The Athletic Hockey Show - Nick Suzuki's line must produce for Habs to beat Hurricanes

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

The Eastern Conference Final between the Canadiens and Hurricanes begins tonight in Raleigh. The Sean's welcome Arpon Basu to discuss the Habs desperately needing more from Nick Suzuki and his linemates, and Lane Hutson's surprisingly steady defence in the playoffs. Hailey Salvian joins from Ottawa, the site of the Montreal Victoire's historic Walter Cup championship win over the Charge and Hailey tells us why she picked Marie Philip Poulin as playoff MVP over Ann-Renée Desbiens. Plus, the boys look back on the Golden Knights win over the Avalanche in game one of the Western final.Host: Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoeWith: Arpon Basu and Hailey SalvianExecutive 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, what up? It's the Athletic Hockey Show for May 21st, 2026. Sean Jantilly here with Sean McIntoo. This is a Wednesday show on Thursday. We got Arp and Basu here as well. We spend some quality time together in Raleigh over the last couple days, my man. How are we doing?

We're doing well. We got a lot of quality time ahead of us. I'm very excited. This is a Redux, 2025 Redux right here, so this is good. Seems that way. We're going to talk about HAB's, Hurricanes, obviously. We're going to do some recap work on the first game of the Western Conference finals. I'm going to touch base with Haley Salveon, who's in Ottawa.

The Walter Cup was awarded last night. Congrats to the Montreal Victoire. We'll talk to her about all that. But Arpin, you're here. Let's start with the HABS. A huge storyline going into this series, I think, is the play of the Nick Suzuki line and not in a positive way. They're getting outscored 8 to 1 at 5 on 5. Expect a goal share of 44% in their 14 playoff games.

It's not a super small sample size. They've had about 137 minutes together. This is, of course, Suzuki and Kofield and Yeraislav Kovsky. What have they done or not done to get those results and what's responsible for, you know, a pretty serious falloff from what we saw from them over the course of the regular season. Well, I think there are two separate stories here. You know, I think in the first round, he went up against a defensive wagon, you know, and, you know, Nick Suzuki is likely to win the Salky Trophy this year.

If not, he's already a finalist, but, you know, going up against Anthony Sirelli. I think we can pencil him in for that one, by the way. I would think, I think it's pretty fair. I think it seems the wind is blowing that way, let's say. But, you know, Anthony Sirelli has been that kind of. guy for years. And you saw why in the first round. He smothered Suzuki in particular, but his line in general. Brandon Hagel had something to do with that. But Sorrelli's so good that John Cooper had the luxury of taking Hagel off that line and putting him elsewhere at times. And Sorrelli was the

one constant. And John Cooper made sure that Nick Suzuki was never on the ice or not on the for very long without Sorrelli being there, especially at the Bell Center. Not really the case against Buffalo. It wasn't as hard a matchup, but like when you're, you know, if you're Nick Suzuki, you should expect some better results. With all due respect to Josh Norris, it's not the same caliber of defensive player as Anthony Sorrelli. And so he, there was a certain, I think, excitement on the part of those guys that they were going to have more room to maneuver, that there was going to be some more offensive opportunities. There's a bit more risk in Buffalo's game than Tampa's game.

And it didn't really come through. It didn't really manifest itself the way they hoped or expected. And asked Nick Suzuki about it yesterday. And, you know, he's fully cognizant that he needs to produce and his line needs to produce at five on five for this team to have any success. So on the bright side, they're here. And they've done it largely without them at five on five, though the power play is humming quite well.

and they're largely responsible for that. But he recognizes that they will need to be better in this series for them to have any chance to knock off the hurricanes. And we'll see how they do. It's not as if the hurricanes are some loose, easy team to play against. So they're going to have to elevate. This is playoff hockey. And playoff hockey, you don't have room.

You're going to get checked. You're going to be game planned for. This is sort of the nature of playing the same team four to seven times. And I think they're still trying to find that. that sweet spot where, you know, they're not giving up a lot, but they're getting some too. You mentioned Nick Suzuki and the Selke, and he's a two-way player and he's got the great defensive game, and we all know that. A guy that we don't necessarily think of as having a great defensive game, but maybe we should. Lane Hudson, you had a piece that went up today on his

defensive game, which is usually not where the focus is, but maybe it's. it maybe it should be. Have we all been sleeping on this, on how good he is defensively? Yes, you have. It's, and not just you, Sean. I think Mac can do specifically, yes.

I think me specifically, sure. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, you might be. There aren't any other athletic writers who have ever criticized him, so that's cool. No, and there are no other athletic writers who are like, what about his skating?

Or unusually, or his puck skills. I mean, yeah, there's no athletic writer that Canadian fans obsess over quite like you Sean. I'm trying to move into that space. You're number one on that list.

It seems like it's a lot of fun. Yeah. Yes. So there has been doubt and to be fair to our friend and colleague. You know, Corey was not the only person to cast doubt

on Lane Hudson's ability to defend at this level. There's a reason he went 62nd in the draft. Otherwise, he would have gone third, fourth, second, first maybe? Like it's no one thought

a guy who weighs 160 pounds has a bit of a choppy skating style and his 5 foot 9 would be able to defend at this level. And frankly, the minutes that he gets for the Canadians are largely due to the fact that Marte Saint-Louis

and Stefan Robidae, who runs the defense for them, have zero doubt in his ability to defend if need be. Like he gets a lot of offensive zone deployment for sure. because why wouldn't you, if you just watch him for two seconds, you can understand why he does that. But if the puck winds up and winds up back in his end, the Canadians don't lose much, you know.

He's not a premier shutdown defender, but he's above average. Like, I mean, I think he's, and when you combine that with the supreme offensive skill, that makes him an elite, elite defenseman, a true number one. But yeah, it's because he does it differently that people don't, and you have to watch it regularly to understand it. And so it's, uh, it, it comes over time. And that's, that's kind of the point of my piece this morning is that this, this playoff run, aside from putting the Canadians, you know, eight wins away from a Stanley Cup or four from a final, um, it's provided this window for people to watch Hudson's game and realize that, yeah, he's not going to,

he's not going to, he's not going to, like, forcibly clear the front of his net. But if you're not paying attention for even half a second, the puck's going to be off your stick and it's going to be on his and the canines will be off on offense before you know it. He does that regularly and has made it really into an art. And normally when you're talking about a small defenseman, especially one who's such an important piece of a team, regular season, okay, but then you get to the playoffs and you go, okay, well, I mean, they're just going to dump the puck into his side and they're going to be sending four checkers in to hammer this guy and figure, after seven games of that, they can wear him down.

Well, the Haps have had seven games twice now. How is he avoided that? How is this kid not a stain on the end boards by now? Is it as simple as just some skill players are just really hard to hit? Or is there something about his game? Like, how is he managed to physically get through 14 playoff games like this? Because also like just year over year, too, because, because Arpin, like, you and I, you and I were on Caps Canadians last year.

And that was part of the narrative with that series was that it was Lane Hudson. And that team writ large, but also Lane Hudson specifically adjusting to the, maybe not the pace, but the physicality of playoff hockey. And it kind of seems like he's figured it out year over year. Well, this is, this is Lane Hudson's superpower to some extent. This is why he's become, in my opinion, a plus defensive player is that his problem solving skills are elite. His brain has always been seen as elite offensively. Like, you know, he's a very creative, imaginative player that you can't run at because he'll make you look silly because he'll do

something that you weren't expecting. But defensively, he has used his brain to solve problems. And I think in that respect, in terms of the physicality and getting, I think he learned a lot from not even that whole Washington series. You saw it from beginning to end of that series alone, how he had adjusted to that reality, that he's going to be a target in the first round. I mean, the Tampa Bay Lightning clearly wanted to execute that strategy on Lane Hudson and slowly take him out of the series and they weren't able to. And it's not just his quickness. It's not just his waterbug nature. Like there's all sorts of different strategies he employs. He'll often let a player, like if he sees it's going to be a 50-50 puck. He'll often let a player get on the puck first and then he'll just steal it. Like he is a master at avoiding contact, not just on the forecheck, but just in general. And when you've grown up, at his size, like he's had to do that his entire life. But doing it at this pace with these stakes, with the quality of players that he's facing,

I think took a tiny adjustment from last year to this year and you've seen it through 14 games. Like there's no NHL team facing a team that has Lane Hudson on the blue line that is not going to prioritize, throw the puck in his corner and hammer him. But good luck with that. Like honestly, like it's not, it's not easy. And it's not only not easy. it's not easy for different varying ways that you can't really predict when you're going in on the forecheck because he has he has sort of computed it in a way that's that's unpredictable.

Kind of incredible that we're, this is year four and a half from Marty Sain-Lu. Like he said, he's had four full seasons behind the bench. That's incredible. It doesn't feel like it's been that long. But you've been there for every step of it. What have you learned about him as a coach this season? because I think that that's something that's something that interests me too, the year-over-year growth from him. What have you seen, you know, from your seat and in your dealings with him over the last couple years that suggests, you know, improvement?

Yeah. You know, well, in the regular season, I wouldn't say a whole lot changed with the way Marty handled things. You know, he's always had sort of a holistic approach to improvement and growth and, growth. and sort of valuing certain things for his players to latch on to. The real growth and I guess the real doubt that remained with Marty, especially after the way the playoffs went last year, even though that was a very competitive series despite it finishing in five games, was just the playoff version of him.

And in Tampa, against Tampa, especially, you know, games five, six and seven, you know, Marty did something that he's not comfortable with and kind of hates doing, which is to like just throw all his line combinations, not just in a blender in the sense that from game to game he was changing lines. Like within games, he was changing lines. He was throwing out like nine, ten, eleven different line combinations during a single game because, you know, Cooper was so hell bent on the matchup game that this was kind of almost using that against Cooper.

Like it was sort of like here, deal with this curveball. And it worked. You know, they won the series. You know, everyone points to game seven as being, as being this, this bloodbath, basically. They got nine shots on goal and won, and they did that in two series in a row. I guess I would say that in a seven-game series, you have to win four games. And yeah, they might have kind of escaped two straight game sevens, but they got there by winning three other games. And it's like it's not, it's not only, doesn't only come down to game seven.

and they won those games in very different ways against Tampa and Buffalo. And I think Marty's approach to those two matchups evolved as he took in more information. And one thing that I guess I've seen from him is that, you know, you got the impression sometimes that he could be a little bit stubborn. And just because he has such strong belief in what he believes, I think these playoffs have shown that he's not all that stubborn. And actually he's very willing to adapt and he can adapt to any kind of opponent. It'll be interesting, man.

And I'm going to see you at the rink in like a half hour or whatever. I'm excited, Sean. I'm very excited. Yeah. Yeah, it's been so long since we've seen each other. You know, man? Yeah, I know. It'll be good to get some more time together.

Oh, yes. It'll be great. See in a few. A lovely warm Lenovo Center. Yeah, it's going to be 110 degrees. Pretty sweet. All right. We got Haley coming up next.

Stick around. All right. We're here. We're doing my Haley Salvian from a Marriott property somewhere in the Ottawa. area Montreal Victoire beat the Ottawa charge 4-0

nothing last night to win the Walter Cup in four games. Congratulations on getting to go home and also

congratulations on disappointing Marie-Filly Poulin. Haley, you were one of the people who voted for her as

playoff MVP over Annorne, DiBien. Pullen seemed to be upset by that. She co-led

the playoffs and points and she scored two winning, two-game-winning goal. So that's enough right there.

on that, why was she your pick over, over Debian? Why did you, uh, disappoint her so? Yeah. Well, thanks for saying that because like I actually didn't tell her my ballot. So you're kind of ruining my spot right now. Um, who's a, who's a listener too? So, um, unfortunately she might be. I actually hope not. There's no way. She doesn't care about, she probably does care about hockey. Yeah. She's going to say the men's hockey. It's not like me. Yeah, she has beef with Sean specifically. But she listens to the Monday show, I think. Yeah, I mean, for me, it was number one, like it was a little bit.

It was a tough one because, so Abby Rock scored like an unbelievable short-handed goal to make the game 2-0 in the third period. So that would have been her second goal to game. her first goal would have stood as the winner. Abby Rock had scored another game winner in that series and assisted on a couple of them, ended up co-leading the playoffs and points. So when Abbey Rock scored, it was at 10-02. And the ballots are due at the 10-minute mark of the third period. And I had already submitted my ballot for Poo, number one, DBN2, and Abby Rock three.

And then Rock scored. And I was like, oh, my God, my ballot. it's in shambles. I don't know what to do. I kept it the same because there was only two seconds left. To me, like, for Poulin, it was, they don't get to the finals without her, the big goals that she scored against Minnesota. And I always felt that that was going to be the tougher series. Like, they needed to get over the hump. And I took some flack for this for saying I thought Montreal should pick Minnesota. Because to me, it was like, if you're going to win, you need to get through them. and you might as well just do it in the first round.

Like, rip the Band-Aid off, kill two birds with one stone. If you can beat the Minnesota Frost in the first round, you're going to win the Walter Cup. And I thought Poulin was obviously really important in them doing that in the first round. And then, yeah, she had her fingerprints on, if she didn't score the game winner,

she had her fingerprints on most of the big moments and most of the big goals in the series. And to me, that was kind of the main gist of it. I think Anne Renee Dabian obviously had an incredible case. She was the best goalie in the PWHL this season. She set records in the regular season for goals against average wins and safe percentage. And then she had an incredible postseason, a shutout in the deciding game yesterday. So I don't know.

I just think Poulin's the best player on the planet. And she refuses to accept that. So I'm not going to let her bully me into changing my ballot. Wow. A full-fledged callout. I love it. She can't do this to me. And I also got to say, the other thing I love about this,

I love hearing that you have to get your playoff MVP ballots in with 10 minutes left in the third. Because the history of the PWH has been everything annoying and dumb that the NHL does. The women come along and fix it and do it better and more creative. And I'm glad there's at least one dumb thing that they still need, they still force you to get those. ballots in early. Because, I mean, it's probably really hard to count 10 ballots or whatever. I mean, the cons might is like 15.

Yeah. It's, it's, uh, I do think there's a bigger voting body in the PWHL. At least they give people like if you're, and I, this is a thing that the PWHL does well because like so many people who cover the league like don't necessarily have the same job that I do. So they don't have, you know, a company saying like, yeah, just go to Montreal and Ottawa. for two weeks. Like, you got to go do it. Um, so a lot of people do cover the league from home. And the league does a good job at sending ballots to the people who aren't physically there.

I think the NHL, they just, it's like Pierre writes it on that piece of paper. Right. Yes. So here just comes around in points and says, uh, we got, this is who you're voting for. He taps you on the shoulder. Like it's like it's a skull and bones initiation. But I, yeah, but I do think like the 10 minute thing, it's my biggest beef with the IHF as well. Like, sometimes I just don't even vokes. I'm just like, this is like I'm not doing it. I either forget because, you know, by the 10-minute mark of the third period, there's usually like some crazy comeback or something wild that's happening. And I just kind of lose all of my brain cells that are left. But yeah, at the 10-minute mark, when I filed my ballot, it was only 1-0.

Abby Rock had scored, you know, on a kind of wonky deflection off Rory Gilday's stick. and Renee Debian had been solid. So at that point it was just like, well, Poulin's kind of been the story. She's doing this on one leg. She's the goat. She's finally going to win her first Walter Cup. And yeah, like, I understand people being, you know, ticked off and saying it should have been Anne-Rene de Bien.

But like the voting body also, like, there's narratives that happen within a season and a series. and like Mary Philippe Poulin has been playing injured and through pain since the Milan Olympics. And the way that she carried this team is not something that can be ignored. Like she led the playoffs and scoring on one leg. And that is something to me that is valuable. So and it was like one nothing and there weren't that many saves. So I don't know. Maybe I just disrespected Anne-Rene de Bianabit.

It's a legacy series for a player whose legacy was already. set. Like it's, it's wild. That's one of the only boxes that she had left to check and she checked it, right? And I fully support, you know, this is, this goes back to, as it always does with me, it goes back to the, to the mid-2010s Pittsburgh Penguins where the tie, the tie goes to Sydney Crosby. Like, that's, it's fine. That's a, that's a, that's a fine way to go about your business. The tie goes in Marie-Filly point, right? Yeah. For sure. And I want to put, and. Phil Kessel, by the way, I'm still mad about that. I, if that, if that keeps Phil Kessel out of the Hall of Fame, him not winning a constant month when he probably should have like, we're going to, we're going to have, we'll table, table that conversation. Because I got that one chambered up for, you know, 2029 or whatever. I also like asked Damien about this too.

It was like, Poulin, you know, shook her head and tried to make you go up there. Like, what are you thinking? She was just like, she deserves it. Like, it goes beyond the goal. scores. It goes beyond everything she does in the ice. She is our leader, and this was very, very sweet. She said, we don't win this without

her. In my heart, she is always going to be the most valuable player on any team she's going to play for us. So if you don't want to take my word for it, take Anne and A. Daybians. Fair argument. I'm sold. Go fight your goalie's heart since you're fighting everyone who

thinks your MVP. Hulen, go fight with Anne. Take it up with her, not me. I wanted to quickly ask about Abby Rock, because I think, you know, you did mention her, but she led the playoffs and goals. This is a player who Montreal took a little bit of a dice roll on in the off season. That was a really surprising trade ahead of the draft. A gasp in the crowd. In Ottawa, right?

Yes. So what is, how is she meshed? How and why has she meshed the way that, the way that she has with that team? And I have an inkling on how you're going to answer, but what has made her, you know, what has helped her refined a level of play that it seemed like she'd slipped from with New York? Yeah. I mean, she became one third of the wife line. And I saw on Twitter there was some fans who were trying to investigate if they were wearing like friendship bracelets that said wife line. And I asked Abby Rock, like I did the good journalism last night.

And I just went up to her and said, like, were you wearing a lifeline bracelet? And she said that she wasn't wearing one that day, but they all have them. Like, Laura wears hers. But Abby was like, I'm just not really a bracelet. I don't wear bracelets when I play. I'm not that girl. So for the inquiring minds, yes, they all have bracelets that say lifeline. And, you know, I think when the trade happened, it was shocking because we had all these moments of Abby Brock being the biggest

trash talker and the most like annoying player to play against. And typically that meant like being in Poulin's face or being in Stacey's face. And there was just this moment of like, oh, how is this going to work? This is like the most annoying. And I say that with adoration, American player before Ivy Murphy came around now playing with Captain Canada. Like what's going on here? But you could see how it would work because Abby Rock is more than just, you know, this. annoying player with a big personality. Like she's incredibly skilled, high IQ, great playmaker. And I, before the season started, I had said on a podcast, like, put her on the top line.

I know you could get some fun versatility with her being the second line center. But if you put her with Mary Philippe Poulin and Laura Stacey, that's going to be the best line in the league. And they all meshed really well together. Like, the vibes were incredible. I, like, I just thought that the three of them worked. so well and you know abby spoke so fondly of just getting to play with pooh and stacey this year and they both talked about abby yesterday after the game you know when abbey rock was traded here like part of

the excitement for her was she felt that she was a playoff player and she was finally going to get an opportunity to show that in the biggest moments and i asked uh or i think christina rutherford asked it just like what did she end up bringing and she was like yeah she calls herself a playoff player And like, holy hell, did she prove it today? Like, the two goals that she scored were clutch. The second one was so sick. Like, I was sitting in the press box. I was like, oh, my God.

To deak out a goalie short-handed like that in the moment that it was. That was, you know, a huge, huge goal for Abby Rock. And then my first thought was like, oh, my God, she's going to go and be the franchise superstar in Detroit next season. And that's really exciting for a new franchise. and a fan base and like devastating for fans of the lifeline. Definitely. Like Bono over there. Well, quickly,

quickly. And before we let you and Bono make your escape from Ottawa, look, we could say that this is a league going into offseason mode, but they've in some ways been in offseason mode for a couple weeks. They've added four teams officially since the 6th of May, I believe. There's an expansion draft to worry about. There's a regular draft to worry about.

There's player movement stuff, you know, that's going to come about, come about pretty quickly. You have a piece up kind of detailing why the league is so laser focused on doing this as quickly as they are. But I think it bears repeating, maybe bears, it necessitates some explanation on the pod, too. Like, what is the thought process here for the league, you know, doing this, this, I don't even, it's turning a marathon into a sprint again over the next couple months. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So the PWHL's ultimate goal. was to get to 12 franchises. And I think there were two avenues for them to get there. Either you add two teams for 20, 26, 27, and then two more the following season, or you just rip the Band-Aid off and add four next season. You create some chaos.

You truncated an already tight timeline. They have six months until the next season starts, but indeed starts in November again. But that option would ultimately spare the players from three straight seasons of upheaval and movement and expansion drafts and roster dispersions and whatever we want to call it. So the league ultimately chose the latter route, which means the four teams that are coming and, you know, doubles the league size from six in 2024 to 12 in less than three years of the existence of the PWHL. So yeah, it's like it's a little

crazy. I don't think anyone would have expected them to grow this quickly. But I spoke to Amy Shear. She's the executive vice president of business operations with the PWHL. And she said like the goal was never to stay at six. The goal was always growth. And I think the biggest shock for people is just that it's coming so soon. She said, you know, the goal is to create the PWHL into a legitimate sports league. And the way to do that is to grow the footprint. You need to be across both countries. You need to go into different time zones. You need to just be bigger. And the interest has been there from different partners in different cities who want the PWHL. The interest has been there from the fan base. The league had a record breaking season three. Over a million fans in the building for the first time in a single season.

They get on national TV in the United States for the first time. Merchandise sales double after the Milan Olympics. There was just a lot of growth, historic growth, this season where the league obviously felt like, let's ride the wave. We have the interest. There's the opportunity our owners in Mark and Kimber Walter who want to invest in this. So what's the point in waiting? Like we're in this huge women's sports boom right now. And I think we're seeing the PWHL try to ride the wave of that.

And it's going to be interesting because, yeah, I think, obviously they've invited a little bit of chaos. It was a 14-day stretch where they announced, yeah, four expansion teams, two general managers, some of the finalists for major awards, they handed out the Walter Cup. There was a back-to-back in the playoffs. There was a postponed game. We had the Montreal Victoire playing in front of only 5,000 fans at home, the worst they've ever had at Plas Bell in game one of the finals because the game was scheduled at the exact same time as a had game. So, like, there's been a lot of chaos and, like, a little bit of disorder just based on the way in which, like, the timeline that they've put themselves in. but ultimately I think all of this is just going to be a net positive because it means like more jobs,

more opportunity for women and people to work in women's hockey, whether you're a player, whether you're a staff member, more fans in the stands, more fans in different markets get to experience the PWHL perhaps for the first time. So ultimately it's like I said, a net positive, but it's been a little bit chaotic. It's been a crazy two weeks for Bono here. Yeah, and now I get to go back in the car and drive somewhere else. Good luck. Good travels.

Yeah, it's going to be great. Thank you so much. Me and McIndo will be back to talk Western Conference. Stick around. All right, we're back. Sean McIndoo, the Vegas Golden Knights are 25% of the way there. They beat a Keel McCarles, Colorado, Avalanche team 4-2 last night. My thought coming out of that one is I think we can see the template on how they pull this off.

That's a really good five-month-old. on five team. That's been true all year. They can use those pocket possession skills to at least play Colorado to a draw, it even strength, which is what they did last night. And they capitalize on the power play. That's been good all year. And get solid goaltending, which is something that basically hadn't happened for them until midway through the Utah series. Carter Hart was good. He made 36 saves. Now, is that repeatable? I don't know. And how much of that hinges on, you know, not having to worry about Keel McCar in the lineup, whether he's at 50% or not playing or whatever,

probably something. But I think what we saw last night, correct me, if you feel differently, but I think we saw the path laid out if they pulled this off, like what it's going to look like. Yep,

I think you've got it exactly right. And if we're sitting here in a week or two, talking about the Vegas Golden Knights being in the Stanley Cup final, we'll be describing three more games that probably look a lot like game one. And that's an if because we got a real good Colorado team that has been tough to beat in the playoffs this year in the regular season this year. And we saw them have really, you know, a couple of small stumbles against Minnesota, not against L.A., but they've responded well.

the key here is Cal McCar. I mean, we, on the Wednesday show, before we knew that Cal McCar was going to be out, we talked about how important that was the question of at the time, was he going to be close to 100% after almost a week off, or was he still going to be banged up? Well, we've got the answer now, that he didn't even play. And that is scary because even if you look at it from the best case scenario, which is the avalanche, know that he's banged up,

hey, we've got, we're the favorites in this series, let's see how far we can go without him. Let him rest as much as possible. Let's see if we can beat the Vegas Golden Knights without him. Well, okay, now you're already down one-nothing. But the fact that he didn't play, put it this way. Guys typically don't have a week off miss game one and then come back to game two 100%. That's not how this works. So even if he, it's almost as if that question has been answered of,

are we going to get full-powered Kail Makar in this series? It doesn't sound like we will. Because he's not going to, he's not going to be 100% when he comes back. And he's certainly not going to get better as the series goes on. If he does play getting, getting hit. And, I mean, we know he'll be targeted. We know he'll be the focus. So that is a very scary development for the avalanche,

because, I mean, you're talking about one of maybe the five best players in the world, suddenly being subtracted out of a series that we'd all kind of assumed he would maybe not be 100% for it, but that he'd be there. This is, this worries me a lot if I'm a Colorado Avalanche fan. I don't, I don't really have a nice spin to put on this. I'm sure the Minnesota Wilde too are really psyched that they did Vegas of a solid here by potentially knocking out, them, we're either knocking them out or knocking them down to something way, way less than 100%. Like, this is the fruits of Minnesota's labor paying off for the Vegas Golden Knights.

I'm sure that makes them very, very happy. Absolutely. They get to decide the Western Conference winner. It's just not them. Congrats to Dylan Cogman, by the way. He's now got more playoff goals than Brady Kachuk. Hey! Just like a good idea.

I got to say, Brady Kachuk is the captain. of my all-playoff bus team and the amount of celebration and football spiking in the comment section for Brady. He's loved here in Ottawa. Outside of that, I don't know if there's if there's all that much. But that is the playoffs, right? Who's going to be the guy that you don't expect to chip in who suddenly does and gets the key goal, the winning goal, whatever it is? That's the beauty of the playoffs. And on a good team, it can be somebody different every night. And good start to Vegas because they look very good last night. The important guys did enough. I don't think anybody on the Vegas side had a dominant game, though. So it's, if you're a Vegas fan, you're looking

at that going, we maybe have a little bit of room to improve. We still got a win over the team that is supposed to be unbeatable. You're feeling really good about it. I mean, the best playoff player on Earth, Mitch Marner, he was good, he was good, but didn't, you know, didn't score one of the best goals anybody's ever seen in this game. So there's always, there's always a new level to hit. He let somebody else do it.

I mean, that's Mitch. He's unselfish. He's, he spreads it around. And, you know, that's why he's going to win the cons might, not just this year, but retroactively for recent years as well. Because I think that, I think the balloting has been done. I think Pierre has already finished it up. He pre-wrote it.

He's got the little slips of paper that he's going to ask. It's all done by telegram. You've got to get it in a month early. It's a whole process. Sending a carrier pigeon up to Pierre's throne in the press box wherever it is. Do you got to pick for Carolina, Montreal tonight? Because that game is this evening. Yeah.

I'm going to pick Montreal tonight. I picked Carolina for the series, but I'm going to pick Montreal for two reasons. Number one, most importantly, I'm a coward, and this way I'm covering my bases with both fan bases. And by the way, I'm picking them also because, I mean, a tough podcast for them. I mean, we did 32 minutes about Montreal winning everything in hockey and then three minutes talking about some other teams. So now we're back to back to how great everything is in Montreal. all. No, I think the rest versus rust thing, and I know you and Julian have a piece up on the site today about that, I think the rust is going to be a factor tonight. And I don't think

I think that's a reasonable supposition. Yeah, I think this is going to be, it's just going to be tough, especially, you know, on yesterday's show when Frankie was describing, you know, what it's like to be in that situation. I think it's going to be a tough, a tough ask for Carolina tonight. I still think they win the series, but I think Montreal gets a jump on them tonight. I completely forgot that Kay Andre Miller became a father during the Flyers, during the Flyers series. Yeah. His partner had a kid and had a game one. So I was like, basically yesterday, I was like, what was a break?

Like, are you bored? He was like, I was changing a lot of diapers, actually. So I wasn't very bored. He had a kindergarten graduation to go to, I think, is how long that layoff was. Yeah, his kid turned, they're Cations five now. He was born on Game 1 of the Flyers, the Flyers series. All right, buddy. We'll touch base soon.

I'm sure we'll talk next week. Thanks for doing this. Thank you to Haley. Thank you to Arpin. Thanks to you, fine folks for listening. Again, we got Game one of the Eastern Conference, game one of the Eastern Conference final tonight between Montreal and Carolina. Prospect Series is back tomorrow, so look forward to that.

And again, have a wonderful day.