The Athletic Hockey Show - Gary Bettman says playoff format won't change, backup goalies aplenty in round 1, and spicy pork and broccoli

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Ian and Sean discuss Gary Bettman's comments on the NHL's playoff format from Wednesday night, and if there would be benefits to changing seedings or adding a play-in system. Also, with many starting goalies going down at the end of the regular season, teams are going to their 2nd or 3rd string goalies within the first games of round 1, and Sean shares his thoughts on EBUGs.Jesse Granger returns for "Granger Things" to discuss Louis Domingue's meal before jumping into Tuesday's 3OT game between the Penguins and Rangers, the end of Vegas' season, and some interesting stats from the playoffs so far. Then the guys wrap with a few questions from the mailbag, and a look back with "This Week in Hockey History".Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM [phone]! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back. It is your Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show, our first playoff edition of the Thursday show. It's Ian Mendezhawn McIndoo. With you for the next hour or so, our pal Jesse Granger's back this week for little Granger things. I'm just curious to know what Jesse Granger, the guy who covers the Vegas Golden Knights for a living. What's this guy up to? He's never experienced this before, missing out on the playoffs. So Jesse's going to drop by. We'll chat a little bit about, I think, Vegas's season ending, press conferences, kind of the dust settling there and then certainly hit on some some playoff topics with him.

Speaking of the playoffs, I don't think we've ever seen a year. With this many third string goalies, forget about backups. We're talking third stringers coming in. We're going to talk about that. Some fun with Louis Doming's comments post-game after game one. We'll figure out where things are at.

If we can get a read on Toronto, Tampa, Edmonton, L.A., the Florida Panthers, are they in trouble? But as we kick things off, we've got some fun mailback questions too. But where I want to start things off, Sean, is with the commissioner's comments. Gary Bettman has been kind of doing a little bit of a tour here, been showing up to various games and doing some availability. And before we play his comments, I want to talk to you a little bit about the playoff format here in the NHL because it's up for debate. you know, the way we do it now with crossovers and wild cards.

Like if I made you commissioner for a day, Sean, what are you doing? Are you doing anything to the playoff format? I am probably looking at the playoff format. It's not my first order business. You know, when we're, when people are running for president, sometimes they talk about the day one list. I don't think this is on my day one list. I'm a guy who does a lot of complaining and criticizing about the NHL.

And there are some things that I just think you absolutely have to fix the point system and among others, the replay system. That's the stuff I would focus on when I'm commissioner. But yeah, I would like to work with the format. I do think at this point, I've converted back to wanting to see a one through eight in the conference. I did buy into the one through four of the divisions. I loved growing up with divisional rivalries in the playoffs. But I've come to concede that rivalries today in the NHL are just not what they used to be. And also having 18 divisions, it just doesn't serve up the same matchups often enough to be worth it.

So I think going one through eight and then doing a reseed in the final four, I think works. As far as expanding the playoffs, I do like the idea of a play-in. I have come on board on this and I've been on board for a few years and I'd like the NBA style. I'm sort of getting my head around that. If people don't know, I had long thought, hey, we'll do seven versus 10 and eight versus nine and they'll play either a game or a mini three game series. The way the NBA does it is they go seven versus eight and nine versus ten and the winner of

seven versus eight moves on. you win one game you're through and then the loser of that game plays the winner of nine versus ten so basically you're guaranteed of those seven and eight teams one of them is going to make it and the other one has a very good chance to make it and if you finish seven and eight you've got two shots basically two swings versus nine and ten have got to go two and oh uh to make it through so it does weight it certainly to towards those finishing seventh or eight i like that idea um and i'm i'm i'm i'm i i i i i i i i i i I'm not so sold on it that I don't see other points of view. I wish the NHL was willing to discuss it and debate it. And they don't seem to be as we're about to hear. Yeah, and exactly. In fact, that's the perfect place for us to drop this in. So this is Gary Bettman from Wednesday night in Edmonton doing a media session,

just kind of one of these general state of the league things. And the topic of playoff expansion, expanding the format, changing the format comes up. Have a listen. Here's Commissioner Gary Bedman. There was a time where 16 to 21 teams made the Stanley Cup playoffs. Now you have 16 to 32. And obviously... That was too many and this is right.

Is it right? Because obviously this is a great scene and it could be replicated in other cities. Other leagues are going playing. The reason this is as good as it is because the regular season and the playoffs are meaningful. Having half of our teams eligible, I think, is the right. balance. I think it creates great competition throughout the regular season, makes the games most meaningful, and there's nothing like our playoff tournament. Stanley Cup is the

hardest to win, and there's nothing in any sport like our first round. So there's no talk on maybe having that play-in system like other leagues are a kind of... No. And in fact, if you look at our record in terms of number of games in the first round compared to others, we typically get more six-and-seven games series. I think what we have now, and most people in our game think what we have now is working quite well. Listen, I love the fact that people are so passionate about the game, that there's always a debate about what we can change, okay? But change for the sake of change, or change because somebody else is doing it differently.

Under the right circumstances can make sense, but for us right now, we like where we are. We think the game's in really good. With the, you guys have put a big focus back on divisional play, which I think is great. love rivalries. In a situation like the East right now where you have four from the Metro and four from the Atlantic, but they're crossed over. Has there ever been a conversation if it's four and four that we would just stick keeping our divisions for the first round? We've had conversations about lots of things, but we like what we have. All right. So what I took away from that is there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for movement from Gary Bettman at this

particular juncture. The thing that I thought was really interesting, Sean, was him saying, And look, when it was a 21 league, sorry, 21 team league, we had 16 teams make it. And he was like, that's too much, right? That's like 80% of your teams are making. He's like, that's too high of a percentage. He says, we got it just right now, 16 out of 32. And when you hear a lot of people saying they should expand the format, this is often the argument we use is like, well, look, they've added 11 teams to the league, but they haven't

added any playoff teams. Do you think 16 out of 32 is the right number for you? Yes. I do think it's the right number. And I understand that people are now saying, okay, he just contradicted himself to what he said three minutes ago when he said he's in favor of playing. To me, the answer is we do a play-in,

and that play-in gets you into the playoffs. And then you've still got 16 playoff teams. So we don't count the, you know, you finish 10th, great, you didn't make the playoffs. You're not in the playoffs because you finish 10th. We don't have 20 playoff teams every year. We do have 20 teams that are eligible for the playoffs, of which whatever would be, 12 would be through automatically. And then the other teams play for those last spots. And then if you still want to call that, once we finish the play in and we're down to 16 teams,

if you want to call that the playoffs and say this is now round one, I'm good with that. To me, that almost feels like a decent compromise. I agree with Gary Batman. 16 out of 21 was too many. I'm a Leif's fan. I watched teams that had 55 points make the playoffs because there was a team with 53 points behind them in the Norris division. It was too much.

But, and I do love the full-on 16-team format, no buys, no, you know, the way that the way you see it in the NFL, the way you see it to some extent. in baseball with the wild car round. I like the simplicity of it. I'm good with that. I would like to have a play-in to get into there. I don't think that's a contradiction. I think you can have a traditional 16-team playoff

while also having a play-in that both makes the season more exciting and also acknowledges the fact that, look, at the end of the day, are we that sure that the 8th team is better than the 9th team? team or do we acknowledge that especially in an era where we have loser points and weird percentages and everything that those teams that are grouped there are often very, very close and maybe the best way to figure out who goes to the playoffs is that you just have them play head to head and let them sort it out on the ice? And you know what, to me, what was a little disappointing was we kind of had the play in

format in that COVID-shorten 2020 season, right? Like, remember, we came out of it and only a handful of teams were guaranteed to start the quote-unquote playoffs. And then you had all of, I don't have to remind Lee's fans, but like you had like, you know, Columbus, Toronto and yeah, thanks for that. But, but, you know, like, we have, like, to me, I was like, okay, well, now we've opened up the box. Like, now we've done it. We've done it. We've done a play in in the NHL. And then to hear that roughly two years later, it doesn't feel like that's going to gain any traction was a little disappointed.

The other thing I want to bring up, and I did look this up this morning, and I don't believe I'm off. I think I looked it up. I think I'm pretty accurate on this. One of the things Gary Betman said was, you know, if you look at it, we get more series going to a seventh game in the first round than other leagues. And so I looked it up. And obviously, football doesn't have the, you know, the best of seven format. But I thought the NBA, I feel like the NBA and the NHL are somewhat comparable in terms of their season and the structure and all that stuff. So I just looked it up over the last five years, Sean.

Last five years, the NHL has had six series that went to a seventh game in the first round. Okay? So NHL, six series in round one have gone to a seventh game. The NBA has had seven. Wow. So like, again, I'm very surprised about that because I can go back and double check. But yeah, that's what I got. I'm a cynic when it comes to Gary Bettman. But when he said that, I just kind of nodded along and figured that was, that, that sounded right to me. So I'm surprised. I would guess that if you expanded maybe the timeline, you would get a different result. But yeah, I mean, look, the criticism, at least from hockey fans' perspective, of the NBA playoffs has always been that other than maybe the four versus five match, if you always know who's going to win,

one seed's always going to beat an eighth seed. The two is almost always going to beat the seven because the NBA is a star-driven league and the top teams tend to be significantly better versus the NHL and not to open this whole debate, but in the NHL playoffs, anything can happen, anybody can beat anybody, you have no idea,

and some people love that, some people absolutely love the excitement and the uncertainty and the unpredictability, and other people, and I'm kind of in this group, feel like it's gone too far, and we're just flipping coins now, and nothing means anything.

And, you know, Gary Bettman talks about the regular season being meaningful, but is the regular season really meaningful when as soon as you get into the playoffs, series are all going seven games anyways because it turns out there's not a real significant difference. It is an interesting debate to me. I think one thing that really makes it maybe even more interesting this year as we see the NBA launching their new format is I think you could look at especially this year's Eastern Conference and say right there is both your best. and your worst argument for this new format. Because Gary Batman talks about the regular season being meaningful. Did it feel meaningful if you're a fan of an Eastern Conference team when we knew all the

playoff teams in November? And for four months, five months, we're just playing for seating. And even seating doesn't really matter. I mean, we know that anybody can beat anyone. So really, who even cares who you play or who has home ice. The last half of the season in the Eastern Conference was completely meaningless. And if there had been a battle for those playing spots, then that would have added a little bit more intrigue. Now, the flip side of that is you look at those standings and you say, the eighth place Washington Capitals are a 100 point team.

Are we honestly going to make them play the Blue Jackets who finished under 500, even factoring in the loser point? Are we honestly going to say the Blue Jackets and the Islanders deserve to be anywhere near the playoffs when teams like Washington, Boston, Pittsburgh, right ahead of them? were well over 100 points. So again, I see both sides of that. I think it's an interesting debate. I would love the NHL to have the debate. What frustrates me here is Gary Bettman is basically slamming the door. And he's saying it publicly.

You hear it privately as well. People say this is never going to get off the ground. Gary says no. And you know what? He's the commissioner. He's supposed to be the boss. I get it. If he really feels like this would be bad for the league,

I don't mind him putting his foot down. But where is this on? anything else. On all of the issues facing the game, where do you ever see Gary Betman sit up there and kind of slam his fist on the table and say, this is how it's going to be. I feel strongly about this. He almost never see it. He's always equivocating. He's always kind of wishy-washy, and people run to his defense. And they say, well, well, you can't expect Gary Bettman to do anything. He just works for the owners. They're the boss. He's just, I mean, to hear some people say it, he's an $8 million a year stenographer who just takes notes at the meetings and does whatever

his bosses tell him to, that's clearly not the case. Because when it comes to things where, for whatever reason, he seems to be passionate about what the right answer is, he absolutely will get up there. And in this case, shut down a discussion before it even gets off the ground. Okay, maybe that's what leadership looks like. Where is it on everything else from this guy? And you know what? I think what frustrates me on the play-in, and I agree with you. Like, like, and maybe we need to set a threshold that if the ninth place team is within within X amount of points, maybe it's five points, maybe it's- You've got to be within 10 points or 5. I wouldn't have agreed with that before this year

and seeing what the Eastern Conference looks like, but yeah, I'm okay with that. Yeah, exactly. But I think when I look back at the last few years and probably more like 10 years, the most exciting regular season games down the stretch were the one. that organically produced a sort of play-in, like think of that Philly Rangers Game 82 that went to a shootout in whatever year that was 2010. And it was like, people are like, my God, like inject this into my veins. This is unbelievable, right? Like, and you remember as a Toronto fan way back in the day, the Todd Gill, Chicago game.

Why are you doing this to me, man? No, no, but, but when it happens organically and it's a, it's a win or go home scenario, there's nothing better than that. In pro sports, winner go home is the best drama and theater. And even when you go back to the end of this regular season and that nutty night, I think it was a Tuesday night to end the season,

Vegas was playing Dallas, right? Yeah. And who was playing Arizona? And why am I blanket now? Oh, it was Vegas and, yeah. And Vancouver was still hanging around. And then the next night, it was Dallas, Arizona, and Vegas, Chicago to finish it off.

Yeah, that's it. Sorry, yeah, Vegas, Chicago. Vegas, Chicago, and Dallas, Arizona. Sorry. And we were all glued to our screens and we're like, oh, my God. And imagine if you intentionally created that. This just happened out of pure luck and circumstance. If you could intentionally create that, I think it's a good thing.

I think it's a good thing. Maybe if it didn't flow organically from a full 82 game season, it wouldn't feel as special. I don't know. Maybe we can, again, that's an argument to be had. Here's my argument for why we should, again, not even expand the playoffs, but introduce a play-in and, again, something that would let those 9 and 10 teams work their way in. I'm going to take Gary Bettman in his word, and I'm going to agree with him that there is no playoffs like the NHL in terms of unpredictability.

As I said, you never know who's going to win. anybody can beat anybody. You know, we just, we've watched the capitals go up on the, on the Panthers, one versus eight. You know, we see big upsets all the time. We've seen years where all the road teams have won. The NHO playoffs are extremely unpredictable. I agree with that, whether you think it's a good thing or not.

But the result of that is one through eight is all really that matters during the NHA. Chal season. This desire to make the regular season meaningful. All that matters in the regular season is make the playoffs, really. I'm simplifying a little bit, but you make the playoffs or you don't. You get an invitation or you don't. And once you get in, anything can happen. You can be, you know, maybe the avalanche roll and win the Stanley Cup or maybe some team pulls what the Montreal Canadiens did last year and comes out of nowhere and just starts beating teams that the season told us were far better. That's all that matters. Home Ice really matters very, very little. these days in the NHL.

Upsets are far more common. It's one versus eight. That's the only question that gets answered in a really meaningful way in this regular season. Are you one through eight and you get in or are you not one through eight and you're not in? Think about it if there was a play in instead. Think about now,

okay, so now you say instead of worried about, you know, that eight versus nine, which is all that matters now, do you finish eighth or do you finish ninth and miss the playoffs? Now it's okay, 10th versus 11th really matters, of course. But also, eight versus nine matters if we do it the NBA way,

because you want to play one game in a play in instead of having to win two. And six versus seven matters enormously because now you've got to finish in the top six to guarantee your spot. You don't want to be in the plan if you can avoid it. And also one versus one and two, finishing first and second now gives you a little bit more because you're going to be playing a team that's just had to play a couple games. you've had time off, you're rested up and healthy or healthier, and the other team is jumping right in off of playing a couple of playing games. So you've got more of an advantage finishing

first and second. There's all these inflection points now in the standings all the way down that matter in this regular season to make it meaningful versus today where nobody cares about anything other than eight versus nine. That's the only cutoff, the only inflection point that matters in this so-called super meaningful regular season. Yeah, anyway, we'd love to hear from our listeners on this. If you're if you're super passionate about it, you know, tweet at us or, you know, certainly shoot a note to our comment section on the podcast because I think the majority of fans would like to see some sort of play in. But the commissioner just shut it right down.

Like shut it right down. And I know that a lot of fans don't want to see it. Every time I raise this, I hear from a lot of fans who say, no, absolutely not. This is just right. We don't want too many teams, et cetera, et cetera. So I get that there's both sides of it. I'd love to hear, you know, send us a couple of lines arguing one or the other. And, you know, like I say, I'm open to the debate.

Unfortunately, Gary Bettman apparently isn't. Well, and, you know, you talk about the anything can happen in the Stanley Cup playoffs. We're almost seeing that play itself out in the first week. And in particular, when it comes to goaltending, Sean, because I'm seeing Pittsburgh is down to their third string goalie. Carolina is down to their third string goalie. Wouldn't shock me if Nashville is down to their third string goalie. Like, have we, like, forget about backups for a second. Like, have we ever seen a year in which the third string goalie comes in this often?

Not that I can remember. This is, it's certainly not this early. Where, you know, you had, you know, what was it, three goaltenders, important goaltenders get hurt right down the stretch in the final week or two. And now a couple more once the playoffs has started. I don't remember ever seeing anything like this as far as guys being forced into games where they were just not at all really on their team's radar as far as being a part of their plan in the postseason. You know, and we saw it in Carolina on Wednesday night.

Like suddenly the e-bug, the emergency backup goalie is like kind of getting ready and here we go. like I still find this fascinating. Like imagine in the NFL that if your top couple quarterback, there was just some random guy in the stands that had to loosen up and warm up. Or like in baseball, imagine if, you know, all of a sudden your pictures are some guy who was a high school star in the area is hanging. Like, this wouldn't happen anywhere else. And I'm wondering if it ever came to fruition in a playoff game, would that change?

Because I think we all kind of love it. We're like, oh, the lovable ebug. Who doesn't love it? It's fun. I'll tell you, if it ever came to pass that an emergency backup goalie had to be put into a playoff game, I think we're having a different conversation, no? Yeah, I absolutely think we are. And look, I took a lot of heat when the Zamboni driver game happened with the Leafs and the Hurricanes.

And everybody loved it. You don't even refer to him by name. No, he's the Zamboni guy. He's the Zamboni guy. Yep. And David Ayers came in and, you know, it was great and he was, you know, he was on Good Morning America or whatever else. And, and I said at the time, I said, this is a great story. Make Haywall the Sun shines with it. Absolutely. Get this guy on every talk show. But then change the rule so that this doesn't happen again. And, you know, everybody said, oh, here he goes. The guy who doesn't like fun, the sour leaf fan, like, of course, it was your team that got embarrassed. So, you know, you want the rules to change. Why do you? you hate fun. And, you know, my argument was what we saw with David Ayers was kind of like, you know, as a parent, when you're just sort of sitting there mining your own business and suddenly from the top of the stairs you hear, hey, dad, watch this. And you look up and your kid

tries to do a cartwheel down the stairs, like on their, you know, or like a flip on their bike. And they land it. And you go, wow, that was amazing. Never ever do that again. Because that game, you know, first of all, I mean, forget about the competitive. integrity. You have a guy come into a game like that. Guys can get hurt. There are guys speeding around at top speed. If David Erz had gotten plowed into by somebody and left on a stretcher, everybody would have been saying how the hell could the NHL let a 40-something guy out onto the ice with professional athletes. But, you know, take that aside, he played well and he got the win because the Hurricanes played amazing in front of him. If the Leafs had won that game,

the Leafs were in a playoff battle at the time. The Leafs were right there and point for point. with other teams. That could have, I mean, it ended up not, you know, we had COVID and we didn't finish the season, but that could have been the game that decided the playoffs. It would have been ridiculous for other teams to lose a playoff spot, let alone, you know, that happened in late February. What if it was the first week of April? And you're right, what if it's a playoff game? Now, it's a lot less likely to be a playoff game because teams can carry a third goaltender. It's a situation where guys are there. Most teams in the NHL, their third goaltender is in the H.L.

Getting games in. You don't want a guy just following the team around not playing. That's why they typically don't have one in the playoffs. Different story. Most teams do have somebody.

It was, what Fontaine was dressed, I think, for the hurricane last night, you know, sitting in the dressing room. So we're much more unlikely to see it.

But we shouldn't see it at all. I mean, it's a cool thing when it happened. It almost, you know, we saw it again Friday night, the last Friday of the season. But it's, It's a neat story, and we've been lucky so far that it has been good stories, but someday it's

going to happen and it's not going to be a good story. And that's when it'll change, and people will say why, why have we been doing it this way? I really felt like David Ayers was the perfect 10 out of 10, absolute dream scenario. And that would have been a good time for the league to say, okay, we got away with it. Let's shut this down. But again, apparently it's because I hate fun. You know, Louis DeMing, what a great story. It looks like, and it looks like he might have to carry the load here for a bit

because Casey DeSmith has a groin injury that might take him out for the entire series. It sounds like Tristan Jerry's out of the walking boot, but still, it's very if he'll be able to come back. I know we make fun of the penguins and we're always like, they always have some random guy show up and score goals, right? Like it's the, what are the names again? Why am I blank? Yeah, Mark Donk and BuzzFee. Fibit are the classic from the classic tweet, yeah.

But I feel like, do we need to also look at the goaltending for the penguins? Like, does another franchise have as many rando goalies winning playoff games? Like I was thinking about this, like Louis DeMing. Remember Jeff Zatkoff a few years ago? Yeah. Johann Headberg kind of came out of nowhere won games.

Frank Peter Angelo, we talked about this. He won a game seven for them. Like, does a franchise have more, like, being a Leafs guy, okay? Who's the most random goalie to win a playoff game for your team? Like for the people leaves? Surprisingly, surprisingly, there really isn't why I went and took a look.

And you might think that they're, well, I guess on the one hand, this feels like a very maple leafy thing to have happened to them. Now, the smart aleck reply would be that you have to win playoff games in order to have goalies winning playoff games. And yeah, I will take that point. Maybe that's why it hasn't had the leaves. The Leafs, like Jeff Reese has a playoff win for the Leafs. Oh, yeah, that would be the guy right there.

That would be the guy, but I mean, it was, it, it, it, there have been other guys who have certainly come into games that you, you wouldn't expect or wouldn't remember where, you know, they're getting blown out and somebody comes in. But no, we definitely don't have any Jeff Zatkoffs. I mean, to me, that's the classic one. Yeah. He won a game in a playoff run where his team won the Stanley Cup. Yeah.

Like, this wasn't a desperate. For Times, call for, I mean, it was, in fact, was he, did he start game one for them? I think what happened was Flurry was out with. Flurry was out with an injury. Yeah. And Murray got hurt in warm up and Zatkoff jumped in like for game one of a crucial playoff series. Yeah, he did.

I'm looking at it now. He played game one and two. He won game one, lost game two. And then Matt Murray came back. because I remember that one being like a shocker. It was one of these things where it was like half an hour before the game and breaking news, Matt Murray's out. And at the time, it's not like Matt Murray was some household name. You know, even Matt Murray are sitting there going, oh, they don't have flurry.

They got to ride this rookie. And then what the heck is Jeff Zatkoff? And he's coming in. That's what, I mean, that would be certainly up there. the hurricanes have had their share. They're doing it this year. Cam Ward being an example. But, I mean, Cam Ward wasn't an unknown guy, but he was a guy who had success.

I mean, if you're going by success, nobody can touch the Montreal Canadians because they had Ken Dryden and Patrick Waugh both come in as rookies who weren't viewed as, you know, Dryden had barely played. Wad played a little bit more. And the other thing is you must remember, you know, being a secret Habs fan. Do you remember the year before Waugh showed up, who the big goalie was in Montreal? Steve Penny. Steve Penny went to the conference final. Yeah, randomly. As a miracle goaltender, you know, pennies from heaven.

That was the pregame thing that this guy. And then he ended up getting hurt and made way for Patrick Waugh and never really went anywhere after that. but it's Montreal has had had some good luck at it and I look I mean we're in a league now where there's 32 teams in theory there's 64 jobs for goalies there's a lot more than 64 NHL quality goalies out there so a lot of teams do have a third sometimes even a fourth guy who is good enough to play in this league but man you don't want good enough in the playoffs and and I got to say for Pittsburgh phenomenal win in game one, obviously to go into another team's building and win in triple

overtime, I still feel like it's the super rare case where I come out of a game one win feeling worse about their chances than I did going in because to win, I mean, what a devil's bargain, right? Like what would you rather? Do you want to win game one in triple overtime, but you lose your goaltender potentially for the series? Or do you take the loss? I mean, when you're going up against arguably the best goalie in the league,

boy, it's really tough to do it with Louis DeMing. It would be tough to do with Casey Dismith. It's going to be tough to do with Tristan Jari if we even get them back. But I don't love the penguin's chances, as great a story as it is. All right, time to bring back our pal, Jesse Granger for Granger Things, brought to you by BetMGM, the exclusive betting partner with us at the Athletic. And Jesse, we were just talking about the Pittsburgh Penguins, Louis DeMing, kind of being parachuted into that series and winning.

Now, you play goalie, right? Like this, and that's your position. What's the worst thing you ever ate before a game that you were like, oh, man, this is sitting in my stomach because we just, you know, Louis de Ming with the spicy pork and broccoli, whatever, people having some fun with that. What's the worst thing you ever ate? And you're like, man, I regret eating this before getting on the ice. Oh, man, that's a tough question.

I've eaten a lot of bad things before playing hockey games. I remember, like, everyone was laughing about, like, how unhealthy it was. And then they showed the picture and, like, It didn't look like the best spicy pork and broccoli, but it still was like fresh broccoli. I've eat like, I mean, we go on travel tournaments to out of state, and we're having a few beers before the games. I've definitely consumed worse than spicy pork and broccoli before a game.

And my performance definitely shows it. You know who must have been happy with that is Mike Keenan, because there was a story in the 87 Canada Cup that Mike Keenan made Team Canada eat chicken and broccoli before. before every game. And that this upset the Wayne Gretzky and the Oilers, which were half of that team, because they all ate steak and ice cream.

It's 1987, remember. Steak and ice cream is a pregame meal. And so they went and overruled Mike Keenan and had steak and ice cream and said. But Mike Keenan redeemed. It is broccoli is the winning food. Yeah. It's weird.

Yeah, the story is that Gretzky was so angry. Like he actually went and personally ordered some steaks or something. Yeah. And ice cream. And Sundays or whatever. But I feel like we need to also very quickly hit on Wayne Gretzky's alleged pregame meal that he ate all the time, which was four hot dogs with mustard and onions. Can we just take a moment for all the people who are like, I don't know how Louis Doming played after eating spicy pork and broccoli? Can we take a moment and understand that arguably the greatest player in the history of team sports ate four hot dogs with onions and

and mustard before every game and is, you know, clearly the best player who ever played this sport and arguably the best player of any sport. Like, it's impressive, man. I tell you, I'm not saying I couldn't eat four hot dogs. I absolutely could. I couldn't do much after. Let's just leave it at that, man. I'm not, yeah, I'm, I'm in rough shape.

And I'll also, it's got to be tough around the goalie. So, man, you're getting up and down like that. That's a lot of squats, a lot of crunches. I don't know that the beef and broccoli that, you know, he even said it wasn't good. When he was asked, you know, he said and she kind of reacted. And then he was like, yeah, it wasn't good. That's pretty rough. But this might be the new thing.

This could be the most popular meal in Pittsburgh pretty soon. Yeah. Of all the food we've brought up, to me the worst one, like I feel like hot dogs, even though they're like barely protein. They are still protein. And like the broccoli and the pork, to me the worst thing, if you told me which one of those

would you least want to eat before playing a game and playing goalie, it would be ice cream for sure. The dairy and just the sweets of it, like that seems like it would be miserable. And two minutes into the game, you're done. You've got no nutrition left in you whatsoever.

That would be rough. But I mean, who are we to argue with Wayne Gretzky? Yeah. Yeah. I remember when you think about hot dogs, I always think about John Garrett, who when he was, was he playing for Quebec at the time where he like, he basically was eating a hot dog and he's a backup goalie and they're like, get in the game. And he like basically, what did he like stuffed the hot dog in his pads or something? I think he said that, yeah, he like hit it in his blocker or something like that. It's, yeah, well, I mean, it's, you got to do what you got to do. You're not allowed to cancel lunch. You got to get that hot dog in however you can. Oh, yeah. And, Jesse, you say that, like, ice cream is a no-go for you. Like, is, like, would fried chicken be on your no-fly list? Like, you're about to, you're about to play goalie in a men's league game.

I'm thinking fried chicken might be on the no-go list. Yeah, that wouldn't be good. I don't think it'd be great for your stomach. I don't think it'd be great for your hands either, getting some grease on your hands. Like, later in the game, the inside of the goalie gloves can get a little slick as you're getting, like, more sweat. And I could see eating fried chicken beforehand. the gloves are even slicker on your hands. There's nothing worse than your glove hand feeling a little loose and you don't really

have, like, you'll catch a puck and you're not sure if the gloves are going to fly off your hand when you catch it. Fried chicken does not seem like a good mixture of hockey. Spicy chicken wings. Spicy chicken wings, at least it'll keep the crease clear. You won't have to worry about anyone trying to screen you or anything like that. There you go. Hey, Jesse, before we get to a couple of, I think, some kind of money. lines and series lines that we want to look at in turn of the playoffs. We got you back on after obviously a disappointing end of the season for the Vegas

Golden Nights. We saw, we followed along with your postseason coverage of media availability. And I thought the, to me, what was the most interesting quote was one from Peter DeBore, who made it seem like, hey, I'd like to come back. But, I mean, can you walk us through? Like, where's the job security for Pete DeBore right now? Yeah. So I'll be completely honest.

When the Golden Knight's season ended, it took them a while to hold a locker cleanout day, which has not been the case. Usually it's the next day for this team. And there were four or five days in between the last game. And I was kind of wondering, like, are they delaying this to make some changes? And then the day before, they announced Pete DeBore and Kelly McCriman will speak. And I thought, okay, I guess they've decided no changes are going to be made here. But Pete DeBore made it pretty clear in his media veil that that decision has not been made yet. He has one year left on his deal. and he basically said, yeah, I hope to coach this team again. I think that we never were able to put it together and reach our potential,

but he still believes that this group has the potential to win it all. And he hopes to have at least one more chance to do it. And he said that he's going to meet with GM Kelly McCrimman and president of hockey ops, George McPhee later this week. And to be completely honest, speaking with Kelly after Pete, I don't think Kelly feels all that comfortable that he's also, Like, like, I think that if I were to guess right now, Kelly McCriman will be back, but I don't think it's been decided and I don't think he's 100% comfortable in that,

that in his spot right now just based on the way he interacted with us. That's my theory. And I'm obviously far, far away from it with no kind of insight information. But I, look, I thought the Golden Night season ended, what, Friday night? I thought Saturday morning we would hear that Pete DeBore was out. And in fact, I'll go one further when it was the middle of this week and we started getting the news trickling about Jeff Blasheel. We heard that Mike Yow wouldn't be back. There was some talk about Bruce Boudreau.

I had a moment where I went, did they do the Pete DeBore announcement? And it just wasn't, you know, it was so obvious that we didn't, you know, I didn't even pay attention to it. And I realized that he was still there. To me, there's no reason to need a lot of time on this if you're Kelly McCrimmon unless. you're not sure that it's your call. And that is what I'm, you know, because even if, look, I think I would be very surprised that Pete DeBore kept his job. But if he's going to keep his job and you know everyone thinks he's not going to make

it very clear, you know, do what the Leafs did last year when they go out. You sit there on the first day after and you say, we're staying the course and you set the expectations. I think it's got to be that maybe Bill Foley or, you know, George McPhee or wherever it's coming from is looking at everyone below him on the org turn. Yeah, Kelly didn't exactly give like a strong ringing endorsement for Pete. He basically said he's under contract one more year. We're going to talk later this week. I'm going to talk to him. That was. Yeah. And he mentioned, yeah, he mentioned the yo firings. He said he, I think Kelly's line was, you saw a couple teams,

they fired their coach before the Zamboni was off the ice. They clearly had made that decision well at advance. He goes, I personally like to talk to the coach. I like to see where our views align. And I don't, to me, like, obviously I'm closer to it. I think Pete DeBore is a good coach. I think Pete DeBore has a effective system. I just don't know if he's the right coach for this group. I feel like there's a disconnect between the talent on the roster and the system he wants to run. I don't know if they mesh. I think because they're so talented and because Pete DeBore is such a smart guy, it has worked. Obviously, they've got a two conference finals in three years with him. But I just don't know if you're trying to maximize this roster if Pete is the guy. I personally don't know. You know, it's funny you use the word disconnect because I think that would be the term a lot of people would use to describe the relationship between DeBoer and Robin Leonard. As the season has ended and the dust has somewhat settled, do we have a better read on that

situation? Is there a scenario in which Robin Leonard and Pete DeBoer can coexist next season? Yeah, I mean, there's clearly an issue between those two. Pete DeBoer blamed Robin Lennar for a couple performances down the stretch, basically said, it's not because of health. It's because he's not playing well enough. And then I wrote about it and I juxtaposed it to. We asked him about Mark Stone, who also didn't play well down the stretch and is battling an injury similar to Lennar. And Pete said, hey, he's our captain. He's fighting through an injury. We know it's tough this time. It was so opposite the way he handled the two. And Pete DeBore did walk. of those statements back on Tuesday. He said, I wish I wouldn't have said healthy, like, probably shouldn't have made that as public as it was. So there's clearly a strain in the relationship. But I do think they can coexist if they were to both be brought back because we just went through this. I mean, Mark Andre Fleury's agent, Alan Walsh, posted a photo of a sword, a bleeding sword through his clients back with Pete DeBore's name written on the sword.

He then went on to win the Vezna Trophy under Pete DeBore the very next year. So, Pete is a veteran coach. He's been doing this a long time. He's dealt with a lot of issues like this. Pete has had issues with the goalies basically from the day he got here, but he's shown an ability to put that aside and get results from his goalies despite maybe a less than ideal personal relationship with him. So I don't know how likely it is that they're both back, but I do think that if it happens, if the Golden Knights decide Robin Lenters are goalie and Pete DeBore's our coach, they can make it work. before we wrap up this segment, we did want to hit on a couple of playoff series. Look, this is the time where maybe, you know, some series or two games in, a couple of others or one game in. But maybe now's the time to, you know, maybe you can lay down some smart money, so to speak,

because you're starting to see a little bit of a pattern in some of the series. So maybe you can walk us through a couple of series here, Jesse, where, hey, you know what, you might get some good value if you put down some money on a series or two. Yeah. So what I like to do is, and like, like, I call you. come on here and I talk betting. I don't like, I don't want to pretend to be a handicapping expert. So I like to just look at the numbers and see where we can maybe find some value. And I like the, at the athletic, we have our odds every day. You can see Dom Lucision does a incredible job with his formula. And I think,

in my opinion, there's not a better probability predictor out there. So I look at what doms are. And those are obviously just pure numbers. And then you look at the betting odds. And you turn those numbers like a minus 185. into the implied odds to, and I compare the two. Where are, where is the betting market overreacting? For an example, right now, Pittsburgh, after that big triple overtime win, they're minus 185 to win their series over the Rangers, which is an implied odds of 65%. So if you're betting at a minus 185 favorite,

it's telling you that you think that team has a 65% chance of winning the series. But the actual odds, according to the athletic and Dom, is Pittsburgh has a 73% chance of winning that series. So you're getting 8% of value betting on the penguins. And I think that's because of how close the game was. I think it's because of Igor Shisterkin covers up a lot of issues. I think when you look at the Rangers analytics and Dom's formula obviously takes that into consideration a lot. I think it shows that Pittsburgh is clearly the better team.

And it's just going to come down to can Igor Shasturken overcome. a much better team in Pittsburgh with a with a worst goalie because i mean they Pittsburgh had a worst goalie when it was jarring net and then it went to dismiss and now it's deming so like that that part does worry you but i think you can find some value another one that is really interesting to me is the is the Tampa Bay and Toronto series and obviously that one was tied up one one last night and it's minus 110 each way so it's basically telling you it's a coin flip um it's 50 50 shot to bet either these teams. But when you look at Dom's odds, Toronto has a 59% chance of winning and Tampa Bay only has a

41% chance. So you're getting almost 10% of value, which is a lot. You don't get that much value very often in the odds makers. So I really like that one. And then the last one is St. Louis and Minnesota is also minus 110 each way after the series is tied 1-1, telling you that there's a 50-50 shot. but this one's really lopsided. According to the athletics odds, Minnesota has a 67% chance of winning that series, only 33% for St. Louis. So based on everything these teams have done all year,

Minnesota has double the percent chance of winning than St. Louis. But at the betting odds right now, if you go to bed on this game, it's a 50-50 toss-up. So I think those are some series where the betting market has really overreacted to the first couple games. St. Louis getting a big win has has kind of shifted things towards them, but according to the odds,

Minnesota is still a prohibitive favorite to win this series. That's interesting stuff. Buyer beware on the Leafs. I actually have warned you right there. So Sean, I'd like to get your thoughts on it because like my watching that series for me, the first game, I thought

Tampa Bay looked tired and just and I compared it to on our podcast yesterday. I said I look at the Golden Knights and the Islanders, the other two teams that have played so much hockey, and they both were worn down this year. And they just didn't have the same pop. And Tampa Bay is obviously more talented than both those teams, so their talent has carried them into the playoffs. But they just, and even last night, I didn't think Tampa Bay looked like itself.

It just didn't look like it had the energy. I thought last night, Vasilevsky stood on his head, and I thought they got a few chances, and their veterans cashed in on those chances when they had them. But I still thought the Leafs looked like the fast. more energetic, hungrier team? I think that's fair. I mean, game one, we learned what happens when the Leafs play a great game and the Lightning play an awful game, which is to say we didn't learn very much.

Yeah, I mean, if one team's good and the other team's flat out bad, you're going to get that result. Last night was more interesting to me. I said going into the game, I said, look, what I want to see is how do the Leafs start that game? because this is a Leafs team. You know, forget the narrative that, oh, when things are going bad, they crumble. No, they don't.

When things are going bad, the Leafs tend to respond pretty well. It's when things are going well. They take the foot off the gas. They pat themselves on the back. They say, you know, we've got it under control. We can ease up a bit. And I really wanted to see, was it going to be like in the Montreal series where as soon as everything's going good and people start telling you how great you are, they come out

and they stink out the joy in the first period? And they didn't. They played great in the first period. Tampa was better, so it was a more competitive period. But the Leafs were right there with them. It was the penalty trouble. It is the fourth line matchup that the Leafs won it so bad. We've had a dumb penalty by Kyle Clifford in game one.

We had two dumb penalties by Wayne Simmons last night that cost of leaf goals and Corey Perry scores for Tampa. So that is a very lopsided matchup. But you could argue that the Leafs were the better team for a decent stretch of that. And they did push back when it was 5-1 and, you know, I got a couple of goals and looked good in the third period. You don't worry too much about that if you're Tampa because you're already way up. It's going to be a series. We all knew that. You know, when you're the home team in a series, you want to come out of the first two games up to nothing.

You're not happy with a split. But based on what's happening on the ice, you're reasonably happy for the Leafs. You've certainly shown you can play with these guys. You've shown you can dominate them. You've shown you can score on Andre Vasselowski. I think you feel okay about it, but you also now know that if there was any thought in your head after game one, then maybe this is going to be easier than we thought.

No, no way. But you're right. I do want to see what happens with Tampa and the fatigue, maybe not in the first round, but if they go further, because we have literally never seen a team in this situation where they have not only gone to the final two years in a row. Remember, their first final was in August.

So it's not even in the last two years. It's less than that. They have had just no break. They've been playing hockey almost constantly for the last, you know, whatever it is, 21 months. We've never seen this before. I really want to see if they can make a deep run. Boy, at some point are they going to hit the wall? And if not, God bless them because we've never had a team have to face this.

Yeah. And like, and I'm sure, listen, Jesse, when, when, and by the way, you're going to be actually sitting in the host chair next week. I'm taking next Thursday show off. So I'm sure the two of you will have a lot to chew on with Tampa, Toronto, because at that point the series, if it's not over, it'll be awfully close to it. But I think we're going to get, you know, you look at St. Louis Mini, Edmonton, L.A.

I feel like we're going to get a handful of series that go to seven games. It really feels like it. So, Jesse, listen, like I said, you're sitting in next week. So enjoy, enjoy the show. Thanks for dropping by. sure next week will be a fantastic episode with a whole bunch of more playoff storylines for everybody to chew on. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks for having me, guys. Right up. All right. Always great to have Jesse Granger back in the mix. Like I said, he's going to be co-hosting with you next week for the Thursday edition of the pod. I want to remind you you can reach us anytime via email. The athletic hockey show at gmail.com.

The athletic hockey show at gmail. Or you can drop as a voicemail. We love to hear from you and hear your voice. 4-5-4-5-8-4-59. Got a couple of emails, though, that I want to hit on. You know, let me start with this one from Joseph, who wrote in because Toronto won game one of their series against Tampa 5-0.

And Joseph says, hey, regarding that win, Sean, when I saw the score, I had a random memory pop into my head. Thought you guys would enjoy this. I believe it was Ottawa, Toronto, in the early 2000s, and Curtis Joseph gave up five goals a 5-0 game one loss to Ottawa. And the headline in the newspaper the next day read Joe Siv.

As in a civ who lets a lot of things through. I think I actually read it in my local paper in northeastern Pennsylvania. But all of the non-local stuff was from the Associated Press. So maybe the same article ran in Ontario. Not sure, but that headline always stuck with me. I do enjoy a good pun. It looks bizarre when it's written. down, but it only works when it's read aloud.

It comes in from, ironically enough, the email is from Joseph, so maybe it's Curtis Joseph that's listening. Maybe it is. So two things real quick. I remember, I covered, it was 2002 Game 1. And I covered that series, and I remember after Ottawa won game 1, 5-0, I went back, and I was working in television

at the time for Sportsnet, and I went back and I looked like, historically, what are the odds that you win a series when you win game one with like a lopsided shutout of five goals or more. Oh. It shut. No, I remember.

This is relevant to my interest right now. Yeah. So yeah. Now obviously 20 years have passed in between. So there may have been other things. I remember it was lopsided heavily in Ottawa's favor. I'm like, man, history tells you if you win game one with a shutout win of five goals or more,

like you have like a 95% chance of winning the series. Of course, we all know what happened to Ottawa there. Okay. Yeah. I think. Travis Yost actually looked at that on TSN and recently and found that it's not 95% anymore, but it's still a blow it in game one because obviously that's relevant also to, you know, if you're a blues fan, a Hurricanes fan, it does tell the future more than a typical win would.

So that has remained consistent. Okay. Now, speaking of headlines, though, and the reason why I want to bring this up, And the Joe Siv headline is, you know, it's cruel, but it's, you know, it is pretty punny. Let me tell you about the, and it's funny that this, this listener is writing us from Pennsylvania. Because I actually, and I think today, if it's not the 20th anniversary, it might be, I think it's the 19th anniversary of this, this headline. And it's a playoff series I covered, Philadelphia, Ottawa. And I think it was 2000. Actually, so it would be the 19 year history, I think, 2003.

Ottawa beats Philly in game six. I know the one you're going to say, yeah. They beat Philly in Game 6 and they basically run Roman Czech manic out of town. I think Marty Halott scores a goal. Anyway, so I'm sitting in the Philly airport the next day and it's May the 5th, right? Like I think when Ottawa beats Philly, it's May the 5th and everyone knows it's Cinco de Mayo, which is today. It's Cinco de Mayo. The headline in the Philadelphia paper is unbelievable.

and I think it's a photo of Czech manic way out of his net and Marty Havlad in behind him putting in the goal that kind of iced the series. And the headline read Stinko de Flyo. Beautiful. And I'm like, this is just a chef's kiss. Absolutely beautiful. May 5th, Cinco de Mayo, they lose the series, the season ends, Stinko de Flyo. Like I don't, like end it. Drop them. And I got to say, that's a huge compliment coming from you because you are the Picasso of puns and headline pun. That's one of the fun things. If you're ever hanging out with Ian Mendez and anything happens,

just turn to him and go, what's the headline on this? And he will hit you with a 10 out of 10 pun, but that one is maybe an 11 out of 10. I got to say, remembering that Leaf Senators game, just on the subject of what we saw with Tampa and Toronto, that game to this day is the single biggest butt kicking I've ever seen in a playoff game. because the senators,

not only did they go into Toronto and win 5-0, it was, if I remember right, it was 5-0 early in the second period. Yeah. And then they very clearly backed off.

And Pat Quinn even said after the game, at some point I was looking at this going, we're going to lose 10 to nothing. Because it was, it was Harlem Globetrotters. They scored, you know, like a minute into the game and everything. And you're sitting there going,

you know, at this point, it's round three of the Battle of Ontario. You know, you're going, man, The torch is going to be passed. And if they had won game two, I'm convinced that would have been it. They would have swept. But of course, game two ends up being the triple overtime Gary Roberts game.

He saves the Leafs and they go on and win the series in seven. But I have to this day never seen a game that the Leafs have been involved in in the playoffs that was that lopsided. When you lose 5-0 and the score flatters you at a game. Yeah. Let me read one other email. This one comes in from Patrick in Chicago. and Patrick's got an idea and he says, look, I'm pretty sure this will never happen, but would either of you be in favor of teams not putting players' last names on the back of their jerseys?

The New York Yankees don't have them. Boston Red Sox don't have them on home jerseys. Chicago Cubs tried it back in 2005. Maybe it would be cool if an original six team, i.e. Montreal, would do it. you guys, would you guys ever be in favor of teams removing the name plates, the name bars, on the back of jerseys for teams? Yeah. So I don't know that I would.

Although maybe for, you know, a third jersey or something like an old-fashioned one, then maybe you'd do it. But the younger folks out there might not know that this used to be how it was. Like in the original six, there weren't names on the jerseys. It was just the number. and in fact, it was only in the 70s, late 70s, I believe, when the NHL passed the rule said, you have to put names on the back of these jerseys. And there's a great story where Harold Ballard, of course, didn't want to do that because

he doesn't care about the fans. What he wanted to do was sell programs. And this is back in the day, that's, you know, that's why you needed to buy a program. So number 12 did something and you go, who the hell is number 12? and then you would have to look at your program and figure out who it was. So he did not want to do it. The NHL apparently told him you must or else who were going to find you X number of dollars. And so what he did is he said, okay, we will put the names on the back of the jerseys,

but he put the names on the same color as the background of the jersey so that they couldn't be read. The names were on there, but you couldn't read them from the crowd. and, you know, the NHL at the step in and say, and be a little more specific. But yeah, that's, that is my weekly Harold Ballard being an absolute jerk to,

to his fan base story. You know, what I would be in favor of is maybe the odd time when two original six teams meet, let's say Chicago and Detroit or Toronto in Boston or Montreal, whatever. Maybe for like one-off games, those two teams meet and you remove the name bar,

It's just kind of as a, you know, it's a little tribute to the way things used to be. In 92, I think, the 75th anniversary of the NHL, they did that. Anytime the original six played, they wore their original six jerseys. And it was very cool. I don't think it had a name bar. I would have to go back and check that. I wonder if they allowed that or not. But it was very cool because like in the olden days, the other thing, and I thought maybe this is where you're going with this,

I would love to see, you know, let both teams wear their dark jerseys when the colors aren't in conflict. Let, you know, the Leafs and Red Wings did that at the Winter Classic years ago. Red and the blue. Red and the blue look great. Let the Leafs and the Canadians do that. It looks great. Obviously, it gets a little tricky. You know, if it's the Leafs and the Lightning, we probably don't want to do that.

But, you know, some of these teams where the colors are, you know, there's clear differentiation. it looks awesome when you have the, you know, and it gets that just kind of old-timey feel to it too. I'd love to see him do that. All right. Let's wrap up. Speaking of going down memory lane, let's wrap up like we always do with a little this week in hockey history.

I've got a couple for you here. Let me start with this one. Marty Jelan. This week in 2004, Martin Jelina became the first player in NHL history to have three different series clinching overtime goals to his credit. Jelina knocked out Detroit in game six in overtime that season for Calgary.

The previous round, he had knocked out Vancouver in Game 7. And maybe you could help me remember the third. Nope. No, you don't remember. You've done this enough, Ian. 2002. We're good. Toronto, Carolina, Jelinea had it there.

It's funny because I think, you know, Justin Williams has the nickname, you know, Mr. Game 7, right? like he always elevated his game. Does Marty Jelina get enough credit? Like at one point was he called the Eliminator? Like did he, did that nickname stick? I feel like he was called the Eliminator. I don't think so, but that would have been a good one.

Yeah, maybe, maybe. I don't recall it. Obviously, it didn't stick, but that would have been a good one. You know, the problem here with the Marta Jelena is when you say his name to this day, even though he had those three elimination goals, that's not the goal, quote-unquote, a goal that people remember him for it. It's not even the moment from 2004. People, if you, I think part of the reason maybe the nickname didn't stick is if you call him the Eliminator, every Flames fan is going to say, yeah, you're absolutely right. He eliminated

the Lightning with that winning goal in game six to win the Stanley Cup. They clearly went over the goal line, but they, they didn't review it or they didn't, you know, and then some other, somebody else will show up and start talking about parallax perspective and all this nonsense. But that's, I think the problem is as much as he was the eliminator, the goal that did go over the line, I will argue to this day, didn't eliminate the team. It should have eliminated because it didn't count. Well, and in the conference final, he also, did he not, he scored the serious clinching goal in the conference final against San Jose. I just don't think it was in overtime. But I think he was credited with the game winning goal.

And so Flames fans always felt like that was a goal. because the universe I've already dubbed this guy, the Eliminator. That's right. He's the winning goal of every series. Yeah, should have been. Which probably will never. It's one of those interesting things. Here's, I'm always to this day kind of a little bit surprised how many fans remember that moment against the lightning.

But they remember it being in overtime. A lot of times, even if you know, if you just Google it, people, you see people, you know, telling their stories, they remember that moment being in overtime. And it wasn't. It was significantly earlier in the game. But it's funny how our memories just kind of sometimes, in this case, add a little extra layer of drama on to something. Okay, one other one. We'll go back to May of 1995.

May 3, 1995, in the lockout shortened season, the regular season went all the way into May. And in the regular season finale, Yarmir Yager, then of the Pittsburgh Penguins, picks up a lone assist to give him 70 points in the 48 game season. and thus tied with Eric Lindrosse for the Art Ross trophy as the league's leading score. Now, Yager officially won the Art Ross because he had more goals. And this has only happened a couple times, right?

It happened to Gretzky and Dion back in the day. And who did it cost? It cost Gretzky or did it cost Dian? It cost Gretzky. It costs Gretzky. Yeah. So it costs Gretzky and Lindross are the two guys that have been the victim of this. if two guys end up tied for the Art Ross,

do you think they should just both be given the Art Ross? Or do you agree with the, yeah, you know what, the guy would think more goals should get it? Yeah, I would say that if you're going to do a tiebreaker, goals is the right way to do it. You know, that is goals. Certainly we understand these days is far more valuable than assists

and far more valuable than secondary assists. So if you're going to do a tiebreaker, that's the way to do it. I think you can argue you don't need a tiebreaker. What's interesting is we don't do it for the Rocket Richard, which is the closest trophy to the to the Art Ross in terms of what it's meant to honor. In the Rocket Richard, you two guys finish with the same amount of goals, then they both get the trophy or they both get credit for winning. I think there was a three-way tie.

Wasn't there one year with Rick Nash, Bovichuk and something. So, you know, it's a it's a. a little bit odd that it doesn't bother me that we do the tiebreaker for the Art Ross. It is a little bit weird that we treat to, in theory, scoring awards that are not voted on. They're just based on the numbers and we treat them differently as far as how we handle ties. Yeah, but that's perfect for the NHL. We've got to find that little bit of a discrepancy. And it comes full-serve- I didn't think we had, yeah, I didn't think we had ties anymore. You do a shootout. Here's what we do. We get the rocket richard guys get out there against the, against the Jennings trophy winners,

which, by the way, how dumb is that that the Jennings Trophy? The empty net? Counts empty net goals. I don't know if this year if it ended up, but it almost, it was on pace to decide the Jennings Trophy, which goes to, yeah, it goes to the goalies on the team that gives up the fewest goals, but we count empty net goals in that. So you can lose the Jennings trophy because I guess when you sat on the bench, you didn't cheer hard enough.

Yeah. This dumb league. Yeah, this league. Why don't you get angry about that, Gary Bettman. Why don't you start to show you? Yeah, get on that. Use the time that we're not using to talk about expanding the playoffs to fix some of this stuff. Yeah, exactly.

All right, well, leave it there. And like I said, I'm taking next week off. So you and the Granger, you got to figure out which one of you is taking the reins here. Which one of you is going to be rough? Is going to be the pilot and which one is going to be the co-pilot? Two backup goalies. We don't know. You guys are going to have to wait and wait and see who's going to have to, who's going to take the

starters net in practice. You'll get the updates on your Twitter feed over who left the ice first. One of you who's got to be the Jeff Zatkoff of this. I think I'm pretty clearly. Jeff Zatkoff. All right. We'll leave it there. And like I said, if you got any questions for us, you can always email us, The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com. I'm sure Sean and Jesse would love to hear from you too. You can drop them a voicemail for next week's show at 845-4-4-5-8-4-59. If you're not a subscriber with us at The Athletic, got a great deal going on for you right now. go to theathletic.com slash hockey show. The athletic.com slash hockey show,

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