The Athletic Hockey Show - Eugene Melnyk's complicated legacy, Rules Court discusses OT, and April Fools' Day hockey pranks

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Ian and Sean discuss the Eugene Melnyk's complicated legacy as the owner of the Ottawa Senators, Ian shares some stories, and hope for the team's future. Jesse Granger stops by for another round of "Granger Things" to discuss how scoring in the NHL is the highest in 25 years, and betting implications. Rules Court was back in session, and Ian and Sean discuss a way to improve OT, and with April Fools' Day on Friday, have there been any good hockey April Fools' pranks? To wrap up a couple of questions for the mailbag, and "This Week in Hockey History".Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM [phone]! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back, everybody. It is your Thursday edition of The Athletic Hockey Show, as always, sitting in these two seats. It's the Amanda Sean McIn-U. Head to the next hour, we will have, as always, Jesse Granger dropping by for Granger things. We've got a whole bunch of things to roll up our sleeves and dig into. Sean and myself and the other Sean. American Sean, is that what we call them? Anyway, we had a really fun piece this week about Rules Court, taking some of your ideas.

And we got a fun one to discuss about overtime. So we'll get to that. April Fool's Day. We want to have a warning. April Fool's Day is coming up this week. We'll talk about some favorite hockey pranks, World Cup of Hockey News, the GM meetings. Got some really fun mailback questions, too,

about the Calgary Flames and not having a captain. This week in hockey history as well. We get to all of that. But, Sean, as we kick this off, I, you know what, I've kind of debated on this. And before I give my thoughts on the passing of Eugene Melnick, because obviously that in our market, in the team I cover seismic news in Ottawa.

And before I wanted to share as a couple of personal anecdotes with our listeners and with you that I don't even know that I've told you a couple of these stories. But, you know, I wanted to get your perspective on this man's, I guess, complicated legacy because you've witnessed it firsthand. And I can't remember if it was 20, it was the summer, I think it was the summer of 2020.

And you wrote a really, in my opinion, passionate, well articulated, well thought out piece, which was basically, um, it, the relationship between the Ottawa Senator fan base and Eugene Malick was irreparably damaged. And you had a, a very good seat for this in the last few years because, peel back the curtain, you do live in Ottawa. So even though people think, oh, yeah, Mac and do, down goes proud, he's Mr. Leaf guy. Well, now he lives right in, in Ottawa. So you have seen this play out.

you've weighed in on it. And I'm just curious what your thoughts were on obviously, like I said, a seismic piece of news in Ottawa this week. Yeah, I mean, Eugene Melnick had owned this team for nearly 20 years. And if you put anyone in a position of that much influence for that long, there will be ups and downs. And then there certainly were in the Eugene Melnick era, beginning with the fact that he bought a team that some people,

were wondering if it had a future. You know, in 2003, remember these are the days before the salary cap. This team was bankrupt. This team was missing paychecks to its own players, which is even in the difficult financial world of the NHL was just about unheard of. And Eugene Melnick was a guy who rode in and saved the team, was the perception at the time. And I think, you know, certainly fans appreciated that. And then, you know, when they're playing the Leafs in 2004,

and he kind of has the comments about, yeah, we're going to go into Toronto. We're going to kill them. That played well in this market. I think, you know, Ottawa sometimes gets a little tired of being in the sleepy, boring town. And the fact that, you know, here was this owner who wasn't afraid to run his mouth a little bit, I think connected with an element of the fan base. And then obviously that same, you know, that same willingness to speak as, mind, it came back to bite him on more than a few occasions. And look, there's all sorts of

valid criticism that you could aim at him as ownership goes. And the piece I wrote a couple years ago was, from my perspective, growing up as a Leafs fan in the Harold Ballard era, which still to this day, I would argue, the worst owner in the history of the NHL. And I know the perspective of that feeling of hopelessness, that feeling of, you know, we're never going to go anywhere as long as this guy is around. Fair or unfair, once that permeates a fan base, it really does feel like something gets broken. And that's where it was in Ottawa.

And certainly this was never a scenario that anyone wished for. And it's first and foremost, of course, far beyond a hockey story. It goes to the friends and the family who are, who are. morning a guy gone too soon. But we are, you know, we're hockey writers and this is a hockey podcast. And from a hockey perspective, this is quite possibly the biggest thing that has ever happened to the Ottawa senators. Eugene Melnick, I think, is inarguably for good or for bad, the most influential person in the history of this franchise. And now that he's gone, we don't really know what comes next for the Ottawa senators.

And it really is hard to imagine a bigger story and a bigger turn of events for whatever the future of this franchise holds. You know, and one thing is I think when that news came out on Monday, it came as a massive shock to a lot of hockey fans. I think they were like, what? Like, it was jaw-dropping news. And it's rare in the year 2022, you find jaw-dropping news anymore, right? There's often hints and things. And one thing I want to say is, I want to, look, in the media,

we get a lot of criticism for being, having kind of a vulture-esque mentality, clickbait mentality. If I got a little piece of news, I'm going to run with it. I'm going to be a fear monger, rumor generator, innuendo, that type of thing. And I want to take one moment to say,

on behalf of the entire Ottawa media, we all knew that, we all knew about the state of this man's health for the last, if not six weeks, certainly in the last two or three weeks, we knew that this unfortunately was not headed in a good direction. And I think what I appreciate is we didn't all have a conversation and say, you know what, like let's all sit on this. I think we just knew this is the right thing to do.

Like to me, people's health is not something that should be reported on without their consent or the family's consent. Right? And I know that the news came as a show. shocked to a lot of people when they saw it on Monday. But we certainly knew that it was trending in a poor direction. And I, you know, I think we did the right thing by by not speculating on it, by not saying anything. Absolutely. Yeah. And again, I know that we get the, we get the reputation of you guys are terrible. You don't show any restraint. I collectively, I think as a group,

we showed some restraint here. Yeah. And it's all, look, everyone, it's, it's all human beings, whether it's, you know, the media, the athletes we forget about sometimes, or even an owner that you don't like as a fan. And you have that right. That's why this team and this league exists is because of the fans. But these are human beings behind it all and with families, with people that care about them. And it's, you know, obviously a tremendously difficult time for a lot of people

connected to Eugene Melnick right now. Yeah, and listen, I would characterize my relationship with him as tumultuous, professionally tumultuous, is probably an accurate way to describe it. But that means that there were some really good moments and then some really bad moments. And I think when I look back at it all, Sean, I think, you know what? Like, I don't feel like I was on an island. I think if you talk to Daniel Alfredson or Eric Carlson or former team presidents or or a lot of people, like a lot of them had the same experience as me,

which is at some point in your professional career, you had a very tight relationship with Eugene Melnick. And then for whatever reason, it fell apart. And it was a common theme. And I think of Dave Cameron, who longtime coach was Eugene's coach in the OHL, and they had a professional falling out, and I don't think they ever spoke again. And it's remarkable to me that he had so many, you know, fractured relationships.

But I got to tell you, like, I had some really good times with him. Like, there was a time where if I needed anything, confirm a story, just text them, just send him an email. He would get back to you ASAP. And it was, it was great. And I want to say, I want to take credit. I don't think I've ever put this out. I may have said this at one point on the radio, here's going Ottawa. But I want to take some credit here for, you know when the senators went to their, they just switched back to their quote unquote 2D logo, like the original logo.

logo. So this is probably in I think 2017. The senators have a kickoff event there and you'll laugh at this because they're announcing we have new hot dogs in the arena. And hey, the media is like free hot dogs to try. It was probably the most crowded press conference of the Eugene Melnick era. And I'm getting my hot dog in the line and Eugene Melnick is there. And he's fixing his hot dog with, you know, whatever is mustard. And I say to him, listen, Eugene, I got to

great idea for you. I think you need to go back to your old 2D logo from when before you kind of came on and when this was the original. And he looks at me like as if I had two heads. He's like, why? I said, listen, you don't understand. Like there's such a great connection between those 90s teams and the early 2000s. And now those kids who grew up watching you in the 90s early 2000s, they have kids of their own. And they, there's just connectivity. And I think you should really think about going back to 2D jersey. And I have a witness, Graham Creech, who works on the radio station here in Ottawa, was with me.

He witnessed it. He will back me up. Me pitching to Eugene Malnick, do the 2D jersey. And Eugene's like, oh, okay, that's a good idea. And sure enough, a couple years later, I just want to take some credit for being able to. Yeah, it's taking all the credit. Yeah. Your idea.

Yeah. Yeah. It was my idea. My idea. And, you know, like, I had such a good. relationship with him where, like, I remember just before he had the issue with his liver in 2015, his personal assistant and right-hand man was a guy named Kenny Villazore. Ken is a great guy. And Ken would put out a lot of fires for Eugene. You know, when Eugene would say something controversial,

Kenny would kind of reach out and be like, ah, you know, he didn't really mean that. And he was a great fire extinguisher. And Ken reached out to me and said, listen, Eugene is going to Afghanistan on a, kind of a, like a promotional tour and wants to bring a couple media people over. You're going to play some ball hockey on the ships out there. He's picked you. He just thinks so highly of you. And I thought, okay, well, you know what? This could be a neat experience.

Go spend some time. And then unfortunately, he fell quite ill and that trip never came to fruition. Then our professional, again, professional relationship kind of went off the rails there. But it, to me, it was like, I don't. felt very conflicted on Monday because I did, like, I know that he didn't like me at the end, but I do think that at times he did. And I think it's important to understand that like human beings are imperfect creatures, right? Like we sometimes think that, you know, we demand perfection, especially out of our owners of like,

they're, they hold this sort of sacred entity in their hands, which is an NHL team and certainly in the Canadian market. But I got to say, as I look back at it, like this team. isn't here if he's not here, right? So there's that element of it. But like, I'm having a hard time. I'm really, I'm grappling with this because at the end, the last three and a half four years, like he wouldn't return my texts. He made it very clear I was kind of persona non grata around the arena. And, and that's okay. Like, but I, what I'm hoping is we get a fresh start in Ottawa. And whether it's Anna and Olivia who own the team, whether it's somebody else, and you

saw it to some extent, certainly in Toronto in the early 90s when there's a change in ownership. You saw it, at least on the ice in Chicago, I don't think we should necessarily go down the road about everything else that happened there. But certainly there was a connectivity that was restored between a city and a hockey team. And I think that's the hope here in Ottawa, right? That would be the hope. And, you know, you look at the way that things have gone in the past. It's interesting that you mentioned Chicago and Toronto because those were two very different

paths. In Chicago, when Bill Wirtz passed away, it had been known for years that when that happened, that the team would go on to his kids. And we knew that Rocky and the family would continue to own the team. And there was a plan going forward. Versus in Toronto, when Harold Baller passed away, there was there was not that in place. Harold Ballard had kids, but the relationships were fractured there. There was a, you know,

the strange things with his wife or, or sort of wife. Was it Yolanda? Yolanda, yeah. Yolanda Ballard, who he wasn't technically married to, but was his longtime partner. There were lawsuits. There were other groups moving in immediately to,

to try to fill, Phil Voids, power plays, all sorts of backroom dealing and backstabbing and drama, which went for a couple of years. And, you know, even extended, even once the power struggle initially was resolved, it continued until the late 90s where the pension plan and all of this moved in. So we don't know. I mean, certainly one thing you never really heard around Ottawa, again, Eugene Melnick was a relatively relatively young man,

you didn't really seem to hear about the succession plan. You didn't seem to hear, you'd mention his two children. They certainly weren't visible to fans as having any sort of role in the team. And they're both, both of his daughters are quite young relative to, you know, the rest of who you think of when you think of NHL or pro sports team ownership. So I think a lot of people, are wondering right now. And you know, you had the story come out this week in the aftermath talking about the, are the senators going to play games in Quebec City? And a lot of people

connected dots there saying, you know, is this the first step to this team maybe not being here? And then, you know, that doesn't seem to be the case. You had a piece today where you basically said in your piece that, and, you know, correct me if I'm paraphrasing this wrong, but you basically said, this team is staying in Ottawa. There is. I guess that is the one thing. We don't know whether the team will stay with the Melnick family. We don't know whether it will be sold. We don't know who might bid on it.

But it is not a situation, as I understand it, where the league may look at this as an opportunity to move the team even to a quote unquote better market. Basically, if there's anyone out there who wants to keep the team in Ottawa and there is, then the team is going to stay in Ottawa. and Senators fans should put that worry aside if that's something they're feeling right now. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's worth pointing out that, and I put this in up my column today,

there are multiple. I'll leave it at that. I'll say multiple. And groups that are willing to buy the team and keep them in Ottawa. I can't stress that enough. I don't like fear mongering. I don't like people thinking that there's a potential they're going to move. I just need people to know multiple groups are willing to buy them,

keep them here, and have them thrive long term. The other thing I want to point out real quick before we certainly move on to hopefully we'll be some lighter topics for the rest of the show. You know, his daughters are 23 and 20. Anna and Olivia are about 23 and 20, so early 20s. And the younger daughter Olivia is somebody who actually had a little bit of an interest, I think, in the business side of the team. She did a couple of internships when she was in high school.

with the hockey team. And so in the last couple days, look, I've reached out to some people who worked with her thinking, hey, just can you give me some background on this young person? And the things that came back were really positive.

And I want to stress that because I think if you were an heir to either a hockey team or a significant fortune, there is an expectation that maybe you won't be a down-to-earth person, right? You might be entitled, you might be spoiled,

you might be, you know, whatever adjective you want to use. And the things that came back, to me repeatedly were, boy, Olivia Melnick was down to earth, never had the air of entitlement, never made you feel weird that, you know, she's bad, oh man, look out that, that's Eugene's daughter, walk on eggshells. And what I thought was really interesting is she showed a significant interest in diversity, equality initiatives, like the DEI movement. So she was like, hey, we need to be better for more forward thinking. We need to be better with our hiring practices. We need

to widen the net. And I thought, you know what? I think this is important for our audience to know that if in fact this ownership stake goes to the daughters and if in fact they have some degree of control over this, this will be a fresh view coming from the ownership suite, in my opinion. You know? Yep. That's, and that's great to hear. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I guess it, The last thing I would say on Eugene Melnick is, I think, whatever you might think of him as a person and as an owner, he cared very deeply about the Ottawa senators. And I think just about everything, the good and the bad came from that. And we've certainly in pro sports and in hockey, we've seen owners that were very hands-on. We've seen owners that really seem to view, you know, it's an item on my, you know, on my bottom line.

It's not something I'm passionate about. And some people would say that's the best kind of owner to have is somebody who just signs the checks and stays out of the way. That wasn't Eugene Melman. He was, you know, there's other people who will tell you that I need an owner who is a fan of the team first and foremost. and that is what they had in Ottawa in Eugene Melnick. This guy, he cared and he wanted to see this team win, and I think at times was not maybe in the best position to know how to make that happen. But that's where it all seemed to come from.

So that's not something you see in every situation and in every market with every team. And it's what Ottawa had in Eugene Melnick. and now we wait and see what comes next. You know, and I think as well, like he might be the last of the era of the sort of colorful, bombastic billionaire owners, right? Like, if you think of pro sports teams in the 70s, the 80s and 90s, like there were these singular people that owned sports teams. And now it's very much shifted to large corporations on the team and it's very faceless.

Eugene was a throwback. He was the, you know, if you're a baseball fan, Charlie Findley who owned the 8th. in the 70s. George Steinbrenner, who kind of cast a larger shadow than the Yankees logo did sometimes. You don't see that anymore. It's rare, yeah.

And some of what we saw in Ottawa is why it's rare, right? Because it doesn't always work. And yeah, you always got the feeling that Eugene Melnick probably either saw himself or, you know, aspire to be kind of an Ottawa version of Jerry Jones, right? Like that guy who's involved in every piece of things and can make it all work. And, you know, obviously the results have been pretty mixed in Dallas and were extremely mixed in Ottawa. But, you know, the one thing you never heard in Ottawa, of all the many, many things.

and you know, you could barely have a conversation about this team in the last decade plus that didn't prominently feature Eugene Melnick's name. The one thing you never heard was, well, Eugene doesn't care. Yeah, this isn't a big deal to Eugene. He's not, you know, whatever. That was not part of the Eugene Melnick experience. All right, as always, on a Thursday, time for us to bring in Jesse Granger for a little segment we like to call Granger Things. Brought you by BetMGM, the exclusive betting partner. with us at the Athletic and Jesse Granger coming to us from Seattle,

where it's an odd one where Vegas plays not one but two games in Seattle this week. Did you think about going Airbnb this week? No. You know, you're there for a week or five days. Why not just Airbnb this thing? I didn't consider it, but I'm staying in downtown Seattle, and it's a pretty good spot. I'm enjoying myself so far. I'm a few blocks away from the famous fish market.

So not, I'm a big seafood fan too. So I'm in pretty, I'm, I'm in heaven over here. Right on. Get to, yeah, get ready to catch your fish. I know if I know anything about Seattle, that's one of three things. There you go. And you got to tell me what you think of the gum wall. Okay.

You know what? I walked past it in Ghost Alley. I haven't been there in the COVID era because in the pre-COVID era, it was still gross. People are just putting their chewed gum on a wall. and now I can only imagine in the post-COVID world, it's even grosser. Yeah, it was pretty gross. There were people posing next to the wall,

like pretending like they were sticking. Yeah, not for me. I watched from a distance. All right, hey, listen, we got you here to chat about a couple of trends in the league. And I know you want to actually bring up something that you brought up on the Wednesday pod with Julian McKenzie. And it's about the pattern of seeing some more goals,

a little bit more offense in the NHL. season. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. So league-wide, they're averaging 3.1-1 goals per game this year, which is the highest since 1995, 1996, so the highest in 26 years. And yesterday, me and Julian, we were kind of talking about how, like, why is that happening? And I think Julian's explanation was, I guess, the best one that we came up with. And that was something along the lines of depth players are scoring more off. They're more skills. teams are leaning towards a more skilled game, not just on their top two lines, like has been the case for a while, but also the third and fourth line guys and defensemen.

We're watching guys like McCar and Yosi, obviously putting up ridiculous points, but it just seems like league-wide when you watch hockey every night. You see a ton of skilled defensemen on the back end. I'd like to get your guys perspective on it. Sean, why do you think there are so many goals in the league this year? Yeah, you know, it's interesting because this is people who read my stuff know that I follow this closely and I've been banging the drum for decades now about the lack of scoring in the NHL and how we've all just come to accept it and it is it is up this year now it's not

you know we're we're talking a tenth of a goal over some of the previous seasons so you know we don't want to overstate it but progress is progress and it's what's interesting is you know a few years ago what happened was we saw we started to see shots against to creep up. Even though the goal tending was this similar quality, there were a couple more shots a game. And then last year, in that weird season, the shots went back down, but the goaltending was worse. The save percentage dropped. And so it kind of balanced out. And then this year, we're sort of seen both. The shots are back up. The save percentage is staying steady, which adds up to more goals. My theory is that what we are seeing here is at least partly due to

the quality of the players that are out there, especially the goaltenders. We've seen a lot of teams have to go to third goaltenders this year, fourth goaltenders. You're seeing it obviously in Vegas. You know, we get the situation with the lease right now. We saw it in Ottawa. You go on down the list.

It's probably a shorter list of teams that have been solid in goal. I'm just talking in terms of having two guys that they trust, let alone star players. A lot of guys have had to swap in. Montreal, obvious example. There was a time where, I mean, the guys they were running out there were just getting shelled every night, but that's, that's who they had. And I think that's sort of added up, as well as, you know, that that also plays out on the blue line. You got a few guys who are, you know, maybe,

maybe not quite NHL quality and that can add up. I think that's a big part of it. And, you know, you mix in a couple of, quote unquote, top goaltenders having, you know, maybe not the years that they were, They were hoping to have maybe some guys playing more than they would like to play because the backup gets hurt or because, you know, if somebody gets COVID or whatever happens, I think that could be contributing. And I hope I'm wrong because if I'm right about that, then none of this is likely to be permanent. We would expect to see it regress back down in the next little while and maybe even worse because the NHL loves to pat itself on the back. Anytime scoring goes up even a little bit, they go mission accomplished. and they're so proud of themselves. And then we see it drop back down.

Maybe that happens again. I hope I'm wrong and it doesn't. And we're seeing some sort of bigger change. But my suspicion is we've just got some goalies in the league who probably shouldn't be playing. And they're getting shelled and knocking the average up. Yeah. And you know what? Along those lines.

And maybe I didn't have the time to look this up. But I feel like there's no way that we've seen this recently. There are nine teams right now, guys. Nine teams. that have a sub-900 safe percentage from their goalies. Nine. Nine teams in the NHL. So Edmonton is at 899.

And then after that, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Columbus, Chicago, Montreal, Detroit, New Jersey, and Seattle. Seattle is bottoming out at 879. New Jersey is at 885. Like, we just don't see this. In fact, and there's not a single team that has a 920 safe percentage, which is remarkable, right? Like you would have thought, oh, yeah, the Rangers, they're probably 930. They're 918. And I think we've not seen this type of, you know, this type of gold tending, like Sean said in a long time.

I'd have to look this up. When's the last time we had nine teams end of season with a sub-900, same percentage? I'm thinking it's been maybe since that mid-90s there. Yeah, probably been along well. Another stat that I noticed when I was trying to like come up with a hypothesis for this is the league. The power play percentage league-wide is 21.01% right now. Wow. And so this is the highest anyone scored since 1995.

Well, that's the highest power play percentage since 1985. We're talking 36 years since the last time the league power play percentage was 21.1%. That would lean more towards your, you got kind of what you guys are talking about. The goalies aren't making the saves as opposed to what Julian and I were kind of talking about. like the depth guys because obviously power plays. That's just the top guys. I wonder, do you think there is a little bit of teams are executing better on the power play? Teams, coaches have figured out ways to score on the power play or is it just poor?

We have seen more of the, you know, the four forwards on the power play deploy. We're even seeing some teams go to five. I think we have moved the thinking away from the idea that, okay, let's go in and get set up. And then we just send it back to the point and try to bomb a 90 mile an hour slug. Lapshot, I think there's an understanding that doesn't work. So it could be. Again, that's something where you tend to see ebbs and flows, right? Because Lord knows, in this NHL, if anything, if the offense against any kind of advantage

that coaches catch up so quickly, right? They immediately figure out a way to counteract it. So, you know, again, that could be part of it. But let me throw a number at you guys that just I looked up as we were talking. 2018-19, so this is the last full season. I'm not counting last year's partial season and I'm not counting the COVID season. 2018-19, there were 93 goaltenders that played at least one game in that NHL season. 2017-18, there were 95 goaltenders who played at least one game.

This season so far, and keep in mind, we're still a month to go. there have been 112 goaltenders appear in the NHL. So that's 20 guys roughly, you know, that in a normal NHL season would not have appeared who are appearing now. And, you know, when I look at guys who, when I look at guys, you know, if you make the cutoff five games or 10 games, it starts to, the gap starts to disappear. So it suggests that there's just a whole lot of guys who've been thrown in for a game. or two. And most of them, I'm looking down the list, there's a lot of guys who, you know, have just gotten shell, you know, Michael Hutchinson into games.

Jack LaFontaine and Carolina just got bit up. I don't even know who Hugo Elnavette is, but apparently he plays for the lightning and he had a nine goals against average and a 700 save percentage. This is, you know, again, and every year there's a couple of guys who get into games and get shelled and go back down to the minors. it seems to be a lot more that it's happening this year. Yeah. And listen, Jesse, before we let you go, now the key is, how do you capitalize on this?

If you're looking as a person who puts some money down on games or is into pools or betting, there's got to be a way to maybe take advantage of this kind of the higher scoring rate or what we're seeing out of poor gold heading. Right. So you automatically look to the overunders and you wonder how much, like, has the market caught up to it because like Sean said, if there's, if there's a little bit offense, the coaches are going to catch up to it and figure out how to stop it. Well, the sports book, the odds makers aren't going to just let everyone hit overs all year long. They're going to start raising those

overs. And we have seen some of the overs like, I can't, I can remember when if, if a game was a six on the over, it was like, oh, wow, high scoring game tonight. Whereas now you look at the slate and it's like almost all the games are six. And then you'll see a five and a half every once in a while. But so I looked season long, 52.6% of the games have gone over, which is slight. That's in betting averages,

that's not a big enough trend to go on. But when you start looking lately, and this may go kind of towards Sean's point two, the goalies are banged up. You're getting later in the year. Lately, the scoring has been much, like, higher. And the, the over under trends are showing that. So it's 40, it's 52% for the season.

The last 30 days, 58.6% of the games have gone over while only 41% have gone under. And then in the last seven days, just in the last week, 63.5% of the games have gone over the total. 33 overs and only 19 under. So it definitely looks like this is trending. Now, maybe now that we're getting towards the playoff chase, we'll have to see. I was talking to a couple players on the Golden Knights the other day. And they mentioned that like, yeah, it feels like you can kind of. of feel it's starting to tighten up. Like teams are starting to get in that way off the front. That goals rate always goes down because every season we get halfway through and people go, this is on pace to be the highest.

And then the last month you see a dive as teams tighten up, you know, the starters play more games, that sort of thing. So yeah, I'm not surprised to hear them saying that. You'd have to be careful. Like you got to watch. You've got to look at your spots if you're trying to bet it and over. if it's two playoff teams like a Vegas, an Edmonton, an L.A. The chase in the West is really tight, obviously in the East, not so much.

They pretty much have their eight. But I think you got to pick your spots. You maybe look at the goalies. I think I think you guys brought up a lot of good points about the goalies getting thrown in there. If you see a guy that isn't a normal NHL guy that's playing, maybe throw some money on the over on that game. But yes, I mean, 63.5% going over in the last seven days and even 58. 58.6% over a month. That's it for betting terms.

Being able to beat the spread, 50, if you can beat the spread 58% of the time, you're doing phenomenal. So pretty solid trends to the over to go along with the, obviously most scoring we've seen in 25 years. So just kind of a cool stat. Yeah. Hey, listen, Jesse, we'll leave it there.

But by the way, all of those games that went over, it's all because of the Red Wings. I think they're solely responsible for all of this. But listen, thanks for this. Enjoy your time. Seattle, and I look forward to your coverage of the Golden Nights against the Cracken this week, and we'll get you again next Thursday. Awesome. Thanks for having me, guys.

Thanks, Jesse. All right, always great to get Jesse Granger on. For the people who are just listening to this podcast, they couldn't see your expression when I brought up the gum wall. I've never heard of this. I'd never heard of this before, and here's my question. Why are we not having at least one of the Cracking goalies be nicknamed Gepard? gum wall going forward. Like how is this something that is not right. I mean, it hasn't,

I mean, maybe gum wall, gum fence. I don't know. It hasn't been much of a wall. Maybe we're waiting for it. But I mean, Philip Grubauer's got to be gum wall going forward, doesn't he? Like I did not know this was a thing. Yeah. But I feel like that's, we got to, we got to put that up there. So right when you go, if you go to the pike place fish market and you just take, there's like a little path that goes down pedestrian way, cobblestone street, and there's this huge wall. And people just stick their gum. on it. That's, it is.

When I heard gumwall, that is what I thought. So it's good to, it's nice to know that something lives up to expectations. But I'm, you know, I might pass on going out of my way to see that. All right. I wanted to hit on you, myself and Shanzhen, Tilly teamed up to, to do a rules court piece. This is basically, it's like a fun mailbag where you put out a call for, hey, you got an idea to change the game, change the rules, increase scoring, make it more fun. you throw your idea to us, no matter how wacky or zany it is, and then the three of us, we play the role of arbitrator.

We were like, ah, you know what, two in favor, one against, whatever, it passes or it doesn't. And the one idea that I think we should discuss, because I think it was really cool and we all voted in favor of it, was the altering of the three-on-three overtime format to do something a little bit more fun. And maybe you could explain to our listeners what the idea is for overtime. And it wasn't even the overtime.

It was the shootout. We would basically, because we all, you know, overtime's pretty good, but what's the best part of overtime, right? It's when the two teams get going back and forth on the odd man rushes. And I feel like a lot of fans were, I won't say all of us, but many of us are over the shootout. I've said, I haven't watched a shootout in years. I turn the TV off. I flip to a different game. I go watch hockey somewhere.

I don't want to watch slow breakaways. You know, I'll find out who wins the coin flip. So one of our readers wrote in and said, we scrapped the shootout. We get rid of the shootout is no longer an individual competition of breakaways. Now it's two on ones. So you get you put the pocket center ice. You get two guys on the offensive team who have to start on that side.

You have a defender in the defensive zone who can start anywhere in that zone and you have a goal. And you go in and it's two on ones. So it's the same concept back and forth. You know, you could do, I guess, three and then, you know, you go into, keep going if, if you're still tied after that. But instead of the breakaways, it's now we have two on ones, which means we have passing. We have breaking up passes. We have, you know, decoys and all this other stuff comes into play rather than watching guys do the same five shootout moves over and over again. I love this idea.

the defensemen now get involved. Defensive defensemen become important, the different skill sets that are ignored in the shootout. And it would just be new and fresh and, you know, interesting. And I think it would be fascinating to watch and see kind of, you know, remember when the shootout came in and we're like, who's going to be good at shootouts? What goalies will be good?

And it turned out, you know, there's a handful of guys that are good at shootouts. I don't even know which goalies have the best, you know, that didn't really become a thing. Wouldn't it be cool to find out, like, Who's the defenseman that you go with to break it up? Who do you use as your two guys? Do you go a setup guy and a sniper? Do you have two guys on the same line?

Do you ever use, you know, does Kail McCar get a chance? Do you ever put a forward back? Would you put Patrice Berger on back there to try to break up a two-on-one? What kind of strategies would we have when you know, like two-on-ones happen organically during the game? And there's always guys coming in to chase. When you have a little bit more time, you know, what happens? Do we get to, you know, do the two-fourers come in on different sides the way they normally would on a two-on-one, or does it get played differently? Does the defender go more aggressively?

Does he hang back? Do you let the goalie take one guy? I love the idea. I want to see how it would play out. And like I said, I would absolutely be watching. I would be rooting for overtime to end in a tie so that I could see the two-on-one competition. Plus, you do it the same, you know, you can do the same rules. You can't reuse guys until you run out.

So now we get more guys in the mix, more players being used instead of just the same three or four guys you see every time. I love this idea so much that I'm already preemptively angry that I know the NHL would never consider it. Yeah. And the way I explained it, I was like, hey, it's like the shootout and three on three had a baby. Like, you know, it's like you take the best parts of each and you put them together. I couldn't find a thing that I didn't like about it, which worries me. I'm like, this seems too good. But what I love and I know the thing that really came through with you and Gentile, it's like, damn, these guys hate coaches.

Like, they just hate NHL coaches because they stuff, they suck the life out of entertainment and fun. Yes. How could a coach suck the life out of a two-on-one? How? I don't think they can. They'd find a way to, you know, to, you know, we said the same thing about throughout three, right? Now it's, you know, we see teams circling back and, you know, some teams use two defensemen and all this is stupid stuff. But no, I mean, you would have to, it would just, like, there's so, I have so many questions.

Like, would we, what would happen when you saw a defenseman go back and then line a guy up and throw a body check? Like, you'd have to allow that, right? I mean, you're allowed to defend. What happens when a guy just smokes the other guy and comes across? Or I had this vision of, let's say, take a, take a, take a, take a, classic setup sniper pairing. Let's say it's Baxter and Ovechkin. What if you let Baxterm take the puck and what if he goes in fast into the zone and goes

right at the defenseman and tries to see, you know, forces the defenseman back, you know, gap control to try to, you know, keep him from going around him. And Ovechkin kind of sneaks up behind and then you do the drop pass back and Ovechkin's got the free one timer from right between the circles sort of thing. There'd be so many different ways you could do it. I think it would just be fascinating. And, you know, you'd have to have some sort of rules. You wouldn't want to guys to be going in and, you know, circling around and around and around over.

And you'd have to figure out when the play actually ends. Is it with a save? It's clear, whatever it is. But, oh, it would be so much fun to just see, like, you know, who are the duos that are doing the best and all of this? There's just all these different scenarios. I want to see it. And I'm already, like, I've already in my head had the conversation where you pitch it to the NHL. And they go, eh, everything's fine.

And just decide not to change it. Like I'm preemptively angry. Yeah. Preemptively angry. That's how we, that's a general way to describe how we feel as NHL fan. Just preemptively angry. Yeah. Preemptively angry and annoyed and just, just all of it.

All right. What happened? Like, wait, could you trip a guy? Like, what happened? You get a penalty? Yeah, what would happen? I don't know. They probably get a penalty shot.

I'd know. I'd let them go 2.0 then. Let's go 210. Let's really, let's see if we can just really blow out a goalie's hammy on one of these where we go back and forth nine times. I don't know. We'd figure it out and it would be fun. So there you go.

That's why it's not happening. Hey, we love these ideas. And look, there was a lot that got left on the sort of quote unquote cutting room floor. So we do want to encourage you listeners, hey, if you got some good ideas for I think I could make the NHL better with a simple rule change or tweak, like, you know, send them our way. And I'm sure we're going to do one of these rules court things again maybe early in the off season or something. It's just a fun thing we try and do every few months, so fire away. And I would like to have the conversation at some point of eliminating offside altogether. Like just like just go into it with an open mind.

Because I know a lot of people are just, it's a non-start. I think we need to have the conversation at some point. There's some merit. No, it's a non-starter is sort of the default stance I've found for. And by the way, I really appreciate the feedback from hockey fans who reached out to tell me that the game is perfect. and I should watch something else if I don't like it. I've looked at the TV ratings. Many people are taking your advice.

So you'll be happy to know that many people over the last decade or two have decided to watch something else. I would like that number to drop. So let's get creative. You know, one thing I also, I feel like when we do this podcast and there's a big date on the horizon, I feel like it's our job to kind of be like it's a public service announcement. I think even a few weeks ago I was like,

Hey, heads up. We got daylight savings time coming. I feel like we need to send a warning shot to everybody. April Fool's Day is this week. Okay? And even though you and I, I think I'd like to think that, you know, we like we like jokes and we like lighthearted stuff and fun. I don't think we like April Fool's Day, right? No.

Like we don't. April Fool's Day is too. The modern version of April Fool's Day is terrible. We're like, you know, companies just put out like, oh, we invented a holographic teleporter. And then they're like, no, we didn't. And it's like 90% of April Fool's, it's just people lying and then insisting they're not lying and then being like, ha, ha, I got you with my lie. And you're like, yeah, that's a good one. You got us.

Yeah, good one. Yeah, if you work at a company and you're like, we're working on a company, April Fool, don't. Don't do it. Don't do it. Because, yeah, April, I'm up for a good prank as much as anyone. But yeah, I'm a hard pass on April Fool's for me. Now, is there any prank in hockey history that you're like, ah, that was a great. That was a great prank.

You sent me a list that you found out of the, oh, boy, there was some, there was some not very good. It was just like people being jerks to each other. Like, yeah, we all, we told someone we were taking a picture and then we dumped ice water on them. Like, oh, that's, that's hilarious. I put, you know, I destroyed somebody's shoes. I go, okay, that's a hilarious one. I will say the two that I've liked, the trend, and I haven't seen one in a little while, but for a while they were doing the thing, like, I think Kevin BXA was the first,

where they would dress a player up so his teammates didn't recognize him and then send them out to, like, talk to the teammates. Remember Kevin BXA was like a maintenance guy or something? Those were pretty good. I will tell you the one April Fool's joke that I actually thought was really well done. and it was here in Ottawa. You might remember this. It was, I got to say, 20 years ago, it was, it was, because it was, when the Leafs,

senators' rivalry was full-blown. So this must have been 2002, the year they didn't face each other in the first round of the playoffs. So 2002, maybe it was 2003. And the, I was driving into work and the local radio station here, Team 1,200, your former home, was talking about a story. that the CBC, due to budget cuts, was not going to be able to cover all three Canadian series. The Leifes, the Canucks, and the senators were all in the playoffs.

And because of budget cuts, the CBC was not going to broadcast the Ottawa series. They were going to do Vancouver for the West and they were going to do Toronto in the east because Toronto had so many more fans. And Senator fans were absolutely losing their minds. They were so angry. And I was driving in. And, like, I was like, it didn't occur to me until I was walking into work with like a little pep in my step because I couldn't wait to tell my senators fans, friends about this, that I realized what day it was. But that was the perfect prank because it fed into exactly what people already.

It was believable enough. And you could absolutely, if you were a senators fan that, yeah, of course, the Leafs get all the attention. So now we're not even going to get to watch our team in the playoffs. The calls that they were taking were just absolutely hilarious from, from fear. Senator fans. I don't remember, I don't think I was listening when they did the reveal

that it was a joke. But it was, that was an 8 plus prank. But other than that, there's not a, there's not a lot of good ones. No, a lot of it is very contrived

and forced. You know, the one hockey prank I always like was, you know, trade deadline day. There's always a feeling like, you know, there's rumors about guys getting traded.

And Brian Murray was great at, you know, kind of lightening the mood and making jokes. And I was in Atlanta with the senators. And I don't, I can't remember it was maybe 2008. Brian was the head coach. And there was rumors that Antoine Vermet was going to get traded. Vermet was kind of this kind of, is he a second liner? Is he a third line?

He just didn't quite fit. There was rumors that he's going to need a new contract. They're going to move them. And it's trade deadline day and we're in Atlanta. and it's right around like the time of the deadline and they're on the ice and Brian Murray calls everyone together and he calls Vermet over he says Antoine very sorry to tell you this but you're sticking around and Vermet was just he said it you know he couldn't believe like his heart was in his throat when when Brian's like hey I got to tell you I'm very sorry to tell you you're not

going anywhere and it just you know it was just have you I yeah they should absolutely do that on trade deadline. Like how great would it be if like just in, in, in, in Edmonton, you just call Leontersitle over, have the GM come out, talk to him, have everybody tap their sticks on the ice and just like the media would be going insane. Didn't that happen at the trade deadline a few years ago? Like somebody had to pee and they just left the ice and came back, but it had already been reported that like they were traded.

There was one. Well, I, I remember this from one of those blooper videos that I grew up watching. You're probably the same. there was a baseball one where they called the guy in. It was like some younger player, but the manager called it and the GM was there. And they told him they traded him to Japan, which is not a thing.

You can't do that. But he didn't. They were explained to be like, you've been traded to the Yokomuri Giants or whatever. And he's just like crestfallen. And like he comes out and like that like everybody was in on it. They're all shaking his hand. And, you know,

they're packing up his locker. And he's like, on the phone to his agent and all of this. And then they, you know, they all revealed that it was a joke. something like that I'm I'm in for it's uh you know that that to me is a lot better than just putting shaving cream in someone's pants pockets and calling it a day yeah or if you talk to uh old nchel players

who played like in the 70s and 80s they took commercial flights like all of them were like well we used to put a $20 bill on a fishing line yes and drop it in the middle of the terminal and watch people try to pick it up yeah that's what you did that was that was a whole night back then man that's uh that's what that's what it was and and i just thought of something do you remember And it was this year, was it not, where the Bruins tricked Patrice Berger told them that Brad Marchand was going to be captain. Do you remember this? No. Oh, I hadn't heard that.

Was there not a video of like, you know, Zadano had left, right? Yeah. Or what am I thinking of here now? Now I'm blanked. But do you remember this? No, I don't. I don't remember. But that basically say that we're very proud to announce that our new captain is Brad Marchand.

And Marchand comes up to take it. And then they're all like, ah, got you, Berge. Oh, that's a good one. Okay. No, I never saw it, but that that one may have slipped by me. Oh, man. Now I feel like I got to check that because now maybe did I just, is that like a fever dream or I could have sworn they did that. It was an idea.

You might be pitching this. Yes. Yeah, no. Okay, yeah. I looked it up. They did. Yeah, Patrice Bergeron and the practice, Captain Prank. It happened.

They named him. They jokingly named. It's pretty good. They need Marchand captain and in front of everybody. And it's great. Yeah. That's nice. I like that.

All right. Why don't we open up the mailbag here to wrap up the show? And we've got a quick this week in hockey history too. A reminder, as always, you can email us to the athletic hockey show at gmail.com, the athletic hockey show at gmail. Or leave us a voicemail. We love that. 845, 445, 845, 445, 845.

This is an interesting one because I think a lot of people would tell you the Calgary Flames are Stanley Cup favorite. And certainly in that upper echelon, if you're going to put five teams in the mix to be Stanley Cup favorite, Calgary would be in that list. But they don't have a captain right now. And Jesse wants to know, look, the flames look like legit cup contenders,

they don't have a captain. If they do win the Stanley Cup, they don't have a captain, who would accept the trophy from the commissioner and has this ever happened before? That's from Jesse. So the answer is whoever they want. I'm not even sure if it is

a rule anywhere that the captain has to accept it. He's just the leader of the team. That's who Batman calls over. I would assume they would just like Gary Bettman know who they want it. Or perhaps they would just go as a group, anything like that. It's not a hard and fast rule so much as it's a tradition. I'm not sure if we've ever had a Stanley Cup winner

that had nobody wearing the captaincy. But we have had one where there was a rotating captaincy. And the good news for Calgary is it was. the Calgary Flames in 1989. Right. That team, it was Lanny McDonald, Jim Plotinsky, and Tim Hunter sort of rotated throughout as who the captain was. And, you know, it was fine.

It's not an issue. You just decide who gets to wear the sea on any given night or nobody does. I would assume it would be one of the assistants, but you will still get your cup. and it'll it'll just be whoever the team decides they want to send over. And let's read one more email that came in. This is from Preston who describes himself as Preston the Confused Sharks fan. Guys, I know there's always a lot of talk from fans on bad teams that want to have their pending UFA players traded away at the deadline as a rental

only to sign them again after free agency. I want to know why don't NHL teams ever consider that when you try, trade a player under contract to a contender, have a provision written in that says that the player is traded back to that original team in the offseason. I think this could be very creative. And although it would never work out in the NHL, I love to imagine crazy scenarios that it might cook up. That's from Preston, the Sharks fan.

Yeah. The answer to this is that the NHL wouldn't allow it is basically it. You always see, or at least you sometimes see trades go in with future consideration. attached to them and then the future considerations are almost never revealed. But they do have to be revealed to the league. You have to give the league the full scoop. That's these trade calls that we've all learned so much about thanks to Evgeny Dadaunov and that. That's part of what goes into it is anything like that that you wanted to formally put into a deal,

you would have to disclose to the league there. And then they wouldn't allow that because they don't want, you know, they don't want these. sorts of, you know, there's rentals in the sense that we know it today, but they don't want guys just being loaned out to the teams. Now, the follow-up question is, well, why not just make it a handshake deal? Why not just say, you know, kind of a wink and a nudge that you'll flip this guy back to me? And I, the closest I can think of is it did happen with Keith Kuch back in the day. I think it was St. Louis and Atlanta, where he went, went to one for a playoff run and then got traded back in the offseason for his rights as a free agent got

traded back for a lot of the same package that he was traded for the first time. But that was a situation where he didn't want to resign. And so they were sending him back to so that he could sign with his old team. Not quite the same thing. Could you have a handshake agreement? Yes. But there would be two problems with that. The first would be if the league found out they could potentially take action against you.

The maybe more important would be that it was not. it would not be something that was binding at all because you haven't disclosed it to the league. Therefore, it's not part of the deal. So if you go and trade, you know, I trade my first liner to this team and it's like wink nudge, you're going to send them back to me. And then in the offseason, I pick up the phone and go, okay, I want my guy back. And they go, no, we changed our mind. Or it's a different GM.

You know, someone's been fired. I've got no recourse. I can't go to the league and say, we had a wink nudge deal. They're going to say too bad. It wasn't in writing. It's not a deal. and now I'm really up the creek. Yeah.

Again, it just, it's just basically, it's tampering to put it mildly, right? Like where you're basically. Yeah, the league, Gary Bettman and the league have wide powers to address pretty much anything, anything you look at with the CBA or, you know, transaction rules where you say, well, you know, is there a loophole? There might be, Gary Bettman can close any loophole that he wants by basically just, it's, it's not It's the old best interest of baseball clause that Major League Baseball has. It's a similar sort of thing.

And we know how Gary Bettman is. If he feels like someone's trying to get one over on him, he's not going to react kindly to it. All right. Let's wrap it up real quick with a little this week in hockey history. We take a stroll back, talk about some colorful, weird, fun, historic moments. And hockey got a couple for you this week. Let's go back to March 28th of 1975. The Washington Capitals roll into Oakland.

beat the California Golden Seals 5-3. Why is that significant, you ask? It ended a 37 game losing streak for them on the road. They finished 1 and 39 on the road that year. I want to know, Sean, are the 1974-75 Washington Capitals the worst team of the post-expansion era? I would argue that yes, they are. I would say that they were. That team was terrible.

I mean, there are other contenders, the early senators, the early sharks you could certainly point to. But, oh, my goodness, that capitals team was terrible. Certainly of teams that stuck around, a lot of the other teams you would think about were, you know, the Golden Seals or the Kansas City Scouts or teams that ceased to exist relatively quickly. Those early capitals, and really for the first five years or so were just an absolutely terrible team. And of course, this was the famous team. This is their first year. So they have not won a road game in franchise history.

And they get to almost the end of the season. They win this one. This is the famous game where they then skate around the ice with a, or not skate around the dressing with a garbage can that they call the Stanley can. And they pass it around like it's the Stanley Cup from teammate to teammate. and that's when you know you're a real bad team is when you've got when you've got guys, when you're passing a garbage can around to symbolize, symbolize things.

That's what it's real bad. Okay, the other date I want to hit on is a few years later, March 29, 1981. Wayne Gretzky sets an all-time record. He gets point number 153 on this date, March 29, 19-81. That breaks Phil Esposito's previous single-season record of 150. And I'm wondering, Sean, if you ask the average hockey fan, hey, when Wayne Gretzky broke the single season point record, whose record did he break?

How many fans you think would know that the answer is Phil Esposito? You know, I'm not sure. Like, we have sort of lost the, like, Phil Esposito, I don't feel like gets enough respect for the, what he did offensively in that era. Because I, you know, we've, we talked a little bit, I think a few weeks ago about, you know, the top five, the top ten players ever. And Phil Esposito's a guy you don't often hear in that. You know, people talk. It's the big four.

And then, you know, is it Crosby? Is it Ovechkin? Is it a defenseman? Is it a goalie. Phil Esposito didn't just hold these records. He destroyed these records in the early 70s. And, you know, yeah, it was partly because it was Phyllispe Cito and Bobby Orr. You had the two best offensive players in the league.

It was partly because of the expansion era. So, you know, a lot of players in the league that it wouldn't have been good enough just a few years ago. And it led to this offensive explosion. And all of that factored in. But, you know, Phil Esposito didn't just set the record. You know, Phil Esposito, there had never been a 100-point player in the NHL. The record was 97 going into the late 60s. And then Phil Esposito has a 126-point season.

So he breaks the record by 29 points. And then two years later breaks that record by 26 points, gets it up to 152. So in the span of three years, we go from 97 points as the NHL record to Phil Esposito having 152. It's the equivalent of somebody coming along and not just beating Gretzky's 200 points record, but having 300 in a year. I mean, it just absolutely destroys it. Same thing with goals, right? Goals for the longest time to even get to 50 was the gold standard. Then Bobby Hall comes along.

He has a 54, then a 58 goal season. Phil Esposito comes along, scores 76. So again, take whatever goal scoring record, even if you want to do it by error, take the highest goal total of the last however many years, and then imagine somebody beating that by 18 in one year. It's just insane to think how dominant Phil Esposito was. And of course, Bobby was doing the same. thing on the blue line.

And I think maybe because it was only, you know, for the most part, a decade before Wayne Gretzky comes along and then just wipes out those records and adds to them even more. Obviously, we all are going to remember Gretzky, especially because those are the records that still stand. But the stuff that Phil Esposito did as far as rewriting the record book was every bit as amazing at the time and every bit as unprecedented. Yeah. Okay.

Listen, we'll leave it there. This hour absolutely flew by. Listen, thanks everybody for listening for this latest edition of The Athletic Hockey Show. We'll get you again next Thursday. And if you got any questions for us, again, email us. The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com. Or like I said, we'd love to hear your voice.

Drop us a voicemail. 845-4-5-8459. If you're not a subscriber with us, you can join us at theathletic.com slash hockey show. Get an annual subscription for $1 a month for six months. And also, we've got a cool thing called The Athletic Audio Plus on Apple Podcasts. Get all of our bonus content.

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