The Athletic Hockey Show - Gary Bettman’s 30 years as NHL commissioner, US television ratings drop, potential playoff matchups, and more

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Ian and Sean invent a new measurement for cold weather in NHL terms before discussing Gary Bettman's 30 years as NHL Commissioner, should the position have a term limit? Then, the ratings are down 22% for the league in the United States, and it's never too early to discuss potential NHL playoff matchups. To wrap up, a dive into the mailbag, and a look back at an outdoor game played at a prison in "This Week in Hockey History".Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM at [phone]!Subscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: http://youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowSave on a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/hockeyshowGet 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code NHL23 at Manscaped.com and shoot your arrow with MANSCAPED™ this Valentine’s Day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. We are back for a Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show, taking you're right into All-Star Weekend. It's Ian Bed to Sean McIndoo with you on the Thursday episode of Pod. We're going to, look, we've got a little bit of a break here in this schedule in the NHL, so we're going to kind of look at some bigger picture things, including Sean's piece on Gary Bettman and the 30th anniversary of the commission. We'll look at some playoff matchups. US TV numbers are in.

The ratings are down. We'll try and dive into why that might be the case. We've got some voicemails. We've got some emails. We don't have Jesse Granger. No Granger things brought to you by that MGM this week. That's because Jesse Granger is en route to Florida, I believe, is what we were told. I don't know.

Yeah. I guess my flight doesn't leave until later, maybe? Yeah. I didn't get the ticket yet. But it's, hey, you know what? Good for Jesse. It's nice that he's going to get down to nice sunny Florida. Get out of the cold and misery of Vegas.

Boy, it's got to be rough on him. Get some sunshine. Yeah. You and I will hold down the forward up here in Ottawa. In Ottawa, Canada. Where, by the way, I don't know how to do this in the Fahrenheit. But at some point, there's a point in the minuses when Fahrenheit and Celsius kind of catch up and it's like, it's the same thing. Yeah.

We're headed for that kind of in the eastern part of Canada this weekend. We're going down to minus 35 with the wind, roughly. Minus 35, minus 40. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, you know, I always love that when they say with the wind. With the wind. It's minus 25, but it feels like minus 40.

Well, that sounds like minus 40 to me then. You know, that's, I'm not really interested in what the temperature is. Yeah, just tell me what it feels like. That's all that, it's like humidity, right? Like, with humidity, just tell me what it is with humidity because that's what it is. Like, I'm going outside, you know, just how many, how many coats do I need to wear? And the answer this weekend is all of them. Wait, okay, you know what?

Now, when you get to like minus 35 or minus 40, we need like a hockey, like, a hockey, like, who's the last player to end a season, like minus 40? You know what? That's good. That's a good question. What's the quickest way to look that up? That's a stathead thing. No, NHL.com is the quickest way to look up anything.

No. I'm going to look this up because I'm thinking minus 4. So you know, like the way we should say it is like, you know, it's minus 25 outside, but it's actually, you know, in certain. If it gets to Bill Mickelson, then that's when the- Who's that the guy who has the all-time record for the worst plus-minus? Yeah, he was minus 82 in a season. season. In fact, most of the guys who are at the top of the list are all guys from the 74

capitals, the worst team probably in the history of the NHL. And Bill Nicholson went minus 82. And that was back when the season was only 80 games long. So, yeah. Holy cow. Okay, I'm looking at this up right now. I'm going to base this on, I'm going to just, let's go from like in the shootout era, though. Let's find the worst season. You know what seems to be the worst is last year, Keith Yandel was a minus 47.

Another, yet another rough, rough, it was a rough year for Keith. You know, he breaks the Iron Man record, gets benched, loses the Iron Man record. He remember he retired on like the same, and then an hour later Zadanochera retired and nobody remember the Keith Yandel and made his announcement. He is a minus 47 last season. So there you go. We're not getting down to Yandel weather, but that is the worst of the cap era. Yeah, I'm looking at it here.

You have to get down to Gord Deneen and good old Darren Rumble from the Ottawa Senators in 93, 94, got under 50. Gosh. When it gets down to the Darren Rumble mark, you just stay inside. Oh, man. That, to be plus, like, Darren, like, is that not one of the best hockey names ever? Like, you're, like, legit, your name's Darren Rumble. That's an absolutely fantastic hockey name. I'm not sure you're top of that name.

His name was fantastic, and I believe if I'm, if I'm not wrong, his other claim to fame was that in NHLPA 93, he was one of the three senators defensemen who was rated at two out of 100 as his overall rating. Yeah, he was on that inaugural. Senator's team that was, you know, whatever. Oh, man, yeah, minus 50. You're right, minus 50 for Darren. You can tell there's no games because we're five minutes into the podcast. We're breaking out Darren Rumble trivia.

We're deep into the Darren Rumble hockey reference page. Yeah, you know what the second most interesting thing about Dary Rumble is? Oh, wow. Okay. Holy cow, Dair Rumble was a first, sorry, this is my last Dern Rumble fact. No, it's not. No, no, he was a, did you know he was a first round draft pick? I did not know that.

See? Look at this. for Sean Drapick in the Philadelphia Flyers. 20th overall. Look at, hey, look at Darren Rumble going out and getting it. Yeah. Maybe every week we just need to do that. Like, rando, like, just a rando player.

We just dive into something, you know, unique about his. I feel like we do do that. I feel like it just showed up a little bit earlier this time around. Yeah. Usually it's later in the pot. Listen, you wrote a piece this week. And I talked about this on the Monday episode. with Julian that Wednesday was going to be an interesting day in hockey because it was going

to mark the 30th anniversary of Gary Bettman taken over as commissioner. And you were likely going to see a lot of like kind of reflective pieces on this anniversary, kind of looking at his tenure. You did a very comprehensive, I'll call it a clear-eyed, kind of very objective look at Betman's tenure. Before we delve into that and some of the, you know, maybe the feedback you got from readers, and I think it's a great topic because, you know, when you've been in charge for 30 years, you're going to have a legacy that's polarizing. I ask this question of Julian, let me ask it to you. Do you believe that there should be term limits on commissioners in sports?

And I don't think the term limit, like, I'm not talking like a U.S. president, like it's maximum them eight years. I don't think you can do enough in in, in, in eight years, maybe as a commissioner, but maybe at 15 or 20, like, do you think that there should be a cap on the like the term of a commissioner of a, of a particular sport? Yeah, I mean, it's, I think there probably should be an unofficial term limit in some sense in that when you've been, you know, there's not a lot of companies out there right now that are really kicking butt that have had the same CEO for 30 years. Things evolve, things change. And that's a very, very long time for anyone to be in charge of anything,

especially given that with Gary Bettman, there's no wind in sight. I mean, there's not even a succession plan that we're aware of. It seems like he's going to keep going. You know, whether you want to formally put one in or not, I don't know. I mean, that would be ultimately up to the owners to decide if they actually felt it was in their best interest to make sure that they had some fresh set of eyes every now and then. I will tell you, if they ever did put that rule in, how long do you think it would be before they broke their own rule

and decided, oh, you know, we're looking around and we don't see any candidates we really like and, you know, that sort of thing. But it would at least force them to be open to other opportunities and other voices that might be willing to come in. Because right now, I mean, even if you're an owner, and let's say you're not happy with Gary Benman. Let's say you're reading my piece and going, you know what, this guy's right. You know, a lot of these criticisms are landing for me.

And he's handsome, too. Like, wow, what a, this guy's fantastic. I should hire him to run my hockey team. You know, if you're sitting there, what are you going to do? You can't, you know, Gary Bettman has consolidated power extraordinarily well from his perspective to make sure that he's pretty bulletproof. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, unofficially, absolutely. I think certainly owners should be looking around saying, you know,

is 30 years really the right amount for the same voice? But I don't think these owners are having that conversation these days. No. And, you know, look, for the listeners of this podcast that didn't read your column on Wednesday, We'll give you kind of the summation here, which is the premise of your piece was not just to look at what Gary Bettman has done in 30 years. Because I think when I read a lot of other people's pieces, that's what it was. Right. Here's the 30 years of Gary Batman. Here's what he did.

Here's what happened. Lots of lockouts, all that stuff. The premise of your piece was a little bit different in that don't judge Gary Bettman on what he's done. Judge him on what could have been done. in the last 30 years. At a time in which we've seen, you know, revenues explode, skyrocket for every major professional sports league. The question is, could the NHL have monetized themselves more?

Could they have maximized their revenue, their visibility, their exposure, all these things that have absolutely gone up. And the quality of the game, too, you know, it can't all be about the bottom line. And even if you do one of you, it all through the lens of the bottom line, the things that allow you to maximize that in the short term don't necessarily translate to the long term. So I'm very aware that the premise that you just described, and that is the piece that I wrote, on some level, it's unfair to Gary Batman. It's unfair to anybody to judge them and say, let's not judge what happened.

Let's judge what could have happened. And I did try very hard not to be just sitting here 30 years in the future with perfect hindsight. and sitting there on my couch saying here's all the things that he did wrong. But what I wanted to do is I want to get people out of this mindset that we do tend to see whenever Gary Betman's legacy is discussed, which is people saying, well, look at the revenue. The revenue is through the roof. The NHL is making more money than it ever has. Franchises are worth more than they've ever been worth.

Therefore, Gary Bettman has done a great job. Therefore, case closed. And, you know, my request is, let's go a little deeper than that. Because, yes, revenues are through the roof. But revenues are through the roof in every sport. Quite literally, every sport out there is making far more money now, far more revenue coming in than 30 years ago. I mean, that can't be where we set the bar,

because we've seen TV rights have exploded, corporate sponsorships have exploded, new arenas that many, of these leagues are able to get the local cities and municipalities to pay for these huge chunks of these profit churning modern arenas, new revenue streams have opened up, all of this stuff. I mean, if your bar for success for Gary Bettman is revenue went up, it would have quite literally been impossible for revenue not to have gone up.

And when you look at how that line has gone up for the NHL, it looks very impressive. And then you overlay what's happened in the other sports. And suddenly the NHL doesn't look so good anymore. And look, no reasonable person had an expectation that Gary Bedman was going to come in and make the NHL more popular than the NBA or Major League Baseball or that he was going to be knocking on the NFL's door. But, you know, simply as a case of, you know, look at as a percentage how revenue has gone up in the NBA and the NFL and even Major League Baseball and then look at what's happened in the NFL. It doesn't look like much of a success story anymore. You know, and I know there's going to be some, but you point this out.

You're like, hey, there's, partially this is not going to be fair to Gary Bettman because it's, like you said, it's hard to look back with the benefit of perfect hindsight. But even if you look at this and say, this isn't going to be, you know, perfect, absolutely perfect hindsight. Like, there's three or four things that the league could have done. One thing that I saw from a lot of,

lot of people, and I don't know if this is just an NHL problem, but they're saying that they feel like the standard of officiating and refereeing over the course of Gary Betman's tenure. So you go back from, you know, 93 to now, that it is significantly impacted the product on the ice. Do you, do you buy into that? Like, I did notice a lot of people saying, I am fed up with the refereeing. I'm fed up with the officiating. I can't watch because of that.

Like, do you buy into that because I'll bring up the fact that in, heck, Gary Bettman's first year on the clock was the Kerry Fraser high stick, right? Why are you going to do this? Why are you got to do this to me? No, no, no, I'm just saying. I feel like inconsistent refereeing has been like a part of this game for a long time. Has it gotten worse under Bettman? Or are we just more cynical?

Yeah. I don't know the answer to that question. Yeah. I put it this way. I think that, as I've argued before, many of the issues with the officiating are overblown. I think what a lot of people call inconsistency in the officiating is just their team not getting all the calls. You know, yeah, we don't like it when hockey's a sport where there's just a lot of 50-50 gray area calls. And when they go against your team, you get mad because you're a fan.

And that's what we all do. and when we now have 20 cameras on every game going into slow-mo replay and showing you and then at the intermission they talk about how the call got missed and then you go on social media and there's a thousand people competing to have the hottest take about how bad the officiating is it probably does feel like it's getting worse. I just think this is an extraordinarily tough game to officiate and I don't blame Gary Batman for the fact that it's a hard game to officiate. Now I do think there are things the league could be doing better.

I think they could absolutely be more, you know, frankly more open when calls do get missed, when mistakes get made. I saw, you know, the other day there was a controversial, I think it was a non-call on LeBron James and the NBA. The NBA officials put out a statement saying, we blew the call and we're, you know, we're not happy about it, but we miss the call. And, you know, you do see that to some extent from other sports. And when it happens, the nice thing about that is when the league says, no, we didn't blow the call. you have at least some reason to believe them versus the NHL where it's every single time inevitably it's oh no it's we got it right we have the best officials in the world et cetera et cetera and all of this so I think that's part of it part of people's frustration with

the game that's not very high on my list of things that I'm pointing a finger at Gary Batman over man like okay now let me ask you this question and for this I think we're going to need to probably hear from people a bit younger than us. Like again, we're in our four, like mid-40s. Like we grew up late 80s, early 90s was kind of like our peak of watching hockey and loving, falling in love with the game

and seeing the game with high scoring and all that stuff. Here's my question. Like, are we, and when I say we, I mean, you and me in particular, are we guilty of kind of, kind of romanticizing the game the way it was because back then we weren't cynical, we weren't jaded, we loved the game.

Like, I guess here's my question. If we talk to people in their mid-30s, so maybe people that kind of their childhood was more of like the quote-unquote dead puck era, do they look back at the late 90s and say, man, I love the game back then? Because that's when I fell in love with the game. I fell in love with Colorado, Detroit. I fell in love with Hashiik, and I felt like, do you know what I'm getting that?

Like, yeah, no, I get. Are we a little bit guilty of that or no? There's an old saying that the, the single best year of pop music is whatever year you were 16. And, you know, there is an element of that. I can tell you, you know, I don't know that I've ever heard anyone look back and say like, man, peak NHL was like 1999 when nobody was scoring and we had the skate in the crease. Now, Colorado to Detroit, a lot of people love that element of the game. They love the fights and the bad blood and all of that that's largely gone out of the game.

And some people blame Gary Betman for that. You know, they'll point at the instigator and all this other stuff, which, by the way, he didn't even bring in. And of course, there's a lot of other people who say, no, I'm glad we got rid of that stuff. And the game is better now. But, you know, here's the depressing thing that, you know, we don't even really, we've internalized it so much. We almost don't realize it. you just described somebody in their mid-30s who has experienced the entire dead puck era. They're in their mid-30s.

There's 30 years that scoring, you know, has been down and not just scoring because, you know, the numbers on the scoreboard are only part of it, but this incredible focus on defensive hockey, conservative, cautious hockey, no mistakes, know exactly where to be, block shots, know where your stick needs to be to break up the passes. and you know, you see these photos every now and then. Here's Alexander Ovechkin winding up for a slap shot, and there's four guys in front of them, you know, all looking to block the puck. And, yeah, very, very often, even today with, you know, scoring's gone up, whatever it is, 10%.

We're all so excited about it. You know, even today, you see a lot of two-one games where the goals are just fluke goals. They bounce out. People are throwing the puck at the net, and it bounces off a skate, and that's the only way to get a puck into the net these days. And it's been that way for 30 years, for, you know, almost 30 years. Gary Bettman took over 92, 93 a season that I've argued was the greatest season in the history of the NHL. It had just a million different stories, a million fascinating things happen. 93, 94, he gets gifted a New York Ranger's Stanley Cup win.

And, you know, a lot of people, those mid-30s fans who aren't quite as old as us will be amazed at this. But you remember, in the summer of 94, the New York Rangers were arguably the biggest thing in sports. I mean, they were everywhere. They were on Letterman every night. They were on MTV. They were on all. Hold on. Younger listeners are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, who's Letterman?

Yeah, who's Letterman? And what's MTV? Is that the reality show? You know, Mark Messier was dating Madonna. Back when Madonna was the most famous woman in the world. And, you know, it was on the tabloids. and everything. And then comes the lockout, which obviously is a huge part of Gary Betman's legacy, all the lockouts, all that interest and excitement goes away. You know,

the summer in 94, very famously, Sports Illustrated has a cover that says the NHL is hot and the NBA is not. And the reason the NBA was not hot back then, and tell me if this sounds familiar, was the NBA game had become very defensive, very clutch and grab. You know, it was kind of this this grimy sort of grinded out game where the stars weren't allowed to flourish and it, you know, it was all about shutting things down instead of making things happen. And the NHL had had an opening there and no, they weren't going to surpass the NBA realistically, but they had an opportunity there. And instead, Gary Bettman chose a lockout, which didn't get them anything other than

lost half season and all that attention, all that goodwill, all the momentum was gone, had the lockout also, by the way, the Major League Baseball strikes going on. So October opens up. There's no World Series to compete with. It doesn't matter. The NHL isn't around because we're having a lockout. And then the Devils win the Stanley Cup. Neutral Zone trap comes in.

The next year it's the Florida Panthers clutch and grab. And the dead puck era arrives. And, you know, 95, 96 is really the last year that, you know, the cutoff that most of us would say that the dead puck era then begins. And we go 10 years of talking about scoring being down and talking about the excitement being down and the games being so dull and nothing happens. Little tweaks and things, you know, let's change a face off. Let's shave an inch off of this goalies pat. No big ideas, no leadership. Nobody puts, you know, slamming their fist on the table and saying this is not what we're going to let hockey be.

Then we get another lockout. We get the, we lose the full year. We lose the Stanley Cup. hockey comes back. Scoring goes up for a little bit because it's all power plays. But then pretty soon it drops right back down. We get another decade plus of low scoring, conservative hockey. Maybe it's a little bit better.

Maybe it's a little bit more open, but really not very much. And that brings us to today. And again, you know, scoring's up a little bit. Okay, great. But it's a little bit. It's nowhere near what it was when Gary Bettman took over. And yet there's now an entire generation of fans. who have grown up with the game.

And now they have their kids who are grown up with the game who have never seen hockey with more than six goals a game or so. And even worse, you've got an entire generation of players who've grown up in that system. You've got an entire generation of players who finished their careers in that system and then retired and became coaches. And now they're the ones coaching the game.

And now we just finished, or we're actually still in the middle of hiring, season for the NFL for coaching. And what do you always say whenever teams looking for an NFL head coach? Well, is he an offensive guy or is he a defensive guy? Oh, these young offensive minds, those are the guys. Who are the offensive minds among NHL coaches? It's ridiculous to even ask.

That isn't even a concept that applies to hockey anymore. It didn't used to be that way. There used to be, you know, Pat Burns was a defensive coach. You brought Pat Burns in and he would, you know, he would lock it down. Ken Hitchcock, guys like that. Now everybody is that. Every single NHL coach is at. Trots kind of has that reputation now that he'll come in and kind of maybe lock things.

Like Washington. He's the goalie. But there is every single coach comes in. And I mean, to the point where we've had one coaching change this year, what did Rick Tocott say when he came in in Vancouver, a team that's got Elias Pedersen, a team that had, you know, had Bull Horvite. Quinn Hughes.

And he says, we can't be playing this river hockey anymore. We got to lock it down. And, you know, this idea that he thinks, you win five to four, you get bag skated. But if you lose two to one, okay, that's, that's fine. We're playing the game the right way. Right. You know, this is, this is all, this has been an entire generation. You know, Connor McDavid, who might be the most offensively gifted player in the history

of the sport, literally has never been alive in an era where that was allowed to flourish. And, you know, and to the point now where we're going, oh, Connor McDavid might get 140 points this year. Isn't that great? Well, you know, guys used to get that, you know, who didn't need to be Connor McDavid. And I understand, every time I say this, somebody will say, well, I don't want to watch 10, 9 games. I like a guy, appreciate a good defensive battle. We all love a goaltending battle. We all love goalies sprawling around and making saves and making great, great plays. What I don't appreciate is a goaltender getting a shadow facing 20 shots, 18 of which go directly into his chest, because there's absolutely nowhere for anybody to

shoot when the goalies were all six foot seven wearing these, you know, gigantic lacrosse suits. And I can say that because Jesse's not on. So we don't have our goaltending union representative. And I guess the last point I'll make on this, on the quality of play thing, because people might say, okay, that's interesting, Sean. That's how the game evolved. What's Gary Betman supposed to do? And the story that I always tell, and I've told it before probably on this podcast, is 2004 in the NFL. they had a dream matchup in their conference final. It was Peyton Manning and the Colts versus Tom Brady and the Patriots. Huge deal, huge TV ratings.

All the sports fans in North America are watching this game. And the game stunk. Because what happened is the Patriots had a very, very physical defense. And they went out and they basically mug the Colts receivers. And they turned it into it up just an ugly defensive battle. Peyton Manning couldn't do anything. Tom Brady barely did anything. The Patriots kick five field goals and won the game.

And people looked at that game and went, the Patriots have cracked the code. The Patriots have figured out how you play against a guy like Peyton Manning, who at the time was in the conversation for one of the best quarterbacks we'd ever seen, but they figured it out. They figured out how to shut down this high-power cults passing attack. And what happened in the immediate aftermath of that? The NFL looked at that and said, no, we are not having that. that is not going to be what our game is.

We are not going to let this be a thing that everyone in the league copies. We're putting a stop to this now. And they didn't form a committee. They didn't spend 10 years moving the lines around a little bit or saying, we're going to make a slight change to where we put the football to start. They came in and they radically changed how the rulebook was called that offseason. And they said, starting on opening night, this is the new way that this rulebook is going to be called.

And, you know, that was almost 20 years ago. And virtually every offensive record in the book has been broken since then. What's the last hockey offensive record that's been broken? You don't see them. In fact, it's so, it's so ridiculous now that you always see these NHL tweets out these stats. Connor McDavid has just done this. Alexander, you know, whatever it is, this is the number and they show you a list. And you go, wow, look how high the guy is on the list.

And then you see the little small print. And it always says since 1996. Yeah. Or since not, yeah. because the NHL offensive record book has not changed in 25 years. And I'll say Gary Benman often comes out and he says, you know, the quality of the players in this league has never been better. There's never been more skill. There's never been, you know, all of this.

He's right on that. I will tell you, as much as I'm an old fogy who grew up in the 80s and 90s and, you know, I loved hockey back then, there has never been more skill in the league than right now. No, no question that there are guys in this league right now who can do things nobody could do back then. And there's more of them and teams have got more skill on their third and fourth lines these days than they had on their second lines back then. But it's all being put to the service of three, two hockey, get into, get to the third period, get tied, slow it down, play 10 minutes of boring hockey. so we get to overtime and the loser point fairy shows up. And this is what hockey is.

And if we had some vision, if we imagine if we had had somebody who had done what the NFL did in 1996, when the Colorado Avalanche are waiting in the Stanley Cuff final, and you've got the penguins playing the Panthers, and you're going, man, we could be about to see Mario versus Joe Sackack. Forzberg versus Yager. Patrick Waugh against Mario Lemieux. And instead, the Florida Panthers basically open field tackle. hack and slash and drag their way to beating the penguins.

What if Gary Batman had seen that and said, no, we're not, that's not what our sport's going to be. But he didn't. There was no leadership. Nobody stood up and said it. And so everyone around the league looked at the Panthers and said, I guess that's how we're all going to play now. Pretty soon everybody was. And to this day, largely, everyone still is. And man, what would that alternate history look like if somebody had actually had some leadership and some, some

desire to look at the product on the ice and not just focus on whatever was good for the bottom line on that particular day. Now, how much though, and you talked about the current goalies basically being six foot six, six foot seven giants with the padding. I don't know. Like if you go back and look at the 80s in particular, like when Gretzky's getting the 200 points and Mario's getting the 85 goals and all that, a lot of that was due to just bad goal tanning.

necessarily terrible, right? The goalies were bad and the style was bad. Right. But do you want to live in a world where, like, do you want, like, I guess here's my question. Like, I, I'd like to see McDavid get to 150 this year. I think that's a great accomplishment. Like, what's it for, like, do you want to see an environment where he can push 200 points? Or is that, like, you know what I mean?

Like, do you want to see those records of the 92 goals and 200 points? Do you want to see that stuff pushed or would you like to just see more, you know what, we just need more 50 goal guys, if that makes sense. I don't know. I would like to see more scoring and then how that gets distributed. It's tough to say. I mean, I would like it if Connor McDavid, who is the most talented player that we have seen, I would argue since Wayne Gretzky and Merrill Lemieux, could actually push for

Wayne Gretzky and Merrill Lemieux numbers. I think that would be neat. The idea that, you know, we're looking at him going, man, is this guy, good as Mario and yeah, but he can only, the most he can do is 75% of what Mario did in a year. And again, I'm not saying that the 80s was the perfect level. And we can have that conversation. There would be some people who would look at the 80s and go, man, that was a lot of that hockey, first of all, was sloppy hockey. And, you know, the goal landing wasn't good.

The defense wasn't good. I mean, yeah, Wade Gretzky was great, but he's coming in untouched through the neutral zone. And he goes across the blue line and he just winds up and takes a slop. lap shot, the blue liners backing up, and the goalie can barely stand up and all of this stuff. You know, I'm not saying you go back to that. But, you know, yeah, the goaltenders have gotten bigger and better. Absolutely. And what do you think would happen?

Again, to go in the NFL, right? You and I know that the defensive backs in the NFL tend to be smaller guys because they have to be fast and quick. What if there was some change in the style that these guys played? Some coach came along and said, here's a different way that we could play cornerback. in the league, let's say. And suddenly, all the cornerbacks were six foot six. And they were just blanketing these wide receivers. And suddenly, like, you just couldn't, sorry, Justin Jefferson, Jabbar Chase, all these guys can't do their thing because these giant defensive backs are shutting

them down. Do you think the NFL would just shrug and go, well, I guess we're a field goal league now. I guess we're going to grind it out three yards in a cloud of dust and win six to three. What can we do? Defensive backs just got bigger. Or do you think the NFL would sit there and go, no, no, we need to make sure our stars can be stars. So we're going to figure out something to do that's going to make sure that we maintain that balance. There's no chance they would just sit back and let it happen. And yet, the NHL, that's what we did for decades. And I don't know how you undo it now because it's been so long that it's just,

it's in the DNA of the sport now. So this takes us, it's the perfect segue into the U.S. television numbers that came out this week. And if you're just to look at them kind of year over year, this is now, you know, we're into this ESPN TNT world. The numbers are down basically 22% year over year. That's a significant drop off when you consider you're now with ESPN. You're with TNT. Like you're in most people, you should theoretically be in most people's homes that have cable. So to see a 22% year over year drop off is it's.

It's rather shocking. And of course, the minute that happens, there's everybody's rushing to explain it. Sean Gentilly, if you haven't read it, did I think a really excellent piece on kind of trying to understand, well, why have the numbers fallen off? You know, one of his theories is, look, they're putting some games up against Sunday night football,

which is akin to just taking a knee. Yep. You know, so that's part of it. Part of it, too, is the archaic blackout rules that seem to be back in effect. on, you know, he pointed out to, look, there's been games where the Rangers are at home and that game is blacked out in the New York market. The penguins are at home that's blacked out in the, in the Pittsburgh market. That's going to affect numbers. But should there be concern here that the

numbers are 22% down year over year? I think there should certainly be concerned. But I do think Sean really did a great job of digging into the numbers. And the NFL factor here is enormous. Now, putting aside, again, that we're 30 years into Gary Bedman's term and the idea of the NHL going up against the NFL is so ridiculous that we just all laugh. Like, ha ha, of course, nobody would ever watch the NHL when the NFL is on. I mean, that, to me, again, doesn't sound like we've benefited from great visionary leadership, but it is what it is. And it's true.

In the United States, the NFL will, you know, wipe the NFL. NHL off the map if they go head to head. And that is a big part of it. Look, when these numbers first came out, a lot of us. And I was, you know, I was one of that. I was guilty of this to some extent on, on my show yesterday, seeing these numbers just in isolation. And you can immediately project whatever, whatever you don't like about the NHL is the reason

these numbers are now, right? You know, it's because it's the game's low scoring. No, no, it's because it's too high scoring now. And there's, there's not enough penalties. They don't call the rulebook. Oh, but there's too many penalties. It's not rough and top. like it used to be. It's the board ads. It's the offside reviews. It's you can you can pick

anything and you know this as Sean digs into it. It's it's largely if you if you factor out that NFL factor it really becomes pretty similar numbers to last year, maybe even up a little bit. So I don't think people should panic about it necessarily and I do think we have to wait and see where these numbers wind up at the end of the year. But the, the, the, the, the real thing, the real. The reality is the numbers went up last year, as you would expect, because there was a novelty to it. You suddenly have ESPN finally acknowledging the existence of the NHL again and promoting it. People are going to be tuning in. What are they doing on TNT? What are they doing on ESPN? I mean, the previous rights holders, I think it was fair to say, were felt pretty

checked out over the last couple years. So that's an opportunity. You suddenly had a lot of probably lapsed hockey fans or fans that had drifted away. coming back, maybe even some brand new fans saying, okay, you know, I'll give this NHL thing a try. It looks good. The highlights look cool. And they sit down and watch a game. And the question is, what they saw when they sat down last year,

did that convince them to stick around or did they go, oh, this isn't all that good and click off? And we don't know yet. I'll say this. There's nothing about this season that would cause ratings to go down. This season's been interesting. There's lots of, you know, there's some fun storylines. There's teams are up and down. A higher, a little bit.

A little bit higher score. Well, I mean, look, like, Nikita Kutrov is on pace to have a better season statistically than he had when he won the Hart trophy and the Art Ross a few years ago. Nobody's talking about him, right? Yep. Yep. No, that's, that's true. It's, you know, it's up a little. I mean, it's compared to last year, scoring is up.

0.02 goals per game right now. And last year was a jump over over the previous year. So, you know, it's, we're talking 0.2 goals again from what it was two years ago, which means if you sit down and watch your team, every two weeks, you will see one extra goal. So, you know, I don't know if we're, we should be hanging the mission accomplished banner quite yet on the scoring thing, but hey, it's a positive. The numbers are going up.

And, and that, we're seeing that go up on the star players. That's all good. But yeah, there is no, there is nothing that has happened this year compared to last year that would make you say, oh, well, this is the problem this season. You know, it doesn't help, I'm sure that a team like Chicago, which is a very strong market, has been quite bad. I don't know what the numbers look like in Canada. I haven't seen those yet, but, you know, Montreal having another bad season, I'm sure it doesn't help. But, you know, again, that's also the flip side of that is the NHL as a league has picked a small handful of teams and said, these are our marquee teams. It's Pittsburgh, Chicago, you know, New York, Toronto, Montreal, handful of others in the states.

They get all the attention. Those are the teams we're going to market. We don't market the stars. We don't market the other team. We just focus on these teams versus I keep going back to the comparison. But the NFL, you know, oh, Brett Farves and Green Bay are our smallest market. okay, well, we're going to turn Green Bay into a marquee team. We're Peyton Manning's in Indianapolis.

We're going to turn the Colts into a marquee must-watch team. You don't see that in the NHL. So, you know, that could be part of it. But ultimately, I do think the ratings drop as much as it was sort of a shock to see yesterday. I think Sean Gentilly explains really well why it probably isn't the sort of story that it may be first seemed like. You know, as we're hitting the All-Star weekend here, I think it's a natural time. look, a lot of teams have basically hit the 50 game plateau of the season. You know, we're kind of five-eighths through the season, so to speak.

And it's kind of with this pause, I think it's a natural time to, hey, like, if the old, if the playoffs started today game. And as I, look, I'm going to do this based on points percentage. I'm not going to do it strictly looking at the standings because there's a discrepancy. Certain teams have played four or five games more. So if you sort the conferences by points percentage, let's start. with the East, okay? I'm going to just tell the listeners here, this is, these are

going to be the playoff matchups if the playoff started today, based on points percentage. You would get Boston, Washington, you'd get Carolina Pittsburgh, you'd get Toronto Tampa. That one feels like it's been locked in since opening night, basically Toronto Tampa.

But the one that's starting to feel really locked in, Sean, and that I think we should start getting super excited about, it's Devils Rangers. Devils Rangers is starting to feel like We're getting better than a 50% probability of that happening. Carolina is starting to kind of push into the Boston stratosphere of, hey, maybe they can sniff out a president's trophy,

like they can maybe win that division. Devils and Rangers feel like they can maybe get a little bit more distance between themselves at Washington, Pittsburgh. How great, as we talk about ways to market this game and make things fun, I mean, Devils Rangers might be it, right, in round one? Yeah, that would be a. really fun one and, you know, that, that's this playoff format. This is what it's supposed to do, right? It's get these division rivalries and it really hasn't worked to the point that I think a lot of

people would like to see it changed. But Devils Rangers, that could be real good. We haven't seen it in 10 years. Obviously, the history there going back to 94 and beyond is excellent. That could be a lot of fun. And I mean, two really good teams too, obviously. And that would be a fascinating matchup to watch play out. Yeah, and as we talk about, like, you know, time to market stars, like, I mean, Jack Hughes, you think to yourself, if he was playing on the other side,

or if he was in Manhattan, it'd be ridiculous. He is really starting to establish himself as a top five, ten player in this game. And, you know, a playoff series against the Rangers, just imagine what that could potentially do for him, right? Yeah, that would be, that would be great. Yeah, that would be a real fun one.

And then the other way, I guess we should say we're looking at points percentage, but essentially Washington and Buffalo are almost tied for that last spot based on points percentage. If you flip that, imagine Buffalo Boston. Adams Division, classic, run it back old school. Brad May drop the puck. Brad may drop the puck. That's what I said. I was on Buffalo radio yesterday.

I said, we got to get Brad May out there to drop the puck, maybe throw up between Ray Bork's legs, and just get that going. I mean, that could be a lot of fun too. And yeah, you know, it could be, look, it's, it stinks in a way that it, again, we're at the 50 game market, and it already feels like we have two of the four matchups kind of locked in on the East, but at least they're real good matchups. I mean, as a Leafs fan, I hate the idea of it, if it'd be in Tampa again, but if everybody else would be sitting there going, all right, let's see it. And it's funny, you're talking about Buffalo.

I'm worried you put a down goes brown hex on them. It was a beat down Wednesday night. It wasn't like, hey, they're here to hang around Carolina. That was a five, and again, we should be talking about the hurricanes a little bit more than we probably do. They've won, what, seven in a row. they're pushing at the top of the standings.

But, man, that's a tough way for Buffalo to go into the break because they could have gone into the break, you know, technically holding down the last playoff spot in the east. And instead, they're on the wrong side. And I'm of a 5-1 loss. I'm worried you put a jinx on them. Down 3-0 right away. Tage Thompson leaves the game.

Yeah, I may have. And they're down 3-0, 10 minutes into the game or whatever it was. You know, it used to be, I've been writing this Monday column, every week for years now where I do my rankings. And it used to be that if I didn't rank a team in my top five, people would be mad at me. You know, how come you don't have the islanders?

What do this team have to do to earn your respect? And now it's flipped the other way. Now I, you know, I don't put a team in and people are like, good. Stop it. Yeah, yeah, good. You know, hold on a second.

Don't put us back in. Wait, oh, you dropped us out? Okay, good. Finally. All right. What do we need to do to make sure that you don't put us back in the list? So I may be open to taking bribes, is what I'm saying, if you're fan base. I can be sitting there going, oh, geez, yeah, you're, yeah, the Rangers have been good lately.

It'd be a shame if anything happened to that team. It'd be a shame if they showed up in a top five and had to have a four-game losing streak, wouldn't it? Yeah. And real quick, let's look at the Western Conference because the West is really interesting when you sort it by points percentage. Because if you just were to open up your phone and look at the standings, you would see, Oh, wow, the L.A. Kings are in second place in their division. But no, no, no. When you sort it by points percentage,

they're technically the last team. They're tied with Colorado. But the Aves have what, four games in hand on them, five games in hand. So really, five. So really the L.A. Kings are the final, the eighth and final playoff seed in the West. So if you're looking at this,

these would be the potential matchups if the playoffs started today in the West. You get Dallas, L.A. You get Seattle, Colorado, which is. crazy. You get Minnesota, Winnipeg, and you get Vegas Edmonton. Like, Vegas Edmonton feels like those two teams are probably thinking that should be the conference final, if everything goes the way we think it should. But how about see, imagine you're Seattle and you're like, we've done it. We've punched above our weight. We've made it to the playoffs. So who are we playing?

The defending Stanley Cup champion. And I will tell you right now, and this is not a, don't, don't, don't, don't, take this as a knock on on the cracking, but if that is the matchup, everybody will pick Colorado in their brackets because not only, you know, not only is it the avalanche and it's an expansion team and all this stuff, but we all know, we've all had the experience of sitting down, filling out our bracket, and then looking at it and going, oh, wait a second, I've just got all the favorites. I can't do that.

I got to have an upset somewhere. So I got to, oh, you know, give me a one versus four that I can pick. Oh, here we go, Colorado over Seattle. Yeah, I'll go on a limb on that one. Boy, it'd be a fun one. It's, you know, those matchups don't, you know, they don't grab me in the same way, but, you know, they're not bad at all. And, yeah, L.A. and Dallas, you know, that could, that could be okay. The one that I would like to see, and we need, we need Winnipeg to jump up and the Oilers to drop down.

But get that Jets Oilers matchup going again, again, the old school spite. Everyone's detecting a theme here. like Sean just wants to relive the like 91 division format playoff. Yeah. But where's my Chicago, Minnesota? Yep. Yep. But Winnipeg, Minnesota would be a real interesting one.

That's, you know, kind of a geographic robbery that hasn't really had a chance to, to breathe yet. But, you know, we could certainly help get it there. All right. We've got some voicemails to get to, some emails as well to read. You can always hit us up with an email to the athletic hockey show at gmail.com or, and we've got a couple of people that have done this, you can leave us a voicemail at 845-4-4-5-4-5-8-4-59. Let's start with Chris in Vegas. You know, Pride Night has become certainly a talking point in recent weeks in the National Hockey League in and around Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers. Chris in Vegas has some thoughts on that.

With the stories about Pride Night at the Flyers and Rangers in the news lately, I just wanted to reach out and say thanks to the teams that I root for for their support. As an openly gay man and a season ticket holder of the Golden Knights and a lifelong fan of the Detroit Red Wings, I want to thank those organizations for their Pride Nights this year and the participation of all the players. It means a lot to me and my husbands know that we are seen and appreciated by the organization and that they support the charitable organizations in the LGBTQ Plus community.

Vegas has sold specialty shirts to celebrate Pride Night that we still see worn by fans from time to time in the arena and proceeds from the 50-50 raffle of gone to support the Gay and Lesbian Center and other great organizations. I appreciate that all the players on both teams supported this as well and realize that it's about acknowledging and appreciating the various fans where you live and supporting either existing or future teammates who decide to come out. It's not about religion or politics in my opinion, but how you're going to treat your neighbors or your teammates. I know that the NHL and team organizations appear to be living up to the sentiment as well as the vast majority of players. My family and others in our community appreciate it. Thanks for the show. Bye. All right.

Listen, Chris, we appreciate that. That was a heartfelt voicemail. You know, I'm going to get into this probably more on the Monday show, Sean, with Julian, because we really did get into it on the Pride Night topic on Monday. and I got a lot of really, really thoughtful emails. So very similar in tone to what Chris did on voicemail. I had a ton of really thoughtful emails on Pride Night that I want to, I'm going to save those for the Monday show if you don't mind

because I think that's where we kind of handled it. And I, you know, I just, I just really appreciate Chris in Vegas taking the time to give us that phone call. Because it's those types of voicemails that, you know, I think they land really well. And I think if you're a listener to this podcast, if you're listener to the show, you can understand why Pride Night means so much to fans like Chris, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And not much to add. I think Chris said it all. Other than, you know, I have heard from a few different angles where people in the wake of the Flyers controversy and now with the Rangers saying, you know, is this worth it?

Is this worth it? for the league to keep doing this. And there's your answer. This is why it's worth it. Yeah. No, no. This is why we got to keep it going. Yeah. No, no, absolutely. And I think it's important to have that type of visibility.

I just, like I said on the Monday show, I wanted to be authentic. I want it to be authentic. I don't want, you know, stuff that's just been done for the sake of it. But then when you listen to Chris in Vegas, you understand why it's important to be authentic and to have this type of night moving forward. To Travis, we go. And we were talking about this. Maybe we should bring Travis on as a guest at some point, Sean,

because I think he falls into the age demographic. We were talking about somebody who maybe grew up kind of first, favorite fondest memories in the in the Dut-Puck era. But here's Travis with a little appreciation for number 77. I'm a Kings fan from Southern California, and I won't make you two feel too old, but I'll say that my birth here starts with a nine. Anyways, I wanted to thank Sean for going to bat for my favorite player of all-time Ray Bork.

Not all of this generation's fans take Lidstrom over him. But since All-Star Weekend is coming up, I wanted to say that it'd be nice to hear a shout-out about how Bork went. I believe without missing a shot two years in a row in two back-to-back All-Star games for shooting accuracy. and I can only think of John Klingberg perhaps as a defenseman as even close to as good of shooting as him in today's game. But I would love to hear your thoughts about those old All-Star games and thanks for always having that great podcast.

All right, there you go. You know, I think, and I know that Jen, by the way, speaking of this NHL-99 series like Travis is talking about your piece on Raymond Bork, you know, Bork v. Lidstrom was a really, contentious debate for a lot of people. A lot of people thought Nick Lidstrom should have been higher. A lot of people thought he should have been whatever. Sean Gentile and Craig Custins are going to tackle NHL 99 in its totality on the Tuesday

episode of the podcast. I want to give you a little plug for that. But yeah, hey, listen, really cool to hear somebody who clearly, like Travis said, was born later than we were. What do you say? Started in a, with a nine. So, you know, I'm thinking, you know, late 20s, early 30s to have that type of appreciation for Raymond Bork when clearly probably Ray's best offensive seasons were in the 80s before

Travis's time. But Travis wanted to give a shout out to Ray Bork there. Yeah, absolutely. And a deserved. And the Bork Lidsstrom debate, it's great. I'm glad it's contentious. It should be. It's a tough question. And that's part of what I tried to do with my Bork piece was to steer it back to, hey, this is a question. And there's a, I'm tired of here and like this is settled. You know, like Nick Lidstrom was the second best defenseman of all time and that's it. Maybe he was, but Ray Bork was right there with him. And, yeah, that, that voicemail really captures the, the, it's, it's hard to express this to younger or newer fans. How big a deal it was watching Bork go four for, for four in the accuracy shooting.

Because, I mean, these days you look at it and it would just, I mean, it would feel boring. I mean, he's got to shoot the, he'd have to shoot the puck into like, you know, Mickey Mouse on a cruise ship or something. with there, you know, some, some gimmicky thing to get people excited. But back then, when they introduced the accuracy shooting, we're all like, who's going to be the first to go four for, for four? To have a defenseman do it, you're sitting there going, oh, wow, that's crazy. But then it comes to the next year and he steps up and he does it again. Absolutely.

You know, it does like the interview with like Bill Clement or whoever and, you know, talking about, you know, can you do it again? And he's, oh, well, I don't know, let's go out there and see and just bang, bang, back, and he does it again. and it was it was really something back then and just elevated Ray Bork even more because that's what he did. He shot the puck.

His stats around shooting were just the number of times he got the shot off. And as that helped prove, it wasn't just about bombing point shots in a 1980 style. This guy literally could just pick his spot from anywhere on the ice. You know, I think there was something about those

just to wrap up Travis's voicemail there, those early, early skills competitions just seemed a little bit larger than life because it was new on the block, like ally of Frady coming out with the slap shot or Mike Gartner

with the fastest skater, like it was just like, wow, this is so new, right? And now I think you know, 30 years into it, you've got, again, this goes back to my point from earlier, like a degree of cynicism sets in, right? But boy, when you first watch that stuff. In the early 90s, it was like, it felt like appointment viewing for us.

Oh, I mean, the skills competition was the absolute, oh, they're going to do the hardest shot competition and it's going to, oh, it was so, I mean, it really was a lot of fun. And look, it's just the novelty wore off. That's nobody's fault. It's, you know, it's, you saw the same thing. I mean, geez, we grew up in the era where the, the, you would talk about appointment viewing, the NBA slam dunk contest. Oh, my goodness. You would just shut it down and make sure you were watching that to when it was on. And then, you know, these days, I don't know, you never, you ever heard of half the guys that are in it because everyone's so tired of it.

It's, it happens. And unfortunately, I guess to some extent, the NHL is by trying all these new things. And some of us kind of roll their eyes at some of the ideas, but they're trying to recapture that and get something new and get something that'll be exciting for a few years. And you got to, you got to give them credit for trying it. Yeah, like the blindfolded Zegris and all that. Look, they're trying. They're trying some gimmicky things.

But again, as long as it's engaging the younger audience, I think that's the part that's important. And I'm sure there was somebody, you know, 30 years ago going, oh, we're going to shoot at styrofoam targets. Like, really, this isn't real hockey? Gordy, how would ever would have done this? Exactly. So, you know, try some new, you know, I am very much someone who believes that you, you're in the entertainment business. You try new things. If some of it doesn't work, get rid of it.

But don't blame, don't blame the league for the stuff that doesn't work. You know what? It's, I don't, I don't get, whether it's skills events or dumb comic book stuff or whatever, let them try it. If it doesn't work, don't, don't keep, you know, don't keep throwing good money after bad. But try some, I won't criticize the lead for trying something new. I mean, I will, but. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

What he's talking about. Yeah, that's your Monday column. It's already written. From voicemails to emails, the athletic hockey show at gmail.com. We'll rip through a couple of these. Paul writes it, look, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the fact that if your favorite sports team is playing a big game, a playoff game, a game seven, do you go out to a bar and watch that, or do you stay at home?

Paul writes in, love the show, listening to your recent podcast. One of my favorite, down-goes brown pieces was his 20 types of depressed sports fans back of the day as a lifelong Flyers fan. I think I've morphed into non-reaction fan and fan who suddenly has to go for a walk. Thankfully, I've got a little bit of happiness with the Eagles and Phillies in my life. But the only time I ever went out to a bar

to watch a playoff game was 2019. I was in Milwaukee. It's Bears and Eagles. There's a bar in Milwaukee called Highbury that's both a European soccer bar and as I found out, a Chicago Bears bar. Right in the heart of Packers country, colleague of mine, a colleague of mine is a huge Bears fan.

I thought we'd agreed to meet there for the game. I walked in wearing my Eagles hat. My friend was nowhere to be seen. I felt awkward. I was surrounded by 100 Bears fans. The looks I got from them are ingrained into my memory. Hence, I got out of there as quickly as I could. I'm not sure what would have happened if I had stayed.

You know what? He says that bears missed the field goal in the last minute. That doesn't really narrow it down. I think that was double doing. Oh boy. Right. Isn't that double doink? He would have got double doink to produce.

Yeah. I don't think put it this way. I don't think the Bears fans would be missing the kicks on this guy. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, but Paul says, anyway, I stay home for games from now on. So there you go. Yep. And again, in our never-ending quest who subtly turned us into a football podcast,

Jeffrey writes in, was listening to your football talk in the latest edition of the athletic hockey show. You guys were talking about how the Toronto Maple Leafs and Dallas Cowboys were similar. Now, given Sean's description of the heartache of the pain caused by his favorite team, I don't really know that the Cowboys are the proper parallel here. I present to you the LA Chargers,

of which I happen to be a fan. You got to remember that the... Basically, Jeffrey goes on here, talks about how statistically the Chargers lose games and things that they shouldn't have. I can get behind the argument a little bit if you say the Leafs were successful at one point the Chargers have never been

but trust me nobody loses like my Chargers awesome job on the show each week that comes in from Jeffrey so May is that is that it are the Leafs the Chargers Boy that's yeah that's that's a tough one and it's it's very funny because the article that he's linking us to is from 2019 but then there's a note at the top saying

they had to update it after the most recent ridiculous collapse. Yeah, as far as finding heartbreaking ways to lose, maybe that's right up there as well. I don't know. That's one of the beauties of sports is, you know, if you say my team's the best, three or four other fan bases will jump up and go, no, my team's the best. But if you say my teams had the most heartache, you will hear from everybody. We'll explain to you why.

I know, in fact, it's actually their team that's got it worse. And yeah, boy, the Chargers, they got a pretty good case. One more email here. And this one comes in from Kevin. And I think it was maybe two, last week, last, yeah, last week's pod. We talked about who was behind the Bruce, there it is, chant at climate plet arena. We were like, are those cracking fans, were those Canuck fans? Who are like, who was doing this?

Kevin writes in, love the show. I'm a hockey sicko who's lived in Seattle for about 30 years. I grew up, though, as a hockey player in Buffalo for a little context. I was a youth hockey teammate of both Stan Bowman and Todd Marchand. I've got a theory for you here on the Bruce There It Is chant and Climate Pledge last week. I am not rich enough to have Cracken season tickets, but I've been to there barn for seven games in total. I think the Bruce, There It Is, chant was local and traveling Canucks fans who started it with maybe some knowledgeable Seattle fans joining in.

Here's my theory. pre-Seattle Crackin, the team to follow for any of us locally with the Vancouver Canucks. A lot of locals were already Vancouver fans. A lot of them still are. We get CBC on Basic Cable here, and Root Sports Network was playing some Connucks games for a while. The late game on Hockey Night was always Vancouver.

I just know a lot of local people who are still Vancouver Canucks fans. There are still a lot of Connucks fans in the area. there's a small number of new to hockey Crackin fans who've got into it but I really think this was Vancouver fans. As a Sabres fan, I go to every Buffalo game here or in Vancouver. There's probably a thousand Sabres fans at the game but it's not because they're traveling from Buffalo,

it's because we don't live in our home city anymore. So I would venture that that was the case with Bruce. There it is. Anyway, love the show. I thought you guys would like a little insight from a hockey guy in Seattle we're still rare around these parts that comes in from Kevin. It's a pretty good theory.

So it's essentially it's a lot of former Canucks fans or Canucks fans who are transitioning to Seattle fans, but they still have a soft spot for Bruce Brudeau and for the Canucks. Yeah, that makes some sense to me. Oh, man. Yeah. You know what I would like to hear from? I'd like to hear if there's any cracking fans out there who used to be a Canucks fan. Because, like, what is, how do you make that switch?

Like, do you have to completely forsake the Canucks? Do they, you know, they're in your division. They're rivals. Like, do you have to now immediately say, I'm, I can't stand the Canucks? I'm, you know, I'm breaking that link. Or do you, you know, can you, do you sort of still have a soft spot for them? We saw that here in Ottawa, right? There was a lot of Leafs and Habs fans and the way that that sort of evolved over the years was interesting.

I wonder how that's going in Seattle. Like how do you, how do you make the switch? Is it a clean break or is it more of a gradual thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a great. I think it's more gradual, probably a little bit more gradual. But yeah, anyway, I appreciate that insight. Listen, we're going to wrap up with a this week. And you know what?

I should, usually I give you a heads up on the This Week in Hockey History. And I don't know why I didn't put this in. And maybe this, maybe I should have. Maybe I just want to get your reaction of this because maybe, like, I had never heard of this until this week. Oh, boy. Okay. But when I did the research for,

oh, what are we going to do for this week in hockey history? For whatever reason, I forgot to send this to you. This is wild. Okay? This is from this week in 1954. Did you ever, had you ever heard about the Detroit Red Wings playing an outdoor game in 1954?

Yeah. At the prison. Yes, okay. The prison game, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. Perfect. Like, I figured you probably knew something about this.

This is wild, okay? So I got a little bit of a rundown here just to educate the listeners. It's just like I had not heard of this up until this week. So this week in 1954, the Detroit Red Wings decided we're going to play an exhibition game against a prison team. Team made up of inmates. It was the first ever outdoor game played by the Red Wings or any NHL team. and newspaper Here's what's weird.

The Associated Press and newspaper accounts of the game say that Detroit won the game five to two. However, according to witnesses that were there, the Red Wings were up 18 to nothing after the first period and then they decided not to keep score for the rest of the game. probably a good considering who they were playing against probably not a bad

probably not a bad idea okay so a little background here a little context is the original planning for the game started the previous year about nine months earlier when red wings general manager jack adams visited the marquette branch prison while doing a promotional tour

for Strow's beer. I mean, where else would you go on a promotional tour for beer than a prison? While he was there, the warden asked Jack Adams,

would your team ever be interested in coming to play? Adam said, yeah, but reportedly only because he thought it would never come to fruition. It's like, you know what? It's like, I don't know,

maybe this is like Jerry Seinfeld in the Puffy Shirt episode or he's like, I didn't quite hear you. yeah, sure, I'm in. Like, imagine that it went from, like, how on earth did this happen? Red Wings played a prison team and were up 18 to nothing after the first year? I would read a long-form story on this.

That's, I wrote, I think one time I wrote that it's, that's not a hockey game, it's a Johnny Cash song. Like, Gordie Howe playing against a bunch of convicted felons. And, yeah, I mean, I guess that's just, most of us would be intimidated to go to that environment. But I guess if you got Gordy Howe on your team, you're not too worried that anyone's going to get out of hand. I have the original Associated Press story, I guess, from this.

And it's a weird. 2,000 people showed up to watch this, according to the newspaper report. Yeah, they sort of marketed it as not just. just come see the red wings, but also like, you know, these, these nasty prisoners, what are, what's going to happen when they collide with NHL players? And there's, there's a great quote from Ted Lindsay talking about how the, the prisoners all loved him because he led the league in penalty minutes. And so they, he, he fit right in, uh, with them. So it's, uh, and it was, it was great, because it wasn't outdoor game, like this outdoor rink. And, uh, and yet,

apparently the conditions were great. Like, you know, there were, uh, quotes from the players saying, like, oh, the ice was good. This was actually a nice, a nice rink to play on. I don't know how they had that at a prison, but there you go. Yeah, there you go. Anyway, if you want to do some more reading on that,

by all means, yeah, Google, Detroit Red Wings, outdoor prison game, 1954 and a whole bunch of hits will come back. Anyway, I thought that was a fun little trip down memory lane. I thought, like I said, I didn't know about that. I figured you might know something about that. Sure enough, you did. And now you know about it, too.

listeners. So listen, that does it for this Thursday edition of the pod. A reminder, Tuesday. Hey, don't you like this too, Sean, that we're directing all of the hate and the feelings towards the NHL 99 project? They're all going to Custin's and Gentilly. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're the ones who ultimately, uh, they were responsible for all the rankings that people don't like. So if there's one that you're mad about, that was, that was Custin's. So, yeah, tune into the show and listen to him, try to defend it. You and I mostly did the ones people agreed with, but... Yeah.

Do you think Gentile will get any emails or calls about Sergey Federov skates? Like how many snarky? Oh, boy. Dix and emails are you, or voice emails you're going to get? Sean learned a valuable lesson about trying anything new and interesting. He's... Don't do it. Yeah.

You'll get a list. You'll get a stat line next time. Don't worry, Fred Roth. And I heard, are they going to have a special guest, Sean Fitzgerald, drop in to talk to take live phone in on Scott Stevens, maybe? Yep, yeah. And Mark Messier will be joining them to explain that why he's actually not even a top 20 modern era player.

Oh, bad. But in all seriousness, we do want to hear from you. We want your thoughts on the ranking. So if you want to weigh in on any of the NHL 99 project that we've undertaken, good, bad, otherwise, send an email to the Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com, here's the only thing I'm going to ask you to do a little bit differently this time. If it's in regards to the NHL 99, just put NHL 99 in the subject line.

Put that in the subject line and Gentile and Custin's will try to get to as many as possible. So again, the athletic hockey show at gmail.com put NHL 99 in the subject line. Tell us what you liked or did it like or who'd you put in or take out or move, whatever. They'll try to get to that. And they're also going to be taking voicemails for that show, too, I believe. So 845-4-5-8-8-459 if you want to do that. All right. Thanks again for listening to this Thursday edition of The Athletic Hockey Show.

Hope everybody enjoys the All-Star weekend coming up, and we'll be back at it. I'll be back with Julian on Monday. And right now you can get a subscription to The Athletic for $2 a month when you visit Theathletic.com.