The Athletic Hockey Show - Gary Bettman’s 30 years as NHL commissioner, Scott Stevens’ legacy changing over time, Patrick Kane’s time with Chicago Blackhawks running out?, Jack Adams Winner of the Week, and more

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Ian and guest cohost Mark Lazerus have you covered with a brand new Monday edition of The Athletic Hockey Show and discuss Thomas Chabot accidentally smacking his stick into teammate Travis Hamonic’s face, NHL Board of Governors meetings and Gary Bettman’s 30 years as league commissioner, Scott Stevens being ranked No. 49 in The Athletic’s NHL 99 project and how legacies change over time, the great Jaromir Jagr stepping out of the Kladno Knights owner’s suite and picking up 2 assists at the age of 50, Jack Hughes records the longest recorded shift in NHL history, Patrick Kane’s time with the Chicago Blackhawks probably running out, Alex DeBrincat off to a pedestrian start with the Ottawa Senators, and the guys hand out this week’s Jack Adams Winner of the Week award to close the show.Subscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowGet a 1-year subscription to The Athletic for $2 a month when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. We're back for a Monday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Ian Mendez with you, as always, and we got a pinch hitter in here. Actually, let's find out who his favorite pinch hitter was of all time. It's Mark Lazarus, sitting in for Julian McKenzie. I know you're a baseball guy, you're a Mets guy. Who's your, like, when I say pinch, like for me, I was thinking of John Van, under wall.

Oh, yeah. Like classic 90s pinch hitter would come in. Who does Laz want to be when I call you the pinch hitter? You know, I think Lee Mizzily was the guy that I think of the Mets fan growing up. Remember he was like, he was one of those, his pants were so tight. You wonder how he could breathe? Lee Mizzily would always come in in like the eighth inning, you know, because pitchers used to pitch seven or eight innings every game.

He would come in the late 80s of the Mets. He hit a ground ball to shortstop and be out. But it's okay, Lee Mizzili. We like that guy. He's an Italian New Yorker sounding guy. We like that guy. There we go. Lee Mizzili is stepping in.

Julian McKenzie is, well, he's doing some traveling this week, work-related. I think he's able to spend a little bit time back in Montreal anyway. So it didn't work out for him. So we got Laz sitting in. We got a full slate of things to talk about, which includes, you know, Patrick Kane. I think a lot of people want to hear about Kane,

kind of what's the latest there. We'll talk about a divisive article written by our colleague, Sean Fitzgerald in the NHL-99 on Scott Stevens. Board of Governor's meetings. I want to start, though, with something because last, I just came back from Ottawa practice against, they're teeing up, playing Anaheim tonight. And on the weekend, in Nashville,

for the listeners who haven't seen this, there's a good chance you probably saw it if you're on social media, but Ottawa defenseman Thomas Shabbat, the middle of that game, was really frustrated because he felt like there was a miss call from the referee, like a shot to his head, got back to the bench. He's sitting there for like 15, 20 seconds, all of a sudden, takes his stick out,

and he smashes it again. against what he thinks is just the kind of the glass kind of next to him. His stick, the stick basically breaks on the glass and the, he's now got half a stick in his hand and he follows through, not unlike Lee Mazzilli back in the day, full baseball swing and it hits Travis Hamannock in the face. Hamannick is in pain. It was, it was crazy. And anyway, Shabbat, to his credit, first thing he did today, he stayed out extra.

You knew he knew the question was coming. He walked us through it. Just said, look, he's a dumb mistake. I can't do that. I'm really sorry for doing it. It's dumb. It's probably one of the things I'm least proud of. So I appreciate he owned up to it.

But this is what he added last. Because, of course, being the tough journalist we are, we asked, well, what did you get him to say, sorry? And Shabbat says, I bought him a few things, but I'll leave it up to him if he wants to tell you guys what I bought him. Oh, wow. So now, so this is why I want to speak. spitball. So if I hit you in the face with a shard, kind of a broken out of a hockey,

like what's, what's the, what's appropriate payback here? Well, it depends. Are you making athletic money? Are you making NHL player money? Oh, okay. Yeah, let's put this in the layperson's terms. Like, like just regular people. You're not, you're not, you're not going to buy me a watch or a car like a hockey player might do. So, honestly, you know, I'd like to think I'd be the bigger man here. And I'd like to say you don't have to buy me anything. Maybe you could, you know, buy me a beer the next time we're out or we'll go, we'll go grab some. dinner or something like that. I'd like to think that, but I'm probably not that, and I would want something. I would think, you know, you know, I don't know, like a really nice bottle of

liquor, maybe, like a really good bourbon, maybe something like that. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because like anyone who has kids has seen this happen a thousand times. Happen to me last night. We were making gingerbread cookies last night, you know, stereotypes that we are. We're making gingerbread cookies in December. And I have a seven-year-old and a 10-year-old, two girls. And my seven-year-old was getting frustrated because she couldn't get the little, icing squeezer to her fine motor skills weren't clicking in very well. It was making a mess. And she got mad and she slammed it down.

And it bounced up and got icing all over my daughter's new shirt, my 10-year-old new shirt, and she was really mad. And it's funny because you go from super, super, super-angry to super-apologetic. Real quick when something like that happens. And you said that was Shabbat where he's so angry. And then me like, oh, God, I'm so sorry. Which leads me to believe that you weren't that really that angry to begin with. If you could turn that quickly, then maybe you shouldn't have,

Maybe you should have reacted better in the first place. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And listen, we'd love to hear from our listeners, too, maybe in a rec league that you've played in. Have you ever accidentally injured your teammate? And then, more importantly, what did you do to make it right? Right?

What did you do to make it right? I'm with you. I think in our kind of tax bracket, being somebody who just buy a bottle of wine or one, just something to say you're sorry. But then you'll still take the brunt of the, the jokes later on. People will still have the right to make fun of you.

I'm amazing this doesn't happen more often. The emotions and the passions run so high. And these guys get so angry when something goes awry. And they've got knives on their feet. And they've got weapons in their hands. And how does this not happen more often where guys just explode? You see a guy celebrate a goal and do a huge fist pump. And he's like a quarter of an inch from an opponent's face because you didn't know that guy was coming.

It's amazing we don't have more accidental collisions like that in a hockey game. Well, and the one I always think about was back in the day, and it was the Florida Panthers, right? It was Keith Ballard and Thomas Focoon. Was it Focoon? Where Ballard was angry, a puck went in, and he went to smash his stick against the crossbar, and he just hit Focoon like full.

You remember that one? You could break an arm doing that, yeah. Yes, it was just, it's, you're right. You know, you could probably only count on one hand where that's kind of you get taken out by friendly fire like that in a hockey game. Well, it's like every time you see a guy flip over, over the boards or, you know, someone delivers a really nasty hip check and a guy goes, you know, feed up in the air like that. I'm always amazed that we don't have guys getting cut by skate

blades 40 times a night. Like, it's incredible how dangerous it is and how infrequently that happens in a scrum where you have like 13 guys on the ice all, you know, in a pile on the floor. How does nobody lose a hand? Like, it's incredible that this doesn't happen more often. You know what? And the one I always think about this are referees and linesmen who don't usually you have any protection on their hands. Yeah. And they're the ones diving in there trying to stop it. Yeah.

Okay, now I'm getting squeamish. Now I'm getting squeamish thinking about it. I'm just saying, like, every time this happens, I'm like, oh, God, that's horrible. And how does it not happen more often? Yeah, exactly. Anyway, so Shabbat tries to make good with Ham and I got. We'd love to hear from our listeners.

If you ever accidentally hurt a teammate playing sports, youth sports, where, like, did you, you know, did you make it up with some sort of gift or some sort of thing? It's a sliding scale, right? Like Tom Brady's got to buy his offensive line in Rolexes. But in Little League, you got to like buy a pack of fund dip at the concession stand. Exactly. It's the sliding scale.

Hey, speaking of those, that higher tax bracket, let's slide down to Florida. The board of governors are meeting two days. Have you ever covered one of these? I have not. I've done some GM meetings before. They're excruciatingly awful to cover. You just literally sit on the floor in the hallway at the Bellagio or whatever for four or five hours, only to find out the one guy you wanted to talk to found a back door and has already gone.

Yeah, and one thing you learn to is like when you cover, and I've covered a couple of board of governors meetings or GM meetings, like, and you look at the, they're usually older gentlemen that are here. And you think to yourself, okay, I'm going to stake out my spot in the lobby.

And they, they, they, they, they, the speed of a gazelle. And they get, you're like,

how did, it's like they have a flight to catch. You have, I have never seen anybody move as fast as NHL executives dispersing from a board of governor's meetings to avoid the media. When you see Pierre LeBron, you head the other way. Yeah.

But I covered one years ago at the Breakers Hotel, which is where I believe there are again this week, it's a Breaker's Hotel in Florida. And I'm waiting there. This hotel's out kind of, there's nothing around, right? There's no like Waffle House or Denny's, something where I can, you know, enjoy breakfast on my per diem.

Right? Right. So I go to the restaurant in the host. hotel in the breakers. I order one omelet. It was $48. One omelet. I'll never forget. Like, I'm at, I'm covering, and I'm like my entire per diem almost most, like, I think we got $70 or whatever was back there. I'm like, three quarters of my per diem. just went on an omelet and it's not even 9 a.m. During the 2014, during the 2014 Western Conference final, it was Kings of Blackhawks.

And, uh, we're in L.A. And the Hawks are saying it's the Beverly Wilshire where like, they got mad at the journalists for wearing jeans in the lobby. That's how bad it was. And at one point, I see Dave Boland coming down the stairs. He goes, hey, last. I'm like, hey, what's going on? He's like, I just got a $120 steak delivered to my room. How are you doing?

$120. And it probably wasn't even that good of a steak. You know what I feel like a lot of listeners don't realize to? Despite making $3, 4, 5, $10 million a year, NHL players still get per diem on the road. Oh, yeah. Yeah. it's, I believe, like, 100 and, okay, I'm going to ball.

It's in the CBA, but I think it's like ballpark 120 a day. Like, so that, something like that, right? Like Dave Boland's steak, he's not paying for it, really. Well, that's the thing. Like, if you get room service, anything added to your room, the player has to pay for. At least that's what it was a few years ago. I don't know if that's changed you.

Like, the team pays for the hotel, obviously, but any incidentals, as they say, if you go, if you raid the mini bar, that's on you. So like Dave Boland, pay. paid the $120 for that steak. But yeah, he got a per die in that easily covered that $120. Yeah. And so I remember, like, you know, if you travel with a team or been around a team, like

when they leave on a road trip, let's say they're going on a seven-day road trip, the travel person will hand out an envelope. Yeah, yeah. Like, this is like a different world. And it's cash. I can't stress this enough. So imagine you're watching. And millionaires are getting handed envelopes of cash.

And again, so let's say it's a seven-day trip. it's about a thousand dollars in there in cash. And that's just their money to have, to just to do whatever they want with. The staffers would get them too, maybe not quite as much, but they got a big per diem. And all of them would just pocket the cash

and go to McDonald's for six bucks for their lunch. Big time. That's how they got their own Christmas bonus. Or they would try and eat the team meal. Right, right. And, you know, try to pocket the money. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Your money to buy Christmas gifts. Anyway, so I feel like not enough people realize NHL players also get to, per diem on top of, you know, their salary. It's a rough life. It's a really rough life. Yeah. But yeah, so anyway, the border governors are down in Florida.

And this is actually the 30th anniversary. So 30 years ago in 1992, at these same meetings at this same spot is when the NHL said, you know what? We're going to hire Gary Bettman as our new commissioner is going to be Gary Batman. They used to have a president. No, no, no, no. It's going to be a commissioner.

And now I'm seeing, you know, and you're going to see this too when, when I think February 1st is the official 30th anniversary of Gary's, you know, start of his tenure. And you're going to see a lot of articles written about his influence and, you know, it's, it's a really complicated legacy, isn't it? Like, there are absolutely some good. And I think it's important to, like, the league is the revenue pie is expanded and all of that stuff is expanded. But you could also argue that would have happened regardless of who is sitting in the pilot seat. It felt like in some ways. But Gary, Gary deserves credit for the sunbelt expansion. That was a risk that a lot of people wouldn't have taken.

And you've had huge successes in Tampa in Nashville, you know, L.A. when they were winning. And Dallas right now is a great town for hockey all of a sudden. Like there are examples of success and the money has gone up. But like you said, it would have grown regardless, right? And the three lockouts, what were the damage that were done by those to the fan base? You know, the league is financially healthy right now. But look at baseball right now. Baseball is a dying sport, right?

Everybody says it's a dying sport. Well, the top salary 30 years ago was Bobby Benilla, making a little over $6 million. Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander making $43 million now each a year. In hockey, when Betman took over, I was just looking this up. Eric Lindros was the top salary about 3.3, and the top now is McDavid at 12.5. And now that's the hard cap. What would McDavid get on the open market? I don't know. It wouldn't be $43 million a year. And I realize baseball has bigger stadiums and more home dates. That plays into it.

But the fact is, hockey has not expanded at the rate the other sports have financially. If you look at the top salaries and all the other sports, they're astronomical compared to the NHL, which is kind of plotting along nicely, but not at that same level. So the league is healthy, but if you're a player, you look at Gary Bettman and he's still the devil. And it is remarkable that he's the only commissioner or league head in the major four sports to wipe out an entire season start to finish. And that was 15, oh, sorry, 17 years ago. Okay, I guess my point would be this. Let's take a Dolorian back to 2005.

And the season's been canceled, all of that. And imagine saying to everybody, 17 years from now, Gary, Betman will still be the commission of the NFL. I don't think we would have believed it, would we? No, I mean, he was such a vilified figure at the time. Yeah. And to a large degree, rightly so. But at that same time, you have to look at both

sides of this, how healthy would the NHL be right now without a salary cap? If you had the Pittsburgh Pirates New York Mets difference in the NHL, what would that look like? What would Chicago salary cap look like right now if they never had to make all those cap dumps over the years? and Arizona was still in the league.

Like, how bad would it be? So, like, you know, I'm generally pro worker and I'm anti-salary cap on principle, but as a sports fan, it's undeniable that a salary cap makes for a better sport. Yeah, and, you know, yeah, and look, it costs them an entire year to get the system. You know, could they have done it without missing a year?

I guess we'll never know. But look, we are where we are. And I agree with you. And I think one area where Gary deserves some credit where I don't think he gets it. He's worked really hard to keep certain Canadian teams in their markets. And people can point back to while they lost Winnipeg. Well, that was a different time.

He brought, Winnipeg came back. But, you know, Edmonton and Calgary and Ottawa, they were on thin ice for a period there in the late 90s, early 2000s, Ottawa went bankrupt. Edmonton had shaky ownership. And Gary was a steady unseen hand. And I know it's real popular for Canadian fans to dunk on Gary Bettman. for kind of, because I think there hasn't been a Canadian-based team that's won a Stanley Cup in any season in which Bettman's been the commissioner for the full year, right?

He takes over in February, February of 93, the Habs win the Cup a few months later, but then never again. Right. And it's easy to people will say, like, you know, connect the dots, this guy, conspiracy. Man, Gary Bettman's done a lot to keep Canadian teams where they are. If he's conspiring against the Canadian teams, why is Connor McDavid and Emmington and Austin Matthews in Toronto right now. I mean, we all know Arizona's not winning the draft lottery the next three years.

We all know that. That'll magically not happen. But the fact that Connor McDavid's in Edmonton basically destroys any conspiracy there you could possibly have against Gary Betman and Canada. I'm sorry, Quebec, it's not going to happen for you. It's never going to happen for you. It's just a fact of life. But you cannot say that Gary Bettman is anti-Canadian. No.

Yeah, it's a great point where those star players, have ended up. And yeah, anyway, you're going to see a lot of Betman pieces, I think, today, and certainly in February and the 30th anniversary. I don't,

and I don't even know really what else is coming out of these, you know, Board of Governors meetings. The one thing I'd love to see them do, though, as we talk about, you know, I think you have a great point on, you know, the salaries probably haven't risen.

Like, I remember Bobby Holik signed a crazy deal back in the day with the Rangers. It was like $8 million per. Like, in today's standards, you know, he, it wouldn't, like, it wouldn't be that, I don't know, I guess my point would be, like, go back and look at like what Peter Forsberg was making and some of these guys, the top end players today aren't making that much more.

Yeah, I mean, right? Jonathan, Jonathan Taze and Patrick Kane, when they signed their $10.5 million contracts that are just expiring now, that was eight years ago. In eight years, the top salary has gotten up $2 million. Because the cap doesn't go up enough because it's set that way. It's designed. The system is. is designed to make sure salaries don't go up the way they go up in the other sports.

I mean, you know, the NFL and the NBA are salary cap leagues, but they're different kind of caps, and they have a lot higher cap because they're just so much more revenue. Patrick Mahomes is making like $50 million a year. LeBron James is making like $50 million a year. Connor McDavid is on the level with those two guys. He's the same thing in hockey. He's making $12.5. He's making just $2 million more than Patrick Kane signed eight years ago, and that's the

system designed working. as it was designed to do, which is to, you know, prevent salary growth. If I was the NHLPA, you know what I'd love to do? If the owners aren't going to get off of this hard cap, this is where we're at, and the upper limit is the upper limit, I think they've got to figure out a way to allow teams like Arizona, like, you know, pick whoever, Buffalo, Ottawa has been in that boat, that they've got available cap space. Allow them to trade it so that money is used in the ecosystem.

It's not just sitting dead, right? Like, again, and maybe you put a limit on it so that the Rangers and the Leafs and whoever you think of the heavy hitters don't get to 100 million while some teams are at, you know, it becomes the Pirate Met thing that you're talking about. But that money is sitting there.

Like, there's dead money that certain teams aren't using that's there in the system. And Cap Space is so valuable. You see what teams are willing to give up just to dump a contract. Imagine what they give up, you know, who wouldn't give up a first round pick for $5 million in cap space to be able to resign your best player and not have to forced out? I mean, imagine if the Blackhawks could have kept Artemi Panarin with Patrick Kane for the last five years because they weren't worried about his contract in two years.

They would have just bought that money. And I don't know if I like that because, again, it increases the disparity between the best and the worst. And, you know, like it or not, the NHL salary cap works in terms of keeping things relatively fair and competitive. but it would be a fascinating discussion to see what teams would be willing to give up for just a few million dollars of cap space, just the huge difference it would make to some of these teams that are just up against it. Yeah, you know, it's funny because I think a lot of what we're saying, it almost sounds like, hey, did Alan Walsh feed these guys a script?

And the other thing, and why I'm going to bring Alan into this is because I think it's a segue into our next topic is one of the things that Alan Walsh is most critical of Gary Bettman is the handling of concussions and brain injury. And the reason why I want to bring this up is we've got our NHL-99 series running and for a lot of listeners, I think you've been paying attention. You know that we've been running down, counting down the best 99 players

from 99 down to 1, you know, in the modern era. And on the weekend, it was the turn of Scott Stevens. And look, Stevens in his heyday was certainly the most feared defenseman on the planet. you think about the hit on Lindrosse, you think about the hit on, you know, I think it was Kozlov in Detroit and Paul Korea.

You know, go through the list. It's hard to think of Scott Stevens and your initial reaction isn't a bone-jarring head at the blue line. He was intimidation personified for a team that won three straight Stanley Cups. And I know that Sean Fitzgerald wrote the article on Scott Stevens, his legacy,

and it kind of went two ways, didn't it? Well, yeah, I mean, he was getting destroyed in the comments. but by angry, mostly angry Devils fans, I'm sure. But it's an interesting discussion, right? Because we're doing this series. And you don't want it to just be a hagiography of everybody, right? You don't want it to be these Halcyon memories of the greatest players ever. We want to present them in the light of context, historical context.

And Scotty, there was a quote from a doctor in Sean's story that thought was perfect, the Canadian neurosurgeon Charles Tater. He was a fantastic athlete, no question. But he caused brain damage in my view. And that's not something to be proud of. And, you know, in the last 30 years, I think all of us have evolved as hockey fans, as sports fans, with all the knowledge we have about concussions and the lasting damage and CTE and all of these things, we have a better understanding of the damage of those hits that we all love to see. Everyone goes, oh, it comes out of their seats and it's all exciting. I don't want to see them anymore.

I don't want to see. I don't want to see Jacob Truba, you know, taking guys out on stretchers just because he's six foot seven and huge. I don't want to see these big hits anymore. For me, hockey has evolved. It's about speed. It's about skill. It's about talent. I want to see Connor McDavid.

I want to see Nathan McKinnon. I don't want to see Jacob Truva. And I don't want to see Scott Stevens. I don't want to see players like that. So I thought it was great that Sean put it in its context. And Scott Stevens was an all-time legendary defenseman. deserves all that credit. But 30 years later, legacies change.

We can look at it through a different light. I think it's important that we do that with this series. it is a really tough one because it's hard, right? Because I think you'll hear some people saying you can't apply today's, you know, principles or beliefs onto things that happened 23 years ago. And I'm mindful of it. But you're right. Like we're much more aware of the damage caused by CTE and concussions.

That certainly, like, let me put it this way. When Eric Lindross was playing there in the late 90s, it was not uncommon to hear that this guy's soft. Like that, you know, this guy's trying to come back from concussions. And we would vilify his family for stepping in and trying to defend. We were like, his family's getting involved. He's not a team player. Like, like, it's funny.

You know, as much as we kind of look differently maybe on Stevens, I think the narratives flipped on Lindross to the same extent. Like, do you not feel that way that we almost look back? And I think I personally, I wasn't covering the league. I was too young. I was kind of a kid, kind of when Lindross broke in. But I think I look back with a little bit of guilt in the way that I viewed Eric Lindross at the time. Oh, and you know what I mean?

There's so many things. I mean, we're both, you know, of an older generation now. And there's so many things when you look back in your youth and you're like, oh, God, I'm embarrassed by that. I mean, I'm ashamed of that. Yeah. And that's part of it is the way we treated our athletes back then. We treated them like they weren't human beings, right? They were just, you know, laundry to go out and entertain us and dance.

for us. And it was, you know, I agree. I think Lindros, that you're looking back on him, you know, I don't think of him as soft now when I look back. And I think of him as a, as a, as a incredible career cut short and how unfortunate that is. And I know that, you know, hockey, it's a contact sport. It's a man's game. Yada, yada, yada. We're going to hear all that. I don't give a shit about any of that. I just don't. That's not what I want to see anymore. I don't want to see these guys fight. I don't want to see Jujar Kara six months after being taken off on a stretcher fighting a guy and taking punches in the head because he has to defend himself over something that happened six months ago.

That's not entertaining to me anymore. I'm not 12 years old anymore. You know, that's not what I want to see. And I think, you know, as for the Stephen's story, I mean, people are mad like, go, you know, this is supposed to be celebrating the athletes. And that's not really what the assignment was. The assignment was find a specific angle that maybe hasn't been written as much before on these guys.

And Sean did the assignment perfectly, better than all of us, better than I did with Duncan Keith and with Jonathan Taves. You know, with Jonathan Taves, I certainly could have written about the Kyle Beach story, right? But I had written that six months earlier about his complicated legacy. I'd already written that story. So I wrote about, you know, how he was one of the best players and wrote me and Dom combined on that. But these aren't supposed to be just fawning pieces over how great a guy was. They're supposed to be putting them in their historical context.

Yes, they were great. This is why they were great. And this is what we should remember about them. And it's not always going to be positive. And Scott Stevens was a great hockey player who, did a lot of things that looking back on, we shouldn't be happy about. Yeah. And I think in the NFL, like, you used to see safeties would come over the middle.

Oh, God, yeah. Leading with their head and, like, Ronnie Lott was killing guys out there. Yeah. You know, I wonder now, like, like, I guess my question would be, and I'm a huge football fan, but like, do we look at Ronnie Lott differently? It's funny because that's the guy I was thinking of. Yeah. Well, that was his whole, he built a, he built a career on it, right?

Yeah. Like, he was like a heat-seeking missile in the secondary. and you didn't want to go over the middle. And I mean, now do we say to ourselves like, do we look at Ronnie Lott differently? Or do we just say, look, at the time, based on the rules of the time, he didn't what he had to do,

but he wouldn't be able to thrive. I guess my question would be this on Stevens. Like, is there anybody in the game? Like, I mean, I don't know, like Radco Goudis or whatever would be like the, I don't know. I'm having a hard, I guess my point is, having a hard time, who would be the guy? True.

Tom Wilson. Tom Wilson. a very, an extremely talented hockey player who doesn't need to do the stuff that he does extracurricular, you know? Like a very, like Scott Stevens was a great skater and a great player and a great defenseman and a great score. He didn't need to murder people out there. And it's just like Tom Wilson, who's just a freight train out there. He can play a skill game. He doesn't need to head hunt.

But every year, it seems, I mean, it's been a while, frankly, that's since we've had one of those. But, you know, these guys are talented enough. And Stevens is a perfect example of a guy who, you know, there's plenty to talk about besides the hits, but that's what we remember is the hits. And, and, you know, with him,

like, look, I want there to be place in hockey for contact to allow players to separate an opponent from the, yes, right? Forecheck.

I want to make that clear. Finish your checks on the forecheck. Absolutely. It's the ones where it looks like the guy's trying to separate the guy's head from his body, that that's, that's not what it's meant to be. But it's tough because Stevens was,

in his era, I think you'll probably say this about pronger. I think you could probably say this about a few other guys that they were so feared. They bought themselves a little extra real estate. Yeah. They did some things that at the time... It served a purpose beyond injuring guys.

Yeah. So, but, you know, it's hard because at the time, like, they wouldn't thrive today, but by the same token, maybe Eric Carlson wouldn't have thrived at times back then, right? Right, because Scott Stevens would have murdered him, exactly. Pick a guy, right? And it just depends on, you know, what, what's the style you'd like to see? And I'd like to see, you know, I love the, I'm trying to think of a good, like a good example would be like a Jerome McGinla, where I felt like Jerome, for the most part, played the game pretty honestly. Although Sean McAdoe and I always say, be careful because it's going to turn out some one random fan base out there. There's going to be one Jerome McGinley hit against like Washington and all these Capitals fans. But, but, you know, like, I think there's a way to. to play the game physically and honestly.

Yeah. I think there's a way to do. I think there is too. And I think that's what we're teaching young kids today. If you watch a younger kid hockey, you know, they don't hit until they're much older now than they used to. So it's not their first instinct. Their first instinct is to lift a stick and pick a guy's pocket.

Their first instinct is to go around someone. Their first instinct is to steer them to the boards instead of just leveling them in open ice. And I think that's a positive. I think, you know, every year it gets better. Like if you look at hockey 15, 20 years ago, you look at how. hockey 10. Look at the way the Los Angeles Kings played in the early 2010s. That heavy physical style. They were awesome. And they weren't dirty, but they were heavy and they played a hard game.

Nobody plays that way anymore. And that was eight years ago. That's just not the game evolves. And these big huge open ice hits that, you know, get you on Sports Center and get you endlessly looped on a gift forever, they're there are a lot less frequent than they used to be. And they're going to continue to be less frequent because that's not what the game is anymore. It's a speed game. It's a skill game. And it's a much. much better game than it ever was. You know, you talk about, you know, how the game is shifted. You know, somebody who could probably speak to this and how it's changed from the 90s to now is Yerimir Yager.

Yager, of course, plays. That is such a professional transition. You're good at this, yeah. Yeah, it's my years of being a radio host. I've come back in on this podcast. But, you know, Yager is a guy that, look, in the 90s, it was in that Patrick Division and would have seen Scott Stevens. And I'm thinking, yeah, I'm never going to see Yarmir Yager play again

until I look on the internet and see on the weekend, the cladino club that he's a partial owner of, they were down several bodies. There was, I guess, a flu virus ran through the team. And Yermer Yager, the age of 50, suits up, Lazz, and picks up two primary assists. Like, who else can roll out at the age of 50 into a professional league pick up a pair of primary assists?

Now, his team did get clown 7 to 3. That's besides the point. Besides the point. That's remarkable to me. Absolutely. I covered, my first job out of school was covering the penguins in 2001, and it was Yager's last year in Pittsburgh. He had already been in the league 11 years, and that was 21 years ago. And here he is, he's still playing. It's just incredible to me. And I was actually out there a few years ago, the Blackhawks opened the season in Prague. And I rented a car and took about a 45-minute drive out to Cladno to visit Yager. And he's on the ice. He was 47 at the time. He's on the ice wearing this little camera. weighted vest, 45 pound weighted vest, ankle weights on his ankles, a 90-minute practice where he's talking about clowning guys, just clowning is the players that he owns and just, you know, humiliating them with how good he was.

And then he was, he comes off the ice. He's like, I got to run to Prague to get this guy's visa. He was the PR guy for the team. He was hosting a Chinese national team. He had to run to Prague like three times a week to get visas and passports for his players. And then he would come back. He would do like an hour-long workout. He'd go on the ice again for another 45 minutes.

He was on the ice four or five times a day at age 47. Gosh. There's never been a creature like Yarmir Yager. He is a singular entity in the history of the sport. God love him. Wow. Yeah, it is. It's remarkable that he's able to come back.

And I love that I love that you have that anecdote there of Cladno because, you know, I don't think a lot of people are. And he didn't really want to do that. He felt like he had to because it was the only way to keep the team afloat because he knew he was the star attraction. On the outside of the arena, this, like, dinky little, you know, run-down arena, there were seven posters of Yager in, like, different NHL jerseys, like different eras of the mullet as it was going on.

Like, he understands he's the main attraction. And even if he wanted to stop, he couldn't because he was the only thing keeping the team afloat. If you look at the NHL world, here's the guy I think, like, if you think of, like, what team would be ravaged by injuries that they would have to call, like, an executive or somebody come in, it's got to be Rod Brindamore, right? What about Mario? Could Mario hop out there?

I don't know. You think so? I don't know. Okay. Now if we're going to go from the owner's suite, yeah, Mario would be the pick. It's not going to be Rocky Words,

I'll tell you that. No. But really, like, I think my pick might be Rod Brindamore. Like if the Carolina team was ravaged by injury, like he just looks so fit. You know, we have a generation of coaches like that now. Brindamore,

Craig Baruchamp. Luke Richardson in Chicago. Oh, yeah. These guys who were like 50 years old but still look like they're 35 and are still built like they're 35 that you know could just go out there. And speaking of, you know, separating a player's head from his body, all three of those guys could do that. There's definitely a generation of coaches out there right now

that could probably pull off a shift or two. Wow. But could they pull off a six-minute shift? That's the question. So Jack Hughes, this is unbelievable. Jack Hughes on the weekend has a six minute and two second shift in an eventual loss of the islanders

since the league started tracking shift length nobody and 0708 though right is the only is that 2007 2008 is the first year the league officially kept track of shift length Jack Hughes skated for six minutes and two seconds

all right I'm going to be the wet blank it here. Okay. There were I looked it up just before this podcast. There were seven stoppages during that six minute and two seconds. He wasn't skating for six consecutive minutes. He wasn't like, you see those shifts. The Blackhawks had one in L.A. a couple of weeks where Caleb Jones and Alec Regula got

hemmed in their own zone for four straight minutes defending for four straight minutes. I think cherry picking down three goals, goal hanging for six minutes with seven stoppages and a bunch of icings. It's not impressive. It looks better on a stat sheet than it does.

And you're actually watching it, all I'm saying. Jack Hughes is what, 23 years old? He can stay on the ice for six minutes with seven stoppages. Was TV time out in there too? I believe there was, yeah. I mean, six minutes long, yeah. He had time to catch his breath and grab a quick drink of water every now and then. And it's not like, and we were talking about this just before we came on,

that there's the classic story in the 90s. Mike Keenan's coaching the Rangers. and a young Alexei Kovalov is having a terrible game or a terrible shift or whatever and Keenan refuses to let him come off the ice right like he's like no you stay on there and people will tell you that that was like a seven minute shift or whatever eight minute shift right for Alex Kovalov. I wish we were tracking. I think most players would be like yeah, you give me all the ice time you want man. I'm never going to complain about getting more ice time.

I don't think they're ever going to complain about that. No. But it's another example of how much the game has changed, right? Because if you go back to the 60s and 70s, when these guys were moving like four miles an hour out there, they would regularly have three or four minute shifts. Like that's like a normal Bobby Hole, Stan McKee to shift with like three minutes long. Now, because the game is so fast and so breakneck speed, you know, 40 seconds, these guys are peak athletes in the prime of their lives are completely gasping for air on the bench after a 40 second shift.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, it's true. I was double-checking this. So the Kovalev shift was seven minutes. Nice. Seven minutes. And you know what, though?

The funny thing is that's the year the Rangers won the Stanley, the go on to win the Stanley Cup. So, I mean, he's teaching him a lesson. He's punishing him, but I guess it paid off. That's quintessential Keenan, right? Like that's Torterella, Keenan. I can't think of any other coach that would, that would A, get away with it,

B, even think of doing it. Oh, it's so old. old school. So old school. And then at the end of the year, then Keenan bolts for St. Louis. Right. Right. Right. Like, yeah. He preaches commitment and then he's like, by the way. The shelf life on Mike Keenan was very short. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, he just bounced around. You know, I suddenly had his memory of, okay, this just came into my mind. I never knew if Keenan was joking with me or not. So this would have been, Eric Carlson ended up winning his first Norris trophy, 2011, 2012.

Okay, so about, you know, 10 years ago, whatever. So the 11-12 season, I'm a TV reporter. I'm the, like, the rinkside reporter for Ottawa games on Sportsnet. So doing the interviews, intermission interviews, whatever, in-game features, all that stuff that you see from your regular television host. And I'm in Madison Square Garden, this is at some point in that season, late in the season. Again, Carlson is having a great year. We're like, holy cow, this guy could be with a Norris trophy one.

Mike Keenan, I believe is working for MSG at the time. He's working for somebody. And he's there along the glass at MSG. I'm there near the glass. We're watching the game. He turns to me and says, what's, uh, who's this 65? And I didn't know if he was joking.

I literally, I don't, I still to this day don't know. He was like, who is 65? And I don't know. What do you say? Like, oh, yeah, he's having a great year. He's just fun to watch. And Keenan just kind of looked at me and it was just so weird. Like, this guy's about to win the Norris trophy.

And you're asking me who's 65? Like, I think he was joking. I think he was joking. There are a bunch of hockey people like that where they, when they deadpan, you just don't know. Like, they're messing with you? Or are they just that, like, kind of myopic, myopic with their blinders on? They don't paying attention to that team because it's not one that's relevant

to them. There are a very, someone once called, well, I won't say which player it was, but someone said, oh yeah, he's really unsettling. There are a lot of unsettling people in the hockey world where it's like, are they messing with me? And he just kind of like grin and smile and nod awkwardly and then try to get through your questions because you just don't know. And Mike Keenan, I never dealt with him. He was a little before my time, but he struck me as one of those guys to be very unsettling.

Yeah. Now, did you have, have you had one coach that you've, you know, had issues with, but like, you tread cautiously in in the conferences or media availability. A high school football coach in Northwest Indiana, Griffith High School, Russ Radke, he was the scariest person I'd ever talked to. How old were you at the time?

I was, oh, I was in my 30s. Like, there's no experience. I was like late 20s, early 30s. But he was, I was so,

like, like, I wasn't like afraid of him, but I was like, I knew that like, if you asked one question just worded slightly the wrong way, he was going to shut it down. Like he wasn't,

he did not suffer fools lightly. And he thought everybody was a fool. And just, it was terrifying to interview him because I'm like, if I do it wrong, you won't talk to me for the rest of the year. And this is the best team in the area of all the teams we cover. And it's funny because I once saw him at a Menard, it's a hardware store. And it's like when you see your teachers out in the wild, it's always disturbing. Well, here he is, big, mean old Russ Ratkey, like, supplicating himself to some 19-year-old girl

who was working there part-time trying to find a tool that he couldn't find. I miss, can you please help me find the jigsaws? And it was like seeing an alien. It's like, what is happening here? And I'm, like, hiding behind one of the N-CAPs because I don't want him to see me because I'm, like, watching this, like, safari thing happening in front of me.

But there's guys like that at every level. There are coaches like that at every single level where there's just, is this like a real human being? Is this like how a real human being behaves? Yeah. Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah, those questions when you ask them the wrong way and they just shut you down, right?

It's a tough. It depends, right? Because some guys, you know, they're just naturally combative, and if you ask the question the wrong way, it'll turn out great. Corey Crawford hated almost everything I ever asked him. But he would give me the best quotes

because he would be like, no, that's wrong. And then he would tell me why I was wrong about something. Like, oh, my God, you lost eight nothing today. Tough game out there. Oh, I didn't think we played that bad. And then he would go on like a thing about it. It was great. Like everything I asked was wrong,

but he went it for it. The guys that just shut down completely, the torturillas of the world, who won't even entertain a question they think is dumb, they're the ones that are challenging to work with. You know, to Torch's credit, one time I asked him, him, I feel like I've maybe told this story in the podcast before.

I'll tell it again real quick. The Rangers, this was when he was with the Rangers. And he's in town in Ottawa. There was a scrum. And I asked him a question. I started asking a question about, you know, John, when you look at the standings and he cut me off. No.

No. And I started again, he's like, no. I don't talk about the standings. No. Cut me on. Anyway. So I had to ask another question or whatever. I, you know, fumbled away, whatever.

The scrum ends that I'm walking away. and to his, he actually came, this is the weirdest thing, came over to me. He put his arm around me. I swear, I swear on my children's hands when this happened.

And he said, hey, I'm sorry about that. I just don't like talking about the standings. He could have said it that way the first time. Yeah, but it was just like. That's the thing about Tororella, though.

Everyone says what a great guy he is away from a hockey rink. He's out there saving dogs and stuff. Like, he's like a good guy. But just something about when their, when their brain switches into hockey mode, they just become just sociopaths.

It's like, you know, when Elaine Benis rolls in to order some soup, and it's like, if you don't order it the right way, you're going to be in some hot water. That's like dealing with certain coaches. Like, it's got to be phrased just so. Yeah. Yeah, you got to do the dance the right way. Otherwise, you know, someone's stepping on your toes.

Yeah. All right. And anyway, I know we talked about being of a certain age earlier, but I think Seinfeld and Lee Mizzily references. You can't do this with Julian McKenzie is. all I'm saying. He's going to be like, who's Elaine Benis? Who's Lee Mozilla? Yeah. Who's Steven's? This is a special vintage edition of the Monday I thought I'll be show. Let's actually chat about a team that you cover, obviously Chicago. And, you know, there's something I do want to talk to you about, and that is Patrick

Kane. Because as the season goes on, in fact, we did our bold predictions and this was kind of, and we revisited them. And I'm curious now. As you look into your dusty crystal ball here, how we feel about Patrick Cain in Chicago finishing this season or does he get traded or like what? Like you're so close to this situation. I feel like you've got a good read on it. What's your gut telling you right now on Patrick Cain?

You know, I felt like I had a good read on it. Entering the season, early in the season, everyone kept asking this. Every time I go into another city, all the writers would ask me that. Some players would ask me that. And I always said the same thing. I, and I was in the minority. I believe that Patrick Kane was looking for a reason to stay, that he wants to be a Black Hawk for life, that he loves Chicago, that he's loyal to an organization that has been fiercely loyal to him over the years. And he was just looking for a reason to stay.

But over the last several weeks, as reality has set in on just how awful things are in Chicago right now for this team, and just how far away they're. are from competing. You know, Kane turned 34 just a couple of weeks ago. Thirty-four, it's getting up there in age. There's only so much time left. His biological clock is ticking like that. And I'm starting to think that he still probably wants to stay, but I don't think it's realistic that he can stay at this point. You know, it's going to be a Claudeau-Juru situation where he can just basically dictate where he goes. And if he wants to go to New York and the Rangers are out of contention or they won't make a deal, he might just shut it down and say, I'm going to stay and then be a free agent in the summer and then reevaluate.

That could happen, but I do believe he's going to waive his no movement clause as we get closer to the deadline here because I just, you know, his numbers are down. He's not producing because he's just, look who he's surrounded with. You know, Max Dolme, he's fine, Andreas of Fantasy, who's fine. Jonathan Taves is fine. But these aren't the kind of high-end players he's used to playing. They're not Alex Debrinkett. They're not even Dylan Strom.

They're certainly not Artemmy Panarin. It's not Nick Schmaltz. I mean, it's not Ryan Hartman. And he's gone through a lot of guys over the years. And I just think he looks around and realizes, even if Connor Bedard shows up next year, this is still a three or four year project. And does he still want to be doing this for 38 by when he's 38? Because, you know, he's won three cups, but he hasn't done,

he hasn't won a playoff series in seven years now. Yeah. Seven years. The last time they won a playoff series is the last time they want a cup. So it's not like this is just starting the process. This is half a decade into the process with maybe half a decade ago. And I think, I don't know, but I think that's starting to kind of smack him in the face a little bit. You know, when I think of Kane, I remember, I believe you've written this before that, that, you know,

he kind of wants to be maybe go down in his just the greatest Chicago Blackhawk of all time. Statistically speaking, he's still got a little bit of a ways to go though, right, to chase down some of those records. To get Bobby Hall's goals record and McKee's points record, he's going to need at least three or four more season. Yeah. So it's not like, okay, so here's my question. If he goes somewhere at the deadline or next summer, if somebody asks you who's the greatest Chicago Blackhawk of all time? Because you know what? In this Monday episode, we do something called multiple choice madness.

So this is going to be my multiple choice question for you. If you're voting today, greatest Chicago Blackhawk of all time, I'm going to say Bobby Hall, Stan McKita, Patrick Kane, And, you know, if you want to throw in Tony Esposito, you want to throw in Taves, you want to, heck, some people might say Denny Savard, whatever it is. What's your answer on that? Duncan Keith. There you go.

See, Duncan Keith. Another name. Duncan Keith is, I think, a singular talent in the Blackhawks of Ed. Because you can compare, and Kane is very, very close. Don't get me wrong. I'm a big, there's recency bias here. But I just, I have a hard time elevating anyone who played high. hockey in the 1960s against five other teams to what the hockey players have to do now.

Patrick Kane is, Connor McDavid is clearly the best hockey player that ever lived to me. That's not a knock on Wayne Gradsky, but if you dropped Connor McDavid into it right now, as he's built now into the 1980s, he'd score 120 goals. Without a doubt in my mind. So there's that. But Patrick Kane accomplished more than Stan McKee did. Accomplished more than Bobby Holden. The Cups, the Hart Trophy, the Kahn Smyth, all of that weighs into it.

Patrick Kane is the best American-born player in history. No offense to Mike Medano, Brian Leach, or any of those guys. It's Patrick Kane. But if I had to take out one guy from those Blackhaws great teams, it's Duncan Keith. He's the one who made everything go. And I think he is the best Black Hawk of all time. Yeah. And you know what?

And see, I appreciate your answer because I'll be honest, being on the outside. And clearly when I ran through the options, Keith wasn't even on my radar. And I don't think you would be on most people's. But if you were around. And again, it's no knock on Kane and Taves who were all-time players. And Taves is, like I wrote a whole thing about, Taves is way better than people think he was. Like, Taves was a elite, elite player for a number of years.

And Kane still is an elite player. But Duncan Keith was the heart and soul of those teams. He was the engine, and none of it happens without him. You know, it's funny you mentioned that Kane's not surrounded by the same talent as he's had in recent years. Look, Alex DeBringcat had a pair of 40-goal seasons riding shotgun with, done with Cain, and they clearly had some chemistry. De Brinkets off to a pretty pedestrian start in Ottawa, we'll call it that.

Only three even strength goals so far this season. I think seven goals in total now, six or six or seven, whatever it is. He's producing some points, but he's not, you know, I figured he would be the guy that could potentially score 35 or 40 goals in Ottawa this season. And you know what? Last, right now he's kind of trending to what he looked like in 2019, 2020, which was an 18 goal season and people were like,

ooh, what's wrong with Alex DeBringcat? If you had to look at this situation, because a lot of people are just saying, well, he's not playing with Patrick Kane. Like how much of Alex DeBrinkech's success in your estimation was playing alongside Patrick King? It certainly plays in there. You can't ignore that you're playing with

one of the great playmakers in the league. And certainly, you know, Kane made DeBringk it better. But to Brinket, you can also see that Kane is under a point a game in a year where everyone's, at a point of game. De Brinket made Kane better, too. De Brinket's a really good hockey player, and he's a good passer, and it's not just a one-timer from the left circle.

Like, he's a really good player. And the thing about being a shooter, sometimes the shots don't go in, right? You go back to that 19-20 season. He had like an 8% shooting percentage. And then the next year, it went back to 20. And then I think last year was around 14 or 15, and this year he's back to about seven or eight. And that's going to happen with shooters.

Shooters are going to flow through stretches where the puck doesn't go in. And yeah, Debrinitit might finish with 20, 20. 25 goals this year instead of the 40, 45 you're hoping for. I wouldn't sweat it too much. I think that's just going to happen with pure shooters like that is sometimes the buck doesn't go in. He has proven when he bounced back from that 1920 season that he can bounce back from it and that the shot is still there. And eventually that's going to average out.

You're going to regress to the mean positively here. And he'll probably finish at about 10 or 11%. And if he does that, he's going to be at 25 goals. He's going to be fine. And then next year he'll probably pop 50. That's just the way it works for shooters. Not everybody's Alex Ovechkin. Yeah.

And actually that's a perfect place for us to wrap up, is on Ovechkin and his coach, Peter Lavellette. You know, every Monday, last week, we look back at the last seven days in hockey and we say, which coach did the best job or what team had the best week? And for me, it might be Washington. They've won four, they've gone four and all.

I think we've got to give Peter Lavellette our Jack Adams of the week award because they outscored opponents 16 to 6. They won all four games. But how do we feel about OV? who was clearly looking, you know, at this point, he's closing in on 800 and, and then eventually on the Gretzky record. He's out there with empty nets, and we saw it again last night.

That's why Labieland deserves the award. He keeps getting Alexo Ovechkin empty net goals. Yeah, and I like it. I mean, look, you're trying to get, look, we all know what's going on. The guy needs to chase down a record. I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it. Yeah, Wayne Gretzky's got the all-time lead in empty net goals.

Ovechkin's closing in on them, but that's how you get to 800 goals. It's my scoring. And, you know, I don't like how people kind of dismiss empty net goals. Empty net goals are huge. Empty net goals are what wins you the game. You know, if it's 45 seconds left, you don't have to, you know, what's better? A guy scoring a goal or, like, frantically defending and hoping the clock runs out. Empty net goals are killers, they're daggers, they're important, and they're hard

because you're basically playing shorthanded. But even to get the puck in open ice, that side of the ice, take some skill and talent. And there's no shame in empty net goals. are game-winning goals, game-clinching goals. And, you know, Laviolet, he's smart. He puts his best goal score out there every time there's an empty net, so he deserves the award. Yeah, absolutely.

And look, Ovechkin, I don't know if we say this quietly, but he's, again, trending towards another 40-plus goals season this year. And if he does it, he'll break Gretzky's record for most 40-goal seasons in his career. And there's a little bit of Yarmie-Yager in Ovechkin, isn't there? It just kind of keeps going. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Listen, this was great.

As you sat in as Lee Mizzily sitting in, this was a lot of fun. Old man hockey show. Old man hockey show. I still say, I always tell people, you know, I'm the same age as Tom Brady, and usually that makes me feel good. And then I watch Brady play on Sunday, and I'm like, nah, you kind of look like me. I'm younger than Tom Brady, so I feel like I'm failing somehow. Like, I should be doing something more of my life.

Oh, man. Now, this was great. Hey, listen, like I said, thanks for pinch-shedding. We always love having you on the Monday podcast. Your insight is always, it's always appreciated, and it's welcome. So listen, thanks for sitting in for Julian. Yeah, anytime, man. It's fun.

Yeah. All right, and thanks everybody for listening to the Monday edition of the pod. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Leave us a rating review. We certainly appreciate that. We've got a YouTube page up as well. YouTube.com backslash the at the Athletic Hockey Show. You can check out all of our videos there.

Also, did I just say backslash? Holy smokes. I am old. Backslash. I think it's just slash. Backslash. At least you didn't say HTP colon. Yeah.

Yeah. HTP colon slash, backslash, backslash. Yeah. Dot org. No. Okay. We'll leave it there. We got a great deal for you too.

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