The Athletic Hockey Show - McDavid is having an all-time postseason… or is he?

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

On today’s Tuesday edition of the Monday show, Ian and Laz look ahead to Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final and discuss how the travel schedule is upsetting the momentum of the series, if Connor McDavid’s playoff run merits a Conn Smythe even if the Oilers lose, the Kings’ Pierre-Luc Dubois conundrum when the 48-hour buyout window opens, and more.Plus, The Athletic’s own Aaron Portzline joins the show to talk about another intriguing offseason for the “never good, rarely boring” Columbus Blue Jackets, as well as the importance of organ donation following his own kidney transplant, and, to close things out, The Athletic’s own Jesse Granger talks to the guys about watching Games 3 and 4 of the SCF with Sergei Bobrovsky’s goalie coach at The Goalie Guild’s Global Goalie Retreat, Bob’s mindset heading into Game 5, Conn Smythe odds, and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. We are back. It is your Monday slash Tuesday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. As always, kicking off your week. It's Ian Mendez and Mark Lazarus. And, yeah, we usually drop this episode on Monday's last, but we're doing a Tuesday pod here. So we got to remember that.

Tuesday. Is it still considered the Monday edition of the Athletic? Is that like a brand name? Or is it the Tuesday edition today? I don't even know how that works. You know what? like in ESPN where the playoffs, the NFL playoffs are on. And it'll be like the Monday night or Sunday night football graphic comes up and the

games on a Saturday. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I think this is still the, it's a Monday edition of the athletic hockey show. But the reason why we pushed this, I got to actually got an anecdote I can pass along to kick this off. So I was in a charity golf tournament on Monday, which is why I, and I do this every year,

it's Kyle Tourist, who of course played for a long time for Ottawa, Nashville, Arizona, all of that. Every year tourist helps out. He has a golf tournament here to help out a special needs hockey program that's just wonderful here called the Capitol City Condors. And Kyle always brings a bunch of some NHL guys show up if they're around. And so the group behind us had Mark Stone was part of the group behind us. Okay. So there's Mark Stone. Who else was part of that group? Mark Mathot, Ryan Spooner. Anyway, so when you're playing behind, NHL guys are waiting and they're watching you tee off. You feel like such a moron, right? You're like, my God.

But these guys were like, no, no, no, go ahead. Don't worry about it. And we were like, why don't you guys tee off first because you're going to be quicker? They're like, no, we're chill or whatever. Okay, so we tee off, whatever. The second hole we wrap up, I'm telling you last, I think we were 340 yards away.

Okay? I'm driving my cart away from leaving the green after putting. This ball comes right by my cart almost hits me. Mark Stone. And it was about... It's happy Gilmore. It was like 350 yards.

And the funny thing is I chatted with him just before we were tean off. And he's like, ah, this is only my second time golfing. He's like, you know, I just... I don't golf very much anymore. Second time this year, I mean. But he was like, I just, yeah, you know, my body and stuff. I like to recover. Golf's not always the best for me, so I like to take it easy.

Last, this thing was 350 yards. And it came... I'm like, what the hell? Don't you just kind of hate athletes sometimes? Like people who just... This stuff all comes so naturally to them. And we're all like working so hard to get like an extra five yards on our drive. And these guys just walk up and casually just destroy the ball.

I kind of resent. I resent people who are that physically gifted sometimes. Oh, it was the second time of the year. And then this group with Ryan Spooner and Mark Bethought Mark Stone, they ended up winning the tournament. No surprise. It's a best ball tournament. They shot a 21 under.

Now best ball, you're going to. to have a good score, but that's pretty, you're averaging better than a birdie a hole. That's pretty really. Exactly. I'm like there's, like, think about that, 21 under. This is one of the tougher courses in Ottawa. Anyway, so that's why we're recording on Tuesdays than a Monday. I was, I was tied up yesterday doing that.

But, but I got to tell you, I thought, it won't matter because the couple have been handed out on Saturday anyway, right? Yeah, I was on call for an emergency podcast, me and Max Boltman, We're like waiting. We were in a Slack channel basically for an emergency podcast in case the cup was won. And about 10 minutes into that game, we're all like, good night, everybody. See you on Tuesday.

Like I knew that they were going to pull Bobrovsky. And we'll chat a little bit later in the episode. We'll chat with Jesse Granger about the Bobrovsky thing. And by the way, Aaron Portsline, I'm going to drop by two, which is going to be fabulous because not only is he back on the job, which we're so thankful and appreciative of But the jackets, there's all of a sudden, like, the team to, to pay attention to and the news cycle. But, but like, Bobrovsky, you knew he was going to get pulled, right?

Like, you just knew what's up. Okay, Yankham. But do you think in any way, shape, or form that the Oilers performance in game four was similar to the Dallas Mavericks in game four where it's like, okay, one last stand, we're going to push back, not in our house, not at home, yada, yada, yada. And then the Panthers will emulate the same. Celtics, game five, we got this.

It's the gentleman sweep, right? You win the first three. You let them have game four on home ice and you get to go win at home yourself in game five. This is nothing new in pro sports in the playoffs. We see these kind of play out, you build up all this false hope and then you just lose in game five. I expect Florida to win tonight, but I mean, would anybody be utterly shocked if Edmonton

wins? Of course not. I mean, they've been in every game. They've been competitive in every game. They've been a better team in some of these games. But Brodsky's just been better. And now that, you know, you cut him, he's not a machine, he's a man. You will see how he bounces back from this in game five. Didn't it surprise you at all that the last time there was a sweep in the Stanley Cup final was 1998?

Detroit, Washington, 1998 is the last sweep. And you got to remember, there was a window of time there in the 90s where the cup just always ended in a sweep, right? New Jersey, Detroit, sweep, Colorado, Florida, sweep, Detroit, Washington. It was like sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep. We haven't had one in 26 years. Well, that's kind of by design, right? That's the whole thing of the NHL salary cap is there aren't super teams anymore.

No team is just that much better than any other team, whereas, you know, like, you could watch Boston and Dallas in the NBA finals, and it was clear that Boston was a vastly superior team, and nobody would have been shocked if there was a sweep there. In hockey, it's really hard to sweep because you're going to get gold. It's very rare for a goalie to just get blown out and four straight games like that. The teams are so level, they're so equal. We very rarely see even five games series in any time in the playoffs outside of the first round when there's a team like Washington that doesn't belong in the playoffs at all.

By the time you get to the conference finals, these teams are pretty well matched, and you're going to have a lot of that. Let me ask you this. It feels like that game four was like six and a half weeks ago. This schedule is absolutely destroying the stand. Stanley Cup final. I understand, look, I covered the Western Conference final, had travel nightmare after travel nightmare trying to give Dallas, Edmonton, and back. I get why there's a second day in between these travel, on these travel days. I understand it. It makes sense. It's just fricen hate it. It's awful. Like, it's just, there's no momentum in this series. It's just dragging,

and I, I sense no excitement in the hockey world that the Stanley Cup might be won tonight, because it just feels like we're just stretching it out so bad. It's brutal. Yeah. I tend to agree with you that the two-day breaks between the games when the series shifts. While I understand it from a logistical standpoint, you're right. It is zapping the momentum. And it also makes you wonder, and I've always agreed with your take that there is no game-to-game momentum. Like once the puck drops the next game, it's its own entity. I subscribe to your theory on that.

But it sure feels like nothing Edminton did on Saturday. really matters. And, and, but do you think, is there a part of any Oilers fan, like, after 5-1 that you were kind of like, okay, okay, just stop scoring, like, don't use up all your goals like the, you know, that was me watching the Mets score 14 runs in Texas after going like a month where they scored one run combined. It's like, what are you doing? Save some of this. Spread it out, man. So, McDavid on Saturday, and I like the fact, it was the Oilers kind of bottom six guys that got the party started on Saturday, but then McDavid, in the second frame in particular,

ended up with three points, three assists, and now he has broken. Wayne Gretzky's single playoff record for assist. So a single season playoff record for assists now belongs to Connor McDavid. And I think any time you pass any Gretzky record, it's caused for you to be like, wow, that's impressive.

So if I ask the question, just sort of out loud, is Connor McDavid having one of the best postseason runs we've ever seen from a player? How do you answer that question? This is a dicey territory here because I don't want like someone to aggregate this and say, you know, idiot at the athletic says

Connor McDavid is postseason is overrated here. But it doesn't feel like he's having this dominant playoff, does it? I mean, he's got six goals. Barkley Goodwin. had six goals. Arturie Lekinen played two rounds. He had six goals. It's just like McDavid's regular season. He went from 64 goals to 32.

His goals got cut in a half. And that's kind of what we're seeing here in the playoffs where he's just getting, I mean, he had 100 assists in the regular season and he's got 32 assists in these playoffs, which is just an absurd number. And I think 12 of them are primaries at 5 on 5. He's undeniably producing a lot here. But for you to have

one of the great post seasons of all time. Don't you got to score more than six goals? Don't she? I mean, and he had one of the best goals we've ever seen. I wrote a whole column about it, like waxing poetic, about how great Connor McDavid is. Like, there's no player in any sport I want to watch more than Connor

McDavid. He is singular. He is one of one. He has six goals, though. Like, does he feel like he's having an all-time postseason? You know he wants to produce to score more goals than this, right? It's a strange thing, like, how much do we value assists in this league? There are some assists that create the goal,

that are clearly the reason the goal was scored. How many of those are we seeing out of McDavid here? It's kind of a weird situation, isn't it? It is. And then I've seen the chatter. I'm not saying I agree with it. I've seen the chatter that McDavid's postseason has been so great, so dominant,

that regardless of the outcome of the Seattle Cup final, he should be your cons my trophy winner as playoff MVP. And I don't agree either. Like what I think of, if you're going to hand out the Kahn Smythe to somebody on a losing team, to me it's the J.S. Jaguerre in 03 with the Ducks. It's Ron Hextall at 87. It's the I dragged my team almost single-handedly to the precipice of a championship, and we just fell short.

If you're saying McDavid did that, I think you're selling dry sidel a bit short. I think you're selling Hyman a bit short, Evan Bouchard a bit short. So I don't feel like he single-handedly grabbed them by the collar and pulled them. And you know what's interesting is that the only time ever in NHL history that a consummate trophy went to a losing team in the cup final and the winner was a skater, not a goalie, was Reggie Leach.

in the Flyers Hab series of 1976, the Flyers got swept in the final and Reggie Leach got Con Smite. Wow.

Now he had 19 goals, I believe, in that, in that playoff year. If I'm not mistaken, Reggie Leach had 19 goals in the playoffs

in 16 games. The only way to me you can justify something like that, a lose, like I remember the Jaguer run and it was justifiable. It really was.

his job getting the ducks that far. But there has to be like no great candidates on the other side. And Florida's got lots of them. You know, you could, Sasha Barkov is so easy to say he should be the consmite winner. Sergei Bavrobski, Gustav Forsling. Like there are viable, excellent candidates on the other side. So you can't justify, you know, giving it to the losing team.

If, you know, Edmonton goes on to lose, we should say, because who knows. But I don't, I don't, I just, I don't see how you could justify giving it to, and again, he's got six goals. Got six goals. Like, I know he's got, 38 points is an insane number. He is clearly having a great postseason. He has come up big in the biggest moments. This is not to disparage the greatness of Connor McDavid,

but to give him the consmite if Florida wins tonight would be to disparage Alexander Barkoff. Would be to disparage, but Bobrowski has done, what Foresling has done. There's just other better candidates right now. It has to be such an unbelievable run in order to give it to the losing team. But this brings up a different question. Do you like how the cons might is a playoff MVP,

or do you prefer what the NBA does, which is just have a finals MVP? Yeah, you know what? It's a great debate because I like the cons smite. I like it being like, look, this is a full month marathon and the totality of it. But a lot of times we see that it's not, the totality isn't rewarded.

It becomes a finals MEP or maybe a conference finals and final MVP. Like I think, I always think about, and I talked about this a million times, in 2013, my first year on the beat, Patrick Kane, before game four in Los Angeles, in the conference final, was sitting at his stall, staring at the ground, talking about how he and his dad were watching YouTube clips of himself,

scoring goals in big games to, quote, remind myself that I am a good player in this league. That's how bad a playoff he was having. and then he scored a few goals going down the stretch and he gets the consummate over Corey Crawford. This usually does become a last two rounds award to anyway. Yeah, and I think what happens is that it just, it's a recency bias. It's also the games are bigger.

It feels more important. So you tend to skew it. And I understand if you put a little bit more weight on the last two rounds, I understand it just because the games are more important. But yeah, I think if you go to tattle the whole thing, the total sum of what you did over two months, Bobrovsky, it's going to be hard to say. Like, you think about that save.

I always think about the save he made on Dumba in that Tampa series. Like, it was like he's been on fire. And what's interesting, too, is when the writers or whoever was voting back in the day and they gave it to Reggie Leach in 76, when Philadelphia got swept in the final, I just looked it up. Ken Dryden that year as a goalie was 12 and 1 in the playoffs with a 930 save percentage and a one night and a one ninety three goals against he lost

Bobby Clark just threatening all the writers or something that he'd beat them up if they didn't vote for what happened here it's wild you know gila fleur at 17 points and 13 games they lost one game dryden was almost unbeatable and it didn't matter you got there better be just some bizarre situation like the jiguer run to justify giving the cons might to a team that did not win the championship. How, I mean, it kind of goes back to, like, do you have to be a playoff team to win the Hart Trophy? Like, how valuable are you if you didn't win?

But I do, I do, I brought it up just as a talking point. I do like the Kahn-Smite version better than the finals MVP. Being the MVP over four or five, six games isn't that impressive to me. Doing it for two long months, I mean, the playoffs are like a season unto itself. So I like, but it is important to remember, like you said, that Bobrosky's been doing this since round one. He had one of the greatest saves we've ever seen, and that was like 17 years ago, it feels like,

but that was during this playoff run. And, you know, you have to reward the totality. And McDavid has been great. If Edmonton were to come back and win, of course, McDavid's going to win the consmite, then he'd deserve it. But it would be a serious disservice to what Florida has been able to do

to give it to McDavid, even if he loses. You know, one of the things I think a lot of hockey fans look forward to is that the minute that the cup is handed out, whether it's Tuesday night or Friday night or Monday, whenever the cup gets handed out, that's the official start of the offseason in the NHL. And it's especially particular of note for the buyout window. Because 48 hours after Gary Bettman hands over the Stanley Cup,

the buyout window opens for teams around the league. And there's one name and by our colleagues in Vancouver. Dranson Harmon, Thomas Drans, Harmon Dale put together a piece earlier this week looking at, hey, here's a dozen guys that maybe are buyout candidates when the window opens 48 hours after the cup.

And I got to tell you, as you scroll through, there's some names that you're, okay, that makes sense, yeah, Jack Campbell, he's kind of fallen out of favor, Connor Sherry in Tampa, yada, yada, yada, you go through the list. The name that is so fascinating to me is Pierre Lug Dubois. from the LA Kings.

And the reason why this is interesting, and the reason why maybe if you're L.A., you're hoping that the Stanley Cup final ends in game five is that Pierre-Luc Dubois's birthday is on June 24th. He turns 26. And why that's important is that before you turn 26, you can buy out a guy's contract for one-third of the value, not two-thirds.

Meaning if the Stanley Cup ends on Tuesday And the LA Kings were to exercise the buyout option on Pierre Luke Dubois, who by the way, signed an eight-year deal with an $8.5 million cap hit last year. They would end up saving $31 million by buying him out before his birthday. If it goes past his birthday, that savings is down to $15 million in change. So look, it is postseason availability. Rob Blake, King's management, we're like, nope, we're not buying them out. But would you not at least contemplate it for one third of the value, Las? Well, yeah, I mean, and you're talking about after that date, it's double the cap.

They'd be paying, he'd be on the books until 2038, like strong Bobby Bonilla vibes here. And the difference is, you know, an extra $1 million on your cap for all those years or an extra $2.2 million. That's a big difference. I know the cap's going up, but that's, that's a plight. player. That's like a fourth line player that is the difference till 2038, which it seems like the distant future. Flying cards. We should have flying cards. Jet pads. It's all going to happen. World peace. Utopia. Is this a stupid rule? Like that you have to wait until the Stanley Cup final

is over? It's been the offseason for the Kings for quite some time now. Is this a stupid rule that you have to wait until the state. I know the league hates having any news during the Stanley Cup final, which makes Columbus firing Pascal Vincent during the final quite interesting because that usually is not, that's usually frowned upon.

But shouldn't it be whatever your ball season starts? Why do you have to wait for these buyout windows when a technicality like this could cost $30 something million just because Edmonton got an extra win in the Stanley Cup final? I mean, this is a stupid rule, isn't it? I agree with you. Like, especially when you're now looking at the potential of a June 24th conclusion of the cup, right?

Like, like, it just seems like everything's being shoehorned into this tiny window. Needless. As writers, we love it because on, by July 3rd, we're all done. Like, you watch like a baseball off season and that shit drags out until like late January. And it takes forever for these free agents to sign hockey. We just rip off the band-aid. The cup ends. Bam.

Buy out. Bam, draft, bam, free agency. Yeah. Canadians go off to their cottages and they're never heard from again. Like, it's beautiful. But it's also really stupid in a lot of ways that we grab it into this tiny little space. Yeah. Well, well, see, it's going to be really interesting because I think every year there are some buyouts.

But to me, Pierre Luc Dubois, paying them through the year 2038, might, you think that's too long? I don't, it might be the smart thing to do because the cap hit is bad for like, for how What is it? It's bad until like 2031. You're paying like a real cap hit. And that's a lot of years. 3.8 is the cap hit at its highest. And that comes in for a few years,

2028, 29, 2030. And then it really goes down. Yeah, like that's 30th aspect of this. It's not a major burden. I know, first of ridiculous, we're talking about the 2030s with Pierre-Dibois here.

But it's like, it's not a major burden. It's like a bonus overage. It's like a million. or maybe two, depending on when, if the Oilers win tonight, it's not, man, I think I might do it. Like, sometimes you got to, you got to bite that bullet and like, look, this player is not working. It's too, we're the cap at $8 million is just too much. We don't really want him on this team.

It's not, like, otherwise it becomes, how long are we going to be talking about Dubai in every single year? I'm not going to buy him out this year and, you know, all the, like, nobody likes being on that worst contract list. Darnell Nurse does not like having that talked about. Brent Seabrook did not like having that talked about. And DuPois is not going to like having that talked about. It might be the best for all parties to just buy them out and start fresh

and just deal with the consequences of, hey, you signed a bad contract. Here's your punishment. Sometimes you just got to sit there and eat it. All right, Laz, tell you what, we are very excited to bring in our guests here on this Tuesday-slash-Munday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. Let's say hello. And a huge welcome back to our pal. Aaron Portsline is in the house.

How are you, my friend? Doing very well, guys. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you guys. Portia. It's been a while, obviously. How are you feeling? Tell us about these last, God, the last year, I guess it's been.

Yeah. Well, how long does this podcast go, guys? You can sell advertising. Yeah, not an easy year, but we've reached the, you know, the end that we'd hope. to with the I had surgery on April 26 the kidney transplant thanks to Lindy Noel shout out to Lindy Noel the angel on earth who donated a kidney she works for the blue jackets which makes this a pretty unique story yeah last season was spent kind of fighting well not kind of fighting through dialysis three

days a week four hours at a time I set it up so I was in the chair at 5 a.m. so I'd be done at 9. And on certain days, we'd be able to go to the rink after to have access to practice and players, but made for some long days. But we made it through. The doctors at Ohio State have been great. Certainly my family and people around me have been great. It's been a little over seven weeks in surgery, and I'm not fully recovered yet, but well on the way. And the blood test,

look good, the numbers look good, so hopefully everything's pointed in the right direction. Well, and you mentioned Lindy Lindy-Nole's name, and I think it's really important that we talk about that ability to donate

organs and organ donation here. And obviously, I mean, what were your emotions like when you found out who it was that was donating a kidney to you? So it was interesting. I had I was so fortunate to have a number of people close to me stepped forward and get tested to be a living donor. Somewhere between 15 and 20 people took that step, which is incredible.

But there were, you know, there were three instances where they made it through all of the testing and got to the final stage, which is a visit to the clinic and they do a battery of test, they retest, they do all sorts of stuff. and on each of those three occasions it fell apart for a truly bizarre reason right at the last second heartbreaking and then i'm in the middle of a nap which was an absolute must on dialysis days and the phone buzzed and it was the transplant coordinator who said hey i think we have a match for you and that was the overwhelming part but she didn't tell me or wouldn't tell me she was sworn to secrecy as to who the donor was immediately.

So I had to wait a few days to find out who it was. And then, of course, Lindy does the great move. You may have seen the video of surprising me with the news. So, yeah, the truly, there are two emotional moments, finding out that there is a match that the end of the light at the end of the tunnel is now visible, but also finding out who it was. I knew Lindy. I knew that I liked Lindy.

We got along very well, but we didn't have, we weren't like fast friends who got coffee and went to lunch and those sort of things. So her willingness to step forward to someone that she knew only a little bit is just incredible.

And obviously me and my family will be eternally grateful. And hopefully more people can be like Lindy Knoll, for sure. It's an incredible reminder of what you can do for another person and how important organ donation is and getting tested and things like that. You've been very open about this since the beginning, since the beginning of the season. How aware were the Blue Jackets players themselves about it? And I mean, is this a thing that comes up in conversation when you're in the room or were they kind of in the dark on it?

I had a few veteran, older guys. I think the younger guys were kind of freaked out at the idea. Older guys, Werensky was great with it. Sean Corrali. The older guys were, you know, real, really personal and have gone through some stuff themselves. Damon Severson, certainly. The coaching staff was great. And I didn't really want it to be a talking point all season.

It was like just going to keep your head down and get going. But we made the decision with Ohio State to try to use whatever platform. we had to generate interest in being a donor. And I think a lot of the players responded to that and shared a certain post with that too because they saw a greater cause for sure. And you know, the way it works in Canada, I don't know if it's the same way in the United States

and you guys can tell me, but basically every time we go to renew our driver's license here, there's a little form and we just take a box of, yes, you're going to be an donor. Is that how it works in the U.S. as well? Yeah, that's one way to do it. You can also write it into your will and state it that it, you know, in a legal sense that this is what you want to do. The tough thing here in the states, there are 90,000 people, 100,000 people waiting for an organ, 90,000 of them are kidneys. And it's almost unanimous. There are some people of religious, of a certain religious persuasion that are not willing to be organ donors. But most people, think it's a good thing and are willing to do it, but a percentage of them have articulated that in any legal, meaningful way. They want to, they would be willing to donate their organs,

but it's not shown on their driver's license. It's not written into their will. And it can be, I grant you, a difficult conversation to have. It's kind of like doing a will in the first place, like who wants to spend a day thinking about the inevitable when it's a beautiful sunny day out, But so the push was on with myself in Ohio State to get people to really make a step forward to doing that and making it a point to make sure that is the case. And if it's not on your driver's license this time, it can be eight years until you update your driver's license in some states. So that's a big span of time. So we've asked people to do what they can in their state to get on a list of or, you know, to have that conversation with their family. The great thing about kidney donation is you can live a long prosperous, prosperous, healthy life with just one kidney.

So that's why so many more kidney transplants, because you don't need someone to lose their life for you to gain yours back again. The national registry is at donatelife.net. But there's Lifeline, Ohio. There's all sorts of different. I don't, you know, I'm not sure with the Canadian. a site is for that. This is Donate Life America. But it's not, it's certainly not hard to find through a simple Google search. Well, the whole Ockyworld is so grateful to Lindy and we're also glad you're back and you probably

thought you were going to be able to ease back in this time of year and you walk into the, all of a sudden, the coach is fired and Patrick Lina is on the way out and I got a new GM and oh my God, there's no easing into this at all for you, is there? Yeah. The Blue Jackets off seasons are so often more exciting than their seasons. I think this is the case here. Yeah, it's been, I missed the GM hiring. I was not clear to resume skating at that point. But yes, it came back last week and here we go.

Line A new coach, now a coaching search. The good thing is this will be their fifth coach since 2021. Think about that. So my coaching Rolodex, I'm still old, I say Rolodex, is still pretty updated with cell numbers. And, you know, although I'm calling people and saying, well, what about now? What do you think about this time again? Still interested?

That's crazy. That's got to be, I don't know, I don't know how you looked it up. That's got to be a record. Five coach. This will be, what you said? Six coach. It's the fifth coach. Fifth coach in 43 seasons.

You know what? As a Cleveland Browns fan, it doesn't seem that preposterous, but it probably is. That many quarterbacks for the Browns. Yeah. No, yeah, it's, it's, well, well, let's, let's kind of start working backwards here. Obviously, on Monday they announced that Pascal Vincent is not coming back. And as you wrote in your column on Tuesday, hey, if you're Pascal Vincent, you're, you get offered the job after Babcock gets like, oh, you're not going to say no. But my goodness, this guy was dealt a pretty unfair hand here, wasn't he, Portie, where it, it was going to be really tough for him to be successful, just throw.

thrown in there. Yeah, and thank God for him he was able to get an extra year on his contract. Because not only did they not do many favors at the start, here it is mid to late June when you're being cast out there when most of the jobs have been filled around the league, too, so no favor on the end either. And to be clear, obviously, Waddell's got the right to do this. And I'm not even saying that it's the wrong decision necessarily, but I think we should all be very careful about making too many, drawing too many conclusions about Pascal Vincent, his ability to be an NHL head coach based on this one season in Columbus.

It just, they have so many things to work through. So many, I mean, Patrick Linae played 18 games. Elvis Merzleekins, the supposed number one goal, he played 41. So you've got 8.7 and 5.4 million, you know, not making any meaningful impact towards a winning hockey team. You can't have that anywhere, much less in this group where the rest of the guys are all mostly like 20 to 22 years old. So not a recipe for success. He did some truly bizarre stuff. Like it didn't seem at times that he recognized what.

this situation was. But again, you know, if you're him and you, you think you're on borrowed time, I don't think you're coaching for tomorrow. It's probably hard to justify personally coaching for the future when you're just trying to hang on to today. Where do the Blue Jackets feel that? Because you're right, because he didn't like, he kind of underused guys like Fantilli and Cylinder and Yurecheck and, you know, there's so much talent now on that team because of all the bad years they've had. They've drafted a lot of good young players. What's the timetable here?

What's a realistic timetable for Columbus to kind of get back into relevance? I mean, to me, and I, you know, last season, somebody would ask the question, what's a realistic expectation? Playoffs, Stanley Cup. You're like, okay, guys, guys, in 59 points last year. Okay? Like, come on. So I thought that was preposterous.

And I think it's preposterous to say that. Now, to me, the goal for this season is to play meaningful games down the stretch. Get a taste of that. They have so many guys that have so far to come to be bona fide NHL players. There's lots of promise here. It's not without hope. But, my, I mean, holy smokes, they've got a lot of growth still to happen. To me, that's what this season should be.

Be competitive, be more competitive. you hope to see the young players, fantilly stay healthy and really start to emerge as impact players, not just players that can hang on in the NHL. They need some of these guys to really bloom. So to me, that's what it should be. And so I don't know if they want a veteran coach. I don't think it's a win now coach type situation.

Maybe it's a grow with me type job. A HL coach makes sense. But it is certainly an interesting team. I'll branch to that. I love that we're sitting here the morning of what might be the day the Stanley Cup is awarded. And you got like sad sack bunch here, Columbus, Chicago and Ottawa talking about, oh, maybe they could play a meaningful game in March. Imagine.

Right. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. This is the world. Yeah. This is like the meeting of the damned, the three of us getting together. So you talked about maybe an AHL coach fits the profile, maybe, like whoever.

So what are some of the names? Because you know what's funny is that, you know, three, four weeks ago, there was five or six openings. There was like this sort of feeling of this game of musical chairs. You don't often get to the end of June and need to fill out a coach. So who are some of the names even available here? Yeah. And not to belabor the point, but if you're Pascal Vincent, they hired Scott Arnela's coach in Winnipeg where he's still very highly thought of.

and they just hired Davis Payne as an assistant coach in Winnipeg. Hard for me to believe he would not have been a candidate for both of those jobs. Well, they're filled or they're gone now. As for the Blue Jackets, to me, you know, Todd Nelson is coaching Hershey probably to another AHL championship, the Calder Cup. This would be his third AHL title, I believe. He has a history with Waddell in the Atlanta Brasher's organization as both at HL coach and an NHL assistant.

That's a number. That's a name. Honestly, if there were no relationship with Waddell that would jump off the page, because I think a lot of people think that Todd Nelson is due for an NHL job. Dean Eveson had great regular season success with Minnesota. He has turned down apparently some assistant coaching positions because he wants a head coaching position. Maybe this is it. I think probably the most qualified guy out there is Todd McClellan, probably the most

expensive guy as well, but a real, you know, obviously a proven veteran coach. Maybe they look at Dave Haxdahl too as a real tactician type. Mike Volucci's the guy who has a history with Waddell. He's been in the HAL for a while now. Worked closely with Don Waddell in both a front office capacity, but also as a HL coach. So those are some names, I think, in the early going that kind of emerge. And whoever gets that job is going to, you know, be missing one of their top snipers in Patrick Line, probably. What is, what is the value in your eyes of,

I mean, Patrick Lai, he's a former 40 goal score. He's 26 years old. Right. And he could probably be had for a song right now. Like there's a lot of teams that are like, oh, they have to be looking at this as, it's a reclamation project, but he's only signed for two more seasons. Yeah. You know, what do you think the value is externally for a guy like Liney? You know, I think just some of the, things you said there, Las, explain how some teams might be really intrigued by him.

At 8.7 million, you know, the cap's gone up. I'm not sure it's gone up enough for that contract to be moved without the blue jackets hanging onto some of it. But we'll see. Can he get back to that? I mean, he's been in Columbus for three and a half seasons. He's played 58% of the games, right? Now, there's been some stuff there. His father passed away. Took some time away. And he's certainly been injured a lot. But that's a red flag for a lot of people.

Just a lack of availability. And, you know, because of that, I mean, even when he's played, he has not looked like Patrick Lining other than like a 20-game stretch in 22, 23, where he put up like 14 or 15 goals. But since he's been in Columbus, I wrote this down because it's. It's mind-numbing, but he has 64 goals, which is 137th in the league in that span. He has 138 points, which is 190th. That's a guy you're paying $8.7 million. This is not just line A being ready for a change. This is the Blue Jackets being ready for a change, too.

So, you know, it might have to be a really good song, but I think you're right that he could be had for a song. I mean, and this is Don Waddell's thrown right into the fire here, right? It's not like he can just ease into this. I mean, what do we think about what his philosophy might be? Like he's coming from a Carolina organization that had been a perennial Stanley Cup contender here last five years. And now he comes into this situation in Columbus. Like what do you think about his outlook, his vision, all of that stuff?

Well, first let me tell you this. Don Waddell, he dropped this little nugget on me the other day. he and his wife have bought 24 homes, different homes, in 38 years. Good God. Think about that. There's a lot of closing costs. Life is an NHL executive. You know what?

As experienced as he is, this is a unique opportunity for him because he took over in Atlanta when it was expansion. And as you guys may remember, the expansion rules were so different back then. The league basically said, you will suck for. five years. That's the reality. And they're just, especially in 99, but more so in 2000, there just weren't players available because they had already had the expansion draft the year before for Nashville. It was tough. So that was unique. His time in Carolina, he was there for, I think, four years as the president before he moved to the GM chair. So he had a really good handle on who was who within the organization, how people work, how the organization worked before

he took over his GM. He steps in now in Columbus and he doesn't really, as strange as it seems, there aren't too many people within the building that he has an existing relationship with, other than the president, Mike Priest, who they became fast friends from some board of governor's meetings. He knows the assistant coaches, Steve McCarthy and Mark Recky, who both were players under him. But otherwise, it's a clean slate for him. So he's really trying to get a grip on who is who and how the people who are now under his management, how they operate. I'm not sure how effectively you can do that when games are not being played.

But he's already made a read, obviously, on the head coach. I don't think, I think we can say for certain that Pascal Vincent is not going to be the last guy to leave here. for now the assistant coaches have been kept on, but does the new guy bring in his favorite assistants? We'll see. There's still a lot of changes to come, but this is a fairly new experience even for Don Waddell. And I have to say the man has a look of someone who feels really,

really liberated by this because he has as intense as the work is, these are his calls. And the ownership here tends to stay out of the way. Oh, my God, in Carolina, everything was collaborative. Everything was watched. And it was GM in title only. And I haven't confirmed this yet, but there's buzz around the league that he's making four times what he made in Carolina. So he should be excited to go to work every day.

That money will go a long way in Columbus, Ohio. Wow. I still can't get over the 24 homes. Like 24 closing, the paper, just thinking the paperwork. Oh, think of moving 24. How many signatures has he had to put on that giant stack of papers you get at the end of a house sale? Yeah, with the little yellow X, X, all the sign here. My goodness. My goodness.

Hey, listen, before we wrap up this conversation, we've talked about general manager, the coach, Patrick Liney. Next week, Columbus Blue Jackets are on the club. clock at number four. And, you know, this is going to be a really interesting draft. Whether it's Promin, Wheeler, any of the draft experts, it feels like it's Maclin-Colabrini. And then it's a whole bunch of question mark. So do you have any sense of what Columbus might be looking at or just from a needs perspective, who they might be targeting at number four? Doesn't this year scream trade down? It just won't happen. Like, like NHLGMs are deathly afraid of trading down out of the top 10,

top 15. They just won't do it. I mean, even from like four to seven. Yeah. No, I'm with you because like, you know, you look at any mock draft right now and the guy who might go at number two might also go at like number eight or nine. Right. Like that's where we're at right now. Like I got like Ivan Demidov. I mean, he's getting measured and everything right now in South Florida as we record this. But he could go anywhere. The Blackhaws could take him. And he could go, you know, late in the top 10. Like it's, it's got that that feel that year that like, you know, Adam

Boquist and Noah Dobson and Evan Bouchard and, you know, nobody had any idea about what order to pick these guys. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And there are guys that like three weeks ago, whose names weren't even on the radar and people are now like, he could go top six. Like, whoa, where did that come from? He jumped really high at the combine. Now I want him to play hockey. Exactly. For me, it's like they've spent, they have had five players taken in the top 12 of the last three drafts and six first first. rounders in the last three drafts. So the pool is fairly well stocked.

They can go anywhere with this. All those defensemen are tempting. The one guy who to me is just super intriguing is Caden Lindstrom, a big, mean, centerman. And Columbus has had a chronic problem at center ice, really for all but like one of their 23 seasons. And you look where they're at now with Fantilli, who looks like he's going to be, he can be a one, maybe interchangeable as a two. Lindstrom has that sort of, that sort of skill portrait. And you think of a Fantilli, Lindstrom, with Sylinger in the number three spot, who's a super competitive player. And then you fill in your wingers and it's less of a concern.

to me that's really tempting. There's another center there, Berkeley, is it Katon, Katon? He's a guy I think you probably consider, but they have such a need for size up front that I would think the Lindstrom guy is really, really, really, really interesting to them. And his medical reports are of absolute paramount concern after missing so much time last year. So that's how I would see it.

But if they want a defenseman, they've got Eurocheck coming, they've got Matejc coming, probably both of them this year, you know, what's your flavor on defense? Because there's a lot of possibilities there. Yeah, there's like five or six guys that can go in the top 10 that are blue liners.

It's going to be fascinating. And the three teams that we cover are picking at two, four, and seven. Like I said, this is the podcast of the dam. Yes, and we're the guys that have to bring binoculars to the draft because the tables, the teams are in order of the picture. The blue jackets are always way off. Exactly.

Back when the Hawks were winning every year and they were right in front of me, oh, it was the best. I can see, I can see like beads of sweat growing on their foreheads. It was fantastic. Yeah. Oh, I know. Oh, amazing. Well, listen, Portie, it's great to hear you,

great to see you. And I got to tell you, one of my favorite things this month. And we often say as writers, we don't venture too much into the comments because sometimes it can be negative. I love the comment section of your first story when you came back.

It was filled with so much love, so much appreciation for you. It was really cool. I'm sure that this podcast will receive the same love, but it was so cool to see all that, that love for you. Yeah. What do you always say?

Don't look at the comments, eh? I know Las has had some dozies through the years. We all have. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. But yeah, it's incredible. And, you know, I don't know if you guys have had this experience too, but I've gotten, we don't get so many emails now because you're so reachable on social media.

But I used to get emails from people when I worked at the Columbus dispatch, just ripping the, living hell out of you. And then you would respond and say, thanks for reading. I appreciate your perspective. Have a good day. And then you'd get back an email like, I, listen, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to call you a brainless effing moron.

That's maybe a little too strong. I didn't think anybody would see this. Like, I think with the comments, there's like, no one's going to read this anyways. I'm going to just absolutely torch them. But yeah, those comments were, again, and really throughout this whole process, the response from people, it's, you know, we're no longer fighting about sports. It's a very human thing. And people have been absolutely great. Yeah. It's been great to see and read. And listen, great to have you back. All the best.

And yeah, listen, it's going to be a fun summer covering the blue jackets. We'll be following along. Always is. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. Welcome back, buddy. Thanks, man. All right, Laz, time for us to bring in, as we always do on this Monday slash Tuesday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Jesse Granger. For a little Granger things, brought to you by BetMGM, the exclusive betting partner, with the athletic. And Jesse Granger, you had a unique vantage point and seat for game four

of the Stanley Cup final where we thought it was going to be a coronation of Sergey Bobrovsky of the Florida Panthers and said he gets yank. They lose in lopsided fashion. But tell us, tell the listeners, where did Jesse Granger watch game four

of the Stanley Cup final from? Yeah, games three and four. It was a lot of fun. It's too bad. It didn't end up in that coronation. This wonderful sport is so stupid and hard to predict. Just when you think you know what's happening, the exact opposite happens. But yeah, this last week, I was up in Breckenridge, Colorado, up in the mountains

for a, it was called the Global Goaltending Retreat. It's put on by the goalie Guild. This guy named Justin Goldman, he does a fantastic job. It's a nonprofit foundation that provides scholarships for goalies that can't afford them and coaching education. And he puts on a retreat every year. He invited me up there this this time. It was a bunch of elite goalie coaches on the ice with some really high-level goalies. You spend a ton of time on the ice. We spent a ton of time off the ice, just talking theories, hanging out, having a few beers watching some hockey. So I get to watch both games three and four up there with them. And in particular, a Finnish goalie coach named Hanu Nyquist, who has coached a bunch of professional teams over in Europe. He's worked with

the Finnish national goalies quite a bit. And he's kind of kind of credited with fixing Sergei Babrovsky. I mean, his, his day-to-day goalie coaches deserve a bunch of credit as well. But Hanu started working with Sergei back in 2016 when he was with Columbus still. It was, if anyone remembers, I mean, he had that Vezan a year, the first one in Columbus, and then he had a bunch of injury problems. And speaking with Hanu, one of the most interesting things I found out about him, I wrote in the story, he's more of a life coach than a goalie coach. He believes so strongly that if you don't have a good well-being off the ice, if you're not enjoying hockey,

if you don't have a balance in life, it's going to be really hard to be a good goalie on the ice. So while he did work technique with Babrovsky and he showed me some of the techniques he worked in mainly loosening up and kind of playing with some flow, playing with some rhythm, not being so robotic. But more so than that, the two hung out off the ice in Austria. They practiced at the Red Bull facility. And he just kind of got Sergeiard. liking hockey again was sort of the story. I mean, the guy loves hockey. He practices. You've read all the stories over the last few days about how crazy he is with his workout regimens. He is as hard of a worker, as focused of a person as you'll see in the sport, maybe sometimes too focused,

sometimes too hardworking and doesn't have the balance, doesn't have the looseness that you need. And Hanu got him back to looking like he has in these playoffs over the last two years. And he's obviously been brilliant. I got to watch both games three and four sitting there. next to Hanu at the sports bar. A little bit different vibes for each of the games. But the cool thing is, though, it's like, yeah, Bob had a bad game. The whole story I wrote, though, is about how Sergey has had an up and down career. Like, the guy's career has not been a flat line.

It's been, he's had some really high highs, some really low lows. He was on the bench to start the playoffs last season. And the other night was a low. But talking to Hanu, I don't think, and he knows Sergey as well as anyone, this isn't going to bother him at all. And I do think that it was the right call to yank him when they did because giving up eight is worse than giving up five. And as weird as it sounds, it might even be a little helpful mentally to get taken out of the game and see your backup, Anthony Stolars, who's a very good goalie and who's had a phenomenal season. Just continue getting lit up like you are.

It's almost like a, it's almost like an assurance that like, okay, it wasn't me. Yeah, it wasn't me. It doesn't matter who's in there. We're giving up eight goals tonight. That's a weird thing to think. but I do think that somehow psychologically that does help. I think Serge is going to be ready to go for game six. Now, we've all been in,

was that a prediction there, Jesse? I think I would just predict that oil that you're going to win. We've all been in press boxes where sometimes they sit you in front of the opposing coaches. And goalie coaches are by far my favorite people to be sitting in front of because they are the most vulgar. They are cursing up a storm. They're screaming, no, what are you doing?

What are you? No, get out of there. No, no, no, no. I won't name names because I don't want to get my seat bumped in some of these press boxes, but some of them are like absolute psychopaths during a game. What was, sorry, what was his name again? Hanu.

Hanu. What was Hanu like, now he's not the Florida Panthers goalie coach, so he's not quite as invested in it. But when he's seeing his guy getting just absolutely lit up in a Stanley Cup final game, you know, what's his mindset? What was his behavior like? Yeah, it's, you know what?

shockingly calm in both instances. So game three, I'm sitting there watching him watch, Sergei, and remember the first period of game three, he had like nine high danger saves that were like unbelievable. Like he just, he put the team on his back. And Hanu was smiling, but very stoic throughout the whole thing.

Just, okay, he's doing what he should. He's doing all the things he needs to. You flip the page, game four, he gets lit up. And it, right as he was getting yanked, the waiter spilled beer all over our table. So it was, it was just a bad time going on, right? At that exact moment. Um, but he was just didn't even like he, he didn't even say a word like until I would ask him.

Like, I would, I would ask him like, okay, what do you think? Like, then he would just answer. Like he very, very calm, not screaming at the TV, not, you could even see it in his eyes, like not worried at all. And I asked him, I'm like, how much you think that affects him? The TV's showing Bob sitting on the bench all sad. You know, the broadcast loves doing that. And I asked him, like, how do you think this affects him going into game five? And he just like, without question, just immediately, not at all. Like, it's not going to bother him at all. He's going to be ready.

They probably should have sent him, I don't know why they had him on the bench. They probably should have sent him in the back first, get him on massage, get him on the plane and get him back to Florida and ready for game five because they're going to need him. The Oilers have really taken control when you look at like the actual game, like the actual hockey on the ice of this series. they've taken control of it. They're going to need Bob to be good. But I'm convinced after talking to a guy that knows him as well as anyone,

it's weird with Sergey because we all know him. We've watched him play hockey for so long. But because he's so quiet, we don't really know much about Sergey Bobrovsky. He's kind of a mystery. And talking to Hanu, I got to know him a little bit better. Like one thing that surprised me was he's like, oh, he's got such a great sense of humor. I'm like, really? That's not something I would have guessed about Sergey based on all the interviews we've seen.

but yeah, I think he's going to be laser focused for game five. I expect the best Sergei we've seen. Well, how does this, I mean, he gets yanked from game four. I think a lot of people would have figured if the sweep had happened, it would have been fairly obvious that maybe Barbarowski is your cons by trophy. But I think there's a case for Barkov, as Lazz mentioned, you know, Forzling. There's a few guys.

But I'm wondering now, as we look at the odds here, again, this segment with Jesse is always brought to you by BetMGM. Have the consmite odds altered at all in the wake of what happened in Game 4? Yeah, they have changed a little bit. Sergei Babrovsky is still the favorite at minus 105, but Barkov right there with him at plus 105. So those are essentially the same odds. You're basically getting your money back if you bet those.

But those are the two favorites by a mile. The next closest is Connor McDavid at plus 600. And what's crazy is the Oilers are plus 725 to win the series. So 7.25 to 1. So McDavid has significantly better odds to win Con Smyth than the Oilers due to win the series, which tells you they think there's a chance that he could win it in a losing effort after breaking Gretzky's assist record and all that. So I think that's very interesting.

And those are pretty much the only three with a shot in hell. Evan Bouchard is the next closest at 150 to 1. Pretty much it's McDavid, Barkov or Bobrovsky at this point. No one else has a shot, according to your odds. Evan Bouchard, he's got the numbers, but if you've watched him in this Stanley Cup final, that is not a legitimate consmite contender. He is getting a little bit of an education here, I think, as a young guy in his first final. Right, right.

And in terms of the actual voting, like, I don't know, I, Mark has for sure voted on cons smith. I don't know if Ian has. I voted on it twice. And like, just from my perspective, the way I looked at it in other years, one, bad game the way Bob. And like the thing is, it wasn't even a bad game. Like if Bob had given up four soft goals and it was just brutal, it's like, okay, maybe we, but those, like most of those goals, there was nothing you could do. It was a tip. It was a backdoor one timer. Um, there was one that

beat him glove side. But to me, you look at the entire playoff run. He's been so good. And you trust me, it's, it's, there is an argument that Barkoff's been just as good over the playoff run. But I don't think one bad game when you're looking at that big of a, of a sample is going to completely take him off your con smyth ballot or change your mind. I think he's, been good enough to have earned the right to give up four goals in a game and still be one of the cons-smite contenders. What do you guys think? It's fine. Lazz and I have talked about, we just talked about Boy, McDavid and winning the cons might, like to me, maybe if they get to a game seven and lose and he's got 14 points in

these three games facing eliminations. I could be talked into it a little bit more there, but I just think from start to finish, the Bobrovsky angle is two. much for me to overlook as just the cons might guy. I think Barkoff too, the way that they've shut down all of the big guns that they've been up against, the Posternaks and the, you know, whoever

they've been up against, they've essentially shut them down, right? Like, look what the Rangers top guys did against Barkoff. Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. Yep. And Tampa too, yeah. Yeah, I just, I think Bobrowski's the easy call here. He's the safe call. Like nobody's going to quibble with that one.

I wouldn't be shocked if, you know, I think there's 18 voters now. It used to be 15. I think there's 18 now. If someone throws a vote McDavid's way, but I have a really hard time imagining that more than half of the voters are going to go that far out on a limb on a guy who's losing the series in potentially five games here. I just, I just, it's a fun talking point.

And it's an interesting discussion. It's what you have to do in order to win the consmite as a losing team. It's a fun hypothetical, but there's just too many players on the Panthers who have been too good for too long here to to consider that at this point. Yeah, I agree with you guys. I think McDavid would have to be a monster for the next. Yeah, if he goes hat trick in game five,

hat trick in game six, and then they lose an overtime in game seven when he had two goals to get him to overtime. He scored like 1.7 seconds. All right, let's talk. But that's a lot has to happen between now and then. I also think that,

I don't know, I've always been of the thought that like to me, goals are so much more important to the, like assists are good, but I just don't put the same emphasis on assist. You were talking about this earlier in the show. If this is the weirdest McDavid run where it's like, has he been, he's been great? Right. Has he been dominant?

He hasn't scored that much. Like if he had broken the goals record for a single postseason, I would be way more on the on board with giving, like even if he loses this game. Like, okay, he scored more goals than anyone's ever scored in the history of sport, given the cons might. But to me, assists are great. But some of them aren't primary assists. He just happened to be, when you're on the ice is,

much as he is. You're going to get some assists that you're not even like, it's not like a brilliant play you made. I think Conrad David would say the same thing if you were being honest too. Yes, I agree. Yeah. Well, listen, Jesse, as we wrap up the podcast here, the hockey world is going to be rolling into Vegas next week. Um, you got some tips. Like a 30,000 time in the last five years, it feels like. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. You got any tips for people rolling into Vegas next week, whether it's fans, broadcasters, team execs. Bring some short. Sleeve suits if you've got them. If you've got to wear a suit on TV, find a short sleeve one. It is very serious. Do they make short sleeve? I don't know. Get like some underarm or some some some some sweat wicking

material underneath there. I don't know. Do what you got to do. It is very hot here. It's it's 97 degrees with 80. 80 something percent humidity in Chicago here right now. It can't be much worse than that. No, it's the you know what. You've probably got me beat with the humidity. It's a lot hotter here. I think it's 105 or so. But it's, And it might be hotter next week, but it's funny. I love the heat here. You'll never hear me complain about how hot it is here. I love it. But I went to Breckenridge in the mountains for a week and came back.

And I was like, oh, my God. Like it takes me a day to readjust. It is like an oven here. So everyone gets to experience. I always feel bad when people come to Vegas and it's like rainy. And it's like, oh, you guys, you hoped for the good weather. And you come here and it's raining just like it was at home. But everyone's going to get the full Vegas experience.

next week. I did Vegas in August once, like a bunch of years ago. And we played around a golf. It was 113 degrees that day. And the thing about the golf courses that are so heavily irrigated. It's the only way to get them green like that that it was humid too. I think I drank like 11 red gatorades during that one round of golf. It's just disgusting how just caked and sweat I was. We got to get out on the course next week, Mark. Oh, man. I'll bring my clubs. I can throw them in there. Let's do it. All right. Hell yeah.

Let's let's, let's, by the way, in Ottawa today, with humidity, it's a hundred and five Fahrenheit. So I'm telling you. I, I'm looking to go to Vegas. I was like, you better run. Yeah, 105 Fahrenheit with humidity here. So I feel like I'm going to Vegas to cool off. All right.

All right. Oh, love it. Anyway, listen, guys, this was a great episode, as always. Thanks for, for hanging out with us. For the listeners, for the last hour or so, we want to tee up the fact that the two shans, McAdo and Gentilly, will be by for the Wednesday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. Frankie Carrado will be riding shotgun with them. They'll wrap up game five of the Stanley Cup final.

That does it for us. So for Jesse Granger and Mark Lazarus, I'll tell you what, we'll hit you up next week. At some point, getting you all set for the NHL draft.