The Athletic Hockey Show - Penguins own goal humiliation, Tom Fitzgerald extended in New Jersey, Jacob Markstrom leads goalie availability ahead of trade deadline

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Ian and Julian discuss Tom Fitzgerald's extension and promotion with the Devils and what the future holds for head coach Lindy Ruff. They break down the Penguins scoring on their own net in a humiliating loss in Arizona on Monday night. The guys ask Down Goes Brown if the Pens can recover from what was one of the worst losses in franchise history. They discuss if a streaming deal is on horizon for the NHL, and DGB presents his five storylines he wants to see play out in the second half.Jesse Granger joins to talk about the evolution of the goaltending position, Bruce Cassidy's harsh but fair criticism of the Vegas Golden Knights and possible landing spots for on the block goalies including Jacob Markstrom, Jusse Saros, Marc-Andre Fleury and Jake Allen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. Welcome to it, everybody, your Tuesday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. And we're doing this bright and early on a Tuesday. You might even notice, well, it's 10 o'clock Eastern time for me, but I think my guy, Julian McKenzie, you're going to have that really deep, rich morning voice to start the broadcast. Because it's 8 a.m. where you are. How do I sound? Mr. Ian Mendez.

Oh, my gosh. Look at this. It's the sultry, sultry tones of Julian McKenzie. I've gotten adjusted to having to do this since moving out west to Alberta, waking up and the sun's still not out, even though, yes, it says 8 o'clock where I am at. But hey, man, it's another addition to do the,

there's another opportunity for me to do the athletic hockey show. So I'll wake up at. I almost go. No, no, say it. Yes, because we're going to do, we're going to do the Wednesday show. I wake up at any hour to do it. Okay, 4 a.m. Mountain time, 6 a.m. Eastern will be the Wednesday show. You said you wake up at any time.

I'll set my alarm from now. It's something I do myself into saying, but I love you too much. So we got a lot to get to. We did the Monday show, obviously, less than 24 hours ago. But a bunch of things happened on Monday night. I want to start with this because, boy, the Pigs, it feels like they're a little bit of a hot mess right now. And if you wanted to pick the one moment that probably personified or kind of illustrated where they're at, it's the, they've pulled the goalie because they got a delayed penalty coming up, delayed power play coming up.

And Christopher Letang drops the puck back to Evgeny Malkin in front of his own net. And Malkin is kind of surprised by it. and puck ends up in the net. I love this stat, Julian, that the Arizona Coyotes became the first team in the history of the NHL to score a power play goal in a game in which they did not record a single shot on goal on the power play. So that's where it's at.

Where do you put the, as you look at that play, Latang and he's got the puck, he throws it back. Now, Malkin, it kind of, he redirects it in the net. If I was to ask you, you got to lay a percentage blank. And maybe you just say it's 50-50, Malcolm 50, Latang 50. Where do you come down? Is it like 80-20 on somebody, 50-50?

Who gets the blame there? Who gets a little bit more of the blame? Like, I want to say La-Tang because the way he's skating around the defense event, I get it. Like he's trying to find an opportunity where he can make the play-up ice. But just the fact that he turns around and he's still holding the puck, he thinks whoever, he thinks Malkins ready for that pass. I would say him as my initial instinct,

but I mean, if you're Afghani Malc and you see that puck coming in, like you could, I can understand why you put some blame on him too to stop the puck from going in, but the whole time I'm watching that play, such a weird thing to happen to two future Hall of Fame players. This is something where if you had told me that Pittsburgh Penguins did this,

and some fourth liner or an H.L. call up did this, you'd be like, okay, this is embarrassing, but I completely understand. Like, they just made some rookie dumb mistake. Chris LaTang and Hennie Malkin combining to make one of the biggest blunders of the NHL season. Like if you broke that in mad lips, people would look at you funny. It just doesn't make sense. Yeah, it's, I'm with you.

I'd probably go 70% Latang, you know, Gordon writes in of the show, says, how is that stat even possible because Lawson Krause was credited with the goal? How was he not the guy credited with a shot, which would have been on the power play? So it's a great question, Gordon. And I think the way that they look at it is, it's just like, it's like when a goalie, and we've seen this highly, Billy Smith got credited with a goal, if a goalie makes a save and then somehow the other team puts it in the net, it's a goal to the last person who touched it, but they don't get credit for a shot on goal. I think that's the easiest way to explain it.

But man, that might be the biggest mishap involving multiple Hall of Famers in a single play, right? Like, I can't think of any other one that comes close and I'm not being facetious. No, I can't. But it's just like a weird, such a weird play, such a weird thing to happen. And again, not talking about random minor league is doing this. future hall of favors, experience people,

it just goes to show. Even the best of us sometimes end up on one of these bloopers. Like someone needs to put together like a list of bloopers from the best to ever do it because look, they're not immune to this sort of stuff.

They're not immune to be thrown on a low light reel for scoring in their own ned, making a bad play. There's got to be a list of of the best players in their worst moments. Like I think of like Wayne Gretzky failing to miss hand. I mean, that's a little bit more.

That's a little bit more. It's a dental. But Wayne Gretzky failing to handle a pass in the neutral zone. He gets the Red Wings when he was with the St. Louis Blues. Kind of comes to mind. Like, I'm trying to think of other ones that would come close. I mean, to what we saw with Latang and Malcon yesterday.

Because that was just weird. Yeah. It's hard to think of like Steve Smith. was one of the great defensemen of his time, but he wasn't like Hall of Fame when he accidentally kind of put the puck in his own net. You know, the one I always think about, although he's not in the Football Hall of Fame,

he's one of the best defensive linemen ever was Minnesota's Jim Marshall, who way back in the day accidentally picked up a fumble and ran it like 65 yards in the wrong direction into his own team's ends. It was a safety. He didn't realize, you know, it was just a lack of awareness,

but he was an all-time great. great player. He was a superstar who had that happen. But man, I don't know. Maybe maybe the listeners can help us out here with in terms of Hall of Fame kind of, oh, actually, okay, I got one for you. I got one. And he was in the news cycle this week. That's Patrick Waugh. If you go back to remember, I think it's 2002, it's the abs and the Red Wings. And it's, what are we called the hot dog play where Waugh makes a save? And then he like tries to be super demonstrative and he's like, ah, look at this.

And then the puck is there, that was an all-time gaffe. And that's Patrick Gaw. Marty Brodur had one in the Stanley Cup final where in Anaheim in 2003, where he just completely just whiffed on a 100 foot player, remember? That puck, like, like, it was sliding on, it was sliding. And I think he went out to get it and it just goes off his stick and in.

It was like, that was one of the weirdest Stanley Cup final goals because he was, like, it just, it was just a weird pinball play, a bit of a freak play, and you didn't expect the goaltender of his caliber to allow something like that. It was just super weird, but who scored that goal? You know, I, again, I'm super old and I covered that game. I was in that Stanley Cup final.

And I remember watching that final. Who, who scored that goal? You get you, but you know what, though? Like, I, the only thing I remember was Marty Bordure, excuse me, Julian, after the game, like he came out and he spoke to the media and he was actually almost not laughing about it but he like he kind of shook it off and I remember thinking like

what a what a way to handle it like a lot of goalies would have given up an embarrassing goal in the Stanley Cup final they would either a not come out to speak to the media or B would have been terse and short and Broder was kind of like laughing about it and I just had a ton of respect for him to to meet the media who do you know who got the goal there

Steve Thomas? No, that's another game later in the series. Sandus Ozilich. Remember Sandus Ozilich? Yeah, he was a he was a guy traded for Mike Ritchie straight up back in the day.

Sharks and Avs, I think they did a one-for-one swap. And Ozilinch went to Colorado from San Jose. I think that was the trade. Jeez. Sandus Ozellin. He's the one who made that shot

that goes off the stick and in past Marty Breder in the 03 Stanley Cup finals. That's one of the more like when I look back at my childhood, that's like among the first Stanley Cup finals I remember watching I think of all the iconic moments from that

series. I mean that goal Steve Thomas Well think of Korea and Stevens and then Paul Korea the biggest one of all. That hit It's kind of wild like that couldn't happen today.

No. His eyes were like, like fluttering and it was, it was really scary. And they allowed the guy to come back at his visor. They allowed him to come back in the game and he comes down the wing and he has that slaper that it's not right, right? Like I mean,

and then do you remember who the game seven hero was for the devils? That's what, yeah, Mike Robb. I remember. But it was like a weird goal too. That was another weird goal. Yeah, too. I think he had two in game seven.

Oh, my God. Yeah, that was just such a weird. It was a weird series, but, I mean, I'm sure. Home team won every game. We've made producer Danielle Cross at the mention of the O3 finals, mind you. But, no, that was one of the wilder, more fun, entertaining NHL Stanley Cup finals that I remember watching growing up. And that had a handful of weird moments, probably on par with what we saw yesterday with Chris. Let's take.

Yeah. And of Gany Malcolm. Yeah. It was a weird one there. You know, every, every few weeks, Julian, it feels like there's a belt or a crown that gets passed on to different teams in the NHL where like right now you are the team with the most eyeballs on you, the most scrutiny, the most heat. And, you know, for a while it was Ottawa and we've seen it be Columbus and we've seen it be

Edmonton and we've seen it be Minnesota. All these places have been hot. Do you not feel like Pittsburgh is now that place? Like, like, read Josh. You always call him today. It sounds like it was an absolutely atrocious performance in Arizona on Monday, save for Sid, who was doing what Sid always does.

But don't you feel like if you had to pick where's the hottest spot where like the most, is it not Pittsburgh right now? That's interesting. You say that because there are people who are looking at the, Because here's the thing. Pittsburgh had a ton of expectations going in. They made that big trade. But I think a lot of people looked at that roster and thought,

okay, well, it was still going to be a little, like they weren't going to be like the world beaters, as we know in the top echelon of teams. But I don't think anyone would expect it to be, for them to be this low. But that being said,

like no one's really looking at the roster and saying, okay, well, let's say it's time to offload everybody. Or Mike Sullivan, remember we talked about a couple weeks, ago, like, what's, what's going to be the temperature like for Mike Sullivan? It's definitely

hot, but I don't know if we are looking at it the same way as some people are starting, and I don't know if you're feeling this too, but I wonder if, but I don't think people are looking at Pittsburgh the same way that people are looking at the Los Angeles Kings. And I know it's a bit of

a weird jump to do here, but that's a team that's like, one, only two of their last 10, and they were a team that started off really well, and they've fallen into a wildcar chase and people are wondering if Tom McClellan can keep his job. I don't hear the same things coming up in Pittsburgh. So while I think that the situation is hot over there and definitely they're coming

off an embarrassing moment and it does not look good for them to make the playoffs, it's still like a very different energy, at least for maybe it's a Western Conference thing. it's a bit of a different energy compared to at least how people are trying to turn the heat up on a team like LA that's falling out of the playoffs. And that's not to say that they're going to do anything, but it feels as if because Pittsburgh was already for their chances to make the playoffs to begin with. It looked a little up in the air.

I think the fact that they've been kind of slow all year, the power play has been really bad and it just hasn't worked. Maybe we're looking at it differently. I'm not sure, but I'm a bit surprised, but also, I mean, come on. Like, this is a team that was already at the end of its rope and maybe we shouldn't be too surprised. man it it they have such a conundrum with jake gensel such a conundrum with gensel because what do you do what do you do if you're if you're Pittsburgh six seven weeks out from the trade deadline right so well we'll we'll see well we'll ask down there's no shortage of people who would want him man

uh teams like edmonton if they're able to to add they'll find a way to do it if it makes sense for vancouver they'll find a way to do it winnipeg i think if you're the pittsburgh penguin I think we kind of touched off on it a couple days ago, and you know you don't have much of a chance to make of the playoffs. Look at them in the standings right now. They're second last in the Metro. And I get it. There are teams above them that are pretty close, pretty jam.

They're only eight points behind Philadelphia in that division. But, and actually, funny enough, the Penguins, amidst all those teams that are also just a little ahead of them, they have a plus differential. Washington and the islanders are like minus 20 minus 24, but the penguins are plus 12 and goal differential, which normally you see teams with that goal differential make the playoffs that are positive.

But if they find themselves way further back and they don't write the ship, I still don't think it's the end of the world for them to ship off Jake Gensel, even though they're supposed to be trying to learn. Let's bring in our pal down goes brown, Sean McIndoo, as we do here in the Athletic Hockey show. Sean, we're talking about Latang and Mel

Malkin and the sort of miscommunication there. And then we were trying to figure out gaffs in NHL history involving superstars. Like we're saying, La Tang and Malkin is certainly a surefire Hall of Famer. Le Tang's going to have an awfully good case. We brought up, you know,

Patrick Gaw on the Hot Dog goal in Oshu. We brought up Marty Brodour in the Cup final in 03. Is there any other like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that's a, that's a, Hall of Famer, legendary guy, and it's like a boneheaded play where I can't believe he just...

You know, here's, let me throw one out at you guys. I don't know that he's a Hall of Favor, but he's a pretty darn good player. What about Brad Marchand just missing the Pac-a-Mat shoot-out attempt? Yeah. Right? That was, yeah.

That was fantastic, man. That one was... Yeah. brought so much joy to so many of us. That was up there. You know what? I'll give you a little. one and this is maybe this is how weird my my brain works this is one that popped in my mind had

no impact on on anything as far as um you know it didn't cost his team a goal like uh like some of the ones you're talking about but you mentioned patrick waugh patrick waugh memorably 1997 has the fight with mike vernon 1998 has the fight with chris osgood yeah and then the Detroit Red Wings go and sign Dominic Hasek. And you're sitting there going, are we going to get the trilogy? And there was a game where Detroit's playing Colorado and somebody went into the crease, Patrick was crease, he starts shoving them, you know, some punches are throwing, and down comes Dominic Hasek from the other end.

And you're watching this going, oh my goodness, this is actually going to happen. We're going to get Waa versus Hasek, and Hasek got all the way down and then wiped out and just like bowling balled out. It just took them all out. Like, you know, Curtis Joseph on Mick Magoo would be another one, but this was, this was like even higher stakes because you're just, it never as a fan have I gone from pure excitement

to misery like that. And then like he popped up and Waugh, of course, was ready to fight, but by that point, the referee was like, dudes, I can't, I can't let you go now. I did this is, you've embarrassed yourself too badly. And, uh, yeah, that one was, that was a rough one. That one might, on a pure embarrassment scale, that might be even worse than giving up an own goal against the Arizona coyotes in January. What a weird play though, right?

Like, what did you make of how that all went down? Yeah, I mean, we've, we've seen it before as far as, you know, you got to be careful when you, anytime there's a backwards pass and you got the goalie out, things can happen. But it was just weird the way it worked with the past going back. and Malcolm being right there and kind of tipping the puck into his own net. And then, you know, it kind of looked from one angle like could he have still swung it out. And then, you know, clearly, clearly not. But it's entertaining. It's fun when it happens.

But, you know, unless it's your team that it happens to and then you got to, you got to watch the replay for the next decade. Yeah. Listen, I actually want to get your take on this because, you know, you're a big wrestling guy. and a lot of people know that you're a big wrestling guy. You know that I'm not a wrestling guy. You know that I'm not a wrestling guy. But I think this is fascinating because there is a bit of a hockey tie-in. There's a broadcasting tie-in.

And that is on Tuesday morning, Netflix announcing a mega deal to stream WWE. And I guess I got two questions for you, Sean. First of all, would be as a fan of wrestling, them moving to a streaming site. I'm curious what you think. But secondly, is this open the door? Like, if you're in the NHL now and you're thinking, about the next big broadcasting rights deal in Canada in a couple of years. How critical is there, whether it's Amazon, Netflix, maybe it's Crave in Canada, whatever it is, that there's a streaming

component to the broadcasting deal. I think if you're the NHL, you're thrilled at this news because you at the very least want to have the streaming services as competitors for whoever it is that you end up with. You know, the Netflix deal is with the WWU is interesting. But I think, you know, at this point, certainly everyone who, not everyone has Netflix, but it's a very popular service. And, you know, I don't know that they necessarily need the extra publicity or anything, as opposed to some of the newer services.

And, you know, you're not a wrestling guy, but you're a football guy. And we just saw Peacock having a playoff game streaming, which was a very big news and had a lot of people going, okay, how do I get this thing? I got to watch the game tonight. And that's the business plan, right? I mean, you get people in there. There probably are people out there who will pay their $10 a month just to watch their Monday night wrestling. The thing that is really interesting from a hockey perspective and just from a sports business perspective with the pro wrestling world is, you know, Ian, you and I are old. enough. We remember 25 years ago probably at this point. We're going back a long ways,

but there was a time where wrestling was everywhere. Everybody had the Austin 316 shirt. Everybody had the NWO shirts. Like, you know, you didn't have to be a wrestling fan, but if you went somewhere, you went to a movie, somebody in that theater was going to be wearing wrestling gear. And it was super mainstream. And, you know, you saw, obviously, the rock goes on to become a big superstar and you know even even Steve Austin was like a cultural touchstone and the ratings for for pro wrestling back then were huge and you might look around today and go boy you know I don't really see it anymore I mean when's the last time you saw somebody you know wearing you know a pro wrestler t-shirt you don't see it and the ratings I can tell you for pro wrestling now

are are way down they're way down it's it's you know they're getting a third of the audience So you sit there and you go, oh, okay, well, tough times for the wrestling industry, right? No. What the WWE has figured out over the last 20 years is how to take the core audience and squeeze dollars out of them in ways that they never could before. And as a result of that, the big audience, you know, the audience overall for wrestling is much, much smaller than it's, not that it's ever been, but certainly than it was a couple of decades ago. but they're a billion dollar company now much more than that they're they're i mean they make enormous profits financially it's a far better world than it than it was back then so how this ties back to hockey is you could sit there and say well you know you know if the nchel went

to netflix or went to some streaming service hey you're going to lose audience you're not going to have as many viewers and the question for me is always going to be at what point if and when the The NHL sits there and goes, you know what? Maybe it's not about getting a bigger audience. Maybe it's about having our core audience and just figuring out how do we monetize that in the best way possible. And, you know, as hockey fans, typically, you know, even especially up here in Canada, we tend to think of it the old school way, right?

We're always looking at what are the ratings. Oh, boy, the ratings are down in the U.S. This is terrible. They're not growing the game. Okay, here's another chart that shows how the NFL and NBA and MLB are just are shooting past the hockey world, this is bad. Maybe at some point hockey decides, you know, we can be like pro wrestling. We can be niche, maybe even very niche, but make a lot of money being niche.

And it's not about trying to convert all these new fans and trying to catch the NBA or whatever else we're never going to do in the first place. We just got to figure out a way to make a lot of money off whoever the fans are that we still have. Man, that's, this, there's so much to impact from, from that. I see that from a U.S. standpoint. I've always just been curious about streaming the NHL in Canada, where we've been so accustomed growing up to have it available either through a TSN.

This new deal with sports that it feels as if it's supposed to be everywhere, even though there are times where you can't watch a random Oilers Leafs game on a Tuesday because it's blacked out. But the point of it is that the game would be so much more accessible. and available for everyone through that deal. But I've just for whatever reason, because of old school values and how people have been accustomed to watching games

and how accessible the game can be on cable or over the top platforms, like the idea of Amazon or Apple TV or Google coming in and saying, nope, we're taking these rights for ours. Or it's one thing if those people take it because those are much more known brands and much more known entities that, you know, maybe people have signed up for streaming platforms.

Could you imagine, I'm not sure how much you guys follow the Premier League, but the last few years in Canada has been such a nightmare trying to watch games. You went from waking up every Saturday and watching games on Sportsnet or even TSN to having to go to Zill, go to the zone for a bit, and now it's on Fubo TV. Like if you want to watch Premier League games, you have to go to a streaming service like Fubo TV, which I've tried to watch it on certic. case, and it's not necessarily as great. Could you imagine if a platform like a DeZone or a Fubo stepped up in Canada and said,

we're going to take these rights and everyone has to sign up? You mentioned the smaller streaming platforms, like, that would be a big win for them. But for everyone else in this country, like, how would they feel about that? Dude, I have DeZone just because for a while they were the only place you could get Red zone. And so I went in, I signed up. They have my credit card number now. And now I'm, you know, theoretically one of their customers.

and you could see that for the NHL, right? I mean, I don't know what the streaming equivalent of the Outdoor Life Network is, but you can see Gary Betman going and taking that. And it's a fascinating debate because, look, if you go on a streaming service, especially down in the States, and it's not one of the big ones, maybe they offer the most money. You know, maybe somebody steps, you know, maybe it's a beacock or, you know, somebody steps up and they put the most money down.

But as soon as you do that, like, where are you going to grow the game? Where are you going to get the new fans? And we always say grow the game. We're always talking about growing the game. But at some point, maybe the NHL says, we don't need to grow the game. We need to grow the revenue off of the audience that we have. And it's a totally different strategy.

And again, it's just, you know, pro wrestling, it's not sports, but as a business, it kind of is sports. Because it's live, you know, it gets the TV rights for the same reason. It's live. It's, you know, people don't, don't record it and watch it three days later and skip all the ads. They watch it live. It's been fascinating to watch, you know, something that by every number, every metric you could look at has plunged in popularity over the last 20 years.

And he's making far more money and is a far better, more profitable business than it's ever been before. And I'm sure there's some people in the NHL looking at that going, man, why are we banging our heads against the wall trying to get people in Alabama to watch hockey like we have for the last 40 years when we can just get this guy in Boston who's a diehard fan and squeeze more dollars out of him and make more in the end. Before we let you go, Sean, I want to just touch on your Monday column,

which does the top five, bottom five team in between, you had the storylines that you want to monitor for the back half of the season. And I'm going to give you the five that you listed. And I want to go from you, what's the one that you're genuinely like, wow, I'm actually legitimately curious how this plays out. So the five that you mentioned,

San Jose, are they going to be historically bad in the cap era? The other side of the standings, which is the race for the president's trophy, we saw Boston and Winnipeg playing Monday night. And so there's a great race for the president's trophy. Alex Ovechkin, what's going on? He's got single digits, eight goals, the halfway point.

The Vancouver Canucks, are they real? And then something where I'm sure we're going to talk about with Jesse Granger here in a moment, go tenting and the kerosol and who needs it and where goalies might go. If you had to pick the one that you're like, oh, man, I'm actually legit, want to know how this plays out. What is it for you? It's the goaltending one.

That's number one on my list because, I mean, this time of year, we're always into the deadline. And, you know, I heard you guys talking about Jake Gunzel and, you know, there's other guys that are out there. But I can't remember a year where there were as many teams, as much potential, I guess, for goaltender movement and potentially even some big names. Because normally this time of year, there's one or two teams that are in the play. playoff mix and they need goaltending. But you say, look, man, I mean, here's the problem. Midway through the season, the teams that have good goaltenders are in the playoffs. And the teams that have bad goaltending aren't in the playoffs, but you're not going

to them. They're looking to sell their guys, but you don't want those guys. They're not improvements. Who are you going to get that's better than what you have right now is always the question that we ask, but you look at this year. And suddenly, you know, you're hearing names like maybe Jacob Markstrom's out there. Pierre had a piece on UCSero. is still, you know, in play, Mark Andre Fleury.

Like, there's some bigger names and, you know, not even to get into like the Jake Allen's and guys like that that maybe aren't superstars, but are guys that could be an upgrade for a lot of these teams, Toronto, Carolina, New Jersey, going down the list, maybe even L.A. Edmonton certainly is a team we would still look at as hot as they are right now. Goaltending is a weakness there. Is somebody going to make the move? And if somebody does make the move. What does that do to the market? Does everyone else back off or does somebody say, okay, boy, you know, we're the Maple Leafs. New Jersey just did something. Carolina's about to do something. We got it. We got to keep up. And suddenly there's this,

this flurry of activity, no pun intended. It may not happen. Certainly there had been years where we've gotten ourselves psyched up for some big deadline story and then it doesn't, doesn't really end up taking place. But I can't remember a year where the goaltending felt like such a focus because there are so many teams that feel like they could win a Stanley Cup, but goaltending is the weakness, and also so many teams that have some pretty big name guys who maybe they're willing to make available when other in most years, you wouldn't see that. But I wonder how much like it feels like the salary gap at the end of the day, whether we get psyched up.

Every time we get psyched up for a market to develop, it's because the salary cap is limited teams from putting themselves the position to make that deal. I'm basically preparing myself for some version of that ahead of March 8th. Am I wrong to think that? No, and look, one thing that we do know with absolute certainty is we're going to hear a lot over the next five or six weeks about how hard it's going to be to make a trade and how hard. The cap makes their job so hard. And look, some of it's true, obviously.

But man, like you watch this. And then you look over in the NBA and it's just like, oh, yeah, 14 deal went down today. Three superstars all got traded. They all got shuffled around. And, you know, the GMs were like, yeah, you know, we woke up this morning, decided to do something. We worked it out. And meanwhile, in the NHL, these guys, these GMs, like, oh, man, I had three months to get a third line winger. And I just couldn't pull it together because it's so complicated to add a $2 million

guy when I only have a million dollar cap room. And you're just sitting there going like, guys, come on. It's, I'm sure you can figure it out. It's not that complicated. The NHL, I mean, certainly if you guys are, you know, NFL and NBA fans, those salary caps are much more complicated than the NHL is baby's first salary cap. And it's pretty straightforward. So I don't know what these other sports.

I guess the GMs are just smarter in other sports than they're in the NHL because, boy, NHL GMs love to tell us how difficult their jobs are and how it's just, it's just too hard for me to do it. And I've said before, an NHL GM is. the only guy in the NHL who's allowed to tell us his job is too hard. Like, can you imagine, we talked about those teams with struggling goalies? Can you imagine if some goalie just came out and was like,

guys, man, these guys who shoot the puck are really good. What do you want me to do? Stop them? I can't stop them. It's too hard in today's NHL. Can you imagine a goal score going through a slump and being like, the goalies are just good, man. It's too hard to score.

Sorry, I don't know what to tell you. Sheldon Keith going, hey, it's too hard to match lines. That's why I get out coached in every playoff series. My job's just really hard, guys. Anyone who said that in the NHL would be gone the next day, except the GM. The GM's allowed to come out and go, my job's really difficult. We all go, oh, that's okay. That's all right then.

We all feel bad for you. Yeah. You know what? I could think of is hearing Jacob Bartstrom after allowing a really weird goal against the Canadians last year, just straight up tell us that he sucks at hockey. I just couldn't believe that moment. And now, not only has this game changed, we're talking about it. as a trade candidate.

It's funny how life works in a matter of a year. There's your turning point right there. A little bit of honesty turned this game right around. I love it. Hey, before we let you go, Sean, we did get a note from a viewer that's watching this live. Eddie says, wow, I get to see Down Goes Brown live for the first time. So Eddie, I want to know, like, what was this like electric for you?

Was this like, what would that be like Freddie Mercury at live age? where you're like, I can't believe I saw this guy locked. I tell you, man, it's every time I come on this show, it's, it's like that old Wayne Gretzky quote. Like, I know that somebody out there has seen me for the first time and somebody's seen me for the last time and I wouldn't want to disappoint either one of them. So that's why I, you know, I sit here. I get myself.

I don't brush my hair. I wear the same hoodie. I sit in the dark. And I just, I put on the best possible performance. and Eddie I don't think Eddie said it was good he just said it was the first time

right like that wasn't actually a compliment in it was just stating a fact he's just making the factual statement okay well I was gonna say thanks Eddie but you know what like the reveal of DGB is like the it's like in the pop world like in this like the world as we are now

like this is as close as we'll get to like seeing like the reveal of who Banksy is like that really popular like artists. This is close as we'll get. The two things I get whenever I, whenever I'm on screen somewhere is number one, I always get that you don't look like what I thought you would look like.

And there's never any explanation. There's never any. So yeah. Sketch me. What do you think I would. What did you picture? Yeah, exactly. And then the other thing I get is,

but you sound exactly the way I thought you would. So, you know, I got that guy. I tried to clean up the Canadian accent a little bit, but sometimes it, sometimes it comes out a little more, you know. Yeah. Oh, man.

All right. Well, listen. You just came out now. That's what he was doing. He was doing it on purpose. Just for Eddie. Anyway, Eddie is not even, Eddie. Eddie hasn't even come back with a follow-up clarification.

He just sits on this factual statement. I don't think I want the clarification now. I think I can put two and two together. I know what's going on here. I don't need any more details. Oh, bad. Awesome stuff. Listen, thanks as always for dropping by the pod.

Have a great week. And we'll chat with you again next week. Sounds good, yes. There goes our guy. Sean McAdoo, down goes proud. And Eddie, see, Eddie has just come back in with another factual statement saying that he's a fan of Puck Sue, which is Sean's other podcast.

So that's it. I love it, Eddie. I love it. Let's bring in Jesse Granger. We talked about how we were going to talk about goaltending. Let's bring in Jesse Granger. As always, when Jesse joins us, it is courtesy of BetMGM, exclusive betting partner with us at the athletic.

He is upright and early on this Tuesday. Thank you so much, Pacific time. Getting up at 7.30 to join us. Yeah, good morning from the West Coast, guys. Okay, well, you're waking up, you got a smile on your face. The guy that coaches the team that you predominantly cover, Bruce Cassidy, is he waking up with a smile on his face? Yeah, I think so.

Bruce is pretty much. He was sour. Man, he was sour last night. Like, he called his beer league effort, you know, just laced into them after his six, five loss in New Jersey. Were you shocked at like the comments coming out of Cassidy on Monday? No, he's the most brutally honest coach in hockey. He might be the most brutally honest coach in all of like the four professional, like major sports in North America. Like he says whatever he's thinking.

And I remember when the Golden Knights hired him from Boston, you heard a lot of things coming of the Bruins saying like, oh, the players, maybe they don't like how, how upfront he is and stuff like that. And like, you see it immediately. That's how he is. And it's, I think it's, I think we need more coaches like that. I think. And, and the thing is, any, any, any, any, any any criticism you hear coming from Bruce Cassidy in the press conference, you know, the players already heard it in the locker room. He's not putting them on blast to the media with stuff he hasn't already talked to them. So, um, I'll say that. And I think that when you look at why he was Mad. I mean, he's a defensive coach that likes to win two to one games. And the Golden Knights

had been doing that recently. If you look at, they'd won three in a row before last night in New Jersey and they were all at home. And they had allowed four total goals in those three games, I think. And then you go up to New Jersey and you give up six. And it wasn't just that they lost. It was the way they lost. It was very sloppy. They had a lot of bad turnovers in bad spots on the ice on both blue lines. They didn't get the saves when they needed them from Logan Thompson, who had been playing spectacularly. Before that, I think he was the league's third star of the week,

went three and O with, he was in net for all three of those wins. So he didn't have a great game. The defense didn't have a great game. You give up six goals. The coach is not happy. And when Bruce Cassidy's not happy, he's not afraid to tell you.

We got to get into more goalie talk with you, Jesse. We alluded to it. we were talking with DGB earlier, but there's a goalie market that seems to be forming ahead of the trade deadline in March. There have been so many, it's one thing to talk about guys like a Jake Allen or even a John Gibson, who we've known him to be better, but he's not at that level,

it seems anymore. But guys like a Jacob Markstrom have surfaced as a trade candidate viable or not. What do you make of these goaltenders being possibly available for trade? Have you seen anything like this as long as you've been covering the game? Yeah, this is one of the most exciting, like potential trade deadlines, at least for goalies as a goalie guy that I've seen in a while. I mean, you don't see big in-season trades with goalies for whatever reason, whether it's just it's hard to find one.

And if you got a good one, you don't want to give him up. And if you don't have a good one, there's no one willing to trade you one. Or whether it's mixing in a team in the middle of the season, maybe maybe teams are, afraid to bring in a big piece that's that big of a change in the middle of the season. Whatever it is, we don't see them very often. But not only Markstrom, but Pierre Lebrun wrote a piece the other day that said, the predators, they're not, they're not fielding. They're not actively trying to trade UC Soros.

But if you called them and gave them a good offer, they'd listen. And I was like, oh my gosh, the devils could be like, they should have 18 different people calling the Predators offices at all times of the day. until they just like block all their numbers. But back to Markstrom, Calgary, there are four points out, right? So it's not like the flames are totally out of this. The flames have no reason to sell him right now. But as we get closer and the Pacific Division is looking very competitive,

it would not surprise me at all if Calgary falls out of that race if they do trademark from who's got one year left on that deal. And sorry, is it too? You know, Julian. Yeah, it's a little further down. but he also is an NMC. But all that to say, like, with the flames probably looking to sell some of their pending UFAs for him to pop up, it's really surprising. But at the same time, they could do it and open up a spot for a guy like Dustin Wolf who's really good in their system.

Yeah, I love Wolf as a young prospect. But Markstrom is playing so well right now. Like, this is the best we've seen him play in a while. I think he's all the way up to sixth and goals saved above expected. And to me, I was, yesterday I was kind of trying to play matchmaker and look at maybe which of these teams, these goalies would fit best on. And I look at Carolina. And I'm not holding my breath for Carolina to make a superstar goalie trade because Yarmou Kekleinen has shown us over the last few years. He doesn't prioritize this position.

Not that he doesn't think it's important. He just thinks we can get good goaltending, good enough goaltending without investing heavily in it. And obviously trading for Markstrom would be investing heavily, not just from a cash. perspective, but you'd have to give up some good picks and prospects to get him. So I don't know how likely Yarmow is to make that trade, but man, when I look at Carolina, the way they control games, the way they force all the shots to the outside. And then I look at Markstrom, 6-6, he's just a big body who has good positioning. And that's the key to stopping those outside shots, because you're not going to see a lot of

them. There are going to be deflections that are maybe not exactly where you thought the shot was going to go if you can be big and you can be in position, you stop a lot of those. And I went back and I looked at Markstrom. Since the NHL started keeping the puck tracking technology, so the last three seasons, he's one of the best goalies in the league at long range safe percentage. It's his, his long range safe percentage is excellent. It's way better than the league average. Carolina allows the fewest high danger chances in the entire NHL per 60 minutes. So they give up shots, but they're all coming from the outside. And the crazy thing about Carolina, this stat doesn't

even seem like it could be real. They give up the fewest high danger chances in the NHL. They have the lowest team safe percentage in the NHL. So it's always in Carolina are not getting the job done. The team in front of them is making it about as easy as they can on these goalies, and they are still failing miserably. If I'm Carolina, I need a new goalie. I think you could get an upgrade for cheaper. I think Capo Caccanon in San Jose, he's got a positive goal saved above expected behind the sharks. I think you should give them the Vezina for that. That right there, they should make up an award just to give to Capo Cacadidate if he finishes

the season with positive goals saved above expected behind that team. But if they want to make a big splash, finally, for the first time, man, do I think Jacob Markstrom would be a good fit behind that team stylistically? And you take a guy that's getting up there in age, who knows how many long playoff runs he has left in him, that's a motivated Markstrom. If he accepts a trade to Carolina, he's got the no move, I know a lot of guys might not want to go to Carolina, but I think on the ice, that is a just a perfect fit for both sides.

Well, let me ask you this. We've got a bailout by a question that I'm going to actually throw at you. This one came in from Dave, Jesse. And a reminder to our listeners, you can hit us up at the athletic hockey show at gmail.com, the athletic hockey show at gmail.com. Dave writes to us and says, the L.A. King stormed out of the gate despite having to have overpaid to get Pierre-Luc Dubois, and they had some questions about mid-goldending. that it happened. Phoenix Copley goes down with a season ending injury. Cam Talbot is struggling.

The Kings are a dumpster fire. So if Mark Andre Fleury is on the move, potentially out of Minnesota, do you potentially see a reunion in the cards with Cam Talbot where Flower ends up in L.A.? That's a question for you, Jesse. What a nightmare for Cam Talbot. He got his job taken in Minnesota by Flurry after having a very good regular season. And then now it's going to happen again in L.A. I think the Kings absolutely can use a goalie. I think especially now, David Riddick has come in and Riddick's stats have been solid. Like he, I'll be honest, I haven't seen all the games that Riddick has played, but his stats have been solid. And if he can be that, I think it's, it's okay for the Kings.

I don't, I'm not all that confident that Riddick is going to be solid for the rest of the season just because that he hasn't been that recently. But to me, Cam Talbot can be good enough for this team. He just can't play 60 games. Talbot has 29 games, I think, in the first half of the season. This guy is an older goalie who hasn't been a workhorse for a very long time. He was a long time ago, seven years ago. He was a workhorse. He was playing 60 games a year.

But that I don't think it's reasonable to expect Cam Talbot to play 60 games and then be at his peak form in the playoffs. That's not realistic. So I think that if you're the Kings, if you want to make a bowl of it, big splash and upgrade over Talbot, John Gibson's out there. I think John Gibson, I think the world of John Gibson. I know there are a lot of people that think he's not what he once was.

I think it's very hard to look good behind that team. And I think it's hard to, I think some of your, your techniques and your, your good habits slip away from you when you're playing behind a team like that. And you've got to step, you've got to stand on your head every night to get a win. I think that if you put John Gibson behind a really good team, whether it's Carolina, whether it's New Jersey, whether it's the avalanche.

I think I've thrown their name out there. I would love him in Colorado if they could find a way to make that cap work. And I think in L.A., if you put Gibson behind a good team with a good defense, and now he's motivated and he hasn't played meaningful games in a very long time, I think you're going to see a different goalie. And we look at his contract and it's like $6 million and we're like, oh, that's huge contract. That's too much. I think if we see Gibson, a motivated Gibson behind a good team,

by the end of the year, we're going to be saying, wow, what a steal. They've got Gibson for only six million. So, yes, I think the Kings could upgrade. If they're not going to make the big splash for a goalie to upgrade over Talbot, I think at the very least, getting a veteran like Peter Morazick or someone like that that you can trust, you can play every three, one out of every three games to give Talbot the rest he needs to try to get him back to that level because Talbot was playing great at the beginning of season. And I think he's capable of being that goalie behind this very stingy defense when they're

playing well, but he's got to be rested. He can't play 60. So yeah, I do. I think the Kings need to add a goalie. Wow. A lot of trade talk to get into. We also have to get into some goalies playing well. Let's get into one in particular in Connor Helibuck, who looks like the front runner for the Vez and the trophy. But is it too premature to put him in the heart conversation? We've mentioned all these guys like a Quinn Hughes or Nathan McKinnon. Where does Connor Hallibuck for the Winnipeg Jets fit in that conversation? Yeah, I think it should be in the conversation. Nathan McKinnon's playing a great, having a great season.

I think Kucharov is right there. Those two are probably the favorites for me. Hughes has been great, but I think Helibuck should at least be in the conversation. I mean, you look in Winnipeg has the best record in hockey right now. And we aren't talking about it a lot. And like when you look at them, yes, they're scoring goals. The defense has been good, but not great. There's one reason that Winnipeg Jets have the best record in the NHL right now.

It's Connor Hellebuck. He's been awesome. He's always awesome. So it's not like this is coming out of nowhere. He's been one of the most consistent goalies over the last five, six years. It's a position that is very difficult to maintain top statistics, right? Like we know the top goalies every year and they're there every year. But statistically, it's very easy to have down years as a goalie when your team in front.

He doesn't play well. Not for Connor Hellebuck. The dude is consistent as can be. He is right up there. at the top of them every single year. And he's, to me, been the best player on the ice most nights for Winnipeg this year. And they're leading the Western Conference. I think they're going to be a big time problem for a lot of these contenders in the West that we've mentioned.

Colorado and L.A. and Dallas and Vegas are all going to have to go through Winnipeg. And if Connor Hellebuck's playing like he is right now in the playoffs, that is a team you do not, you want no part of playoffs. Before we let you go, Jesse, I do want to ask you about the article you wrote with Eric Do Hachic this week. about how the goal-tending position has evolved and how we went from, you know, 20, 30 years ago, you would be able to just pick out a goalie based on his style. And there's little Mike Vernon and there's the flexible Dominic Hachick and, you know,

all the goalies that had sort of unique traits. And now it's like it's a robot factory. And they're just churning them out and they all play the position in a similar way. And I'm wondering, what did you learn as you sort of put that piece together? Anything surprised you? And maybe more importantly, like the feedback you've gotten. whether it's from readers, whether it's from people in the industry, what do you think about the way that this discussion has evolved?

Yeah, I love the responses we've gotten. There have been some comments that absolutely love the story. They thought it was thought-provoking. They agreed with a lot of the premises. There have been some people that didn't like the story and disagreed with it, but I'm okay with that because while Eric and I were writing this story, and our editors, Rich Hammond and Mark Wolman helped us a lot on that. We'd been working on this story for months.

And we kind of, it developed as we wrote that story, like from, we started saying, okay, maybe we've got, it has goaltending lost its allure, has, has this position that me as a kid, I look at Patrick Juan, Dominik, and I wanted to play that position because they're the coolest guys on the ice. They look the coolest. They're doing the coolest things. Look at them flopping around. Are we losing that?

And we talked to a lot of goalie coaches. Eric talked to Ken Dryden. We got a bunch of different opinions. And as it went on, we kind of decided like, no, I don't think it has lost the floor, but it has changed a lot. And as you mentioned, the uniqueness and style has pretty much disappeared. Yes, there are small differences. Goalie coaches can tell you huge differences between goalies, but the average viewer,

when they're watching it, you don't see the drastic change in styles between goalies. And basically what happened is goalie coaching took over. I don't think a lot of people realize how late goalie. Coley coaching actually happened and became a thing. A lot of goalies that grew up that played in the 90s and earlier didn't have goalie coaches growing up. So they figured things out from themselves. They all, the goaltending is problem solving.

You're watching a play develop on the ice. You're trying to figure out the most efficient way to stop that. When they're all trying to figure that out for themselves, you're going to end up with a bunch of different ways to solve that problem. But now we've reached a point in the NHL where pretty much every goalie in the league had a goalie coach from when they were as young as they could remember. And they've all been taught these very similar techniques. Francois Allaire was the one that kind of pioneered the butterfly style and

started all of that. But now it's obviously been changed and perfected over the years. And now you've got everyone who's been trained to make the saves in the exact same way, mostly. And it's made the position better. The goalies are better. There's no doubt about it. Now you can say, oh, the save percentage is down.

Well, teams are finding different ways to score with deflections and screens and screens, but there's never been a time in NHL history where a goalie is more difficult to beat one-on-one with a shot, just you and the goalie, than it is right now. So the goalies are excellent. We're not saying the goalies have gotten worse. It's just not, maybe not as interesting as it was. And what it's really done is it's closed the gap between the elite and the rest of the goalies, because it used to be, well, you've got to have a Dominic or a Marty Brodour or a Patrick Waugh, because they're so much better than the other goalies. You're just not going to be able to beat those guys in the playoffs.

Well, the middle of the pack has caught up and teams with an Aden Hill, if the team plays well in front of him, you can win a Stanley Cup with Aiden Hill. Or Jordan Bittington is a good example. Came out of nowhere and he played elite in the playoffs and they win. So to me, you look at the salaries. The goalies are not getting the big contracts. They once were.

Connor Hella Buck. I just mentioned how consistent he is and how great he was. he only got eight and a half million. And I say only, Basilevsky and Babrovsky got 10 million. And you look around pro sports and basically the best player at whatever position who signs the next contract gets the next highest contract. It's not going that way for goalies.

And I think a big part of it is the elite goalies aren't, there isn't as big of a gap between them and the rest. And I think general managers are shying away from paying them. So the story was just kind of a, uh, uh, Let's dig into these things, see if we find anything. It's thought provoking.

It certainly accomplished that if you look at the comments. So, yeah, I was very happy with the story. It was fun. As a goalie nerd, I just like diving into those topics. And it seemed like the readers like it too. Well, listen, before, and we do encourage our listeners to check it out. Eric and Jesse putting that one together earlier this week. Before we let you go, we bring you on a little, we call it Granger Things, right?

A presentation of our friends at BetMGM, the exclusive betting partner with the I'm going to throw something at you here, Jesse. This is really interesting to me as you look at BetMGM and the Stanley Cup odds. And if you had to pick which division the Stanley Cup winner is going to come from, the odds are all pretty much about the same. They're all at about, you know, three and a half to one out of the Atlantic, the Metro, the Central, the Pacific. So if we just, you're not, you don't even have to pick the team that's going to win the

cup. I'm just asking you to pick the division in which the Stanley Cup winner is going to come from where where would you go right now if I ask you that question that's a fun question because so yeah I think I think to me I would lean towards one of the Western conference teams and the reason is because I think the the middle of the pack in the West is weaker than the middle of the pack in the East I think the the bottom of the of the playoffs basically in the East the four through eight teams are going to be more competitive than those teams in the West so I think those top, the West is a little more top heavy.

I'm going to go with the Pacific. And this could be a little homerism, I guess. I'm in Vegas. But I just think that those three top teams in the Pacific, when you look at Edmonton is absolutely on fire right now. So I get them. I get Vancouver, who's been very, very good. They've got scores all over the ice.

They've got, we talked about Hella buck, but Demko's right there with him in the Vezina race. He's been awesome. And I get the defending Stanley Cup champions who haven't been great lately, but they're also missing half their lineup. So eventually you think the Golden Knights will get a little more healthy. They're still the defending champs. I think they're very good.

If I can get all three of those teams, the team with the highest potential probably in the Oilers, right, with McDavid and Drysidal, a team that's been very, very good in the Canucks and the defending champs. I'll take Pacific. Which division you guys like? I've been, I think the Pacific might be it,

to be quite honest with you. I mean, either Pacific or the Central at this point, just with the fact that you have teams like Winnipeg and Vancouver, playing really well. Throughout this year, we've mentioned how Vegas has been good. They had that really hot start to the season. And I know Bruce Cassidy's not happy right now.

I still expect that team to go very far in the playoffs. We haven't even brought up Edmonton. They started off the year horribly. They've since picked up their game. They've won 13 in a row. They can make it 14 if they beat the Columbus Blue Jackets tonight. This is a team that looks really good offensively and defensively. it's not just a team anymore that's just led by the two superstars in front

and you hope and pray that they don't get shut down. They look like a more complete team than any other iteration of the emmitted Oilers in the Connor McDavid era. Like they look really good and they help that case for the Stanley Cup to be awarded to a Pacific division team. That would be my pick. Yeah. You know what?

I agree with you, Jesse. The east, it's a little bit of a little bit tougher to figure it out. But I'll tell you that central division, if Dallas ever gets their kind of act together to where we think they should be, then you'd have Winnipeg, Colorado, Dallas. Oh, boy, that'd be pretty good too. But I agree with you there.

I think the West might be the easier path to get into the Sionleman final. All right, well, we're going to have to leave it there. Jesse, thank you so much for getting up so early in the morning and for joining us, as you usually do, for a little greater things. Yep, thanks for having me, guys. There he goes. Jesse Granger up early, early, early in the morning.

And that's why I'm going to give him a pass on calling Yarmou Kekalainen, the general manager of Carolina. I was like, man, it's so too early in the morning. We don't need to call him out on that. We'll correct him after this segment because he's up early. And I know that I know he meant Don Waddell, but he said, Yarmokkekela. Yeah.

Who amongst us hasn't confused general managers at 7.30 in the morning? I mean, it could be a lot worse. you could be Chris LaTag and Evgeny Malcon. I think that's much worse than what Jesse Granger did. You know, as we wrap up here, and we thank Jesse Granger and we thank Sean McAdoo for joining us, a little bit of news to pass along here in that Tom Fitzgerald has signed a contract extension, multi-year extension.

And he also gets a little bit of title promotion. He's president of hockey ops in addition to the general manager. So I wonder, though, does this mean anything for the future of Lindel? Lindy Ruff, it's interesting, people wondering how that's going to go. But now the general manager has more security and I would think arguably more authority to maybe say this, that, I'm going to do this, that. What do you think this means in New Jersey? I wonder, I always wonder with the possibility of coaching changes.

I know I kind of talked about it a little earlier with how people are feeling about Todd McClellan in L.A. Who's the best guy available? who's the option out there. Do you not think it's Barube? Do you not think it's Craig Barouba? He's definitely the most talked about option. He definitely has a Stanley, and he has a Stanley Cup to his name.

I wonder if Craig Barrabe would be that fit. But also it's probably premature that we're at that point, but maybe some Devils fans would disagree and wonder, hey, maybe a coaching change could be necessary to kind of get them up. This is a team that was supposed to be taking that next step in the revolution, but they've also been dealing with injuries, notably to Jack Hughes, right? So how much does that play into it?

My initial thought is definitely more security for Tom Fitzgerald. And we get a better sense if Lindy Ruff really is his guy with how the rest of the season plays out. And as we wrap up, you mentioned Edmonton trying to run that winning streak to 14 on Tuesday. And they've got the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets visiting Edmonton. Julian, does this not feel like Columbus is going to win this game? And I'm not going to say that they're going to outplay Edmonton.

I'm just saying, boy, this feels like this feels awfully trappy. This is the trappiest of trap games that has ever trapped. That's my call. It's a, it would be really funny for the Columbus Blue Jackets, a team that has, you know, no controversies around that team at all. We don't even talk about them. I'm kidding. But that would be funny for that to happen.

But I also think this Oilers team, just the way that they've been playing, it's been good. If it gets to a point where Columbus starts peppering them with shots or trying to make it work offensively. Like I could see the Emmettian Oilers just play well defensively and commit to that. At least it seems like they've been able to make that side of the game work. So it would be funny. I don't know if it's likely that Columbus beats that tree. It's happening. It's happening.

I just. Oh, my. I'm not saying I'm cheering for it to happen. I'm just saying, boy, doesn't it feel like that's how it's going to end? The winning streak? Again, it would be very funny. I don't know if it's going to happen, but it would be very fun. Yeah, okay.

Anyway, we'll have a chance to discuss it on Wednesday. We'll be back at it with Mike Russo. You, me, Mike Russo, on the Thursday edition of the Athletic Highman. So that puts a bow on the Tuesday show. I want to thank everybody for following along and listening or watching. this Tuesday edition of The Athletic Hockey Show. Leave us a rating and review. You know we would appreciate that.

You can follow us on YouTube. At the Athletic Hockey Show. And right now you get a one-year subscription to The Athletic for $2 a month when you visit athletic.com slash hockey show.