The Athletic Hockey Show - Evgenii Dadonov trade is reversed, the lack of blockbuster trades at the deadline, and best Stanley Cup odds

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Ian Mendes and Sean McIndoe discuss Sean's latest piece comparing rosters of teams built solely by number of times a player has been traded. And speaking of trades, of course the talk of the week centers around the Vegas Golden Knights failed trade of Evgenii Dadonov to the Anaheim Ducks. Is this the biggest clerical blunder in NHL history, and is it time for the league to have a universal no-trade clause? Also, they discuss the lack of blockbuster NHL player trades when compared to the NBA and NFL.Then, Jesse Granger jumps on in "Granger Things" to continue the Dadonov conversation, and the trio discuss updated Stanley Cup odds following the trade deadline. Ian also asks Sean and Jesse if given the choice, would they pick the Cup winner to come from the Atlantic Division, or the field?Then in the mailbag, a Red Wings fan wonders what approach the team could take in the offseason, Ian and Sean discuss favorite broadcast duos, and to wrap up, a look back with "This Week in Hockey History"Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM [phone]!Save on a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome, everybody, to your Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. As always, it's your M&M crew. Mendez and Macon do with you for the next hour or so. Coming up, we're going to dive into the Afghani Dadanoff caper, certainly one of the most bizarre ones in recent NHL history, and we'll certainly appreciate Jesse Granger's thoughts on this topic as the Vegas Golden Knights are front and center. That story, we're going to hit on the trade deadline that just passed,

and I guess we're going to lament. Why do other leagues get to have these gigantic, fun blockbuster deals, and the NHL does not. We've got some fun voicemail and email questions to tackle in our mailbag. This week in hockey history looks back at a night when Ron Tugnut put together one of the greatest one-man shows in NHL history. You got all of that coming up in the next hour or so. But Sean, as we kick off this show, I want to talk about your column that you dropped Thursday morning in the athletic because this is fun. Look, listen, 95% of your columns are super fun.

And the other 5% are like really great thinking pieces. But most of your pieces are. I wanted to know what the other 5% were. Yeah. What are the other 5%? No, the other 5%, they just fall flat. Immediately after Leaf's playoff runs. Yeah, no.

Yeah. No, but you know, for the most part, I think you've got the market cornered on. It's just kind of let's have some fun. Let's get a little silly. Let's get weird. And let's lean into it. And for me, this one was, okay, this is great coming off the trade deadline. You look at NHL history.

And, well, listen, why don't I get you to explain this to the listeners? Because it's a fun premise. The idea was simply to let's build some all-time rosters. And we will build them based on how many times a player was traded over the course of their career, their NHL career. So you have the team no trade, which are the guys who were never traded at any point in their NHL career. And then the guys who were traded once, twice, three times, and then a four or more catch-all. And that's what I went with with the one caveat that for the team no trade, it had to be guys who did play for more than one team in their career. Because otherwise, that you just get all the lifers.

You get Mario and Lidstrom and Crosby and Ovecgan and all this. And it's an absolute wipeout. So given those parameters, you know, what do we get? And it's always fun to be to do these sort of things because I like to start with the theory. And usually the theory is the better a player, you would think the fewer times they're traded. So you would think we're going to hit diminishing returns the further down the list we go. And usually it doesn't really work out that way. And I would say in this case, probably didn't quite get the results I was expecting.

Yeah. So as we look at the rosters and I look at them, like the list of guys who are on the two team two trade. So these are guys who would have been traded two times in their careers. Like, to me, all you have to do is look at the first line of this team. It's Wayne Gretzky with Marcel Dion and Mark Messier riding shotgun. Like, those are three of the top, what, six point getters of all time in the way? I think we found out that Team 2 trades, because they also have Ron Francis. So that gives them four of the top six scorers of all time.

And Phil Esposito as well as on Team 2 trade. They're very, very good, especially up front. They are locked and loaded up front. And I should say, part of the fun of this sort of thing is I'm guessing there are some people right now going, wait a second. Mark Messy didn't get traded twice. He got traded from Emmington to New York. But then it was, he went to Vancouver as a free agent. He went back to New York as a free agent.

He was traded to the San Jose sharks. And if you don't believe me, I have the link in the piece. It's there. I won't even get into explaining how and why that happened. But Mark Messia was once traded from the Rangers to the San Jose Sharks. I swear I'm not making that up. Check the article if you would like to know the details on that one. Yeah, exactly.

It's, you know, there's some weird trades. But look, that's, you know, Team 2 trade. To be, Hachik being the goalie too, probably tilts it in their favor. Like, listen, it's a fun article. And like you kind of say off the top, listen, like lean into it. Have some fun with it. The deadline is come and gone. And, you know, it's a fun story.

This is. This is classic post-deadline material for us. Every year, I don't know if you feel the same way. We gear up so much for the trade deadline. Yeah. You know, everything. And then it's like, you know, Monday night, we just kind of look around. And it's like, what else do we have to write?

And you look at the standings, you're like, there's still 30 games to go home. What am I supposed to do until the playoffs arrive? This is what I do is I build make-believe rosters and then argue with people in the comment section about which ones would win a fictional game. Yeah, exactly. So listen, it's a lot of fun, but when I look at this and, you know, you look at, especially look at Team 2 trade, you know, Mark Messier's in there and Gretzky, obviously we mentioned, you know, Ron Francis, Brendan Shanahan, you know.

Blue lines a little thin, though. That's the downfall. The Blue line's then. PK Suban makes the team. PK'Souban, Jay Beaumaster, I had to put on the trade, which is two very, very good players, but a lot of the other rosters, you're talking six Hall of Famers up and down the blue line. So that's the one area where I get a little nervous if I'm Team 2 trade. Yeah, for sure. And like, you know, but like you look at this and like, you know, back in the

90s, you know, Blockbuster Trades, you know, Ron Francis was in a Blockbuster and Brendan Shanahan was in a Blockbuster. Obviously, Gretzky going to L.A. in the late 80s is a Blockbuster. Messier going to the Rangers in the early 90s of Blockbuster. And we, it feels like we don't have those anymore. And I want to kind of shift the conversation to that because I know a lot of our listeners happen to be fans of other sports too, right? And if you've been paying attention to the NFL news cycle lately, you're like, damn, Devonte Adams got traded, damn, Tyree Kill got traded, Russ Wilson got traded. Like, these are superstars getting traded. And in the NHL, it feels like the only time a guy gets traded when he's a star, like Jack Eichael, the guy's got to be super

disgruntled somewhere. That's the one. And outside of Ikel, man, I'm having a hard time. And I know people would say, well, what about Claude Giroux? Well, Giroux's on the back nine of his career, right? Like, he's not at the point where he was like five years ago. So, like, should we be really disappointed, Sean, as hockey fans when you see, and obviously the NBA has got a ton of player movement. We saw it again at their deadline.

Yeah. Like, should we look at these leagues with just a ton of envy and just feel jealous that our best players, the movement isn't there? I am, you know, and I know not everyone feels that way, but I certainly look at these other leagues with some jealousy and especially with the NFL. And yes, I will grant you, the NFL is in its offseason right now. It's a little bit of apples and oranges. But the NBA just had its trade deadline. We saw like the James Harden deal, like big, big blockbusters, many of which seem to come together pretty quickly, seem to be very complicated.

And then meanwhile, in the NHL, we're always hearing about, you know, some third liner. Oh, we just ran out of time. We only had three weeks to put this together. And, you know, we couldn't figure out how to trade this guy for a fourth round draft pick. I do feel jealous because I love trading. I love it's exciting. It's fun as a fan. I love the rumors. I love, you know, arguing about who won or lost to trade. I always have. And that used to be, I would argue a few years ago, that was the one thing that we could kind of hold up over the NFL. Because the NFL, for all maybe its problems in the commissioner's office and some of the off-field stuff, humming along as an on-field product. Great offensive records being broken all the time. Legendary players are

right there. TV ratings through the roofs, of course. You know, money just flooding in from everywhere. You look at the NFL and you're like, man, they just do everything better than the NHL, but we've got the trades and we got the deadline. And the NFL was the league where there was very rarely trading. Certainly during the season, it was practically non-existent. Then in the off-season, you didn't see very much. And that's changed. Now suddenly, the NFL is the home

of the monster blockbuster trade. And it's hard for me as a hockey fan not to look at that and go, man, it would be fun to have that. Now, having said that, you know, I'm a Leafs fan. If it's a Jack Eichael trade, hey, that's lots of fun. If it's

Austin Matthews getting traded, suddenly I'm going, well, wait a second, maybe a little stability. would be nice. So it's always, it always depends who's getting traded, whose team it is, and how your team's coming out in the deal. But I do have to say, even on a day like Monday where we're all absorbed in NHL trades, it was really hard not to be kind of side eye and what was going on in the NFL and going, oh, wait, I'm going to go over there and look at that because that trade's even bigger than anything we're getting. But I look at this. And again, like one of the fun things of our youth in the 90s was sometimes you would just, you know, you'd race home from school,

you'd turn on, you know, I think it was called Sports Desk at the time. It wasn't the Sports Center, right? You turn it on, you'd be like, holy cow, Vincent Domfus just got traded for like, like, you didn't know, right? Yeah, yeah. And like, these are good players, like, good players got traded all the time. Like, guys just get 90 points, turn your chief, like, all the following, like, and there'd be a graphic, it's like, Rick Tockeet, Paul Coffey, Mark, you're like, what is happening?

And you don't see it now. And my question is, do we put all of the blame on this? salary cap. Is that all of, like, did it stop in, or did it stop before 0506? It had slowed down before then. But you're right. I mean, again, going back to my piece today, Team two trades. Here's the fourth line, Pavel Burray, Eric Lindross, Tim Mussalani. How much would you love to have run that out in NHL 94? Right? That was your dream team. And yet these are guys who got traded multiple times in their career. I think do we, do we? We blame the salary cap. My answer is yes and no. Yes, the salary cap absolutely has influenced

this and contributed to this situation, what I would call a problem. Other people may not phrase it that way. But I think we get too simplistic because we look at the cap and it's not a case of drawing a straight line from the salary cap to no more trades. Because the reality is you look at the NHL salary cap and GMs always talk about how hard it makes their job. The NHL salary camp is dead simple compared to other leagues. It is a very, very simple hard cap guaranteed contracts. There's, you know, a little bit of, you can retain a little bit of salary. But other than that, it's a cap hits are the same every year. There's no renegotiating. There's no shifting cap hits from one year to another. It is a very, very simple set of rules compared to what the NBA has, compared to

what the NFL has. So just that on its own can't be the answer. Because as we just said, the NBA and NFL are getting a bunch of trades and they've both got caps as well. But what I think has happened is two things that have contributed to this. Number one, because of the salary cap, because of the downward pressure that's been putting on player salaries, the response to that has been you've seen players suddenly getting much longer deals. And I think that's what really makes it hard to trade guys. It's one thing to trade Pavel Burr or Timuselani or whoever back in the 90s where, you know, Most of us, we maybe had an idea what guys made, but we didn't have a cap. We didn't know even how long the contracts ran.

You get Pavel Burry an eight-year contract when he turns 27 and suddenly he's a real hard guy to trade when he's 28 or 29. I think that's a part of it that we overlook is how long these contracts are. Remember, unlike the NFL and the NHL, these contracts are guaranteed. In the NFL, you can't just go, you know what, we're done. We're going to cut you. We're going to renegotiate. We're going to try to squeeze.

None of that's in play. So that certainly helps. The other thing is, I would argue that the salary cap has just, in general, contributed to a very risk-averse environment for NHL GMs. They just don't like to stick their neck out. Most GMs, I've said this before, most GMs are managing for their jobs, not for their team. And there's various reasons for that. But they don't want to be criticized. We're in this environment now where a trade comes down and instantly, it just feels like you get on Twitter and within 30 seconds.

there's a consensus about who made a good deal, who made a bad deal. I think a lot of GMs would just rather not deal with it. They'd rather deal with drafting and developing, which takes longer. You know, it gets stretched out. Nobody comes in and suddenly one day says this prospect isn't good anymore, and it's the GM's fault like they would with the trade. So I think that contributes to it. And the other thing I will say is the NHL in 2004 as part of getting a cap basically gave the players

those guaranteed contracts. and in doing so, they standardized the contracts. They essentially did away with the holdout. They ended the idea of the holdout. And we can look back and think about, oh, isn't it great when Mark Messia got traded? Or Pavel Burray, or Brendan Shanahan, or Sergey Fedorup, those are all players who got traded because they refused to play for their team anymore.

They basically said, I'm done. Doug Gilmore, another one. We always rip on the flames for that trade. Doug Gilmore walked out on the Calgary Flames. And that's why the deal to Toronto ends up happening. That doesn't happen anymore, except for very extreme cases. We really haven't seen it at all. We see players ask for trades, but we don't see players say, I'm packing up and going home

and I'm not playing for this team anymore. They can't do that. And that has removed a lot of the pressure. And, you know, in the NBA, you don't fully have that, but NBA players have far more control. And in the NFL, you're seeing it as well, where players are starting to say, you know, what, you know, you're going to trade me because I don't want to be here. The Seattle Seahawks didn't just sit down and go, you know, I think I'd rather have no fan than Russell Wilson. Russell Wilson said, I don't want to be here anymore and here are the teams I'll go to.

So fun to look at those trades until it's your team and it's a player walking out on your team. And then, you know, a lot of times you're looking at it going, this stinks. I wish we had the NHL system where that didn't happen. Well, and that's going to take us right into this conversation where there is a little bit of a sticky situation in the NHL this week involving a trade. In fact, this became, what's that NHL? What was the catchphrase a couple years ago? No soap operas. No soap operas. Yeah.

No softs. No interesting storylines. Only the NHL would come out with that marketing. Nothing interesting happening other than two one games on the ice. Yeah. This might be the juiciest soap opera we've seen in a while. That's a good one. That's of getting to Donoff.

And by the way, I'll apologize now because when he was in Ottawa, it was Daddanov. It was of Getting Daddanov. And now that he went to Vegas, he changed the pronunciation of his name. So if I stumble or falter on Dodonov. As somebody who constantly mispronounces names on podcasts and radio, I'm glad to hear you say that because I'm just going to go ahead and say we're right no matter what. Yeah. This is my disclaimer on Doddanov.

If I switch back to Dadenov, maybe we just call him Daddy. I don't know. No. No. Hard know on that one. That's a hard know on Daddy. But this to me was fascinating as, of course, he got traded briefly from Vegas to Anaheim at the deadline and then the league coming out on. Wednesday evening and saying that the deal had been reversed.

I encourage all of our listeners to check out Pierre LeBron's piece in the athletic. Does a great job of running down the kind of nuts and bolts. Here's what I think is really fascinating to me. And you tell me if I'm wrong. I'm just going to read verbatim off of LeBron's piece. So there's no, you know, I'm not paraphrasing. I'm just going to, I'm going to read this. It was mind-blowing to me.

Okay. This is from LeBron's column today on the Doddanov trade. He says, I was pretty surprised to learn that neither the league nor the NHLPA officially keeps track of no trade lists. That is a matter only between player agents and clubs. In chatting with an NHL team executive on Wednesday, he was telling me how loose the system was when it comes to the submission and tracking of no trade lists. There was a case a few years ago, this exec said, of a player agent, emailing a no trade list to a lower level assistant in an NHL team front office, who then deleted the email by mistake so the team never got it.

There was another story of a GM getting an email from a player agent with a no trade list, but then that GM got fired and the incoming front office never got the list. This seems so loosey-goosey. How did this only come to light now with Doddanov? Isn't that mind-blowing to you? Now that we know how the system works, it feels like a miracle that we dodged this bullet until now. It's crazy. It's absolute ridiculous.

And it's yet another example of this league, always putting whatever's best for the GMs. And in this case, you know, the player agents, that's always the priority. The GMs make the rules. So the GMs make the rules for the GMs. And the fans who would like to know this stuff, who cares, no big deal. Just like they, for years, they did, they told us, yeah, you guys don't care about the salary cap.

We don't need to make a cap-friendly site or anything like that. That's official. Fans aren't interested. They used to always put out press releases saying, we've signed a player to an extension. They wouldn't tell you what the terms were. And, you know, just because screw you. That's why.

Give us your money. And, you know, let's say it's, it's, the NHL is the embodiment of the old joke about, you know, this would be a great business if it wasn't for, all the customers. And this is another example of that. As a fan, I'd love to know where, you know, who's got who on what no trade list. Right. That would be cool information to know. It would help me evaluate my team. How is my team perceived around the league? You would let me know what players I should be even thinking about in terms of trade rumors and which ones not to bother. You would let me know if my GM is being effective at convincing players to come to my team. That'd be cool to know,

But the NHL not only doesn't want us to know that, they are so paranoid about it that they don't want anybody to know. And they've created this system that is just absolutely ridiculous where it's just emails bouncing back and forth and that sort of thing where a situation like this can happen. I mean, you have a central registry. That should be a central place to register things like this. And it's complete madness that they're not doing it. But again, you know, some GM is thinking, I'm going to get yelled. that if people find out who's on a list that I've got, so I just don't want anyone to know that.

Complete Bush League stuff. And thankfully, I know I've occasionally gotten in trouble for saying this about the NHL, but this is so obviously needs to change that they have to change it. They've got a GM meeting next week. This has to get fixed. They couldn't possibly leave it like this, could they? All I can think about that GM meeting on Monday is, are they going to put Pierre Dorian and Kelly McCrimmon next?

to each other in the seating arrangement. Maybe. That could get awkward because it's clear that there's a disconnect. I'm curious to talk to Jesse Granger about that. So just from a player's perspective, though, like I've spoken to players in the past about their no trade list. And one thing they'll always tell me is they don't want it out because they feel like they're going to be perceived in a certain,

like, and I'm going to use an example here of like, I'll use Sidney Crosby because he's, you know, he's the generational player. like I think of your Crosby and you got like a 10 team no trade list and let's say you put Montreal on there. You don't want to every time you go back to Montreal have the media and the fans kind of on you. Like I think like they've always said to me players like, hi, like I just don't want it out there. I don't want people that like, you know, so I understand it. But I but I also think.

I get it. I get it. I'm just, you know, this is to me, you know, when I'm commissioner, you know, my my response to the players is going to be, I get why you wouldn't want that out there. There's probably a lot of things that you wouldn't want out there. There's probably some players who don't want their salaries out there. Or they don't want the fact that they've got this clause or that clause or whatever. There's probably a lot of players that really would like it if their stats weren't made public because they're not very good. It's part of the deal of being an NHL player is what I would say.

But yes, I do totally get it. And I will also say, even as I'm sitting here saying, oh, you know, it's for the fans and all this. as soon as we find out that, as you say, some Canadian star has all seven Canadian teams on as no trade list, we all freak out. And I can absolutely see where they're coming from. And I don't think they're being unreasonable. I push back on it.

But I do get it. Yeah. So now the question becomes because everybody's no trade list is different. Like some guys have a five team, 10 team. Some have modified. Some have no movement. Some players have a certain date that they have to submit their no trade list.

Other guys have a clause that they only have to submit the list when they're asked. Is it time for some sort of universal rule here? And I think of baseball all the time where they've had for years, right, there was the 10 and 5 rule. Like if you played in the league for 10 years and had five years with the same team, your current team, then you had the right to veto any trade. So you were, if you were a 10 and 5 guy, 10 years of service time, five with the same team, that meant there was none of this silliness of, it was just that was it. That was the rule. Is there a way that the league could do this or you think that that's counterproductive?

I mean, I think they certainly could do it. The downside to that rule in baseball for the players was that for the longest time, you couldn't negotiate anything else. It was just automatic. You had it or you didn't. You couldn't make. it part of a contract that you specifically ask for. I think our system right now is fine. I think having, you know, some guys can ask for the full no trade protection. Some guys get partial. You know, that concept, I think, I think works well. You know, I think no trades are great. They give players a certain amount of control. Players would want that. I'd certainly want it. If I was working in an industry where at any given time my phone could ring and I could be told that I got to move halfway across the country or the continent, I'd love to have a little bit of protection

and ability to say no. And I've got no issue with players, of course, asking for that right, negotiating it, giving and taking to get it, using that right when they have it if they see fit, or also waiving it, if it's a situation where there's nothing wrong with the team going to a player saying, I know you have this list. Would you consider going to this team? And then the player can say yes or no. None of that bothers me.

What does surprise me, and you alluded to it, is how loosey-goosey, it just seems to be as far as how these clauses are written. Because that's not the way it works for contracts. You know, if you're a hockey fan, when you talk about contracts, sometimes you'll see the acronym SPC. That stands for standard player contract. And the thing is, about player contracts, they are very standard now. Didn't used to be this way before 2004. 2004, you could have con. You could work all sorts of things in the contracts.

As part of getting that cap, the league basically said, here is what is in a contract. Here's what a contract includes. Here's what it doesn't include. Here's what you're not allowed to add in. You know, you can't. Basically, there's very little room for creativity in a contract. I won't say that it's as simple as just filling in the numbers in the years. It's not that far off of that.

And yet you have apparently this situation with no trade clauses, which are kind of poor. named, we're starting to find out, because a clause is something that's in a contract. No trade clauses are almost like no trade addendums. They're almost like a separate thing that gets stapled on, which is why for a while we had this controversy over whether they even traveled with a player, which is ridiculous. I sign a contract. Of course, the contract goes with me when I get traded, but somehow in some cases like P.K. Suban a few years ago, that no trade clause didn't follow them. They closed that loophole now, thankfully. But, you know, you think you would simply say, you're the NHL, here's what a no trade clause looks like. Here are the dates. Here's, you know,

how that is filed. And that's it because we're hearing all this stuff about, you know, sometimes it's based on July 1st or the start of the league year. Sometimes it's opening night. Sometimes it's only when the team approaches the player and then they have to get back in a certain amount of time. And it can just be anything. That seems weird to me in a league where they've gone to such great lengths to standardize the main contract that they would allow so much freedom and and so much leeway for something to go weird on the no trade clauses. Just standardize them, standardize the way that they're filed, make it so that everybody knows who's got a clause, everybody knows who's on it or at least has access to that if they need

to know that. And I think a lot of the rest of this works itself out. And hopefully that's what they end up doing. You know, obviously this is going to go down as a colossal clerical error. Or, again, so it seemed like a series of unfortunate events that happened, but it's a clerical error. Like, this guy should never have been allowed to have been traded from Vegas to Anaheim. So let's talk this out here.

Where does this rank in terms of all-time clerical errors in NHL history? Yeah, I mean, there have been a couple of cases where, you know, guys were, they were trying to trade guys and faxes didn't go through. until the deadline passed. I remember the Leafs way back when trying to trade Jonas Hoagland at the deadline, and apparently the fax machine got jammed or something like that, or documents weren't signed properly. There was a memorable attempt at claiming a clerical error

where Phil Esposito, when he was the GM of the Lightning, tried to get out of an offer sheet to Chris Grattan by claiming that the fax was smudged, and he couldn't read the numbers on the contract. so therefore it was invalid. I think if you count it as a clerical error, the greatest of all time would have to be Eric Lindross getting traded twice to the Rangers and the Flyers

and the Nordic saying, well, hey, we shook hands on the deal, but we never filed it. And then the league eventually through an arbitrator saying that still counts and the Rangers getting left out to dry. But you do see it every now and then. But, man, you know, it's one thing to talk about fax machines. getting jammed. That happened back in the day, kids. Ask your grandparents. But to do it these days, I mean, you would think there's got to be like an app on your phone or saying. There's got to be a

no trade app. If not, we're going to develop that. I'm going to get the interns on that. And we're going to get the Gordle guy to do a no trade app. And we're going to, we're going to market that. And then I'm going to have a back door where I can go in and see everyone's list. It's nutty to me. But that Stan Bowman one is an all-timer for me too, right? Where it was the who did it like it was it was it was it doesn't that he didn't that's right yeah he he well it was it was it was dale it was dale tallon it was dale tallon dale tallon who didn't didn't send that's a great one yeah yeah he had to send the qualifying offers yeah and they're on on several players he missed it right and uh and and and i think was like a day late which made them they now didn't

have qualifying offers they became free agents uh and the hawks ended up retaining them but that basically cost Dale Talon his job. That was in 2009. Stan Bowman comes in, takes over its GM, but by that point, the team's already assembled. They win the Stanley Cup. Stan Bowman, it becomes a cup winning GM. And the Blackhawks, I believe, ended up giving Dale Talon a cup ring, even though he wasn't employed by the team at the time. But yeah, there have been a few, a few like that. Deadlines missed. Mike Keenan famously claimed that the, in 1994, that the Rangers had missed a bonus payment to him by one day and that that made him a free agent. That's how he got to St. Louis is he declared himself a free agent because he said,

they missed my payment by one day. Neil Smith said, no, we didn't. That's nonsense. You're just looking for an excuse. But that was another one where it was just a whole mess. And Gary Bettman had to come in and drop fines on everyone. And I'm really interested to see coming out of this, we have a resolution as far as DeDenna of staying in Vegas.

But are there fines and repercussions for the three teams involved? I'm really interested to see that. You know, all I can think of is Chicago, what would have been an evil genius for them is they say to Dale Tallin, yeah, yeah, we sent you a Stanley Cup ring. I swear we put it in the mail. Did you not get it?

We put stamps on that, I think. Yeah. Oh, well, sorry, buddy. All right, this is a perfect time. We're just talking about the Doddanov situation. Perfect time to bring in Jesse Granger for our segment. Granger, thanks. Brought you by Bet, MGM.

exclusive petting partner with us at the athletic. And you know what? Like, Sean and I have just been talking about Dodonov. And we're fascinated by this. We don't know how it happened. It is an all-timer in terms of clerical error. Can you give us, Jesse, because you cover the Golden Knights, a sense of maybe how this could have happened?

And like, what are people saying there? Because look, the senators haven't said anything. I know they're at the center of this. They declined comment. And we haven't heard much from the Golden Knights. Like, what's going on there? Yeah, the Golden Knights have released two statements on Twitter since this whole thing started. And both were pretty useless.

They were just kind of the cookie cutter. Like, the trade is being reviewed. And then once the trade was reviewed, they said, we accept if I need it on, off coming back. So the Golden Knights haven't said a whole lot. And what's weird is Kelly McCriman held his press conference right after the trade was announced and processed. And they thought it was going to be done.

And he kind of just mentioned that this was a salary cap dump. we needed it for to give ourselves flexibility for this season and for the off season. And after the press conference was over, he kind of came back in. And we asked him about like, just kind of standing in the room, we asked him like, what, what is this with the no trade clause? We're seeing things on Twitter. And at that point, we didn't have all the details yet. And we're like, and Kelly acted like he had no idea what we were talking about.

Now, it could have been in his best interest to just, hey, just don't say anything right now. let's see if this trade still gets processed. But at the moment, he didn't seem like he was like, like he knew that that was happening or that that was something he had an idea of. Like I said, we don't know if that's actually what was going on. But then later we find out, and Elliot Friedman was all over this. It was, they obviously were on his no trade. Anahem was on his no trade. And the turning point in this all seems to be the trade from Ottawa to Vegas. It seems like, like I said, I haven't spoken to Kelly McCriman since this happened. I really want to, but it seems like there was something that happened in that trade

that led Vegas and the NHL to believe that his no trade clause was no longer in effect. And if it was just the Golden Knights, I would think, okay, maybe the Golden Knights were intentionally ignorant to this. Like, let's just not pay attention to this. And if it comes up later or whatever. But the fact that the league also was under the impression that the no trade clause is no longer in effect. And the fact that the league processed the trade tells me that there was something that happened. I don't know what it was. I don't know if it was Dorian saying something

or if it's or if it was the way the paperwork was was dealt with. Something told them that this no trade clause isn't in effect when that clearly wasn't the case. So I'm honestly not sure. Yeah. And that's been one of the big questions on this is because you could go at any point to the cap friendly page for Hvgeny Dodonov and you would see that there was a 10 team no trade clause listed. And a lot of us were saying it, at the very least, you would think that would, you know, Vegas would say, hey, we should check into this, double check if they thought the clause didn't exist. And now it sounds like the idea here is not that nobody knew that he had a no trade clause, but that they felt, as you said, that it wasn't in effect, which can

happen if a player through his agent doesn't submit the list on time. And I guess the, one of the stories going around is that potentially in this trade call between Ottawa and Vegas, Ottawa either says, don't worry about the no trade, he didn't submit it on time, or they show an old one, or something creates the impression that this guy had not submitted a valid no trade list, which means it's not in effect for that year when that wasn't the case. But again, as Ian and I talked about before you joined, how is this something that the NHL can't immediately go and check in some sort of central registry? I don't know just to coin a phrase.

apparently, I guess they just take teams' words for it, which seems like an open invitation for this sort of thing to happen. Right. When I first heard all this, I thought, okay, if Ottawa, if I was the Golden Knights, if I was Kelly McCrimand and George McPhee and Ottawa told me in the trade negotiations, yeah, his no trade clause no longer works. In the first week that I had, Evgeny D'd Donov in my facility, I would probably go to him and his his representation and and be like what's going on here like they they said you're no trade clauses no

effect did you not fill it out like but they didn't and to me that kind of it looks sort of like one of those like I don't know but I don't want to know so let's just leave it like let's like if we ask him it may clarify it and then he does have his no trade and that's going to make our life harder if we want to try to unload him at some point so let's just go with what Ottawa said that or just Just to me, it's kind of, I don't want to put this all on Vegas, but I do think they should have done their homework a little better. Come on, this is an NHL front office. There's a bunch of people in this room making a lot of money to do exactly this. You should know the contracts and you should know the status of them.

And if something's weird in the trade with Ottawa, they should have checked with him. I think this is a little bit a lack of communication between the front office and its players, which to me, if this was the only time that it happened, I wouldn't be saying this. but it's a pattern with this front office. They do not communicate well with the players. And I think this is another case of if they would have went to the Donoff two days ago before the deadline and said, hey, man, we love what you brought on the ice, but we've got to unload some salary. And we're looking to move you to Anaheim just to let you know. At that moment, Fgeny would have said, no, they're on my no trade list. And then they would have been like, wait a minute, wait, we need to look into this.

And then the trade never would have been processed. So I do think that clearly Ottawa is to blame for something if any of these reports are true. But at the same time, I think Vegas can do a better job communicating with his players. And I think a lot of this could have been avoided if that was the case. Yeah, because not only do they, sorry, not only do they not trade him to Anaheim in that case, but they have time potentially to trade him somewhere else, which is the problem right now. What the hell do they do now? We've got a player who they clearly have made obvious they don't want.

They're going to welcome him back. That might be good for them because he can actually score a little bit. And no one else on the team can. But do you think it's possible that they trade him still, which they could legally do after the deadline? It's just that he now cannot play for whatever team they trade him to, but they could still dump his salary. And you, somewhat ironically, I guess, wrote about this before the deadline where you are like, hey, just so you know, this couldn't happen. And most fans don't know that.

And now here we're in a situation where it might be Vegas. Is that a possibility you think that they still move him somewhere else and just say, sorry, pack up your season's done. We need the cap space. Yeah, I do think it's possible. I think, I think, if Genni Diodonov is the one getting screwed in all of this. Like he's, the guy didn't play two games. He's been in limbo.

He's now on a team that he knows doesn't want him. They try to pay a second round pick to get rid of him. And then he may end up getting traded and not being able to play for the rest of to the season, which would be brutal for him. But this Golden Knights team, it's a business. And they are in a really bad spot. I think when I wrote that story, I actually was writing it with the idea of at some point, Mark Stone may become healthy. And that may be after the deadline. And they wouldn't know at the deadline. But they tried to be proactive. I mean, not proactive enough because they waited. I mean, they were the last trade with one second left before the deadline on a trade that obviously wasn't legal in

the end, but I do think that there's a chance. Someone floated the idea in my comments section, and I don't know, I tried looking it up in the CBA. It's impossible. I tried seeing if this is legal, but there isn't a chance that the Golden Knights could say, all right, Anaheim, we'll trade you, we'll send you our second and whatever they want to complete the exact same trade. We'll trade you our conditional second round pick. You send us John Moore and Kessler's contract in a trade. And none of those players are going to play anyway, so it doesn't matter. And then the Golden Knights could waive Evgeny Dadaunov and Anaheim claim him. And Adonov would be, he would be waived, picked up by Anaheim.

He'd be able to play for Anaheim the rest of the season and the rest of the trade would go through as normal. I don't know if that's legal, but I thought it was interesting. He doesn't have no movement, right? Right. Yeah, so he can be waived. Now, Anaheim's probably going to want to sweeten the pot now. I saw Pierre LeBron's column last night about the whole thing. And he said just kind of he texted around the league a couple front offices.

And they said at least a first to take on to Donov at the end of this. So things may get more expensive for Vegas. This team is used to paying picks to give players away. They've been doing it for three years. I don't know what's going to happen. But I do. There are ways around this. Like the Golden Knights are not stuck.

There are plenty of ways for them to. They also have Kelly McCrimman said when we talk to him after the deadline. He said, we have. more LTIR eligible players who are not currently on LTIR, meaning they have injured players that can go on to LTIR if they need. So there's also that. They could do that to make room for Mark Stone. So they have options, but they're definitely in a worse position than they were when they thought this trade was going through. You know, what I find fascinating is, and we're recording this on Thursday, Dadaunov expected to be back and play against Nashville.

Like, this could be awkward. You didn't want him. And I think about, and this is years ago, but the Ottawa senators and Alexei Yashin had a sticky situation where Yashin basically held out and thought he was a free agent, an arbitrator ruled, nope, you still owe Ottawa another year. And he had to come back. And it was weird.

Like you could tell it was weird. He didn't want to be there. The team didn't want him there, but he was there. And I don't know, like, could you give us a sense of, is this going to be awkward? Is this going to be weird? Like, what's this going to be like when Dodonov comes back and possibly plays on Thursday.

To be completely honest, I don't think it's going to be weird at all. I think because, for one, it's the front office. And it wasn't necessarily that they don't like him. It's that he's the odd man out and they had to trade someone. Like, this wasn't a case of we have to get rid of this guy. He's so bad. It was, we have too many contracts. We traded for $10 million Jack Eichel and someone's got to go.

And of the $5 million players, he's the new one and he hasn't fit in as well. And then the other factor is Pete DeBore loves Evgeny to Donoff. like DeBoer, any chance he gets, he sings Dodonov's praises. So like he's just kind of one of his guys. Like he likes DeDonov. So you come back in, the coach loves you. The players in the room have no ill will towards Afghani, they all love him.

So he's going back into a room where the players look like the front office. If he walks past Kelly McCriman in the tunnel, yeah, that might be a little awkward. With the front office, I could see it being awkward. But between him and the players and the coaches, I don't think it'll be awkward. Also, if it is, it won't be much different because this guy doesn't talk much. If he did it on office, one of the quietest human beings I've ever been around, he does not, he's a man of very few words. And if it is awkward, it'll just kind of be the same thing.

He'll just be kind of sitting at his locker, not saying much. So I think it'll be fine. If they do decide to keep him for the rest of the season, if they don't make one of these post-deadline trades, it'll be fine. Listen, we always have you on to talk some props and betting lines. and we'll round out the segment by doing that. So trade deadline is come and gone. Some of the big guns decided to load up and it felt like everyone that's a contender made

at least one move of significance. So give our listeners a sense here, Jesse. Give us a sense of the Stanley Cup odds as we sit here post trade deadline. Yeah, it's interesting because they didn't shift too much other than the gold and ice have plummeted just because they did. doesn't look like they're going to make the playoffs. And then like you said, these top teams,

the avalanche are only four to one now. So basically, if you were going to bet the color to avalanche, you should have bet them already or at this point, you're not getting much value. The team that sticks out to me, the abs are four to one, Panthers five to one, lightning eight to one. Once you start getting below that, I like Calgary a lot. They're nine to one, which isn't like crazy high odds, but to me, this team is not, when you talk about the contenders and you mention like Tampa Bay, Florida, Colorado, Carolina. Calgary, to me, doesn't get mentioned enough in with those teams. When I watch them on the ice, they're playing the best hockey right now.

And I know Colorado's been impressive and Florida, but to me, Calgary looks like the best team in hockey right now. And they've got the deepest lineup. When I watch flames, it's like, it doesn't matter what line they put out there. I mean, they've got Mangiopani on the third line. And he's a 30 goal score. And it's not, he's not on the third line because they're trying to spread the depth. He's on the third line because they've got too many good forwards to put them all on the top two.

And that team just rolls wave after wave after wave. You never have a chance to breathe against that team. There's never a line where you feel like, all right, we can kind of catch our breath here. Maybe we can get the puck in our zone in the offensive zone. They just keep coming at you. I love their goal tending. I love their defense. For me, Calgary would be the team I would take a shot at right now.

What about you guys? Yeah, I mean, I like the flames a lot. I don't. You guys know me whenever it comes to sort of future. I'm always looking more around the middle of the list. I want that value. The teams that jump out to me a little bit. I mean, first of all, the wild still giving you really good odds,

even though they went out and got flurry. I know goaltending trades are hard to predict. The goaltending itself is hard to predict. This may not move the needle even at all for them, but it could, and it could be one of those. I could see a situation where Minnesota gets in, suddenly they're playing Colorado in round two. It's a tough fight, tougher than we thought.

And we're going, yeah, we should have seen this coming. They went and got the Vesina winner. So I like them. And Flurry matches up well with Colorado, by the way. Fleury knocked them out last year. And in his whole time in Vegas, they had a hard time against Flurry. So there you go. I mean, that could work way.

And the other one is the penguins. I just feel like we're all kind of sleeping a little bit on how good the penguins are, certainly how good they are at their best. They went out. And they got Raquel, not a huge blockbuster, but that'll help. and they've got them, you know, mixed in just a little bit ahead of the Rangers. And behind the Golden Knights who might not even make the playoffs, I wouldn't mind dropping a couple of bucks on the penguins if I was so inclined.

Yeah, it's funny. I feel the penguins are quietly like fourth overall in the standings. Like it's remarkable. And every time you look, they're on a five-game win streak. You're like, oh, right, they've got that Crosby guy. That could be good. Yeah. Hey, listen, as we wrap this up, let me throw one question to both of you,

along these lines, okay? And as you look at the potential Stanley Cup champion, I'm going to throw this scenario at you. If I gave you your two choices are either the Stanley Cup champion comes out of the Atlantic Division, so meaning Tampa, Florida, Toronto, or Boston, or the field, where would you guys put your money? The Atlantic Division or the field to win the Stanley Cup?

I think I would take the field, but the fact that this is even a question tells you how good the Atlantic is. I'm looking at the, so they have on bedmGM, they have odds for each division. Atlantic is the favorite at plus 180. So you, $100 would only win you $180. It's like barely more than even money. That conference is stacked. I wish I could take the state of Florida. If you gave me the state of Florida, because to me, those are the two teams in that division, Tampa and Florida. If I could take the state of Florida and get a little better odds, then that would be my pick. Yeah, I, uh, that's not a bad way.

Here's my thing. If we took 16 playoff teams and then we shuffled them up, I might take the Atlantic and I might run with that. The fact that we don't do that, the Atlantic's got to go through the Atlantic. So that's the part that's going to, I mean, one of those teams is going to be out in the first round, probably two, although there could be a wild card crossover. Chances are only one of them comes out, and that team's going to be real beat up. I mean, you know, if the Florida Panthers, it'd be great to see them going to run. But if they have to go through, let's say, Tampa and either Toronto or Boston,

what are they going to have left, especially if they get to a Stanley Cup final against a team coming out of the West, where we all kind of think it's sort of Calgary, Colorado, and, you know, maybe a whole bunch of question marks. So I'm taking the field, but I did have to think about it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it's one that you definitely have to put some thought into. All right, Jesse. Hey, Jesse, here's my pitch, okay? Tell me what you think about this.

The knights do what you said. They make that trade with the ducks. They get Kessler's contract. They take on John Moore. They send the second round pick. They put Dadaunov on waivers, and then the next day we find out the ducks didn't claim them. How great would that be? Come on, team chaos.

You tell me, that's not the ideal scenario here. I mean, we thought that two Kyle GEMs having a little feud was better. Like, how quickly would Kelly McCriman be on a plane to Anaheim to throw down on that one? It would be phenomenal. And by the way, there's a reason I mentioned, I said the trade first. And it's because if the Golden Knights told the ducks to claim him first before the trade goes through, there's no chance the ducks are doing that after what just happened. It's like, yeah, no, we never trust anyone in Vegas who's saying, just trust me on what I'm going to do tomorrow.

Yeah. Yeah, the trade would definitely have to go through before the waiver claim if I'm the ducks. Amazing. All right. Hey, listen, Jesse, as always, appreciate your time, your insight. This week, it was great, especially with the Donov stuff. So, listen, thanks for this. Have a great week, and we'll get you again next Thursday.

Awesome. Thanks for having me, guys. Thank you. All right. Always great to get Jesse Granger chatting everything about that, the Vegas situation. I trade with Anaheim and then the Stanley Cup odds. Let's move along, shall we? And we got a couple of voice mails to live.

listen to. And the first one here, a reminder, by the way, drop us a voicemail anytime. 845, 445, 845, 8459. We got a couple of great voicemails to get into. Ben from the great state of Washington. He's not a Cracken fan. He's a Red Wings fan. And Ben has a question about what Detroit might do this summer. I am calling as a Detroit Red Wings fan. I wanted to know what you guys think. Do you think they're going to be extra crazy in the off season with free agency? Do you see them going after some big names like Klinberg? Or do you think Eisenman's going to keep it cool and just go with whoever he could get, either be a trader at the draft deadline?

So thank you. Bye. All right, Sean, listen, Detroit's got some great pieces. Like this, you can feel like that more excited is going to be. Norris trophy going before too long. Maybe in the kale-maccar breath, but certainly he's going to be great. You know, Lugie's Raymond looks good.

They got some nice pieces. But are they going to start to get aggressive or do they look at that Atlantic division and say there's a clear line of difference between the bottom four and the top four. We're not quite ready to push into that top four just yet. Yeah, that might be the deciding factor. I mean, Steve Eiserman, so far in Detroit, it's certainly been slow and steady, I think would be fair to say.

He's not been very aggressive as far as making high risk moves. I think he certainly understands that there may not be a GM in the league who is under less immediate pressure, just given that Detroit fans know it's a rebuild, given his reputation, given how beloved he is by that fan base. So he's been going slow and steady now. We know this, right? We know that when it comes to rebuilds, the tear down is the easy part. Hopefully you find some prospects. They've certainly done that in Detroit. But at some point, you need to start to win or else you risk getting into a situation

like the Sabres and some other rebuilding teams where when you go to hit the gas, the tires just spin and you don't go anywhere. Whether this is the year for it, I don't know. I mean, you know, would Klingberg fit? Yeah, maybe. The thing is, though, a lot of times when you have free agents that are changing teams in the summer, they're looking for one of three things. Either location, which, you know, there are some Michigan players, but not a ton of them. They're looking for a chance to win, which Detroit doesn't really offer right now, or they're looking for money, which Detroit could have.

They've got the space, but then do you want to get tied up on that stuff? Steve Eisenman's a smart guy. I think he realizes that it's unlikely that this team pushes to the top next year. I think the cautious approach is more likely. Yeah, it's going to be fascinating. Ottawa, Buffalo,

Detroit, and then at some extent, Montreal, all in that bottom four, all at various stages of a rebuild. And the question is, when do you think is the right time to come up for air when Tampa, Florida, Toronto, Boston start to sink a little bit? It's going to be interesting.

It's going to be really fascinating. I love that question from Ben. Now we've got another one here, and there's a little bit of a Red Wings tie-in, too. This one comes in from Devin, from Virginia, who's got a comment about something we had some fun with last week about players going to the right team based on their last name, and then also a broadcasting question. Here's Devin from Virginia. Another player that their name fits the team is a current prospect for the Detroit Red Wings in Redmond Redskins. And then my question for you guys is which color commentating and play-by-play announcement duo is the best in the NHL in your opinion.

And why is it Ken Holland and Mickey Redmond? Thanks, guys. Have a good one. All right. Hey, first, before we get to his broadcasting question, and by the way, I think just a little misspeak there, a little slip where he meant not to say Ken Holland, who is, of course, a general manager, a long time in Detroit Long and general manager in Epitaine. He meant Ken Daniels. Yeah, but apologies to Oilers fans who got really excited for a second

that they missed the news that Ken Hollington retired and taken a broadcasting job. It's not the case. Yeah, not the case. And the other thing I like is, you know, he makes the comment about the Red Wings and the player. You know, I thought of it this week because Ottawa traded for Zach Sennishin. And there's the name Senn is right in there. We had it. I feel like we inspired that trade.

I think that was it. You know, another one I thought of that could, you tell me if this could work. And again, is the Detroit theme. But what about Blake Wheeler going to Detroit? You know what? That's a good one. I like that one. I thought about this last week.

I'm like, hey, the winged wheel on the logo, Blake Wheeler. That would be a really good one. Or the other thing is he's got to go to Toronto and switch to the number 18. 18. 18 wheeler. Right off a cliff. Especially if Fletcher's involved in the deal. And then you can really, you've really, you got a cliff to work with.

there's got to be a fit there. Oh, yeah, this thing, this thing writes itself. All right. So best broadcasting duo, that's what Devin is wondering. And, you know, he's obviously got his vote in there for that dynamite crew from Detroit with Mickey Redmond. And now I want to say Ken Holland, Ken Daniels. Like, do you have one that's, you know what? That's your favorite broadcasting duo?

No, see, I don't have a, I don't have one favorite above and beyond them all. There's certain guys that I really like. Darren Pang in St. Louis is one that I'm a big fan of. I know we did. We had a broadcast rankings where we went to the fans and everybody voted. And I think Detroit finished reasonably high in that. Yeah. But not at the very top.

Anything with Ray Ferraro obviously is good. As long as it's not Boston. That's the one. My one thing when I'm watching local broadcasters is I can't get into the homer. And I don't mean that as far as I get if you're a local broadcast, you're going to be more excited for the home team than you are for the opponent. You're going to get a little louder when they score that sort of thing. I don't mind that.

But when it comes to like penalties or something like that and it's always, oh, the refs are out to get us and booze. Come on. Grow up. And Boston obviously is the classic example of that. So anyone that's not Boston's good for me. I don't know. Do you have a favorite?

What's your all-time favorite? What's your number one? Boy, number one for me. And, you know, Cuthbert and Ray Ferraro for me were dynamite. And now, unfortunately, they work at different places, right? And you don't often get to see Chris Cuthbert, Ray Ferraro anymore. That was, to me, one of the best going. Because Cuthbert calls a great game.

And I think in parts of Canada, like if your team is broadcasts regionally by TSN in Canada, So Ottawa gets it. Toronto certainly gets it. Like, Gord Miller and Ray Ferraro are about as good. Like, the thing about Gord Miller is, uh,

I find that I learn something. And I feel like I, look, I feel like I'm very knowledgeable of you. I cover hockey. I got great history, knowledge of hockey. But I feel like I learned something new when I watch a Gord Miller broadcast.

And I, and I, and I always tip my hat to him. I think he's phenomenal. I think he's really good. And then, but like, you know,

all time. Boy, like, it's hard to top from our heyday, like, when we were, like, it's hard to top Bob Cole, Harry, Neil, right? I was going to say, that is my, that's my all-time favorite, and it kind of ruined me for that. That's the best combo we've ever had. In fact, I would put them very close to the top for my favorite combo in any sport. I think I'd probably still have them behind Summerall in Madden, but that is the absolute cream of the crop for me. And by the way, I'm just going to address it now. I know I just finished saying I don't like homers.

And now I said I like Bob Cole and Harry Neal. And every senator's fan is screaming right now. I don't want to hear it, you babies. I don't care that Bob Cole called Alfredson Arvinson one time. Get over it. Cole and Neal are the absolute best of the best that's ever done it. You know, it's funny because Harry Neal had a very dry delivery, right? Very, very, very funny.

And yet, and Bob, Cole was animated. and like and I think that that discrepancy is not unlike summerall and madden right where summer all was just you know very straight very delivered it very straight and john was kind of this bombastic like oh boom look at this guy bang and like like it worked like for whatever reason it worked the the contrast doesn't always work but it worked there and i think that's what made cole and neal great is in their heyday bob was the most like nobody in my opinion in terms of play by play. Nobody that I've ever seen was able to match the inflection of their voice based on the moment and better than Bob Cole.

Yes. And without any silly catchphrases, like I love guys like Rick Jenorett who can make it work. But Bob Cole, a lot of times his most famous calls are just the name of the player. And that's it. And yet it's absolutely perfect. I could do a whole show about how great Bob Cole was. Sounds to me like a summer episode of the athletic hockey. All we do is Bob Cole's greatest moments. All right. Let me sneak one email in here real quick because this kind of ties into broadcasting. This comes in from Monroe who says, I'm an NHL fan and a millennial.

And I feel like there's no easy way for new fans to get into watching NHL games up here in Canada. We've got several options that are way overpriced. And half the time when you go to watch a game says you're not in the right market or something like that. My question is, if the NHL really wants to grow the game, what streaming platform do you guys think they should dedicate them? to. For the record, I live in Calgary, but I can very rarely watch my favorite team, the Vancouver Canucks, with the subscriptions I have and who still pays for cable this day and age. That comes in from Monroe. So if it were up to you on a streaming platform or whatever to make things easy for younger fans, and even for people like us, like I usually watch,

like I have the NHL app and whatever game center. I watch a lot of streaming games. If you had to pick a streaming service, what's the best here for the NHL? You know what? I don't know. Who still pays for cable? I do. I'm old. But I can tell you that the problem isn't all that much better on cable. I've had it happen where, you know, living, as a Vee fan living in Ottawa, I'll not be able to watch the game. Oh, yeah, I'll record it. And then you get home and your recording is just a blank screen that says this is not available in your market because you were on the wrong channel. I don't care what streaming service it's on, as long as it's a good, reliable service. It's not going to be glitchy. It's not going to be patchy. But we got to get to. rid of all these blackens. That's, that's the thing that's, this is not 1973 where you could say this is my market and everyone who lives in this market must be a fan of my team because I'm trying to sell tickets. We're in a connected world now and acting like everybody in a specific city is only a fan of that team. It's just silly. Make it available so that everybody can watch whoever they want. And then you know what? If the

Leafs get better ratings in Ottawa than the senators and too bad, the senators need to get better and then they'll get better ratings. It's silly, and it needs to stop, especially if you're talking about not just basic broadcast TV. I mean, I can get that, okay, if I'm watching Hockey Night in Canada with the rabbit ears, then yeah, show me the Senators game if I'm in Ottawa, not the Leafs. But if I've got a service, if I'm paying you money, make it easy for me. Stop with the blackout.

Stop with all this nonsense of, you know, I can't find my game that everyone else online is talking about because I live in the wrong city. Get rid of it. And you know what? I think our American listeners have had some frustrations with the ESPN Plus, right? And Hulu where I know Buffalo fans

were irate at one point where there was a game that just wasn't available to them in the local market unless you had ESPN Plus, right? Yeah. And again, it becomes frustrating. You feel like if you're paying, let's say you're paying,

I'm going to just throw out the number, $18 a month, $20 a month, or for whatever, that should entitle you to every game. game. As soon as I'm paying money to the NHL, I get every game easily. I don't want to ever see a blackout. I don't even want to see. It annoys me. I pay for the like the center ice package here again on cable. And it bothers me that I got to flip through channels to figure out which one is actually showing the Leafs game. I can usually get it, but which one is it that's

showing it. And I got to, you know, it just it bugs me when I turn into the main sports net or TSN page or whatever, or channel. And, you know, I get it if you're showing me something else. And I say, okay, obviously that game's not on here. But to just show me a blank screen and say, no, you're a senator's fan, remember? Yeah, no, I'm not. Yeah. Let me watch the game that I'm paying you to let me watch.

All right. Let's wrap this up as we always do with a quick trip down memory lane. It's a little segment. We like to call this week in hockey history. And we're going to go back to the early 90s here because this to be is an all-time heroic performance. In terms of single game performances by kind of unheralded players,

what Ron Tugnut did on March 21st, 1991, is near the top of list. Ashon at the old Boston Garden, Ron Tugnett goes in with Quebec and faces 73. That's right, 73 shots on goal in an overtime,

3-3 tie against Boston. Ron Tugnut makes 70 saves in that game, which is an all-time record since they started keeping track of shots on goal. But what I want to bring up is the fact that Raymond Bork, the Hall of Fame Defensive of the Bruins, was credited with also credited with an NHL record that night with 19 shots on goal by himself. Think about that for a second. There's some games where teams don't get 19. Raymond Bork had 19 of the 73 shots on his own. Here's my question. We've not

seen either of those things since. We haven't seen a goalie get 70 saves, haven't seen a defenseman with 19 shots. What do you think we could potentially see first? A goalie making 70 saves or a single player with 19 shots on goal in the game? That's a tough one. I'm going to be real honest here. I know my history pretty well. I know about the Ron Tugnach game.

I didn't know about the Ray Bork record until I saw that in the note that you sent me. That's ridiculous. I mean, 19 shots from a defenseman too. I mean, putting aside the fact that it's coming from a defense. been. Ray Bork had all sorts of shots. I think you look at the all-time records. It's kind of like Esposito, Ovechkin, and Bork is right there. Boy, I don't know. I mean, we've seen goalies get way up there and saves in the playoffs in overtime. I mean, there was, it a few years ago with the Columbus Tampa Marathon. But if we're talking regular season, you know, on the one hand, I have a hard time imagining in today's defensive. systems and, you know, all of that, that you would ever get a 70-shot game.

But I also have a hard time imagining 19 shots. And if you say from a defenseman, there's absolutely no way because the game has changed so much that we don't just bomb it from the point anymore the way we did back then. Well, I can't really imagine either one of them. But I mean, I'm going to say that 19 shots is probably a tougher one because, you know, we've at least seen teams get into the 50s for shots a few times. you know, maybe if you had a team that was just completely decimated by injuries and, um,

and all of that, uh, maybe you wind up with a situation where somebody could at least get close. I don't even, I'm trying to even, do you have the like the shots, single game shots record in front of you? Has anyone even gotten close to it in over the years?

No, that's a great. You know what? I can, I can look it up here real quick, but like it's it because like, and the reason why I brought it up is like, I feel like Ray Pork doesn't get any credit for the, like, I feel like nobody talks about,

what about the time the guy had 19 shots on goal? I've said before, Ray Bork, and this is a ridiculous thing to say for a guy who was an elite level superstar, Ray Bork is underrated now by today's fans. I don't know where we all decided, and you watch me get the Red Wings fans, Matt here, but at some point we all decided that Nicholas Lidsrom was the unquestioned second best defenseman behind Bobby Orr of the modern era.

Ray Bork is right there. Ray Bork was, you know, not just winning Norris trophies. Ray Bork was almost winning MVP awards. He was he was absolutely phenomenal for 20 years, you know, right up until his very last season. He's still in the Norris running. We actually somehow underrate Ray Bork these days because he was just absolute madness as far as, as far as the numbers that he put up for so, so, so long. Yeah. And, of course, now my computer.

is frozen, so I haven't been able to find it. Listen, I don't think anyone's come close to to 19 shots in a game in the last, you know, a couple of... We'll have to check that. Hockey reference has gone down at the exact moment we need them here. Totally, right? And I always use hockey reference. And for whatever reason, it's not, it's not working for me where you can... Okay, at the very least, least I can tell you this. The season high for shots on goal this season is Nate McKinnon. And he had 14. 14. And I'm looking, I did find a list. Nobody has ever had more than 16. But apparently Marion Hosa did have a 16 shot game. And I don't have the, oh, here's the date.

In 2006, so that would have been one of his very first games with Atlanta. He had 16 shots. Alexander Ovechkin's highest total ever was 15. That was a guy. again in 2006. I'm just looking to see if there's anything more recent. 2015, Ovechkin had another 15-shot game. So, you know, guys are getting close, but even 15-shot,

you're 75% of the way there. You still have, like, a full, good game for a forward left to go to get there. And that's the only one that I'm seeing that's anywhere. Yeah, Nathan McKinnon this year is the next one. And that's pretty much it for anything in the last 10 years. Yeah. Yeah, boy, that is.

Slim Pickens, yeah, it's hard. And to think about a defenseman, you know, being able to do it. You know, we're going to do this. And by the time we record next week, Kail McCar will have had a 20-shot game. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they'll ask him about it. He'll be like, yeah, it was easy. I don't know, man.

It was not a tough one at all. Yeah, the Bruins and Sabres had a 72-shot game where Boston get eight goals. And again, I'm looking to see anything that starts with it too. Yeah, that Calgary Columbus game earlier this year was 62 shots for Calgary, which means 56 presumably saves for Columbus. Again, you're looking at about the same ratio there. But that one was a huge outlier. I don't see anything else that starts with a 2000.

and the next one you got to go down to is 58 shots between the caps and the lightning in 2019. Oh, yeah, no, forget it. I still think that's more likely than, and, you know, for a defenseman, forget it. Forget it. Ray Bork was just, there were nights where the Bruins were Ray Bork, and that was it. Like, you were playing against Ray Bork, and you probably lost. He was so good. Yeah.

No, listen, we'll leave it there, and I want to thank everybody for listening. to this latest edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. Look, we love the voice mails, like I said, 845, 4459, 8459, and drop us an email to The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com. So we'll leave it there. If you're not a subscriber with us, we've got a great deal going on right now. We get an annual subscription to The Athletic for $1 a month for the first six months.

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