The Athletic Hockey Show - Montreal's search for a coach, the Kings' surge, fantasy overachievers and more

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Ian Mendes and Sean McIndoe discuss the Canadiens' search for a head coach after the firing of Claude Julien, does the next coach have to be a francophone? Also, is Julien the first domino in this season's coaching changes? The Kings are also surging with their older players leading the way and currently finding themselves in a playoff spot.In "Granger Things", Jesse Granger highlights the North Division in fantasy hockey and the biggest overachievers so far this season. Then in the mailbag, is Claude Giroux underrated?, and the duo wraps up with a discussion about Gretzky's trade to the Blues in "This Week in Hockey History".Have a question? Email [e-mail] or leave a voicemail at [phone]!Also, we're looking for your feedback, tell us here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/athleticaudiosurvey Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And welcome back for another episode of the Athletic Hockey Show. I'm Ian Mendez alongside Sean McIndoo on today's episode. We break down the shocking firing of Claude Julian in Montreal and ask if there are any other coaches on the hot seat in the NHL right now. We'll try and figure out if the red hot L.A. Kings are legit. Jesse Granger is back for some Granger things. So stop by, chat some fantasy hockey with us. We'll tackle a listener question as well about NHL expansion in Canada.

and we'll wrap up the week with this week in hockey history and a little chat about neutral site games. Sean, let's start with this because I remember about two, three weeks ago on this podcast, we were going in, we were engraving Mark Bergevin's name. He is the GM of the year. It was smooth sailing, the habs of cruising. To me, I never saw any scenario in which Claude Gillian was going to get axed this year. How shocking was the news that broke on Wednesday for you?

Yeah, it shocked me. And yet you're right, three weeks ago, Mark Bergevan, we had the trophy half engraved. And I'm kicking myself because I was the guy in the offseason when everybody was talking about how great the Montreal Canadiens were going to be. I was the guy going, are we sure? Is this the team that we really think is that good? And I was the skeptic. And then I bailed on it after the first few weeks when they were playing so well and they were just rolling over everyone. I said, yeah, I guess everyone else was right and I must have been wrong because this team's really.

good. And there are still pieces there. They could be very good again, but for whatever reason, it's just falling apart in the last few weeks. And clearly, Mark Bergevin saw something that he felt meant it was time for a change. Claude Julian's a real good coach. He's a really good coach. But the one thing that I think is interesting about Claude Julian is, this is now the fourth time that he's been fired in the NHL. And all three. four times have been mid-season firings, which is rare. Most coaching changes in the NHL happen in the offseason. And for whatever reason with Claudeau, and maybe it's coincidence.

But there may be something just with his style where when it runs out, when the impact wears off, it seems to happen quickly. Because this Montreal team, I mean, watching them against the Leaps, watching them certainly against the senators, it just wasn't there the way it was early in the season. and that's not necessarily a coach's fault, but sometimes you just need to do something to snap everyone awake, and especially this year, this is the easiest way to do it. Do we even count the time he got let go by Lou Lamarillo in New Jersey at the end of the year? Does that count? It counts, but it's one of the strangest ever, right?

Yeah, because they were good. It wasn't like, you know, hey, it's a bad season. We're going to let you go a couple of days early. This was a good team headed to the playoffs. And you know what? You look at some of the other times that he's been let go. I mean, that team was real good when he got let go in Boston. It wasn't like the Bruins were flatlining.

It wasn't like the Bruins were spiraling. They were under, it was very similar to this situation, a good team. But the GM felt like they could be better. And even this Montreal team, they're still in a playoff spot. So, you know, Claude Julian will be back behind a bench somewhere in the NHL. And history tells us probably back again in Montreal before two. long, but for now it's a real interesting situation to put a rookie head coach into. Let's put it that way.

Man, like, we'd have to go back. You bring up a fascinating point about Julian being let go midseason multiple times. Like, how many times has a coach been let go while his team is in a playoff spot? Not once, not twice, but at least, I think, three times that that's happened to Claude Julian. So it is certainly interesting. Now, here's the question, because his final game that he can. coaches Sean in Ottawa is a game that you wonder if the if the bounce goes their way if the video

review goes their way are we having this conversation if they win that game but a goal got wiped out at the end of regulation time so I'm going to need you to explain this to me Sean I was covering the game watching the game thought that it was clearly goalie it was not goalie interference I thought the goal was going to stand so I'm going to need you you know how you hear the phrase, explain it to me like a five-year-old. Sean, I'm going to need you to explain this to me. Like, I'm a 44-year-old man who's watched hockey for 30-plus years who doesn't understand video review with goaltender interference. So help me out. And you've come to the right guy because this is, I've been banging this drum for a few years now where it drives me crazy when

when there's a replay review on goaltender interference and people say, man, I had, I have no idea what they're going to do. I have no idea what the rule is. I never know. It feels like we're flipping a coin. And my thing has always been that if you read the rule, it's not that confusing and it's not that complicated. It's not simple. Okay, there are some rules in the NHL rulebook that are simple. You can't use your stick to trip somebody. You can't whack somebody with your stick that's slashing. This one's a little bit more complicated and it's got different pieces of it and different things that you have to look at. But generally speaking, once you get your head around the three or four things that they're looking at on any one of these reviews, you can get them right most of the time. And in fact,

if people follow me on Twitter, they know this sometimes when there's a review and everybody's doing the whole, we have no idea. I'll tweet out and I'll say this is what the ruling's going to be. I'm almost always right because when you know the rules, it's not that hard in a lot of cases to figure it out. Now, that being said, sometimes it's just a grayer and it's just a coin flip. And this was one of those. I was watching it and I did, I didn't tweet out what the answer was going to be because I didn't know. I was trying to figure out along with everybody else what they were going to do. But I'm not shocked that the goal came off the board. I mean, there was very clearly goal tender interference. A guy went into the crease. He made contact with the goaltender,

spun him right around. Okay. I mean, that is, you go into the crease. There's any contact at all. That's not allowed. The only time you can have contact in the crease is if you are forced in and you cannot avoid it. And that's a key that I think a lot of Montreal fans are missing on this one. It's not if you get pushed towards the crease, well, then the rule disappears and you're allowed to hit the goal. You have to make every effort to avoid the contact. If you just get flattened and steamrolled into a guy and there's no avoiding it, that's one thing. But you can't get nudged towards the goalie and then kick a skate out and spin him around.

So at that point, this is clearly interference. Where it gets confusing is, does Matt Murray have time to get up and reset? And that's the part that doesn't come into play in a lot of these. Usually it's a bang, bang play, and it's either interference or it's not. And for that reason, a lot of people don't realize that when it comes to goalie interference, it's not like offside review where we've all seen you can be offside and 30 seconds later there can be a goal and it doesn't matter. The offside negates the goal because it happened earlier in the play.

Goal interference doesn't work like that. You can have the interference. A goaltender can get run over. If he's got time to get up and get back in position, you play on. you keep going and the interference disappears. And the question was, did Murray have enough time to get up and get reset? And he seemed to have time. There was about a second to second and a half that went past it.

But the question is, can he get up? Can he locate a puck after getting spun around? Can he get out and get set? I think it was pretty clear that he wasn't. He was still back on the line. He hadn't gone out to the top of the crease where he would go to face a shot like that if he had time to get ready. The one thing that makes me wonder is,

you can kind of see that Matt Murray gets up and he's sort of looking around. And if he's looking around because he can't find the puck because he just got spun around, that's goally interference and that's no goal and it's the right call. But if he's looking around because he's looking for the ref, he's looking to sell a call, then that's a different thing. You don't get, just because you get interfered with doesn't mean you get to stop playing and look for a penalty. You got to keep playing and you got to fight through and actually try to find that puck.

And so if I'm a Montreal fan and I'm trying to say this goal should have counted, it's not because Gallagher got pushed in, it's not because of this or that, it's because I'm sitting there saying, wait a second, that goalie was trying to sell a call instead of fighting through and getting back in position. And that's where if they had gone ahead and said it was a goal, it wouldn't have shocked me. That's what they would have been finding. But clearly they gave the goaltender the benefit of the doubt here. And they said he's looking around because he's trying to locate a puck after he's just been spun 360 degrees by very clear goaltender interference. See, I still feel like even with your explanation, the next time this

I'm going to be, I'm going to be wrong. I am wrong every single time. It feels like roulette. And I know that the way that you explained it, it's not. But that's how it feels. And I listen to Brendan Gallagher post game. And I think the players get a little bit frustrated. Now, Brent, of all the people that shouldn't be complaining about what's going on in the blue pain. I love how we're all throwing Brendan Gallagher out as the impartial witness here. Yeah. Well, let's hear what this guy has to say. The guy who actually did the crime. He doesn't seem to think it was a big deal. Crashes the crease more than anybody maybe in the National Hockey League is Brendan Gallagher. So the Montreal Canadians, they lose that game.

They lose a head coach in Colgillian. And now Sean Dominic Dusharme is taking over as the interim head coach in Montreal. And I think this is a really interesting conversation to have because there is a, there's an expectation in that marketplace that the coach of the Montreal Canadians will be bilingual and francophone. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is I'm wondering, are the Montreal Canadians doing the best to get the best possible coaching candidate if this is part of the criteria. And I'd like to bring up what happens sometimes.

And I'm not, you know me. I'm not a soccer fan at all. But I do see what happens in Europe in the Premier League and in the Bundesliga where you could bring in a coach who doesn't speak the language but is an effective coach. And I look at, again, I'm not a soccer guy. But I look it up and I looked at the story of Leeds United last year. They bring in a Spanish-speaking coach in Marcello Bielsa. He doesn't know how to communicate with the media.

But guess what? He earned a promotion for Leeds United. And I wonder, do the Montreal Canadiens and the fan base in the media and everybody needs to collectively get together, do they need to say it's okay to go outside of the box and hire an English-speaking coach if that's the best candidate? or are the Montreal-Canadian Sean such a cultural institution that the protection of the language in that particular spot is so inherently important to that institution and the fan base that they have to go with that. And I think it's an interesting conversation to have. I really do.

Yeah, no, and it is. And look, I'm not from Montreal. I'm not Francophone. If I'm a Canadians fan, I'm a fan of any team, I want my team hiring. the best people possible, period. I don't want them limiting themselves based on what language somebody speaks. I don't want them limiting themselves

necessarily based on only looking for a certain type of candidate. I don't want them only bringing in former players the way that so many teams seem to want to do. I want the best candidate. Now, that means the best candidate to do the job. And you could make an argument that in Montreal,

part of the job is managing the media and that if you can't speak French, that that's going to be challenging. You know, I will say this. You look down the roster of coaches that the Montreal Canadians have had over the years. There's pretty good coaches there. You know, there are several French-speaking coaches at any given time that are very good coaches in the NHL. And as long as Montreal is considered one of the preeminent jobs that you can get in this league, maybe it works out okay for them.

But, you know, when you start limiting it and you start saying, you know, all right off the bat, there's only two or three or four candidates, whereas any other team would have a dozen guys they could look at, that does limit you. And I'm not sure that it's hurt the Canadians that much because, again, you go down the list of the coaches they've had. They've had some pretty good guys. And, you know, the one time they dipped their toe into the pool of hiring an English speaker with Randy Coneyworth. And we all saw the struggles he was having and trying to, maybe that is the counter example that says, says, this is why it wouldn't work. It's always tough. Whenever you hire someone, you're always thinking ahead to the best case scenario. What if we really get the best guy and he does a great job? But you do also have to think about what if it goes bad? And the thing in Montreal is,

if you can't handle the medium and it starts to go bad, it can go very bad, very quickly. And that's not fair. That's not how it should be. But it's how it is. So I certainly wouldn't mind seeing them expand the search a little bit. But as long as they can keep finding good candidates, and I think they've got one here, even as he's somebody who doesn't have a lot of NHL experience, this has been a guy who's been considered one of the future NHL coaches for a little while now, and he's been groomed for this. So that's great. But if it doesn't go well and in the offseason they're looking for a new guy. Again, if I'm a Montreal fan, I want them talking to the very best of the best and we'll

figure out the media relations piece of it later. Yeah. And you know, I, you bring up Conyworth and I just don't think Randy had the pedigree to step in there. Remember, like he was talking about, I'm going to learn French. I think he was using like Rosetta Stone or whatever that thing is. And that's unfair, right? But Randy Conyworth didn't have this great resume.

Like, I wonder. And look, and Mike Babcock's polarized. guy, I get that, but Mike's got a connection to McGill. You look at that resume of Mike Babcock. You look at Bruce Boudreau. Like, there's some really qualified coaches that are on the outside looking in right now. And I think back, and I remember, you know, I looked up the story of Gila Fleur talking about, hey, when we were winning cups in the 70s, Scotty Bowman never communicated to me in French on the bench.

When Scottie was by... And Scotty grew up in Montreal and he is bilingual. but what Ghee's point was, as long as you can communicate with the players, that's what matters. And I think it's going to be a really interesting search. And maybe, and like you said, maybe Dominic Dusharum is the guy. Maybe he is going to be the player, the guy behind the bench. But when Cunningworth, like there was such a vicious undertone in the media that Coneyworth being there, Lejeunel of the Morial, when they, Cunneyworth had lost two or three games in a row,

they put a headline in the paper in English saying Coneyworth loses third in a row just so he would understand. And they were making a point. And I thought, you know, we need to grow a little bit as a group. But look, I'm very respectful of that. And I do believe that the Montreal Canaaners are a cultural institution within the province of Quebec.

And I get that. But I also understand your point of view, Sean, which is you just want the best people possible in place to get your team to the next level. And I can't help. Especially when you've been waiting this long for a Stanley. And yeah, you're right. I mean, Randy Countyworth, good guy in terms of coaching resume.

He's probably not the guy you break your rule for. But if John Cooper became available in the offseason, you're telling me the Montreal Canadians wouldn't want to pick up the phone and talk to that guy, you know, you go down the list of other potential candidates, get the best guy, or at least get your list down to the two or three very best guys. And if one of those guys speaks French, okay, that can be a plus. That can be something that goes in the column of why maybe you tip the scales over there. But if you're ruling people out entirely, that's where I think you maybe get into some dangerous territory because this is the Montreal Canadians. It's been 27 years and counting without a

Stanley Cup. Do we want nice headlines or do we want to win? Because winning fixes it all. Winning's the universal language. You can win like Scotty Bowman. It doesn't matter. You could be back there speaking Swahili. Nobody's going to say a word.

Yeah. And, you know, I think it's going to be fascinating to watch how that process plays out. I also think, Sean, will be fascinating to see if and when Claude Julian lands another job in the national hockey. I think you look at the coaching carousel right now. Mike Babcock was back in the news cycle again this week. He's going to be coaching, you know, basically university-level hockey, college hockey in Saskatchewan. He's in the news cycle.

Julian's there. I mentioned Bruce Boudreau. If I threw out those three names, Sean, to you. Claude Julian, Mike Babcock, and Bruce Boudreau, three of the winningest coaches in NHL history. Two of them have a Stanley Cup ring on their resume. And Boudreux might be the most accomplished without one. If you had to guess which guy gets job first. In the NHL, who are you going with there?

Yeah, with the caveat that you never know when a coach gets fired where their heads in. Some of these guys just say, you know what, I'm going on vacation. I'm taking a few months off. I got my contract. The paychecks are still coming in. I'm going to take a bit of a break. But we know what happened the last time with Clutch Hill, where he gets fired in Boston. And it was a week before he was back on his feet in Montreal.

I don't know for sure whether that opportunity is going to present itself this year. but I think Claude Julien's the guy. And I think that this is a guy with a lot of a track record of success and his thing. And we saw it in Montreal is he is a guy that if you like those underlying numbers, if you're looking at those possession numbers, if you're sitting there going five on five, who's driving the play, Claude Julian teams are always the ones near the top of that list. And more and more these days, that's something the teams are looking for. And I think there's going to be teams out there that've got very smart people.

people who are sitting there saying, you know what, we can find somebody to run a power play, we can find somebody to do the penalty kill. That doesn't have to be Claude Julian because he's typically, his teams aren't great in that area. He's the guy who seems to have unlocked a way to really drive that possession, drive that five-on-five play, and that's really hard to find. I think some team out there is going to say, this is the guy we want and any other weaknesses we could fix and, hey, we can give him maybe some more finishers than he had in Montreal. all to make sure that all that play driving is actually getting translated on the scoreboard. You know, I think a lot of us were thinking this year might be the year where we don't see

any in-season coaching changes. Sean, just with the COVID protocols and some of the awkwardness associated with that. But now the Montreal Canadians have opened the door to that possibility. So I'm going to ask you right now, is anybody else in the NHL? And it felt like Claude Julian went from super safe to his job. Well, the seats tepid to. This. it was just scorching hot. Like, we didn't even have time to realize, you know, how quickly his seat heated up. Is there anybody else in the league right now? Like, you look at Colorado and they were, you know, pegged to be a Stanley Cup contender.

And based on points percentage, there's still a playoff team. But I would say that there have been a little bit underwhelming. So is Jared Bednar in a little bit of trouble? David Quinn and the Rangers, I think a lot of people, there's some noise there. All of our Red Wings listeners will be screaming at us. Now do Blaschell. Now do Blaschell. Like, I get that.

So is there a. anybody else that right now, Sean, you would look at the NHL landscape and say, you know what, there might be some legitimate heed for that head coach? Yeah, I think there isn't. The first thing I'll say is I'm working on a piece right now where I'm talking about midseason coaching firings. And that's where I realized that Julian's name had come up so often. The other thing you notice, because I've got a spreadsheet right now with a big long list of all the times it's happened, you start seeing the same date show up. You start seeing these clusters to the point where there was a couple times where I'm looking at my spreadsheet, I'm going, I must have made a mistake cut in pace,

because I got the same date. Yeah, because you get somebody gets fired, and that seems to be the domino that sets it going off around the league. Because now suddenly the GM who's telling his owner, it's too early, it's too early, it's too early, it's too early, well, now somebody else has done. So it wasn't too early for them. So what are we waiting for? And so it wouldn't shock me if this being the first one to shake free, suddenly we start seeing more of it. And the guy, certainly out of the names you mentioned. The guy that I'd be concerned about right now is David Quinn in New York for a few reasons. Jared Bedner has had success before. He's done a great job in Colorado. This year, yeah, some underachieving, but he's got the resume. David Quinn doesn't have that

at the NHL level. Jeff Blasville has got a team where the expectations weren't super high. And we've talked about, you know, we thought there maybe would be a change there. But I'm not convinced you see a mid-season change for a team that's pretty much playing the way we thought they would all play. The Rangers had some expectations coming into this season, and they're not meeting them right now. And you look at David Quinn, not a guy with a long track record at the NHL level. And the other thing that worries me, and again, this maybe shouldn't be a factor, but it is you're starting to see the media in New York throw his name out there and start to ask questions. And a lot of times, once that happens, you can potentially be heading to. down a bad spot, especially when you're a team like the Rangers that had their eye on a

playoff spot, that seems, that hope is fading, but it's not gone completely. Do they convince themselves that, hey, if we're going to save this thing, we've got to do it right now. You know, let's move to the other end of the spectrum, Sean, from coaches who might be in jeopardy to coaches who might be in consideration for the Jack Adams Award. And I can't help but think that the job that Todd McClellan is doing in Los Angeles right now is certainly going to be opening some eyes, L.A. winners of six consecutive games. they're doing it with the old guys, Anse Copatar, Dustin Brown. Drew Dowdy's actually having a pretty good season, you know, making sure that he's got that

chip on his shoulder. Here's the question I ask you. Like, are the LA Kings legit? Like, could they potentially be a playoff team in that West Division? I mean, I think they could, if only because we all said at the beginning of the year, we looked at that West and you went, okay, abs are in, Golden Knights are in, blues are in, before the season even starts. So they're all fighting for one spot.

Most of us assumed it was going to be Arizona and Minnesota fighting for those spots. And it still may come down to that. But it always right in that mix. And it's a great story because the Kings, you know, look, the Kings have been almost the prototypical rebuild the last few years. We saw them go down near the bottom of the standings, some really lean years, but put together one heck of a prospect pipeline. I mean, this is arguably,

depending on who you listen to, the best collection of prospects that any team in the NHL has at this point, certainly in the top three or the top five, which is what you want. When you're doing the rebuild, you want to collect all that young talent, but they didn't do the full-scale sell-off.

They weren't moving the big names. Those big veteran names, you just mentioned, who now are kind of leading the way. And granted, given the salary situation, they probably didn't even have the option to do that if they wanted to. But this is kind of any GM who starts a rebuild, this is what you're thinking. You know, we're going to cut out a lot of the deadwood.

We'll keep the veteran corps. We'll bring it a bunch of young players underneath them. And then it'll all click in one year. And look, you look at the Kings, they've been good for about two weeks now. And I'm not going to, based on two weeks, say, you know, put the, hang the big mission accomplished banner and say the rebuild's done. But they're a great story. And this is what has to happen.

And when you're doing the rebuild, we've seen it happen in a lot of places where you do the stripping down, which is the easy part. You bring in, you get some prospects, you get some good young players. And then at some point, you've got to hit the gas and you've got to see if the car goes anywhere. And sometimes it does move and we're seeing it move in L.A. And sometimes the wheels just start spinning and you don't go anywhere, which is what seems to keep happening in Buffalo. It's not as easy as just saying, we're going to be bad for a few years and that will be good. But when it does happen, man, it's a great feeling. It's got to be all sorts of fun to be a Kings fan right now and watching this team going,

we're pretty good right now, certainly better than anyone thought we're going to be. And it's only going to get better once these kids either start showing up in L.A. Or potentially start showing up in some trades we could maybe make with some other teams to bring in some A-level talent right now. And, you know, I look at L.A. I think it's a remarkable story. I think Chicago is a remarkable story. And you think about all those great matchups, Sean, you know, five, ten years ago. go Chicago, L.A. It felt like the path to the Stanley Cup would always go through one of those cities.

And we figured that they were in for painful seasons this year. Like you said, L.A. is surpassing expectations. So too are the Blackhawks. Like, if you look at those two teams that were great rivals about a decade ago, like who's the bigger surprise for you sitting in a playoff spot right now, the L.A. Kings or the Chicago Blackhawks? I mean, I think out of those two teams, L.A. is a surprise. Chicago's the bigger surprise.

from it. And part of that is because, like I said, L.A., we all knew what they were doing. We all knew that the rebuild was underway. And at some point, sometimes when you get out of the rebuild, sometimes it's a slow step forward. And sometimes it can be pretty quick. We've seen teams like Toronto and other teams in recent years, Colorado certainly after that terrible year, get back towards the top of the league very quickly. Kings aren't there yet. But we knew that was a possibility. Whereas Chicago, it felt like it was just starting. It felt like this was the beginning of the rebuild. was the start of the pain that you were going to need for a couple years. And, you know, certainly when you look at the guys who got hurt, you look at Jonathan

Taves not being there, you look at them going in the season with no goal pending. We're all sitting there going, who are these goalies? We never even heard of these guys. You know, I did say at the beginning of the season, I said, you know, Chicago, I'm not quite sure because any time the goaltending is the big question, who knows how that's going to work out. But I was looking at that as in maybe these guys won't be dead last in the league the way so many people predict.

I wasn't looking at them saying, oh, this is going to be a playoff team. All right, Sean, we gave him a week off last week, and I pushed, we had Katie Strang in there. I pushed Stranger things. Sean didn't like that. We'll go right back to Granger things, though, with Jesse Granger.

Welcome back to the show, Jesse. I guess we'll start by asking you about some fantasy hockey questions because, you know, we talk so much about betting lines and over-unders and things, things to look for. We realize that we do have a ton of listeners that are really into their hockey pools and fantasy hockey and things of that nature. So what kind, let's start with kind of a

big picture question here. What kind of boon has this North Division been for fantasy hockey owners so far this season? Yeah, I definitely don't have to tell you guys that the games up in the North Division have been high scoring this year. It's been fun to watch. I find myself on a nightly basis when I'm kind of just scanning the games. I always end up watching the Canadian Division games, just because they seem to be six to five every time I watch. So I was looking up the actual numbers, and it's pretty crazy. The top four players in fantasy hockey are all from the Canadian division. That's not particularly surprising, just because Matthews, McDavid, Drysiddle, and Marner, or guys you expect to be there anyways. But when you go

further, eight of the top nine players in fantasy hockey are from the North Division. And if you go even further, the top 25, 13, more than 50 percent of the top 25 players in fantasy hockey are all from that North Division. And that's just because more goals are being scored overall. They've actually scored more goals in the North Division, 443 total goals so far than any other division. And that's with fewer teams in that division, which means fewer games. So a lot higher scoring games in those has led to obviously not only those goal scores,

but you're getting the assists on those. So there's just a lot more fantasy hockey points up for grabs in North Division games. So I guess a general set in a general. set in a general sense. If you're trying to pick between two players, just go with the guy who's playing in the North Division because there's going to be more points up for grabs at a nightly basis. Unless it's a goaltender.

Right. Right. Yes. Steer clear. Run as fast as you can. Yeah. Well, it's funny because I think coming into the season, Jesse, we would have figured that, okay, if you told me that in the top five in scoring,

that in some order dry sidel, McDavid, Matthews, and Martyr would be there. I'd be like, yeah, I could see that. So beyond those guys, then who are the ones, in the North Division that from a fantasy standpoint are kind of outperforming where we projected them six weeks ago. Right. Yeah, there are a lot of guys who are surprising. And Nikolai Eilers is at the top of that list. He's currently sixth in the NHL in fantasy points with 95.5. He's right beneath Mitch Marner and Patrick Kane. I don't think anyone who drafted Nikolai Eelers was

expecting him to be putting up points with those guys. His average draft position was 131. So you get a guy at 131st and he's the sixth best player so far through, through first quarter of the season a little more than the first quarter of the season, you're very happy. And I mean, that Winnipeg, top six has been awesome this year. And Eilers has kind of bounced back and forth between playing with Paul Stasney and Kyle Connor and Mark Schifley and Blake Wheeler. But it doesn't really matter where he plays that,

that team's scoring a ton of points to look at some other guys who are surprising in that North Division. Two guys on defense that you wouldn't have expected to be here at all. This isn't Roman Yose, Victor Hedman, guys who are consistently near the top of the league in points for defensemen. Darnell Nurse leads all defensemen in the entire NHL in fantasy points this year with 94 fantasy points. He is 11 fantasy points ahead of Victor Hedman. And his average draft position was 138th. I'm sure you guys have seen quite a bit of Nurse this year.

He's been playing great. And it's not just the points. He has 16 points, which is good. It's not great. But he's racking up all those little tiny stats that just count for so much in fantasy. He's top 20 in the league in blocks. He's near the top of the league in penalty minutes, which not a great thing for the Oilers. But if you're a fantasy owner, most fantasy leagues count that as a positive.

So a guy in Darno Nurse who is playing solid minutes for the Oilers, he's got more points than you expect. And he's just tallying up all those little counter stats that add up big time in fantasy. Wow. Okay. So those guys, I do want to, though, like let's. focus on Mark Andre Fleury for a second because I do think that this is an unbelievable story where, and this is again, this is the team you cover, so you have even more insight on this. We all thought it was going to be the Robin Leonard show.

Flurry would be in the background and it's almost been like those roles of reverse. So from a combination fantasy perspective and also just a news angle story, let the walk us through what this has been like with Mark Andre Fleury essentially taking back over the number one job in Vegas. is. Yeah, as you mentioned, going into the season, pretty much everyone expected it to be the Robin Leonard show. Peter DeBore came in and he decided Robin Leonard was his goalie last year, going into the playoffs. He and he and Flurry had kind of split starts, and they even split them when they first got up to the bubble in Edmonton. And then once they got into that first round of the playoffs against Chicago, Peter DeBore made his decision. Robin Ler was his goalie. Most people

expected that to be the case. You look at the average draft position fantasy-wise for Flurry and Lennar. Mark Andre Fleury was drafted 142nd on average, and Robin Lennar was drafted 45th on average. So people expect it. And people are drafting Lennar as the Golden Knights are going to be one of the better teams. In fantasy hockey, if your team is, if your goalie is on a good team, he's going to win a bunch of games. He's going to get you a bunch of points. So I understand the thinking. Early in the season, Lennar and Flurry were switching back and forth. Flurry outplayed Lennar by quite a bit. Now, it's a small sample size, especially for goalies. We don't want to bury Robin Lennar because he's had four or five bad games.

But since then, Robin Leonard has been out. The team is calling it an upper body injury. He's been day to day for a while. He hasn't been traveling with the team. And that has led to Mark Andre Fleury playing seven straight games. And if you're someone who drafted Flurry, probably in a later round as a flyer thinking, who knows? He looks better than most of the names at this point in the draft.

And all of a sudden, you now have the starting goalie for one of the elite teams in the NHL. And his stats have been just spectacular. but I mean, he leads the league with three shutouts. And by the way, he has fewer starts than most of the guys at the top of these lists, just because he was splitting time with Leonard to start the year. So he leads the league with three shutouts. He has the best goals against average in the entire NHL.

His 9-4-2-safe percentage leads all goalies with at least 10 starts. So he's been elite in just about every way. And if you're a fantasy, if you drafted him in fantasy, you were kind of expecting him to be good when he's out there. You're just not going to be able to use him much. And that's gone to a guy who's playing every single night. And it adds up because the Golden Knights schedule has been so jam-packed since Robin Leonard got hurt. You've had Flurry in your lineup basically every night since Midway Point at where we are in the season right now.

Jesse Granger, as always, great to have you drop by again for Granger things. We appreciate the kind of the fantasy insight this week, and we look forward to connecting with you again next week. Awesome. Thanks for having me, guys. Thanks, Jesse. All right, Sean. Yeah, it was always great to get Jesse back there for a little bit of perspective. and, you know, yeah, that North Division is a high-scoring division. But I got to tell you, that Mark Andre Fleury story is unbelievable to me. And to think, Sean, too, you go back to the offseason, it felt like any team that really

wanted Mark Andre Fleury could have had him. Yeah. I mean, for a guy to be playing that well with a sword sticking out of his back is just, I mean, this is mastered and trophy sort of stuff. I mean, this is, and it's great because we've talked about this. Mark Andre Fleury is one of the most likable players in the entire league. And yeah, there's probably some teams out there that could have had them. And then now you're maybe kicking yourself a little bit.

And I wonder what they're thinking in Seattle, where we had all head Mark Andre Fleury penciled in as the starting goalie for the Seattle Cracken on opening night. And now who knows, maybe that ends up bouncing in a different direction for Vegas. All right. Time for us to open up the mailbag here. A reminder that with the athletic hockey show, there's multiple ways you can reach us,

including via email. You can get us at The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com. That's The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com. Or you can kick it old school and drop us a voicemail. That's right. We got a voicemail answering system all set up. And we got a voicemail here from James in London. We want to remind you that the way to get us with a voicemail,

it's 845-4-4-5-8-5-9. That's 845, 445, 845-8459. That's exactly what James did. Have a listen. Here's James from London with a question for us. Hi, this is James from London. I was just wondering if you guys thought that it would ever be possible for an Eastern Canadian team to become a thing,

like one in maybe New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. Sure, they are smaller in population, but it seems like they have a really big interest and diehardness in hockey. And I was just wondering if it was ever possible for them to get a team. Thanks. Bye. Okay, Sean. So there's James from London.

I'm thinking that's London, Ontario, right? I would imagine. I think so. And not London, England. But the question is, look, there's a great appetite for the National Hockey League out in what is known as the Maritimes or Atlantic Canada. or Atlantic Canada. It's Halifax. It's Prince Edward Island.

It's, you know, it's that part of the country. Wonderful place to visit. I don't feel like, James talked about it there, I don't feel like there's a population base or a corporate base to, I think maybe McCain's is out there. Like, is McCain's out there, the French frymaker? I think so. Maybe we just put them there.

Yeah, it sounds good to me. Listen, help me out here. Let's answer James's query. Yeah, first of all, I got to say, I like that we're sort of getting a theme now with these voicemails. We're moving teams around and redoing the league's geography. I mean, last week we moved, we dropped half the teams in the league. And I was hearing from Carolina hockey fans going like, hey, what was that all about?

So this one, we're not naming specific teams. But look, I think there's kind of two ways to ask this question. There is the question of could the NHL work in Eastern Canada? Is there a scenario where that could work? And yeah, you know what? Maybe if you put a team anywhere in Canada that has a big enough population base just to sell out a building, because that's still where most of the revenue is coming from in a regular season. You can get 18,000 into a building.

And that team wins. And that team wins long enough that you peel off some of those fans because we know, I mean, certainly in Ottawa. this place is still crawling with Toronto and Montreal fans. It is tough to pull somebody away who's got a family history is cheering for certain teams. And most of the fans out there in Eastern Canada are probably Leaf fans or Haps fans or maybe they pick somebody else. But if you can win and you can win long enough,

could you build up a fan base? Yeah, you know what? Maybe you could. We've seen, you look around the pro sports world. You know, if you were starting the NFL from scratch, you probably wouldn't put a team in Green Bay. But it works because the history is there in the tradition. and it builds up.

So could it work? Yes. The other way to ask the question, which is the way that he asked it, is would they ever get a team? Like, would this ever actually get off the ground? And I have a really hard time imagining a scenario where Gary Bevan and the NHL are going to say, that's where we're going to put a team. Whether it's a team moving, whether it was expansion, you know, we know what they want. They want a big market, preferably a big TV. market, ideally in the U.S., I think they would look at Canada that this league still generates

a lot of its revenue in Canada, but it's got to be a big market. They want a brand new arena. They want lots of corporate money. They want everything paid for. And I just have a hard time imagining how you could check all of those boxes out in Eastern Canada when you're competing against a Houston or go on down the list or even a Quebec city, which probably would still be the leading candidate in Canada. I mean, this, again, it feels like the Hamilton situation where there are reasons why it could work,

but there seemed to be more reasons why we're not going to get a chance to find out that it would work, because the NHL is just not going to go to that route unless something cataclysmic happened to this league's financial outlook to the point where Canada was now there, A plus market and America was secondary, in which case everything goes out the window, but I have a hard time imagining any sort of of realistic scenario where that plays out. Yeah, but we appreciate that question, James, from London. And you know what? Maybe Halifax is a great spot for a neutral site game. And we'll get into that in a moment when we chat about this week in hockey history.

But we're going to open up that email bag inbox as well, Sean. The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com is where you can get us. And we'll read a couple of these. Ray writes into us, hey, guys, loved your idea of the Rangers Islanders at Central Park. Got a couple of ideas for you. how about the Arizona Coyotes in Vegas playing a game at the Grand Canyon? You want to talk about great backdrops and images? What about that?

How about the sharks hosting any of their opponents outside in the Bay Area with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background? I feel like the outdoor possibilities are endless, maybe not great for gate revenue, but great for attention. So let's kind of walk through some of these ideas that Ray put out there. I'm waiting for you to make your bridge deal joke about a game. That's a good ad. No, I didn't even think of that. Kevin LeBank with a bridge deal. But like, listen, I think the one cool thing, I really liked your article on, was it Monday of this week? Yeah, Monday, your Monday column talking about, hey, let's not criticize a button that,

a league that we have continuously hammered for being too conservative. Let's not hammer them for going outside the box. And at least I thought in Lake Tahoe, it opened up our mind to some cool things like what Ray's talking about here. So I'm going to toss this out to you, Sean. Grand Canyon, Golden Gate Bridge, thumbs up or thumbs down? You know what? Thumbs up to both of them. I'm picturing the visuals in my head.

I've been to both of those places. And yeah, I mean, those would both look fantastic. I mean, building an ice rink at the Grand Canyon, there's no sunshine at the Grand Canyon, right? That's because we found out that that's the enemy this weekend. That's right. I'm pretty sure that would be all right. I mean, look, if you could ever pull it off, and I'm sure it sounds impossible, but Lake Tahoe would have sounded impossible a few years ago.

They're getting better and better at this stuff. And same thing with the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm off the top of my head trying to figure out where you would actually put that. But if you could get something where you had that in the background of the visuals, yeah, that would look fantastic. And you know what? I like that he's got coyotes, Vegas. The sharks have had the one game at the first.

football stadium. But like, yeah, let's get some new teams into the mix, too, here. Let's see, you know, I look, those games were fun. I'd like to see in Boston and Philadelphia, but, you know, let's keep getting some teams into the mix. Let's find somewhere in Florida. Let's get the lightning and the Panthers out there, too. I'm sure there's somewhere they can do that. And not just, we don't need to see Pittsburgh, Washington, Chapter 9 when it comes to the next outdoor games. We can let Chicago have a break for another year. I like the idea of new teams, in new areas that we wouldn't even think of. And if that means you don't have fans in the stands,

I'm all for it. Gary Bettman, on the other hand, doesn't seem like he'd be as enthusiastic. Let's read one more question from a listener via email. Sean, this one's from Tyler in Seattle. And I want to ask you guys if you think Claude Giroux is underrated because he plays for the Flyers. And you think he might be in the Hall of Fame conversation

if he played for a team like Pittsburgh and had a couple of Stanley Cups under his baseball. belt. So as you look at Clodjeru, and this is one of the things that you've always, you know, you've always hit on is the Hall of Fame is such an odd thing in the NHL. And sometimes it's a gut thing, right? Like if you say to somebody, yes or no, Hall of Fame, like that, sometimes that feels like that should be the litmus test as to whether or not somebody gets in. But as we've seen, that's not the case. So when Tyler says, Clodjeru Hall of Fame, what comes to mind for you automatically. I'll give people the stat line on Giroux here just as a big picture thing.

903 career games, 829 career points. He has been a pretty good consistent player for about a decade, one 100 point season under his belt. Like, he doesn't scream Hall of Famer to me, but is that a result of playing in a market like Philadelphia that hasn't had a ton of postseason success? Yeah, I mean, it's not the market. Philadelphia is one of the NHL. biggest markets. We just saw them play in a marquee outdoor game. So it's not like he's losing out on attention. He's not in Winnipeg or Ottawa or somewhere like that.

He's in a big market, but no, they haven't had the success as far as as far as winning Stanley Cups. I hope that doesn't work against him. We've got to get our heads around the fact. This is going to be a 32 team league soon. There's going to be good players who don't win Stanley Cups. This is not the 70s and 80s where if you had a legitimate franchise level superstar you would expect to win a championship at some point.

There's just too many teams. There's too much parity. If somebody has a great career, a Hall of Fame-worthy career, and they get to the end of it and they don't have a cup, put him in the Hall of Fame. You know, this is Roberto Luongo, do we, Henrik Lunkwist, do we hold it against him? They don't have rings? No, of course not. Put them in the Hall of Fame.

Claudea Rue, at this point, he's not there yet. I mean, you talked about the stat lines, certainly when you get to offensive players. even in the in the dead puck era a thousand points is still is still the benchmark and he's got a little ways to go to get there but he might the thing that jumps out to me with him is no awards one year as a post postseason all-star one year as a heart finalist a couple of other near misses but not a guy who you would ever say was really at least in terms of the award voting considered an elite guy there was that brief period where he was was in the best player in the world conversation and maybe that helps him. I think he's got to

have a few more very strong years because right now he strikes me as a hall of very good guy. And we have seen players get in the Hall of Fame without a lot of awards on their resume or even any, Dave and or Chuck, Marion Hosek guys like that. It's certainly not like baseball where you really need to have some of that black ink on your page. This is this is not a deal breaker. But I just need to see bigger numbers from him than what he's trending towards. And if he can put up a couple more big seasons, then gets over a thousand points, then he is in the conversation. And whether that results in him actually getting inducted someday, we'll see.

But I think he is in the conversation with a couple of more big years. Yeah. As I look at his hockey reference page in terms of statistical similarities, Adam boats. Yeah, Adam boats, Jason Spetza, Alexia, yes. Gashon, Pat Lafontein, Jeff Carter. Like, those are all some, this is some pretty good players. In a case of Oates, Oates is in the Hall of Fame, right?

Yeah. Lafontein is in the Hall of Fame. So, yeah, they're certainly, and they're both in there without Stanley Cups. And then with him, you know, I said not a lot of All-Star picks or the awards, but he is in, in a sense, voters might look at him as sort of a modern day, like a Dale Howard Chuck or Peter Stasney, those guys who they were playing when Gretzky and Lemieux were playing. It was like, oh, you never got a postseason.

Oh, what was I supposed to do? I'm supposed to beat out one of the two best players in the history of the game. And these days, people might look and go, yeah, well, this was the Sydney Crosby era. And the Crosby handed the Tartan to Connor McDavid. And yeah, he wasn't better than those guys. But being better than Sidney Crosby can't be the line to get into the Hall of Fame. And Claudeau-Jureau clearly wasn't. Now that I've got every Flyer fan absolutely furious, except me by saying that.

But I hate to break the news to them. So again, you don't rule it out. But right now he feels to me like one of those guys who, his best case is that he's going to land on that borderline. And then you never know with this hockey hall of fame. Once a guy's on the borderline, maybe he gets in the first year, maybe he gets in the second year. Maybe we wait 30 years. And then suddenly, I don't know where he gets put in. And we don't know why or how that happened.

You never know with guys like that. The Rogie Vachon way of doing it. All right. We're going to wrap up our, our episode. So, Sean, as we always do with a little this week in hockey history. And I mentioned this earlier in the show that we were going to talk a little bit about neutral side games. And that's because, Sean, on this week in 1918, that's right, 1918. So 103 years ago, February the 27th, Ottawa and Montreal traveled up the road to Quebec City to play in the first ever neutral site game in the NHL.

Ottawa knocked out Montreal three to one in that game. But the reason why I'm bringing this up is like when we were growing up there in the early 90s, neutral site games were a thing. Remember the season where everybody had two extra games and they'd go to Hamilton and they go to Kansas City and they go to different places? I always thought that was a great idea. I'm going to ask you, would you like to see the NHL return to some sort of regular rotation of neutral site games? I'm not talking about outdoor games in different venues. I'm talking about you go to Halifax, you go to Houston, you go to Kansas City,

you go to Hartford, and you play a regular season game. Yeah, it would be cool. Hopefully we do it in the early 90s way and not in the 1918 way, because back then a neutral site game meant your arena had just burned down and you didn't have anywhere else to play. Yeah, we've seen it. I mean, even these days we see it, I guess, when they send teams over to Europe, you could consider that a neutral site game.

But yeah, no, the 90, I want to say like 93, 94 season was the year where you would just turn on the NHL. And on a Tuesday night, there'd be a game in Milwaukee. And you just go, okay, I guess we're doing this. And it was a cool idea. And it was sort of a thinking outside the boxing. And it was the NHL testing the waters in different markets and saying like, hey, you know, what kind of reception are we going to get? the reason that it didn't continue is I get the sense it just wasn't very successful. There were a lot of markets where the reception was pretty lukewarm.

And certainly if you're the NHL, you don't want to be taking your product somewhere and saying, one time only, here's your chance to see NHL action. And then there's 6,000 fans in the seats. And you realize the whole thing is kind of a dud. I guess it didn't make the financial sense for them. And teams were saying, look, if we're going to play these extra games, We want them in our home arenas and bank that revenue. So I get it.

I'm not a bottom line guy, but the people in the NHL who are clearly didn't feel like they could justify doing this. But as a fan, it was neat. It was kind of cool. And I'm sure if you're a hockey fan in one of those places, it was probably very cool. There are a ton of people who probably saw their very first ever NHL game in one of those games. And hopefully, at least some of them became fans. because of that and are still following the league to this day. Yeah.

And, you know, I remember Pavel Burray actually scored his 50th goal of his season in a neutral side game. I want to say it was in Hamilton back in the day. But yeah, it's just, you know, those are cool little moments that people that were there in Hamilton got a chance to see a little bit of NHL history. One other piece of this week in hockey history, Sean, February 27, 1996. The Kretzky trade. And no, not the one that sent Wayne to L.A., the less popular Gretzky trade, and that is the St. Louis Blues acquiring Wayne Gretzky, February 27th, 1996 from the L.A. Kings. What should be our takeaway from that deal? Yeah, I mean, the first Gretzky trade gave us the old cliche that if Wayne Gretzky can be traded, then anybody can.

And this one gave us, if Wayne Cretzky can be traded for Roman Volpat, then I guess whatever ridiculous HF boards trade rumor you're coming up with is it could actually happen. It was such a, it was such a bizarre time because this back then, Wayne Gretzky is still a star player, but the Kings are bad now. There are a few years removed from their run to the Stanley Cup final and clearly they're not going back. It's starting to crumble.

The finances there with Bruce McAul and everything are starting to fall apart. And it becomes clear that Wayne Gretzky might be traded. And as I remember it, it was, it was. It kind of all came together pretty quickly. This is before social media was before the rumor mill was this monetized beast that it is today. So maybe there was talk earlier, but it just felt like one week. It was like, hey, they might trade them. And then the next week and you're watching hot stove or wherever you got your rumors from,

it was like, no, this is going to happen. And the Blues weren't considered the leading contender. It was the Rangers that we all assumed he was going to. But then good old Mike Keenan comes in. And of course, he Keenan had the history with the Rangers. I think he saw an opportunity to stick it to them. And the thing that I will always remember is when this trade happened, I remember looking at it going, wait a second.

You're telling me that Wayne Gretzky, the greatest playmaker in history is going to play on a line with Brett Hull, they're going to score a million goals. They are going to be absolutely unstoppable. That Blues team was not a very good. They were like a 500 team at the time. But you're just sitting there going, that is going to be completely unstoppable.

And Gretzky comes over. I think his first game, Keenan played them like 30 minutes or something. It was just ridiculous. And they just never clicked. It's one of the all-time great, NHL kind of what if or why didn't it work? Because Gretzky and Hull just never really set the league on fire

and then they ended up playing on different lines after a while. And the whole thing just didn't work. And then, of course, Gretzky goes in the offseason and signs with the Rangers and plays his last few years there. But it is such a bizarre trade and such a bizarre segment of, NHL history that the greatest player in the world got traded for essentially a bag of magic beans and then played well for the team that he went to, but not like we were used to to seeing him. And then just a few months later, it was done. And we all just kind of forgot

about it. Yeah. It's random, too. Like, Shane Corson was the captain of that team, I think, at one point in 96. And then I think, did they have like a rotating captaincy? Do you remember this? Well, I mean, every Mike Keenan team had a rotating captaincy eventually. But I think Corson was the captain and gave the C over to Gretzky when he got there and it was this whole thing. And I mean, yeah, like that blew his team. And I know them well because they played the Maple Leafs in the first round of the playoffs and beat them. They were not a good team record-wise. I think they finished 500 or very close back when 500 was meant you were a very mediocre hockey team.

but they were stacked with talent. I mean, you go down the, they had five, six, seven Hall of Famers on that team, and a lot of them at the end of their career and that sort of thing. And the thing that I really remember, Wayne Gretzky's lasting legacy to me is, as far as being a St. Louis Blue,

is they go in, they beat the Leafs. That's the series where Grant Beer gets hurt, Nick Hippiros falls on them and injures him, and John Casey comes in. They go on and they play the Detroit Red Wings, coming up one of the greatest regular seasons in history, and they play them so tough, and they take them to game seven,

game seven overtime, scoreless game, and who is it? Wayne Gretzky coughs up the pocket center ice. Steve Isamink comes in, takes what I still to this day say is the greatest shot in NHL history, just that on-the-fly slap shot, curves the puck right over John Casey's shoulder, wins the game,

and then the Detroit goes on in the conference final, and they play Colorado, which is where the rivalry begins because of Claude Lemieux and Chris Draper, if Wayne Gretzky doesn't turn that puck over, And the blues beat the Red Wings. Talk about how history changes. We lose that whole rivalry. That Red Wings season becomes even more of a disaster than it was.

Maybe Gretzky stays in St. Louis. Maybe they win a Stanley Cup. It's just one of those moments where a guy that was so sure with the puck coughs it up. And Steve Isamond takes it the other way. And the rest is literally history. Yeah. And it may be maybe the most iconic goal, one of the most iconic goal celebrations, too, from Eisenman after he puts that in.

All right, Sean, as always, this was a ton of fun. Enjoy what should be a pretty entertaining weekend of hockey. And I think a lot of eyes will be on the habs with a brand new head coach, but it should be a lot of fun. So enjoy the games coming up this weekend. Right on. I will. And you too. All right. We want to remind you that if you're not an athletic subscriber,

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Thanks again for joining us. We'll get you again next week. A reminder, I'll be back with Haley Salvean to wrap up the weekend on Monday.