The Athletic Hockey Show - The Edmonton Oilers are in a spiral, the Pittsburgh Penguins are rolling, and Cale Makar's epic 3-on-3 goal

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

In their first show of 2022, Ian Mendes and Sean McIndoe discuss the Oilers hitting a boiling point. What happens next, a coach firing or a trade for a goaltender? For Connor McDavid, is this the biggest waste of generational NHL talent ever? Then, with the Penguins surging, does Tristan Jarry get votes for comeback story of the season, and does he have a shot at the Vezina? Also, Cale Makar enters the goal of the year conversation with his 3-on-3 OT goal vs Chicago.Then, with the mailbag overflowing from over the break, Ian and Sean tackle questions about a coach's challenge in a recent game, the World Cup of Hockey, and a listener comes up with a famous celebrity in a Panther's jersey to de-throne Sean's Walter Cronkite pull.To wrap up, in "This Week in Hockey History", Eddie Shore's epic journey to make it to a game in a blizzard, Wayne Gretzky returns for his 1000th game after missing the first half of the season, and more.Have a question 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.

Hey, everybody, and welcome to your first Thursday episode of the Athletic Hockey Show here in the calendar year 2022. As always, it's Ian Metis. Sean McIntyre with you in this slot ahead on this podcast. The Edmontonoyler season appears to be careening off of a cliff. We'll discuss the latest there as things feel like they're reaching a boiling point around Connor McDavid, Leon dry-siddle, Dave Tippett, and Company. Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh Penguins, they're at the opposite end of the spectrum. winners of nine in a row, are we believers in Pittsburgh now, and maybe more importantly, do we believe in Tristan Jari?

Plus, we got a jam-packed mailbag segment here, lots of listener questions that we gathered over the holidays, and a little this week in hockey history, which chronicles Eddie Shores unbelievable journey through a snowstorm back in the day just to make it to a regular season game. So we got all of that coming up in the next hour or so. We say a happy new year to our list. listeners, if you haven't been with us during the week,

and a happy new year to you, Sean, as the two of us, by the way, are coming at you live from one of the only places, or not live, but live to tape, whatever, from one of the only places in North America that's pretty much locked down. So we got nowhere to be right now. Exactly.

Yeah, this podcast is going to go nine hours. Yeah. It's all we have to do. Yeah. And we should point out, by the way, no Granger things this week. Jesse Granger, we've been told his in jury duty, which I'll be honest with you. Yeah.

A little suspect here for somebody who lives in Vegas. Exactly. If I'm going to be, listen, by the way, you can't contact me for 10 days. I'm going to be sequestered, air quotes, in Vegas. Like if your spouse goes to Vegas on a business trip and then you can't reach them. Yeah, I got jury duty. It was wild. Yeah.

Have fun on jury duty. Jesse. Yeah, good way to do your civic duty. Yeah. Yeah, he's going to be milk that one for all it's worth. He's going to be pushing for the, pushing for the verdict to, you know, to be postponed, all that stuff. Yep.

And if you get sequestered, if you're doing a, on jury duty in Vegas, like, are you at one of those, like, casinos, your hotels? Like, where are you sequestered? Where does this happen? I don't know. Like, are you, like, outside the, you got the roller coaster outside of, your window or something like that. I don't know.

That's a good question. We asked Jesse next week, maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he's still some questions. Yeah. Hey, listen, let's get right into it because, uh, did, like, if you had to pick one situation in the NHL, like it moves around, right? Like, a few weeks ago, it was Vancouver and like, it depends, right?

There's always a Philadelphia has been through it. There's always this sort of boiling point, uh, moment for teams. It feels like we've gotten there with that. They lose again on Wednesday. Feels like I said off the top. They're careening off a cliff. You hear people that cover the Oilers that around the team and even from an arm's length, Sean saying time to get rid of tippet, time to trade for a goalie.

I mean, what do you do? Do you do both? Do you do neither? Do you do one of those things? Yeah. It's a mess. And, you know, you said it, right? We go around the league on this sort of thing.

but man, there are certain places we seem to have more stops than others. And Edmonton, here we are again. It's unbelievable that especially when you look at how that season started, when they win nine of their first 10, they're just absolutely smoking teams. And you're looking at them saying, man, they're going to win the Pacific. They might coast to this thing. And here we are, a couple of months later. And it's all happening again.

It's spiraling. I'm a Leafs fan, so I know an 18-wheeler when I see one, and here we are. So, yeah, what do you do? I mean, the easy thing to do is to make a coaching change. That's always the easiest thing that you can do. And, you know, I like Dave Tippett as a coach. I think he's a good coach. I think he's done a good job in Edmonton.

Not a perfect job, but I think he's, I don't think he's the problem. But as far as the solution, if you're looking at. looking for something right now. A lot of times that's where you wind up. And then, of course, we all put two and two together in Ken Holland and the Mike Babcock connection. And that's been denied. And, you know, there are other guys out there.

But the issue here with this team right now, it's beyond anything in coaching, it's two things. It's goaltending. And it's the depth. And goaltending is probably the one that you can address more quickly. because it's a case of probably bringing in one guy, but you've got to find the right guy. And you've got to clear the room to do it because that's the tricky thing about

goaltending, right? Is any other position, if you're, you need to improve the blue line, you can bring a guy in and say, okay, this guy, we think he's going to be our number two. And then he ends up, you know, maybe he's not as good and he ends up being your number four. Okay, we'll bring in another guy and we'll just keep shifting guys down.

And you can't do that with goaltending. You got two, you know, virtually no NHL team runs with three guys. So what do you do with Miko Koskinin? What do you do with Mike Smith? You know, neither one of these guys have been especially good. This year Smith's barely played. Koskinen's been the starter, hasn't been good. You got Stuart Skinner.

He's been good, not great, but, you know, this rookie who hasn't really had an opportunity, do you want to take a look at him? You got three NHL caliber goaltenders on your organization right now, none of whom are playing well enough that you want to trust a year of the Connor McDavid experience in the playoffs to them. So who do you go out and get? There's not a lot of goaltenders typically available during the season. It's a real challenge.

This should have been addressed in the off season and they chose to roll the dice with they have. It hasn't worked. And boy, Ken Holland's in an awful spot right now. Now, what did you make of, like, Dave Tippett had some pretty pointed comments about Miko Koskin. And they lose on Monday to the Rangers. Tippett says after that game, I got the quote here, I thought we did a lot of things well. Our goaltender wasn't very good.

And we didn't find enough pucks at the net. And then a little bit later, he said, if you recall, Kaskin kind of had that mishap behind the net with the puck. Tippett said it was a brutal mistake. It's a brutal mistake. What are you going to do? Call it what it is. It's a brutal mistake. So he used the phrase brutal mistake three times.

And then Koskenen says, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go to a finish outlet. And I'm going to speak my mind. And Koskenin did not appreciate being called out by his head coach and tells the Finnish newspaper, quote, it must also be said that in the six games I lost, the team scored seven goals. I can't score goals. It's not always up to the goaltender alone. to win or lose.

So it feels like things have been ratcheted up here. Now, when I think about all-time coach, goalie, kind of public airing of the grievances, I was actually in the room, Sean, back in the day. 2006 Stanley Cup playoffs, Tampa, Ottawa, John Tortorella, coaching the Lightning, makes the infamous comment about his goaltender, John Graham. I'll never forget it because Tororella gets to the podium

and he just says, I'm just sick of the 25% rule. And of course, that was, he felt like 25% of the shots were going in. That was a, I think that's the all-timer for me in terms of a coach just throwing a goalie under the bus. Did Tippett, did Tippett's comments cross a line in any way, shape, or form in your mind? I mean, they crossed the line of what we're used to hearing from coaches, which is you almost never, here's something like this, it's become one of those unwritten rules that no matter how badly

your goaltender plays, and we've certainly seen some goaltenders have terrible games, terrible stretches. You just, you don't say it. And, you know, you always talk about, it's a team game or, well, we didn't give them help or, you know, this or that. And

look, I mean, nothing Dave Tippett said was untrue. Michael Koskinen had a bad game. And it was a brutal giveaway that a brutal mistake to lead to that goal for a fragile team that's been given up the first goal all the time. And, you know, it was, it was, nothing Dave Tippett said was inaccurate. And maybe in other sports and leagues wouldn't even seem all that odd. but in hockey, especially with goaltenders, it's something that's just not done. And so, you know, for Miko Koskin and to fire back probably didn't make the situation any better.

But, you know, he's not wrong either. He's not getting any offensive support. So it's, and it's, that's tough on go out there knowing, man, I need a shutout tonight because we only, we might only get one or two. So, you know, it was just, it was unusual to see it play out that way. And, you know, the other piece of it, and, you know, Dave Tippett has said that, well, it was, you know, my comments were taken out of context. I was asked specifically about the play. I didn't just come up to the podium and start tearing him down. But the thing that was interesting is even above and beyond the quotes that you read, like, there was clear frustration from Tippett in that sound bite.

I mean, this was a guy who was much like Tortorella, if I remember it, there was, you know, just a level of frustration that normally gets hidden from us when when coaches talk to the media. So again, it's just this thing's going off the rails in Edmonton, and you can just feel the frustration building. And sometimes that means little cracks get formed and some things spill through that maybe ordinarily we wouldn't get a glimpse at. And of course, this is all happening while Connor McDavid continues to lead the league in scoring. and the storyline, the narrative always comes up. You're wasting McDavid's prime years.

You're wasting the greatest years of a generational player. And I want to talk about this for a second because I want to take our listeners back to Mario Lemieux's first handful of seasons in the National Hockey League. And if you look at this, Mario Lemieux's first six years in the NHL, Sean, they missed the playoffs in each of his first four seasons.

they won one playoff round in his fifth season, then they missed the playoffs again in year six. So it's awfully similar to McDavid. And remember, within that, Lemieux is getting the 85 goals, the 1099 points. He was at the absolute pinnacle of his game. And then all of a sudden it turned around.

I mean, the Ron Francis deal helps them. They had all sorts of influx of talent and Recky and Stevens and all these guys elevated. But I think are we starting to think that now McDavid is going to be the guy. Like early Mario Lemieux was wasted because we never saw him really in the playoffs. Is this where we're headed with McDavid? Are we in that conversation where people are going to say this is the greatest waste of a generational talent ever? Yeah, we might be getting there.

And, you know, there have been other guys depending on how you want to define generational. I mean, Steve Iserman for the first almost decade in Detroit, that that was a bad team that, you know, didn't really go anywhere. But, yeah, I mean, Mary Lemieux had been sort of the gold standard. Because remember, this was back when 16 teams in a 21 team league made the playoffs. And they're still missing five out of six years. And, you know, up until this year, that was the comparison for McDavid. And the problem for McDavid is now we're in year seven. and year seven is when Mary Louon breaks through and the penguins win the cup.

Now, it's worth pointing out both of those first two years that the penguins finally win the Stanley Cup, they didn't have great regular seasons. They were still like an 80-something point team. So, you know, if you're an Oilers fan and maybe you're going to cling to this comparison and say, well, okay, you know, even halfway through that first year where the penguins finally broke through. There were still a lot of questions about what this team was and whether they had the right pieces. So maybe that's it. Maybe you're saying, okay, the year seven is the breakthrough. Maybe we get that for Carter McDavid too. But yeah, we're into uncharted territory. Put it

this way. If this season goes the way that it looks like it's going, then we're probably at a point where you could say that there has never been a truly generational player who's coming to the league and had this little success at a team level over his first seven plus years. Because Mario was the only other guy that I can think of with apologies to, you know, Steve Eisenman and Eric Lindross and guys like that who I think maybe were just not quite at that tier. There's never been somebody where it's been this long that you're waiting for that success. You know what's funny is I just thought of another guy who if you see where he was drafted, and you see his career resume, you'd be like, oh, yeah, 100%.

That guy's a, that guy's a generational talent who played on a bad team. And yet he very rarely enters the conversation. That's Marcel Dion. Yeah. Like, yeah. And does Marcel Dion kind of fit the bill a little bit? Maybe, I mean, he sort of, he could. Yeah.

And it's one of those things too where, you know, some people would say that, you know, is Marcel Dion a generational player? Well, maybe not because he didn't win the cup. Well, then, you know, so he can't be a generational player who didn't win the cup because he didn't win and you go kind of circle around. Marcel Dion is the best player, I would argue, in NHL history, to never win. And in fact, he never even went to a final. But it's, you know, was he at that Mario, Connor McDavid level? I mean, the numbers would say so.

He was the all-time leading score in the NHL, I believe, at one point or at least, you know, as the active guy. He was behind Gordy Howe. But, yeah, it's, I guess you could, you could dig back. But boy, if you're, if you're an Oilish fan, you'd rather have the Mario comparison, knowing those two cups are down the road than the Marcel Dion where you look back and say, just never got close. Man, like, it is. It's one of those frustrating things, I think, for, for Edmonton fans to see that.

And what do you do if you're Ken Holland? I mean, there's, NHLGM's constant. constantly, constantly are telling us that we need patience and it takes so long to make a trade. And it's so, our jobs are so difficult. I mean, you can hear the clock ticking. What more do you want McDavid and Dracidal to do? They're both having potentially career years from guys that, you know, you wouldn't have both already played at MVP levels.

And, you know, are you really going to let this tick away again with the goaltending? The depth, you know, the depth is. tougher because it's almost a whole bottom six that you need. If that was the only problem, and I think we've said it before on the show, you can get to the deadline and pick and choose a few veteran guys to bring in and supplement the depth. But the goal tending, I mean, what do you do?

And the other piece of this is the one guy, if you look at goaltenders that are available, there's a few names that would maybe make sense. The one I really like is Jake Allen. You've got to think Montreal would be willing to potentially move a guy given where they're at. Maybe not with Kerry Price is up in the air, but that would make a lot of sense to me.

But the big name is Mark Andre Fleury. Do you go big? Do you go for that guy? And I mean, every oil fan right now is just shaking their heads going, we got to make another deal with Chicago for a veteran. After we got Duncan Keith and they didn't retain any salary, which is partly why we're capped out and in this situation. man, it's tough.

And boy, Ken Holland, a guy that 20 great years in Detroit, lots of cups and wins and contenders. And it's, what have you done for me lately? And in Edmonton, he hasn't done enough. And so the heat's on big time. I wonder, and you brought this name up earlier. As you think about Holland's success in Detroit, the back half of his tenure there, he is linked to Mike Babcock. And they want to stand the cup together in 2008. back to the finals in 2009,

we're a perennial playoff team with Babcock behind the bench. Is there any scenario that you can see Mike Babcock coming back? Because remember, when he left the game, it was under a kind of a cloud of, I don't know if this guy is compatible with coaching athletes in the year 2020 and beyond. I mean, is the hockey world ready for Mike Babcock? Is he what's needed at Edmonton?

Because I think if you look at potential replacements in Edmonton, he would be the first name on the list, just given his previous connection to the general manager. That's it. It's the connection, right? Because, I mean, he left on, Mike Bab got left on bad terms on a couple of levels. There was, you know, the stuff that came out about his treatment of players.

And he also had a very talented Maple Leafs team going nowhere. So it's, he's done in the in the year since he was fired in toronto he's done sort of a couple of attempted redemption tours uh that i don't think have gone very well uh you know i if you were looking for uh strong evidence that he's he's learned from his his mistakes uh i'm not sure you really found that and though so i i don't think he's at the top of my list if i'm an nch lgm but i'm not ken Holland and it's the NHL, right? Everybody's always reaching back into the past. What players have I had before? What coaches have I had before? Whose dad do I know? Who was I roommates with in college?

It just seems like it's always, you know, this web of connections and who are you connected to? And that's it. I mean, Ken Holland has got the Mike Babcock connection. And that's why everyone's pointing to it. And we should say again, he was asked about it. Ken Holland was. And he said, no, that's not something that we're looking at. So you take that for whatever it's worth. The other thing that was interesting to you, I saw this somewhere and I hadn't realized it, that Ken Holland has never fired an NHL coach in his time.

He had his coaching changes in Detroit. He had Scotty Bowman, who retired. He had Dave Lewis, who didn't do a great job, but got to the end of his contract and was then not retained. and Mike Babcock the same thing. So, you know, midseason or otherwise, he's never gone to a coach with a contract and said, we don't want you to do the job anymore. So first time for everything, but it's just another layer to add to this.

Man, so Dave Lewis didn't get fired in Detroit? That's what I saw somewhere. I'd have to double check it, but he, that he got, it certainly wasn't a midseason change and that he was basically allowed to get to the end of his contract. And by the way, apparently Dave Tippett is in the last year. of his contract. So if you're looking for true to form for Ken Holland, it would be to see this through to the end of the year and then make your change then. And that's usually the best time to make a coaching change because there's more Canada. You can talk to people's

assistants or anything like that. But again, the clock is ticking. This is another all-timer season from two of arguably the two best players in the world on the same team. And you got another season ticking away. It's a real tough situation. And you know what doesn't make it any easier is every time you look in the standings and you see Vancouver's won again. Here's a team that made a change. Brought in a guy. Some of us thought it was a good move. Some of us didn't. And they're unbeatable. It's turned the season right around. And it's got to be tough to look at that and say, man, is my Bruce Boudreau out there and who is it? And, you know, should I be making that? move sooner rather than later.

You know, as we talk about the struggles of the Oilers, we look at the opposite end. You see the Pittsburgh Penguins, you want to talk about a team that has been sort of built around two generational players for the better part of a decade. It's been Crosby and Malkin, and yet they're not the driving forces right now in Pittsburgh's nine-game winning streak. I mean, it's truly remarkable to me that Pittsburgh has won nine in row because, look, they've got a 15-year run of making the playoffs, 15 years in a row. They only missed in Sid's rookie season.

That was it. 0506, after that, they've made the playoffs every year. Every year we wait and we're like, I think this is it. This could be the year. And I think coming into this year, we thought if there was going to be one undoing of the penguins, it would be Tristan Jari and net.

And I sit here. And I think a lot of us in the hockey world have to eat some significant humble pie or crow on Tristan Jari. Sean, his numbers right now is we flip the calendar due to January of 2022. 24 games, a 16-5-and-4 record, a 9-34 save percentage, a buck 89 goals against. If I'm looking at a player who has maybe changed the narrative the most around him or deserves a comeback player of the year award,

I'd be hard pressed not to give it to the Penguins netminder because he's having a Vesna caliber season. Yeah, and comeback player of the year not. Usually we talk about comeback from injury or, you know, illness or some sort of personal situation. This is just a comeback from being bad. I mean, he was, he was not great last year.

I do think that people remember his season last year being worse than it was because of how it ended in the playoffs and that he wasn't great in the playoffs and had a couple of those visible, like memorable errors that overtime give away and that, you know, his numbers weren't terrible last year. But that was at the top of everyone's list for Pittsburgh going to the offseason, right? Was you got to get a new goaltender.

Go get flurry. Go get whoever. And apparently may not need that because, yeah, Tristan jars turned it around and that's goaltending, right? Who knows in this sport? And this is part of what makes it so frustrating, whether you're Kent Holland and Edmonton or, you know, any number of guys anywhere else around the league where you're looking there saying, I don't think I have the goaltending.

Well, it's kind of like the weather in some places, right? You just wait a while and sometimes the problem fixes itself. sometimes the guy you thought was no good turns out to be no good. And sometimes you get, you know, Sergey Bobrovsky, who was lousy for two years, and then he was great for two months. And everyone said, oh, there's your big comeback. And now he's kind of iffy again. And you're holding your breath if you're Pittsburgh.

But look, I've been banging this drum since before the season started. I've said over and over again, the Pittsburgh Penguins are the one team that I cannot figure out and that I cannot get a read on. and I said that at the start of the year, I said that when they, you know, started off reasonably well. I said that when they lost, I think it was eight or nine of ten at one stretch and then win five, lose five, and now they're unbeatable again. I don't know. I throw my hands up with this team. I don't know how, you know, without Evgeny Malkin, without Sidney Crosby for much of the year. sure let's let it be the Evan Rodriguez show why not

that's uh you know who knows of this team all that I know all that I'm willing to say with with any sort of level of authority is you know two things number one if they get everyone healthy in the playoffs and nobody's going to want to play them and number two is until then Mike Sullivan is a real good coach because he just whatever you throw at him

he just seems to keep a steady hand on the ship and there have been so many times or the last few years that you could understand if the penguin said, all right, this is not the year. But Mike Sullivan just keeps it chugging along.

You know, I wonder, you mentioned usually comeback player of the year is the guy that comes back from a catastrophic injury or some circumstances like that. I wonder if we need to come up with an annual award

for the guy who takes the biggest beating on social media and then turns around and lets the, his play silenced those critics. Because I would say if you go back to the summertime of the off season and you look at Pittsburgh Penguins fans talking about Tristan Jerry, I hope he saves some.

Like, there should be a thing where we just save the receipts and then we put the stats up. And then it's like comeback player from the, you know, the most social media adversity. That's what you need. You call it the Trolley Award. And the trophy is a corn cob with a bunch of receipts around it.

And yeah, we could get that, man. And that would be a coveted award, too. Tell me you wouldn't want to watch that speech at the NHL awards where that guy gets up there. Yeah. Yeah, I got some people to thank. Here they are. Oh, yeah. And you just.

Penn's boy 420. Yeah. I'd like to thank you. Here's what you said about me. Oh, man, that's, that would be good. I'd much rather have that than the, you know, seven good sportsmanship awards that we have right now. Let's bump a few of those and I think you're on to something. Exactly.

And you get to roll up to the podium with the song, How Do You Like Me Now? Playing in the background. Yeah, exactly. It would be fantastic. This is the trolley. This absolutely has to happen. The trolley award.

Hey, I want to ask you about Kail McCar's goal this week because it was a jaw-dropping highlight real goal where the Aves defenseman, showed off his world-class skill in overtime. And, you know, as I think about it, and we've all, I think, Sean, as hockey fans, we've kind of bemoan the fact that three-on-three, some of the skill and the creativity has gone and sort of evaporated from that portion of the game. McCar brought it back earlier this week with that unbelievable goal in Chicago. I'm thinking, and sometimes this is where recency bias starts to play tricks in your mind.

I'm like, man, that might be the nicest three-on-three goal I've ever. ever seen. So help me out here. Kail McCar's goal in the time that we've had three on three hockey in overtime, is that at the top of the heap? Boy, that's, uh, it's, it's got to be up there. I mean, we've, I still like three on three a lot, but I'm, I've sort of fallen in the category that says that, you know what, three on three, you got to get the end to end. You got to get going back and forth trading two on ones, odd man rushes, breakaways, that sort of thing. Once you get into the zone and you get settled down, that's where it kind of grinds to a halt because there's just not, you got one guy with the puck on a stick, he's only got two teammates to pass to and there's

three guys in between him and them. So it sort of falls apart, which is why you see teams leave the zone and try to regroup and start again and all of that frustrating stuff. This was one of those where it was like, it had been settled down. You know, they'd look like the, the Hawks had it under control. And then Cal McCarrow. I was just like, nope. And I would tell anyone who, if you haven't seen the goal that we're talking about, certainly seek it out, but make sure you find it in real time. This is one of the few NHL plays.

A lot of times in the NHL when there's a great play, you have to see it in slow mode to really appreciate. This one you've got to see in real time. Just to understand and appreciate the speed that it happens. I literally the first time I saw this show up on my on my feed and you know I saw people freaking out about it and I watched the gift in real time. I thought they had sped it up in the middle. Like I thought like somebody was trying to be artsy or something and I was like, oh, it's a. And it took me like seeing it two or three times before I went, oh, that's actual speed.

He actually just mashed that turbo button. It was it was a phenomenal goal. I'm sure everyone's got probably suggestions from their own team for who top three on three goal. But that one's right up there. That was absolutely just under the circumstances given the fact that Chicago seemed to have it locked down. And I've seen a few people have said there's been this debate over how it was played. And people have said, you know what? It was played perfectly well for 99.9% of the league.

But that point, you know, as long as it's not McCarr-McDavid, you'd be okay. But it was, and now it's in the back of the net. Yeah, and it was Kirby Doc, right? Yeah, it was kind of defending that way. Yeah, I feel bad for him because you're right. He's on a poster now. You've been posterized forever. And it's like that guy that Vince Carter dunked on.

Remember the French guy from the Olympics? Back in his day, it's like, that's Kirby Doc. But I don't necessarily blame him. Like, sometimes you just have to tip your cap. Like sometimes you're like, hey, listen, that's a great play. And I also think it's three on three. which there's a touch of the like, I don't want to say it's like glorified shinny,

but it's a little less sort of defensively structured, so to speak. Yeah, and it's not something you're practicing all the time is how do I do a, you know, how do I defend a one-on-one against a defenseman who's cycling back from behind my net? But I will say this, though, here's my one take on the Kirby Dock thing, because I've seen lots of debate and some people were picking screen grabs and I think it was Uchigros was kind of making fun of them

and then there's this debate you know Mike Johnson stepped up and defended him and then Ray Ferraro kind of came in and said well yeah but you know this this is what he did wrong and now Mike and Ray are kind of going back and forth with a little bit of debate I like that we have something like this and we are actually doing something

we almost never do in the hockey world which is we're debating technique on a play, not his heart, not his compete, not whether he wanted it bad enough, but just literally like, hey, here's the technique, here's where maybe he wasn't quite in the right spot or but okay, here's what he was thinking, but was he thinking the right thing or should he have been expecting a different? I love that. You know, you and I, we're both football fans. You see this all the time in football, right? In football, you'll see there'll be a play in the end zone and somebody will go up for it and they'll say, ah, you know, he didn't miss time to jump. the high point, you know, look at this technique by the cornerback, look at, you know,

when they looked here, moved the hand here. And we don't get that so much in hockey. In hockey, we see that play and we go, oh, that one guy wanted it more and he just got it, and that's it. And here, I love that we're actually, and I'm learning some stuff by watching guys who have, you know, a ton of NHL experience debate this. I like that we're actually having a debate about technique and execution and how it was played that isn't just psycho babble about who wanted it more. I would love for there to be more of this. And so thank you to Kirby Doc for giving us that,

even though I'm guessing it's not, it's not playing out super well for him right now. Yeah. And I think what I love too is that you're getting credible analysts like Mike Johnson and Ray Ferraro, who are at complete opposite ends of the spectrum. And you rarely see that too, right? Like you said, hockey is such an echo chamber

that everybody kind of tends to go on one side. So when you legitimately have two extreme, like I would put Johnson and Ferraro at the top of the heap. I love Mike's ability to work analytics into his conversation. And I love Ray's ability to teach me things about the game that I didn't realize. And so I think I would put them at the very top. If not one and two, then certainly both in the top five. And to see them both having a differing opinion on it, it's fascinating. And I think it's great. So it's exactly Yeah. And if people haven't seen them go back and forth, like, they're not mad at each other. This isn't, you know, something like that. They're just making points back and forth about, you know, the situation and how it was played and what where they were trying to do. And it's great. You know, this is, this is why I want former players explaining the game to me. Because both of them have been, you know, not in that situation in terms of three on three, but they, they're guys who play forward in the league. They've defended. I like this rather than just, hey, let me tell you a story about what.

what a great dude this guy was that we usually get. So I, it's, it's, it's been, it's, it's, it's, it's a phenomenal goal. And I, I, I really like the discourse that's come with it. And then, of course, you know, in the background of these two guys talking it through, you've got the usual armchair, uh, uh, superstars who, you know, take, take one screen grab and know exactly that some guy screwed up and is terrible and all of this stuff. But there's some actual real smart stuff coming out of this. And man, I wish we had more of that in hot.

Yeah. This is the point in the show where we often connect with Jesse Granger for Granger things. But like we said, our man is sequestered, or at least he's on jury duty. So he is unavailable to us this week. But that allows Sean to dive right in to our mailbag, which is overflowing with emails that we receive from listeners to this podcast over the holiday. So we got a handful of them here. We want to remind our listeners to. Anytime you want to hit us up, you can just simply drop us an email. The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com. The athletic hockey show at gmail.com. Send us any question you have, thoughts, comments, anything like that. You can also drop us a voicemail at 845-4-4-5-8459.

Let's get the ball rolling here, Sean. Let's start with this one from Ethan. Ethan has emailed into us and says, can you explain what in the world happened during that devil's oilers game New Year's Eve? when that unofficial coaches challenge thing went down. That's from Ethan. And just to give the kind of rundown, quick version of what happened here, that game saw about a 10-minute stoppage in which the devils tried the challenge a call.

The officials got together. And then after about 10 minutes realized, actually, you can't challenge what they were trying to challenge. And then they weren't even assessed the two-minute minor for, you know, the unsuccessful challenge attempt. It was a, it was a super awkward, weird situation. But yeah, Sean, it cost everybody about 10 minutes of real time. So what on earth happened here?

So, okay. So what happened here is this is the, this was the devil's challenging a goal under the relatively new rule that says basically anything that could be a stoppage can be challenged. And this is going back, you know, a few years ago, it was just off sides or a handful of things. And then there was the hand pass and the playoffs and there were some cases of puck hitting the netting. And the NHL basically said, okay, you know what? Whatever should have caused a stoppage, you're allowed to challenge on that.

But with the caveat being that the thing that caused the stoppage has to have been something that the offensive team did. In other words, the team that scores has to have done some. something that should cause a stoppage. It can't be the defensive team that got scored on saying, hey, we did something wrong, so therefore give us a do-over. And, you know, the example would be a high stick, playing the puck with a high stick. If the offensive team plays a puck with a high stick and then as a result of that ends up scoring a goal later, you can come in and say, hey, that should have been stopped. They played the puck with a high stick. They got an advantage by doing that. That goal shouldn't count. What you can't do is say, we play. We play.

the puck with a high stick. We did something wrong. Therefore, uh, the goal scored against us shouldn't count. Okay. Makes sense. What happened in this case was there, what the devils were challenging was that there had been a delayed call, uh, against them and that Dougie Hamilton had touched the puck had handled the puck, which should have caused a stoppage and that that's what was missed. And as it turns out, because that is something, an action taken by the defensive team, it's not eligible to be challenged. Now, maybe it should be because, you know, in this case, it's not like playing with a high stick or something where you've done something wrong.

You've done what you're supposed to do, which is get control of the puck. But based on how the rule is written, it's not a challengeable play. Now, that's the explanation of where we wound up. What I cannot explain is why it took 10 minutes to figure this out, you know, and why everyone had to stand around for 10 minutes. But it's a little bit confusingly and maybe poorly written. rule. But that is why ultimately it couldn't be challenged because it was a case of the team

being scored on saying that they had caused a stoppage. And as the rule stands, you can only challenge for a stoppage that would have been caused by the offensive team. Yeah. And like you said, it was the 10 minutes that elaps. I've got no explanation for that. Clearly, somebody wasn't sure on the rule or there was confusion. And that's, there's, there's really no excuse for that.

I mean, it's, it's, the rule book gets complicated and it gets weird. And, you know, I've, I've highlighted that in lots of places, but the people who are doing this need to need to know it. So that was, that was a mistake. Okay. We got some more questions to get to from our, uh, listeners via email. Andy has written to us over the holidays. Andy says, uh, why can't the NHPA and the double IHF work together directly to put on a World Cup of hockey. Why does the NHL need to be involved at all? This could be an easy way for the players to get a larger

percentage of the proceeds or do NHL contracts prohibit them from going this route. So basically what Andy is saying is, hey, how come the Players Association just can't go to the International Hockey Federation and say, let's get this done? Well, yeah, the NHL contracts are the big thing that prohibits them from doing this. But I think the bigger question is, as we've seen the Olympics get punt in for now is why don't we get a best-on-best World Cup involving the NHL, NHLPA, and the double IHF? Yeah, it's, that's the question. As far as the, the listeners question, they've got it right.

It's the contracts that would prohibit that. Basically, you have a contract within NHL team under the NHL CBA. It says that, you know, as part of that, you cannot get paid to play hockey somewhere else, without the NHL, you know, being okay with that. And so that's where it would be prohibited. And, you know, obviously if something like this was tried and somebody got hurt or whatever, then that puts all sorts of things in jeopardy. It's, you know, I remember back to one of the lockouts, I think it was the first lockout.

There was a team of NHL players basically went on a tour and they would play junior teams and local teams. and it was a rare chance to see them kind of do their own thing. But they could do that because it was a lockout. So there was no CBA to prevent them from doing that. Right now, we've got a CBA and you can't just say, you know, I signed this NHL contract, but I'm going to make my own thing and make money and cut the NHL out of it. Bigger question, why don't we see a World Cup?

I don't know. I don't get it. I don't understand why it wasn't more. of a priority after 2018. The NHL very clearly, the league doesn't want to go to the Olympics. At least when they're not in North America, that's been made crystal clear for us. The players do. But, you know, why they wouldn't do something like this as a moneymaker that they have control

and they don't have to worry about the, you know, Olympic rights and all that stuff, I don't get it. I'm sure it to some extent, you know, obviously once COVID comes into play, that that screws everything up as far as the plans, but the fact that there weren't even any plans in place, you know, a couple years after the Olympics, uh,

is strange to me. And, uh, you know, the NHL always seems to be saying, well, we'll do it later, you know, we'll do it next CBA,

the next this or that. I, I, I love the Canada Cup. I love the World Cup. I think there are a lot of fun. I put them real close to the Olympics in my book and it's very strange to me that we haven't had them and it's,

you know, it's very strange to me that we're going to get to, I don't know, whatever age for, Connor McDavid without ever having seen him play in a true best on best. You know, Team North America was fun, but that wasn't Connor McDavid versus Austin Matthews, Canada, USA. And it would be, if it's not going to be the Olympics, let's do our own thing that's a true best on best. I don't understand why the league isn't pushing for it.

Yeah. And a couple of other things here, just to wrap up Andy's questions, the way it works too. So NHL players, like if, I'm just going to use Alex Ovechkin as an example. Like if he goes to play for Russia at the worlds or any other international competition, the Washington Capitals actually have to give, and I think they just nowadays, obviously they just, I think they back then they used to fax it. Now they just, I think probably email a PDF version.

But there's like a transfer card, basically. That's like, okay, like for this period, we are loaning you Alexander Ovechkin to go play for your federation. Like you said, they require the permission of the teams. And there's actually like a physical kind of card that gets transferred. The other thing I kind of chuckle at too when Andy said, hey, can't the NHLPA

try and do this on their own? I'm thinking that was probably in Alan Eagleson's original playbook, right? It may have been, yeah. May have been. Players just NHLPA do it all by themselves, make a lot of money and then they get to the end and they'd be like, where do the money go?

That's weird. The cash register is empty, how strange? Yeah. Okay. One other email question that we'll get in here. This one comes in from Chet. And Chet is referencing something that you and I brought.

Yeah, it is. Actually, the only guy I can think of with Chet is the old Detroit Tigers center fielder, Chet Lemon. What a great name. The poor man's Daryl Strawberry, the produce aisle of 80s outfielers. Yeah. Is there any other Chet? Wait, was there a Chet Pickard that played as a goalie?

It was Calvin, but did he go by, yeah, there is a, I just, I just typed it in Chet. There's a Chet Picker. It was Chet Pickard? It was not a totally? I just typed it into hockey reference. Chet Pickard is the only Chet in NHL history. Didn't play in the NHL, but was apparently, I'm on his Twitter feed right now. This is, wow.

I don't, yeah, good, good for Chet. It was that, that wasn't, okay, because there was a Calvin. Yeah, there was Calvin. Yeah, it was a goal. Okay, all right. Different guys, I don't know, maybe related. Well, they have, one of the odds of two guys with the initial. see like with the first name C last name pickard and they were both goalies I'm sure they

were related no this is this is now a chet pickard uh no I don't I don't see any he's a Canadian German professional ice hockey go well you know what because here's the thing how many families other than the Dryden's you don't see a lot of families with two goalies right like the one kid gets to be the goalie and then the other kids uh it's a good point shots on him but his younger brother is Caled Yes, there you go. So, okay, it's, yeah, his younger brother is also professional goaltender. So, all right, there you go.

We got on the. There we go. All of this because the guy who's email. He says we just skipped by his question entirely. So Chet, the original point of his email was he was referencing back in December. You and I did a podcast and I think we said we need every organization. sorry, every franchise the NHL has the one celebrity

who has worn their team's jersey and like who, and for whatever reason, your poll on this one was Walter Cronkite. Probably wore a Florida Panthers jersey at some point in the 90s. And Chet says,

come on, guys, we all know who the biggest celebrity poll is in a Florida Panthers jersey. And it's little Ariana Grande, who of course, was what, what, four years old, five years old, and got hit in the head or hit with a puck at a, at a Panthers game.

And to say, sorry, they put her in a Panthers jersey, and they put her on the Zamboni when she was whatever, five years old. So every other grande wins the award if we're going by most famous person to wear your team's jersey, regardless of their status at the time they wore the jersey. Like David Letterman with the Leafs, he wasn't David Letterman. and as we knew him, right, at that point? Not quite, yeah. So this, yeah, I mean, full credit to chat, this is, this was an unforgivable miss by me.

I absolutely should have flagged the five-year-old Ariana Grande with a welt on her head as the highlight of Panthers fandom. That was a pull up. I think it's Mike Camito, who's one of the history guys on NHL Twitter, I think may have been the first, one to find that or at least to circulate it. I think one year he tweeted it out and like Ariana Grande actually like retweeted it and made some comment about it. So this is, uh, uh, yeah, it's absolutely I should have thought of that. And but I will say in my defense, five year old Ariana Grande, Walter Cronkite. I mean, it's apples in orange. It's, it's tomato tomato at this point. It's really close enough. I, I mean, I was right there. Time to wrap up.

show as we always do, Sean, with a little this week in hockey history. And we've got a couple of dates to circle on the calendar here in January to wrap up the podcast. I'll start with this one because this is not a story that I think a lot of hockey fans know, but it's a crazy one. January 3rd, 1929, 1929. Boston Bruins star defenseman Eddie Shore was supposed to get on a train with his team to travel from Boston to Montreal. Shore is in a taxi cab and because of an accident somewhere on the streets of Boston, he is late to get to the train, misses the train, takes off without him. And then Sean,

Shore decides to basically get a vehicle and through a blizzard and he's off the road a couple of times. He has to pull over and get snow chains. It's like a 20-hour odyssey just to get to the Montreal forum to play a game. And when he gets to, gets there. Oh, by the way, he scores the only goal of the game. It's like one of these stories that could only happen in the 1920s. Yeah, it's a very 1920s story. It's, you know, and it's a wild one if, you know, Google it if you've never seen it because, and, and, yeah, I mean, it's 100 years ago. So really, who knows how much of this is, you know, still true or maybe got supplemented a little bit over the years. But yeah, he's, he misses his train.

He starts off this journey with a limo with a chauffeur, but the chauffeur doesn't know how to drive in the winter. So he basically commandeers the limo and kicks the chauffeur into the passenger seat. There's a couple of different stops at service stations to get chains put on tires. Remember, this is the 1920s. The car that you have today that's designed for winter driving is not, that's not what they're dealing with. They keep driving off the road. They drive into ditches. they, you know, at one point he, they, they get stuck somewhere and he hikes to a farmhouse

and hires a team of horses to come and drag them back out and basically gets to the game, you know, gets to the team hotel two hours before the game, eats a steak, takes a quick nap, and goes out and plays the entire game, which is the way that the things work back then, and scores the only goal in a, you know, one-nothing thriller. and yeah, hell of a story, good old Eddie Shore. And yeah, it was different back then. And, you know, the inspiration for all of it, not just that he's a great competitor, but he didn't want to get fined for missing the game, which would have been a $500 fine.

So, I mean, imagine, I'm sure today, you know, that's you, you, you've threatened an NHL or today with a $500 fine. I'm sure they'll risk life and limb on a perilous journey to get to the next game. Yeah, like, it's remarkable to me. And we just kind of glossed over the fact you're like, oh, by the way, at some point, he knocked on a farmhouse door and got some horses to pull the car out. Yeah, and just thought of doing that. You know, they were like, well, as the car stuck, let's go find a farmhouse and take, hire some horses for $8.

It's, yeah, it's a hell of a story. It's a different, different era for sure. Yeah. A couple of other ones I want to get to. this date in this week in hockey history. So I didn't realize this. So January 6, 1993, Wayne Gretzky played his 1,000th game in the NHL.

Okay? He missed the first 38 games of the season that year with L.A. He had a herniated disc in his back. I guess what I'm trying to figure out here is, like, did it was, and remember, it was at the time, it was a serious back injury, you didn't know what was going to happen. Did it cross anybody's mind that Wayne Gretzky's

career could have ended at 999 games. Like, he was stuck on 999 games for months at a time until he came back. Isn't that kind of weird? Would have been pretty cool. Yeah. As a fan of the 92-93 Leafs, I'd be okay with that if it turned out that way. Yeah. No, there was a time, like, you know, it's got to be, I wonder if it's a little weird for like

newer younger hockey fans to hear like so many guys, Gretzky, Lemieux, Mike Bossy, having back problems because that's not something you really hear much of these days. Like Jason Spetsa, I think is maybe the last one that I really remember missing significant time with back problems. But back then it was it was common. Like you would hear that, you know, this guy's got a bad back and you'd, oh, oh, and there you go. You might not see him again for months. And Gretzky, I don't remember it being, you know, a case of career threatening.

But there were certainly some talk that he would miss an entire season potentially. And, you know, what would he be like when he got back? And, you know, this could be the end of the great one. It could be, you know, who knows what he's going to be like. And we had seen Mike Bossy's career cut short and we'd seen Merrill Lemieux miss big chunks of time. So there was concern. But I don't remember people thinking that his career would actually be over. One other one, January 4th, 1999.

Tom Barrasso picked up his 40s. 38th career assist, which to the day, Sean still stands as a record for most career assists by a netminder. I got to pick your brain on this one a little bit. 48 career assists, pretty remarkable. A couple of things that jump out to me. First of all, I don't really recall Tom Barrett. Like, when I think of my kind of childhood, I think of Ron Hextall being like the best pocket handling goalie. And then it was kind of Marty Broder and Marty Turco.

So help me out here. Let me start with this. Was Tom Barrasso super good at playing the puck? And I just didn't remember it? Or what was the reputation there? Yeah, he was a good puck handler. Not one of the very best reputation-wise, I don't think. I mean, honestly, I think a big part of this is that he played for the Penguins,

an incredible offensive team. I mean, when you think about it, there's sort of two ways for a goaltender to get an assist. The one is being a great puck handler and, you know, making that great, pass up the ice that, you know, we all, you know, we all love when a goalie does. And the other is that you just make a save and your team quickly takes it up the ice and scores, you know, either directly off of that or one pass. So I would guess that if you were going to go back and break down all Tom Brassos' assist, you'd probably find a higher proportion being that second category.

You know, you make a save and, oh, there's Paul Coff, he just picked it up. Oh, he just passed it to Merrill Lemieux. Oh, I got an assist. You know, that's how maybe it went for them. And, yeah, not from back in the day, yet another way that that era was different, where, you know, you didn't have this incredibly structured breakouts like we have today where it feels like there's three passes just to get out of your zone. And you very rarely see any goaltender assists anymore.

So I don't think anyone, I don't think anyone's going to make Tom sweat too much. Martin Broder almost got there. He finished a couple short, and I think that's probably going to be a while before anyone gets that close again. You know, I'm looking at, I did look at the breakdown of his numbers of assists for Barrasso. And as you would suspect, 31 of those assists came with Pittsburgh,

but he did have 17 assists with the Buffalo Sabres, including his second year in the league. He had six assists in a single season, which is rather remarkable. Not bad for, you know, a guy was probably, he was still 19 back then. So, yeah, that's, you know, it's the 80s. Every team was scoring three or four goals a game.

But, yeah, I mean, he clearly was a little bit underrated in that aspect of the game. And among others, I've made the case that we should be talking Tom Barrasso a little bit. His name should be coming up more in the Hall of Fame conversation. Not saying he should be in, but, you know, if we're going to dredge back up the Mike Fernins and guys like that, to try to fix the lack of goaltenders. And Tom Barrasso is a guy I think should be talked about more. And maybe this is part of it. The fact that there's not too many guys that hold offensive records for their position

who aren't in the Hall of Fame. So maybe this is a guy. All right. Well, hey, listen, we'll leave it there. And this hour flew by. And hopefully our guy, Jesse Granger, maybe he's listening to this podcast while he's got some downtime. It's the trial of that pregame night.

who keeps brutally murdering all of the opponents. He's, you know, he cut a jet in half. He's stabbing crackens. That's right. They finally caught him, and it's a big trial out in Vegas. There you go. So, listen, hopefully we get to Jesse back. This was a lot of fun.

Have a great week, Sean. We'll get you again next Thursday. Right on. All right. And thanks, everybody, for listening to this latest edition of The Athletic Hockey Show. Like, we just read off a bunch of those emails there. If you want to hit us up, you can do so with an email. to The Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com,

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