The Athletic Hockey Show - The Cole Caufield revenge game

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

Sean McIndoe, Frankie Corrado and guest co-host Shayna Goldman discuss the Habs last second win vs the Minnesota Wild, with Cole Caufield scoring the winning goal vs Team USA General Manager Bill Guerin's team. The crew debate if Guerin will regret not taking the diminutive high scoring American born winger to the Olympics, if the NHL needs to add an eye in the sky for egregious calls missed by referees, like the phantom trip in Montreal on Tuesday night. They celebrate the goalie fight between Alex Nedeljkovic and Sergei Bobrovsky, and wonder if the Canucks could have received more for Kiefer Sherwood if they held onto him a bit longer, before Sean and Shayna add their thoughts on TSN's exclusive, powerful interview with Linus Ullmark on his mental health.Hosts: Sean McIndoe and Shayna GoldmanWith: Frankie CorradoExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff DometTake our listener survey: http://theathletic.com/survey26Watch full episodes on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowJoin our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/VTm9VjkFSubscribe to The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. What up, what up. I think that's what we say to start. The Athletic Hockey Show Wednesday edition, I am not Sean Gentilly. Sean's off this week. So it's me, Sean McIndoo, pulling hosting duty. And in order, like any great team for us, it's somebody's not there. It's next Sean up.

And the closest we could find to the next Sean was, is Shana Goldman joins us. Hello, Shana. Hi. Yeah, I'm Sean today. It's an honor. Usually I'm Boy Dom, a girl Dom, but today I am Sean. If you really want to be Sean, you have to have some kind of meltdown before the show about some kind of technical issue and then really get wound up and then take a deep breath. What up, what up. Welcome to you at the lot of hockey show. That's it. That's usually how it starts. That is every pre-show. And, And just at random points in the show, if you could just drop, like, random Pittsburgh references that nobody else gets. That would be fantastic.

And you heard the voice of Frankie Corrado over there. Frankie's back. How are you, Frank? I'm good, buddy. Yeah, nice to be back with everyone. Got a lot going on. And it won't stop snowing. It's cold.

It feels like we're in Siberia here in Toronto. I hate it. And I just can't wait for some better weather, buddy. I wish I had something more creative to say. than that. Pretty soon we won't be in Siberia. We will be in Italy for the Olympics. And Frankie, we got to talk about Team Italy and your Team Italy roster. How's that going over in the hockey world? Oh, buddy. Well, yeah, I just got back from the consulate, actually. We were having a little meeting. Me, Lou, Mike Pecca, Mike Ritchie, Jack Capuano, Piero Greco. That's our staff.

That's what we're going with. And then I compiled a team, basically. If you have Italian heritage or if I think you have Italian heritage. If your name ends in a vowel, you're on the team. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, Shane Pinto might actually be Portuguese, but I've selected him for team Italy. So we'll see how that sort of shakes out.

Somebody was trying to put Macklin-Celebrini on the team. Is that? Well, I put one together initially in like five minutes. And then I realized, wait, I have Sorrelli on the team. And I had Zuccarello on the team. Zuccarello's, of course, going to play for Norway, Sirelli playing for Team Canada. But then I went back with the brass at the consulate,

and here's what we got. You want my lines and parings? Absolutely. Yep. All right. Mangapani, Pinto, Valardi, Bertuzi, Fantilli, Amadio, Vitrano, Donato, Fabri,

Sonny Milano, Valeno, Mantha, the Falino brothers, and Kyle Palmeri. This is not in any particular order, by the way. and then on the back end, Ferraro and Peschi, Fabro and Carlo, de Mero and Marino,

and DiAngelo and D. Simone. And then in net, Sebastian Kosa, Damian Clara, who's actually on the team, he's actually Italian, and Mikey DiPietro. There's our squad,

if we could do it that way, the Heritage Squad. That's a metal team right there. And if the goaltending doesn't work, I feel like at some point, the lights would dim, the music would hit, Roberto Luongo skates out wearing the gold medal from 2010 and takes over.

That's perfect. All right. And we got to talk snubs. I got to mention one name I didn't here on that roster was Frankie Corrado. Where's you don't have the game legs? Like what's going on? You know who I forgot? Shane, I felt so bad about this.

I forgot Matt Coronado. Like how could you forget? Like that Matt Coronado. and I don't have him on my team. What am I doing? How do I, I forgot about it. So I did feel bad about that. It's okay.

It could be an extra forward. There's, you know, there's been so many injuries this season that I feel like even this Italian team, if we're going to be realistic and it feels like we are, right? Because you took out players

on other rosters. You added an actual Italian goalie. You blurred the lines a little bit on players nationalities. That's okay because we are team, Shane Pinto, making an Olympic squad. He should be on Team USA.

So I think having snubs to debate and a potential injury replacement just made this team real. Yeah, I don't disagree. And I mean, speaking about players that should be on Team USA, did Cole Coughfield have a night last night? Did he do it or what? Oh, my goodness. What did we think about that performance? Cole Cofield snubbed from Team USA. and he gets a chance in front of Bill God.

I'm assuming Bill Garon was in the building, but certainly Bill Garon's team made a bit of a statement. Scoring with 13 seconds left, something like that. Gets the winner. Lane Hudson has a good game as well. Another snub. Is Bill Garon now rethinking Team USA? Well, of course not.

I don't think yet, not yet, but if you lose, if you lose by a goal, you have to be. Answer me this. Okay, here's today's trivia question. Over the last three years in the National Hockey League, who's got the most game-winning goals? Give you a hint. He had one last night. It's our favorite short king. Come on.

It's Cole Cofield. It's ridiculous to me, like, that he didn't make the team. I can't stress it enough. Like, I would have had him on there. I get it. He's short. Okay. Can we get past this?

the rank. Everyone's like, you can't have a short. I mean. Yeah, exactly. Everyone's like, you can't have a short player like that on Team USA. If you want to say you can't have two short kings, I'll have the conversation with you. It comes down to Brinket or Caulfield. But like him scoring goals, I think we've talked more about Jason Robertson's level of

Petty because it's like Central Division, potential round one playoff battles. But Cole Cawfield going to no, no, we're going to start that party early that when Bill Garan is home at the end of February with the silver bronze medal, if he's lucky, right, at this point, when he goes to sleep at night, he needs to close his eyes and all this sudden that goal like replays through his head with like selim dion backdropping it that's what needs to happen for him to not make that mistake again but i i fear it's you know no one's learning from this no one's no one's changing their tune they're like no no we're good with our roster as mid as it may be well and i guess we we always talk about these big moments whether it's the playoffs and we haven't

really had best on best other than the four nations but that was a big moment and we talk about the clutch gene and how do you quantify that? And for me, the best way to quantify it is, do you score game-winning goals? Do you score goals to tie up games, latent games? Do you score overtime goals? Like, those are the big moments in games. And sometimes with the nature of where your team is, right? Like, you're not in the playoffs every year. Montreal got there for the first time in a long time last year. But from what you can tell, Coughfield does have that clutch Gene. No one scored more game-winning goals in the last three years than him. And last night, it felt like a little bit of poetic justice because it was against Minnesota. It's Bill Garron's

team. And the player who he gets away from in the coverage is Brock Faber. And Quinn Hughes is on the ice as well. So you got away from two of the top defensemen for USA when you score that goal. That's like the cherry on top. That's the little extra hanging on the rim on the slant. of that goal by Coffield. And then to add to it, the Montreal Canadiens Twitter account just tags USA hockey and just throws that thing out there and just lets it burn on Twitter for everyone to see. That was excellent. I got to say as far as NHL team Twitter accounts, that may be the best tweeted a year.

Apologies to all the hardworking social media people who are constantly making players do like cute little trends or answer questions off a whiteboard as they go on the practice ice. But that simple one word, one tag, I think that got the message out there. And yeah, do you think we're going to get like the Phil Kessel tweet from Cole Cofield at any point? Something I should be doing. No way. No way. He's not that kind of guy.

He's not, he's a really like personable, like not the Phil isn't, but like he's just, he's just, he's just so smiley and happy and I don't think he wants to, I don't think he would want to do anything to, to rub it in anyone's face or draw any kind of negative attention to himself. He's, he's a, he's a really interesting guy to be around in morning skates and stuff. Like he's always beaming. He's just,

it doesn't seem like he's the kind of guy that'll do that. Phil, on the other hand, yeah, Phil would. But I got to say, we didn't think Phil had that in him either. Not the, not the, not the bitterness, but the sense of humor. It's like, you know, when the one quiet kid cracks a joke in class and you're like, where did that come from? Yeah, the teammates would know. Like, teammates would know all about the stories of Phil.

Like the best one from, I played with him briefly in Pittsburgh, but all the guys in Toronto loved saying this one. Like, there would be first shift of the game, go out there, get the puck on the wing, fly down the wing, take a shot on net, come back to the bench and look at his linemates, which was usually like, Bozy and JVR, right? Like that was the line for a long time and just look at them and say, I don't got it tonight. You guys are going to have to do it. I just don't got it. It's one shift.

I don't got it. It's just like the perfect dry humor though that the situation called for. And it's like I wish we saw more of that from players. But if not, at least Montreal, like the Montreal, the account, the being the entity. You know, they took care of it here with like the perfect. pettiness that the individual is never going to bring to the table. And like, I feel like this year we're seeing teams up their game with social media, like Buffalo taking the heated rivalry joke of like them actually being good. You know, that's really nice. That's wonderful. Love it for them.

But Montreal, I think handled it and let, let, you know, the one tweet, the one at do the talking enough here that Caulfield doesn't have to. It's going to be interesting to see what happens if USA does when USA falls short because it's also like this is not an American team. So there are even more ways to make jokes about this, you know, later on this year. So I hope that the teams can keep bringing it so the players don't have to. And shout out to the Carolina Hurricane who took the Canadians behind the woodshed on the whole offer sheet thing a few years ago. That might be the villain origin story we look back on.

Right. Of the Montreal Canadians turning into this. And to your point there, Shana, you know, we're going to talk about. was it a mistake to leave Coffield off, right? If there's no injury replacement, is it a mistake to leave Bennett off? Like all these different scenarios, mistake to leave Hyman off,

it's only a mistake if you lose. If you win, you pick the right team. Like, no one will fault you. But if and when you lose, that's when we'll have all those conversations. But one note on Coffield, as far as like how he does it and why he's so effective this way.

And you brought it up earlier, Shane, about him being smaller in stature. Well, he uses that to his advantage. It doesn't take him much to turn on a puck and to release a puck. And it catches people by surprise. And so you can kind of put it into an area. And that area, it feels like it's a bigger wheelhouse because it's just this short little turn.

It's like if you watched baseball and you watched the Blue Jays run to the World Series and you watched Alejandro Kirk, it's a quick little turn on him. He's not this long-ranging guy which takes more motion and more time and Caulfield's the same way. And so that's what makes his release so difficult to track at times.

And so now you think about it, well, there's not much room on the ice. There's not much time out there. But if you put it anywhere near the guy, he can snap it like pretty quickly. And sometimes a guy that's a little longer with a little more range, you just, by the time he gets it off,

goaltender can track it and can see it. That's Coffield's advantage. And so when, you know, it's going to be tight. Like, it's not going to be much room at the Olympics. That's the micro of, and that's the technical aspect that you're leaving off your team with not bringing Caulfield there. I'm now picturing an Alejandro Kirk sized hockey player. Just bowling ball his way around there.

That guy would be in the Olympic team. That's a forechecker. That's all they want on Team USA. But no, like, that's a really important technical aspect. And I want to add to it, too. Like, it's not like this is someone who isn't used to going up against the best. And I get it, it's not best on best. No matter what at the NHL level, he's not going up against super teams like Team Canada's defense,

which is who we're constantly going to measure USA against. But this is someone who does, you know, play in matchup minutes. It's a consequence of playing with Nick Suzuki. You're going to go head to head with the opponent's best on a nightly basis. And he's pulling it off in those minutes. And to me, that says, okay, like maybe you do have the chops to play for team, say maybe you do. Not first line capacity, obviously, because there's going to be, I mean, the winger

depth would be stronger if you had Jason Robertson at the top. But even still, probably not top six. But say third line role, like, you can play that. And, you know, you have the skill set to make these moves against the NHL's best still. Yeah. Well, and by the way, while we're talking about Calfield, Jason Robertson scored twice last night, and I believe he's at 29 goals now. I think that's also pretty good.

So I think Dallas fans would be, they would be upset if we didn't at least bring that up when we're talking about wingers who are scoring a ton who didn't make Team USA. All right. So we're second guessing Bill Guerin's mistakes. There was a very obvious mistake last night. It wasn't Cole Cofield.

Although it did involve Lane Hudson. He gets a penalty on what can only be described as a Phantom trip. Who was the wild player? It was Felino. It was Marcus Felino. So Filino's backing up and he just, he trips over the blue light.

Just one of those, one of those things that happen sometimes. Sniper in the stands. Somebody got him. Hudson happens to be the closest player and he gets two minutes for tripping. Now, if you go and look at the replay, if you look at where the referee is, you can see how this happens.

because he is the, the Hudson is right between the referee and Felino, so maybe it looks like he got the stick back there. But he didn't. It's a, it's not a penalty. It's a phantom trip. The referee even went over and apologized to Hudson after. What do we think about this? Is this just one of those things where, yeah, mistakes happen? Or as some people I've seen on social media, are we looking at this saying, there's got to be a better way to make sure this doesn't happen.

I want to hear, I have my opinion, I want to hear, I want to hear from both of you. Okay, here's, here's my thought on this. Okay, and first of all, that was, that was Eric Furlat, who's a veteran ref, guys done 1,500 games in the league. He made a mistake. He obviously apologized. It never should have been a call. But I don't think this is something where you need to necessarily have another video review, but there should be some kind of verbiage along the lines of, Bottom line, we get the call right. And if that means you have to have a little bit of a conference with the linesmen who will have some input or the other official who would have some input, it's not the first time there's ever been a call that has been made that has been rescinded after a little bit of a conference. So I think that's where the crew, the officiating crew has to get together and say, okay, I get it. You made the call. You made a mistake. We're not trying to show you up.

But bottom line is we have to get this call right. And that's what should have taken place last night. And if all four of them missed it, well, that's crazy because referees get paid a lot of money. And I get things happen quickly on the ice before people should not have missed that call last night. Yeah, that's a very, very reasonable take. Like, I understand there's always going to be a human element to this because referees, they're humans. And that's what the NHL wants, right? Like, that's why there's gray area in a lot of ways because they want it that.

Every official has a little bit of a range of interpretation on every rule. But that's just, you know, a blatant miss. And say that happens in the playoffs, say it leads to, you know, a game winning goal. Like, that's the moment you're constantly going to look at. So, well, I agree. Every minor penalty should not have video review, right? Like, we would be there forever. I think that it's reserved for things to the higher degree of, you know, double minors and major penalties.

here it feels like the officials on the ice could have quickly done that or it's another reason to have an eye in the sky. It's not the reason, right? I think that we've seen stronger cases for other penalties. Just have that extra set of eyes that is connected by a headpiece, not to, you know, anyone in the booth, but to the officials on the ice that you could quickly in a non-destracting way be like, hang on, hang on, that's not it. Or, you know, you could chime in somehow with egregious misses as well. I think it could help out to have just a different perspective, like an actual on-ice official who just happens to have a different vantage point and instant replays.

And it's not like they have the time in that position. You could say no replays too, honestly. But, you know, to sit there and review tape, you don't have 30 seconds every time a potential penalty is or isn't called. It just won't work that way. But just have someone else from above be like, hey, actually, no, it's the same amount of time I would assume as it would take, maybe even less, to have that conference of pushing a button and calling down being like,

wait, wait, this is what I saw from this perspective. Here's where I'm at on this. I like Frankie's idea. It reminds me of the NFL where it's not rare to see a flag get thrown, the officials huddle up, and they pick up the flag, right? And the referee just go out and say there's no foul on the plate. Because somebody, you know, they talk and somebody says, I saw this or, you know, in the case of last night,

the referee down in the offensive zone skates over and says, hey man, I know you were blocked. I know from your angle it looked like there was contact. There wasn't. And you make it no penalty. The thing that I worry about is another idea from the NFL, which is a relatively recent thing, this idea of the expedited review where there's no challenge, there's nothing like that. Somebody just gets on the earpiece to the NFL official and says, you guys missed this.

This was not a foul. This is what you missed. and they very often it's by the time the first replay is done, it's very quick, they just get on and they announce expedite a review. We've changed the call. I feel like it works okay in the NFL. I don't love the idea for the NHL. And all I'll say is this.

There's a saying in the legal world that says hard cases make bad laws. I think there's a follow on that should apply to sports, maybe, but definitely the NHL, definitely hockey. that says easy cases make bad rules. And last night, this was an easy one. There's not a single, you could be the biggest Minnesota Wild Homer out there. You don't look at that and say, yeah, that's a penalty. We all agree 100%.

And that's what makes it dangerous. Because the classic example of this is Matt Duchesne being offside by 10 feet. Everybody looked at that and said, that's so obvious. That's such an easy call. How do they miss it? What if that happens in game seven? of the Stanley Cup. What if that happens in overtime of a playoff game? Surely we need a system so we can get it right. And we got instant replay review for offsides out of that eventually.

And in 10 years, we have not had a single other Matthew Shane offside by 10 feet case. Instead, we've had nothing but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of goals coming off the board based on a fraction of an inch, stuff that nobody noticed in real time. Uh, because we made the rule based on the easy case, the guy being offside by 10 feet, and then we found out that, oh, right, there isn't actually a way to say, we're going to have this sort of review, but only for the easy stuff, because where do you draw the line? If this call is easy, what about the one that's just a little more great? Do we do that one too?

And it just ends up, I can see a world where we do expedited review for penalties, where if it's obviously the wrong call, somebody, an eye in the sky, whoever gets on, goes in the referees earpiece and says that wasn't a penalty. Guess what? Now every single call that happens in an NHL game, we're all waiting around for the expediter. It's too much. It's going to be too much because hooking, oh, your stick was horizontal or, oh, that was actually boarding. Like we can't get into that.

There's no way. Something as egregious as last night, there's no way four guys should be able to miss that. I'm sorry. There needs to be some kind of conference. And as far as all the officials in that game, there's a lot of experience, right? Like Eric Furlatt, veteran guy, 1,500 games. His partner, Brandon, Brandon Blandina,

almost 300 games, right? And then the linesman, one's at 670 and one's at 1,800. So, I mean, it's not like those were guys in their first season, calling their first games. There's a lot of experience there.

Between the four guys, there has to be some kind of, like, understanding, Maybe it's a memo between the league and all the teams that, like, we're going to call it. But if it's egregious and if it's a miss, like a really bad miss, or it's a phantom, bottom line, we can get the call right. And that's all that needs to be understood by teams. Huddle up, no replay. No replay.

No replay. No replay. It's unintended consequences. By the way, did you say Blandini for the other official? Blandina. He could be on my team. That sounds like we thought. We've got our linesmen for the team, at least for the skirmages.

We've got that. All right. Great. We will be back in a little bit for segment two. All right, we're back. Before we get back to the show, you listen to us now we want to hear from you. We are asking you to fill out a quick survey about you and your podcast habits by going to theathletic.com slash survey 26. Three lucky entries will win a $100

Amazon gift card. So whether you're a long-time listener or a brand new one, we want your feedback. Go to theathletic.com slash survey 26. That's theathletic.com slash survey 26. The link is also in our episode description. Fill that out. You'll be helping us out a lot.

All right, guys. We made it 20, 25 minutes into the show. We haven't talked about it yet. It's about 36 hours. old by this point. We had a goalie fight. Greatest thing or better than greatest thing? The best, man.

Because goalies are, they're lunatics. They're all nuts in their own ways. It's not like they're not always snap shows, but sometimes they're snap shows. And then once those wires cross and you see them lose their minds, which I've seen countless times probably because like I have been in the way screening them or turning over a pot. Yeah. I've seen so many goalies lose their bodies. Yeah.

And then you just hear the loud like, like, you know what word they're saying when the puck goes in. And then the stare down, you could feel it right through the back of your name bar. But then once their wires cross, it's almost like there's no going back, man. And then when the two of them get into the fight, like I thought that was awesome. And Bob, like, don't you think Bob's tired? You guys played a ton of hockey. And then he's the one flying down the ice saying, we're going? That was wild, but that was a couple things.

The camera review from the other end of him going down the ice. Amazing. Cinema. Yeah, it absolutely was. It absolutely was. And listen, like, if you didn't love Bob already, like, okay, you didn't love Bob. Like, the teammates obviously love Bob in Florida. But how much more do they love him?

The guy just delivered two Stanley Cups to you. It's one of the best goalies in the league. Now he's going down there like a lunatic fighting. And if you're at Nadelcovich, you're like, I'll get some cash a out of this, you know, with my teammates and around the league. That's not a bad thing to have on your resume. I love that.

I don't know who said it, but like no one was leaving their seats after that fight. That was pretty entertaining stuff. And look, it's like you can have your feelings about fighting in hockey. Goalies? I'm not going to say nobody ever gets hurt in a hockey fight when it's goalies, because, you know, Rick DiBietro might argue with me on that one. But you're, these guys are wearing sumo gear. They don't know what they're doing. They can barely keep their balance. It's like watching two, like, koala bear cubs wrestle each other. It's the best. And it was the first time since 2020, first time since the Mike Smith-Camp Talbot. which is a long time. This used to be something that happened every couple of years. Sheda, how do we get goalie fights back in the NHO?

If we had them all the time, I don't think we'd appreciate them as much, okay? We need the officials to not break things up when a goalie skating to center eyes trying to make this happen because it gets a moment like this. And, you know, sometimes you see fights develop. And it's like this quick, you know, snap second thing where a player literally turns their body. And it's like, oh, you're fighting now. You don't even have a minute to think. If you're a goaltender and you are choosing to engage in this fight, you have to skate usually

across the damn ice. So if you so choose to do it, like let them cook. And I think it maybe the perspective would have been a little bit different if it's, you know, the Panthers are up four to one. And this vivy team, the sharks is trying to disrupt things even more. And it's Nadalkovich skating across the ice. No, no, no. It is back-to-back Stanley Cup champ, Sergey Bobrovsky, who is not having a great game,

is not having a great season being like, you know what? I am in in this moment. you have to let it happen. So I think we need it that these happen, you know, like maybe once a year, right? Like a goalie goal. You get it like once a year you're going to get excited about it. It's a rare thing. And you nailed it the key thing, which is these officials.

Okay, I defended the officials in the first one for missing an obvious penalty. Whatever. Who cares? But we've got to send a memo out to the officials saying stop it with this breaking up goalie fights. Because how many times have we seen it? There's like a five-on-five line brawl. Guys are just getting pummeled. It's just absolute chaos.

And a goalie will skate like three feet out of his crease and like all four officials just brush him. Like no, they form a little human wall. No, no. We can't possibly have the one thing that everybody in this arena wants to see. I don't know how Bobrovsky got all the way down there because it was like it was a long skate. He must have like crouched slightly or did whatever the, you know, however you activate stealth mode in the goalie world. Because there were four officials going, it must have been the wind. and then suddenly he was just right there throwing haymakers.

It was a good scrap, too. It kind of reminded me of the old meme of, it's like WWRRA or Smackdown, but that one ref who comes around the corner and then he's just running into the ring down the ramp at full speed. Like that's exactly what it looked like, except it was Bobrovsky going down there to fight. DGB, let me ask you this, bud.

You like goalie fights? You like when goalies snap and lose their minds? You? So you like Jordan Bennington? Because he's your Olympic goalie. Get ready for it. Hold up just a second. My guy, Jordan.

I mean, if Jordan, look, we all saw the three fights in nine seconds last time Canada and USA. How about Jordan Bennington right off the opening face off? Just right down the ice. Take out Connor Hellebuk. That's probably a suspension. Okay. I don't know. If we can get Hellebuck end.

That's a win-win for you. I feel like that works. Yeah. You know what the difference is, though? Like, Bovrovsky and the dog, which these are not goalies who are like constantly stirring up things. Bennington is constantly stirring up things with no repercussions. And I'm not saying he needs to fight constantly. He's never head.

Yeah, exactly. Not a major. If you're going to create issues, you should be fight. Like, I think we'd all have a little more respect for him if we knew that was going to turn into something instead of him just having big loser energy and then allowing a bunch of goals against. Like, I needed that I need more. Like, there's a way to earn my respect. He just hasn't done it. What is, because there's a right answer on this, but you two kids might be too young for it.

What was the most disappointing non-goly fight of all time? As far as either guys who didn't fight or guys who, you know, didn't, tried and got taken out by the officials. Do you have any nominees? Kujo and Mick Magoo? Who did, who did, who did, okay, who was? It was Mick Magoo, right? Kujo goes flying in and then he loses an edge and he takes down Mick McGoo and is,

is he no bucket referee at the time? He might have been no bucket. Well, hold on. Did Curtis Joseph lose an edge or did he sweep the leg? I don't know. To this day, I still don't know. But that's the one where it's like, if you're making a B-line for an official like that, what happens once you finally get face to face?

Are you going to punch this guy out or something? That one was so far. Shade, I don't even know if you read this. This is Battle of Ontario like early. 2000s. And Kujo's mad because he's given up a goal and he thinks it's interference. And he charges over at Magoo and he slips. And he takes out Magu's legs. Magu falls on top of him. And like there's this moment where you can just tell Curtis Joseph is like, did I just get suspended for 20 games in the middle of the playoffs? Like what did I just do? And then Magu's like,

okay with it. And then like Kujo kind of half-heartedly goes back to arguing with him, like a little bit like, hey, that was interfit. No, I'll go back to my crease and that was the end of it. So that's a pretty good nomination. Shana, do you have, do you have any? No, because I thought, I'm like thinking, I'm like, what is the one you're thinking of one specific instance? We're wrong otherwise.

So it's a trap question here. Yeah. Well, I'll give you. I'll give you two. And these are both, again, these are old timers. So I understand if, if some of us may not get the references. One of the most famous goalie snaps of all times. is Ron Hextel in the playoffs on Chris Chelios going after him where he just like during a whistle just attacks him in in a late 80s, Habs, Flyers.

And that one to me is up there because you know who the goal he was for the Montreal Canadiens that night? Patrick Waugh. Patrick Waugh. Oh my God. Patrick Waugh never fighting Ron Hextel is like the equivalent of like Hogan and Flair never headlining WrestleMania. Like, it's that, and that was the night it could have happened. But it was like a young Patrick Waugh. But he is involved in the all-timer, which is we all remember with apologies to Hextel and Felix Pothin,

who I think are the silver medalists for goalie fights. The most famous goalie fight I would say of all time is Patrick Waugh and Mike Vernon at the fight night at the Joe, the famous avalanche Red Wings brawl. Patrick Waugh and Mike Vernon go at it. And Vernon wins the fight. Waugh gets cut up. One year later, Patrick Waugh fights Chris Osgood, kind of gets, you know, a little bit of the revenge there. We almost had part three of the trilogy because there was a game between the Avalanche and the Red Wings,

where Patrick Waugh got involved in his own crease and the Red Wings goalie came all the way down for part three. And you know who that Red Wings goalie was? Dominic Hasick came all the way down the ice to fight Patrick Wa. And I got to say maybe the most exciting 10 seconds in NHL history was him making his way down there. And he gets down there and then what happens right as he gets there. He slips. He bowling balls into the pile picks up the spare and the officials jump on him. And we didn't get Dominic Hasick versus Patrick Gua absolutely devastating.

Yeah, that would have been all time. Perhaps the time. There's nothing like having the headline. It's the same in boxing. It's the same in UFC. It's the same when we get the heavyweight tilt in the NHL. When we get Deloree versus Olivier, like, that gets going on Twitter. Everyone stops what they're doing and they're like, I got to see this one.

What would be, right? That's what that would be the heavyweight battle for now. I mean, is it Bennington? Or is Binnington the Jake Hall of Gold. Ooh, I love that. Okay. So Shane, I played minor hockey with Jordan all the way up growing up. So we go way back.

Binner is like this scrawny, skinny guy. And the joke always was that like couldn't bench press a plate. And then he finally could bench press a plate. And it was his Twitter bio. Like I can bench press a plate. So he's not like this big, burly, mean guy. It's just like a persona that he has. But I will say this.

I played with John Gibson. this is many years ago now. Like we played together for the Kitchener Rangers and Gibby was built like a player. Like he was big and thick. Like he was more built than a lot of us. Like the guys that were defensemen and players on the team. He would be like my sleeper pick for a goalie

that would do some serious damage. I like that. I like that Lux now I'm like thinking old Central Division. Like now we've gotten, you know, Red Wings Aves and it's like, you know, that would be a really fun to do like a final. But it's like we can go. Detroit blues and get a nice goalie tilt out of that. That would be a fun one.

And I think Jacob Markstrom, I've seen his wires cross and I've actually seen him fight in the HL. I was on the ice for it. I think chances are I was doing something ratty. I actually know for a fact that I was doing something ratty. And he fought and he's pretty good too. And shout out to Nadelcovich now, one of five goaltenders to have a fight and a goal in his career. Pretty good company. Billy Smith, Mike Smith, Chris Osgood, and of course, Ron Hextel.

Not bad company to be in. Okay. I guess there was other things other than goalie fights. I mean, if we have to, what else? Oh yeah, there was a pretty big trade. Kiefer Sherwood goes to San Jose. I don't know what would feel more unlikely heading into the season. Kiefer Sherwood being the big one of the big deadline names or the San Jose Sharks being buyers? Question mark. What did we think of this deal? Well, credit to San Jose and the players and Worsowski because they've put themselves in a spot where they're not sellers. And they're making this trade because, yes, they want help now, but they're not all in right now.

And they realize that there's a chance they can sign this guy, have some. hardened skill in their lineup, which is something that's not easy to come by. They'll have the cap space to make it happen and kind of keep this thing rolling as the years go on here. But, you know, I don't know what you guys thought of the return. It was going to be hard for them to get a first round pick. It was going to be hard for them to get like a high-end prospect in this kind of deal because as much as Keeper-Sherwood has done well the last couple of years, there's not like this huge pedigree here of him being a consistent 20-30 goal score.

He hits a lot. He's involved in the play a lot. He's had two good years in a row when push comes to shove like 60 career goals and a guy who was a tweener up until three years ago. So I think the return was pretty much as good as it was going to get. If you wanted to hold on a bit, you could have if you wanted to if you're Vancouver. But I think this was probably the offer that you take and say, okay, we're going to move on and try and use these picks.

I'm torn on that with the timing of it because I do wonder if they waited could they have gotten more for teams who are up against the cap and go they need someone cheap, they need that. He feels like to me a final piece for a contender, right? Like you look at who he's played with in Vancouver and I think that's something that better's his case too because you're playing with guys like Danton Heine and Teddy Blucher and, you know, Drew O'Connor. The list is not great. It's not like he's in a true top six role and I don't think he's meant to be. I think, like, in a perfect world on a contender, he's right in the middle six. He's at secondary score. He's tough to play against.

He can kill penalties now. Like, he can score big goals and he can hit a ton. And that kind of player, we've seen teams overpaid for in the past, but it's tough to say, like, some bottom six centers bring back first round picks, but centers are always valued very highly in this league. A Blake Coleman brings back a first round pick, but it's two playoff runs of him. What would have helped, Sherwood, I would think, is the fact that there aren't a ton of utility guys like that on the market.

So Vancouver could have waited. But on the other hand, the risk is too many buyers potentially fall out of the race because it does feel like we're starting to get some separation between teams in the playoff bubble and teams that are going to sing to the bottom of the standings. So it's a tough one for Vancouver in that regard. I would have liked to see them push for more, but maybe it wouldn't have been there. But I really love it for the sharks. And I didn't think I would because, again, I thought this was a piece for a contender, not, you know, a fringe team. I could have seen a team like the Boston Bruins being like, that is who you need to solidify your case as a playoff team when I don't think they're in the. right position for it to be spending assets after they started retooling. Sharks have had assets forever.

And it's not just the draft picks that they've had and drafted highly. It's all the ones they've collected along the way with just some really smart move. So why not? You can afford to move two picks if you're San Jose. You can also afford to invest in his next contract, which a lot of teams, I would say, okay, buyer beware here because yes, on the surface, sure would looks like this impressive goal score over the last two years, but the streakiness and the ups and downs and writing high, you know, high shooting percentages. We've seen it come down and what, you know, what goes on from there is games not nearly as effective when he's not scoring goals.

But the sharks can afford it, right? Like if he ages like Darren Helm, who's one of his comps for this season, it's a little bit worrisome, but they have a ton of cap space and they're going to have to fill out a roster somehow. And I also feel like he's going to be playing higher in the lineup there than he would elsewhere. So like put him on a line with Celebrini and Will Smith and let's see what happens. Like I'm all for this for the sharks.

Yeah. And I think we all presume that the sharks will. We'll re-sign him. Although, I mean, we've got six weeks to the trade deadline, four weeks of that, you know, three or four weeks of actual NHL action. If sharks fall out of the race by the deadline, who knows? Maybe they turn around and flip them. But I think the interesting thing with him as far as why does Vancouver do it right now, 17 goals on the season, over half of them, nine of those goals in October. I got off to a great start.

He's been not as productive since then, and maybe you don't want to let that get to the end of February and see how it goes. Worst case, he's always going to hit, right? Like, he'll always have that. He'll be one of the hits leaders in the NHL. He'll play with energy, but it's hard to count on goal scoring for a guy

who's got 60 in his career, and the majority have come over the last two years and DGB, like you said, early in this year. Before we go, I just want to chime in with something. Three years ago, Matt Barzell is chasing down Kale McCar around the net. McCar falls and trips. Referee's arm goes up. Penalty is coming.

Kail McCar goes to the official and says, hey, he didn't trip me. I just lost an edge coming around the net and guess what happened? They rescinded the call. They took it back. No penalty, no power play. Three years ago, that happened. So there's no reason why that couldn't have happened last night in the Lane Hudson. It sounds to me like what you're saying is Felino should have gone to the officials.

You're blaming. Yep. Felino, a dirty liar. I am not calling him that. I'm saying. To say that to a team Italy teammate, that is going to make things interesting in the room. We might need that linesman. That's my captain from the Sudbury Wolves, Marcus.

and you know what? He knows about gamesmanship and how to win games, even though they lost. Wait a second, wait a second. Wait a second. Gamesmanship. Not quite sure how that works. I don't apologize for nothing.

Frankie, what are you up to you this week? What do we got going on? Oh, you know what? I'm actually, I'm sure you guys know the news of Mickey Redmond, who's going to have surgery. So I'm actually headed to Winnipeg to fill in with Kenny Daniels on the Red Wings broadcast on Saturday night. So I'm really excited for that.

It's an honor and a privilege to work with Kenny and call a game for an original six franchise. So I won't be, won't be, you know, won't be like Mick. There's no way I'll ever come close to Mick and what he represents for that fan base,

but I'm super grateful to get the opportunity to fill in for him. Awesome. We will keep a nice. eye out for that and we'll talk to you next week and uh shana and i will be back segment three okay we're back shana though i guess the other piece of news uh we heard from lenis almark finally he did a sit down with tsn pretty pretty interesting stuff uh talking about his absence from the team talking about the uh the rumors that went around talking about the statement that the team put out.

Did you see the interview? What were your thoughts on that? Yeah. Watch the interview. I hate that he was forced into the spotlight with this when a person, a player, you know, I think sometimes people forget, like, these are people, right? I know it's like easy to think of them as like an object in a game that you watch, but like this is a person with a life and spewing stuff can have repercussions.

So it's unfortunate that he was put in the position where he couldn't have just focused on his own mental health and doing what he needs for himself, but now this is what you come back to. And I know, you know, if you have the privilege to be one of 64 goaltenders at the NHL level, give or take, you know, you're going to be put in the spotlight and this is what comes with it. But at the end of the day, I just feel like he shouldn't have had to, but he did. And I think it's an important listen for anyone of what someone might be going through and, you know, why you should be empathetic about it. But I think where my brain keeps swirling is this debate of how the senators have handled it a little bit more of should they have faced the rumors head on. And in a way,

you could say given the rumor's life. And the other side of it is if you don't and things keep swirling. I keep thinking about the Connor Bessar rumor a couple years ago. That was so ridiculous, but it just went off the rails. And maybe it's different here because this isn't, you know, rising superstar corner of your cornerstone of your organization trying to like settle things down so they don't have to listen to it but it's still a person it is and i i get the argument against the senators handling the way they did especially with with the statement um because you ended up with the night that statement went out suddenly they're talking about it on TSN. A couple nights later, they're talking about it on Hockey Night in Canada to broadcasts

that wouldn't have addressed these rumors. So suddenly, you know, I'm getting text from my parents saying, like, what's the deal with this goalie in Ottawa? It did kind of fan the flames. But a key part of that interview last night was all Mark saying, I love that they did that. I love that the team put that statement out that Steve Steyos kind of came to my defense. to me that that kind of puts it to rest. If the player involved is like, I love that they did that, and wanted them to do it

and wanted them to get ahead of it because, you know, as he said, I'm getting texts. So before the statement comes out, he's already getting these, you know, texts from friends and, you know, whoever is saying like, hey, is everything okay? I'm hearing about all this stuff going on.

the player wanted the statement out there or appreciated it once it got out there, that's enough for me. And the same thing with the interview last night, clearly, that's something where I'm sure the senators are involved in putting that together, obviously, but that's not the senators pushing a guy out in front of the camera saying you have to talk about this. That is somebody saying, I want to go out there and talk about this and sort of, you know, for lack of a better term, maybe clear my name and just talk. through what does it feel like to be in the middle of something like this? And as far as I'm concerned, even though I had some, you know, some criticisms of the statement at the time it came out, if the player involved is saying, no, you know what, I loved it. That was fantastic. That's good enough for me. I'm, I'm ready to sort of put it to rest then. Yeah, I agree with you. Like, that, that's all like you needed to hear of him saying it. And, you know, he humanizes

a situation some more. I get it with goal. He's like, you take off the mask and now he's sitting down and it's like a vulnerable thing he's doing. So, you know, credits to him for that. With the team statement, I think the fact that it came from the general manager and, you know, from high up is most important here. Right. It's not like the coach in a scrum is doing this or the players in the locker room had the responsibility. I feel like Steyo's doing it. It kind of not absolved, but it took the pressure off everyone else to handle the situation and then everybody else started chiming in as they felt comfortable to do it. And it was such a strong statement. This wasn't some like fluff piece thrown out there.

It was like, hang on. So if you're going to do it, do it. And I will give a lot of credit to that. Yeah. And it almost in a way, you know, I think I was like everyone else. When I read the statement, I was like, holy smokes, man. That's a, that's maybe a little over the top. But maybe that was the smart way to do it. Because that kind of made Steve Steyas, not the villain in the story, but one of the main characters in the story. Now everyone's pointing at him saying, did it. Was the language too strong? This and that. Maybe it takes some heat off the rest of them. The last thing I'll say on this is, you know, if Allmark wanted that statement out there, if Allmark wanted the team to come to his defense, great. I think that's, as I said,

that's all I need to hear for this particular one. I guess the one caveat I throw out there is this won't be the last time something like this happens. Players take leave fairly, you know, fairly common these days. Very often there's not any information released. There's no information. Sometimes that vacuum gets filled with nonsense. I guess I would just say to everyone, let's not the next time this happens on some other team,

that player might not want the attention and might not want the statement from his. So if a team doesn't put something like this out, let's not all go, oh, that must mean it's true. because the GM isn't putting out this forceful statement. You know, every situation can be different. And if there's a player out there who says, no, I don't want to dignify this with a response.

Let's not all jump on this and say, okay, well, that tells us that this was obviously real. You know what I mean? Yeah, all good points there, Sean. And hopefully Omar gets back when he's ready and everything, you know, can be put to rest and he can just focus on his own mental health and none of this chaos.

So, Sean's power, you know, went out. So now our Sean's per 60 rate has absolutely plummeted for this episode. So thanks to Sean while he could manage to be here and to Frankie. And thanks for listening to The Athletics Hockey Show. The boys return next Wednesday. And Haley and Gentilly have the next show tomorrow.