The Athletic Hockey Show - NHL All-Star player draft is on Thursday, will struggling Kings and Flyers rebound in 2nd half and is Kris Knoblauch the Jack Adams favorite?

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Ian Mendes and Jesse Granger along with Down Goes Brown discuss the highly anticipated NHL All-Star player draft, the work ahead for Pittsburgh's Kyle Dubas with the trade deadline looming, and if Auston Matthews reaching 70 goals is as impressive as Connor McDavid scoring 150 points?Ian and Jesse take a look at ten goalie stats and storylines from the first half of the season, if LA and Philadelphia can bust their slumps in the 2nd half and stay in playoff contention, if the Blues are for real and if the Jack Adams trophy is Kris Knoblauch's to lose? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. Hello, everybody, and welcome to your Tuesday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Ian Mendez with you, and we got Jesse Granger in the co-host chair, sitting in for Julian McKenzie, and Jesse Granger, we got them up bright and early on a Tuesday in Vegas. Now, the Golden Knights are on their break, right? Yes, they are. Yeah, they don't have. have a game, I think 11 days off between their last game, Detroit, and then after the All-Star break,

it's, yeah, it's quite a while without a hockey game for me. Okay. So I want to know, are you taking a vacation? Are you taking any downtime? What's Jesse Granger's kind of 10-day window here? Yeah, I mean, I'm writing a bunch just, obviously I write a lot about goalies and stuff like that, so that has nothing to do with the Golden Knights. So I can work on kind of some stories that have been on the back burner that I'd

maybe don't get to work on as much when I'm at practice every day. But yeah, it's nice. It's a little like mini vacation. I'm not going anywhere. I don't have to go to practice every day. So even though I'm working, it's kind of all just from home. There are no games or practices.

I get to play a couple rounds of golf, which is my favorite thing to do. So get a little bit of golf in while I can. So now tell me something. When people are like you live in Vegas, do you ever go down to this strip ever to just to like maybe it's to see a show, maybe to heck, like do you ever go down there just for,

fun or no, it's too touristy. It's like Times Square for people who live in New York. I mean, I do, but very rarely. I think there are people that live here that do it more than I do. For one, it's very expensive. So like if you want to go out for drinks, there are plenty of places to go out for drinks that aren't the strip that are, the drinks are half the price that they are like on the strip of beer is like $16 or something. So that keeps me away. But yeah, I mean, if we're going to go down there probably to eat dinner, we like to go downtown Los Vegas a little more than the strip. So still touristy, but not quite as crazy and not as hard to get around. I like downtown because you can just kind of like walk from casino to casino. They're right next to each other.

So yeah, I do the touristy parts of Vegas every once in a while, not a whole lot, though. Yeah. So various writers are taking some downtime. I'm not really taking time off. The senators are about to hit the 10 day window where they're off. I'm not doing too much. I'll take a little bit of downtime. did you see where our colleague Joe Smith is?

No. I'm going to give you one guess. Okay. So Joe Smith, who covers the Minnesota Wild Forest, along with Mike Russo, I'm going to give you one guess. Joe Smith and his wife took a trip.

Jesse, you get one guess where they went. Tampa Bay. That's a good guess because that's where Joe worked and lived for a long time. He tweeted a photo from New Zealand. Wow, good for him. That sounds fun.

Now, that is living your best life. Yeah. Like, you got a window of time and you go to New Zealand. I've never been. I've never been anywhere down there. Yeah. So Joe Smith wins the award for who had the best. I don't care where anybody else goes.

Nobody else is touching the Joe Smith down in New Zealand. 100%. Have you been down there? I have many years ago, many years ago. My parents actually lived in New Zealand briefly when I was in university and I went down. And you know what? Actually, I have a funny sports story that you will appreciate from New Zealand. Okay.

So I may, people may know this, may not know this, diehard Dallas Cowboys fan. That's my all-time favorite team. That was my favorite team growing up. And I went down, Jesse, in 1996. and it was over Christmas time and the Cowboys were playing a playoff game at the time against the upstart Carolina Panthers. The Panthers were only like in their second year in the NFL.

And because we were in New Zealand, the game was being shown on tape delay. But there was no internet. So I was like, there's no way I'm going to find out the score of the game, right? We're driving in the back roads, back country of New Zealand. And my mom puts the radio on.

And I'm like, no, no, no, don't put the radio one. I don't want to hear the score of the Cowboys game. She's like, what are you talking about? Like, why would they, why would they give you the Dallas Cowboys score on local New Zealand radio? I'm like, okay, okay. And sure enough, at the end of the newscast, the woman's like, and a shocker, an American football as the Carolina Panthers have defeated the defending Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys. I'm like, ah, no. So I got a spoiler while in New Zealand back in the day.

I don't know what you do. Like, I don't know what you do when you try now to PVR a game and not get the result. Because now it's really hard. But I got exposed to New Zealand in 1996. Yeah, it's much harder now. The only sport that I really do that for and like don't watch it live is I'm a big Formula One fan. I got sucked in with everyone else off the Netflix show. So I watch Formula.

one. And sometimes I wake up at two in the morning to watch the race live, but on occasion I don't. So I'll watch it like the next morning or whatever. But I have to stay off Twitter because I follow all my favorite teams and drivers and stuff on Twitter. So if I, if I haven't seen the, the Formula One race, I've got to stay off Twitter or I'll see it. So that's really the only, the other thing that I can remember is when Game of Thrones was airing there at the end, I, I remember being at a Golden Knights game covering it. And I had to go through Twitter and I had to mute every character's name. I could think of out of Game of Thrones so that I could avoid any spoilers before I got home to watch the episode before it aired. That's the only other thing I can think of trying to not get spoiled in the last few years. Yeah. No, it's really hard in this day and age to, yeah, to get the, to avoid the result of a sporting event or what have you. So let's bring in Down Goes Brown, Sean McIndoo, I believe is ready to join us here on the Tuesday edition of the podcast. and we're talking, well, we're just talking about the Dallas Cowboys. We'll allow him 30 seconds to gloat about his San Francisco 49ers.

His favorite football team is going to the Super Bowl again. Yeah. Wait, the Dallas Cowboys. Okay, that rings a bell. I haven't heard anything about them in a while. Do they still have a team? Wow. Toronto Maple Leafs fan is ripping the Dallas Cowboys.

I got to say it was, you know, I'm a 49ers fan. So obviously, I was happy to see the team win. Have you guys ever been in that situation where, though, where your team, Cowboys, you must have? Your team is clearly the bad guys, right? Everybody was rooting for the line. Yes, easily. And, you know, to the point where even I was looking at it going like, if I, if we got to lose, I think I might be okay with losing Detroit lines.

It's such a great story. And it's like, it was a very weird situation. But now it flips the other way because. going up against the chiefs, a team that it feels like everyone is sick of. I don't know if the 40, people are rooting for the 49ers, but it's definitely not,

not like it was against the Lions, where every decent person, if you were neutral in that game, you had to be cheered for the Lions. For sure. Yeah. I was cheering for them. It was devastating when they blew it.

Yep. Yeah, it's a shame, man. I feel terrible for you. Oh, well, off to the Super Bowl for my team. Again. Again. Ian, the Super Bowl,

it's like the championship. game for the NFL. It's like it's sorry, I just, I didn't know if you were, if you were familiar, but it's like, it's like, it's like a big deal. It's like, it's like if your team gets to the conference. Okay, the conference championship is like the game before the Super Bowl. I don't know if you, you know what, we'll catch you up later. It's fine. Yeah, you're just picking at Dallas and Washington fans now. And again, my evil plan to turn this into a football path, slowly morphed this into a football podcast is, is working. Okay. So obviously this week and Jesse and I were just talking about, this is the start of, you know, buy weeks and into the All-Star week.

And coming up on Thursday night, we've got the draft, the player draft, the return of the player draft. Sean, you wrote about this in your Monday column. And I'm wondering, like, what should our expectations be? Like, we want it to be fun. We wanted to be kind of loosey-goosey, unhinged, have a few drinks. What should we really anticipate Thursday night when they do the drafts of the four teams? Yeah, I mean, I was remembering back to 2015, I guess it was, which was a, the NHL All-Star draft, I covered it for Grantland. So I was there.

I was standing five feet away from Alexander Ovechkin, and I almost lost my eyebrows just from the fumes of the beverages that were radiating off of this guy and everyone else, too. And that was a very memorable and very interesting night. It was also the last NHL player draft for the All-Star weekend. They got rid of it after that. So I'm really interested to see what we're going to get here almost a decade later because it's maybe it's been long enough that they just go back and say, you know what, we're going to have fun again. Get everybody the Red Solo Cups. Everybody just, you know, let's get crazy and see where it goes.

It's also possible that it took them this long. to figure out how to do a tampered down lifeless boring version of something that people used to find really interesting. So we're going to see. They've got the celebrities. So I think the celebrities will probably do a lot of the

heavy lifting as far as the personality side of it. But beyond that, we'll see. We know that we're not going to get the last pick drama. They figured out a way to get rid of that. Will we get some trades? will we get like some fun as far as who gets picked where or is it just all going to be guys picking their buddies and their teammates and you know everyone else kind of falls asleep i don't know that that's part of the appeal and the attraction for me is i don't know where this could go this

could be awful this could be really terrible or it could be an awful lot of fun or it could be somewhere in the middle so we'll we'll see but uh yeah no no pressure on the celebrities because uh i think they're going to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting and it's three singers so you know I'm not sure, man. Unless they're going to do it as a musical number, this could be a lot of pressure on Will Arnett to carry this thing. Worst case scenarios, they all just take their teammates and buddies, right?

Like, that's the most boring possible outcome. I mean, we've so far already avoided the absolute worst case scenario, which is what we saw in 2012 and 2015, which is they already say in advance. Like, you remember, Ian, in 2012, in Ottawa, yeah. And everybody was very excited. Eric Carlson was, no,

it was the Daniel Cher, right? And Daniel Alpherson were the two captains. And people are like, who's going to be the first pick? This will be really interesting. And then Alpherson was like, yeah,

I'm just taking Eric Carlson, who at the time wasn't even like an established star. It was his first All-Star game. He hadn't went. And people were just like, oh, okay, cool. We were going to have suspense and debate and everything.

But yeah, you're just going to take your friend. Great. And it could be the same thing, right? I mean, we've got one team is like a couple of Leafs, they could just be like, yeah, we're just, I'm just taking Mitch

Marner. Sorry, nobody get excited. Or, you know, there's, there's, there's, there's fun ways it could go again. You're, you could, you could, you could, you know, it's, there's different ways it could go. But yeah, don't just take your friends. And, and certainly if you're going to take your friends, don't tell us in advance. Don't at least give us a little bit of suspense. You know, nobody, uh, nobody, nobody, nobody wants to be that, um, get the whole thing spoiled for them in advance. especially if the nature of it being spoiled is none of us care about this. We're just all want to hang out with their buddies.

You know what I think would be like a fun twist on it is like you almost give them a deck of cards. Now you have to pull one and it's got instructions like, okay, you're next, you can't pick a teammate. Like okay. Okay. Or you pick a one up. You got to pick someone who, you know, just randomly what? In your division or whatever.

Draft the defenseman. Drop the right shot person. dropped it, whatever, like, dropped a goalie, like just whatever it is. And now you're kind of subjected to that. Yeah. Do we have rules about like, because I remember last time, again, there was like these weirdly complicated, like, you had to have goalies taken by a certain point in defensemen and all of this.

I just, all I'm going to say is I'm going to say two things here, okay? Number one, I hope if Austin Matthews team miraculously ends up with the first pick that him and Justin Bieber don't take Mitch. Martin. That would be so predictable. It would be so boring. Don't do it. The second thing I'm going to say is as a member of the media, if they don't take Mitch Marner, I'm turning into a whole story about is there dissension in the Leafs room? Is this a broken locker room? Is Mitch Marner not part of the long-term plans? I'm absolutely going to go to town on that. So, you know, pick it's all on Justin Bieber right now. The future of the Toronto Maple Leafs dressing room is all about which way he goes on that.

Yeah, choose wisely. Hopefully it's better than the jerseys you made, right? Yeah. Holy shit are those bad. Or the music he makes. Yeah. Hey, listen, speaking of Austin Matthews, like, we can't state enough how remarkable this guy's season is. He's got 40 goals and 46 games. I got a question for both of you because obviously there was such a focus and

attention on McDavid when he got to 150 points. And we're like, wow, we may never see that again. It's a hallowed mark. Austin Matthews is trending towards 70 goals this season. I'm wondering, do we need to treat it with the same sort of, I guess, reverence that we did with McDavid and 150? And I want to point our listeners to Eric do Hotchick's piece. He caught up with Bernie Nichols, who part of that 70 goal club. And Nichols is like, yeah, I think Matthews can do it.

So I'm just, I want to ask both you guys. And Sean, maybe I'll start with you. 70 goals. Is it the equivalent of 150 points? I think it's right up there. Yeah, in the sense of it was just a number that you stopped thinking about as a fan for those two decades of the dead puck era that we've had where you're like, all right, you know, hey, we're happy if somebody gets to 50 or 100, you know, 50 goals, 100 points. Those are now the marks. And some years, we didn't even get that to get to 70 or 150.

Those Bernie Nichols marks, that was, it did feel impossible. So, you know, 150 points. That was really impressive. But man, to get to 70, that would really be something else. Now, he's got a long way to go. Now, what, Ovecichkin got to what, 65? 65. So a little bit closer than I think anyone had gotten to the 150 mark.

But, yeah, I mean, it would be a heck of an achievement. And, boy, finally, finally some attention for us to Matthews and the Maple Leafs. Hockey fans can watch with bated breath as he, you know, maybe we can, we can cut in on other teams games to give like, you know, updates about what Matthews has done. That would go over really big. People would enjoy that, I think. Yeah, they just don't get enough attention. I totally agree with Sean.

And to me, it's, yeah, it didn't feel as unattainable as 150 because like you said, players had come closer to it. And even when you're scoring 50, it just 70 seems closer than when guys are getting 100 and 150 points is just way out there. But I think I've always been this way. I say this with the awards voting. I think we don't value goals over points enough. I think goals should, there should be more emphasis placed on goals than we give it in relation to how much

we count points for. So I'll always side with the goal. So I think because of that, it just feels the same as the 150. And also, yes, scoring has gone up the last couple years, but it's still impossible to beat these goalies with a clean shot.

Like every goal we see is a deflection and a screen. And in an era where the goalies are as hard as they've ever been to beat with a shot, you've got a sniper scoring 70 goals. To me, it's not just the number. It's how he's doing it. The era he's doing it in is so difficult to score that type of goal the way he scores. So yeah, I think it's right up there with 150. If he hits 70, it'd be incredible.

And how crazy is it that Austin Matthews is on pace? to challenge 70 goals. And he's getting like no heart trophy buzz. Yeah. You know, you talk about the goals and points and, you know, part of it's because he did win it a couple years ago.

And, you know, we like to move on to the new things. But it's all about McKinnon versus Kuturav and can McDavid still the swoop in and take it away. And even when we do like our athletic picks and everything, nobody's picking Austin Matthews. This guy could have 70 goals and not even be a finalist for the MVP. Just wild.

You wouldn't have thought that would even be possible at the beginning of the year. But kind of speaks to how many fantastic performances we're seeing so far. Yeah, I got to point something out, Jesse saying, you know, it's impossible to beat a goalie clean these days. Hey, Jesse, tell me you haven't watched a Senators game in 2024. Well, he meant an NHL goal. Yeah. I was just writing about Eunice Corpusallo yesterday. So I'm well aware of his numbers.

and how awful they are. And you and I are going to chat some gold-tending in a bit. But, you know, Sean, you're talking about MVP candidates. And I think, you know, McKinn is up there, as you mentioned, McDavid, certainly. And Shana Goldman has a piece today on Sidney Crosby, the merits of Cid's heart trophy candidacy, which is, you know, he's an excellent candidate, but it's all predicated on Pittsburgh making the playoffs. And I want to talk to you guys about the penguins because, Sean, in your Monday column,

and you reference kind of Rob Rossi and what's going on there and what he's written with, what do you do with you, Kyle Dubus? And boy, oh boy, this is a conundrum because of Jake Gensel, because of they traded for Carlson, all of these things. I just, I'm going to put this out as like a blanket question here. Is there a more interesting team in the NHL as we get closer to the trade deadline than the Pittsburgh Penguins? Boy, they would be right up there.

The team that I've been pointing at all along is the flames as my most interesting team because of the dynamic there where you had Craig Conroy say, I will not let another Johnny Gradoro situation happens, which means I will not let guys walk away for nothing as free agents. I either have to extend them or I have to trade them. And now here we are a month away from the deadline and he's got these guys that are still not signed. So what do you do as your team is hovering around a playoff spot? I mean, what are you going to do if you're in a wild card spot? Are you going to trade Elias Lindholm and Noah Aniffin and all these guys? So I do find the flames very interesting. But man, the penguins might be the toughest one for me because I can look at the flames.

And within a few weeks, I'll have a pretty good sense. Here's what I would do if I was Craig Conroy. I'm Kyle Dubas, man. I don't even know with these guys because you went all in with Eric Carlson. This is an old, old, old team. I think six of their top seven scores other than Jake Gens, Everyone who isn't Jay Gensel are over 30, which you almost never see in the NHL these days. You're locked in.

You've got long contracts. There's no prospects coming. I mean, this is a team that is all in. So do you double down? Do you go out there and try to get even more? Do you try to do the rebuild? You can't rebuild with Sidney Crosby in that like Blackhawks way of like, hey, let's just trade everyone and finish last. Can't do that with Sidney Crosby.

Do you just take a step back? Do you do the reload, which is what. Rob was sort of advocating for. Or do you stay the course, which would mean resigning Jake Gensel and now you have yet another piece signed long term on this team that so far isn't really going anywhere. Man, I have no idea. And the Jake Gensel thing is going to force it, right? There are teams that are facing dilemmas where they have the option to just do nothing,

which is, we all know, you give an NHLGM the option to do nothing. That's what they'll do. But Kyle Dubas doesn't have that option because you can't possibly, you talk about Craig Conroy, can't let a guy walk for nothing. You can't let Jake Gunsell walk for nothing. You've got to extend him, in which case you're extending a guy well into his 30s on a team that's already declining. Or you've got to trade him. It's got to be one of those two options. What do you do if you're Kyle Dubas?

I have no idea. I'm glad that I'm not him because I don't know that there's a right answer here. Yeah, that team is tough. to decipher. Like I don't know how good they are. And to make it about goalies, like I always do. We like we talk a lot about Vancouver's PDO and their shooting percentage and their safe percentage and is it going to go down?

Like they have to come back to the mean eventually, right? Like this team can't do this all season. Well, to me, I look at Hittsburg and they're fourth in the league and safe percentage. And Tristan Jari is a good starting goalie. Nadelcovic has played well. But are they the fourth bet? like should they be in the top five in the NHL and save percentage? Probably not.

And so you look at them and where they're at in the standings and it's like, okay, they're hovering around the playoffs. They might not even, we're not even sure if they're going to be in. And that's with excellent goaltending, considering who they have in net. My guess is that over the second half of the season,

it's not going to be that good. They aren't going to be 920 goalies. So if the goaltending dips a bit, are the other pieces that are underperforming going to, going to raise their game enough to, to overcome that and be better because they're going to need to be better if they're going to make the playoffs. So I'm pretty skeptical about that team.

Imagine saying that at the beginning of the year to a Penguins fan that. Yeah. Tristan char is going to be fantastic. The goal tendings going to be great. And Sidney Crosby is going to go full sit. Yeah. MVP caliber. Oh, we're first place in the metro, right?

No, you're barely even making the playoffs. And then the person be like, well, did Evgeny Malcon score any highlight real goals lately? And you'd be like, eh, you know, kind of. Yes, in a way. He sort of did. It got set up by Chris LaTang. It was a little bit of a one-timer. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. You know, before we let you go here, Sean, I asked Laz yesterday on the pod because the Ebbothan Oilers ran their winning streak to 16, which is won off the NHL record of 17 held by the Penguins and tying with the Columbus Blue Jackets of 2016. And the reason why I'm bringing this up, and I'm going to read an email in a second from a listener, I want to ask either of you two guys, what do you remember, if anything, about the Columbus Blue Jackets 16 game winning streak

that happened just a few years ago? I remember that when I saw who the Oilers had just tied, I went, what? The Blue Jackets? And then I kind of went, yeah, I seemed to remember there was something like a long time ago. And yeah, it was like five years ago. Now it's five years ago, like,

takes you into pre-COVID, which might as well be 20 years ago for, for a lot of us. But yeah, I remember very, very little, um, other than feeling like it was a very strange situation. And, uh, and then they won one playoff game that year, which if you're an oilers fan is not what you want to hear. But, uh, yeah, that, that was a, it, it has to be the strangest long win streak in history. I mean, Mary Lemieux and the Penguins go in 17th straight. Sure. Why not? Connor McDavid and the Oilers. Yeah. Okay. Sam Gagne and the Columbus Blue Jackets not high on my list of teams.

I would have expected to go Supernova for a month and a half. What season was it? 1617. Okay. The only thing I remember is I used to watch way too many Blue Jackets games because I love Sergey Abrovsky and he's probably the entire reason they had that win streak. And probably the reason they only won one playoff game because they used to play him 70 games a year. And by the time the playoffs got there, he was just like a withered old man.

back in the crease. So that's that that's my memory of it. You know, so I'm going to read an email here from a listener. And because I said, does anybody have any recollection of the blue jackets during the streak? And there's an interesting anecdote here. And maybe this will jog one of your memories. I don't remember this game. But Russell has written in a reminder you can hit us up at the athletic hockey show at gmail.com. Russell says, I have listened to the show daily for about three years now. You guys have finally forced me to write in. As a Blue Jackets fan, I have dealt with a lot of disappointing years,

but one of my favorite memories is that 16-game winning streak, and in particular, New Year's Eve, 2016. I was studying abroad in London, in the UK, and while we were bringing in the New Year in 2017 back in North America, I just kept staring at my phone waiting for puck drop between the jackets and the Minnesota wild. Why? Because both teams entered the game with 12 game win.

winning streaks and being a goalie guy myself, I was in for a treat watching Sergey Bobrovsky dual Devin Dubnick in a Vezna Trophy showdown and even happy to watch my Columbus team come out on top. I can always spend the new year in a different country. It's not every year you can watch two teams on winning streaks of 12 games play each other. That's from Russell. Either of you remember that to 12. Yeah, see, that's what I was wondering.

It rings a bell. Now, if you had told me before, he said, well, who did they play? play on a win streak. I don't know if I would have got the wild, but I believe maybe the first time in history that there was two teams with that long of a winning streak playing each other. Obviously in the modern area, it's a little easier to get a win streak than it was

in the past, but yeah, I do remember that. I wouldn't have remembered that it was New Year's. The other thing I was trying to remember, and Ian, you might remember this because I wondered if this is where he was going. Was that the year that they beat the Habs 10 to nothing or was that more recent?

Oh, yeah. That was just a complete beatdown, right? Yeah, there was a 10-0-0-0-0-game in there. Or no, maybe it was in-close. Anyway, yeah, oh, yeah, I remember the 10-0-0 game. I don't remember if that was part of the streak or not, but that's it. We've moved, we've transcended past Remember Some Guys and now we're into Remember Some Blue Jackets games. That was, that was the year?

But not during the street, was it? November 4th. And nothing, no. So maybe it was during the street. No. I think the streak started in. late November and went to early January. So this was like the-

So we should have known it was coming. It was the appetizer. It was the appetizing. It was woken up. Yeah. Man. Okay. Well,

listen, Sean, always great to get you on the pod. Now, are you headed to Toronto for the All-Star? I am, yeah. Yeah. So just give our listeners a little sense of maybe what,

if you're going to be writing off that or what you're doing. I'm going to be writing. I have no idea what I'm doing. I've been tasked with making the All-Star weekend interesting. So you got any ideas. Let me know because I'm, I'm looking for them. I'm going to be there for the,

I'll be writing off the draft and the skills. And then I don't think we're going to do a, I don't know what we're going to do for the All-Star games of selves just because they're on the weekend. But I'll definitely have a wrap when I do my Monday power rankings. We'll be talking some All-Star. What worked and what didn't and how Justin Bieber did. Okay.

Well, listen, Ali certainly appreciated you popping by the pie. DGB rules, as always. right on. There we go. Thanks, awesome. Okay, exactly. Awesome. There we go.

Sean, thanks for dropping by. Safe travels to Toronto. There goes Sean McHandoo, aka Down Goes Brown. And yeah, that should be fun. Boy, imagine your, imagine your job going in as a writer

is make the All-Star game fun. Like, oh, man. I mean, the NHL's been trying to do it for a while. Yeah, they should not be. It's not an easy task. Yeah. But if anyone can do it, if I was the NHL,

if I was the NHL, I would hire Sean McAdo, down goes Brown, for two reasons. Number one, you could get him to write all the skits and the speeches and all these little things, right, that happen. But more importantly, you bring him into the fold, now he's off your back. Now you've sighed. He can no longer complain about it not being interesting because it was his fault. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. We were just talking about Sergey Bobrowski being on a heater during that 16, 17th season. I do want to watch. talk about goaltending with you because we're at the unofficial halfway mark of the season, you have a column that dropped on Tuesday looking at the best goalie-related storylines in the league. And look, a lot of them are good storylines. A couple of them are, you know, negative.

But as you put that list together, what's the, if I told you, okay, Jesse, you got one story that is the most interesting one. What is it for you? man, that's, that's not easy. I think this might just be the homerism in me and because I'm around it so much here in Vegas, but Aden Hill has been so good. And so he missed, he missed a lot of time. He's only had 17 starts.

He missed like 20 games with a pretty bad lower body injury, tried to come back. He only played like six minutes of the game and had to leave and then was out for another month. So if he hadn't had that injury, I think he'd be the favorite to win the event. as in over Hellebuck right now, which is wild because to me, he's the most interesting story because, yeah, there's some other goalies that have been awesome. Thatcher Demco has been spectacular, but that's nothing. That doesn't surprise me. He had a down year last year, but we know Thatcher Demko is one of the most talented goalies in the world. And Helibuck,

carrying the jets to the top of the state, like that doesn't surprise anyone. He's, he does that every year. So to me, Aiden Hill, he goes on that, like going into the playoffs last year, he was not the number one goalie for the Golden Knights. And Laurent Brousawe gets hurt. Aiden Hill comes in and it wasn't a case of, well, they survived despite having Aden Hill in. No, Aden Hill was like the best player on the ice most nights in the playoffs and was a legitimate candidate to win the Con Smyth. And we all kind of said, well, goalies get hot. And he had the best couple months of his career and he happened to have him in the exact

right time to win the Stanley Cup. That's probably not going to last. And I think that anyone who said that, there's plenty of reasons to not believe that, Hayden Hill is going to continue that type of play. But he has. He leads the NHL and save percentage. He has not allowed a goal from long range the entire season. There's only three goalies in the league that have not given up a goal from long range.

He's one of them. And so he's using his big body. He's cutting off the angles. He's he's blocking the shots he should block. And he also leads the league in high dangerous safe percentage. When teams do get dangerous chances against Vegas, which doesn't happen often because their defense has been so good. Aiden Hill's been awesome. I just think that for a goalie that two years ago, the San Jose Sharks were thinking about waving him because he was the third best goalie on the San Jose Sharks.

And then the Golden Knights basically traded nothing for him. Hey, we'll give you a pick for him. And now he's legitimately one of the best goalies in the NHL is a crazy, crazy development for me. And it's not when I watch him play, it feels like he's one of the best goalies. He is so in control. He's six. He's listed at six four. Man, he looks bigger than that.

in the net. He's he's just been so impressive. It looks like you can't score on this guy. To me, he's the most interesting just because of all the elite goalies, he's the one that you probably expected the least. Can I ask you just a, I guess a technical question? When you say he is not allowed a goal from long range this season, is long range the blue line? Is it like kind of there? And does it matter if you're screened or it's tipped or like what constitutes a long range goal. Yeah. So the, the NHL this year, they put out their edge website that tracks all the puck tracking and player tracking. It's where you can see like how many times Connor McDavid has gone over 20 miles an hour or whatever. And they have the shot location. So it's based strictly on shot

location. Doesn't matter if you were screened. If it was tipped, well, actually, if it's tipped, it changes the shot location, right? Because now the shots come from. So no tips, but screens count towards long range. So we're not talking just floaters from the blue line. line that you see the whole way. Those saves are easy, but you have plenty of difficult saves to make long range. And to me, when I see that stat, when I see a goalie has an exceptional save percentage from long range, that tells me he has good positioning and good stance, because a lot of those shots are not reacting and making the save. You never saw it. But just because you didn't see it, doesn't mean you don't have to make the save. Like, that's part of the goalie's job. Make some saves

on shots you don't see. And you do that with great positioning. If you're on angle, you give yourself and you're big, right? Aden Hill's a big guy. That helps too. When you're big and you're on angle, you don't give up a lot of those screen goals because you just the puck hits you. You're in the right spot and he's done it really well. So yeah, encourage our listeners. Check out Jesse's piece looks at, you know, the big storylines around the league and what Boston is doing and, you know, on the opposite end of the spectrum, also on the opposite end of the spectrum, a former sense goalie in Cam Talbot,

whose play has really dipped off since Christmas. And I want to talk about L.A. for a second with you. And I want to talk about the Philadelphia Flyers. I'm going to bring those two teams together for a second, Jesse. And look, Philadelphia, one of the great stories of the first half of the season, it was like they were running on fumes into the break. They lose five in a row.

Los Angeles, again, great team in October, November. we were saying like, man, they're a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. We weren't saying that are they a playoff? No, we were like they're elite. And they have won two of their last 16 games, not a typo, not a mistake, two out of 16. So I ask you this, Jesse, at the kind of the All-Star break, which team are you more confident will hang on by their,

maybe by their fingernails or whatever, but hang on to a playoff spot? Philadelphia in the east or Los Angeles in the west. I'm going to go Los Angeles. I'm more confident in Los Angeles for a couple reasons. One is the underlying metrics for the Kings are very good. And usually those kind of things end up bearing out. The Oilers lead basically everything in terms of expected goals, share, shot, share, all that because they generate so much.

But the Kings are right behind them in most of those categories. They're top two, top three team in most underlying metrics in terms of the shots they're giving up, the value of shots they're given up and the shots they're getting. So to me, that says that's a strong team. Remember, the Oilers were struggling for a while and they had those good underlying metrics. And all of a sudden, they've won all these games in a row. I don't think the Kings are going to do that. But I do think they're going to bounce back and get some better play out of Talbot.

I don't know if he's going to be quite as good as he was for the first month of the season, but he's going to be better. And then the other part of that reason that I think I believe in the Kingsmore is just, I think the competition that's chasing them down. is not as good in the West. I think the West is very top-heavy and the top teams in the West, Colorado, Vegas, Edmonton, I think might be better than the top teams in the East. It's close. But I think in the East, you've got a lot more teams chasing. Like you've got the devils. We already mentioned the Penguins, the Islanders. They're all right behind Philadelphia. And those are

good teams. And like the devils, if they can get a goalie, they're going to be even better. I think the competition that the Flyers have to fend off in the second half of the season is much harder than what the Kings will have to to find that playoff spot. So I'll go Kings. What about you? Yeah, I think I agree with you. And using a lot of the same rationale is that you look at the Western Conference and, you know, with all due respect, I don't think Calgary, Arizona, to some extent, Seattle are as dangerous as, like you said, New Jersey and maybe Pittsburgh, right? Like, those are the teams that that you look at and you're like, man, those are, those are teams that, you know, potentially could cause some trouble in the postseason.

Philadelphia always felt a little bit like it was a mirage as well, didn't it? Like, like, so I, man, I wanted to see them make the playoffs because I think that's such a great market. I think they've been pretty patient with that program in the last few years and nobody knew where they were going. I think a lot of us thought they'd be bottom five. So to see them with a 560 winning percentage, but it's going to be hard for them. to kind of stave it off

and I, boy, I don't know like what you do now if you're Danny Breyer because I think going into the season, is it not fair to say, Jesse, that it seemed pretty obvious at some point, you know, Philadelphia, they got some veteran guys on that team, right? Where you could start to think about,

you know, there was rumors about Kineckney and, you know, just guys that you're like, are we going to trade these guys? And I think when you were playing well and you were secure in a playoff spot, I think you play. put that conversation on the back burner, does it not kind of inch back onto the front burner now? Like, maybe it's time to think about how we construct the roster in Philly. Yeah. I think it puts a lot

of pressure on the team, on the players between now when they come back from the All-Star break and the deadline. What is it, March 8th, I think, March 6th, something like that. March 8th, yeah. Yeah, you're going to have a stretch of games where I think because of the way it ended going into the All-Star break, everyone's kind of wondering, okay, were they tired? Did they need a rest or have they turned into a pumpkin, right? Like that's the question. And we're going to get the answer to that over the next, whatever, 10 games before they, before the deadline.

And I think how they play in those games, rightly or wrongly, how they play in those games is probably going to determine if the team gets them some help or if they maybe ship somebody out. So that's a lot of pressure for the players to prove, prove, get us some help. We deserve it. You're talking about the Western Conference picture. I'd be remiss if I didn't, you know, Nashville's in that mix as well. The predators are just kind of on the precipice of the playoffs.

L.A. is actually talking with St. Louis in the wildcard race. And Jesse, you know, you're in the Western Conference. You see some of those teams maybe a little bit more frequently than I do. And I'm wondering about St. Louis because they were one of those teams that like kind of like a Calgary where you're like, I could see them making the playoffs. I can see them missing. You know, they got a lot of good veteran guys. But, I mean, they're 13, 6 and 1 under Drew Bannister.

So they've won as many games under Bannister as they've won as they. he did under Craig Barouba with Barouba obviously coaching more games. So 13, 6 and 1. I mean, Robert Thomas is having a really good season for them. Bennington, like, I mean, he's done it before. Like, do we believe that St. Louis at the halfway point of this season that St. Louis makes the playoffs? If I had to guess right now, I'd probably say no, but I think they absolutely can. Like, I think it's in the in the conversation. I, the blues are interesting to me because You mentioned they've got a bunch of veteran players, and they do have some players that are still left over from the last era, I guess, when they were, when Tarangelo was there and they were, they obviously won the Stanley Cup. But they're so different the way they play hockey because when I, like those blues teams, I remember for a long time, the blues have been a big, heavy, strong team that kind of wins in front of the net and they're good defensively, low in, low event games. And that's not the case at all anymore. Like they are run and gun. You mentioned Robert Thomas has been brilliant. He's, he's,

He's so good right now. I've been so impressed with Jake Neighbors. Kids, 21 years old, and he's already got 15 goals in 48 games, like on pace for maybe a 30-goal season out of a 21-year-old. And he's a first-round pick, but it was like a late first-round pick. I don't think anybody was expecting this kind of season out of him. So at least I wasn't. So they're playing really well right now.

They kind of are a run-and-gun team with lots of goals going both ways. Bennington has played really well. He's bounced back. He's been good all year. So they have a lot of interesting. pieces. I think it's going to be tough just because the West, the top teams in the West are really good. But like we said earlier, I think maybe the bottom three or four teams in the playoffs are more getable than they are in the East. So it should be interesting. It's going to be

one of the teams that's more fun to watch down the stretch to see if they can climb into a spot. Yeah. Like I said, 13, 6 and 1 for the Blues under Drew Bannister. And that's obviously not the best job done by a replacement coach. That goes to Chris Knoblock in Edmont. 26 and 6. There's a 26 and 6 under Chris Knoblock. And I think if you asked people a couple of weeks ago about Jack Adams' candidates, I think Rick Tocket was at the top of the list in Vancouver.

For a while, we were talking about John Tortorella. I think in Philly would be maybe not so much now. But, you know, Torts has them overachieving. I think Rick Bonas in Winnipeg is that. that a great job. At what point, or maybe we've reached it now, Jesse, is Chris Noblock? Is there serious chatter around him for Jack Adams coach of the year? I mean, if this, I mean, if they keep up this right now, they're on an 813 points percentage pace since he took over, which is like very close to what the Bruins did last year.

So if they finish the season on that kind of pace, I think you have to give it to them. but I want to get your opinion on this. Like how much credit do you think he deserves? Because I think there are a lot of people out there. And I don't know where I'm at. I think I'm kind of in the middle. I want to give him some credit. But I also think, well, this team, it was like anybody that they put in there was

this team was going to do better. Like look at all the talent on the ice. This team is so good. They were they were just in the conference. Sorry. Second round, lost to Vegas to go to the conference final. To me, I look at it. sort of as like, is he really doing a brilliant job or is he just kind of letting the players do what

they do and letting these talented guys like, I don't know, what do you think? How much credit do you think he deserves and how much of it is just, he just happened to be the guy that replaced a coach on a really talented team that was going to win no matter what. Well, but they were three and nine. Yeah. Like under like Woodcroft. So I don't know. Like, and remember, like, I think what's interesting too is remember when they hired Knoblock, what was the, what was the consensus from the outside. Oh, man, they just went to the David's. Yep. Right. And I got to tell you, this guy came in with a lot of expectations and pressure. And I don't know that it was that simple to just get a new voice in there and boom, it changed, right? Like, like clearly something was

a miss. And oftentimes when you talk about the Jack Adams candidates, what do you talk about? Great gold heading. Uh, the oilers up until now, obviously, things have stabilized a little bit. But boy, like, he, he didn't walk in. Like, yeah, he had McGaubes. David and Drysidal and Hyman, but he didn't have a Vez and the caliber golden. Right. Right. Man, I think he deserves a lot of credit. Like, like, but if you're asking me, okay, today, Ian, you get to vote on the Jack Adams,

which by the way, as writers, we don't get to do that. That goes to the broadcasters. I think I'd go Rick Talk it. And I think I'd go talk it, Jesse, because I almost looked like he's now had a full year. If you go back to where they were a year ago at this time. there's nobody on the planet that could have anticipated that Vancouver Canucks would be battling for a president's trophy. If you go back to even a year ago at this time with the Oilers,

most people would have said, okay, you have to pick one team that's going to win 16 games in a row. And a lot of people would say, yeah, it's Edmonton. So that's the part where I agree with you that he did inherit a really good roster, but clearly something was amiss.

I'd go talk it by a hair, but I do want to point out that, that Ken Hitchcock won the Jack Adams in a season in which he took over in 2011, 2012, same with Bruce Boudreau. So it's been done a couple of times in the cap era where a coach comes in, turns a program around and gets it. But I just don't know if anybody's going to be able to supplant hockey. It's going to be tough.

I mean, the Canucks, like you said, were not anywhere near. They weren't a good team when he took over. And now they're one of the best teams in the league. And you look at the record at the end of last year, Tocket. They were very good. I remember everyone's saying, oh, they're a playoff team if you just look at their record under Tockeet. So this isn't just this year. He's been good since he took over there. I think it's hard to argue against Tocket. Yeah, but it's going to be an interesting situation. And Lazz and I talked about this yesterday. What like, what do you think is going through Jay Woodcroft's

mind right now? Like, like, you know, like he was such a good coach for them. He like his, his winning percentage as a head coach was, you know, north of 650 or whatever. Like he was a, very good coach in the NHL. How do you think Edmonton turning things around? Like, does that affect his I don't know if higher ability is a word? But like, like, do you think other teams look at that and be like, hmm, interesting? Like, you leave an organization and they turn it around

or is that, like, I think there's enough of a body of work on Woodcroft where he came in and he fixed it, right? Like they were kind of striving. He fixed it a couple years ago. I don't know. I just, man, I always feel for coaches who get let go because when something turns around, it's so easy to point the finger big. That guy was the problem. But I think Woodcroft would be, yeah, I think Woodcroft would be terrible.

Yeah, I absolutely do. This is hockey. Like, I, the example last year. So Bruce Cassidy gets fired from Boston and Montgomery comes in and they're the best team to ever walk the face of the earth. So it's like, wow, man, Bruce Cassidy must have been. a pretty bad coach, right? If, like, if, if, if Montgomery can come in and suddenly they're the best team ever, oh, wait, no, Bruce Cassidy went to the Stanley Cup and won the Stanley Cup. And then it's like,

well, Bruce Cassidy won the Stanley Cup with the Golden Knights, after Pete DeBore couldn't get it done, man, Pete DeBore must not be a very good coach. Actually, he's awesome. He was in the Western Conference final. He would have been in the Stanley Cup if not for Bruce Cassidy. So it's like, to me, this is hockey. Coaches get replaced and the new guy comes in and does better. It doesn't necessarily mean that the first coach wasn't any good. I think a new voice just helps sometimes. So I wouldn't put much. I think Woodcroft can absolutely get another job. Yeah, I think so too.

And look, in the offseason, there's going to be the classic poaching carousel. And I think if he bides his time, he'll end up with a seat. Before we wrap up here on the Tuesday pot, Scott Wheeler has started his prospect pipeline series, Jesse, where he basically counting down from 32 all the way to. number one, which organizations of the NHL in his estimation have the deepest prospect pool. And if you're an Islanders fan, I got bad news for you, you're going to wake up on Tuesday, you're going to open up your app and you're going to see sitting at number 32 is the New York Islanders.

Like, as a fan, when you look at these things, like, how much dread is there that, like, oh my gosh, are we going to be the next day? Like, we open up, like, where are we? Like, because this stuff matters. Like, people go crazy. They go bonkers over prospect pipeline stuff. Like they love it. Wheeler and Prondman do such a good job with Max as well on the podcast side.

But like how damning is this next 32 days when he puts the sound? You can really damage the psyche of a fan base, can't you? By telling them they have no prospects? Yeah. Well, I think to me it has it's very related to where the current team is. Right. Like if the Golden Knights are 31st tomorrow, I don't think Golden Knights fans really care. Why?

Because they traded all their best prospects for Jack Eichol and all these players like Mark Stone. So when you're a contender and you're really good or even Toronto or Colorado or like teams that are elite teams that are competing for a cup, I think those fan bases, well, maybe not Toronto. But they're a little, they don't care as much, right? like, okay, we're, yeah, we don't have any prospects, but that's because we traded all our picks to be good right now. If you're the Islanders and you've lost a bunch of games recently and you're falling out of playoff position and this seems like a team that's, I wouldn't call them on the up, they're not on the positive trending. Those kind of teams, if you're not good right now and you don't look like you're going to be good in the near future, and then you see

your 32nd in prospect rankings, that's not good. That is absolutely crushing. I can imagine Islanders fans as passionate as they are, are not having a great morning, the ones that have read Scott's story. It's, like I said, I think there are certain fan bases that can just say, ah, whatever. But if you're not good right now,

you definitely can't be bad in the prospect pool either, or it's going to cause some dread. Okay. So without giving it away, the team that's sitting at 31, there's going to be some serious dread. Because that team is sitting in the bottom five of the overall standings right now.

So imagine being bottom five in the league standings, having the second worst prospect pool. And I'm also going to give another little hint and say this team is capped out. Anywho, I wouldn't know who it is. So, yeah. Good luck, Ian. Yeah, good luck indeed.

All right. Hey, listen, Matt does it for the Tuesday edition of the podcast. So speaking of the process. The Wednesday edition of the Outletic Hockey Show is going to be with that three-headed monster of Boltman, Cronman, and Wheeler. They're going to have a special edition of the Prospect series coming your way on Wednesday. And like I said, people just love this stuff. So those guys will have it on Wednesday.

Thursday. It's the usual Haley Salvin, Max, and Sean Gentilly for the Thursday show. So listen, man, this was great. Thanks for hanging out for the whole hour. I just love talking goalpending or hearing you talk about goaltending because it's such a fascinating topic and it's a frustrating topic in the market that I live in. So I'm, I just look at you with envy that you turn Aden Hill into basically a Vezna caliber,

consmite caliber goalie. And Ottawa is like, you know, on their fifth goalie in five years and they just can't get it right. Yeah, shout out to Sean Burke, the Golden Knights goalie coach. It seems like whoever they plug in there is awesome. So not me.

Shout out to Sean. Yeah. Well, listen, plugging you in on the Tuesday show was awesome. So listen, Thanks for popping by. I want to remind everybody to leave us a rating and review. We certainly appreciate that with The Athletic Hockey Show.

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