The Athletic Hockey Show - Jake Oettinger a legitimate number one netminder, NY Islanders hire Lane Lambert and Boston Bruins, Pittsburgh Penguins & Washington Capitals find themselves at a crossroads

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

The Tuesday boys praise the play of Dallas Stars goalie Jake Oettinger who has proven himself to be a number one goalie in the NHL and as an important piece for Team USA in future international play.The guys discuss the Pittsburgh Penguins, Boston Bruins and Washington Capitals strategy with those franchises needing to make a decision on staying the course or beginning rebuilds. Kevin Kurz from the Athletic joins to discuss the New York Islanders hiring Barry Trotz's top lieutenant Lane Lambert and what tricks Lou Lamoriello might have up his sleeve to improve the Islanders and Peter Deboer being fired in Vegas. Craig and Sean stick tap the Selke Trophy finalists Elias Lindholm, Patrice Bergeron and Sasha Barkov and Dustin Brown who retires after 18 seasons and two Stanley Cups. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey everybody in America. Welcome to the Tuesday episode of the Athletic Hockey Show where we, and by we, I mean, Sean Gentilly and Craig Custin's, talk American hockey, no Canadian hockey, allowed. You know the rules. Sean, ironically, fine by me. Live from Calgary in the middle of battle of, what is it called? Battle of Alberta? Is that a state? Who is Alberta? I think he discovered Canada.

Is Sean Gentilly still stuck in Canada? I had a great aunt, a great Ann Alberta, by the way. Her name was Alberta? Yep. Roberta. Alberta. Is that why you're there still? Daughter of immigrants.

Yeah, that's why I'm here. No, I'm here. I'm on my way to Viking Alberta. I'm going to spend a few days with Daryl Sutter. Wow. On the farm. We have so much to dissect here because, of course, there was a team eliminated in the playoffs. We want to see, should they run it back with their roster? We are going to break it down.

And of course, we're talking about the Pittsburgh Penguins or the Washington Capitals or the Boston Bruins. Three teams at a crossroad, and we're going to get into that. But first, I do. Oh, and also let's tease to Kevin Kurz, who covers the Islanders for the athletic. He's going to be part of the second segment. And we're going to go over the whole. Barry Trots, Lane Lambert, Lou Lamarillo, Islanders, Carousel. I don't even know what to call that.

It's been fun. I love off-season stuff like that. Yesterday was hilarious. Like, the, it's classic Lou, right? We need a new voice. We need a new coach. So let's hire Barry's mini me. My theory on that is it was going to be Mike Babcock,

and then Kersey wrote about Mike Babcock so then they said, well, okay, that's done. We can't do that. I got a text from one of my best friends at midnight last night that said Barry Trots to the Red Wings question mark. And I don't know if he was just out drinking and was curious or if he heard something. It could have been, it could have been both.

So I like scrambled and I was like, what happened? Did I miss something overnight? And there was nothing. No Barry Trots. I think Barry Trots, Pierre, of course, reported that he wanted to take out of least what a week or so to what a jerk he is

figure out his life yeah take a take a week where do you where do you think he ends up you we talked to Winnipeg last week I mean the Vegas thing's interesting I still think it just makes so much much sense for him to go to Winnipeg

Vegas is interesting that was always there was a reason I closed the where the hell does Barry Trots to end up peace with Vegas I don't think I don't think anybody should be surprised that they, that they fired DeBoer. I don't think that, I don't think that there's anything to read into it there.

I doubt it was like Pete DeBoer's, Pete DeBoer's safe. Oh, wait, Barry Trots was just fired. Now he's not. But that's still, that's still really interesting. I think fully, if Foley wants Trots, like, he's going to, he's going to try to drop a bag big time. Well, I mean, that's what he does. I think that's the question. the big fish, right? Vegas, that's what

they do over there in Vegas. Yeah, and it's worked off for him so well. I liked the question, like somebody asked if he was Kelly McCrimman, if he was regretted the Gerard Glandt, who's now led the Rangers into a second round of the playoffs. What's he supposed to say? I know. What are you going to say?

Yeah. I will also say Pete DeVore is interesting now that he's on the market because the Red Wings have an opening. He's got a lot of Detroit roots. you know, Windsor, he's somebody who

I can see ending up I don't know if there's any Steve Eisenman connection, but. Well, Curtis initially floated the coach swap, right? That was, that was one of, that was one of things Cab was, was was bringing up earlier where it was like

deborda, maybe to board a New York, right? But that's that's not what's going down. I mean, Can we talk about some good teams, please? Yeah, sorry. All right.

We'll get all this in the signa. We can do all this in Cigna, too. Before we get to the good teams, let's talk about three teams that we want, that lost in round one. Oh, oh, actually, no. I want to talk about Jake Ottinger briefly before we get to that. Twist my arm, why don't you, brother? We have now seen the future of America and goal, and it's Jake Odinger. Unbelievable performance.

Darrell Sutter called it the best player of round one. I mean, just almost put his entire team on his back. And as an American, you know, John Gibson might be aging out. I don't know. You know what you mean? As the Team USA, that's how old we are, Sean. I think we have one every week where we're just like, holy God, we are getting old. And I think John Gibson aging out is, that's about as bad as it gets.

That's about it. Hold on. How old is John Gibson? He's, I don't know if age is aging out. I don't think he's even 30 yet. The issue is that John Gibson might not be that good. John Gibson is 60 for hockey DB.

Defenseman played a draft played for the Leafs in the 80s. I got the wrong. Wait a second. I'm looking at a list of Jake of, of John Gibson's endorsements here. And one of them is reverse mortgages. He goes, yeah, he goes. RP? John Gibson's 28, so he's not aging

out of anything. John Gibson has those commercials that run during the Price is right where Tom Selleck tries to get old people to sign away their homes to some fake bank. Oh, he goes. I just watched that documentary on the Price is Right, the guy that memorized all the prices. I don't know if you've seen that one. Fairly interesting.

Yeah, that popped back up on Netflix recently. I remember, because it's a couple years old. It's old. A couple years old, right? I was scrolling through. I was like, Wait, did I imagine this? Did I see this three years ago? They're just recycling at this point, as we do. So we just wanted to give a little bit of appreciation of Jake Odinger as a future of American goaltending.

And talk stars because you love this. People in Dallas want to hear your thoughts on where they go next, what his emergence means for the future of the team. And maybe how that changes things, right? I watched probably 90% of that series. Part of it's because I'm in Calgary, but part of it is just, Of course. And part of it is because I had to for the nightly post.

But I think the end of that series, by the end of that series, it was entertaining. I think people got in their heads, understandably, based on the first three games, that that was a slog. And that was completely true. But by the end of it, it wasn't. Yeah. Um, Ottinger's got the carry price thing where you watch him and you're like there's such economy of movement, you know, the demeanor, the mindset. I mean, especially in game, I mean, what, there's not a lot more to say about what he did in game seven, right? The only person who made more saves in the game seven was Kelly Rudy and that game went four overtimes or whatever.

The flames were throwing everything they could. Adam. It was not like the first couple games of the series where I was like perimeter shots and you know where I was sort of pumped up shot numbers, you know, this was this was kitchen sink stuff being thrown at Jake Ottinger and he was the Terminator. Like I was I was watching I was watching this like oh oh boy. Um, I just, which makes the stars more interesting by a factor of 100 now because they have the goalie. I think we can say that. This is not some random guy.

This is not some 29-year-old career AHL dude who comes in. He's 23. Who comes in and has, you know, goes unconscious for. Yeah. This is like franchise guy. This is a franchise guy. Pedigree.

All the stuff. U.S. national team. All the blue chip prospect. everything you want. Everything you could want. The only real reason he, everybody was like, oh,

he started the season as a third stringer or whatever. And like, okay. But that's just because the star's goaltending situation was so.

Yeah. Preposterous. Right? Where it was, where, you know, you got Braydenholt B and you've got,

how much is Anton Hudobinov left and all that. So like, whatever. Yes, Jake Ottinger started the season as a third stringer, but there's a major

asterist next of that. You look, you look at the star, and for as weird as that roster is and for as flawed and possibly oh, I don't know, unimprovable as it might be because of the fact that you're paying Ben and Sagan

$20 million between the two of them to look as, you know, past it as they have at points. Yeah. You look at what they have. Franchise goalie, top 10 defensemen in the league in Hayskin. Group of hints, Jason Robertson, Joe Pavelsky who's got, I don't, I mean, I know.

Ageless. I mean, they signed them for one more year and five and a half million dollars, but I don't, I mean, in the end comes for those guys fast. We've seen it happen. But like, I don't think that, I don't think that next year is the final year for Joe Pavelsky as a productive NHL player. They have the difficult stuff taken care of. they have a top line they have an alpha dog defenseman and they have a franchise goaltender so what now you know Rick bonus is out presumably is out his contracts up I mean it seems like a feta company that he's he's not coming back if he doesn't you know that's a pretty good job that's a

very good job I think of a sudden it's just like it's just those that's Sagan contract, you look at that and you're just like, what are, how do they, what's the solution here? And I don't know, I don't know that there is one. You just hope that for, for, for, for, for, for the star's sake that, you know, some good comes out of it because my God, he's, is it 10 and a half through, you know, four or five, four or five more years? Well, the cap is going up a million, so that should. I mean, I mean, I, I mean, I, Right. That contract, that contract goes through 20, 27.

He's got a full no movement clause. And he's at 9.85 for the duration of it. That is, that is brutal. So other than that, everything's fine. Yeah. If they can, if they can, if they can find some way to make that work. Here's what you do. You just pretend he's on an entry level deal and Jake Ottinger's getting paid 10 million.

and you're fine with your roster. Well, what do they do whenever? Well, that's... Imagine what they do in two years. Like, how does that work? Because you have, you have Jason Robertson, who's RFA coming into the next season, by the way.

You've got, you know, Ottinger at some point. Those guys between the two of them. I mean, you just broke into the league. You're worried about his extension now? I mean, again, I'm not worried about his extension, but he's, he's, you know, he's an RFA. You know, these guys are going to, I mean, they're going to start getting expensive and decision time is going to come. Like, what, like, what do the extensions look like?

What, what do the bridge deals look like? You know, he played four games on the 2014-15 national development team that we are checking off. So Jake is on our summer. Have you paid any attention? Have you paid any attention to the world whatsoever? I haven't. Are we being honest? We're in the trust trees.

We're in the nest. How is this Team USA doing? We're in the nest. I don't know. Probably winning a lot of games over there. I bet you they're in first place. There's no way to know for sure. I mean, how could anybody expect us to know something like that?

I think they're undefeated and working great. Can we, can I talk Penguins? really quick with you now that you're out. They are, by the way, U.S. is in third place in group B. They're three one and one. All right. Then a group with Finland, Swinland, Finland, Swinland. Finland, Switzerland.

In checklist of Vinliand. Because we're tight, I want to run Penn's caps and Bruins. Is there any one of those teams that has a future that doesn't include things getting really difficult in the next couple years? No. who of those three is a cup contender moving forward truly i would have said the penguin i would say the pittsburgh if it doesn't if jacob truba doesn't hurt sidney crosby they're playing right now i believe if kate dismiss core muscle doesn't yeah tear like wet tissue paper and over time there they're still

playing yeah but it happened and they're not and now and they're now and they're not they're in the offseason with two great big boys and one pretty decent size boy coming up to the UFA yeah I don't know or maybe the Bruins because he's still that you know there's still good young players in Boston once Bergeron decides that he's done they are too it's it they are a contender as long as as as Patrice Bergeron decides that he wants to play hockey I like that he like was saying, you know, shaking hands with everybody and everybody passed that video around. And then people were like,

wait a second, he's just super polite and does that every game. And I was like, oh, okay. Okay, never mind. I guess we got to do this for a few more days for a couple more weeks until he figures this out. Yeah, I mean, they're not going to be good whenever he's gone.

They might have to do a little, another version of what they did when they picked up all those first rounders and reset and just do the same thing, but only for kind of the next generation, the knackovoys and whatever. Like, the passer knack.

Like, good on them for pushing Carolina to seven games. I thought that series was entertaining, but they lost for all the reasons we thought they would lose, you know? Right. There's no, there's no second layer of production there.

There's not like Charlie Coil, Eric Halla. Taylor Hall was, you know, one of the best players in that series at points. But like there's just no Craig Smith. Craig Smith went zero zero zero. Yeah.

You can't have that. If Brugeron's gone, then I think you have to do a quick reset and try to flip it as quick as you can for McAvoy Passernet. I feel bad for Charlie McAvoy. He's never going to be a Norris finalist. It's never going to happen for him. He might have deserved it this year. He's just doomed to be like the Chris LaTang of the, the Chris LaTang of this generation where he's like, yep, really good.

He was the fourth best guy in the league this year, the fifth best guy in the league this year. It's going to happen to him a half a thousand more times. So I vote quick reset for the Bruins. I don't know what to do with the Capitals, to be honest. They're done. And they're done. Try to squeeze one more year out of the Penguins. I might.

I might. I mean, I would. If I were running that team. team, I would, I would say to have Gennie Malkin and Chris Letang, like, all right, we'll give you guys three, we'll give you guys three year deals. Uh-huh. How much you want. And then just, and then just take it from there. That's not just, honestly, guess what?

Guess what? Ain't going to happen. Ain't going to happen. You don't think that's what's going to happen? No, I don't. So, Latang walks. The Tang walks. Latang, because Latang is, is, is, Latang has more value on the open market.

than if Ganyi Malkin does. Yeah. Crystal Teng could get pretty much what he wanted from where he wanted at this point still. I don't know if the same is true with Malkin. I think Chrisa Teng is more apt to leaving than Noggeny Malkin, too. Yeah. But then you lose him. In my mind, you either have to go all in or all out.

Like bring them all back or you're in no man's land. That's why their last offseason was so confusing for me. I mean, I know you wanted to see, you know, you needed it. to see more from Malkin, sure, because he's coming off the injury. But like, there was no, there was no need to, there was no need to extend the uncertainty to Chris LaTang. Yeah. Bring them back.

I know. And now it's, now it's, it's tough to see it happening. And then Washington, Washington, they're, I think they're done. Nicholas, Nicholas Baxter was talking like a guy who was about to retire a couple days ago. He sounded done. Yeah. His hip is in bad, bad shape. If you want another indicator of how old we are,

is that Nicholas Baxteram is about to be finished. And they don't have, like, they don't have that, like the Bruins that next week. Like the best team that's really set up is the Bruins of those three, you can see doing something like what the Kings did. Yeah, because, because if, you know, you can have Marshaun and Pasernak and Macavoy, like that's something. Maybe Jeremy. Markshad's older than you want to be, by the way.

He is, but not old enough to know who the Ramon's are. I don't know if, I don't know if I buy that. That I have, like, I have driven the bus on, like, actually, I was an early adopter of, like, actually, Brad Marchand is, you know, pretty funny. He's a funny dude. So you think he was just messing with everybody? I don't think it's impossible. I think both outcomes are equally likely. I don't want to give Brad Marchion too much credit here.

Like, I think there's absolutely a scenario where he just, whatever. His girlfriend bought him a cool t-shirt for, you know, $75 or something, and he just wore it. But if he was serious there, I feel like that's a major step back for Marshawn. We're back in the era of him looking the side of people's faces. Which is like... Would you trade him because of that comment? I don't really care about the Ramones Like that's sort of that's sort of my thing

Is it like Look do I know about the hormones like Of course like just like any any little punk kid I loved them for a little bit And I know more than enough of them But I'm not out there listening to You know beat on the brat When I'm you know

As a as a 36 year old So it's fine I mean that the Brad Marchon You know Whatever isn't intimately familiar with the Ramones But I think In this is another Like salty old man take

I think that if you wear a band's shirt You gotta have some functional knowledge of them It doesn't need to be that much But you gotta be able to name Like a like a few Like a few songs Like Brad Marshawn should know I want to be sedated or something

Right He does I mean if he heard it I don't You can't You can't assume stuff with hockey players dude that's true there's a bit of a bubble here's a thing

one of the things that they did if we're talking about them doing a bit of a reset they had to make a tough decision with Milan Luchich and it worked out great really yeah well I mean it works the process was right I don't remember which of those they made the right decision

saved money got assets I don't know if the ultimate I don't know if there's a version of that on the Roans roster or any of these rosters where these teams could fast forward to reset by moving like a 34-year-old Brad Marchand who has a no movement clause. But I think for these three teams, everything, you know, you've got to make sense of I think in a weird way, in a vacuum, if you just look at, if you look at these guys as names on a ledger.

Yes. Which, then we sports group may. I think Pittsburgh is probably in the best spot there because of the amount of cap that they have coming off because you have Evgeny Malkin salary coming off in Chris Littangs in Brian Rust and then all of a sudden you're like wow that's

that's $20 million. That's not bad but that doesn't account for the fact that you have to replace Evgeny Malkin, Chris LaTang in Brian Rust and it doesn't account for the fact that you have a pretty important guy at the top of that roster who would rather you not have to replace Fgeti Malkin or Chris Littang. Right.

And that is when things get really interesting. Is if they come out of this, if they come out of this offseason, and there's no of Gennie Malkin, and there's no Chris Lattang, and it's Sidney Crosby versus the world. Yeah. Where does that put him? I'm not even talking about where that puts them as a hockey team. I'm talking about... What does Sid, how does Sid feel about that?

How does Sidney Crosby feel coming into the 20, 22, 23 season if dude X is the second line center and dude Y is the 25 minute a night, right side defenseman? Like, what does he think about that? and that is something that I'm not sure they've thought all the way through. You have to make Sid and Paperson part of the conversations. There's, you know what I mean? If it, you let him, you let him, you give him, you give him 49% of the vote. Yes, I think so.

Yes. That's all the matters. It's possible for this team, ticket 10 for the next three. three seasons, we'll say. And I don't know if that's the route they're going to take. Really, at the base of it, we're talking about great sentiment of their era. We're talking about Crosby, we're talking about Baxterum, and we're talking about Berseran.

We suspect Berseran could be done. Baxter's talking like he's done. Sid, and Malkin's in that conversation too. Well, okay, so it's like Berseran... Is not done. Sid is still an elite player. We saw it in these playoffs. We saw it all year. This is a different part of the equation. Bergeron might have had enough just generally.

Backstrom physically might... Yeah. The choice might not be his. So you have different circumstances there. But man. Yeah, I don't know. There's both... All three of those teams are in some soup.

Can I get your playoff? We have like one minute to get playoff locations on the record. Yeah, since we adhere to such a, you know, rigid schedule. No. Like, we have... We got to... to go to break. We have commercials lined up that are

advertisers. Contact us now. What is Tampa, Florida, your favorite series from last year is back. I'll happily be wrong about Tampa. Yeah. I'll be wrong about them at some point. But I'm going to let myself be wrong about them. I'm going to pick them to win series until they do not. And guess what? Yeah.

Work pretty well for me in round one. They won that round? Supposedly. I'm going, I'm going to go Florida because of Braden Point. Yeah. I think Braden Point, that's testing. That's testing my medal on Tampa all day, every day. He's been the engine of the last two years.

That shift. Boy, when he came back out, that shift, he skated. I was feeling it. I was in pain watching him. Just, I mean, my God. after he went to the boards initially. Like, you saw, you saw him reach for the old, for the old groin hip area. And you're just like this, this isn't good.

Yeah. So he, like, he, they don't have all the success you're referring to without Braden Point. And now Braden Point's not there. Yeah. I think Florida, Florida got past the, like, what if we're the best team in the regular season and choke. Yep. And we, they didn't. They, they, they powered through that.

And now, now they can, they can be Florida. I think we're going to see a little bit more. them reflecting how they looked in the regular season. So I'm picking Florida in seven. It's not easy. Tampa's the champ for everything you said. St. Louis, Colorado. I'd love the final way to pick the blues in this one.

But I can't. The wild, I mean, look, we all pick, we all, we all pick the wild. So who knows? The blues just, the blues just keep getting it done despite being, you know, an average five-on-five team. with goal-tending, you just don't know who's going to show up on a, on a given night. They score a bunch of goals. I think they're, I think they're a very fun team. But, and that's not to say that they can't win this series.

If I'm trying, I mean, I would love to try to find a way to pick them, but I just can't, I can't, I can't do it. I think, I think Pete did a good, Peter Baid did a good, did a good, did a good sell job for the, for Colorado getting out of the second round last week. I mean, I know it's easy to say just because they're as good as they are. But you're going to, you look at that group, at that group of Blues defensemen, and you're just like, how are they supposed to get this done? I stand by my comment to Pete last week. I think they lose game one, Colorado, and then come roaring back. Yeah, which is like, five or six.

Which is like the only way that they haven't, that's like the next, that's the next series template for them because all three of their last second rounds have followed one in one way or another. And I like how he broke it down. Like we've added up each of these second round losses, but they're not all equal, right? Yeah, I mean, that's what you say when you lose them.

No, I know, I know, I know. I'm sure Toronto's, I know we're not supposed to talk about them, but they're saying the same things. Rangers, Carolina. Oh, I'll go Carolina on this. The Rangers, the Rangers first round was bizarre because I thought they were going to have lighter work with the penguins. Like I thought, I thought the Rangers fixed what ailed them during the regular season in terms of, you know, adding cop and Mott and Petrono. And those guys, by the way, were pretty good.

Yeah. But that was just such a bizarre. What happened to them against Pittsburgh, like, shouldn't have happened. They got, they got destroyed in a few of those games. And I was not anticipating it. I think Carolina is a pretty bad matchup for them. And I think Carolina, getting past Boston, even though they, even though they crush them in the regular season is a pretty, that's a big, that's a big help, you know?

Yeah. So I like, I like Carolina in that one. All right. I do too, actually. So I don't think it's the Rangers time just yet. But they, they did, you know, they showed you something. They showed me something. I thought the Penguins were going to win that series.

I always, I never think the team that goes up three, two is going to lose. Never. I don't, you know what you mean? I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish we could go back and see like how many, how many times a team was down three, two, or a team was up three, two. And I pick them to win and sincerely thought that they would. It's got to be, it's got to be 99 times out of 100. I know. All right.

And then there's one other series that we won't, we don't have to get into. Who gives, who gives a shit? Doesn't matter. Calgary. All right. Let's, Calgary over, Evanston. Oh. I thought we weren't going to talk about it.

We got Kevin Kerr's coming up next. Curzey's already logging in. We see them coming in on Zoom. Get excited folks. We are going to talk some Lou Lamarillo, Barry Trots, coaching changes, whatever Curzee wants to talk about. A lot of off-season stuff. But we're going to take a quick break.

We will be right back. We are now back. Segment 2, joined by Kevin Kerr's writer of the athletic New York Islanders. Made the switch from San Jose to New York. And like, everything happened. way more interesting situation, I would say, in the Beaverton shop there for you. Yeah.

I mean, in the last few months of the regular season weren't all that exciting. The islanders were pretty out of it pretty much as soon as I got here. But it's picking up now. Yeah, it's, yeah. I mean, we've talked a lot about Lou in the move last week and a little bit this week. But I would love to hear your perspective. just, and, you know, we've all read everything you've written, but in, but like, as it's settling in, does it make any more sense, or are you, are you starting to, like, piece things

together now that you see more of the big picture? No, frankly, it is confusing still. Okay, good. It's not worse. Okay. Yeah. It's, it's not any less confusing, I guess. I'll put it that way, because, you know, when he, when, when Lou makes the announcement,

that he fired Barry Trots. He said the same thing that general managers across sports pretty much always say is we needed a new voice, right? Well, what does that mean? I mean, it's just sort of the go-to phrase for any of these sorts of these situations. We didn't really get any clarity on why they needed a new voice. Because when you look at the Islanders and what they went through this season, it was the 13-game road trip to start. It was the opening, the new building, having to play through COVID, which was before I got here in November. That was really before the league was canceling games or postponing games.

The timing, the timing on that just could not have been worse for them. It was like, it was like a couple weeks later. They were like, oh, okay, this is not how we can approach things anymore. Whoops. Right, right. And they had so many postponed games that coming out of the All-Star break, there was no way they were going to get back into the race because they had. the most compacted schedule of any team in the second half because they had to make up so many

games. So, you know, I don't think anybody puts the blame on Barry for the Islanders missing the playoffs. I think, frankly, they put more of the blame on Lou for bringing in, you know, you have Zadano Chara and Andy Green on the back end to guys that were just past their primes and couldn't keep up and didn't play with enough pace. And not enough scoring up front. And that includes some of the guys that he extended, like Kyle Palmary. It took him a while to get going and, you know, some players like that.

So, you know, I think the fan base is not all that, you know, happy with Barry's departure. I'm not sure I've ever seen a version of this where the coach gets fired and the fans turn on the GM. Like I'm trying to think of an example of this. Usually when a coach gets fired, fans, it usually happens a year after fans wanted to or whatever. Fans are usually fed up with a coach. This was, this is like, like, what's Lou doing? Like, people seem really legitimately upset about this. Yeah, and I think that gets back to just the roster construction in general.

And, you know, fans are still upset that he traded Devon Taves when you look at what Devon Taves is doing in Colorado. And that's a fair criticism. So, you know, and Barry was, I think. he's such an endearing guy and I think the fans could see that in his interactions with just, you know, with us in the media and he was very honest and I really did get the sense that what Barry was telling us

was exactly what he was telling the players or at least close to it behind closed doors and I think that goes a long way. You know, I know we're biased working in the media but I do feel like that goes a long way that a lot of fans, especially the ones that tune in day to day and pay attention to the day to day, they do appreciate when a player or a coach is very honest like that. And Barry was. Yeah, he was. Um, do you, any, when you've talked to people that run the organization or you kind of continue to analyze this, we, you know, Lou's not going to say much publicly. You know, we need a new voice. It could have needed that new a voice because they, they promote,

the assistant, which I'm fine with, right? So it's, it's not like even, I'm just trying to see, like, what else could, like, there had to have been something that Lou saw that he didn't like. You know what I mean? Right. Absolutely. And, you know, it's, as you sort of, I think, indicated, it's nothing against Lane Lambert because I think Lane was, is, has a great reputation around the league.

And he probably would have gotten a job somewhere else. And I know, you know, is reading Max speculating. and I'm sure you are too, Craig, about going to Detroit potentially. He's been connected to Steve Eiserman. Like, the moment Steve arrived in Detroit, people made that connection in the game and outside. Like, Lane Lambert's going to be, which actually made me wonder if that, you know, if Lou has decided Lane was going to be the next coach, you know, we're all just speculating because nobody really knows.

The cone of silence. Yeah, there's a cone of silence there. But, you know, if you think you're going to lose Lane Lambert and you think he's the next Mike Sullivan to John Tortorella or whatever, however you want to say it, then you preemptively make a move? I don't know. Maybe. But, you know, Lou, and you're right, Lou hasn't told us much, but if you read the press release that was sent out making the announcement yesterday, it mentioned that Lou was impressed with the way Lane Lambert handled the team when Barry had, you know, Barry, you know, Barry

missed about a two and a half week stretch. First, his mother died tragically in January, and then he came down with COVID-19. And it was two and a half weeks. The team only played three games. So they were practicing throughout that time, but because they had to cancel, you know, postpone all these games because of COVID, Lane was essentially running the day to day. And Lou mentioned on his conference call yesterday that he was a little bit more visible throughout that time than maybe normally he is. And he was sitting in on meetings and he was really observing the way Lane handled the team. And he came away impressed. And he said that in the press release and he said that again in the conference call.

So, you know, that makes you wonder. is Barry has to leave for a tragic situation. If he didn't have to leave over a death in the family, would Lou have been able to see Lane Lambert handled the team? And yeah, so I was a little surprised that he went that way, but it does seem pretty evident to me that, you know, Lou and some of the players also, you know, obviously he was getting player feedback because this announcement came a whole week after

the season was over after the postseason meetings are over. He clearly got some feedback. Wait a second. Wait a second. I thought he said he didn't consider anybody else's opinion except his own. What? Well, yeah, but he didn't say who he was listening to before he came to that conclusion. But I think it's pretty obvious. And, you know, I've had some people tell me that, too, as I've written, that, you know, there were some player feedback. And, you know, even Barry admitted that maybe his style is a little bit harder to play over the course of an 82 game season. And I talked to Scott Hartnell yesterday, who's with NHL Network, former player for Barry Trots. And he agreed that it tends to wear on guys.

But, you know, I don't think anybody came to the conclusion that because of that, you need to replace the coach. I mean, it wears on guys over normal seasons, let alone what the weirdness that they just experience specifically with the with the arena stuff and the in the in the COVID stuff right and this isn't a normal a normal season ending vibe for them right right Scott Hartnohue by the way was live tweeting a vasectomy earlier today in case you i saw that tweet this morning yeah go follow him on twitter um you know i'm good if you know not it's not lost on me that barry um Barry and brian mcclellan in Washington didn't split on the best of terms or whatever.

Like, whatever was happening. Like, there was a point where Barry Trots was getting fired and everybody knew it. And then he won a cup with the capitals. You know what I mean? Like, we forget, right? And then there was the split. And, you know, and then Barry goes to, I don't know if there's something that these guys see in the day to day that we don't see or something that makes them feel like, you know,

they're not as in love with Barry. The GM isn't as love is sometimes the results suggest they should. be. I don't know. Yeah. And, you know, Lou said that his relationship with Barry is fine and no one's really talked to Barry yet. I think Pierre got some sort of a statement from him that he said he's just going to take some time and sort of reassess. And Barry, too, to, you know, to look at it from his perspective, he did say in what we didn't know at the time was his final media availability after the final game, you know, he really indicated that he had a lot to handle in the offseason

in terms of his personal life because he's never gotten a break. And I'm sure that stems from the death of his mother. And, you know, frankly, I think that's why a lot of people were speculating that you might end up in Winnipeg because that's where he's from. And if he has to handle all these personal situations, that would probably make the most sense for him to be close to home. But, you know, he did sort of give off the impression that he was tired. And I think everyone was tired after the end of this season. But him may be particularly so because obviously he's the guy in charge. And even on off days, as we know, coaches are always working, right? I mean, he's also got the benefit, too, of being Barry Trots. Like, like, it's a lot easier to get

fired because that's what happened. It's a lot easier to lose your job and you're like, this is fine. I'll just be able to, I'll make as much money or more at pretty much a job of my choosing at some point. Yeah. At some point in the near future. He's got that, he's got that Trump card to be able to sit down and hang out for a little longer.

Like people will wait for him in a way that they wouldn't for Lane Lambert, let's say. Like they'll wait for Barry Trots. Yeah. And, you know, it's unlike the situation of Washington because he does have a year left on his deal and he's got a $4 million salary. And so, you know, he can just kind of chill for a little bit and figure out his next move. He's got that he's got that $4 million salary that the cabs did not want to pay him after that cup win. He's got it for another year. So like, and you can look at that two ways.

Either he can relax and if he wants to recharge. Look, I think everybody was gassed coming out of COVID and like, every. everybody, not just hockey coaches, all of us. And it manifests itself in so many different ways. So if you're Barry Trots and you're getting paid $4 million to do nothing for a year, that might be this. This might be best case scenario. Or you can say, if you're a team, I don't even know,

that wants to get them on a discount for a year. Like, and then overpay them or do, like, you can get creative, right? Like, and use that $4 million as a, you know, as a carrot or whatever. Yeah, I mean, he's getting $4 million. dollars regardless. Yeah. So you're like, hey. It's a pretty good, pretty good situation.

We're signing a Barry trust to an $800,000. Yeah. $2. Yeah. Then it jumps up to $4.5 million. But this year it's two. I wanted to ask you about Pete DeBore, Kersey, because you know him well.

And he, Vegas fires him yesterday after missing the playoffs. Yeah. It's interesting because I was surprised. actually when San Jose, I was surprised by that move. So, like, this is now twice where it hasn't worked out for Pete. But I think Pete is generally regarded pretty highly in coaching circles. What were your thoughts on that? Yeah, I would agree with that.

And if you go back to when he was fired in San Jose, it was only a couple months after he had made the conference finals in 2019. And the whole culture in San Jose went to hell when they, let Joe Pavelsky walk and you kind of hand the keys over to the guys like the Eric Carlson's and the Evander Caines and Logan Gature still getting used to the captaincy. The whole culture was blown up because of Joe Pavelsky and Pete took the blame for that and I remember talking to him the day after or one or two days after he got fired and I'm paraphrasing here but he basically said the vibe just didn't seem right from from day one. And the roster was also not very good from day one.

They had, if you look at their opening night lineup from when they closed out their season in 2019 losing to the Blues who eventually won the Stanley Cup and their opening night roster, then it's like, who the heck are these guys? So it was not Pete's fault that the sharks have started decline, which I think everybody realizes now. And, you know, I, at least from afar, it doesn't seem like he was much to blame for what happened in Vegas either. You know, all those moving parts, all these big personalities leaving, coming between Flurry and Eichel and the injury situation. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see where Pete ends up, but I feel like much like Barry, his reputation is still intact as he hits the unemployment. line. Yeah. What does he, so there's going to be fan bases that are really interested in Pete

DeBorn what he brings to the table. What did you learn about him as a coach in covering him so closely? Well, I do think the players really like him and respect him. And I think that that's, you know, that's pretty necessary with any coach that has success, right? You have to have that reputation of players, you know, respecting you enough that when you're tough on them, you're going to respond. And I think Pete always had that respect in San Jose of the players and particularly the older players. And I think that, you know, when you look at Pete, I think he does, you would classify him more as a veteran players type coach. And that's not to say he doesn't play the young guys, but he's one of those guys, much like Barry, I think, too, that the young players, they really have to

prove themselves to get in the lineup and stay in the lineup. And I don't think that's a bad thing personally. I know sometimes that doesn't go over with every fan base, but I also feel like every NHL fan base tends to overrate the young players and the prospects in the system anyway. Yeah, they all want the young players to play. They love the prospects. They always get mad at the coach for not playing them.

No, it's prospect, prospect derangement syndrome where everybody's, every, every player who gets four minutes a night's going to end up being a star in one way or another. Right. And that happened to Pete in New Jersey. That happened with the fan base there. That happened to Pete in San Jose with the fan base there. Probably not so much in Vegas. But, you know, it also happened with Barry here in Long Island where, or on Long Island, I have to say that, or people will jump down my throat. We can fix it in post. That's fine. Yeah. You know, a lot of fans were on Barry this season for not playing some of the younger guys, and particularly Oliver Wallstrom was one of those guys that he was tough on, and I think it's fair to say he was tough on Oliver. But I think

coaches like Pete, coaches like Barry, maybe they're a little bit tougher on those young guys because they want them to have to break through, not just on the ice, but emotionally as well. Do you think this is better for Matt Barzell moving forward? Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you asked that, because that's what I'm going to write either today or tomorrow. And I actually asked Lane about that yesterday specifically for that reason. And you do, I think that's fair to wonder. And, you know, Barzell is obviously the single most talented player on this team, at least offensively.

And, you know, you look at his season, his production was, you know, down. It's been down since his rookie. year before Barry got here when he was a point per game guy. But in the second half of the season, he was playing with Wallstrom and Zach Parisi. So you've got a rookie that hasn't quite yet proved himself. And Zach Perisi, who works hard, but is obviously past his prime, I mean, how is Barzel going to thrive with those two guys? So to me, he's got to be one of your top two centers. He was essentially the third line center. And a lot of of his points over the final few weeks were coming on the power play. So it's on, it's incumbent,

I think, upon Lane to find, to let Barzell maybe be a little bit more, I don't want to say less structured, but maybe have a little bit more freedom offensively to do the things that he, you know, use his God-given talent. But it's also going to be incumbent upon Lou to find some, at least one top line winger that has chemistry with barzell because it was it was a process and they never really figured it out this season to find effective wingers to skate with matt barzell Jordan eberle was one of them but he left obviously to go to seattle and they never really found someone else that that meshed with barzell oh my god if if you looked at their playing time breakdown over the first few months of the season it was just like let's see let's see who works with

Matt. Let's see if Matt works with someone else. Like just the breakdown, just in the sheer number of guys he had playing on his wing, you know, really up until, say, probably after the holidays. I mean, it was, he was, he was in the blender. And I don't know if that was, I, blame who you want, I guess, I guess for that. But there was the, it was a wild, wild lack of consistency, right? And you look at the, you look at the production early on for him, especially. You're like, oh, that's, that's why. It's because he's got two different winners every three games. Yeah. And, you know, I've seen a lot of suggestions that it was maybe Barzell behind the scenes,

complaining to Lou about, and I don't think that's fair. I don't think you can say it's one player or another player that was maybe hoping that Barry would leave or anything like that. But I do think that the coaching change could have a net positive effect on, on Barzel probably more than anybody else. And it'll be interesting to see how much Lane changes the systems because he's basically known as the guy that was an architect of Barry's systems. They've been together for so long.

So that'll be something, obviously, we're all going to be interested in when training camp starts. But, you know, you get back to the original question is how much of a new voice is Lane Lambert going to be over Barry Trott's? and how could, you know, how is that going to be a benefit to the team, ultimately? This is Mitch Korn state, does he leave with Barry or does he stick around? Legendary goalie coach. Yeah, that was, there were some reports out there and Lou wouldn't confirm anything like that yesterday.

He said all these guys are under contract. Yeah. I know they do have another goalie guy, Pierre O'Greco, who I, I assume is going, is not going anywhere. Curzey, thanks for showing up here. Thanks for all the insight, the hard work. It's going to be an interesting offseason for you, which is good. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys.

Appreciate it. This is the only good segment on the show. It's when we go into the comments that you guys leave in the athletic app on our particular episode pages, six tops. Only ours, by the way. Only ours. You have to find ours. Don't go to Ian's. read Mendes comments. No thanks.

Quick bit of business before we get to all this. Selky nominees announced Patrice Bergeron, Alexander Barkov, Elias Lindholm. I think that's about right. The only question there was whether Barkov missed too many games to be to be considered there. But I think that's fine. It's going to go to Bergeron. I'm glad to see him.

One for the road. One for the road. Yeah, right. Since he's definitely for sure retort. tiring. He shook everyone's hand, Sean. You saw it. You saw it like I saw it.

I love that. How funny is that? Oops. Oops. Wait a second. He does that every year. I'm glad to see Lindelm get a finalist not because he was he was really, really good for Calgary. But you were, you were, you loved him all year long. That one, that top line.

Top line was unbelievable, man. Between the Lindholm, the Lindelm, the Chuck. Johnny G. line. Linholm is an honorary American. He's a... He's American. He's Swedish. She plays for the flames. He's got two American lines as he counts. Um, Ian W. Says, you guys are great. I usually keep checking all day to see if you guys have released yet. That said, I don't always listen to it because by the time it finally comes out in the afternoon, I'm busy with my day. Well, sorry, Ian. We appreciate your, we appreciate your, uh, your kind words here. We're going to reshuffle our schedule

to make it more convenient for you. We record it first thing in the morning. Sean and I get up at 6 a.m. and we record from 6 to 7, like very diligently. And then producer Jeff takes like 10 hours to post it. You know what? It's definitely not 1102 Eastern right now.

Get with it, Jeff. I like that Michael Cage just said, listen to it Wednesday morning. We try to, in all seriousness, we try to make it as, you know. Yeah, we don't do it. It's not on time.

That's where I'm looking for. Time specific. Time sensitive. I was going to say time intensive, which we also try to avoid. I mean, we like off-season stuff anyway, so like we try not to even talk about games. I also, in terms of housekeeping, let's send off Dustin Brown as a great American in a proper way. Jeff, Jeff just slacked Craig and I. He says, it's the damn ad reads, which is true.

Because we always record those last and we're slap happy. and also think we're probably 40 to 50% funnier than we actually are. So let's take. On the ad reads? I know. Why do we have to keep re-record? Why can't we just run back last weeks? Buddy, when you get that sweet Smith AI money, you do whatever they say.

I will also say, I feel better about myself because I listen to that. There's a cop car coming fast right now, by the. Is there? Are you going to get arrested? I hope so. I listen to SmartList and to hear like Will Arnette have to do like this. same ad reads we're doing. It's really funny.

I feel a little bit better that you're like, hey, these are like superstars. I love it. I love. These are superstars. And he's going, you hire an at LinkedIn, LinkedIn jobs? And I'm like, Will Arnett has to do that? I love, I love listening to Doe Boys and hearing them, hearing them do the same, the same better health ads that we do.

So anyways, it's ads. Sarah 8th says, Relieved to know you exclusively save your sound editing for the Indiana Jones theme song and very good garage band tunes. Love the podcast. Go playoffs. Which is true. I was so psyched to hear Pete get played in with the Indiana Jones theme last week. Oh, so good.

Did you quote the hamburger last week? Is this what Sarah H is saying? Was there some hamburger quote that you gave? I don't know. I don't know. Oh, oh, no. I know what Sarah's talking about here. When you brought up Andrew Hammond last week.

Oh, that's right. And you're like, there's a big, big pull from. Big pull from 2015, okay. All my polls are from 2015. Yeah. Thank you, Sarah H. For appreciating my timeless. That way you can listen on Wednesday morning.

I like to make references from 2013 so you can listen any day of the week. Sarah H., she gets it. Jason B says he's disappointed that neither of us were pro-stars fans. We talked about the cartoon with Gretzky and Bo Jackson. I honestly think, I think that is like in this, in like the weird space of time. That should have been right in our wheelhouse. I think you were too old for it, and I think I was too young. Like, you were too old by a couple years, and I was too young by a couple years.

Yeah. Because if that came out in 1990 or whatever, you'd have been 14. Like, you had better shit to do at that point. Yeah, I wasn't watching ProStarts. And I was, and I was, you know, a little baby. Jason writes, my favorite recollection as a kid is eating ProStar cereal while watching Gratz Bowen, M.J., kick bad guy ass. Hell yeah. So they fought people?

I might have to go back and watch. Yeah, seriously. Michael. Sean, what was your, hold on, I got to ask a sugar cereal. I was not allowed to eat sugar cereal, so I don't have a reference here. Did you have any bad television sugar cereal that you had ate for like a six-month window of time? You know, we were pretty, as an adult, yeah.

No, nothing. No, my mom was pretty good about that, too. It was, it was, I had a lot of frosted mini weights as a kid, which, like, she somehow. Yeah, it could be worse, though. Like, that's better than, she was firmly anti-. Like, I specifically remember I was not allowed to ever. I don't think I've ever eaten a bite of cookie crisp because that was like the big little kid commercial at that point. We was like, oh, cookies for breakfast.

And she was like, absolutely not. I want to also read it. I think this is another Michael K comment who believes he's on the band list. Shadow band for Michael K. Here's how not to get off the band list, which you're not, but he doesn't want to name me by name. only referring to me as Sparty, and he says he's on team Sean. There's no teams here, Michael Kay. This is all one happy family.

For now. He says, give our boy Sean some love. He always puts up with your shit. That's right. What? I couldn't be nicer to Sean. Michael Kay, you're so out of bounds here. Craig's the shit disturber in these parts, baby.

My gosh. Okay. Michael Kay with another, this is a fair question. I mean, Edmonton ended up winning. If this continues, just the general Oilers and competence, because I'm sure he posed this after one of those games that they lost to the Kings. If this continues, is the time to fire Kanolyn for incompetence. All as well, it ends well.

They're in the second round, but it's, that seems, that team's tough to watch. Can I say this? You owe Mike Smith an apology. I do. I suppose I do. I mean, game one was a joke by him, but he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, rebound he rebelled it well after that you'll see good no we'll see we'll see what happens you know whenever the oilers are eliminated we'll see exactly exactly why it goes down Sean are you

already preparing your trade grade article when Leon and Connor get traded to Vegas for Eichol Theodore and Leonard um that's Leon and Connor yeah and Connor no here's what I do here's what I do know I don't know if you have that pre-written Sean or if that trade is going to happen but I do know the grades are an A minus and a C plus. It's all, I flip a coin whenever I do these. My favorite grade of the actual trade deadline series was, um, was when Florida traded Frank Petrano to, to the Rangers. And I gave it a C plus for the Rangers. And it was like a free

Frank Petrono because it was like for a third round pick or something. And people, and people went just ballistic. Um, and I was like, C pluses are C pluses are fine Everyone Everyone knows that Almost immediately proven wrong Because rapid trots

Has been fairly useful for them Can the devils please get trots Lucas C says Do you think Fitsy has him on speed dial From having been his captain in Nashville Interesting The Devils As a trots destination

They here's what I don't know if that's where I'm going if I'm very trots this is much as much about very trots as it is the team having he honestly he can he's this is the rare coach like the last time we saw this was Mike Babcock really and and you know he gets to pick and as we've said there are better options than the New Jersey Devils all due respect I said I don't know how much that organization and I'm not talking about Tompest Trail either I'm talking I don't know how much that organization values the head coach position. Oh, wow. That's unnecessary. What would we do to believe

they don't value the head coach? Because they don't pay for it. That's been an issue with them in the past. Here's probably the more diplomatic way to put it, is that there's a number that they're okay with hitting on coaching on coaching salary. And I feel like that is south of what Barry Trott's, understandably would want to continue his head coaching career. William T. says looking at the new podcast cover photo, The Athletic would rather list no hosts on the cover

than credit Sean and Craig on the image. Wow. Myrtle's Canadian bias knows no end. Here's what I think happened there. I think William T is speaking from a place inside the organization here because Myrtle's Canadian bias is something that comes up constantly, let me tell you.

You think William T is, inside the room. Is William T. really Corey Massassac? That is exactly what I was going to say. William, William T. is the alias for Corey Massac. Did you have something out there?

No, I actually requested that they scrub them because like there's so many rotating hosts and there's in and out and I just didn't want like people to feel like Pierre was on there and Pierre is just kind of parachuting in as a guest when he can. It just made no sense, and it just seemed like more work than it was worth to try to keep those

updated. I think we should have had... If you need to blame anybody, Corey, blame me. The podcast album art or whatever should just be our faces with everybody else's name listed very, very small. I mean, microscopic. We should have our own episode. I mean...

Mm-hmm. Chet... Um... Chet B says... Hey, for landing spots for trots, how about Edmonton? No, I think Jay Woodcroft is doing a fine job. I think Jay Woodcroft is a really good coach. Yep.

Like, that's a very modern. Like that, I think Jay is the future. Like, that kind of coach is the future of coaching in the NHL. So that's not the problem. If there's a problem in Edmonton, it's not behind the bench, in my opinion. Mm-hmm. We have a waffle house order. question from from Greg Tia what's your Waffle House all-star special order what I will say is that

my go to hash brown order at Waffle House. Smothered and covered and I like iced I like covered no I like covered and peppered I like I like cheese and jalapinos not not a huge onion hash browns guy I don't need ham or anything like that so smothered and pepper you don't eat ham or you don't need ham in my in my hash browns. I am I'm hash browns, one waffle and then eggs over medium

and some sausage. That's the move. I am, if I'm at the Waffle House, which I'm at much less frequently now that I live in Michigan and not Georgia, but I am a firm believer in the breakfast sandwich at Waffle House

that I've tried to replicate, you know, because they have, it's also good. The bacon, east, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich. I'm looking at her, and my mouth is watering. and they gave you a few pickle slices that you throw on there. Oh,

gosh, it's so good. When I... And then smothered covered and diced on the side. When I moved to Charlotte right after, right after college, and I was working, I was working the night desk,

one of the only places that was open, you know, at 2.30 or three or whatever time I, I would get out of there from editing Craig's sloppy, horrendous copy was, oh my gosh, I'm the cleanest writer. You are.

What you would do, and I've, and you have passed this on to me. There's some weird. I don't know if it's, is it genetics? I'm not sure how that works. Do you remember when you did not, you could not remember how to spell.

Restaurant? Filpola. Those are my two things. Restaurant and Valterri filpola, I can't spell either. And you covered Philpola for years. Years. Years.

And I edited you misspelling Philpla for years, years. I spelled it every, differently every time. Mm-hmm. They were trying to guess. Zs and Q's and M's in there. It's crazy. And now I am constitutionally

enable of spelling Philip Grubauer's first name. Oh. I can't do it. I get it wrong. Everybody's got to, everyone's having it wrong every time. And Alex Innegues is always the one who fixes it for whatever reason. So it's turned into a running joke where he's like, yep, you screwed it up again. So my restaurant.

Valteri Philpola and my other block was I always wanted to spell out the number 10. Yes. Oh my God. I still want to. Dude, I told you, I think that was one of the only things that I ever was like, you got to stop, you got to stop doing this. Because you spelled it out every single time and you said no. I said no. Sometimes you got to stand up for what you believe in.

And that's where I draw the line. I discovered five on five, our style for, here, welcome to athletic style book talk. God, this is so boring. Five on five, our style is to spell out five dash on dash five. According to Monica in our Slack channel. I do it a different time. I've been doing the numeral five dash on dash five. I like five view five.

Sometimes I fin, sometimes not. Sorry, Monica. I'm going to have to get that changed because it shouldn't, you shouldn't spell out five. Timby's. And that concludes style talk. Yep. Timby has a great way to close out the close. of the common section this week.

Falling up in last week's comment, Tim says, I want to be clear that I am in no way a Dallas Starz fan. Okay. It's okay if you are, Tim. You're allowed to be, buddy. You're a lot of you as Thursday. That said, I am sad they got knocked out. I miss the chaos of that team and what they bring or don't bring to the postseason,

but at least America's Canadian team is moving on. He speaks, of course, of the Calgary Flames. Yeah, it's good to see America's Canadian team. That's great reason. I don't know if we have done that yet. America's Canadian team. I think they're going to keep winning too. Sean's going to be in the middle of it writing about the Battle of Alberta

through the eyes of an American, which is postcards from the prairie, we're going to call it. I mean, it is, it is, who would have known that when we were asking Matthew Kachuk who were like, oh, yeah, does anybody actually, you actually give a shit about that or not? He seemed genuinely to care about it, which I was somewhat surprised. I thought he's going to make, yeah, up here it's kind of a big deal, but we all know.

No, I'm, I'm 24 and I grew up in St. Louis. I actually don't care about this. I don't care. But that was, I guess he has to care. That was not his answer. And I will tell you that I'm, I'm into it now, too. You should have seen.

For real, Sean? I, dude, the amount of excitement here, here right off the red mile in Calgary, whenever they, whenever they close down Dallas was, was unbelievable. I was trying to be cynical and, you know, jerky about it because, you know, it's a first job. It's my job because it was a first round series and whatever else. But there was something heartwarming about it. People were losing their minds. And then I was ready to go to sleep because it was going on for hours, just constant car beeping and people going crazy.

I think it was equal parts because they moved on and because they did. knew that, you know, the Oilers were the next, we're the next opponent because there, you could actually hear, you could actually hear Oilers suck chance like a couple blocks away. It was, it was, it was, it was very fun. So I'm excited for this starting Wednesday night. Well, we, we need America's Canadian team to come out of that. Um, I like, and the flames are fun. And also American Lynn Holmes, who we've adopted. I just want to, I just want to get the others out of the paint, man. Get out of there. Having Connor McDavid around is good.

Is a net positive. Watching him try to just strap the team to his back. It's fun to watch. Do that for a round or two and then move on. Bruce Boudreau is joining the Vancast. Bruce is as good a podcast guest as you can possibly get. He is entertaining and fun. So make sure you're listening to that.

Also, Arthur Staple. I'm glad he's back. Yeah, me too. Arthur is like to see a full year of him. God, Vancouver. What a weird team. Arthur Staple joins the roundtable tomorrow with Pizzo and Civi and Granger, talking Rangers.

And what else? What else to plug? Athletic Audio Plus and Apple Podcasts where you get Sean and I bonus episodes. Do that. You get a 30-day pretrial. Oh, no. 99 cents a month after that. Is today the day?

No, I don't think so. But maybe it is. We'll never know. And also, uh, make sure, this is a hashtag. Make sure always to use the hashtag T-H-S Tuesday Boys with five Zs. Five Zs. Oh, wow.

We're adding. I think the producer of Jeff added a Z to Z. And we have granted permission for the band name the Tuesday Boys. Yes. Yes. By the way. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Dude, I forget your name, but keep us updated on that. Our only request is that we get, is it we, is it we want T-shirts? Just give us the T-shirts. Where'd we settle on that with the Tuesday Boys or is it just Tuesday Boys as the preferred It's the, it's the Tuesday Boys. I had a long conversation with it with it, well, I shouldn't say long, conversation with a dude about it. A lot of times you see, I feel like from the years of 2002 to 2006, there were a lot of punk bands who had articles on their names where it'd be like the or uh or and that's the way they would start and they would drop them by

their second album so i'm that's my goal for for this dude is for him to start out as the tuesday boys and then get signed or whatever and then drop it up the it's cleaner is it the romones or it's ramones who is remote ramon razor razor ramon thanks for listening everybody sean someday try to try to pass that covid test keep working on it We'll get you back. We'll see. I might just stay. I'm now a proud Canadian taxpayer.