The Athletic Hockey Show - NHL front-office rankings: no-state-tax teams dominate

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Gentille, McIndoe and Corrado dissect The Athletic's front-office rankings, with Florida, Dallas, Tampa, Winnipeg and Vegas rounding out the top five, the surprise ranking of the Oilers at No. 11, and no votes at all for Steve Yzerman and his staff, once regarded as one of the top front-offices in the NHL. The guys get Frankie's perspective on the Sens without Brady Tkachuk, the Oilers snapping their three-game losing streak, Anthony Stolarz’s criticism of his teammates in Toronto and they stick tap Brad Marchand's return to Boston and Alex Ovechkin approaching career marks of 900 goals and 1,500 games played.Hosts: Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoeWith: Frankie CorradoExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff DometWatch full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowJoin our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/VTm9VjkFSubscribe to The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. What up? It's the Athletic Hockey Show Wednesday edition. I'm Sean Jansili. Frankie Carrado is here. Sean McIndewer here. Fellas, what's new? What's going on?

Frankie, you're in Ottawa somewhere. I like just starting out the show, just recapping or setting up like what NHL City Frankson. What hotels? What hotels he's in? He's somewhere in Ottawa, right? I was with, I was with Ottawa royalty last night. Sir Paul McLean.

Sean McIndoe. No, not DGB. I'm going to call him Sir Paul. I was calling him Coach. I was calling him Mack. I didn't call him a bug-eyed walrus. I did not call him that. I'll leave that for Brandon Prussed.

But we did the panel last night with Claire Hanna and Paul McLean. It was really cool. Like all the fans coming up to Mac and saying hi and nice to see him back in town. So it was nice to hang out with him for the night. How confident are you that it was actually Paul McLean? and not the doppelganger from behind the bench. It's a great question, man. The doppelganger, do you guys remember that?

The doppelganger looked more like Paul than Paul. Yes. If that makes sense. It was unsettling. It was like kind of like an uncanny valley thing where, you know, like you see with like CG stuff or video games. It left me uncomfortable. Sometimes you talk about something. looks like somebody else a little bit and it's like,

oh, he looks like the stunt man for that guy. This wasn't the stunt man. This was like, like Paul McLean filmed a movie and then he wasn't available for one scene. So they just CGI'd some guy in and you're like, that's, that's too much, Paul.

That's, yeah, too, too buggy. The thing that's crazy about it is the stash. Like the stash is the crazy thing because you don't just like, us three, we don't just wake up one day and say,

I'm going to grow the McLean stash today. It's just not possible. That would be a years-long project for me. I saw that thing up close and personal, and that's like, that's original parts, original parts. So that's crazy that that gentleman not only had the facial structure, the hair, everything, but to have the same stash is, it's wild. That was AI before AI existed. This is like the second time in probably 10 days that I've talked to.

about Paul McLean's doppelganger. If you want to know, this is like a glimpse into my pathetic life is like, I've talked more about Paul McLean's doppelganger than I have about like my nieces and nephews in the last, in the last 10 days. It's not, it's not a good state of affairs. Um, because we're, because we're talking about, you know, the, who was it? The little, the little Kipersoft doppelganger. It was like, it was like an NHL, you know, faker conversation that took place.

So, yeah. That's the way it goes. Yeah. busy Wednesday here. We want to start with a big one that just dropped from Chris Johnston and Mike Russo. This has turned into a pretty fun project to be a part of. It is the NHL front office rankings as told or as voted upon by the front offices themselves. Those guys, and it was mainly those guys.

I held the pen for some of it and did a very minimal amount of work to horn in on the byline and get some of the credit. those guys pulled, I believe it was 37 different front office execs from 27 total teams. So you have almost total buy in there and got their top five. This is the second consecutive year that they've done this. So we got some banger quotes from across the league, some pretty honest assessments of where teams are in the hierarchy of front offices. And I think it's always, you know, I know this is the second year they've done it, but it's, it's turned into something to look forward to it because it is unvarnished opinion from a, from a lot of the most important people in the league. So I wanted to start with that. And we have the Panthers at the top. We should, we should, we should say that straight away. Is there, is there, is there any surprise from either you guys that the defending champs, you know, who've built this, who built this war horse over the last, over the last five years or seven years or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, is there. or at the top? Are we okay with that? As a collective, are we okay with the Panthers having the having the top right front office? Really going out on a limb. Yeah, I know. I feel like,

yeah, you could, you could probably defend that one. Yeah, it's, it's the Panthers. And I'm not going to say it's, it's the field. Like, there's not, it feels like there should be a pretty big gap with the recency bias and the way things have gone the last few years, like every move that they've made, even going back to, you know, having a guy like Alex Lyon on your team, like that guy saves the season three years ago and you go to the Stanley Cup final. I mean, everything they've done has worked. I find this list fascinating because, yes, the Panthers should be number one. And then it's all teams that have won, right? Like, it's Florida.

I mean, Dallas hasn't won, but they're consistently going to like the Western Conference final. So I totally understand that. Tampa's one. Vegas is one. above Vegas is Winnipeg, you know, everyone understands the challenges that the Winnipeg Jets face, but they, they consistently like do well in trades, you know, they're, they're kind of, their, call it thrift moves seem to work pretty well, like someone like Niederiderider a few years ago or Nemesnikov, like these things all kind of hit for them and they've drafted well,

they've developed well, and then, you know, there's Colorado, but I found this interesting. A bunch of teams that have won, a couple teams that are usually in the mix, and then one team that just made the playoffs for the first time in a long run in a few years last year in Montreal. It's like that's one of these things is not like the other, but there seems to be some confidence in that front office based on what they've done. They haven't won anything yet, but they're in the company of teams that have won and have been consistently,

you know, pushing deep into the playoffs. I think that speaks volumes of what's going on with, with Kent Hughes and Jeff Gordon. Yeah, I wanted to talk about, yeah, that's, that's true. And that's a lot of dip on the chip for the, for the Canadians, too, right? This is a team. And everyone's impressed by the way they've exited the rebuild. We've talked about this.

The three of us have talked about this at length, the contract structures, the way that they've, you know, found a way to, uh, lock up their key players and also leave themselves with some legit money to work with. I think everybody respects that. But yeah, I think CNN at seven was, was, was a little bit of a surprise. wanted to go back to the Dallas stars, though, because they were, they were number one last year. This is, and this is voting that was done after the Panthers won the cup. So everybody looked at what we saw, all these execs looked at what we saw in the playoffs last year and said, you know what, yes, congratulations of the Panthers, whatever. We're going to vote them in at number three, which I, which I believe is, is where they were at.

Dallas was in the top spot. And I think a lot of it was because of the drafting and developing that Jim Nell does. But also a lot of it was clearly. people like Jim Neal. He's a good, he's a good man who people like dealing with. And that came through in the way people spoke about him. It's like he treats people well and whatever. And that seems like that was some kind of tiebreaker there for a team that famously is always in the mix, but hasn't actually, hasn't actually done the job yet. So they, they dropped down a little bit this year.

And I think that's, I think that's at least a little bit interesting that Dallas, you know, I don't know if that, I don't know if that means the clock's ticking or, or if the Panthers were just undeniable. But yeah, to see them dip from one to two, I think it was deserved because you got to, the proofs and the pudding on this one. And God bless what they've done and it's been impressive. But at some point,

if you're going to meet the top of list like this, McIndoo, like you got to, you got to bring home the hardware. And we haven't seen that from them. Well, I mean, Jim Nill has a lot of hardware because we have this GM of the year award, which is voted on by the GMs. and he has won it three years in a row,

which is fascinating to me because nobody ever wins coach of the year in back-to-back years, let alone three times in a row. The coach of the year, for whatever reason, has become an award. You get to win once and then it passes to the next guy. Nobody's won it back-to-back since Jacques DeMere in the 80s. So it essentially doesn't happen anymore, whereas Jim Nill, year after year after year, gets to be the gym of the year. Okay, so when is that award voted on?

after two rounds of the playoffs. In other words, they get to the final four, and then all the GMs go, who did the best job? Guess what? It's always three GMs who are in the final four. And it kind of works out where that ends up being the perfect window for Jim Nill to win awards, because his team always looks great going into the conference final. And then that's where it kind of falls apart.

So I'm interested that even this year, you know, it's not, it's not the same people voting, although there could be some overlap, but yeah, Jim Neal was the guy after two rounds of the playoffs, but two rounds later, it was right back to Florida, and rightly so.

I think it's just interesting to, too, just to see, treat this as a kind of a glimpse into what GM's value, like what's important to them, generally speaking. And I think Dallas is an interesting,

an interesting litmus test for that because what came up a lot, I'm looking at all the quotes here, some of which we use and some of which we didn't. Their drafting came up a ton. And that's, of course, it did. You draft Rupahins, 49th overall and Jake Ottinger, 17th, or 26th, and Jason Robertson, 39th. On and on, on, the group, the core of that team is built, you know, outside of, outside of Miro Heiskenon, basically.

It's built with lower, lower value draft picks, let's say. You're there's there's not there's not a bunch of number two, number four, number six picks there. And I think people, I think people respect that to some extent. You know, they're on the fact that he's a nice guy. And like,

of course, they're going to be, they're going to be high on this sort of stuff. I do find it interesting that, you know, the three top teams on this list, it's Florida, Dallas and Tampa.

What do they all have in common? There are no state tax teams. And then four out of the top five, because you include Vegas, who's at number five, also a no state tax team. I think some people would look at that and say, well, no wonder they're great GMs and they run a great program. Look at what they're dealing with.

But to Gentile's point, state tax doesn't matter about drafting Rupert Hince or Wyatt Johnston or, you know, Logan Stancovin, who eventually you move on from and you bring in Miko Ranton. It's like, those are just, you know, that's, that shows when a front office can fly. their muscle and how smart they can be. And if you can develop those players. And, you know, I think we talked about it so much in the spring. And we've talked about it the last few years because of Tampa's success, because of Florida's success, the advantage that all these teams have with the no state tax. But at the end of the day, you got to build the program in order to reap the benefits of what

the tax situation is. And I think this is kind of showing you that Florida, Dallas, Tampa, Vegas. They're legit, they're legit front offices. They run legit programs and they wouldn't be able to utilize the state tax if they weren't. And, you know, Winnipeg, Winnipeg is in there as well with all these teams that are palm trees and, you know, Vegas and, you know, all these very desirable places. And then Winnipeg's in there. And if we were having an honest conversation, every player who has a 10 team no trade likely has Winnipeg as one of those teams. You just have to fill out the 10 teams.

It is what it is. And sure enough, like, they've flexed their muscle as a front office as well. So it's not all about the taxes. Like, you have to have smart people running the show. And I think this really illustrates that they're smart people running all those programs. And lots of no tax teams, but no Seattle, no Nashville. It's no guarantee. I think, let me throw this out because I found this really interesting because my first thought when I looked at this list is, you know, it's an interesting list.

I love that we do the exercise. I love that we get the comments and, you know, some of the thoughts from around the league. But I look at it and I go, well, this is just a list of the best teams in the league. You've got you've got all the most recent Stanley Cup winners. You've got Winnipeg who are the reigning president's trophy winners. You've got Carolina's in the top 10. That's a team that's had a ton of success. Obviously, Dallas has had a ton of success.

And then there's Montreal who we talked about. St. Louis, a bit of a surprise, but everybody loves Dog Armstrong. He's been doing it forever. So you sit there and you go, great. All you told me was all the teams that do well every year are in the top 10. But then you realize, no, there's a team missing. There's a team that went to the Stanley Cup final two years in a row that is not in this top 10. Now, I think they're 11.

So, I mean, but the Edmonton Oilers, not there, which is interesting to me because, I mean, Stan Bowman, say what you will about him. It's got a bunch of Stanley Cup rings from Chicago. You would think there'd be maybe some carryover on that on some people. And yet, with the Oilers at least, I don't want to read into this, but part of me thinks that a lot of people just look at this and go, you inherited Connor McDavid and Leon Drysad. yeah, you should be getting to the final. That's not good enough. What are you going to do to put him over the hump? And he got McDavid re-signed, which was the number one thing.

But not there as far as getting the respect or the kudos from other front offices around the league. I found it very interesting that the Oilers are not there. I think a better way to look at it for the Oilers, too. Yes, they're number 11, I think overall when you tell you up the points and all that. they only showed up on two ballots. And there were 37 ballots. So yeah, it's good that they were fourth and fifth in a couple of spots.

And they got and they got more, obviously more votes than the teams at the bottom of the list. But when you frame it that way, you say there's only, there's only two of these execs that we pulled that actually think they're a top five team. I think that's, I think that's pretty damning. Yeah.

Well, you can find, like you can find teams that have done a better job. whether it's, you know, addressing goaltending. Heck, Colorado changed both goaltenders last year because they knew it was an issue. So it can be done. You know, there's teams that have had better managed caps. There's teams like Dallas that have integrated young players within the veteran players. So you don't feel like there's any turnover, you know, like I think St. Louis falls into that category as well.

As far as getting young guys to take the next step while not moving on from too many veteran guys. Edmonton, Edmonton doesn't, doesn't do that to the level that, all those other teams do. And they don't, they haven't pulled the magic trades that Florida has done either. So they're not like, they're, they're probably right where they,

they should be. That's, I think that's a very fair evaluation on the Oilers. I think where this has become interesting too is now that we have a couple years worth of, worth of this list and we see people, we see teams moving around and we see maybe rationales change. I think that's interesting too.

I think that makes it more interesting than just looking at the list straight away and just being like, yeah, of course Florida's number one and of course Tampa Bay is up there and yada yada. When you see some of the stated rationale and you look at how it changes from year over a year, I think that I think that becomes interesting too. And I think the offseason that Florida had, you know, we're talking about state tax and all that. The offseason they had bringing back Eckblad, bringing back Bennett, bringing back Marchand. There were execs who said like, yeah, that's state tax stuff, but also like we got to give them credit because.

is they created a situation where those guys, you know, you get them close. And then maybe the tax stuff makes it a little bit easier at the end. But ultimately, you know, ultimately they make it all stand up with the, with the quality of the program. 100%. If they were, if they were practicing at the Y and they weren't getting the resources that all the other NHL teams get and it was a crappy place to play, it would be, I'll go down there and retire and, and, you know, lay on the beach. and that's where my career will go to die. It's not where your career goes to die. It's where your career goes to, like, get made and win.

And it used to be where your career went to die. They flipped it around. I mean, that's impressive. One last thing on this, anytime you give me a list and you say, here's the top 10, here's everyone who got vote, I look right at the bottom and I scroll from the bottom up, didn't get votes. Who are the teams that got completely shut out? And you guys were kind enough to give us the list.

And I won't read the whole list because it's it's about half the league. There's 15 teams who didn't get any votes. Not a single vote. Any surprises on there, though, because I'll give you a couple. I'm a little surprised. Nobody gave any love to San Jose because I really do feel like they're at the easy part of the rebuild cycle, which is the tear it all down and be terrible and collect prospects. But I feel like they've done a great job of that.

So a little bit surprised Chicago is not, didn't get any votes either. The one that really stood out to me though is even a few years ago, if you had said Steve Iserman, is not getting a single vote. That would seem shocking because he was a guy that certainly in Tampa and even the first few years in Detroit was viewed as this is a guy who is really, really good at this.

And clearly, I don't know if patience has completely run out in Detroit, among the fan base. Maybe it had two weeks ago and it's building back up now, given the start they're off to, but among other front offices, at least not a single mention of Steve Eiserman and the Red Wings anywhere. I found that interesting.

Kind of was looked at in his Tampa days like a guru, you know, like this really, really sharp, you know, younger executive at the time. But with that being said, Tampa's having a lot of success this year. It's early. or sorry, Detroit is.

Not Tampa. He used to be with Tampa. Detroit's having a lot of success. And there's like, there's Marco Casper playing a big role. There's Axel Sandine Pelica. There's Simon Edvinson. There's like all these young guys that are a part of the Eiser plan are starting to come to fruition. So I don't know, like if they have a good year and they push for the playoffs, who knows, maybe they make the playoffs.

And he has a, you know, a more thrifty offseason. And I'm not talking Justin Halls and Andrew Copps and, you know, Eric Gustavsons, like real guys that fit into the piece of the puzzle moving forward, then I think that changes. And Iserman gets back into, you know, top 10, top 12. But I think there's, it might be on the precipice of changing with the way things are going in Detroit with their young guys now. Yeah. I feel better about the Red Wings now than I did a year ago, which is funny because

Eisenman showed up on ballots last year. It crashes out of the top 10 out of the voting, out of the voting totals entirely. It's it's kind of ironic. And I think part of that has to do, Frankie, like you said, with the Marco Casper's of the world, with Lucas Raymond, you know, continuing to kind of level up, yada, yada. Like they're, they seem like they're in a better position for me now than that, than they were a year ago because you are starting to see some of those, some of those young guys flash. And yeah, like we said, they've won, they've won five games in the room. So that's, so that's interesting.

That's something we're going to track all season two. I think the red ones are kind of fascinating. We're going to hit a break. After the break, we're going to talk about another Atlantic division team who's trying to keep pushing the boulder up the hill. It might have to do with where Frankie is located now. It might not. I'm going to talk senators, maybe going to talk little Alex Ovechkin, stick around.

That's what we're going to do after the break. All right, we're back. And as we said, Frankie is in Ottawa. I don't think there are any lunch plans with you and Mackendoo. Are there? Can you guys hang out? Not yet. I don't know. Do you want to head down to Barhaven and, you know, I can take you there? I love, can you, can you explain to us again where that is in relation to the right to downtown?

That's what I was trying to set up. You got, you got a sincere laugh out of the two of us with this. Frankie was asking how to get to Bar Haven and I said you, you drive, I said I'm way out in the, uh, and the way to get there is you drive halfway to the rink and then turn left. And head south. Let me just ask you this. When someone, like, if you're way out there, how do you explain where the rink is to someone who's coming from downtown? You know what?

This is Ottawa. It's like, we're way out of there. And then it's like a, it's like a 10 minute drive. Way out in Ottawa is not the same as way out in Toronto. I remember many years ago, there was a public transportation strike here. And like the buses were canceled. And people are like, I'm not going to be able to get to work. And then you had a whole.

city full of people being like, yeah, it turns out I'm only a 15 minute walk from the other side of the of the downtown. We're not that big here. I'm never riding the bus again, as it turns out. Yeah. I don't care about the strike. Apparently, it's right. Apparently I can actually see it from my house.

If I just, interesting. Frank, you were, you were there for a game. You saw you saw the Sends lose the, lose the Edmonton Oilers last night. Yeah. I don't, I don't watch a stitch of that because I was, I was, I was driving. back from another from another work thing what's what's going on there how do they look without brady kachuk it seems like it seems like it's maybe a bit of a problem it looks like a work in progress like losing brady's huge i don't even have to say that but it feels like a work in progress because

they were so gung-ho or adamant on team needs to score more right five-on-five scoring last year second last in the nchel but i think what's happened here is on the pursuit for goals they're playing let's score a goal. They're not playing hard to play against hockey, which was at the crux of it. That was the Sends identity that they formed last year and really made them a stable team. And goaltending was good at times. But they've kind of lost that a little bit.

And it's all returning players. You know, like it's all the same guys. You've added Lars Eller and Jordan Spence, who didn't even play last night. So they've got to like, last night was a good game for them, I think, at five on five, because it was lower event, it was a little more of like a cautious type approach.

It wasn't the most optically, you know, pleasing game. Just there wasn't a lot of, you know, big explosive, offensive moments for them. But that's okay. Like they need to play, let's win a hockey game, not let's score a goal. And that's where the difference lies right now. The big talk here is their penalty kill,

which, you know, I've never heard the word diamond formation more than I have in the Ottawa market the last, you know, couple weeks. And the reality is, I think there's only four teams, four or five teams in the NHL that aren't doing the diamond penalty kill. Like, it's become this trendy thing that all the teams have kind of switched to. And the Jets, the Winnipeg Jets are an example of a team that don't do the diamond. They do the old kind of top down pressure.

And they have one of the best penalty kills or if not the best penalty kill. But if you look at, you looked at they're expected, it's like, like second worst. It's really stark, like the difference. And I think a lot of that has to do with who's in net in Helibuck. Um, so they're, they're working through some stuff. Like, they're, they're trying to get back to their identity as a team. And the penalty kill, like they just got to figure out when they're applying pressure, when they're laying back. It's a little discombobulated right now. And, you know, McDavid comes into town goal list last night. And I think a lot of people would go on whatever betting app they were, they were on and see that

there's a 60% penalty kill at play. And sure enough, McDavid gets a power play goal. Like, yeah, wouldn't you know it? Like, you know, he kind of feasted a bit on the man advantage. But, yeah, Ottawa was working through some stuff. If you're Edmonton and you're struggling, you need the offense from unexpected sources. So it was great to see this. There we go.

There it is. But, you know, you mentioned goaltending. That's the other thing in, in Ottawa, right? Is the goal tending has been awful. When you get guys getting lit up by the Buffalo Sabres, that's a bad sign. So I don't think there's such a thing as a good loss when you're struggling, but some losses are better than others. And I think getting a point and holding the high-powered oilers to two goals and regulation, I think you can handle that if you're the Ottawa Senators. This is one of those we can build on this sort of losses.

Okay, put it this way. If you're struggling to get back to your defensive identity and you see the Oilers coming into town and you're working through stuff and you're like, wait a second, that's the Oilers. And they're kind of leaky and they're really motivated to have a great game because they haven't played well.

And you play the game that the Sends played at five on five. And it wasn't like McDavid and Drysidal who were playing together, nuclear options. They didn't have a field day out there. Shane Pinto made it pretty tough for them. He did a good job in a lot of situations. So if you can do it against the Oilers, there should be confidence within the group

that you can do it on a night-to-night basis against the Phillies of the world in Buffalo. And yeah, you need to get saves. Like Linus Allmark played great. Levy Merlin has gone down now. He's been, you know, really bad, quite honestly. Hasn't been able to give him a save. So I think that's a good building block game.

in an Atlantic division where, you know, Ottawa's stumbled. Toronto lacks identity right now. Detroit's playing well. You know, Florida's finally got a win. Like there's some moving parts in the Atlantic. Like it's a very interesting division right now with the teams that have stubbed their toe and the teams that are playing well early. Okay.

I've got to jump in here because I have a rule. I never want to be the first one to mention the Maple Leafs, but since Frankie did it. I thought we were going to make it. I thought we were going to make it through. Frankie, you said that we were going 45 without talking about them at all. Not possible. You said the Leafs lack an identity.

I'd argue with you on that one. I think the Leafs have an identity. I don't think it's the one that they want. My question to Frankie is, in your time as an NHL defenseman, did you ever have your goal to get run so bad that he had to get up and flip the net off while you stood there and why? and watched and follow-up question. If so, what were those conversations like in the room or on the bus or wherever they happened eventually?

I'm not going to pretend like I was some big tough guy or that like I was even, you know, that impactful at the NHL level. I was a guy. I wore an NHL jersey and I played NHL games. But if the goalie ever got hit, it was just like a non-negotiable. You have to do something. And you could even tell the guy, honestly, you could tell the guy that you're mauling. You're like, you know, I got to do something here, right?

Like, there's just, there's just no other option. So that's, it's crazy to me that it got to the point in Toronto that Stolars, you know, had to air things out publicly. But I'll tell you guys this, okay, it's not a great, it wasn't a great decision by Stolars to air all that stuff out because it puts a target on your back within your room. And right away, the first thing that's going to happen is it's going to get addressed by the team and we say, guys, we're brothers in here. We can all talk to each other man to man. We don't air stuff out publicly. That's not what we do in this dressing room.

Let's have the conversation in here. That's number one. And then number two, you're the goalie. A lot of shots come in your way. Don't put more pressure on yourself because it's a hard enough position as it is. And if you want to call out, you know, in not so many words, Neelander for a back check or you want to call out the team because they go low to high and they get you know powder puff shots to the net with no one in front like don't let in any bad goals now because now you're on notice and last night anthony stole ours led in a couple bad goals and I can't help but wonder like did you need to apply more pressure on yourself by calling out you know your teammates and now putting a putting a bit of a target or a little more pressure on yourself it wasn't it wasn't

a smart thing to do. And that's fair. And, you know, I think we all saw his comments after the game where it really felt like he was going, okay, now I'm going to be the good guy. And, you know, we played well and all of this stuff when they clearly didn't. I will just say this. As someone who, you know, spends a fair amount of time hearing from Leafs fans in Leaf fan circles, you know, I feel like I've got a pretty good sense of where the fan base is

at. I don't know that I heard a single person criticize or complain about Anthony Stoller saying what he said. If there was a reaction, I think there were a lot of fans who kind of went, thank you. Somebody said it, hallelujah, let's see if we could light a fire. And I'll tell you right now, if it doesn't work, okay, it doesn't work. But if this team now goes in a spiral and people try to go, oh, you know, the turning point was when the goaltender, that's not going to fly in Toronto. Nobody has any patience for this team that was already viewed as being very emotionally fragile.

You talk about identities, and that's what this team's identity is. If they turn around and say, oh, our goalie said some mean things about us, so we all just shut it down, that's not going to fly. I think a large majority of Leafs Nation is team Stollers on this one, whether he should have said it or not. the fans would be clamoring for someone to say something like that. But within the room, it's appeasing the fan base doesn't go over well at the expense of your teammates. Right. Like that's a tough dynamic in the dress room. So listen, it happened.

It's over. Everyone's going to move on. They're all big boys. But in my heart of hearts, I think if he could get a mulligan on that, he would take it. and not say what he said about his teammates. They got like two more weeks to work through this or 10 more days or however, however long it is until the, until baseball season's over.

That's fine. No one, no one's, no one's, no one's paying attention to me, please. Everyone's trying to score a World Series tickets. They moved their games.

Did you see that? Yeah. A Saturday night Leafs game being moved to five o'clock. That's when you know that, uh, this is, this is back to be in a baseball cap. I think they,

I think they moved one during the ALCS too. They did. They moved one to the afternoon. That was a Monday, though. I don't know. I just- Thanksgiving Monday. We're just all so shocked up here in Canada that Blue Jays are doing what they're doing because we were told it was impossible in Toronto with, you know, because there's fans in media. You can't, you can't succeed. But apparently you can. It's very weird. We're all, we're all super confused. It's a lot of the same, a lot of the same reporters in media. They're, they're just down the street right now. I don't know. That would really condolences to the Seattle

Mariners who still haven't made a World Series, as we've heard many, many times, 48 years of existence. It's squeaking out just ahead of the Pittsburgh pirates who have existed for 500 years and haven't made one in 46 years. So everyone's, everyone's focused on feeling bad for the Mariners. Pirates are still a team. They're still a team. That's good. Not really.

Great baseball stadium. Tough team. Thanks. But thanks for, thanks for Isaac. I'll pass that. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah.

I know. I was good for, good for you guys. I'm glad he's, glad he's helping. Yeah. Frank here, are you headed home after this or did you get another game this week? We got, uh, we got Philly on Thursday. So me and Paul McLean will be back on the panel doing that. We'll get to see, get to see the Mitchcoff show. Maybe he's in shape. Oh boy. Maybe, maybe you will, maybe you won't. The show might be him sitting on the end of the bench, uh, opening the door. I'm curious to see him in person. Like, I called a couple of people. a couple Philly games last year. And he's a very talented player, right?

But holy smokes, man. Like, it feels like if there was ever a player that's a work in progress with his head coach, I mean, from, I mean, listen, he's going from torts to talk it. Like, it's not exactly, you know, it's not exactly the Mechkov type of guy that is like, this is like find the differences in the, in the picture. And yeah, it's Pam. It's Pam. It's Pam Beasley holding up to two pictures. And they're the same thing.

It wants you to find the difference between these two. One of them's bald. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, that'll be interesting. That's on Thursday. I will table that. We'll be able to get 15 or 20 minutes out of Michkov next week. There's a lot going on there.

So I'm glad you get to see it first hand or whatever. Watch it with a more critical eye. I'll talk to you, buddy. All right, boy, have a good one. All right, there goes Frankie. It's just me and McIndoo. Sean, we learn things every week. What have you learned?

What have we learned, Sean? I learned last night that Brad Marchand is a human being with feelings and emotions and tears that won't stop coming when he came back to Boston. It was touching. It was a touching moment. And the rehabilitation of Brad Marchand's reputation of Brad Marchand's reputation going from most player in the league, the rat, all that stuff to a fun guy who does funny stuff on social media and plays with a teddy bear in commercials and is also still a rat to his credit. But he got the well-deserved ovation from Boston fans and he cried. And the tears dripped onto the floor and turned into little tiny rats and scurried away.

and everybody was happy. This is like the inverse of Two-Face in the dark night. This is like you live long enough as the villain. Something like that. Yeah. You either die a villain

or you live long enough to see yourself become a hero. Thank you. Quick. Thank you, quick Google for a very famous quote from a movie that flew out of my head like the little tear rats

scurrying across the ice in Boston. You know, Tom Wilson is watching this going in a couple years. This will be me. He's there already. I'll be that guy. Wilson's there already. I think the response to the heatal hit was proof of how his image has been rehab. There are a lot of people who are like, what are you going to do?

That hit was squeaky clean. I don't know what we're doing here. What did you learn? I thought I'd love. learned everything about Alex Ovechkin, and then I got an email from the Washington Capitals a few days ago, pointing out that later this week, I believe it is Saturday in Columbus, I want to say.

He will become the eighth player to play 1,500 NHL games with the same team. And shame on me for not realizing that this was coming down the pike. I feel like we're still to some degree on, on a milestone watch for O'Feskin. He's got 900 goals coming up. We're all aware of the big round numbers that are associated with that guy. But I missed the 1,500 game thing.

Maybe because I just don't think of it is that important of a mark. But the capitals clearly do. And O'Veskin clearly does. I talked to him about that in Washington yesterday. So story upcoming on the site about that. But, Sean, we're going to steal from another much worse podcast

and do a little bit of game show Wednesday here. Who are the other seven players who've made it to 1,500 games with NHL with NHL franchise? How many can you name? Let's do it that way. There are seven, there are seven guys. How many do you think you can name? So 1,500 with one team may have played for other teams.

They may have. Okay. So Gordy Howe, for example, would be. Correct. All right. So Gordy How is at the top of the. list, 1687 games with the Detroit Red Wings. Okay.

The other one who would fall into that category would be Ray Bork. Ray Bork, 1518 with the Boston Bruins. Wow. Okay. So, I mean, boy, if Ray Bork is only just barely getting across finish line, that's, that is tough. The other guys that I would think of, Nick Littstrom? Yes, correct.

1564 with the Red Wings. Steve Iserman in Detroit as well. Steve Iserman 1514 with the Red Wings. He is seventh out of seven on the list in total in total games. And then whenever you mention Iserman, you kind of always go to Joe Sackick. No, Sackick. Hmm. Okay.

And then the only other one that, well, no, two more to jump to mind. First of all, just because we're on the Detroit list with all their guys, Alex Delvecchio. Oh, my God. I figured you would not get Alex Delvecchio. Well, I figured he was... The reason I know that one is... Because he watched him play. He was before.

Sorry. He was before my time. But the Red Wings, I mean, that's what they do. They have guys who just stay there forever. And how Eisenman-Lidsrom and then Del Vecchio is the one you forget. The other one is, did Patrick Marlowe get there with... Patrick Marlowe get there with... Patrick Marlow got there.

He's actually number two on the list, 1607 with the sharks. Wow. What is that? Did I get five or six of them? My man, you got six of them. There's one guy. Is it an old timer or is it like a modern? It is not an old timer.

And I fear if I give you a hint, then the hint that I'm thinking of it. It's not a real. Crosby, right? Like, is Crosby? Crosby isn't there. He's about, I think he's, I look this up a couple days ago, of course. I think he's like 200 games off or so. Hmm. Is he active today?

He is not active. He was fairly recently active. Would you like a hint? Yes, I would. He has a son who is a current NHL player. That doesn't narrow it down. I know. I didn't want to, I didn't want to just lob it up to you. There's another, there's another easier one. He has a, he has a son who's a current NHL player and he has worked in front offices before.

How about that? It doesn't narrow it down at all Because that's that's the those are the two main traits of hockey players If you play in the NHL for a hundred games Your son will play in the NHL And you will work in front offices He did this he out here here you go You're you're gonna get it

He played all these games for a team that relocated More than 1500 games for a for a franchise that was located in two different cities at the time of him playing those games. You have forgotten Shane Donne. I have forgotten Shane Don't. I absolutely forgot Shane. And you weren't going to get there. I was not.

No, that was, okay, yeah. That does check all the boxes. I'm sorry, Shane. He's a, he's a subscriber, so whatever. Thank you. Thank you for apologizing to him. He would have been very upset. Now I'm, now I've, I've potentially lost this.

Yet again. We're going to get fired. Yeah. So I, shout out to Ovejka, though, I guess. Like, this seems like it's something that it seems like it's something he sincerely cares about, which I thought was interesting. I, you know, everyone likes round numbers, but this was one that just completely slipped out. Where is Crosby on the list? Have it in front of you, like what he's up to?

I, I want to say he was around, I'm looking it up right now. I want to say he was around. He's a little bit behind, obviously, because he missed the concussion. Had some had some concussion issues of note. He's at 1352. 13. Okay, so he's not going to get there. We can save that for another time.

Might get the 14. Might. He's getting a 14. Okay. They're good. The penguins are good. That's all the time we have for this week. Thank you, Sean McIndoo.

Thank you, Frankie Corrado. And thank you for listening to our beloved athletic hockey show Wednesday edition. The three of us are back next week. I am back tomorrow with Haley. That's when the next show is. So thank you again for listening. We will talk to you real soon.