The Athletic Hockey Show - Stanley Cup Final Game 4 ends in controversy, Paul Maurice is the new coach of the Florida Panthers, and the NHL Awards

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Ian and Sean discuss the controversial end to Game 4 of Avs-Lightning on Wednesday night. Should there have been a penalty for too many men, and should every goal be reviewed like touchdowns are in the NFL? Also, why the Lightning's first goal of the game was allowed, despite Darcy Kuemper losing his mask. Then, they react to Paul Maurice being hired as the new coach for the Florida Panthers, relieving interim coach Andrew Brunette, and Ian and Sean share their thoughts on the NHL Awards.To wrap up, a mailbag question prompts a memory of one cent wings, if there was a winner in the legendary Avalanche- Red Wings rivalry, and a look back with "This Week in Hockey History".Have a question or comment for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail], or leave a VM [phone]!Save on a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

All right, everybody. Welcome back. It is your Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Ian Mendezs, John McAdoo with you for the next hour or so. And boy, oh, boy, do we have some stuff to sink our teeth into after a controversial ending to game for this? The only come final. We've got that to get into. We've got Paul Maurice in Florida.

What's going on there? We'll talk about the NHL awards that were handed out this week. We've got some great voicemail submissions, questions into the email. this week in hockey history. We got so much to get to. But Sean, I got to tell you. So I watched the game last night on Wednesday night. Okay.

And Nazim Cadry scores, and it's like that Patrick Kane kind of diddy or didn't he what's going on. But, you know, as soon as that was resolved and it was clearly a goal, I'm going to admit something. I shut my television off. And I basically didn't look at Twitter

and I went to bed. And I know you were live blogging last night with Sean Gentile. At what point did you realize, that this was like, I'm not going to say it's Brett Hall-foot in the crease, but there's a pretty big goal and a big momentum shift in the Stanley Cup final. At what point did you realize, wow, we got ourselves a story here. After the live blog had closed, we had already shut it down.

And the reason we had is because not one person on the broadcast, not one person on Twitter, nobody saw this as an issue until John Cooper did his very weird press conference. And even then, people were like, what is he, what is he talking about? What is going on here? And, and so my situation, not all that far from yours is we did the live blog. We were live for, you know, five hours or whatever it was. We wrapped it up. Hey, there's the goal. You know, Stanley Cup will be in the building Friday night. Good night, everyone. I go to bed. And as, as I always do, I'm doom scrolling Twitter right before I go to sleep. Yeah. And I see, yeah, it's healthy. It's, I'm sure contributes to great, great sleep for me every night. And I see, I see people posting the quotes from John Cooper. And then I see, I think it was Ellie Friedman was the first one to say, I think it's too many men that they're referring to.

And I start seeing the clips. And I went, well, that's nothing. That's, I mean, that's, this is a non, this is a non controversy. And I went to bed. And it was when I woke up in the morning and I saw how much traction this thing it gained. And I saw people posting clips. Here's the definitive angle. And oh, this is the most damning shot.

The bench view. Yeah. And so here we are. This is a thing now. And apparently this is going to be the thing for the next two days is that this goal was amidst too many men. I don't know where you went because I got thoughts but I want to you're a reasonable guy. Okay. So here's the thing. I worry that this happens more often than we think, right? Like, I think this happens more often than we think. Like this happens all the time. This is, so my concern.

This happens multiple times. Yes. Every game, including that game, including the Tampa Bay Lightning, also having too many men on the ice at that moment on that same play. They also had a sixth guy over by the bench. So yes, this does happen absolutely all the time. My concern is

we're headed down the path of overreaction and what has happened in the past? Think of the Matthew Shane, offside goal, we blew it up and now are we going to go down the road of every, and look, and I think it's a good conversation to have because we do talk about the NFL.

The NFL reviews every single scoring play. And I know that there's an appetite from some people saying, look, if the NFL reviews every touchdown, maybe the NHL should review every goal. My concern on that, though, is what happens on a situation like last night? Like, now I'm certain to think, are we going to be just getting rid of goals left, right, and center? Yes.

Look, what was- Absolutely. That is what will happen if people get their way on this. And so I think, Look, did Nazim Cadry jump off the bench and get up there a little early? Yes, he did. Okay. But were there like six skaters on the ice that, for a sustained period of time,

that led to that goal happening? I would say no, but that's just my opinion. And I do think the- It's not your opinion. The answer is no. Yeah. That was not, we have seen, because we have seen the situation you described. We saw it at Islander,

fans have got to feel like this is very rich because they saw it last year against these same lightning at least once in that series they'll tell you twice where there was at least one of the goals in that series crucial goal there was just six or it might have been seven guys on the ice for an extended period of time not because somebody had jumped a little early because they'd mixed up a line change two guys jumped on for one guy which happens and and it got missed and the goal counted and people went out it's a bad break for the islanders and then we moved on. And maybe Barry Trott should have burst into tears at his press conference

and made it a bigger thing than it was, but we moved on. And yet on this one, which again, this play happens constantly. Now, yes, if you look at the strict letter of the rulebook, you could argue that should be a too many men on the ice call. But that play does not get called too many men on the ice, nine times out of ten, and I'm not talking in the playoffs, I'm not talking in overtime. First period of a game in November, that play maybe gets whistled down one time out of ten. Maybe they call too many men or maybe a legal substitution, which is also an option that they have.

In that game last night, when it was rugby rules from the third period on, we saw guys get in time. Victor Hedman, got tackled in the third period. That was unbelievable. Like, that was, if that wasn't textbook interference on Hedman, I don't know what is. Like, he literally was. There were three or four obvious clear as day penalties that did not get called. And we think that they're going to call too many men on that play.

Imagine they whistle that day before the goal, right? Because it's a play. You got to call it. You don't wait for a goal and then say it was too many men. Imagine Nazim Kadri carries a puck in and suddenly there's a whistle and everyone's looking around. And they, oh, too many men on Colorado. We would have lost our minds. We would have said, are you kidding me

that you're letting guys tackle each other out there? And then you call this jinsy nitpicky, too many men. And look, I get, if you're Tampa fan, obviously if you're with the Tampa team, you're disappointed to lose that game. Understatement. I don't mind them being passionate. I don't mind John Cooper being ticked off.

And I got a lot of time for John Cooper. I like John Cooper a lot. He's a good guy. You and I have hung out with John Cooper. John Cooper. Yes. So we'll tell that story someday. Yeah.

But you and I have closed a bar in Florida with John Cooper. I like John Cooper a lot. He's probably my favorite coach in the league. But John, it's your buddy, Sean here. This is not it, man. This is, and I really hope by the time people hear this when John Cooper's done his media and that that he'll do today, that he has turned the page on this, not even walked it back, but has he said, look, you know, hey, this stuff happens and we're moving on.

because the other option is we start doing review on this. And that would be an absolute nightmare. Every goal that gets scored, suddenly somebody, whether it's the team or whether it's the league, is rewind into the last line change and just looking at, well, was that five feet or was that six feet? That guy was on a little quick. Oh, that guy kind of stayed. Goals will be coming off the board constantly. And it'll be an absolute nightmare.

I mean, look, there is, there's nothing here. And I get that it's the Stanley Cup final. Everything gets magnified. I get that, that, you know, John Cooper made it a thing that nobody else had picked up on. Not one person that I saw suggested that there was anything wrong with this goal until John Cooper. I get that the NHL certainly didn't do their refs any favor by kind of throwing them under the bus with this statement just saying, it's a judgment call, but it is a judgment call. And in a game where they're not calling anything,

the idea that they should have blown this play dead. And look, it's not like Nazim Kadri, you know, jumped on the ice, and because he was so early, he had a breakaway. He's going in one on three. Stop the guy. Like, it's an absolute non-controversy. I really hope that us in the media are smart enough to not take debate on this. Because the end result will be, first of all, we put a black cloud over a game that doesn't need one.

And we're going to get review on these stupid things. And I've used that as an example in the past. Whenever I'm railing against offside review, people know I don't like offside review, I don't think we should have it. And I say, you know, what else are we going to, what else should we tell? If we have to just get it right, should we be checking, you know, on a dump-in from center ice? Should we be checking face-off violations? Somebody has a skate in the face-off circle every single face-off. Why don't we worry about that?

Should we check line changes? Somebody was six feet away instead of five. I'm making that sarcastically to make the point that, hey, wouldn't it be ridiculous if we do that. Now we've got people saying maybe we need to. It's a non-story. It is taken away from a great win by the avalanche, a great moment for Nazim Kadri. I like John Cooper a lot, but man, this is, you know, for him to get up there and do this, this performance almost. And I'm not questioning that he was, that he was emotional. Obviously, the emotions run very high in a series like this. But for him to choose to play it that way and then lead us all on this, you know, wild goose chase for, oh, look at this gift, look at this freeze frame. Look, I drew little numbers on this. And there's Nathan McKinnon over by the boards. And people are looking at the game sheet.

Oh, my gosh, the game sheet has an extra player on it, who wasn't even part of the play. That was just a mistake. But people think they've got some. smoking gun. It's nonsense. This was a standard line change. We see this all the time. Yeah, it was early. By the strict letter of the book, it probably was too many men. But that's not how this gets called. And it's not how it should be called. And we're in for a world of problems if we go down this path of saying we got to crack down on this somehow. Well, exactly. And to me, the offside, the introduction of video review for offside is the cautionary

tail. Like we, the unintended consequences of that, I think we're still feeling it. We'll feel it for for years and years because every single play is broken down. And can you imagine that we're doing this on every line change? We're going to suck the fun out of the game. And hey, like, if Nate McKinnon was actively engaged in that play, I would be fully on board to say, you know what, the aves got away with one. And we need to make sure that that doesn't happen again. But Nate McKinnon was cruising towards his bench. right? Yeah.

Like, he's probably at the bench when, and this is all it described in the rule book, by the way. The fact that Nathan McKin's skates are still on the ice when the goal is scored does not matter. Because they specifically talk about exactly the situation. They call him a retired player. Basically, he's out of the play. Even if his skates are on the ice, he's not part of the play anymore.

So, yeah, it's, this is a standard thing. I promise you, go to any game. really watch every line change. You are going to find cases like this. And they don't get called and we don't want them called. And look, we've been trained by offside review. This is part of what bugs me. Offside review has trained us to, as soon as a goal gets scored,

especially if it's against our team, to go, well, hold on, wait a second. Let's look at everything. Where's my get out of jail free card? Where's my, you know, it doesn't have to have anything to do with the, but is there something that happened? Did a puck touch the netting, you know, two minutes ago? Was there an offside? Was there this or that?

Is there something that I can say this goal shouldn't have counted? Even though it was a good goal, even though it was a good goal, even though somebody beat my defenseman, beat my goal, he made a great play, we don't want it to count. And you know, you and I are old enough. We remember the skate and crease rule, which was a terrible rule. And the NHL had it for four years until the Brett Hull moment. And then it went away. And we all knew that that's how it was going to end.

And it's the same with, you know, offside review. going to lose a goal. You know, Connor McDavid's going to score a game seven cup winner someday, and it's going to be ruled offside by a quarter of an inch, and then we'll get rid of the rule then. Because it's the NHL. We wait until crisis, and then we respond. But the biggest problem with the skate in the cruise, remember, there were years there as a fan. Every time there was a goal, you didn't jump out of your seat.

You kind of stop and went, okay, hold on. All right, I don't see it. All right, it looks like it's a good goal. Okay. I feel okay. All right. Yay for my team. And that was awful.

Because, I mean, hockey is about the rush of seeing a goal score. That's the key moment as a fan to bring you out of your seat. And when we train everyone that hold on, there's a good chance this is going to come back on some technicality. It's just, it's a mess. And it's already a mess. And it's going to be much worse if we go down this road. And today's the day. People like us on this show, people doing the, you know, people.

doing the pregame show tomorrow, everyone doing their talk radio who's going, oh, this will be great. Let's, we can fill two hours with, we need more review. We got to nip this in the button and say, guys, this is, this is, this would be dumb and this would be awful and this would make the games even less entertaining than they already are. Stop it in its tracks right now, because this was, say it for the dozen time, this was a very standard play. And on the list of things that should have been called a penalty last night, this isn't even a the top 10. You know what I could see happening or somebody proposing or I guess I'm proposing it here. I don't want to see this. But could you not? And the rule is you got to be within five

feet of the bench, right? Five feet of the bench and then the player can change out for you. That they put some sort of color on the ice that that way it'll make it easier for these referees to catch too many men and if you know what I mean? Like I could see that being floated. could. But again, this is one of these things. I've written posts before, kind of tongue in cheek, where I've said, hey, if you want the rulebook called, here's a bunch of rules that are not called the way you think they are. For example, if you take a shot on a goaltender and he freezes the puck, that's a penalty, according to the strict letter of the rulebook. Goleys aren't allowed to adjust their equipment. If, you know, we see it all the time, gole, either something with the wrong with his pad or his mask or his skate, and he goes over to the bench and we all wait.

that's not allowed in the strict letter of the rulebook. They have to leave and the backup goalie has to come in for any equipment adjustment. Players who are hurt or, you know, testing out an injury aren't allowed to go on the ice in between shifts and take a little skate to test it out. We see that all the time. That's a penalty. You're not allowed to swear in the NHL. It's supposed to be an automatic penalty and a fine.

Anytime anybody swears. You want to break that Flyer's Senators all-time penalty minutes record in one game. Call that rule for one game. This is another one of them. I mean, yeah, it says five feet, but that's not what the rule is. Now, if you want to argue, we should enforce that rule, I guess. I did. I had somebody suggest that to me today saying, like, you know, if we actually suggested that,

it would make line change. It's tougher. Maybe you get tired players stuck out there more and, you know, but we'd also get just a flood of goals, getting pulled off the board. And not only would we lose good goals, but you would eventually, you would have come to expect it so much. We kind of already do this with interference and offside. But this would add one more thing that every time there was a goal, you'd go, oh, hold on, let's not get too excited.

Let's see maybe somebody was six feet from the bench on the last line change. We don't need this, guys. This is, you know, and it's that we didn't need it last night. And we sure as heck don't need to be checking every single goal for seasons to come just because the Tampa Bay Lightning were upset about this one. Well, I'll tell you what, the overtime goal by Nazim Cadre was not the only time we dusted out the rulebook in game number four. Tampa's first goal by Anthony Sorrelli had people reacting pretty strongly. And that is because Darcy Kemper lost his mask. And I think you tweeted out the actual rule.

And I think this is really important because I think there is a misconception that the minute or the second a goaltender loses his mask, the play is blown dead. And clearly that there was people yesterday saying, wait a minute. Dushie Kemper lost his mask and then, you know, Sirelli puts the puck in the net, what's going on here? Like, you know, so why don't you just, just for the sake of clarity,

just walk our listeners through this rule because I think it is really important and it certainly was a factor in game number four on Wednesday night. Yeah, now that I've got every lightning fan mad at me, let's get the Colorado side too. this was also a good goal. They called it correctly. It's rule 9.6. And basically, what the rule says is that if a goaltender loses his mask, you blow the play dead unless there is an imminent scoring chance. It was basically exactly for this play. It is not that you blow that, the defensive team has to have possession of the puck. It's not anything like that. The bar is

not even that high. The bar is there has to be an imminent scoring chance, which is basically a guy has a puck on a stick and he's about to shoot it in the net, which is what happened last night. This is the only case where letting the play go is the right call. And this was a very bang, bang play. If you didn't see it, it's literally, I'm not even sure the referee would have had time to blow the whistle. Right. To see what had happened, process it, get the whistle up to his mouth and blow the whistle before the puck goes in. I'm not sure that there would have been time. time to do that. Now, I just did a whole rant on too many men where I said, you know, there's what the rulebook says and then there's how it's called. So some people will say, well, wait a second,

though, I've never seen it called like this. I've seen so many examples where guys will lose the mask and even though the other team has the puck, even though it does it, it gets whistle dead right away. And yes, the way that this is called is typically the officials give all sorts of leeway towards blowing it dead. The only time they were. won't is essentially on a play like this where the puck is on a guy's stick, empty net, he's going to shoot it in. I mean, we've seen plays even where a goalie loses his mask and somebody's winding up for a slap shot and they will blow it dead. You know, again, it's a safety issue here. And I know that's where a lot of people are coming from on this. But let's also

describe how the play happened because what happens is there's a shot. It hits Starcy Kemper in the mask. It pops the strap off the back of his mask. Now his mask is loose. And as a goaltender, I mean, it can stay on your head. The mask can stay on there. But now your vision lines are all screwed up. And so what goleys tend to do is they shake the mask off. And that's what Darcy Kemper did. I know there's a lot of Avalanche fans saying Sorrelli got him with the stick.

Sorelli pitchforked the mask off of him. No, he didn't. Mike McKenna tweeted this out, the former goaltender had the smart take. And look, if anyone's going to be pro goalie, it's him. But he said, no, the strap pops off. He shakes it down. You can actually see it's his head. The stick kind of comes up near his face, but the mask goes down.

The mask doesn't pop up. The mask goes down because Kemper is shaking it off. You really don't want to have a situation, I don't think, where you say anytime the mask comes off, it's an automatic stoppage. Because goalies do shake the masks off. And we've seen that before, and they know they do it to get a stoppage. And partly because they don't want to play with a busted strap. But they do it on purpose. and Kemper did what he was probably coached to do, which is to shake the mask off.

And, you know, I don't think you can just say automatic whistle every time a goalie shakes his own mask off. Now, maybe you do something out. Maybe you say, hey, it's, you know, maybe it's a penalty. Maybe it's a, somebody said, okay, but if a goal he does that, it should be a penalty shot. Maybe that, you know, that's not a bad copy. If we're really worried about player safety, then that doesn't, that kills the play. it creates that player safety, but it doesn't give any incentive

to try to take a scoring chance away. But look, I mean, it was called properly. This is how the rule is written. This is how the rule is intended. This is how the rule is called. And the reason you haven't seen a call is because it almost never happens like this. And if you're an avalanche fan,

if you think it was Sorrel, and this apparently, I think it's a bit of a, this seems to be an ESPN sports net thing because I think we got different replays and I think on ESPN they kind of played up a little bit more that it was the stick and on Sportsnet they didn't. But if you're convinced it was the stick, then yes, obviously you can't use your stick to knock a goalie's mask off and then score on him right away. That shouldn't be a goal. But that's goalie interference. And that's a challengeable play. So don't be mad at the rep. Be mad at Jared Bednarc because if you really think that it was

the stick that very obvious, and I know a lot of Avalanche fans think this was completely obvious, then be mad at your own coach because it should have been an obvious goal of interference and he didn't challenge it. You know, we had a lot of, look, obviously game four was dripping with controversy and rulebook stuff. And I hope it doesn't take away from the greatness of the Nazim Cadry moment. Yeah. And I say that because I don't know that he gets into like the Bobby Bond category of this

guy scores a goal with a broken foot and all that stuff or a broken leg. But, man, you, like, sometimes you wonder about hockey gods and whether they just, you know, how they, how they do things. And here's a guy that obviously in that St. Louis series, we all know what he went through with, you know, dealing with racial insults and the response with a hat trick. And then he gets the busted dumb. And I thought, okay, well, this is going to be it for him. And if he comes back, maybe he's just like a decoy. And he's, of course, the overtime game winning goal. A beautiful goal.

An absolutely gorgeous goal. And you know what? You know what sucks is you're right. This does detract from it. I know. It does. You know, it, it already, this is already now the too many men goal. And, and again, like, I'm not, I'm ticked off at John Cooper.

Not because he should care about Nazim Cadry's narrative or, you know, anything like that. But like, I, I don't know, man. It's, it does. It takes away from a great moment and a great comeback. And, you know, Nazim Cadry. It was interesting. Doing the live blog last night, I really didn't notice Nazan Cadry for most of the game. I mean, you noticed him in the sense that because he was making the comeback, you look for him.

And he was playing a fairly regular shift. But he didn't really do anything. You know, not only in terms of scoring chances because we weren't even sure he'd be able to shoot. He didn't sit anything up. There weren't any, like he didn't seem really involved in the physical play. And then he scores this goal, the goal of a lifetime. And, you know, for a guy that, you know, we know his history in Toronto with the suspensions and then, you know, happens again with Colorado. And then, yeah, you talked about the journey this year.

It's a great story. And I wish we and everyone else was leading with that today instead of John Cooper cheering up at a press conference over a play that doesn't get called 90% of the time. You know, one thing I also want to hit on is, you know, we've talked about this, that. You know, usually the NHL asks teams that aren't participating in the Stanley Cup final. Hey, like, can you kind of keep your significant news? Just hold it for a little bit. And this year, I'm feeling like, wait a minute, the Flyers did John Totorella. And now the Florida Panthers have gone ahead and hired Paul Maurice in Sunrise to be the new head coach of the Panthers.

Andrew Brunette doesn't get to continue. the interim tag, you know, usually you hear, the interim tag is removed. No, Andrew Brunette, Jack Adams nominee, historic season in some ways for the Panthers, not good enough to retain his job. Well, like, when you heard about potential candidates like Andrew Brunette might not be safe in Florida,

did Paul Maurice, was that one of the names that came up to you? Because it wasn't for me, and I'm just curious, like, you're reading to this because it's not like Paul has a history of taking teams that are on the verge of winning over the hump. You know, he's got the one trip to the final in, in 2002, right? With 20 years ago. 20 years ago. And you can argue that team kind of punched above its weight more than it was a, you know.

That was a good team. I mean, they beat my Leafs. That was a good team. But that was 20 years ago. Pre-cap, pre, you know, full-on dead puck era. and he has not had a lot of winning seasons since then. He took a very good Winnipeg team to the conference final. I think he's gotten out of the first round four times in his career.

I think somebody was telling me he made the playoffs like nine times out of 20 seasons or whatever it is. Yeah. No, he was not on my list. And here's the thing with the Panthers. I know a lot of people were very, very, surprised that this was even a question. And even you heard, you know, towards the end of the season, people were like, oh, I mean, clearly Andrew Burnett's going to keep the job unless there's a disaster in the playoffs.

And then they win in the first round. And, you know, even given how badly it went against the lightning, I think there were a lot of people just assuming that he was safe. And I didn't necessarily feel that way. My feeling was he did a good job, clearly. but he did a good job with a good team. He wasn't their guy that they wanted. Obviously, with the Joel Quenville situation,

they were forced into making a move. That team was 7 and 0 when he took over. He kept it going, disappointing end in the playoffs. You know, I looked at it and I said, if you've got a chance at a real upgrade and this team is this good and it's this important for your franchise

to strike during this window, I think you look at it. I think you absolutely take a look. And I was thinking along the lines of, you know, if Barry Trots wants to come to Florida, then yeah, I think I make that move. And, you know, maybe Bruce Cassidy or, you know, somebody like that, I will tell you, Paul Maurice was not on my radar as a guy that I make this move for. And I was very surprised. And I sort of theorized yesterday that I, you figure something must have happened behind the scenes. And that doesn't mean anything like nefarious or, you know, it, but it.

makes me wonder if either, A, they heard some things from players in the exit meetings where, you know, a player might, you know, said, hey, you know, either we don't like this guy or, hey, against the lightning, we weren't prepared and here's what we did not do. Or whether it was, maybe it was sort of a Barry Trots thing or, you know, let's keep our options open and eventually enter Bernanke goes, guys, you can't just keep me dangling here. If I'm not the guy, then let me go. and then they are now stuck where, well, we didn't get Barry Trots. We ticked off our guy. Now we got to go and find the best guy available.

And maybe that's that's Paul Maris. I don't know. We don't know yet as we're recording this, whether he's even going to stick around in the organization. Apparently he's been offered that. I can't imagine that you would want. Like, I know Pierre LeBron was the one who reported that, hey, listen, they've offered him a chance to stay on in another role.

And whether that's a scout or maybe an assistant. I don't know that you could be the assistant coach. that might be really weird. We've seen interim coaches do that. You know, be the interim coach and then go back to, but that is when it's, they're very clearly the interim guy. And they certainly aren't Jack Adams. No, I don't, I don't see how you can be the Jack Adams runner up and then just take it, take

it back into the. Yeah. I mean, it's, and it's, it's easy for me to say that because there's not, there's only a couple of coaching vacancies right now. And, and still some very big names available. So it's no guarantee that he gets suggest. So it's easy for me to say, oh, I'd walk. But I'd walk if I were him.

And even if you go be an assistant somewhere else, I don't want to stick around in Florida after, you know, even if I can understand him looking at the upgrade, if the job that he did last year wasn't good enough for them, then move on and find a better. find a better situation. I mean, the only other guy I can think of, and you would know this, like, that was, I mean, Ted Nolan won the Jack Adams and then didn't go back.

Like, to be a Jack Adams nominee and not go back the following season, I mean, this is almost, like I said, I think Ted Nolan's the only other one I could think of, right? Where I think it, I think it may be. I mean, and, yeah, you know, and we've seen situations where guys leave and the Ted Nolan's situation I think was a little bit different. There were some personality things going on there. You know, we've seen, we've seen cop winning coaches. We've seen Mike Keenan go to St. Louis.

We saw Barry Trots just a few years ago, jump from Washington and the Islanders. I don't know that we've ever seen other than Ted Nolan, a team move on from a Jack Adams. We've certainly seen guys be Jack Adams finalists and then very quickly get fired. a year later or even during the next season, but to not even make it to opening night, I off the top of my head. I can't think of any other examples of that.

No, no, it's, yeah, certainly it's a rare, a rare situation. Want to pick your brain real quick before we open up the mailbag, listen to some listener questions to via voicemail. The award show, initial award show happened on Tuesday night. And we joke last week, I said, you know, you should have written the jokes for Kenan Thompson.

And I had the laugh at the way the show ended where it was like, clearly he was getting a cue in his in his ear. Like, we have seven seconds. He's like, hey, congratulations for the least for winning something in June. Say yeah. Like it kind of, it was a very awkward cold out. Yeah. That's a good line. Yeah, they clearly had a hard out for him.

I thought he did a good job. The show was good. You know, I thought, I said yesterday on the other podcast and I thought it got a little schmaltzy at times. Like it kind of got a little over the top with the like, we're all good guys. And, you know, here's all our inspirational stories. But I had some other people tell me like, hey, you're sitting in Canada. This is on ESPN, the fans don't, some of the people watching this don't know these stories. And okay, you know, I get that.

I thought Keenan Thompson did a good job. I thought the, unfortunately, there wasn't really anything in the voting results that we could get furious about. I mean, I know some people are trying, like they're trying to, oh, there's one guy. who didn't vote for Matthews or McDavid out of 200. Let's be mad at him. I thought the voters got it pretty much right, or at least close enough that there wasn't anything too ridiculous. Good show.

Look, I like the full-on cheesy NHL award show with sketches and monologues and musical acts who don't know anything about hockey and celebrities, mispronouncing names. I love that. Maybe I'm the only one. So I don't necessarily want this one hour condensed version to stick. But it wasn't bad.

I thought they did a good job. Speaking of the awards here, in fact, we got an email here. It's kind of, again, like I said, open up the email. We'll listen to a couple of voicemails too. I want to remind our listeners, the athletic hockey show at gmail.com. The athletic hockey show at gmail.com. Jason writes in, and it's a little bit of a long way to get there to the question, but let me read this out because there's some

a little bit of fun here. Jason says, hey, seems like Ian missed out on my Arizona adventure of eating a 22-inch, three-pound hot dog prior to a deep-ax game. In keeping with the tradition of emails about eating food challenges, Sean made the point of saying he does not take on eating challenges. It reminded me of when I was back in college. Due to financial constraints, I would enter pizza eating contests. The contests were free, but this bar had races to see who could eat two full pies. I never won, but I was consistently fed for free looking back one of the best financial decisions at the time. That's brilliant.

Just enter food contests if you don't have to pay. There's no entrance fee. Yeah. What's, what's that part doing, though? Like, what's, I don't understand the business model here. Yeah, I, I, I'm not a, I, I'm not a food contest guy, but I, college me, I would have definitely been in on that. Yeah, you and I used to go to a place in Ottawa called the James Street Feed Company. Yep. Imagine if they were just, it's free,

you know, all you can eat wing night, contest, we would be there all the time as students. I remember we went one time for one cent wings at some place. We had to. It was called Zuma's. Zuma. Pay wings.

Holy, I honestly think they must have found like every uneaten chicken wing from the last month and saved it and thrown it under a heat lamp because those were the worst chicken wings. It was in a fact. You remember? Yeah.

It was like under a heat lamp. Yeah. And you know how this worked? You would give them a quarter, like a 25 cents. You give them a quarter. They would give you a ticket that allowed you to have 20 wings.

It was 20 wings for 25 cents and they called it penny night. Yeah. Yeah. Unbelievable. I mean, I was young and starving and I'm paying a penny. and I'm still like, I'm not getting my money's worth on this.

This is no good. Anyway, by the way, Jason's real question here. I got a question for Ian and his balloting. Ian, how and why did you leave Michael Bunting off your Calder Trophy ballot? Was a question of age or was this just to stir the pot with your co-host? That's from Jason. So listen, I really appreciate these types of questions. Because I think it's really important when you have a ballot for a major award,

that you are transparent, accountable, and, you know, ready to defend your decisions. These are, these are significant decisions to make, right? And so I don't want to hide behind it. So I want to tackle this question. And like, for me, the Calder Trophy came down to two players for me when I was like, who should win. It was Moore at Sider and Trevor Zegris for me. Like in terms of who impressed me the most, who did the more.

And at the end of the day, I looked at the, I'm like, this has to be cider. Like, this is unbelievable. What this kid is doing as a defenseman. So that became clear to me. Cider 1, Zegris 2. After that, it was very open for me. And I absolutely considered bunting. And age wasn't a factor for me.

Age, like, I saw the people saying like, oh, Michael Bunding is 25 or whatever. I don't care. That's not, don't blame Michael bunting. That's not he's eligible. That's the rule. You work. Okay.

The issue for me on bunting, and by the way, I voted Austin Matthews first for the heart trophy. So I hope people don't think that this is me, some anti-leaf thing. But in voting Matthews for the heart trophy, I think, I don't want to say Bunting rode the coattails, but there was a, there was an element of me that thought, what would Michael Bunting do without, like,

like, what would Trevor Ziegress do riding shotgun with Austin Matthews? Like, what would, what would Jeanotte do from, from, from, from, from, from, from, from Nashville, riding shotgun with Austin Matthews. And so that kind of went into it for me. I thought Austin Matthews had a historic season, and Michael Bunting was a beneficiary of that. And so that was a big part of it for me. That I thought if he was on a different line,

if he didn't have as much time with those guys, if he was doing different things, I think that would be a part of it. I thought what Swayman did in Boston, given the position, given the fact that there was a lot of uncertainty, there with Rask, I thought that deserved some consideration. So really, that's why I left him off.

And it wasn't, you know, anything to, you know, anti-Toron. Like I said, if there was an anti-Torano sentiment to any of my voting, I don't think I would have gone Austin Matthews first. So that's my rationale. You can tell me if it doesn't make sense or. No, I did that that's valid. And, you know, Ian's not some homer. I mean, I found it a little weird that Brady Kachuk was on your Calder ballot.

that was a little bit of a strange choice, but, yeah, you know, whatever, it's fine. Yeah, there you go. Listen, why don't we listen to some voicemails here? We got a couple of them. And we want to remind you, anytime you want to hit this up with a voicemail, the phone number is 845, 445-845-845-4-45-845-8-4-5-8-4-5,

why don't we start with Chris from Vegas. And I know a lot of people, I don't know, when, I don't know how or when we can watch this in Canada. But on Sunday, ESPN is going to be airing the E60 documentary unrivaled on the Aves and the Red Wings. Do you even know how we can watch this in Canada? No, I don't, but I would assume it'll make its ratio pretty quickly. Yeah.

TSN tends to work with them. We'll figure it out one way or another. Yeah, we'll get here. But anyway, a lot of people are super excited for this coming out on the weekend. Aves Red Wings rivalry. And Chris from Vegas has a question for us along those lines. this weekend ESPN is showing their documentary unrivaled about the seven-year war between the Red Wings and the avalanche.

And it was quite possibly the most intense rivalry amongst the greatest players at the highest level in relatively modern hockey. 15 Hall of Famers across two teams during that time frame. Not sure we'll ever see that many in a rivalry again in the Cap era. So my question you guys is, who won the rivalry? Does one team stand above the other, even if only slightly? In my book, Three Stanley Cups for the Red Wings is the tie break. but how do you guys see it?

Good question. You know, and it's actually one I'll be honest with you, Sean, I've never pondered who won the rivalry. Like, because you look at it and they won five Stanley Cups between them, Red Wings in 97, 98, 02, Aves in 96 and 01. I guess if you look at it, like Chris says from there, because Detroit had more cup wins, I suppose you can say they won the rivalry.

I'm more inclined to think that this thing was wash. Like, yeah, I, I, I, I kind of, I sort of reject the premise of the question that we, that we need to pick a winner for a rivalry. I mean, I feel like the great, a lot of the great rivalries, that's what makes them great is that you can't pay. Like, who won magic versus bird, you know, who won? Whereas other rivalries, like you can say who won Manning or Brady? Tom Brady won that one. Which is why it doesn't rank as one of the, you know, the all-time great rivalries the way that it could.

I don't want to pick a winner. I just want to say it's a great rivalry and that's that. Now, that said, if we want to, if we want to pick a winner, yeah, looking at the Stanley Cups is one good way to do it. The flip side of that, and certainly if you're a Colorado fan, you're going to say, yeah, but these two teams, as much as they hated each other in the regular season, this rivalry was forged in the playoffs, they met five times in the rivalry years in Colorado won three out of the five.

So maybe that's, you know, maybe that's Colorado. That's their claim to it is, yeah, you won the Cups, but the years he didn't win the cup. It was because we knocked you out of the playoffs. I don't know, Detroit would probably counter that, yeah, you know what, but the main thing was we won the, we won the big fights. So, you know, we won, we won the Verde de Waugh fight. We won, well, McCarty Lemieux wasn't really a fight, but, you know, maybe they pulled that out. You know, to give you the cheesy cliche to answer, who won, we all won, because it was about the friends we made along the way.

And it was about just watching this amazing epic rivalry that is, if not the greatest in modern history, the NHL right there with the Battle of Alberta, I think is the only other one you could put next to it. It was amazing to see. And then I don't feel the need to declare a winner. All right. Yeah, I like what you said there. Like, yeah, it's the friends we made along the way.

That Detroit, Colorado, I don't know that in our lifetime we'll see a better rivalry. I just don't. For ever, star power. We never will. And by the way, hey, speaking of which at the award show, Claude Lemieux sitting with, what was that all about? I don't like that, man. I know he's Sider's agent and we talked about that, but I don't know. he doesn't need to be sitting with like with with the red wing with Steve Iisman and

everything like come on man like let's let's let's keep the k-fabe on this we don't uh you know let's can you imagine if cider like walks as a free agent or like holds out or something just claude lew playing the long game then just right back to being the most hated guy fingers crossed on that one yeah no it is it almost feel you're a big wrestling guy but it almost feels like you know when when there's like stage stuff and then you see that they're actually buddies or whatever. You're like, what? This is really weird to me. Exactly. Exactly. You can't

do it. Yeah. All right. We got one more voicemail. This one comes in from Samuel, from North Carolina. He's got a question for you, Sean. And we were just talking about the award show earlier. And every year there's a first and the second team All-Star team. At the end of the season, first team all-star, second-team all-star. Well, Samuel's got a

potential proposal here along those lines. I have a question for Sean. to whether there was the justification for adding an official third team to the NHL All-Star team selections. I understand that way back in the 30s, up to even, say, the early 2000, when there wasn't as much elite talent level that it was okay to only have two official teams. but now that the talent level has really started to rise, I just can't help but think that it's time to add an official third team to the NHL all-star team.

And I'm wondering since Sean is a great historian from a historical point of view, what that makes sense to add it now. Thank you. Bye. All right. So I guess answer the question here, Sean. Is it time because of a better player pool, more teams? do we need a third All-Star team at the end of the season?

Yeah, and at the end of the season, because I got to admit, when I first heard this, he confused me. And I thought he would met like in the All-Star game. I'm like, we're going to have like a, like, they're just going to wait to play the other. But no, he's talking the real All-Stars, the meaningful ones, which is the postseason, the first and second team. Could we have a third team? We could.

I mean, I don't know that the reason to do it is that there's more talent than ever before. I mean, every generation has, you know, has talented elite players. And, you know, there were lots of guys when we were growing up who didn't get much all-star love that, you know, we're absolutely elite-level players. But, yeah, you could do a third team. The NBA has a third team, I believe. NFL doesn't. But you could.

It would just be, you know, a little extra bit of marketing. And the interesting thing is we have all the votes. going back. So you could even do it retroactively. You can even say, like, all right, these guys are now, you're now a third team all-star from five years ago, because we know that you finish third on that. You know, this is, Alexander Ovechkin was probably a center back in 2013, too. We can get him on the third team for that finish, finish it all off. But I don't, I don't hate the idea. I mean, you know, the argument against it would be that, you know, we don't want to water it down or

anything, but I don't know that it would all that much. And it would give you an extra chance to kind of highlight some of the better players. I don't mind the idea. One more email here. Let's get this one here from Grady. Grady writes in, hey guys, Tyson Jost was traded from the Aves to the Minnesota Wild. After he played 59 regular season games for Colorado. Stanley Cup rules say that if you played 41 regular season games with a team or

one game in the final, your name is on the Cup. So help me out here. Does Tyson Jost get his name on the Stanley Cup this year if Colorado wins? My mom is a big North Dakota fan where Jost went to school. We need you to solve this debate. Thanks and appreciate all you do that comes from Grady. No, he does not get his name on the Cup. He's not a member of the team anymore.

The rule that you're citing only applies to guys that are on the team. This is the same reason that, you know, Mike Gartner's name is not on the Rangers Cup in 94. You go on down the list, there are lots and lots of guys who have been traded midway through a season in which their team won the Stanley Cup, and they do not get their name on the Stanley Cup. It doesn't get a ring, does not go into the history books as a Stanley Cup winner. Sorry, apologies to your mom.

Gartner's always the one I think of because I think he played like 70, did he not play like literally right up to the deadline? It was like a late game. A late trade deadline and, you know, he's a guy, 700 goal guy, played 20 years, never won a Stanley Cup. And, yeah, that's always remembered as a tough one. But, yeah, no, he does not. You're not on the team. You're not on the cup.

All right, let's wrap up the Thursday pod like we always do with a little this week in hockey history. You know what? It's funny. We started this show talking about controversy and overtime. And we got an overtime team to. to this week in hockey history. June 21st, 1999. June 21st, 1999,

the NHL announced a radical new format for overtime. Starting in the following season, each team would receive a point for a game that is tied after 60 minutes. With an additional point,

some would call it a loser point, handed out to the overtime winner. And then, we should also point out, the league also said, we're moving to a four on four overtime format. I think that gets forgotten too. Like we used to have five on five overtime. And if nothing happened, everyone got a point.

June 21st, 1999, a complete overhaul of the overtime system, Sean. Yeah. And I've been very vocal of my contempt for the loser point or the winner point or whatever you want to call it. Bonus point. Bonus point. It's terrible. the fact that we have some games worth more than others, the fact that we incentivize teams to play

for overtime, which they very clearly do. It makes the standings into a joke. It's terrible. It's a day one change when I become commissioner. And having said that, sometimes people are surprised when we talk about this change, which was in 1999, I actually don't hate this one. even though this is the birth of the loser point. And it's because of the context here. So back in 99, the problem was overtime was five minutes. It was five on five. No loser point.

You know, just it was a tie if the game ended after that. And overtime was very boring back then. Because you had two teams that in their minds, the thinking was we already have a point in the bank. Let's not risk it by trying to get two points. and maybe we turn over the puck and we get scored on. So overtime, which in theory should be one of the most exciting things you can see, was very, very dull. And so the NHL did two things.

They switched to four on four to open it up. And they introduced this loser point, basically said, you know, you're now not losing anything if you get scored on. So you might as well go aggressive. You might as well go exciting. And it did work. There were a lot more overtime goals, you know, a higher percentage. of games being settled in overtime.

Now, back then, the game could still end in a tie, though. So if you didn't, if after five minutes, nobody had scored, okay, it was a tie. And that's why the standings back then have four columns, which looked really weird, because he had ties and overtime losses. But, you know, the rule did do what it was meant to do, which was encourage teams to not play for the tie. Now, the problem is, five years later, we bring in the shootout. And now we don't have ties anymore.

So the problem that you were solving in 1999 doesn't exist anymore. Now, go ahead and be boring in overtime for five minutes. That'll just get us to the shootout. We're still going to get a winner. And yet the NHL kept the loser point. And they've given us all sorts of nonsense reasons. Oh, it makes the playoff race is closer, this and that. No, it doesn't.

It inflates the records. That's the only reason that we have this thing. And we all know it. But back in 99, it actually wasn't a terrible addition. I would have liked to have seen just do four-on-four and see if that helped before they changed the point system. But it wasn't terrible. The big problem was that we didn't dump the thing immediately

once we had the shootout and the problem that this point was solving was no longer a problem. Man, it's crazy. The summer of 99 had the Brett Hall foot in the crease and then this, right? Yep. Yep. And it was a big...

And this, even the strange thing is, I don't remember this being that controversial at the time. Like, I don't remember this being something people were really furious about that they were doing. I know a lot of people were confused by the standings, you know, like my team is 23, 17, 6, and 4. Like, what does that even mean? What does that even mean? But, you know, it wasn't bad. I remember the thing was the number of the percentage of games that were being settled in overtime.

I think it was something like 20 or 25% only before this rule change. And it went up to 40% or maybe it was even closer to 50%. So the rule worked, but also the number of overtime games increased. Because, of course, teams were like, wait a second. We had, you know, games more valuable. We get it to overtime. And that should have been what everybody saw and went, oh, wait a second, this is the problem here. And this has led to what we have now where if you're watching a tie game in the third period,

instead of being excited, you're sitting there going, oh, let's watch these two teams dump the puck in while they wait for overtime to come. we should get rid of it, but I don't hate the way that it came into the league. You know, it's where you say you don't remember a lot of controversy around it. But really, like, what were the outlets in 1999? Like, there was no internet. Like, so really, unless you were going out complaining about this with your friends. I mean, or like Kevin Allen wrote about it in USA Today or not. Well, you know what it was back then?

It was, did Don Cherry yell about it on Saturday night? Yeah. That kind of set the whole thing. But, I mean, there were, there were, sports radio. There were, you know, the newspaper columnist and that sort of thing. You know, we, it wasn't like today, you're right, where, I mean, the smallest thing happens and you got a hundred people yelling at you about it. But it was, you know, it was, we did have some, and the skate in the crease being an example. I mean, that was a big controversy of, for a lot of

that summer and the fact that they, you know, sort of tried to quietly get rid of it after the damage had already been done. And this, which, you know, you're right, it was a radical change. Kind of just slipped by. But, you know, it did what was meant to do. And I've never, I'm never, I never want to criticize the NHL for thinking outside the box

because this league almost never does that. And this was an example where they did. I just wish they had been smart enough to get rid of it once the shootout arrived. But by that point, the GMs were hooked on the inflated records. Yeah. That's right. Hanging around. Job protection,

as you like to say. All right, we'll leave it there. When we hit the show next week, we'll have a Stanley Cup winner because game seven, if it goes to the seventh game, it will be wrapped up by then. So I'm sure we'll have a lot to tackle. We want to thank everybody for listening to this latest edition of the Athletic Hockey Show, Thursday show. A reminder, you can email us any question, the athletic hockey show at gmail.com. Leave us a voicemail.

And we'd love to actually hear. If anybody else has had one cent wings at some point in your life, please let us know. Because that was weird. Now that you've mentioned that, The penny wings. They were awful. They're so bad. I still remember them.

I don't remember anything I learned in university other than don't go out for one penny wings. Yeah. One set wings. You can also leave us a voicemail with any of your questions or anecdotes, whatever. 8454-4-4-5-8459. Not a subscriber with us.

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