The Athletic Hockey Show - NHL opening week headlines, Dallas Stars check-in with Saad Yousuf, Multiple Choice Madness, Hailbag, and more

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Ian and Hailey open the show discussing some of the biggest storylines coming out of the start of the NHL season, including Jacob Markstrom’s not-so-surprising opening night shutout against his former team, the Canucks, the possibility of Keith Yandle’s consecutive games streak coming to an end due to being a healthy scratch, Jakub Voracek’s postgame presser critique of Flyers beat writer Mike Seilski, Barry Trotz channeling his inner John Tortorella, admonishing his team for injuring starting goalie Semyon Varlamov in pregame warmups, and more.Then, The Athletic’s Dallas Stars writer Saad Yousuf joins the show to discuss where things stand with the team after a COVID-19 breakout sidelined upwards of fourteen players, delaying the start of their season til this coming Friday, whether the group will be negatively impacted heading into the opener against Nashville or not, expectations for this year coming off of a Stanley Cup Finals berth, Miro Heiskanen’s potential to be in the Norris Trophy conversation, and more.Plus, to close things out, Ian and Hailey run through a series of Multiple Choice Madness questions and introduce for the first time on the podcast the Hailbag segment, as Hailey fields questions from listeners.And, don’t forget, you sign up for an annual subscription to The Athletic for just $3.99 a month when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And we're back for another edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. I head on this episode with Haley Salvean. Calgary. We'll look at some of the biggest storylines from opening week in the National Hockey League, including what is going on with the Panthers and Keith Yandel. How do we feel about Jake Vorichick ripping into a Philly Beat reporter? And speaking of ripping into people, was Barry Trots right to lace into his own team for injuring Semy and Barlamov in warmups?

We'll also be joined by our athletic Dallas Stars Beat reporter Sad Yusuf, who will let us know what the stars have been able to do while the start of their season has been paused due to COVID. We'll wrap up with a little multiple choice badness, including which of the Hughes brothers would you rather start a team with? Jack or Quinn. Your first podcast installment of the Hailbag as well, you can fire your questions over to Haley Salvin.

And Haley, I got one for you right off the hop here. How salty are Vancouver Canucks fans right now after Jacob Markstrom pits the shutout? against his old team. Yeah, I don't know if it's a salty feeling or just a, yeah, well, we could have predicted this or written this storyline. We could have drafted these tweets. The beat reporters could have had their stories pre-written before this game because I think

everyone, if you just look on Canucks Twitter, they're like, yep, no, that's, yep, yep, 32 save shutout by Jacob Markstrom and I think about eight block shots by Chris Tanna. So about a 40 save shutout for our two former players. And we all could have seen this coming months ago. So maybe there's a bit of saltiness, but I think it's a lot of, yeah, no, like, you're welcome. Please enjoy what we enjoyed all season last year and the years previous since Markstrom has had this really great rise into, you know, one of the elite goaltenders in the league.

So Thomas Drans and I just had a story come out. I think it came out just now. a minute before we started recording, so we couldn't take a look at it. But we had a story come out looking at just how much Jacob Markstrom moving from Vancouver to Calgary changes things and kind of changes the order of power with the Western Conference Canadian teams. And it's a pretty significant change, especially when you look at the 56 game season and you're playing against these teams nine to 10 times. So maybe salty is the right word, but also just sad. Speaking of the balance of power in that North Division, let's start there. Let's talk about some of the things that surprised us caught our eye opening weekend.

For me, Haley, and I covered the game. The Ottawa Senator shocking the Toronto Maple Leafs on opening night was an eye opener. It was for me. I still don't see Ottawa as a potential playoff team in this Northern, this North Division. I still think, and this is going to be an interesting week for them coming up. They got three dates with the Winnipeg Jets in the span of five days. But that was something that surprised me. Like Ottawa, for a game and a bit, kind of punched above their weight,

looked like a team that gave Toronto trouble. And of course, Leif's fans were melting down a little bit about the way things were unfolding on the weekend. That was one of the biggest surprising storylines for me. And the other one, too, is like, here we go again. Like the Buffalo Sabres, I get tricked by them every year. Like, every year, Haley, I'm convinced the same. Sabres, this is going to be their year.

They're going to be okay. They're going to be a team that surprises you. And again, early on, I guess it's a good thing for Buffalo fans. I get the bills to focus on right now because you can forget about the Sabres. But once again, to me, I'm looking at Buffalo. I'm like, oh, no, here we go again. Well, it's been two games, Ian. Two games for the Sabers.

Is it really that bad? Six-game season, all of a sudden it feels a little bit more. Like, I feel like if you have a bad week or two, it could ruin your season. Yeah. You know, it's true. You know, the two games is a very, very small sample size. But I also think that Sabres fans probably have, you know, a decent, you know, recent, you know, recent history to fall back on in terms of like, should we panic? Ah, history would suggest maybe.

It's interesting, though, you know, going to the Ottawa senators, I did. watch that game, you know, being from Toronto, I worked in Ottawa and, you know, I just like to watch all of the hockey games that are available to me. And I think that was one where, um, I was very pleasantly surprised by what the Ottawa senators were able to do in that game. I think some of the offseason acquisitions that they made, you know, looked pretty good. I know there was a ton of, you know, not saltiness to go back to the, to the Vancouver terminology, but I think there were some fans who were quite upset with some of the moves that were made, you know, why are we blocking young players? Why are we doing this? But then you could kind of see it in action and it made a little bit of

sense. You know, you had some good veterans. You had guys who really fit into that system really well. And they, like you said, they kind of punched above their weight against the Toronto Maple Leafs. So it was a great season opener for them. I think it was a great, you know, Tim Stootzler got his goal in the second game, which was great to see. It was awesome to see Brady could chuck get three points. in their season opener too. So, you know, Leafs fans probably weren't happy about it. But I thought that was, you know, one of the more pleasant surprises to start the North division.

Also in the North, one thing that kind of, and I don't even want to say that it's surprising because I think heading into the season with no exhibition games, we probably could have expected that there was going to be some not so much sloppy play, but really, really weird results at the start of the season. And I think we saw that with some of these matchups. You know, specifically you had the Edmonton Oilers who just looked bad. Their season opener was not good. It didn't look like a great, it wasn't a great game.

It looked like a game that was the first game in a long time with no exhibition games and you only played an intras squad. So they went down to the Canucks 5 to 3, but then the very next game, the Oilers came back in 1 5 to 2. and then they went and lost to the Montreal Canadian. So I think we're seeing these kind of wonky results of, you know, when is it that we're going to know what these teams look like? Because I don't really know right now because some of these games have been, you know, pretty wonky in terms of the swings and the way that they change on a game-to-game basis.

Another weird one, the blues beat the abs four to one on opening night. And then two days later, the abs beat the blues, eight nothing. I mean, that's a, I guess that's another indicator of this weird season because that is a very big swing and change for those two teams as well. So just a couple of my surprises. But like I said, I don't think we can say that we're shocked by these results because we knew going into the season that it was going to be a really weird one.

And there was no exhibition games, like I said. Yeah. You know, I think one of the biggest storylines that come out of opening weeks, week two, Haley, comes out of South Florida. And it's rare that the Panthers would be like a team that would provide a soap opera for people. And yet here we are Keith Yandel in the middle of a little bit of a controversy. And that is, it looked like heading into the weekend, Haley, that maybe Keith Yandel's

consecutive game streak was going to end at 866 because it looked like he, maybe he'd be the odd man out with Joel Quendell. He plays, he scores a milestone goal too. But like if you're the, if you're the Panthers, if you don't. Joel Quenville, if you're the general manager of Bill Zito, like, how do you handle this? Because it's an awkward one. If Keith Yandel had played like 300 games in a row, you'd be like, whatever, man, you're going to be a healthy scratch. But he's getting to within a hundred games of Doug Jarvis's all-time record.

My question to you is, should that be a factor in whether or not you make a player a healthy scratch? We saw it play out with Andrew Cogliano a couple of years ago. And I think that he was pretty sour about it. Like, how would you handle that if you were a coach and you had this type of kind of milestone to kind of play around with. Well, we also saw that play at with Jason Spetson, Mike Babcock. Remember, he was benched in his return to his hometown, not hometown, excuse me, he's with his hometown team returning to the team that drafted him on opening night.

And he scratched. When the Toronto Maple Leafs going to the Ottawa Senators, he was scratched. That didn't go over well with the fan base. I think that probably rubbed some people in the hockey community the wrong way because Jason and Spetsa, I'm sure you can attest to his character and probably how special that would have been for him being with his hometown team and going back to the Ottawa senators to play the first game. And he was sitting in the press box watching. So we saw that play out there too. And I think Mike Babcock came out. And, you know, I think the overall takeaway for him with that

decision was, you know, I'm going to put in the best players for this game. And he still has some things to work on. So yeah, it would have been nice, but, you know, we're going to, we're making decisions based on the results. So I think that's where it's interesting because if you're Joel Quenville and you believe that you have a defenseman who could go into the lineup and play a better game than Keith Yandel, that is a difficult decision because this isn't just a return home for Keith Yandel. Like, are we expecting that Keith Yandel is going to play for the next 100 games every single night just to get that record?

Like, if he has a bad game, does that just automatically? mean that Keith Yandel gets into the lineup tomorrow. If he plays poorly for three games, and there's a couple of prospects who probably deserve to get into the lineup, who've worked really hard, there's a guy doing well in the taxi squad, does Keith Yandel just get that spot because he has a big milestone coming up? And it's not an insignificant one. Like, I think that's awesome.

I love the Iron Man streaks. But we're not talking about five to ten games. Like, that's a hundred. So is he just going to play all season? and no questions asked, regardless of what he does. And so I think that's where this becomes a bit of a weird situation, because, you know, Joel Quenville was saying on a different podcast last week, and this is kind of where all the, you know, the drama happened.

But he said, you know, everyone wants to play. We've got some tough decisions, and that's been one that we have to make on Sunday. And as of right now, you know, Keith Yandel's not going to be in the lineup. And his reasoning was that there was some young guys who came into kids, camp who made the opportunity for Yandle to be a regular player very tight and very difficult. So it comes back to what I just said, right? Does Keith Yandel just automatically get a roster spot or a starting spot just because of, hey, he's got to play 100 more games to do this when you have someone who's potentially

more deserving? Now, I think that there's a lot of people in that Florida. organization players, people who know Keith Yandel, people who have played with Keith Yandel. I've heard so many stories that just speak to the character and how great he is in the room. He's a really funny guy. He is a great defenseman. So that comes up to it too. You know, this isn't just some guy who plays four minutes a game.

It is Keith Yandel. So it is a really difficult one. And I don't even think I answered your question, Ian, because I'm just kind of trying to think about it out loud. and if I was Joel Clenville, I wouldn't know what to do either because we saw him wishwash. And it's a really tough one. Yeah, exactly. I don't know that I would want that responsibility as a coach. If you had to sit a guy and that's the end of his streak, boy, like to have that conversation,

I think the key to all this is transparency, right? You've got to sit down with Keith, yeah, don't take this personally. But I think we're going to be better off without you. And then maybe you can try and look at the, the, situation and say, listen, we'll keep you in the lineup. Maybe we'll shop you around. Maybe there's another team that can use you in your consecutive game streak. If it matters to you, we can find a different home for you. But boy, oh boy, I'm with you. I would not want anything to do with that because that's a tough decision. But then again, I'm sure Joel Quenville over the course of

his career, whether it was in St. Louis, Colorado, and of course, in Chicago had to make some tough decisions on, I mean, I think a Cbrook and some of the things that have happened there, you have to sometimes make tough decisions on players. That was one. big storyline that came out of opening weekend. Haley, another one that came out of Philadelphia and it felt like it came out of left field. Jacob Vorichick, we're going to play this for you in case he somehow didn't have a chance to hear

this, but it's a post-game Zoom conference call which has become the norm in the National Hockey League. And Jake Vorichick takes a question from Flyers Beat reporter Mike Salski. So Mike Salski asks him what appears to be, as you'll hear, it's a totally innocuous, harmless question. Have a listen as Jake Voracek is having none of it. Two games in, Jake, how different does the seasons feel, if at all, given the circumstances of the offseason and the condensed schedule and everything?

Doesn't matter what I say, Mike. You're going to write fucking shit every time. It doesn't matter what you say. Yeah, it feels different. I mean, we got four points after the first two games. I wasn't even going to answer your question because you are such a weasel, it's not even funny. Next question.

Haley, I got to tell you, when I hear a clip like that, my first reaction is, whoa, this is the NHL. We usually don't get that type of spicy stuff on the podium. But my goodness, there's a ton to unpack there, isn't there? The amount of times that that clip was sent to me over the weekend, And everyone was sending it. And I just, it was everywhere. And you know what?

I think I'm fairly new. We know that this is only my second season and I've only technically had one year in the locker room. So I personally haven't had that kind of interaction with a player where they come up to me. And they're like, why would you write that? I honestly think that Zoom is making these kind of interactions more public because I am sure that there has been conversations like that across the league. all the time because beat writers or national writers, whatever it may be, like some of them are

pretty nasty. They can say, you know, they've got hot takes, right? And I don't hate that Jake Voracek said that because I think that if you are going to dish it, you have to take it back. And if you're going to be writing things about why Jake Voracek is bad, why he should be traded, You know, I looked through and I saw some of the tweets that this reporter has made about Jake Voracek. I've seen some of the columns. This reporter has written about Jake Forichek.

He stands by them. He was tweeting in response to it. He stands by it. He says, you know, everything I wrote was true. You know, these are just my columns. I'm a columnist. This is my take. I stand by it.

Fine. But you have to then, like if you are going to say those things about Jacob Boracek, you have to take it back from him when he finally says, I'm sick of reading the nilmuch. the negative crap that you are saying about me on a day to day basis. And I just, I would expect that that is something that would happen in a locker room situation as well. Like, it's not just for a check hiding on a Zoom call. You know, oh, I don't actually have to talk to the guy. I'm just going to say it on Zoom. No, it's the nature of the environment and he finally snapped. I heard Brian Burke say this the other day. And I think it's very true as well. If you're going to be

Borracek and you're going to, you have to make sure that you are 100% correct and you have to have those things kind of said sparingly. But I think that he was absolutely justified in what he said. And I also love the spiciness and the personality. I loved it. I would hate it if it was me. But at the same time, if I was saying those things about a player and they had a problem with it, I would have to take it because, you know what, you're right. I was saying some some pretty negative things about you. That's fine. You can rip me if you want. I think I agree with you. Like I think the one thing we always do with NHL players is we condemn them for being the one game at a time,

pucks in deep, you know, insert cliche here. And then somebody goes off script. You're like, whoa, what is this guy doing? What I find fascinating about all of that is the original column that Salski wrote about Voracek, Haley. It goes back to October of 2019. Like what I find fascinating and where you make an excellent point about Zoom being kind of maybe allowing this type of thing to happen is, you would have thought at some point,

I know the pandemic kind of shut things down, but at some point between October of 2019 and January of 2021, how was there no direct interactions between Mike Salski and Jacob Borchek? Right? Like that's the part of it that it's like, whoa. Like he was hanging on to this for a long, long time.

But I always think too, like when you think about spicy reporter moments in the NHL, you immediately, your mind just goes right to John Twitter. Like it just goes right to points. But when you think about players, the one that I always think about, and I would encourage our listeners to check this out at the end of our podcast. Because, you know, Dan Boyle was one of the kind of the nicest, most professional, easygoing guys, people I know loved him in San Jose.

His last year in New York, his end of season press conference is one of the most remarkable things. He calls out two reporters. He's like, I'm not answering questions. well, that guy and that guy are around. It's amazing. Like, again, take a look at it because I think it kind of got lost. You know, Dan Boyle was like a perennial all-star, but it wasn't like, I don't know. I just think it was an amazing piece of footage.

And what Voracek did reminded me a lot of what Dan Boyle did with the Rangers. Hey, I brought up John Totorella there. I wouldn't mind asking you about poor John Totorella and the jackets Haley are off to a slow start. They've lost a couple of games. and they got a couple of storylines. Torts had no problems, benching Max Domi. I'm sure Habs fans are loving that,

kind of benching Max Domi, stapling him to the bench at the end of their opener. He also talked on Columbus Radio last week about, I wish Pierre-Luc Dubois was a little bit more open about why he wanted to go out. If you're sitting in Torts's seat right now, what do you think is frustrating you a little bit more, Haley? Is it the Pierre-Luc Dubois situation,

or is it the fact that now you've got a new, quote unquote project in Max Dolby? I would probably say the Pierre-Luc Dubois situation, just because you have a player who has clearly stated that he wants out. And you also have this player in Pierre-Luc Dubois, who's had a very slow start to the season. So if you're John Tortorella, you could kind of, I don't know how you're not going to take that as, you know, you want out so you're not playing hard?

Like, what about all the other guys that are here? I think Max Domi being benched, like, you know, torts is no stranger to little projects. Maybe it gets annoying after a while, but I don't think that there's going to be a long-term fit issue there. And I think Max Domi is at least a guy who's shown that he wants to be there and he's like, you know, he's going to put in the work. Pierre-Luc Dubois, we haven't seen that on either. side there. You know, he, uh, he's, he's scoreless through the first couple games the season.

Um, he, he clearly wants out. And I saw John Tortorella, um, you know, talking about that. And like you said, he's like, I wish he was more open about why he wanted to leave. Um, you know, he's here. But I think that if you look, you know, speaking of the North Division as we have and being in in Canada and, you know, Patrick Linae has said that he wants out too. and what does he do? He scores two goals in the opener to beat the Calgary Flames. So I think if you're just looking at the Pierre-Luc Dubois situation and you're looking at the Patrick Lainé situation, they both want out, but at least one of them's performing. So if you're the Columbus Blue Jackets and you're John Tortorella and you're looking over at Winnipeg and you're looking at Paul Marisa's

situation with Linae, at least you have a sharpshooter who's still playing as one, whereas you have a number one center who doesn't want to be there, which is also interesting because it's not like Pierre-Luc Dubois is not given opportunity in Columbus. He's their number one center. He was a big part of last season's group, and he was amazing in the play-in round against the Leafs and in the first round of the playoffs. So it's a weird situation, and I don't know if this is something we want to get into or not, but I wonder where you stand on players who are still technically into contracts, you know, we always talk about in the media, like guys play their way to their UFA years.

They've earned it. They've earned the right to go wherever they want. And now we're starting to see guys kind of pull that trigger early and say, you know what? No, I'm going to tell you where I want to go now before I've earned my UFA years. I don't know if that's like an old hot take, but it's just really interesting to see this kind of new trend potentially starting to happen with young guys saying, like I'm not waiting to my UFA years to demand what I want. Well, you know, you bring up a great point.

And from the careful what you wish for file on that, think of Jonathan Druand, right, who a few years ago was kind of in that same boat. He's like, I don't want to play in Tampa, I want out. He went to Montreal. Now, granted, he's been dynamite to start this season. And I think Habs fans are thinking, if this is the Jonathan Druand we get, that's okay.

But all of a sudden, like, he asked his way out of Tampa and right into the pressure cooker of Montreal. but you're right. But it's that tier of player, right? It is Dubois, it is Druin. What I would think would be interesting, Haley, would we ever see in like how either their entry level or just out of it, McDavid McKinnon, like if it was like a mega star,

like a mega top five, I don't think we've seen that, but it's that little kind of that next tier of young stars that you raise an excellent point that we've seen that. So that is certainly frustrating John Torto. And how about Barry Trots channeling his inner John Totorella this weekend, Haley? Maybe we should call him Trotsarella because Barry Trot. No.

No. What do you mean? No. Listen, he channeled his inner Tororella. I'll call him Trotsarella when he does it. So here's the deal. It's Islanders Rangers on the weekend. Shemian Varlaalmav is in the net for the warmup, takes a high shot from Cal Clutterbuck. He goes down. In fact, I think everybody saw that on social media. It forces Ilya Sorokin to come in.

And I mean, the islanders just get wax. It was 5-0. And Trots wasn't happy. He's like, you guys, shoot low on the goalie in warm-ups. This is ridiculous. Was Barry Trots right to rip his team? And in particular, Calcutterbuck for that. Was he right to say, guys, smarten up in warm-ups? I think so. Yeah. You know, this isn't a regular season. We're 56 games here. And we've seen the way that goaltenders have gone down already and the amount of goalies that have been taken off waivers. The last thing the New York Islanders need is to lose their starting goaltender. And if your starting goaltender is out for more than one game, which I did see this morning that Varlamov and Sorokan are available for this game. So Varlamov is back.

However, imagine if that was something more long term and you lose your starting goaltender. in warm up in one of your first games of the year because, you know, your team has decided that they're going to, you know, work on their wrist or and try to go, you know, top shelf on their goalie instead of just warming them up low. So I don't have a problem with what Barry Trott said because, you know, just the importance of the goaltending position. And if he saw something ice level where he saw his guys where maybe, you know, you know, joking around, you know, they're, yeah, they're loose, they're having fun, which is great.

But then you go and do something like that. You know, I don't, I don't have a problem with that because just imagine what would happen to their season if they lost Simeon Varlamov for the entire season. There's not many goalies available anymore. Like we're seeing, you know, Arindell is probably off waivers by the time this podcast is over. Like, this is going to be old news, but he's probably getting plucked off waivers because there's so many teams who need goal tenders right now. So the Islanders would be in a really tricky situation if that, you know, became more of a long-term thing. So I'm all good with Trotsorella doing that. I hated that. I know you hate that. I just don't like your puns. I like puns. I don't like more puns.

Chemistry. I'm allowed to say that. All right, Haley, I think we got a little bit of tension between us here. We might need to bring in a third person to kind of ease things up over that pun controversy. So let's go down to Lone Star State. Bring it. He covers the Dallas stars for us at the Athletic. Saad Yusuf joining us here on this podcast, the athletic hockey show.

First of all, Saad, thumbs up or thumbs down to puns? Are you a fan of puns? I'm a fan of elite puns, and that's pretty much it. Like I think it gets watered down sometimes. People try to be way too punny and it just ends up being lame. But the elite ones, I'm a fan of those. That's about it. Okay.

So are you familiar? Sorry, Ian, I got to step in here. Are you familiar with an Ian Mendez pun because he drops them all the time? They are like they're funny. I will give him that. But it's just he makes everything a pun. So for me, after knowing Ian for so long, it's just kind of like, oh, my God. Like, how did you even see this?

Like our last episode, Ian said that he wanted to, you know, draft of Genie Malkin and call his fantasy team Malkin cookies. And he also just called Barry Trots Treasrella because he yelled at his team. Can you just rate Trotsorella? Trotserola is a bit down the total. I would say. I think that's maybe trying, that's maybe trying a little too hard. You know what? I think that's all the time we have for SOT. You know what? I know that it's funny because you actually have to run and cover a practice here

for a team that hasn't played. And I guess, look, SOT, we would have had you on. This would have been the day we're talking, we should have been talking about a Stanley Cup final rematch that was supposed to be played on the weekend, Tampa and in Dallas. And instead, Dallas is kind of in a holding pattern. So could you just tell you? tell everybody where things stand with the Dallas stars and kind of what's going on with the team right now? Yeah. So, you know, just to go back, start from December 30th onwards, they've had 17 players test positive. Now, this news came down, you know, they had to shut down their facilities last week, or it's been a little over a week now on January 8th.

And so when they shut down the facilities, then we knew six players tested positive and two staff members. Then the following Monday and NHL report came out, or following Tuesday, I believe, that 17 players had tested positive. They shut things down for a little bit there. And then when they came back, 14 players were not there. Honestly, I felt like I went from covering the NHL to the HL really quick because that's kind of just what it looked like at practice. And we weren't even allowed at practice, but we were just, you know, given the lines and things like that. over the last few days, they've had players start trickling back in. They went from missing 14 players to 13 players to missing seven players.

And as of yesterday, though, everybody was back except for three players who were already cleared but hadn't rejoined the team. And one other player had already rejoined the team, but was probably out with an injury, though, you know, that's undisclosed so we don't know. So a long way of saying the stars are pretty much back to full. strength now after a terrible outbreak over the last couple of weeks. And they're pretty much primed and ready to go now for the game on Friday against Nashville. I mean, that's a lot of time that's been taken out from training camp. And we've seen some, as Ian and I were speaking about earlier,

we've seen some pretty weird, maybe surprising results in some of these games. How is all that going to impact the stars? You say that they're all kind of primed and ready. But, you know, we're seeing teams like the Edmonton Oilers come out and look flat. We're seeing the blues get beat eight nothing. And they had full training camps with way more players. So how do you think that's going to impact the Dallas stars when they actually open their season? Oh, yeah. When I say they're primed and ready, more of just like the names and bodies are just present. I think, you know, it's like, you know, I said this the other day. The standard of what ready is is so different now. It's like, you know, in 2020, like the standard of a good time was not just having a dinner at a restaurant,

but that now we're just dying to do that. And, you know, I think the standard for ready for them right now is just, hey, bodies are available. Like, but you're absolutely right, Haley. Like, you know, it's, Nashville is going to have four games under their belts. Dallas is going to be going in cold. You referenced, and, you know, this is going to be a wacky season, even if there hadn't been a delay.

I mean, you referenced the blues game. They beat the abs like two days ago and then they lost eight nothing. So, you know, it's going to be a weird and quirky season. So Dallas is going to go in. And I think the biggest concern they have is Dallas, you know, we saw it throughout the Stanley Cup run and everything. They kind of make their staple as being the physical team and things like that. Well, they haven't hit anybody in real speed since October.

And that's what they're going to be facing as, Nashville has already played four games. I think there's going to be concerned about, one, injuries and two, how much they're even able to play their game because they're just not going to be in the flow of physicality that. So what would you say would be the expectations around this team? I mean, look, they went to the Stanley Cup final last year. Is the feeling in that market that this is a Stanley Cup caliber team again?

Is it too tough because they are in the same division as the defending champion, Tempe Lightning? like realistically what are people expecting out of the Dallas stars of the season? The expectation has to begin at the playoffs. And I think the expectation is definitely for the stars to make the playoffs. They're in that window. They have the veteran guys like Jamie Ben, Joe Pavelski, Anton Houdobin, Ben Bishop, who's going to come back in March.

When you have veterans like that, you can't be playing the long game and hoping that you win a championship in 2025. So, you know, the expectation is definitely to at least make the play. playoffs. Now, Ben Bishop is going to come back in late March. He's their number one goaltender. Their number one forward, I would say overall, Tyler Sagan's going to come back in early April. They really are just trying to tread water throughout this regular season. If they can finish fourth, that'll be, that'll be fine. They just need to get to the playoffs and then ride their goaltending a lot like they did last year. There just hasn't been a lot of roster

turnover from last year. They lost Corey Perry and Matiasianmark, but other than that, they're basically returning the same squad. And so the expectations, therefore, are also mostly the same. So I think in the playoffs, we saw, you know, a really great breakout from Miro Heiskenen. How have you seen, you know, just the kind of reception to his game grow over the last, you know, eight, 10, 12 months? Because I don't know if he was like really right in the middle of the conversation, at least outside of Dallas. And now it seems like everyone's kind of paying attention to like, wow, this guy is pretty incredible. Absolutely.

And, you know, I just a small tease, if I may, of my own work. I actually have a two-parter coming out on Miro Hayskin and leading into the season. He is the Dallas Stars best player. He is everything that, you know, he was advertised when he was coming out of the draft and then some. And so I think the next step for his game, though, is, you know, Rick Bonas's system really requires to activate the defenseman. And so if he is able to take his offensive game to the next level,

that'll really put him into the elite tier, which I really think he's already there. But when we're talking Norse Trophy and things of that sort, that's kind of what that means. But I think that the Stanley Cup run did him a lot of favors because frankly, you know, he doesn't get a lot of. of the love that, you know, some of the northern, northern teams do, or northern players do. So I think that served him really well.

Saad, as we wrap up our conversation with you here, I just want to know, what's the feeling in Dallas? It's one of the, if I'm not mistaken, one of the handful of cities in the National Hockey League that will allow, am I correct on this, that they will be some fans allowed inside American Airlines arena? That's correct. 25% capacity. 25%.

So obviously we saw, look, the cowboys were playing to, you know, you. you know, 25% capacity. Is it your expectation that you will get about 5,000 fans? Like, do you think they'll max this thing out inside that arena? And then the second part of that question would be, is there any way that you think that this can be a little bit of home ice advantage for the Dallas stars, a luxury to have people cheering them on, that 90% of league will not have this, at least to start this season?

You know, to be honest with you, first of all, I do expect that it to be up to capacity of the, 5,000 for sure. Their watch parties were in the Stanley Cup final and that was just watch parties. I think, you know, people around here are just, you know, really craving hockey right now and they'll show up. In terms of the advantage, you know, not to cop out of the question, but it's just I haven't been in an arena in a long time with fans. I don't know when the stars are in in normal times and they have their arena, it's a huge advantage. The Star's fan base is really loud.

They're really involved. Everything like that. I don't know how much 5,000 fans is going to resonate in that big American Airlines Center building. It's certainly possible. I assume it can't hurt, but I don't know exactly how much that would help. Well, listen, it's going to be fascinating to watch the defending, I guess, Western Conference champs start their season again.

later this week. I know it's been a long wait for everybody, but Saad, best of luck as you kick off starting another season covering the Dallas Stars and your first one, I guess full time on the beat. So, hey, listen, we're looking forward to your work and thanks for taking a few minutes to join us here on the podcast. Appreciate you guys. All right, Haley, I hope you appreciate the fact I didn't try to make a pun out of Saad's name, okay? I'm showing a little bit of restraint here. I'm not even going to say anything. I don't even know what kind of pun you would come up with in that. So we're not even going to

We're not going to go there. Hey, you know what we are going to go. It's multiple choice madness Monday. Listen, we love to hit on this as we set up another week in the National Hockey League. So let's start with this, Haley. And every single one of these answers is going to be, have the little asterisk of it's early. Small sample size. You know, whatever you want to say.

But let's hit on this. What team should already be a little bit worried, a little bit panicked about the way the first week of the season played out? Aley, is it A, the Chicago Blackhawks, B, the Buffalo Sabres, C, the Columbus Blue Jackets, or the Vancouver Canucks? Yeah, I think that that's a good one to start. You know what? I think that the Blackhawks kind of knew that they were going to be, you know, they made a statement. They're rebuilding.

So I don't think they're going to be panicked that they're not doing well because this was kind of the plan. So, you know what, I'm going to go with the Buffalo Sabres. I know you mentioned it right off the top, Ian, but, you know, they may. made the swing, you know, they brought in Taylor Hall, you know, like you said, this was supposed to be kind of the year. Like, they're going to, they're going to do better. And, you know, they haven't. I will preface this. Like you said, it is early. And they weren't playing insignificant opponent. Like, they were playing the Washington Capitals. And they're expected to be pretty good again this year. They have Alex Ovechkin, you know, a lot of their core is still there. They brought

in Zadano Chara. So I don't know how much you can get upset about the Buffalo Sabres when they're losing to a team like the Washington Capitals. However, I do think that, you know, with everything that was said in the off season about the moves that they made, is this finally going to be the year? Is this going to be enough? And then they start 0 and 2. Not a great start. Not exactly what you want when you have all the kind of you're trying to generate positive hype around the team. It's not great. I don't think they should be, you know, sounding the alarm. But I would be a little bit worried just like we said before based on recent history with that team. Well, you know what?

Out of those teams among Chicago, Buffalo, Columbus, Vancouver, I'm going to take Columbus. And we kind of touched on the fact, like it feels like there's a couple of like pressing fires, things on the front burner for John Tortorella. Max Domi, the fact that he got staple to the bench early in the season kind of makes you think like here we go again. And I'll give Torts credit. Like that guy gets the most out of people.

But we've seen Max Domi bounce around now to so many places. You know Habs fans are sitting back with a big old bag of popcorn and be like, we love Josh Anderson. You can have Max Domi. So I'm looking at that. I'm looking at Dubois. I'm looking at the O and two start. And I'm thinking,

uh-oh, I'm a little bit worried if I'm Columbus, particularly because I just, I don't know that they've got enough offensive firepower. You need Dubois and Domi kind of clicking. And if they're, you know, dealing with some other issues there,

boy, that's going to be a tricky start. for Columbus. We talked about this earlier too. That takes us to question number two, Haley, multiple choice madness. We talked about Keith Yandel. I'm going to ask this question here, and that is, who do you think has the best chance of breaking Doug Jarvis's record for the most consecutive games ever played the NHL? Jarvis got to 964. There's actually three players. People may not realize this, Haley, because all the attention is on Yandel. There's three players who are within striking distance. So that's about 100 games out, a season and a bit. Is it going to be,

A, Keith Yandel, B, Patrick Marlowe, C, Phil Kessel, or D, none of them is going to do it. You know what? I'm going to jump in first on this one. I'm going D. Haley, I'm going D. I say nobody breaks it. And look, we saw it with Cogliano. You think a guy is getting close and it ends.

Yandel, it feels like that thing is kind of, it feels like it's tenuous at best. I don't feel like he's a lot to play every game this season. Marlow, who knows if he comes back next year. I feel like maybe breaking Gordy House games played record is more of the thing for him. And then Phil Kessel, let's give this guy credit. I know everyone loves to make the jokes about Kessel. The fact that this guy hasn't missed the game in 10 years is remarkable. But to tell me he's going to play every game this year, 56,

and then have to play another ballpark, another 60 games next season without missing any, for any reason, feels like it's a little bit off. So while I think somebody might get to 900, I don't think any of them gets to 965. What about you? I think that if there's anyone who's going to do it, it's going to be Phil Kessel, just because he is younger. And he's had that. I mean, look at the streak he's had. Like you said, he hasn't missed a game in 10 years.

He's just so low-key, healthy, dependable, you know, in terms of playing the games. and I just, I don't really know if I see that changing. And I, and I don't see a situation like the Keith Yandel situation where a coach is sitting there thinking, like, you know, in Arizona, like, I think I have somebody better than Phil to put in. I know, like you said, everyone likes to make the jokes. I know that there, there were questions about, you know, was he the right fit? Like, what was wrong with his game at the start of last season?

There's always going to be those questions about Phil Kessel. But as we've seen over time, there's never been enough of a question. question mark about Phil Kessel's game to say we've got someone we can put in his spot instead. So I think he's got the age factor, the health factor, and there's not exactly a prospect in Arizona, to my knowledge, who's trying to push Phil Kessel out of the lineup. So I would say that in terms of how tight, you know, his roster spot is, he's probably in the best situation to break that record. But I do agree with you in the sense that I don't know if this is going to get broken, but I do think if there's anyone who's going to do it, it's Phil.

Hey, all of those guys, Haley, are over the age of 30, and so too are the guys in this next question in multiple choice madness. And all of these guys are off to pretty good starts. They all have kind of like a point of game after a couple of games. So I ask you this, which guy who's over the age of 30, who's off to a pretty good start, Haley, actually could maybe hang around and stay in contention to win the Art Ross trophy? I think most people would say it's going to be McDavid or McKinnon. But if one of these older guys over the age of 30 is able to hang around, who would it be? is it A, Stephen Stamcoast, B, John Tavares, or C, Alexander Ovechkin. Haley.

That's another good one, Ian. These are some good multiple choice, much better than your puns. I think that it's going to be, I mean, since we're stuck with over 30, because I would personally say that Nathan McKinnon's going to win, but that's not the question. Let's say John Tavares. just to spice it up. I think the easier one is maybe an OV or a Stamcoast, but I think after a down season last year or down for his standards,

I think John Tavares is, you know, he's looking for a big comeback year. He was still a great player last year, just the year before his first season with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He was, you know, I believe top five in scoring in the league. And I think that, you know, if we look at this Leafs team, they're going to need guys like Austin Matthews, Mitch Marner, John Tavarra, is William Nealander to really step up. I could see John Tavares having a really great season.

And, you know, we talk about the playoff expectations and the hopes that this team has. And I think they want to make a really deep and long push. And I think John Tavares is a really important piece of that. And I think if he can be the key fob to help this team have success, if we're looking at guys over 30, I think John Tavares, you know, is pretty good. And that's just, I don't want to cop out and say Ovi, which I'm sure you're going to, you're about to do that right now. No, but I love that.

You're all about the condo life there with the key fob reference. I like that. That's pretty good. I'm going to say Stephen Stanko. So, you know, I think we forget how good Stephen is. Like you look at his resume. Like, he's already got, what, 400 goals. Like, this guy's going to end up with 500 goals.

And he's going to have a Hall of Fame career. And yet it always feels like there's injuries or circumstance that take him out. And I think this guy's going to come back. He's got a ton to prove because last year, I know he had the one shift in the cup final. But a lot of people were like, oh look, Tampa won the cup without Stephen Stamco. So A, I think he's super motivated. B, I think he's healthy.

And C, there's no Nikita Kuturov there. Like, there's a little bit of space there for Stephen to come back, have a great year. I've always been a Stephen Stamco's fan. And I think he's got a great chance to maybe hang around and maybe put together like a 65, 75 point season in a 56 game campaign. Okay, on to question number four. We go from the old guys to the young guys, Haley. And I ask you this, whose first career goal was more impressive? Was it the Minnesota Wiles, Carill the thrill, Caprizov with that overtime winner against the L.A.K.K.

Or Timmy Stutzla, his first career goal against Toronto. I'll go first on this one. I'm probably going to get run out of the market in Ottawa, but give me Caprizov. And maybe it's because it was an overtime goal. Maybe because it was kind of, it was, you know, overtime goal to score your first goal. It's pretty cool. I love the Stutzla goal. That thing was hanging up in the air.

And I was watching it. I didn't even realize where the puck was. And then all of a sudden, it's in the back of the net. That was such a cool first goal. But I think for like the electrifying kind of explosive factor, give me Caprizov's overtime winner against LA, but they were both awesome. Yeah, I think just the stakes of it is great. I think that that is a good one.

But, you know, I'm going to go with Timmy Stutzler. And I think, you know, this being from Ottawa, you know, coming from the Ottawa market, covering that draft and just being able to kind of soak in all the attention and all of the excitement that Sends fans have had, you know, over the Tim Stutzel selection. And, you know, everyone saw how dynamite he was in the world juniors. And I just think that, you know, I think that was great for Senators fans. You know, it obviously wasn't an overtime game winner. You know, they lost the game. I think it was a great shot. He's got an incredible one-timer. And I just think that Tim Stutzla, I said this in all of my pre-draft content, if there's a guy who is going to end up being, you know,

the best player out of this draft who's not Alexei Lafranier, it's going to, I truly believe it's going to be Tim Stutzler. I just think he's the whole package. He's really skilled. He's smart. He's fast. And I just think that's, you know, I'm just happy for Sends fans. I'm happy for Tim Stutzla.

There's just something about that guy. Every time he does an interview, he's just so genuinely happy and excited to be there. He's really happy to be an Ottawa senator, you know, just the joy and how much he loves the game. There's just something really easy to like about Tim Stutzler. And so I was happy to see that for him. And I'm just really happy for Sends fans to be able to get a player of that magnitude and the third selection, who's actually going to pan out and potentially be one of the best players out of that draft. So I'm going to go with Timmy Stutzler.

All right. Fifth and final question, multiple choice to add is Monday, Haley. you're starting a brand new team from scratch, okay? You get your first crack at any player, but I'm going to give you a choice. Hey, Haley, you have to pick one of the Hughes brothers on your team, and you can only pick one of them. You're starting a brand new team.

Are you taking A, Jack Hughes out of New Jersey, or B, his brother, the defenseman, Quinn Hughes, from Vancouver. Who you take it? You know, just because we kind of talked about the saltiness or the sadness for Canucks fans, and my story with Drance did come out, And I did read through the comments a little bit as we were recording. And some of them are just saying, well, now I'm sad.

Thanks for that. Now I'm crying into my coffee this morning. So you know what? I am going to go with Quinn Hughes, not just because I want to, you know, pay it back to to Canucks fans. But I do think that if you're starting a team from scratch, you know, I am of the belief of the importance of defensemen in building from the back end and out. So I just think if you can find a top pairing defenseman like Quinn Hughes,

at the top of the draft and you're trying to rebuild. I think you go defensemen, just the importance of that position. And we've obviously seen what Quinn Hughes can do. I know there's always, there's with some questions last season about Jack Hughes, you know, he didn't have an amazing rookie season in the National Hockey League. I do think that he's an incredibly skilled player and he's going to have a good career in the NHL. But, you know, I just think that Quinn Hughes, he was a finalist for the Calder.

He was so impressive. He's so great with the puck. He's a great skater. moves the puck, offensive defenseman, and he's only going to continue to get better. So I'm going, Quinn Hughes. You know what? I'm going to do the opposite.

I'm going to take Jack Hughes. And maybe I'm a sucker for that, like, prototypical, number one centerman, build your team around that. But listening and reading all of the comments about Jack Hughes's opening weekend and the way that he elevated his game. And boy, it feels like maybe he's taken some sort of quantum leap forward. And I love Quinn Hughes. Don't get me wrong.

I think that guy might, he's going to end up winning a North. Like if you had to tell me, you have to pick one defenseman in Canada who's going to win a Norris trophy in the next whatever three or five years, you can make a great case that that's your guy in Quinn Hughes. But if I'm starting a team, I think I'm going to go Jack Hughes. I think he's got all of the elements there. And the fact that he seemingly has put some of those together to start the season, I think he's going to be New Jersey's best player for a long, long time. I think that's fair. But I'm still going, Quinn. Okay, we're going to wrap up the show with a little hail bag.

Somebody who doesn't like puns has decided to create a mailbag called a hail bag, and yet that is somehow acceptable. But we just tell the listeners a little bit about the genesis of the phrase hailbag and how we're going to bring it into the podcast here. Yeah, so when I started covering the Sends last season, one of the things we wanted to do to engage the market, engage fans, and our subscribers was do a daily monthly mailbag. And I think it was, we saw that Myrtle did one and he called it the Mert bag.

And it was just the most unfortunate sound. It just is unpleasant to hear. It's not a great name either. It's the Mert bag. So my editor, Aaron and I saw Mert bag and we were like, that's disgusting. Let's make a hail bag. And we just kind of saw like, wow, Mertel, that was really dumb. Like mine can be way better.

So that was really the genesis of it was just, you know, seeing that my boss did something and I hated it and just, you know, being competitive and saying, well, like, my name actually rings a lot nicer. So thanks to the Mert bag for really starting the hail bag. It took a while to catch on, but, you know, I do think that people, people like the hailbag, at least in Ottawa, I think. It's an elite pun, much better than Trotsorella. So that was kind of the genesis of it.

and we're bringing it here to the podcast. The hail bag is alive and well. So let's see, let's see what questions we got. We do. We got some questions. Let me start with this one here. Samuel tweeted out as Haley and said, in speaking with NHL.com, Bill Daly said the NHL would like to move away from an all-Canadian division because they want to continue having out of a North American League, integrating all the teams moving forward. And Samuel is wondering what we think of this as Canadians.

Would we like to see the All Canadian Division live on or kind of go back to some semblance of what we had before? I've really liked it so far. And I do think that the Canadian Division is going to bring some must-see television to hockey fans specifically in Canada. And even outside of Canada, I think there's going to be some great matchups. And we've already seen some of them this season. However, I would like to see a return back to the way that it was. You know, the Canadian Division was created out of necessity for this season. And I think it's going to be great, like I said.

But there's no, there's no Crosby. There's no Ovechkin. There's no, you know, cross division play. And, you know, you don't get to see the Nathan McKinnons. And so I think that brings a level of excitement to fans in every division where you get to see every team play. You still get your divisional rivals. And for the Canadian division, at least for teams like Calgary, Vancouver and Winnipeg, they were already all in the Pacific. So, you know, there's still, I believe it was the Pacific.

My God. It's been a while since I've had to look at the old divisions. Scotia North division is all I can remember now, it seems. But, you know, I think that there's already some of these rivalries here. And, you know, you look at the Leafs and the Sends, they're in the same division with the Habs. So I think for the Canadian division, you're still going to see a lot of those teams play against each other regularly. But then you're going to get that mix of the Crosby's, the Ovechkins, the Pastornax and Panarans of the world. And I just, I prefer that.

even if there was a Canadian division with cross-divisional play, I still just would like to see the Metro and everything come back. You know what? As you said earlier in the show, you like shameless plugs for our written work. I got one coming up this week. I'm hoping to have a column. I'm going to realign the NHL, Haley,

into four team divisions. Like the NFL, you know how the NFL has four team divisions. I've got eight four team divisions. I'm going to throw that out. And so I'm going to give you a little tease of what I'd like to see happen in the NHL with realignment. But I'd say no to an all Canadian division for the very reasons you laid out. I think I like seeing, I really like seeing the McDavid's and the Crosby's get to cross the border and play everybody. Okay.

Next question in the hail bag today. This one, Haley comes in from Cameron, who wants to know how much of a factor will not having fans be for teams like the Toronto. beliefs. Yeah, I think that's an interesting one, Ian. I think that if you would ask the players that, they would probably tell you that it's weird without fans. They wish that their fans were in the building. However, I think that we're going to see these teams. They're going to have to find ways to motivate themselves on the ice. Obviously, it's weird. Obviously, you don't get the kind of home, home ice advantage, especially that teams like Toronto get, even on, I mean, even on the road, we see the Toronto Maple Leafs get advantage because they have so many fans in their away buildings.

But at the same time, I don't think that not having fans in buildings is going to be a detriment to the teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs teams like the Montreal Canadians because, you know, they're going to have to find ways to motivate themselves on the ice and on the bench. And that's just you're going to have to adjust. And if you can't and if not having fans in the building is the reason you're not able to have success, then. I mean, maybe you shouldn't. Maybe we've kind of, maybe these teams just aren't as good as we thought if having fans, not in the stands, is the thing that makes or breaks their play. So I think they're just going to have to kind of, you know, to be cliche, dig deep and create their own kind of motivation and energy on the bench and on the ice

amongst each other. And I think Leif's fans will be able to tell you that they're used to not playing in front of fans the first five or six minutes of every period. at Scotiabank Arena. Everyone's always in there. Little luxury suites are never out there anyway. So maybe it's not that big of an adjustment. Okay, one last question in the hail bag today.

And we're going to go to a tweet from Not So Magic Mike. I don't know why he lost the magic, but it's not so Magic Mike. And wants to know, hey, guys, we're still at that point in the season where most analysis analysts, sorry, will tell you it's too early to tell. But what's one trend so far this season that you think will continue? and you think it might see sticking around for the season. So let me ask you that question, Haley. What's something that we saw maybe an opening week that you're like,

ah, you know what? I could see that happening in March, April, in May. These are good mail. These are good hailed bag questions. I'm, you know, I'm enjoying these. These are good. I think that's a, it's an interesting one because I'm really not sure what the answer would be in the sense that like some of the trends

that we've seen early on in the season have been things like, you know, semi-sloppy play and, you know, teams, uh, teams still kind of adjusting to not having an exhibition schedule. But, you know, I do think we've seen a trend of regardless of if it's been, you know, a bit sloppy, if they look like they're a bit, um, you know, they're still getting their legs under them. I think the games have been really exciting and they've been really fun to watch. And I, you know, I very broadly and, and maybe it's kind of a cop out answer.

But I do believe that that is going to stick around. I think the excitement, um, around the North Division, specifically around all of these teams. I think it's going to stay. You know, we've all been waiting to have hockey back. Some teams have been waiting for about 10 months since they weren't a part of the return to play. So hockey fans have been waiting for this.

And regardless of what the result is, regardless of what the team kind of looks like, I just think there's been a ton of excitement around the league and around their teams, around these divisions. And I just, I don't see that dying off as the season kind of goes on. It's 56 games packed into 160. days and I honestly see the excitement that we're seeing as a trend right now at the start of the season. I truly believe that's going to stick around for the whole year. I think we saw the sports net, the sports net, you know, viewership numbers was, you know, the opening day this year was

the most watched NHL opening day on that network. And for those listening from the states, you know, Sportsnet talking in Canada, that they have the national broadcast rights here in Canada. And I believe correct me if I'm wrong Ian I don't have the press release in front of me but it was you know some there was you know 6.6 million 60 6.6 million viewers for opening day which was the most that SportsNet has had on the NHL opening day on their network so I don't know if it's going to be that many million people every single game but I do think that that excitement is going to stick for the entire season just because we've all been waiting for this for so long and it's such a unique year and I just think that that energy

is going to stay. Well, listen, we're going to have to leave it there, Haley. As always, this was a ton of fun. Enjoyed our second podcast together, and I'll try and improve the pun game, the elite pun game coming up for next week's show. So listen, that does it for this episode of the Athletic Hockey Show. Thanks so much for listening to us.

We want to remind you to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and leave a rating and a review. We really appreciate it, especially if you're enjoying the show. And a reminder, you can subscribe. to The Athletic for just $3.99 a month by visiting theathletic.com slash hockey show.