The Athletic Hockey Show - Most intriguing players to watch this NHL season, Arizona Coyotes relax game day dress code, renaming player awards and more

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

"All or Nothing: The Toronto Maple Leafs" drops Friday on Amazon, will Sean be tuning in? He and Ian then dive into his pieces on the most intriguing players heading into the NHL season, and finding hope for fans of the ten worst teams in league. Also, the Arizona Coyotes have become the first team to ease up on their game day dress code, will other teams soon follow suit?In the mailbag, a listener tasks Ian and Sean with renaming the player awards, and in "This Week In Hockey History", a look back at the outdoor exhibition game at Caeser’s Palace in Vegas between the LA Kings and NY Rangers.Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM at [phone]!Join The Athletic Hockey Show’s official fantasy hockey pool on OfficePools.com: http://www.officepools.com/invite/classic/m/HAFE2H6QGet 50% off of an annual subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to it, everybody. It is another Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. As always, it's Ian Mendez and Sean McIndoo with you in this slot. Head on this show. We'll talk about Sean's most intriguing players to watch in the upcoming NHL season, as well as which fan bases should be optimistic or maybe pessimistic about their teams heading into the regular season. Dress codes for NHL players, it's back in the spotlight, too. We'll have some fun with that.

We'll also invite our listeners into our fantasy hockey pool as part of our deal with office pools and we're going to have some fun going head to head with our listeners on that. So if you haven't heard about this, we're going to tell you about that. We're going to open up the mailbag, maybe talk about renaming some NHL trophies as well as a what if from the 2006 Stanley Cup final. And this week in hockey history, we look back at a forgotten outdoor game and an important rule change from way back in the 1920s. As we kick off this episode of the podcast, we'll let people know that we're actually going to give Jesse the week off.

So no Granger things brought to you by our good friends at BetMGM. We're going to give Jesse the week off, but I'm sure next week and next couple of weeks, as we get into the regular season, he's going to have all sorts of fun prop bets and lines for us to analyze. But as we kick off this show, Sean, we're on the precipice of hitting October. The calendar's about to hit October the 1st. And you know what that means? All or nothing.

The Leafs Amazon Prime series rolls out on Friday. I need to know, have you. read any, because there's a lot of people who have seen the whole thing. Maybe you have to. I don't know. Maybe they gave you an advanced copy. But a bunch of people have seen it. Have you read anything? Any spoilers? Are you going into this not knowing what's going on? No, I've, first of all, I haven't seen it. They, they, they, for some, my copy must have got lost in the mail, uh, for, for, for whatever reason. I did not get the advanced version. And I said before, I think on this show, I was kind of so, so on whether I was even going to watch because, for a couple reasons.

First of all, we all know the deal with this behind the scene stuff sometimes it's great and you get a ton of insights and it can be fascinating stuff. It can make new fans. It's been done really well. And sometimes it just feels like marketing and it just feels like you're getting a very scrubbed version and it's it can still have its moments. But, you know, I don't know. I don't go out of my way to watch that stuff with this one.

And because it's my team, what I first heard about it, I thought, this is going to be great. I can't wait another year until this thing comes out. Knowing how the story ends, though, I don't know that I'm really all that eager to go back and revisit it. So I have read the reviews. We had one on our site, on the athletic, Jonas Siegel took a look at it. And I've seen a few others.

And mostly the reviews have been pretty good. um the there are certainly apparently some moments that are that are going to be interesting to fans uh and maybe even to people who aren't hockey fans um that said i i put it this way i'm not making a day of it tomorrow to to get up to crack aton and start binging this thing uh because i know how it ends and i i'm like i think a lot of lee fans in that the idea going back to last season And given how it ended, it's just not something we have a ton of interest in. The faster we can forget about that, the better. And if that means that I miss out on a couple of moments,

I'm sure anything that's really especially memorable will bubble up to social media and that sort of thing. But, you know, to sit down and invest a few hours, revisiting one of the most disappointing seasons in my sports fan existence, I don't know how eager I'm going to be to do that. Yeah, like, you're right, because I think there's a lot of people who aren't Leafs fans. The Toronto Maple Leafs are one of those polarizing franchises that I think there's going to be a whole bunch of non-leafs fans who are going to have a big old bag of popcorn to be sitting down and be like, give me, you know, inject this into my veins. But like when you see all the heart, like, would you have wanted to, like, so when I think of the Leafs heartbreak, I think of that 2013 meltdown in Boston, like, would you have wanted to see after the. fact of behind the scenes kind of what happened in and around like if they had cameras with unfettered access third period like going into intermission after the game like would you have wanted that or you're like no you know what this i don't ever want to hear about this again yeah i mean that

you said the key word which is unfettered access yeah yes absolutely you you've given me everything uh then by all by all means i would want to see that uh and you know the same with this now my understanding with this Amazon series of the Leafs is that it pretty much ends with game seven. You know, it was meant to capture their chase for the cup. And as soon as it ends, that's pretty much the end of it. I would have liked to have seen it go on into the offseason. I would love to have seen the postmortems and the, you know, but give me unfettered access to that first conversation between Kyle Dubas and Sheldon

Keith and Brandon Shanahan after game seven. And absolutely, that's what I want to see. But you're not going to get them on this sort of thing. I mean, and realistically, as much as we might like to see it, we probably shouldn't. You know, in fact, some of the reviews that I've seen have said there are moments in this series where it feels like the people involved are aware that the cameras are there and they're maybe holding back or they're not going to, you know, which, of course, it's human nature. You're going to do that. I'll tell you, what really fascinates me is, you know, there's been all this talk about, are Lee fans going to watch or hockey fans going to watch? I want to see if this gains any traction outside of the hockey world

because we've seen that. What is it the is it F1 where there's this docuseries? And I haven't watched, but I have seen just a ton of people say, man, I had no interest in car racing, none. And yet I watched this. It was a great series and now I'm interested.

You know, now I find myself sitting down on the weekend. I'm watching races. And I'm like, I know that guy. I know that team. I know this situation. I would love to know if that's going to happen in hockey for non-hockey fans if anyone is going to stumble on this and be like, oh my gosh, there's this team with this super long championship drought and this is the year where it's all come together and they're going to face the biggest rival. And I don't know how it turns out.

I can't wait to watch. I would love to see that. I would love to see those people sitting down going, oh, this is the last episode. I bet you this is where they're going to win and it's all going to come. And then what happens, happens and see that reaction. I'm fascinated to know if we get any of that. Look, if you're a Leafs, and you want to watch, by all means, go ahead. Let me know how it is.

I may at some point sit down and give it a look, but not on day one. It's too, you know, it's still, it's still too fresh in our minds that, you know, the way that ended. And the season was so disappointing that it's one of those things where even the fun stuff, I got to be, I don't want to see Mitch Marner. playing PlayStation. I don't want to see Austin Matthews going golfing. I'm not, you know, I'm just at the point where I'm like, you guys should be practicing. Get back in the gym or getting, you know, whatever. So I don't know. But that also might be a me thing. I'm sure some people will enjoy it and I encourage him to do so. Well, you mentioned Mitch Marner. He makes it onto your list of

kind of intriguing players to watch. And let's talk about your column this week because this is something you've done now. Last couple of years, you kind of look at who are the most, And this isn't a list of who's going to be the best or who's going to be the worst. It's just like who's the most interesting, like, who's got the best storylines kind of swirling around them? And what I want to know from you is, you know, obviously with your pieces, you get a lot of feedback in the comment section. Was there like, was there like one or two names that repeatedly came up that hockey fans were like, oh, man, Sean, this guy should have made your list of 22 intriguing players to, like, you missed on this guy. I wouldn't say that people are saying I miss. The one thing that I make clear, I think in this piece, every year when I write it, is I'm building out a roster.

I'm putting 22 names on and I've got 10 honorable mentions. That's 32. I'm going one player, one name per team. That's it. One per team. And some people either miss that or skip over it and they go, okay, yeah, yeah, you said this guy from my team. about this guy? What about this guy? My team is so interesting. I've got all these. And of course, every fan thinks their team is the most interesting one. So there weren't necessarily people saying

you missed on this, but it was the what about this guy question. And yeah, I mean, there were certainly some teams that are tougher than others to narrow it down to one guy. And the team for me that was maybe the toughest of all of them was the Blackhawks. Because you've got the, the, you've got the the guy I ended up picking with Seth Jones. Not especially controversial pick, I wouldn't think. You've got a guy who comes over. It's a big trade. Signs to this massive contract.

The contract doesn't even kick in until next season. So you've got this year where he's in a new, you know, new team, new role. Wasn't very good last year. We all expect him. I think a lot of us expect him to rebound and get back to that top level that he's been at. But what if he doesn't? What if he has another year like last year? And now he's in, you know, now you're sitting there going, this contract hasn't even started yet.

And we got eight years committed to this guy at this massive price tag. And he's not playing well. Boy, we may have really made a big mistake. And there's going to be panic in Chicago if that happens. Or flip side, he gets back into the Norris conversation. And Chicago is sitting there going, we got our guy for the next decade. This is beautiful. We've, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, so that was my pick from Chicago.

what, you look down the rest of the rest of the rest of the. But you look down the rest of that roster. I mean, Mark Andre Fleury, right? I mean, we're all fascinated to see what happens here. This guy, rating Vezna winner comes over, you know, how's he going to play? Jonathan Taves is back. I mean, you talk about a great storyline. This is guys, you know, going to be probably the comeback player of the year.

We're all rooting for him. Played his first game last night. You know, we all want to watch him. So right there, that's three really big names from, from one team and then, you know, you could go, go down the list and pick other guys. I haven't even mentioned Patrick Kane, who's, of course, always one of the more interesting guys out there. So that was one.

There were, you know, the sharks are another one where, you know, I had mentioned Thomas Hurdle because we don't know his situation. He's talked about, you know, maybe it's time to move on. We'll see maybe he could be trade bait during the year. But obviously, you go down that roster, lots of big names. Lots of guys, you know, Aircross and Brent Burns. Can they rebound? the whole Evander Cain mess.

We don't even know what's happening there. So that was another team where narrowing it down really became tricky. And, you know, every, like I say, every fan base knows their team really well. And they can all say, hey, what about this guy? What about that? This obscure guy. This guy's on a PTO. It might be, you know, at the end of his career.

There's all different ways you can go. I got to say, for a league where a lot of times we go, oh, there's not a lot of great storylines, it's hard to narrow it down when you're talking individual name. because there is so many unknown ones going into this year. There's a lot of different angles and a lot of different ways this could go. You know, as you talk about teams that have multiple guys that are interesting, the Florida Panthers jumped in mind for me because, you know, Aaron Eckblad's coming back off an injury and was kind of, you know,

potentially having an elite season. There's the Bobrovsky, Spencer Knight, there's Barkoff going in the last year of UFA. But the guy you went with was McKenzie Weeger. And I want to talk about him for a second. Okay. I want, first of all, I need to peel back the curtain a little bit here for our listeners who may not realize that both Sean and I live in the same neighborhood, right? You and I live in the same neighborhood in Ottawa. Did you realize McKenzie Weeger was our neighbor for years? Like, McKenzie Weaker grew up in our neighborhood. No, I didn't know that. Wiger went to school around the corner from you and I. And I feel like this is not something we've talked about. Like, you could have been grocery shopping and McKenzie Weiger like, 10,000. years ago, this, you know, whatever, 14, 13 year old kid, you might have been in front of line

with him at the grocery store. You probably crossed paths with McKenzie Weger and you didn't even know it. He was your neighbor. How about that? This is absolutely news to me. I did not know this. It did not influence my pick. But no, that's very good.

There's some Kenzie Weger probably skateboarded in front of my car and I shook my fist at him and told him, get off the road. That's good to know. No, I had not realize that. But, and you know, we kind of talked about this with Jesse Granger last week. And, you know, he is a real, like, I love the, I'm all in on the Panthers. I really think that they are Stanley Cup ready. If they get the goal heading, whether it's Bobrovsky or Spencer Knight, they are, in my opinion, Stanley Cup ready. Like, what do you like about, like, McKenzie Wieger as like a dark horse?

Because I think it's interesting. You brought this up in your column. Like when Adam Fox won the Norris, he didn't follow the traditional. path, which is, you know, show me for five years you can be an elite defender, then maybe we'll open up our mind. Like maybe McKenzie Wigger, maybe the door was kind of a jar for McKenzie Wigger thanks to Adam Fox. And look, it's, it's one of these things where McKenzie Wigger's a guy that for the last couple of years, that name started to come up more and more among kind of the analytic minded folks. And, you know, initially it was sort of, uh, it was sort of, uh,

You know, this guy is, this is a guy that you probably don't know, but he's better than you think. And I remember a couple years ago, there was any time there were trade talks with the Panthers, you know, we see people going, try to get weaker. He's, you know, that's a guy that you can maybe, maybe pull some value from. And then last year, it sort of went from, hey, this is a guy you don't know who's better than you think to, this is a guy you do know, but he's a lot better than you think. And he's, he's maybe a top tier guy. And look, we've, we've seen analytics people say that about some guys where it.

The breakthrough just never seemed to happen. We've also seen them be ahead of the curb on guys. And, you know, I'm going to be real honest. I'm not, I'm a national columnist. I cover the entire NHL. I'm not going to sit here and act like I've seen dozens of Florida Panthers games every year. Like, I'm sitting down and breaking down film on the Florida Panthers. So when it comes to McKenzie Weger, I've kind of taken other people's word for it a little bit.

And this is one of those situations where I sort of want to focus a little bit more on seeing this with my own eyes and just kind of seeing what's there and watching this guy. Because it feels like at this point, the secret is out. This is no longer a situation where it's a, you know, it's a it's a no name. But it's a guy who probably, at least according to the smart people, doesn't get the credit that he deserved. So, you know, he was my pick from the Panthers. But you're right. There's a ton of other guys, especially those two goaltenders.

I mean, you know, Sergey Bobrowski can get back to Vesna form. the Panthers jump right to the top of the list. But he hasn't been there in a couple years and you got Spencer Knight. And what do you do if Spencer Knight's outplaying your $10 million guy? I mean, do you make that switch? Do you put that pressure on the young guy? Do you hope it's platoon? What does Sergey Bobroski even do if he's sitting on the bench for six or seven straight games

because he's getting outplayed by this rookie? It's going to be very interesting. There's a lot of ways that can go. But I'm with you. I think this Panthers team is really good. And you mentioned Aaron Ekblad because I feel like we all kind of forgot that Nickblad was out for the playoffs last year. It was a disappointing disappointment in the sense that in how that series of the lightning

went. But they were missing their number one defensemen. So yeah, real good team and a lot of potentially good stories coming from a team in a market that a lot of us tend to kind of write off and we shouldn't this year. Yeah. I still think the best illustration of how under the radar McKenzie Weeger is is the fact that he was your neighbor for years. and you didn't even realize it.

That's how you know. The guy is a dark horse candidate. I never noticed. Yeah. I want to talk to you a little bit about goaltending too because quite frankly, let's be honest, you're like probably for 15 teams in the league, you could pick their goalie as like the guy, right,

as the most intriguing and a lot of their success hinges on it. I want to ask you because we're going to be talking about some fantasy hockey coming up with our officepools.com, you know, fun listener contest. I'm going to throw two names at you. and they're kind of connected. And I want to know if you had to pick one of these goalies for your fantasy hockey team this season

and your options are Matt Murray from Ottawa or Tristan Jerry from Pittsburgh, who are you taking? Yeah, that's... First of all, I'm looking at the waiver wire to see if there's any other options. I mean, I'm probably going Jerry because most fantasy bowls are still based on wins and I think the Pittsburgh Penguins

are going to win probably significantly more games than the senators, although that's not necessarily a sure thing. But it is interesting because whenever you're looking at, you know, who do I take, who do I trust, you're looking at the overall numbers, of course, but the recency bias does kick in here. And you think, you know, what do I remember? What was my last impression of this guy? And Matt Murray, who did not have a very good year last year, and his numbers were quite poor.

But like the rest of the senators, pretty good down the stretch. You know, there was that last kick of the, you know, the last three weeks or so of the season where the senators were playing really well. And Matt Murray was part of that versus Tristan Jari, our last memory of him in the playoffs, giving up goals and overtime, coughing up the puck, all of that stuff. not very good. I'm not sure which one of those guys is the better goalie. I think Jari is certainly in a better situation, so he's probably my pick. But if I'm picking one of those two guys in my fantasy bowl,

something's gone real wrong for me in the draft. I clearly missed the draft and got set to autopick and digging my way out. Not that that would ever happen. No, not that that happened to me. Okay. So last guy I want to talk about the major list is, Patrick Liney. And I'm, I, boy, I don't know what to make of Patrick Liney.

Like, he came in early in his career. I think his sophomore season, right, had the, the, the, the four, whatever, the, the 40 goal season. And he would be, like, he would just be torrid, hot, right? He would go, you know, three or four goals in a game and then two weeks without a goal, whatever. And I'm still trying to figure out what Patrick Line is. So if I ask you the question, like, do we lock it? Like, is Patrick Liney a legitimate 30-goal guy? No questions asked.

Like, what is he right now? Yeah. I mean, it's a fair question because you're right. Year two, you were looking at this guy going, this guy's going to win multiple Rockover Shards. This is the second coming to an extent of like the Alexander Roevejkin sort. And that's not to say he's going to score 700 plus goals. But this guy who just got that bullet shot, yes, you know, there's questions.

of other aspects of his game. But the hardest thing to do in all of the NHL is to score goals. And some guys just have an instinct for it. And some guys, you just see the eyes light up when that goal scoring chance comes around. And he can get that shot off from anywhere. And it's dangerous anywhere he gets it. And the last few years, it just hasn't happened. And yeah, I mean, part of it is he's streaky.

But here's a secret. Every great offensive player is streaky. Unless you're Connor McDavid and you're just good all the time, everybody is streaky to some extent. You just notice it when you have guys, and Liny's one of those guys, who when the puck isn't going in, there's not a lot else happening.

There's not other aspects that are really making up for it. And yeah, is he a 30-goal score? No questions asked. I would say yes in the sense that just on pure talent, he's going to score 30 goals every year, probably should be scoring 40, maybe more than that,

should have a few 50-goal years in his future. The question is, what else can he do? What other aspects of his game are going to either elevate or not? And do all of the potential deficiencies everywhere else in his game at some point add up to something that overwhelms the goal scoring he can do? And suddenly he's maybe not in the lineup or not as high in the lineup as he can be. I mean, you put this guy in your first line, he's going to score 30 goals every year if he stays healthy. but the question is, are you willing to put him on that first line and keep him there?

Or at some point, as a coach, do you say, you know what? I got to work with this guy and I got to get through to him somehow and suddenly the ice time is down and maybe he's not getting the power play the way he's used to. We saw it to some extent with John Tortorella. We all figured we would see it with John Tortorella. As soon as that trade happened, everybody went, well, line A Torterella. Let's see how that goes. We saw how it went, not great.

So now it's Brad Larson's turn. And this is, you know, three coaches in three years at some point if it doesn't work with Brad Larson, maybe it's not the coaches. So I think we're all kind of watching this. Liny had, you know, part of the reason he made my list is he, you know, he had those comments where he was like, look, I was really bad last year. Yeah. He was, you know, he didn't, he didn't hold back. And sometimes when you hear a player say that, it gets your attention. You think, okay, this guy's, he's got it.

It's clicked now. I don't know if it has. we'll see with Patrick Lainey if it does. If it ever does all click together, and both in terms of what he wants to be and just the maturity and everything on and off the ice, he's still got that goal scoring talent. You just can't teach what he's got.

And he could be a really dangerous player and a guy that you can still, you can build a team around. But if it doesn't, and he's either content or just can only be a guy that can score goals and doesn't do anything else, then I think that career could go on a lot of different paths.

You know, can I just talk for one second? And this is a podcast. So I know we can kind of casually swear here. Can we just talk for a second how much I appreciate European players just casually dropping the word shit in the quotes? Like, ah, we were shit tonight. We're like, oh my God, we run to our phone.

We tweet it out. And it's amazing. I love it. Like, it's the best thing ever. Yeah, they didn't get the same. memo that the North America got where it's like 60 minutes on the ice of just every horrible word you have ever heard. And then they get there and they're like, oh, we need to up the effort level a little bit.

Yeah. Is that really? Was that when you guys talked about behind closed doors? Yeah. Hey, listen, Columbus fans, as we talk about Patrick Klein, I think if you talk to a lot of Columbus fans, they know that they're probably in for a tough season, right? Like, you look at Columbus and I think the way that they are and the way that they're constructed, they might very well be a bottom five team.

in the league this season. I think it's really interesting because Sean Gentilly has a poll going out for fans right now. And it's called the Hopeometer, basically asking fans, and it's either or scenario. Either you are optimistic and hopeful about your team or you're pessimistic. I want

to know, Sean, like how many fan bases are going to end up skewing kind of positive? Because I feel like by our very nature is hockey fans, we're cynical, we're pessimistic, we're doom and gloom. Like, we're like, oh my gosh, here we go again.

Like out of the 32 teams, how many do you think are going to end up skewing somewhat positive in their optimism level for this season? You know what? I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be the majority. I'm going to put the number in about 20 that'll be... That many.

That'll be optimistic. Yeah, I know. It seems high to me, but here's the thing. I mean, first of all, there's a lot of teams in the league that are just good teams. And, you know, they're clearly, you know, Vegas, Tampa, Colorado, they're going to say,

you would imagine that they're hopeful. I can't imagine maybe the Leafs will be the one like top 10 team that fans will say, no, we're not optimistic. But, you know, that should get you a good amount. And then the one thing is, there's going to be some teams that are on the,

on the border line, but I think fans will maybe give the benefit of the doubt. And then you get into the teams where change is happening. either because they're rebuilding or they brought in the new GM, the new coach. That does in sports tend to buy you a little bit of time. That gives you a little bit of the optimism where you say, okay, we're resetting, we're getting a bit of a clean slate in one way or another.

Yes, I'm hopeful for the future, even if I think that the team might stink this year, because that will be a category, right? There's band bases out there that go, oh, we're going to be bad this year, but we're hopeful for the future. You know, I most, in my experience, most Detroit fans, for example, would fall in in that category. A lot of them are going, no, and of course, I'm not going to make the playoffs this year. But we got Steve Eiserman. We're on the right track.

Pieces are being put in place. We feel good about this. Ottawa, where we are, I think maybe there's a bit higher expectation as far as the playoffs, but I wouldn't say that most of the fan base thinks it's likely. But again, optimism, lots of young pieces put in place. talk to us two or three years down the line, but, you know, we feel good about that. So I think between the teams that are legitimately good and the teams that aren't there, I think it'll be in the 15 to 20 range, slightly above the 50% mark or close to it, final answer.

And you know, your call- And you clearly don't, right? You're like you seem like you think we're going to be. I feel like 20 are going to be negative. We'll get maybe 10 that are like, yeah, I feel pretty good. Like I do think a team like Toronto, even like I wonder about like fans of Pittsburgh, Boston, Washington that have been perennial contenders, but now you're like, are they going to fall off a cliff, the California teams?

Like I don't know. I'm not seeing very many teams that have like legitimate championship aspiration. So it's like Calgary. Like I don't know. Like Nashville. Like there's a whole bunch of teams. What's Edmonton going to think, right? I mean, that fan base has been so battered.

It is. I mean, I think the one saving grace for team optimism might be that, you know, Sean left it very vague. He was just sort of like, you know, do you have hope, you know, yes or no? In fact, it was funny because I read the comments and a lot of people were like, did my form get cut off? Like, I thought there were going to be more questions. And it's not.

It's like, what's your team? Do you have hope yes or no? And that can mean different things, right? Like if you're a Boston fan, you might be sitting there going, yeah, boy, it could be Bergeron's last year. Marchion's getting up there. We don't know about, you know, this or that. But we're still good this year. So, yeah, I have hope for this year.

And then, you know, you turn around at some Kings fan is going, yeah, we're not going to be good this year. But we got all these prospects, all these pieces coming in. I have hope because my hope is for a few years down the line. I think certainly if he had said, do you have hope you can win the cup this year, then you're right. Then we see the numbers plunge. but I think the fact that he left it open end, it'll be, we'll see,

because I'm kind of taken, this is unusual ground for me. I'm kind of taking the optimistic. Yeah, what's going on here? The rose color glasses view of, of the hockey world. And I, we'll have to see how it turns out

because you're kind of talking me into the fact that, yeah, maybe this is, maybe I'm going a little bit too optimistic. You know, I think what, what was interesting too, like Dom Luch-Chichin wrote his,

he's kind of every day, he's dropping his season preview. and it's two by two. I always joke, Dom is like the Grim Reaper, where like every day you wake up, you're like, is today the day that my team

ends up in Dom's, you know, preseason rankings. A team like Ottawa, for example, I know the fan base was pretty upset to see that they were projected to be bottom five. Vancouver is in there. And so you kind of wrote a column.

It's funny because that's my column for tomorrow that I'm hoping to write, unless they signed Brady Kachuk. And then maybe I have to shift gears. But I kind of, one of the things I want to do is like go through Dom's preseason, you know, projection for Ottawa and look for some of the positivity because, you know, fans are looking for hope, right? You don't want to all, as I told Dom, I was like, it's all Dom and gloom is what I said to him.

Yep. He appreciated that. But I think it's interesting. Your column today was like, hey, if you're a fan of the teams that ended up in the bottom 10 in Dom's rankings, like here is, is this a new down goes brown by the way? Are you just injecting optimism? This is my one for the week. I'm getting it all out of my system.

And then it's going to be just all, all misery for the rest of the way. No, but this is, this is, it's another piece that I've done kind of every year. And it was sort of inspired by, just every,

not every year, but every now and then, we see teams that kind of come out of nowhere, where everybody agreed that they were going to be bad. And then next thing you know, they're not just, not just good in the sense of like, oh, they're hanging in the playoff mix a little better than we thought, but they're capital G good. And, you know, the most famous example is probably the Golden Knights

in their expansion year. You can retcon the history all you want. Nobody thought they were going to be good. We've talked about that with Jesse. The odds makers, the experts, everybody thought this team was going to be pretty bad. And then they go all the way to the Stanley Cup final. The maybe the most classic example was the year before that, the Islanders, where they had just lost John Tavares and I remember I think it was I think it was Deadspin had there the headline on their season preview article was ranking every NHL team from best to Islanders and that's how bad the islanders were expected everybody was just like well this is it they you know they'll get Jack Hughes and you know they can move on from there but Barry Trots comes in and the Islanders have been

one of the best most consistent teams ever since so part of this is optimism and part of this is me like desperately trying to call a shot on one of these teams. I figure if I take the 10 worst teams and I make the argument that they're going to be good, some year I'll be right. And I'll be able to sit back and go like, you know, at the end of this year when people are going, nobody thought the Sabres would be good. And I can put my hand up and go, oh, wait a second. I did as well as nine other teams that I was wrong about. So I try this every year. I've been trying it for the last few years. Honestly, hasn't gone super well. The bottom of the league has been a lot more predictable and consistent over the last few years, and maybe it will be again.

But if you're a fan of one of those bad teams and Dom made you sad, check out my piece because I'm doing my best. It's much harder for some teams than others. I'm trying not to get condescending and insult anyone's intelligence, but I'm desperately searching for an angle for these teams where maybe, just maybe, they can be a lot better than we think. I want to hit on one other kind of interesting story before we, we, we'll, We'll talk about our fun fantasy hockey pool that we've got against the listeners and some of the other this week in hockey history and mailbag stuff. I want to talk about something that Emily Kaplan, our colleague, wrote over at ESPN that dropped on Thursday. And so they did a survey of all 32 teams, the NHL, Sean.

And only one team has a plan to fully relax their dress code for players. So for the listeners, if you've watched NHL games over the years, whether, you know, in, Canada, the United States. There's always that shot of the players coming in off the bus and they're all wearing suit and ties, right? It's just they all look the same, except during the bubble, the NHL kind of relaxed the dress code. So we thought maybe we're at this point where we're going to see a more relaxed dress code. The CBA actually outlines how players have to dress. And the NHL is the only team in the Big Four sports that kind of spells out a very strict dress. code for game day. And it says players are required to wear jackets, ties, and dress pants to all games. And while they're traveling unless, and here's the big caveat, unless otherwise specified

by their head coach and general managers. So ESPN does a survey of all the teams. And guess what? Arizona is the only team that is going to relax their game day dress code. So Jacob Chikrin, you can roll in however you'd like, Phil Kessel. Bill Kessel. That's right. And the other 19 guys in the coyotes whose names we have to learn. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I want to see what Phil's going to wear. He's most likely to be like this roll in with sweatpants or maybe like a hot dog t-shirt, right? Yeah, he's got to take the hot dog costume from I think he should leave. He's got to like just show up fully decked out in that. You know what? Good for the coyotes. Good for the coyotes. Because I, first of all, I was surprised to learn that it was.

in the CBA. I kind of assumed that this was just one of those unwritten hockey rules. And, you know, to find out that it's actually there in the CBA surprise me. But, as you say, it's, it's there, but it says teams are allowed to just ignore it. And yeah, good for the coyotes. This is a team, a young team, relatively new GM, new coach. You're trying to make an impact in the market. Again, it's about showing a little bit of personality. And I'm not somebody who really cares about a lot of this stuff, whether it's hockey or any other sport. You know, when you get the, you see a photo go around on social media. Look with the quarterback war.

Look with this guy war to the game. And I'm always kind of like, so what? But it is anything that breaks this idea in hockey that we are just one hive mind and everybody, it is just the team. And there are no individuals. And we're all like, you know, if that means somebody gets to wear, you know, something. that's a little bit more outlandish or not. If somebody just wants to dial it back, let them show that a little bit. I'm fine with it.

I don't think that's the secret to unlocking hockey's popularity. I don't think it's some marketing bonanza if we let Austin Matthews wear his, you know, crazy Final Fantasy costume or whatever he was on the magazine cover with a few years ago. I don't think that's, you know, that's going to be a major breakthrough. But every little bit helps. And good for the, you know, again, good for the coyotes. that's what teams like that should be doing. We've seen it kind of with Vegas and their game day stuff.

You're not a traditional team. You're not the habs or the Leafs or someone who's behold into history and tradition. Have some fun. Break out of it. Caroline has done a great job with that too. You know, show a little bit of personality, show a little bit of something, show that you can be a bit different. Why not? What have you got to lose?

Any chance Lou Lamarillo breaks from this. Absolutely no chance. That will be the last one. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. All right, Sean, it's time. I talked about this with Haley on the Monday episode of the podcast,

but we got a fun little listener versus hosts versus I think our producers are going to be part of this. It's going to be a lot of fun. It is the athletic hockey pool powered by our friends over at office pools.com. So there's going to be a link for our listeners directly where you get your podcast from. You'll get a direct link to the pool. but if you don't want to do that, you can just listen to me right here. Go to office pools.com

and sign up to join the athletic hockey pool. You're going to make your picks and you're going to go ahead to head with us. So we're all going to have our own teams. This is going to be a lot of fun. And the way that this is done, Sean, is it's one of those box pools, meaning there's a bunch of boxes with players

and you've got to pick from that box. What I think is interesting is they have given you, they've named all the box kind of after athletic hockey show hosts, and you have the top billing inside your box, the McIndoo box, is Connor McDavid and Nate McKinnon? That's it.

You only have two guys. How did you get top billing? See, I'm not sure. On the one hand, I feel, you know, I'm thrilled that I got top billing, but also they gave me the box with only two guys. Like, what does that say about their confidence in my decision-making skills?

They're like, no, you know, everyone else can handle a half dozen, but this guy, we've got to dump it down to two guys. And it's, I would say, probably a pretty obvious pick, too, although, you know, McDavid versus McKinnon, you got to look at the scoring system and all of that. I think most people are going to be taking Connor McDavid here, but there is a little bit of game theory that kicks in where you're going, you know what? Injuries happen, weird stuff happens. If everybody takes McDavid and I take McKinnon and something happens to Connor McDavid, I've won the pool because I'm going to have this huge advantage over everyone. it's it's you know well I'm interested to see where people go on that but I think my box and by the way we got to talk about the naming here because this McIndoo's meal I don't

they've given everybody like you know their own kind of cute name and I don't know about that one I don't know that I've got anything much better but it's how about Mac ando's Macintock how does that sound because it's MacDavid McKinnon Macon back right that's I mean that that feels better than yeah the meal, I don't know. I don't know about that. But yeah, I did, you know, I appreciate having the two best players in the league for sure. Now, will you be like me as you go through and we're going to make our picks in the next few days here?

If you're debating between a couple of players and it's really a flip of the coin, will you potentially take the guy with the better pun name so that you can name your fantasy team? See, that's a veteran move. Yeah, you've got to. see because I mean you got to have at least one guy for a pun and if you can combine multiple guys and get uh you know yeah you have to consider that absolutely you got to it's it's like it's like putting a team together you got to have guys in the right role and some of the guys their role is just going to be contribute to the pun name I'm going to try to come up with

something good I'm sure other people will but the pressure's on you because this is this is your home turf this is uh the the Mendez pun pun headlines have been legendary for for decades now So the expectations are high. Yeah. So again, go to office pools.com. You're going to just kind of get the opportunity to join the athletic hockey pool. And you're going to go head to head with us and pick those names. You know, we got a good one here.

Tell me if you like this, we got some feedback into the show talking about bad pool names. Listener wrote in and said, hey, with Ian's love of awful fantasy team names, I'd like to share mine. It's not as much of a pun. but my fantasy team in my league this year is West McCauley Culkin. Okay. Not bad. West McCauley Colkin is pretty good. Yeah.

Yeah. I'll take that. Yeah. I can't think of too many guys who have their team named after West McCauley, right? And, you know, well, probably not. And, you know, we can all picture West McCauley doing the home alone scream, like, as a penalty call one time. Just, you know, just rather than not, just go full West.

And yeah, that'll be how he signals no goal on the next replay review. See, now I'm already thinking about drafting Dylan Strom so I could have Strom alone. There it is. See, already, the wheels are turning. The wheels are slowly turning. This could happen. So check it out. Again, officepools.com.

A great partnership we have. We're going to have fun with that. Hey, quick question for you because you've done a lot of the legwork as a commissioner in a fantasy football league. And there's obviously a lot of people who are commissioners of fantasy hockey. hockey leagues. Tell me, what's the toughest thing? I'm going to give you a couple of options. Maybe it's something different. Okay. What's the toughest thing about being a fantasy sports commissioner? Okay. The things on the list here would be like, you know, just trying to set up

a draft date that works for everybody. That can be tough. Tracking down money like, hey, just a reminder, $50. Like, you know, and then you have to send it like seven times. Or is it once the season starts and you get an email for like a trade that you have to approve or deny. Like what's the toughest thing and worst thing about being a commissioner of a fantasy sports league? Yeah, those are three good picks. I'm going to go with the draft date one because that bites me every year. You send out the email, hey, guys, when you start thinking about draft dates, you know, this is the range. Anybody got any nights?

They can't do it. Anybody, you know, I'm going to be away. And you get no response. Nobody replies any of, okay, I'm narrowing it. What about these two nights? Okay. Speak now. We're doing it Monday, eight o'clock.

And instantly you hit send and you got four emails in your box. People go, and I actually can't do it that night. I got a thing. I got this. I got another draft. I got whatever. And it just makes you want to tear your hair out. So that's up there.

I, in my football league and any league that I'm going to run, I always have the rule. We don't do voting on trades. That's something. I know that's controversial for some people. I can't stand leagues where you and I make a trade and then the rest of the league gets to vote on whether that's a good trade or not. If we're, if there's, you know, if we're got some sort of under the table deal or there's, you know, it's a super unfair deal, then let the commissioner step in and, you know, figure out what's going on. But this idea that like our rivals can say like, oh, I don't know about that. That makes Ian's team a little too good.

I'm going to vote no on this and not let it happen. Get rid of that. So I don't deal with that. We just let everything go through and it tends to work itself out. And chasing down money, that can be dicey. Here's the key on that. You got to be able to turn off people's ability to change their lineups or pick up guys on waivers, that sort of thing. Hey, if you haven't paid by week two, I'm turning off your waivers and you can enjoy playing the rest of the year with the guys you're stuck with.

That tends to get people's attention if you need to do it. But generally, I don't know. Most of my leagues are guys that have been doing it for a long time. So we tend to be pretty good, except when it comes to that draft date, which is a nightmare every single year. Yeah. And a reminder, this is a really fun contest, but there's also a chance for you to win some cool prizes,

you know, PS5 or an Xbox, some autographed jerseys, NHL jerseys, monthly winners are going to get signed NHL Puck. So it's going to be a lot of fun. You just get one team per entry. So if we find out that you had multiple teams, you're going to get this qualified. Ian's going to come to your house with McKinsey Weeger and they're going to have a chat with you. Yeah.

the Bar Haven. That's where we live. That's the part of Ottawa. We live in Barhaven. Barhaven bullies are going to show up and yeah, you're in trouble. And by the way, if, get a look at the list and then I would also love to hear your feedback on some of the naming. I'm open to ideas on some of these category names too because, you know, some of them are good. And then there's the rest of them. Yeah. Again, go to officepools.com, sign up, join that athletic hockey pool. Make your picks. And like I said, you're going to win some.

fantastic prizes. All right, time to wrap up this episode of the podcast, as we always do, by doing a little mailbag and a little this week in hockey history. A reminder to you, you can hit us up at the athletic hockey show at gmail.com. The athletic hockey show at gmail.com is where you can get us with an email. We've got a few here. Alex says, hey, if you could rename all of the trophies with names from players that retired between, this is interesting, between

1981 and 2011, okay, who would you take here? He says there's obvious ones, Gretzky for, would you have a Wayne Gretzky Memorial Trophy as the MVP, Bobby Orr, Memorial Trophy for Best Defenseman, interested in your choices.

The only thing I'd say is that Bobby Orr technically doesn't fit into your window there, Alex. But I know what you're trying to say. Can we also point out that Wayne Gradsky and Bobby Or are both still a lot? So we don't, the Memorial Trophy, Oh, geez. Yeah, I didn't even realize. Sorry.

That's not rush either of these guys. Exactly. We're not breaking any news here. Gretz is on the TNT panel now. He's going to find out what? There's a memorial trophy for me. So, but like if you were doing, like, let's say, okay, let's go to the Selky trophy. Like, is that Gie Carbono?

Is it Bob Ganey? Is it like Jerry, Jerry Letting? No, no. I mean, it has to, there's two ways you go with the Selkie. You got to either go Ganey because it was. Everyone will tell you the trophy was basically invented for him. Or if you don't feel like Bob Ganey is a big enough name to have a trophy named after him, then I guess you have to go, I mean, do you do like a Steve Eiserman or Ron Francis,

one of those guys who won it kind of later in their careers? You know, we're a few years away from being able to call it the Bergeron, which maybe would be the best choice of all down the road. but I think it's probably you're going to end up with the old timers wanting it gainy and then the other guys maybe I might go Eisman even though I know he wasn't a good defensive player for the start of his career but he really was at the end and you know it also he's the sort of generational star that you wouldn't mind seeing recognized in this you know the one trophy that would be almost impossible to rename would be the Calder

trophy for rookie the year like what would you you do with that. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, what would you do? Like, did Jim Carrey win the rookie of the year and the Vesna or just won? Just the Vesne. Yeah, I think he won the Veson in his second year, but he may have won the Calder as well. Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah, there have been definitely some guys that did not hold up super well. I mean, you know what you could do with the Calder is he called the Salani, right? Because that's a guy who had an all-time rookie year and also had the career to back it up where you'd feel okay. Mike Boss, you'd be another one that I think you could do. But yeah, you're right. That would be a tough one.

Okay, one other question here from Mike Polk. Mike has written into us at the athletic hockey show at gmail.com and says, hey, guys, what happens if Duane Rollison does not get hurt in game one of the 2006 Stanley Cup final? Let, of course, that missed cue that led to the Canes winning goal. They ultimately won the Stanley Cup. How different would things be for Carolina and Edmonton if maybe Duane Rollisand doesn't get hurt? It's a great question. You know, I don't think it's a sure thing that Edmonton wins that series with Dwayne Rollison.

But, you know, the injury did lead directly to the goal that ended up being the winning goal in game one. If that game goes to overtime, who knows, maybe Carolina still wins. but you're looking at a real close, tight series, and Edmonton didn't have its number one goalie. And people got to remember that 2006 Edmonton team, a lot of people pointed them as being like this great dark horse Cinderella underdog run because they were the eighth seed. But they were actually, they were a very bad team.

Most of the year got Dwayne Rollison and suddenly were very good. So I mean, he really was probably the MVP of that team aside from Chris Pronger. So yeah, maybe Edmonton wins the cup. you know, what happens? Yeah, I mean, from an Edmonton perspective, what's interesting is all the stuff that came after probably still happens because Pronger probably still wants out, even with the Stanley Cup, you suspect. And that kind of was the domino that tipped them into the decade of darkness.

But is it really that dark if you've got a Stanley Cup that recently, you know, in the cap era? Maybe it does kind of change the feelings around the team. maybe it at least changes the vibe for that fan base. And instead of talking about them being one of the longest suffering fan bases anywhere, you know, maybe we're still at least going, ah, you guys got that Stanley Cup in 2006. And Carolina, who knows, right? I mean, who knows even as, you know, from the perspective of building the fan base and everything,

does it change significantly if they go to game seven of a final instead of win? Maybe. Maybe it does. And probably also changes a few legacies as far. far as the players involved. So it's, yeah, it's a real interesting what if to throw out there. Okay, let's wrap up this edition of the Athletic Hockey Show with something we do on Thursday podcast, which is a little this week in hockey history. So 30 years ago this week, we take you back, take our listeners back to September 27th, 1991. The LA Kings and the New York Rangers played

an outdoor game in very hot weather. It was like 80 degrees Fahrenheit. It was the Kings and the Rangers an outdoor game at Caesar's Palace. Basically like the parking lot of Caesar's Palace. They make an arena out there, ice surface, and they play a game. A couple of questions for you. First of all, the only,

so I have a vague recollection of this game. The only thing I seem to remember, did Kelly Rudy wear like a camera on top of his helmet? Do you remember this? He may have. Yeah, that doesn't sound like something they would do. Yeah.

That was, well, here's the thing. It was a memorable game. And, you know, it's kind of become almost the forgotten outdoor game because, you know, it's a lot of people look back and they go, you know, the Heritage Classic, that was the first outdoor game. And it wasn't. There was this and there were some other, there were some other outdoor games earlier in NHL history where teams just went various places, including one where I think it was the Bruins. teams used to at the end of the season go on these little tours where they would just go around and play other teams before they packed up for the year. And the Bruins went one place and it was like, oh, hey, I know we told you we had an arena, but we're not finished building it yet. So it doesn't have a roof.

So they played an outdoor game because there was no roof on the arena, that sort of thing. But this one was, yeah, but in Las Vegas, in September, which is not, you know, it's. That was 80 degrees. Yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of people look at that and go, wait a second, 80 degrees in 1991, how did they pull this off? And the answer is they barely did. There were all sorts of problems. They did, for one of the problems was that they didn't, for some reason, they didn't paint the lines on the ice. They used like a fabric across and then put the ice over it. So the ice was starting to melt. And then you had these patches where like if you went across the blue line, you hit this fabric. Like guys were just, you know, trip or fall down or whatever. The ice was obviously a mess. It was, it was miserable. And then there was also like an invasion of, I don't know if they were locusts or there was some sort of bug that was coming and kept jumping onto the ice.

And what was happening is, you know, as you know, if you've seen how hockey rinks will work sometimes is the ice kind of sits in halfway between melted and frozen and it'll, you know, it'll melt as. play goes a little bit and then it'll freeze back up because of the cold coming up. And so these bugs were like jumping onto the ice into the water and then the water would freeze and these bugs were like trapped on the ice surface. And some of the players described like you're skating and you can hear the crunches under your skates as you're skating over this insect infestation. I mean, it was a real mess. You can find it on YouTube by the way. There's a few highlights out there. It's an early 90s hockey, Rangers Kings. This is, I think, right before the Messia trade, so he's not in it.

But there's like a fight at some point. I think it's Chris King gets in a fight. And it's a real interesting thing to see. But if you're looking at it going, why didn't they do this again for 12 years? That's why. It didn't really work the way that they were hoping it might. You know, we need to turn this podcast into one of those visual things where we sit down. We just watch the game and we just make comments over things like that's insane.

Yeah. There was like fabric under the ice. And it was just one of those things where, you know, 19. And then the, you know, the other great thing is it's 1991. How many other fan base has never even heard of this? Like you're like, oh, I was a hockey fan of 91. I don't remember anything about this. These days it would be, you know, it's a big thing.

We'd all be making jokes about locusts on Twitter. And I'm willing to bet there's a lot of even older fans who are hearing this story for the first time right now. Yeah. Let me sneak one more in, too. Let's take our listeners all the way back to September 28th, 1929. So if I'm not mistaken, like, this is just before the stock market crash. I think the stock market crash of 1929 happened in October, right? So this is like a couple of weeks before the world. What are you implying? No, no, I'm just, I just said this is just before the world went to hell. It was October of 1929. Just before that, though, the NHL implemented a very important rule change that stated that players were now permitted to pass the puck forward in all three zones. That's right. Prior to this, what fans probably don't realize is that if you got over the blue line and you were in the other team's zone, you were not allowed to make a forward pass in the attacking zone, which is it's crazy when you think about it. Like in the 1920s, there was just all drop passes.

Yeah. That's a very old-timey sports rule, right? Because, you know, it's like American football was the same way. Rugby still where it's, yeah, you didn't pass it forward. That was cheating. You had to carry it in. And yeah, this is, again, this, there is, we've talked about it and maybe even kind of complained about it.

But there is a reason why the NHL wants you to think that history started with the original six in 1942. to. And they kind of ignore the first 25 years of history of the NHL that actually started 1917. It's partly because of stuff like this. The rules were all over the place. Scoring was all over the place up and down with different stuff. Goalies weren't allowed to drop to the ice. Teams were coming and going and going on strike and getting kicked out of the league right before the playoffs. And it was just 25 years of chaos before we got some relative stability. And that's kind of where the NHL wants you to think we started.

But yeah, there was a lot of years in the NHL where the forward pass was not legal everywhere on the ice. And then somebody thought, you know what? Because you look at like scoring rates in the 20s and the goal, I mean, you think we're in a dead puck era now. Like that was the era of one-nothing games. And finally somebody was like, hey, guys, a crazy thought here, but forward pass maybe. And they tried that and it worked out.

to have been at that meeting. It's like, I don't know, like some rando like Jack Adams or someone's like, yeah, go ahead, Jack. What's your idea?

Guys, hear me out on this. Hey, what if we, what if we love forward passing? Whoa, that's crazy. That's crazy.

And you know there was some guy who was like, this is not how we've ever done it. Yeah. We have to, this league has been around for 12 years and we can't just start putting in crazy ideas now. You know, there's some fan somewhere was like, I'm not watching anymore if you change that.

But anyways, I just want to point out for everyone that, you know, Ian Mendes, you heard it from him. The NHL implemented the forward pass and then the entire world economy went to hell immediately after. So that's Ian's, Ian's not saying. He's just saying. I'm not saying. I'm just saying. But I feel like it was like, so September 28th, 1929 is when they did this. I feel like within a month the world's economy collapsed.

I think it was in October. Try your own conclusion. Yeah, exactly. There you go. All you guys who want to make the nets bigger. this is what you're toying with. This is what could happen. All righty, listen, this was a ton of fun.

As always, hit us up with any comments that you have. The athletic hockey show at gmail.com. You can also leave us a voicemail at 845-4-4-5-84-59. Sean, this was a ton of fun. Looking forward to doing again next week. And say hi to McKenzie Weeger's parents for me. If you see them. I absolutely will, yeah.

I'll get out on my front porch and wave at them. Yeah. And a reminder, too, if you're not a subscriber with us, You can join us right now on the print side of things. Theathletic.com slash hockey show. You'll get a 50% off your annual subscription.