The Athletic Hockey Show - Pittsburgh Penguins sale is official, Shawn Thornton on fighting his way to the top, the most valued US franchises in the NHL

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Craig Custance and Sean Gentille are reunited and it feels so good. The boys discuss the sale of the Pittsburgh Penguins to Fenway Sports Group and what the sale means to the franchise and the fans of the Steel city. The guys also review the top ten richest American franchises in the NHL.Shawn Thornton, a two time Stanley Cup Champion with the Anaheim Ducks and the Boston Bruins joins Craig and Sean to discuss his new book 'Fighting My Way to the Top' which profiles his long hard journey from career minor leaguer to fan favorite in Boston with the Bruins. Shawn also discusses his job on the business side with the Florida Panthers, helping grow that franchise, off the ice.With Craig back, Gentille and Custance renew their Athletic Hockey Show USA comments segment, with topics touching on which US based team will get the most points vs Canadian teams this season, the national TV deal in the United States and the pod leaving out the New Jersey Devils on teams to watch in the metro division. Plus, Craig's family gives him a new nickname over Thanksgiving, and it's awesome!! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey everybody and welcome to the reunited best friend tour, Americans Edition, Tuesday morning, afternoon, whenever it is you're listening to this episode of the athletic hockey show, Sean Gentilly. I'm Sean, I'm not Sean Gentilly. I'm Ron Burgundy, joined by Sean Gentile. Shawnee, did you miss me? Be honest.

On the scale of 1 to 10. Craig? Craig? Is that, is that you? I thought I'd never see you again, my boy. It is me. I thought I'd lost you, my boy. I can't believe I thought I was going to be replaced and was fingers crossed.

And it was like when they bring out like Jeopardy replacement hosts, although I'm not dead as far as I know. And what was that look? Max came in. everybody's big you know the villain max baltman did a great job jeremy rutherford i i did get um producer jeff did send clips of you guys making fun of behind the bench and the jeremy rutherford that was and and how uh he founded at the blues bookstore at the rink you know you said you said you're worried about being replaced i'm gonna tell you right now max had a chance he came in here was he like the erin rogers of uh i had every intention on swapping you out for him permanently

But Max, buddy, you blew it. You blew it. Oh, Maxwell. So it's great to be back. I took Thanksgiving off. I was, do some traveling for work. Oh, wait until I'm out next week, too. I haven't told Jeff yet.

I just remember I would be traveling for work again. Seriously? Oh, my God. It's been a busy time. But it's great to be back talking hockey with you. And I wanted to start specifically, because you are in Pittsburgh and this has been a long rumored sale.

So the Penguins being sold for 900 million to the Fenway Sports Group. It's officially been announced. And there's a couple interesting tidbits I want to get into with this because I'm actually, I wasn't sure we were going to talk about this, but I subscribe to a sports business email huddle up.

This is not a plug or anything. I just want to give them credit for writing about it and writing. This episode of the Athletic Hockey Show is sponsored by. And they had some interesting tidbits. And a couple of the things that stood out to me. I mean, they acknowledged the high price. They said it was a bit of a premium.

I think that Sportico had valued the Penguins at 850. They got 900. That's fine. One thing it said in there, NHL franchise values are up 200% in the last decade, which is a lot. So it seems like this is, a safe buy, right? Like, if it's 200, if you're up that much and there was a global pandemic and

revenues are tanked, then they seem like they can withstand anything. But there's a couple thoughts in here that I wanted to run by you, Sean, because you're in Pittsburgh and you know that area well. It was saying it's a good purchase, but it was predicated on a couple things. One was the ability to develop around the arena. And it's funny, I was in Atlanta for Thanksgiving visiting my brother and he was talking about the Braves new stadium and he's like hey you got to go down there because they've actually done what you hear about in terms of developing around and i don't know if people in Atlanta like it or not or whatever but he was like it's cool it's a that's a that's a touch is it they don't like it well well i mean just like just like the overall genesis it's just like any

other stadium right like they've moved out to cobb county where all the all the uh more affluent White people live and there was, and there was all sort, like, that, that deal was was fraught from the start. But yeah, it seems like, it seemed like the development around there is at least something, if that's something. Well, he was just saying there's good places to go grab lunch, essentially. Yeah, right. Exactly. You should check it out if you haven't seen it. I'm in Detroit where they built Little Scissors Arena. Again, this is all fraught with, you know, a lot of issues that we can or can't get into, but they promised the same thing. And I, you know, it has not happened. You know, they rolled out the initial, here's what's going to be around Little Caesar's arena,

and it's going to be this massive development and all these cool places to go. And it is not how they drew it up, I would say. And so let's start there. If you have to get your value out of the penguins, and this is part of the proposition, do you think that's happening? Or do you think that's even necessary? Do you just think, like, this is a skyrocket. You want a franchise.

You're going to make money. think you need to be careful with how much credit you give the NHL for valuations going up over the last bunch of years. TV deals have that effect. And that is, again, that's no, that's just the way it works. Like, if you, if you have sports to sell, you're going to make more money now than you were 10 years ago. That's just the way, it's just the way it is. Like, that's one of the only DVR proof or the only really, you know, safe sets of program. So, like, whatever. I mean, they're in the right business, but the valuation should be going up with the way that industry.

I wasn't giving anyone credit shot. I was just saying that you're going to. Well, I'm just, I'm just saying, like, as far as, like, valuations being up, like, it is a lot. But at the same time, like, it should be a lot. Right. Right. Like, you can say, yeah, the average valuation is up $200 million from 10 years ago. Like, it should be, like, because of a lot of different factors.

TV is one of them. I think. I wonder how it compares other sports. sports too. I bet you like the NFL is like six billion percent or whatever. Right. You know, the, the LA Clippers sold for two billion dollars seven years ago or whatever it was. And that and that is without getting too far off topic, I guess, that is like the Rubicon for franchise value is when Steve Ballmer came in, bought the Clippers. So it's like an insanely rich guy buying an LA based franchise in the NBA right around the time the new.

TV deal was negotiated. So all those factors combined to just create this enormous sale price for this asset. And that's like the dragon that everybody's been chasing. Yeah. You know, for years. And that, not coincidentally, sort of spurred the penguins to put, spurred penguins ownership to put that team on the market back in 2015. Like that was it. And they couldn't get the price they wanted. The way I heard it back then was that it needed to be more than the buy-in fee for Vegas. And in the expansion teams. And it didn't quite get there. So whatever, 700 million, wherever it was at that point,

there was some disagreement between the owners and the league over whether they should sell or not. One thing led to another. Then they won a Stanley Cup. And I was like, okay, teams off the market, right? And now they can get the $900 million number, which is like the magic. That's like the magic number,

especially for the penguins who were like a mid-level valued, if you go by Sporto-Co valuations, or SBJ valuations. They're middle of the table, right? They're like 14, 15, 16. So I think that's part of the reason that the price tag was so important here because you can say like, look at this. The penguins, they're a U.S.-based, like not in the biggest city,

and they got $900, $900 million. So I think that's why the number was important there. So, yeah, they talk about you better develop around the arena to make it pay off. The other thing was it kind of just was like, it acknowledged that the penguins are probably. probably going to go into a rebuild here, you know, post-Sidney Crossview, whenever that happens. Yeah, as far as the arena site's concerned, now, I realize, I realize we just, we, we meant to talk about that and I just, that's fine.

I blew right, I blew right past it. So the way that works is the penguins, as part of the new arena, as part of when they built what's now PPG paints arena, they demolished the old civic arena, and the penguins got the development rights. It's still owned by municipalities. is it's owned by the city and the county. But the Penguins got the development rights, and as long as they showed progress towards doing something with it, they were allowed to keep parking cars in that space.

And again, you can kind of connect the dots there. There's a lot of money in parking. So that's a big part of the reason that we went 10 years without seeing meaningful movement on that parcel of land being developed. And then the other thing, and this is another, this is the main reason I think,

why this whole development is so fra. is that the civic arena, its site represents the destruction of a black middle class neighborhood in Pittsburgh in the 1950s and 60s. It was a thriving, you know, it was like a little, a little mini Harlem in Pittsburgh that the Hill District was where there were jazz clubs and black-owned businesses and grocery stores and families and homes and whatever else, wiped out by a minute domain to build the arena. And then, back then, another thing that happened was there was an interstate that cut the Hill District off from downtown Pittsburgh. And Craig, like, you know this better than anybody.

It's when you're walking from the arena over towards the Marriott, where everybody always stays. You know, you go over a highway that just, the cuts that literally runs horizontally between the rank in downtown Pittsburgh. So those sort of things, along with some other factors, contribute to the absolute destruction of the Hill District in the 60s and 70s. So there's psychic wounds there with the community and with the neighborhood and just historically speaking that have led rightfully neighborhood groups and urban development authorities in the city to be like this is an important parcel of land. You need to do right. You need to kind of at least try to write what was wrong before.

And your mileage may vary on whether that's even possible. And that's like an economic development theory that we don't even need to get into. No, let's get into that. that means that means that means that means that I'm too dumb to get into it I see the dialogue around that site has just been difficult and fraud for a lot of years because you have a lot of competing interest you have the penguins who want to use it to make money but also maybe do right by the community but not too right because that's going to cut into how much money they'd make and it is not a coincidence that it's 10 years later or however

10 or 11 years later and nothing has happened on that site there's still parking cars right Nothing had happened there until September. And whether it's a coincidence or not, they broke ground on a skyscraper there in September and sold the team in November. And that is something that Fenway Sports is good at. They're developing areas, quote unquote, good at. Like, maybe that sort of development is positive or negative.

Like, again, don't have the energy to even get into that here. But whether you believe it's a good thing or not, there's stuff going up around Fenway. that's around Fenway Park that's Fenway back developments. There's major developments happening in Liverpool at Enfield and all that stuff. This is a big part of the deal. And I think the fact that they have an appetite for it and the fact that they see money there and also are capitalized enough to maybe nuke parking spaces while it's developed is a big,

big deal. Like this is, these people have a ton of money. They don't have to worry about parking cars for $18 a day to recoup loss revenue elsewhere. They can say like, this is going away. We're building this now. Five years from now or 10 years from now, this is going to make us money. But for the time being, we can eat this cost. And the penguins, the penguins didn't. That never happened. And you can, you can, you can attribute it to what you want, whether they were doing it on purpose, whether, like, there were roadblocks, whatever, like they, they were not able to get that done. And now it seems like that's going to get off and running with Fenway. The second part of the equation is if we're acknowledging the team probably won't be good for a long stretch.

If you're going to say, okay, we've got to eat costs for several years. We're in the post-Crosby era at some point. Now this email kind of contended, hey, this is a great fan base, which it is. Like the Penguins fan base has been amazing for a long stretch of time. But I don't like, so it's like, you know, they'll transition into a rebuild and still get support and still be able to draw revenue. I don't, I don't know if any team, certainly in the States can, you know, I've looked at rebuilds in the best markets. Like the Blackhawks, when they were bad before they got good, there was an empty building. And, you know, John McDonough famously saying the first time he went there, he thought he,

went at the wrong time. He thought the game started later in the afternoon. It was so empty when he got the job there. Oh, one of those classic John McDonough quotes, right? I know. I was like the second. I'm just saying, are we never allowed to reference anybody that existed in that time? Okay.

He's a non-person. He did say that. You know, the Detroit Red Wings. I'm in Detroit. It was, it's getting better, but a lot of empty nights during the rebuild. And or if they were playing Toronto or whoever, a lot of Toronto fans. A lot, you didn't know you were in,

and this is a fairly good hockey town, I would say. I don't know, is there in a city? Like, I don't think Pittsburgh's just going to draw, you can't assume they're going to draw fans during a rebuild. What is, what is this expectation for every hockey team to draw fans consistently for years to a shit product? Like, why do we believe that that's a thing?

It's not. In fact, it's just not. Like, I think we can say the other thing. Fans will wait patiently. They're not going to go watch a team that's bottoming out. But that'll, you know, that's going to have a real impact on revenues. There were MTCs at the Bell Center earlier this season, right?

I'm sure there aren't like look at, look at Ottawa. Like this isn't just, it's the nature of the thing. People don't want to spend money to go watch a terrible team. And you can be bad for some amount of time. You just need some, you also need a roadmap and you need built up cachet and you need luck. Like where I struggle with a lot of this, and this is coming as somebody who is, 17 years old in 2004 and going to these games at Mellon Arena where there were

whatever 6,000 people in the building and you could get tickets on the sidewalk like literally laying on the ground beforehand Is that true? Dude I probably went so there's 40 there's 41 games in my senior year of high school I we probably went to 25 just because tickets were just around it was like hey like such and such as neighbor doesn't as four they it doesn't feel like using you guys want to go and we never paid for anything right so i look back on that and i wonder what it's going to look like here in year three of a rebuild after all the stars are gone but because that's just how i came up but i think that kind of ignores a couple

a couple important things it's like the cred that's been built up with this fan base over the last 18 years. It's a different, there's people who it's, it's just more baked in now than it was in 2003 after this run of success and all that. In the arena that they're in right now is an actual, it's capitalized. Like, you can make, you can, there's so many, there's plenty more revenue streams in that arena versus melon arena, which was just tapped out. It was an old dump where you couldn't sell, all you could do is raise ticket prices. There was, there was no premium seating, like all this all this other stuff that just made making money in melon arena impossible and why they needed a new arena to stick around in the first place so it's not the same situation as it was

as it wasn't in 2003 that being said i still think it's going to be really interesting to see what happens you know if if in when sydney crosbie retires and if and when they don't transition into another generational talent. And if there's three or four lean years, I am interested to see what attendance looks like. And that's no knock on the people here. No, because it happens every. Why would they go to see a terrible team?

It just happens everywhere. Like, who wants to go see, who wants to go see a horrendous team with no hope in year three of a tear down? Like, nobody should. We've got, and this is such great hosting by me, we've got Sean Thornton coming up in the next segment, and he was amazing. and I'm glad I'm teasing that 15 minutes into the podcast.

But before we get to Sean, let's end in this segment like this, Sean. We're going to play a little bit of a game show with you. I'm looking now in this email, again, this episode, what is this email called? The Huddle. Huddled up. They have the top 10. Again, again. Thank you to our friends at the Huddle.

Hey, subscribe to it. It's really good. If you like sports business, which I do. Um, top 10 most valuable NHL franchises. I'm looking at it right now. Did they have a Black Friday? So? I don't.

I think it's free. It may or may not be. Um, I'm looking at the most valuable NHL franchises. We're going to remove the Canadian ones. Can you name Sean in one foul swoop the top five most valuable. This is according to Sportico, top five most valuable American franchises. In order? Sure.

Yes. It has to be in order. The range is in. are won at 1.87 billion. That's less than the clippers seven years ago or whatever you used it. Just FYI. Yeah, absolutely. Of course.

It's hockey. Oh, yeah. The Bruins have to be on there. They're number three, so I'll give you credit. 1.3 billion amongst American teams. I think the kings were on there just by virtue of being in LA. Yeah, so that's the one. They are.

So they're four amongst American. I was surprised to see that. Like, to be honest. I know they're in L.A. I get all that. And it's a good setup down, you know, Staples Center or whatever it's called now. But I wouldn't have pegged them as a top five.

But good for that. I think that's just like the L.A. Just like the L.A. inflation. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what their deal is like on the. And excuse you, yes, you alluded to this,

the crypto.com arena. Why are we mad about that? Did you see that? It's not like it was. you know, Wayne Gretzky Arena, it was Staples. Like,

it's an office supply company, isn't it? I think people, it's, why are you mad about that? It was so long ago that I think people just divorced the, it was just the Staples Center. Yeah. It lost,

the connection with, like the office max center. With the office supply thing. No, it's because crypto.com is a mouthful and sounds stupid. It's replacing a legendary name. Legendary. It's an office supply company.

People don't think of, they think that's, that Kobe Bryant played at the Staples Center. I mean, I get that. Not that Staples, you know, that's where I bought my desk chair a few years ago. I just was really surprised about the amount of, like, heartache that was, that came out of that. Oh, man. Lakers fans are intense, man. I think, I think that handering would have been a lot, there had been a lot, there had been a lot, less of it if Kobe Bryant was still alive. That's my

big theory. Well, wait until the Kings Win a Cup at Crypto.com and we're like, we are attached to Crypto.com and we forget what crypto even is one day. Yeah, and also people hate crypto. I like crypto. Rightfully. Not me. You got two more slots to fill here.

You're missing the number of two team. Is it still Chicago, I guess? Still Chicago. I don't know if they'd get 1.36 billion right now. That's what it's going to score to cut. Why? Why? What happened? Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't know how that would work in the open market or if you just say,

um, probably, boy, is that a damaged brand? Holy cow. It wouldn't, it's not going to inherently matter, but if there's sustained backlash and people actually, you know, whatever, if, if, if that team sucks and people stay away for a, for a variety of reasons, there will be repercussions. You know how sometimes you can make a business decision that's a business decision, but it's also the right thing to do? Why don't they change their name to turn the pay? Like you could say, I would do it from a business perspective and just say,

hey, look, you know, now we can all get excited about this team. But, and it's also the right thing to do. Or just change the logo. Or the logo. I mean, yeah, maybe that's better. I don't, I don't care what they call that team. Okay. like but like well no I I do I like whatever wow I'm surprised to hear that the logos the logo the logo the logo is a way worse my my galaxy brain thought was that they should have just done it whenever whenever whenever everything hit last month yeah but that would have also been like operation of holy cow I know that that was just like my snap decision like oh yeah like they should just change the logo now but it would have been the operation human shield it would have been the it would have been the it would have been the it would have been it would have it would have

It would have been the equivalent of Stan Bowman trotting out every woman that worked in the organization whenever they announced their draft pick, which is that's... Remember that. That got lost in the shuffle, I feel like, when I went whenever we could be in the postman. Well, because you could be in and stay mad about it for 10 seconds. Thanks. To move on to the next. Move on the next repulsive decision. Last one. Flyers?

Yeah, the Philadelphia Flyers coming in at 1.25 billion. To round out the top 10, we got two more American teams. the capitals at 1.17 billion and number 10 your Detroit Red Wings at 1.03. I'd buy a low on the wings right now. Yeah. Oh, really? I'd take that team for a billion. I think that's a $2 billion team.

Franchise. Steve Ballmer's going to swoop in and pay $3 billion for the Red Wings. Once I get some of my athletic money, liquid, I'm going to. Yeah. So you cash out on that equity, baby. Let's make it happen. I think that's the value buy out of the top 10. All right.

I do want to ask one more question. I'm dragging this out. If you could buy it, who should buy a low franchise right now in the U.S.? If you're like, it's outside the top 10, you can buy a franchise because you think, I think the Red Wings actually are a decent buy low proposition. They should be up there with the Rangers. So you're saying, I'm saying, I'm giving you a billion or I'm giving you $900 million. Okay.

Of athletic. You just hit... And you get to go in and buy low. How about... Oh, I think I know my answer. How much you think the sabres are worth? Probably not that much because their arena is a catastrophe. I love that market.

I love... I love the fan base. I love... I think you'd come in and people would... you would be like the hero. Yeah, how well did that work out for the figula is? Everyone loved him. I feel like I'd make better decisions.

You don't have that fracking money, baby. No, I don't. Oh, yeah. This would give you a chance to be an evil owner, Sean. I know. We need to find some just disgusting, completely immoral way to make money and then get it into buying it. it could be i think we might have missed the boat on that one okay um nfts maybe we can maybe we can

grift people out of money on on nfts and use that to buy like the st louis blues or something let's make an nfti of our first podcast together and see if we can get a billion can we just get some just some like random artist to draw our caricatures and that can that can be an nfts and we can sell it. We can sell it and resell it for. You heard that. Get to work out there, random artist. You're going to commission an NFT of our face.

We'll give you half the NFT value of that to the artist. And you can. Man, would you buy the, the Sabres would be fun, but aside from the cursed aspect of things. How about the Predators? Oh, that's not bad. Good fun town.

Good fan base. Arena's fine. What about Dallas? I was just looking at them. It's just because it's Dallas. I know it's a hard mark. I mean, I know the challenges they have there. If the Cowboys sneeze, it's on the front page of the local everything for a month.

And you've got to win a Stanley Cup to get mentioned. That's a hard place to live. I always wonder how much that's like driving their decision-making process even now, where it's like we're just white knuckling it and holding on to this to two years ago, as long as we can, just in the hopes that it'll happen again and people might care. Yeah, probably. I'm buying Buffalo. You're buying Nashville?

We can both go in on Buffalo, actually. Okay, I'll split it with you. We can be heroes. I like Buffalo as a city, too. All right. I would die if I own the Nashville Predators. Well, we got Sean Thornton coming up. And Sean, who's now working with the Florida Panthers.

Actually, that would have been a Florida Panthers. Maybe we, you know, you get a better rink deal. I would like to live in Miami. That's not a bad one. Sean was fantastic. Suburban Fort Lauderdale, you mean? Well, you move the rank. Sean was awesome, as he always is.

Let's, we'll be right back. All right, we're back, and we are thrilled to be joined by, I'm going to call him friend of the podcast, even though this is his first appearance in the podcast. I don't know if that's the podcast rules allow for that. Friend of the podcast, Sean Thornton, who is out. I hate when he's promoting his new book, but we would have them anyways. He's always welcome. Book or No Book.

His new book is called Fighting My Way to the Top with Dale Arnold. And it's great. Anybody who's just checking off Christmas list, this is an awesome idea for any hockey fan in the family. Because it's a really fun read, really insightful. And I can't wait to dive into some of the things that I learned. Sean, how are you? Thanks for doing this. The only reason I wrote it was to get on this show.

I didn't think I could get on it any other way. You did it. This is accomplished. Congratulations. Oh, man. So how long a process was this? Congratulations. This is like, you know, I've always said it's basically the equivalent of giving birth, right?

It's the same, you know, writing a book is the same in my mind. My wife would argue that this was not as difficult. I mean, you know, it was to say. It was a process. I mean, I was approached probably two years ago now. and I'm on the records. I said no like three, four times. You guys know me well enough to know.

I'm not a huge fan of talking about myself or being the center of attention and being grandstand. So it took a lot of convincing. Dale convinced me that a unique story that people would want to hear about and it might inspire somebody to give back or to, you know, fight through some adversity if they were looked over a few times in their lives and any walk of life. So I was like, all right, fine, I'll do it. So the idea, though, was, you know, I go back to Toronto a lot. I go back to Boston a lot. I was going to bring Dale with me, basically, and, like, meet my friends, my family, do a bunch of hot stoving, really let the book kind of come to shape through some of the stories,

through my relationships. And then the world stopped a month and a half, two months later. And it was a big, giant phone Zoom. I won't say interview, but, like, we did it all over the phone because nobody was really traveling. So I envision it being a little bit different, but I'm happy with how it came out at the end of the day. Of course, it wouldn't be easy for me to write a book either, right? Like, it just kind of falls in line with the rest of my career. Just make it a little bit more difficult to make it power through it.

What I liked about it, I mean, you know, there's a lot of these kind of books and writer, you know, players post-career. But I love the interludes from teammates or your wife who really seems, I don't know her, but she seems really funny. Like she, it would be like, let's talk about the boat. She's like, oh, not again with the boat. Like, I don't want to. It's like these great like little breaks. I don't know who came up with that idea, but it was awesome. Me, because I couldn't talk about myself that much.

I was like, I need other voices on here. I can't have myself talking about a fight with George LaRocque. Like, I'd rather have somebody that was there that experienced what I was going through beforehand to give a little behind the scenes. And my wife, if it's funny, we were over at David Ortiz's golf tournament like a week and a half ago. And a few people had met her for the first time. that I work with here at the Panthers.

And I'm like, your wife is you. She is a carbon. She is the female version of you. She swears as much as you do. She tells me exactly how it is. Like, yeah, I married my carbon coffee. So, yeah, and that boat, I've never seen her so angry in my life as she was when she found out I bought that boat. So it wasn't the best purchase.

That's a good test of a relationship with a friend is can you share a boat? Like, that should be the litmus test. Yeah. That you and Tuka have survived the. the, you know, the boat purchase because I think that might end a few of my friendships. Yeah. It wasn't used that much. That's probably why it was a floating, uh, it was a floating bar, basically. I loved, I loved all the Tuka stuff, man. Obviously, he wrote the, you wrote the forward and you had the, you had this, the, the, the, the, the separate chapter about him.

I had known you guys were tight, but I don't think I, I don't think I, I don't think I, I quite realized that it was, that it was on that level. If you had told me, if you had told me a week ago that Tuka Rask wrote the forward to Sean Thornton's book, I think I would have been surprised. Well, you know, he's like me in the fact that he doesn't like to be the center of attention. He likes to just fly behind the scenes, do his job, you know, have a beer at home. And, you know, he doesn't really leave a mile radius of his house too often on the same way. So to talk, it was a favor to ask him to do it. But, you know, he's such a good guy that he said, yeah, not a problem, whatever you need.

So the stuff, so I love books from this era or stories from this era because, you know, like Sean, I was at a lot of the games you referenced or, you know, right in the middle of the, right in the middle of it. And even being there, I don't think I understood, you know, some of the intricacies that go into the role that you played. And I don't want to, you know, we don't have to go story by story and give all the highlights away from the book. Yeah, all people buy this still. No, I know. That's right. So we can talk about like, we can talk about like, we can talk about. Your hatred of turkey or whatever. But, you know, like, and so I'll be careful here. But like the level, we're talking about the Matt Cook kind of retribution, the level of communication that went behind the scenes with Billy Garron or Mark Recky, just to like arrange it and then are we good? And all this stuff, you know, I think I knew like there was a little bit of that. Like you knew you were going to have to do it. But just, I don't know.

There was, there was a lot of communication that went on there. Yeah. there's a full plan in place, yeah, from start. Like the logistics that go into the thing. That's exactly what I was going to say. Well said. Yeah.

And, you know, I've been through it a few times in the miners. Rex had seen it in this day. Like, we've seen games go and Z as well. I mean, he played in the minors. And then, you know, he, for all of that era, right? So we've seen games go completely to the left and where you don't want it to go. And I mean, that's probably more my comfort zone, to be completely honest. So, and our team was built for that at the time.

Now, they had a pretty tough team. Don't know, it could be wrong. They had some big boys on the team. But if he really went, you know, probably down the list, man to man, when we get to the bottom third, our bottom third is going to be standing a lot higher. And we just didn't want to turn it into that. So, yeah, there's some logistics that went into it. And I thought it was the right way to handle the situation. And it turned out to be at the end of the day.

I mean, you mentioned, you mentioned in the section, like, you're like, all right, like, Burgesson can go out and play and Crosby can go out and play, right? Like you mentioned both those guys specifically. There's some kind of give and take where you're like, yeah, our big guns can go out and work, but so can theirs. Right. It's a necessary stuff. Yeah.

And nobody really wants to get into those situations where every single shift is a five-on-five brawl until there's four guys left on the bench. And you're on, I think we talked about it. Like you're on ESPN and Sportsnet for all the wrong reasons. instead of something, instead of Bergey getting a hat trick that game after things were taken care of and you had a 4-1 win or whatever. So we're a cognizant of that

and we just wanted to handle it properly. I could tell you, it's funny even to read how conscious you were of like, this is going to be what brings attention to our sport. Like I was at ESPN at that time and I felt like the only time I was ever doing SportsCenter or something. It wasn't because Sid had a hat trick.

It was because there was a fight. And that was, and even I was like, okay, can we like really, this is what, this is what's going to get me 10 seconds of air time. Like that shows you how much I don't like being in front of the center of attention. Because like, I definitely could have been the center of attention. You could have already a year with that.

Oh, dude. Yeah, you could have been leading PTI for, for days if you wanted to. I think I was once, unfortunately. Oh, wow. When was that? I'm guessing the suspension probably. I think probably. Oh.

For all the wrong reasons. For all the, no. I know. No, we're, we're going to continue spoilt. sections from the book. We're going to read the, we're going to read the orpick section, a word for word here. So people don't actually have to buy it. I think we should do a reading, like a good Christmas. Gather around kids. So we're going to, here's, I did like, like talking about suspension, you know, Gary Bettman seemed to go out of his

way. And again, I mean, Gary Batman's not a popular guy right now. I'm not trying to like, but like you did seem to appreciate the level of communication he gave you and the respect he gave you. 100%. The professionalism from Gary during that whole process was, was, was great. and I understood the severity of what was going on behind the scenes with everything, too, and I understood who I was and was self-aware on what type of player I was. And yeah, no, you know, the first hearing did not go the way I wanted to. He wasn't there. Did not go the way I wanted it to.

I did not feel good coming out of it. I did not feel good about how it was leaked. It did not feel good that I found out about it hours after it was leaked. And, you know, all that's, it just didn't feel right. but, you know, second hearing couldn't have been more professional. And then, like I said, I talked about it in the book, but he called me on Christmas Eve and let me know that they're, you know, holding up the 15 games and, you know, it wasn't personal and walked me through some of the reasons why.

And I was like, I was just grabbing a coffee after taking some kids to a movie. I was like, you know what? He didn't have to take this time out of his day on Christmas Eve to give me a show. Like, I'm just one person. He's working with owners and, you know, investors and billionaires. Like, who am I? but I thought that was very professional and it did not go unnoticed. What was the better Christmas Eve, the one where you had 15 Gennesse's?

I think there was a Christmas Eve reference to that. That was a Christmas day. That was miserable. Yeah, a couple of Christmases by myself in the hotel when I was up and down to the minors, which was not ideal, but again, all happens for a reason. Yeah, a couple lonely Christmases. I was bitter around Christmas for a few years after that. Probably wasn't until I had kids that Christmas came back to having some,

some happy meeting again. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's what people don't realize about that, especially when you're moving up and down from, you know, the HL to the NHL and the grind and,

and, I like, you know, it did seem like you kept a lot of perspective and, you know, there was a little bit of shade thrown at, like Phil Kessel for complaining about having you wear sunglasses at a golf course.

And you're like, hey, Phil, like, we have a pretty good life. But you, like, yours was legitimately hard. Like, you had the right to complain.

Yeah, I tried not to. I think that was, uh, I think that was, uh, Chimur. Yeah, I, I chirped them a little bit that day, but you know,

the sunglasses. What was he? You just, he was mad at him wear sunglasses on the golf course. I got one. I think he walked, I think it was,

I can't remember exactly. I think it was like, he walked out as like, because Chimmer tells the story in the book, but I think we picked him up at his apartment to go golf. He's like, oh, it's so sunny out.

I got to go back upstairs and get my shades. I'm like, really? What? What? I'm like, I'm like, I'm so mad about it being sunny.

That's great. That's a good dude. One of the questions I want to ask is you had no agent starting out. I don't know if this was, so here you are like calling every GM at the start of your career after. So I had an agent when I got drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs. Okay. Rick Hines. He got out of the agency business.

He ran goalie schools up Toronto and stuff. So when I wasn't qualified by Toronto, I had to quickly figure out what a CBA was and then where my standing was in it. So I didn't have time, nor could I find the right agent being a, I say a three and a half year, you know, three year minor league player. It wasn't, you know, they weren't knocking on my door saying this guy is the next greatest thing to come walking up. So I just figured out on my own. Yeah, I started calling every team. I called the PA and I was under the assumption that I was a free agent. And then luckily Mike Smith was in Toronto.

He went to Chicago. My coach, my first three years was the assistant coach for the Chicago Blackcox. But it was actually through Al McIsaac, which I know there's some stories that just went out with him, but back in the time, anyways, Al McIsaid was the GM in Norfolk. That's who I got in touch with. And then he called up to Mike Smith and said, I'd like to bring him to camp. We'd like to sign up for the HL team. Mike Smith knew what I was from my Toronto days.

I said we'd love to have them. So that's how I ended up in camp there. But then, yeah, we had to. Looks like they didn't have the, I didn't have the right to be a free Asian. Toronto still technically owned my right. So I did not figure out the CBA properly as a 22-year-old. No, good line. I was even, like, it was like one line in the book, but like, yeah, I called every GM.

And like, legit, like, what is that? How do you even get all the cells? And you're just like, hey, Bradenberg. I called offices back then. I mean, I don't know. So you just called it like the ticket. It's unbelievable. No, no, if you asked for me to get Holland.

The PHPA and the NHLPA literally sent the list. They said, here's a list of all the GMs and EGMs in the HL and the NHL. And I just got on the phone for every week for a couple hours and tried to get in touch with them. And it's actually remarkable. Like, as a player, you find it really quickly, like, who you might want to play for one day. Like, I can't remember.

This actually, it could have been in the book if I could remember the story. But there was, I think it was the GM affiliate at the time called. He's like, hey, man, know who you are, but I got, am I allowed to swear on this thing? Yeah, you get. He's like, I got no fucking place for you in our my organization, but I appreciate you giving me the phone call. I was like, you know what? And then there's some that like, kick you off to like the minor league scout who doesn't have any say or whatever. It's like, yeah, I'd love to have the conversation with you.

Like it ends up going nowhere. Right. Yeah, it was a unique experience. I wouldn't want to do it again, but it was a unique experience. Come on. Who was the GM that big time do and sent you to their? I can't honestly you call 60 something people I can't remember if you ask me like the week after I'd probably tell you but I really can't remember

you get the joy of cold calling people that's a big that's a big part of this sales it's a big part of this fucking job you're like I'm gonna I'm calling someone who I know doesn't want to talk to me whatsoever and I'm I'm gonna do it a dozen more times we gotta do though right now end up working out yeah what I want have you uh have you heard back from Michelle Tarian yet after after after the publication of the book that was that was that was that was one of my that was that was one of my favorite sections he was here on wednesday too I didn't go down there uh we played philly Wednesday I know because the hands was here no I haven't heard from oh I don't problem whatever he reaches out or not we're both men I'm

got a problem having a conversation with him now I mean I think it's isn't he in the title of one of the chapters like it's like it was that big of rivalry between a player and he's I've never heard of. Have you, have we heard about coaches versus player rivalries? He would be the guy that I might, like if you would have said top three coaches who are candidates to have a rivalry with the player. Imagine, imagine a coach you had a years long rivalry with a player. Not just any player. Sean Thornton. I'd have been like, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, I'd have been like, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's unbelievable. That's why I had to get like Trent Yanni and a couple others to speak to it too. Because I don't want to, one, I didn't want to think it was all in my head. But like, I'm right.

I'll talk about like, no, no, it's true. Every game, that guy sent somebody or did something or. That was definitely one of the moments where like the interludes and the interchions from other people really work. Because like not like, you know, you're, you read it. You're like, like, is this was this? How, how legit was this? I mean, I know it's a long time ago. You're a young kid.

Like you could have been, you know, seeing, seeing stuff where it was. And guys like, guys like Gianni, you're like, nope, it's real. Like that happened. Oh my guys. We got to get, we'll have to get it. I want to get Tarion out here for comments. And I want the other side of the story.

I would have loved to have had him in the book. I didn't. Oh, yeah. I would have loved to have had his perspective on it too, actually. That would have added to it. It would be great if he was just like Sean Thornton. I'm not familiar with, uh, you played in the league. Who, uh, who, who is Sean

Thornton. I don't know, Sean Thornton. That's right. Oh, my gosh. Before we let you go, I do want to talk a little bit about the Merlot line because I think that comes up. And it's one of the, just the great I don't even know if we have that

anymore where you have a great name, a great line championship. It's just one of the awesome things that come out of championship teams. And, you know, you talk about it a lot. But what, and I don't think you guys viewed yourself as a fourth line either. Like that was an impact When you were on the ice, that was an impact line.

Why was it so special? What made it work? Internally, we consider like, obviously, you look at the depth chart, we're the fourth line, right? But we had a pretty team. That's why we won. But internally, we consider ourselves more of a checking line. Like, we took pride in the fact that we could play against most top lines on any given night and eat up good minutes. Now are we lighten the lamp against SIDS line? Probably not. But if we could eat up some minutes, we were happy. I think it was a product of, well, one, the name was good because Claude called us like,

the burgundy line. I was like, ah, we're not getting, we're not, we're not a French wine. We're going to be, uh, we're going to be, we're going to be more low for anything. Uh, yeah, we wore those jerseys every single day in practice, the same color. And we're aligned together for what, three and a half years maybe, something like that. So it, uh, the combination of those things, the longevity, the unique jersey color and the fact that I'm, uh, I love wine, uh, probably all those together. And, you know, and I played with two guys that were second and third liners on every other team.

Right. laid on, right? So they come to us. They accept a fourth line role and made my life a lot easier. Yeah, I mean, you said that about about Pai and Campbell. Like, in a lot of, on a lot of other rosters, they're, their second liners, they're, I mean, they're second. He was a second liner on our team until Marci took off and they had nowhere else to put them. So

he was still playing with me too, but he was playing with Berge on the second line when we traded for Paisi. Now that we've given away 80% of the book, no, we're just scratching the surface if you're listening to this. Oh, it's like, it's like 250 pages long. And it's, or whatever it is. It's, it's, it's, it's beefy. And all, all the anecdotes are, and stories are, they're fantastic.

These are, this is three out of, you know, 20 or whatever it is. Is there something that you, you, you had to cut out for any reason? Well, first of all, I, like, I was disappointed that we, we were censoring swear words, like, with the dashes. I mean, maybe I got just the, like, I'm not going to lie. We went back and forth on that, and I pulled a little bit out. The thought process was, I have two young daughters now and they're going to read at some point. Listen, they've heard me swear already. Like, I have a tough time keeping my.

cursing in check but I also want to be a little respectful that they're going to grow up and their ugly dad's faces on a book somewhere that people might recognize so yeah, where the stuff that was cut out probably

I mean, again, if I wasn't an executive an actual franchise and if I wasn't a father nowadays, there might be a, it could have leaned a little bit towards some stuff.

Tell all kind of thing. Yeah, but again, but I was also, you know, I wouldn't ever put my teammates in a bad situation, myself. Sure. So, like, yeah, is there stuff in my life that's not in the book?

For sure. But I'm happy with how the book came out. Was there any of it you wanted to, you cleared with teammates or you're just like, are you buying with his going in? Like, I didn't feel like there's anything that was. There was some of that where you're like, you're cool with this? Yeah, but the most of them are in the book. So I would have been like, hey, I'm going to talk about this and this and this.

Do you mind giving some background on it? Obviously, too, because I mean, we talk almost every other day. So I kept him in a loop on what was going on. So I, yeah, and I don't think there was anything in there that was, this keeps me up at night. Like, before this thing was released, I was like not sleeping saying, oh shit, did I say something I shouldn't have said that's going to like open up Pandora's box? That's the last thing I want. Like, I want people to get a feel of, you know, that it wasn't easy for me to get there.

It's an unconventional path to get to where I was, but it was all worth it. And that was like the main thing I wanted to get across, not putting anything out there that needed to, you know, like I said, open up Pandora's box. I thought the craziest part of the Tuga chapter was at the end where you said definitively whether he was coming back or not. I was surprised to see that. They're like, oh, yeah, where you find out. Like, he's definitely coming back in February, right? Yeah.

He just went on the record, didn't he? I did he? Did I miss that? Somebody talked about it, said he was looking good or coming back. I thought I saw it. He's, uh, he looks good, though. I saw him last week. He looks good.

I'm super, like, I feel like he's going to end up in the between, you and Billy Zito. It wasn't Billy his agent for a long time? It was Asian forever or AGM, Brett Peterson's his neighbor and the assistant GM here.

Yeah. So he'll end up. He'll be doing corporate Jet Blue deals before too long. Yeah, I'm going to have my sales team that one. I'm going to be tired.

Oh my gosh. Well, Sean, thanks for doing this. And congratulations again on the book. I know it's a great read. It's fun. It's perfect timing with Christmas coming up

and all the holidays. Again, it's all me, obviously. I timed it perfectly. Nothing to do. You got it done just in time. It's great. It's fun.

It's called Fighting My Way to the Top. You can get it anywhere books are sold. And I strongly recommend it. So, thank you. Congratulations, Sean. Thanks, about doing this. Great to see you,

friend of the podcast. I'm glad you made it. Awesome. I think I needed a book to do it. That was great. Great to have Sean on. he's uh like those this is really fun for me to be able to read these books from this era as they come out and and remember distinctly place and time at where i was like it's it's

it's it's fun that we're not suddenly nostalgic for 2010 like i love that he took the words out of my mouth i'm reading this and it's like oh yeah 2010 that was that was three years ago right no like it was a long time ago holy hell this is like we're talking about the merlo line it's it's it was 10, 11 years ago. Yeah. Now, it's good. Yeah, just a lot of, a lot of great stories from that, from that era. I, I came up during the, during our talk, but it's long.

Like, it's a, it's, a lot of these as told two books, like, sometimes they're kind of, they're kind of thin and, you know, whatever. That is, that is not the case with this. There's a lot of, you know, a lot of really great anecdotes from that whole, from that whole run. It's, it's good stuff. And you get like the inner working. like, you know, GM's calling each other to get the scouting report on Sean Thor,

like Brian Berg's saying he's not your heavyweight, you know, like a lot of little tidbits where you're like, okay, I learn a little bit about this person and that person and how like the sausage is made. Like that's the stuff I love. It's a mix of two things, right?

It's how the sausage is made or was made when our thought was coming up. And then also you forget how many, you know, he mentioned the Brooks Orpick hit and the suspension. in the Merlo line and like in the in the in the Matt Cook stuff and all that like he figured pretty prominently into a lot of memorable moments over the over the 2010s right so no good it was good stuff from him and definitely definitely would recommend it not just the Bruins fans but for

anybody who you know kind of came up like we did honestly in the game during that stretch all right I don't know if while I was gone you dove into the comment section of the app but let's let's dip our toes in the water and see what we come out. A little bit. I thought you would save them off for me. Really hurtful. Spoiler, everybody hates Max Boltman. Oh, I mean, spoiler, that's, we knew that.

Self-evident. The greatest guy ever. All right, John, we'll be right back. Ooh, baby, it's the best part of the week. We go to the comments section of our episodes on the athletic, app, which in your absence, Craig, I figured out where it actually is. Oh, you had to because you can't make the gas to all the work.

Yeah, right, I'm going to tell, I'm going to tell J.R. to deal with that. It's, if you look at the bottom in the app, there's, there's the listen tab. Mm-hmm. And then you go to NHL. Mm-hmm. And then you go, and then you go to the athletic hockey show. But you have to find our episodes, so you have to know the title. Or the day of the week.

Follow the trail of breadcrumbs to the Tuesday episode and leave questions and comments there. The fact that anybody does it is hilarious and wonderful. I just love this. The other thing I want to say about that, by the way, this is some kind of glitch because we have like test versions of the app and beta versions of the app. I can't leave comments on other people's comments. So if you guys out there have like asked, you know, asked specific stuff or ripped us or said anything funny and haven't seen an interaction from me. It sounds like you're avoiding the people, Sean.

It's me. Up in my ivory tower. I'm rich. I'm rich. That's all that crypto money. All that crypto money. That's where the savers, that's where that savers check's coming from. All right.

Let's dive in. I've got one I'm saving from last episodes. I'm going to go two episodes back because I've been absent. And this is on the Justin Falk. This was with Jeremy Rutherford. Jeremy does a great job. This comes from Ben D. says, finally, an episode where Gentile, with Gentile

where he doesn't say, that's right. That's right. Is that your thing? Is that your catchphrase? Yeah, we're making T-shirts. That's what the NFT can be. It's like a, it's like caricatures. of you and I and then that's right.

That's right. Like written across the bottom. And then, uh, try to think it, try to think of one of your band phrases. I don't have, I, oh, yes, yes. I don't have any. We've discussed this.

Uh-huh. Yeah, no. Yeah, no. You can't put that on a shirt. Um, Ben D also asks, I'm assuming it's the same person. What team will have the fewest losses against the Canadian teams this year? My choice will be Carolina.

That's John's favorite team, in case anyone's wondering. Love them. Craig, Craig, Craig. I don't know if you've seen their Twitter account, but, oh, it's edgy. Carolina, since they're one of, if not the best team in the Metro, the division with no Canadian teams, aka the best division. That's right. That's not a bad answer.

I'll go with Carolina. I'll let me answer his own question. So, yeah, you need minimal Canadian teams. A and you need someone who's really good. Obviously, the hurricanes are a good pick. It's got to be them, right? Yeah, it's Carolina. It's Carolina or the Caps or whatever, one of those top, like one of those two, because

you know, for as good as, you know, for as good as the Atlantic Division is, as good as we think Tampa and Florida and them all are like you're still playing against you're still playing against three Canadian teams yeah um yeah I don't know the Jets are the Jets are good enough to cut into it the Pacific is a no go because the two best teams in that division bias sites are Canadian so yeah yeah got gotta be got to be metro um got to be got to be Carolina all right I think it doesn't Sean Gentile's Carolina Hurricanes Nick P writes as a Canadian, oh, thanks for listening, Nick, despite all of our shenanigans. Sorry. Sorry, buddy. I'm only reading this because it compliments a show.

I do have to agree, this is the best athletic hockey show of the week consistently. Wow. I was worried it wouldn't be as good with no Craig, but J.R. was great. I don't know how I feel about that. He's better than me. J.R. was that, he was that good that we're like,

we're not talking about my absence a little more. No, I'm just saying he's better than me. It's not tough. Matt M. writes, thanks for answering my questions about the national broadcast. That was the answer I was hoping to hear. I do agree the coverage has been a huge step forward from what we used to get, but I'm looking forward to seeing more national broadcasts. Looking forward to next Tuesday when we get more of the most entertaining edition of the show.

Thank you for that, Matt. Yeah, we've seen enough now of the national. How do you, like, 10 words or less? How are you feeling about the national broadcast? It's fine. I wish there were more random games on cable. Like that is kind of a bummer. And I get it.

You know, ESPN Plus is basically a good product. I know the blackouts are driving people crazy. Yeah. But I think it's going to get better because we're about to see a lot more games on ESPN. They clearly were waiting until college football and certain other things were. College football and wrestling basically on TNT. They had to do some house cleaning with that. So we're about to see a lot more.

a lot more broadcast games and that's all that's all good i'm i'm willing to i'm willing to hold off on on a decision well i mean it always felt like to me with mbc it didn't even start until the winter classic and then it was like okay now we're paying attention like so we're we're still early in the process i would say yeah it's just a lot it's a lot of 10 pm eastern games on tn t and you know but like we got we got a we got a black friday game on espn like i think that sort of signals that we're about to or on abc rather so they're they're about to start ramping up. And I think once those guys get more reps, it'll be easier to judge them. Hey, guys, this is from Jason K. Happy Thanksgiving. Please let Haley know that there is

Thanksgiving and Canadian Thanksgiving. There is no need to say American Thanksgiving. This is all factual. America made it a national holiday first in 1870, 1879 in Canada. But it has been celebrated here on and off since before Canada was a country. I thought it's a Canada, country? Or is it some sort of like the municipality of the queen of... It's a protectorate of England. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like Guam with the United States. These are all important banks.

Oh, producer Jeff is piping in. Did you have something to say, Jeff? Or just hand signals. So, um, so, um, a couple of things about Thanksgiving, I want to say that are, our podcast adjacent. One, we, I was, the family, we were thrilled to see. Bryce Salvador on the Thanksgiving Day float in the in the Macy State parade. Is that true?

Oh, man, I missed that. Yeah, it was, I think it was, um, Anson Carter, Michigan State, uh, former Michigan State great. Legend. Legend. He was there when I was there. He was so good at State. And Bryce Salvador.

And so the debate was, he was, he was waving to the crowd as he, they cut to him. And he had his phone out and he was like, you know, taping around him. and we were saying, should I text him like happy Thanksgiving in that moment and just to see what his reaction was? Oh, man. Would you have done it shot? I was like, that would be funny, but also like, I don't want to ruin Bryce's Elvador's moment. I wouldn't, I wouldn't text him. I would have straight up called him.

You would have called him? So you see him like taping? Yeah. It's like, get startled by his phone buzzing in his pocket? The conclusion, the families decided that. He was probably, he probably had it on airplane mode anyways. Probably. You're in the parade.

You're putting it on airplane mode. And I didn't want to interrupt. So I never did wish Bryce a happy Thanksgiving. So happy Thanksgiving, Bryce Salvador. It was the other crazy thing in terms of guests at the Macy's Day parade. I saw Quinn Hughes pulling the Sonic the Hedgehog balloon. What? Wow.

Yeah. It was crazy. He was amazing. He had time to do that. He was holding the ropes. I know. He was probably, I don't know, visiting Jack and you're just. Jersey, maybe?

Second podcast-adjacent thing that happened over Thanksgiving since we haven't talked. I show up, so I go to Atlanta, I've got my three wonderful nieces. They're amazing. And, you know, they're just kids, they're little. And I show up wearing my Donnie Meatballs T-shirt. I don't know why. On Thanksgiving? No, like when we arrive.

So we, you know, we're barging through the door, me and the three kids and the family dog and it's a car shirt it's a car shirt and so and it's you know warm in Atlanta so I'm wearing a T-shirt and of course that's all anyone sees it's really if you haven't purchased one it's good it's for you know

it's good cause and it's fun we support Donnie Granato on this podcast as you know and so they're all like meatballs they're like Uncle Meatball so the whole trip they were calling me Uncle

Meatball to the point where I, so my birthday is on the 26th at Friday, it said, happy birthday, Uncle Meatball on the cake. Oh my God. You started something, dude. Uncle Meatball? That's going in your, that's going in your obituary.

Here lies. Husband, father, Uncle Meatball, podcast co-host. I mean, Uncle Meatball. I've never seen something stick that quickly. I've never even had a nickname. Is that true? Not really like it. Would you call me?

Craig? See? So does everybody. Except for my name is. The arch rival. The next, this is we're going to move up an episode with you and Max. And you must, you angered our user Nick Yu, our listener, who says, why did you guys discuss every team in the metro besides the devils, basically tied for the wildcard spot with only

16 games played and big wins against. good teams, i.e. the lightning the other day and missing their best player. I know. Nick, but Nick, my boy, ate to break this to you. We don't know what we're doing. We forgot. But it was. It was, it was kind of egregious. We left went over every, every team. And I mean, I don't know. I don't, let's, all right, come on. Devils are. They have 22 points. They're fifth in the wild card now. Like, if there was one, we're going to skip, it's going to be, it was going to be them.

We've talked about them before. I like, I like what we're doing. I like what Dustin Mercer's done. They're not, they're not going to win the wild card. I'm going to, I don't know how far, but if you went into these comments from our, the last episode we did together, which was the, um, Quinn Hughes episode. But someone asked if you've, um, they've never heard you in, and, uh, Down Goes Brown in the same podcast.

Is that true? I thought you guys have done that. Yeah, we've done episodes of Puck Soup together. I mean, there is a pretty heated rivalry there between the two of us. Andre M writes, and this is so true. Quinn had a big, I'm just here so I don't get fined energy in this interview. We appreciated Quinn, but I feel that, Andrea M. So did I, actually.

So did we, for that matter. Let's see. I think you guys touched on all these other ones. I don't need to bring up my book again. behind the bench, available, great Christmas gift for all. But thank you to the comments. As you said, as you said to Sean Thornton, wherever books are sold, I heard that, I heard that in the book plug whenever you, whenever you did that one. Is that even true? Is that even, I was like, I'm sure I'm sure you can buy his books. So anywhere there's a book sold, you can buy Sean Thornton

and my book. Yeah, right. Like in the Starbucks that's in your grocery store where they sell coffee table books, you can get behind the bench and, and, in Thornton's book. Anywhere books are sold. Anywhere on earth that books are sold. Books are a great Christmas present, holiday present. You should do that. Support authors. Anything else you want to add before we get out of here, Sean?

I don't want to go too far into these questions. I'm glad you're back. It's good to be back. I'm leaving you again next. I don't know if I'm going to be in San Diego. That's how you say that, right? San Diego. But I think I can, we'll see.

try to make it do from the hotel. I mean, I'll be working. I do want to plug Rapizo and the Wednesday roundtable with Sarah Sivian, Jesse Granger, Julian McKenzie this week. I have no problem plugging that group. They do fine work. Unlike Haleynian, terrible. You know what's crazy? Is to see Julian on a podcast? I can't believe it. That's good. He's finally getting some airtime. Julie is the best. What a superstar he is. He's the greatest. Tom Fitzgerald of the New Jersey. Devils. All right.

The team Sean loves to exclude from all his analysis is Mike Russo's guest. And straight from the source, Russo, who still can't get Gentilly's name right when he plugs. Mike Russo. Mike Russo has, I can't even mess up Fitzgerald. Is it possible? Fitzgerald, has Tom Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald.

Tim Fitzgerald. If you're not subscribing to the athletic and you will. want to leave comments on our episode. Really, that's the only reason you need to subscribe. You can go to theathletic.com slash hockey show, 399 a month. Next week, if I'm not here, it's going to be Max Baltman. I don't know. This is, I think producer Jeff is typing this in as we speak on the, on the sheet.

Max Baltman will be, I am not committed to not being here yet. So let's easy there, Max. With possible Dylan Larkin guest. which would be awesome. Dylan's one of my favorites. Max is a son of mine. Max is foaming at the mouth to get back on the... I mean, I barely even said I might not be able to make it

and there's already a replacement and Max is already in. I don't know how I feel about that. Yeah, terrible. Not good. Not good. Not great. Big week for Max, by the way.

What is, like, Michigan. Geez. Hish. Michigan over Ohio State. Wait, that didn't happen, actually. Never mind. College football talk. All right.

Thanks for listening. Sean, great to be together again for one week and one week only. Until next week. Thanks, everyone. Love you all. And to all, good night. Goodbye forever.