The Athletic Hockey Show - Vancouver Canucks near tipping point as they face Seattle Kraken on Thursday, Chicago Blackhawks win four straight, and hockey-related Halloween costumes

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

To kick off the show, Ian and Sean kick around a couple of ideas for some hockey-related Halloween costumes, and discuss the Islanders' new "Potvin Socks" merch. Then, a couple observations on Dom Luszczyszyn's latest projections, with thoughts on the Canucks, Blackhawks and Lightning. In "Granger Things", Jesse Granger joins the show to share some NHL betting trends, including most profitable teams, and best teams to bet the under. To wrap up the show, a dive into the mailbag, and in "This Week in Hockey History", Ian and Sean discuss not one, but two possibly unbreakable records.Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM: [phone]!Save on a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/hockeyshowSubscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3BKz27u Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is The Athletic Hockey Show. We are back. It is a Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Ian Mendes, Sean McIndoo, with you for the next hour or so. We're going to have a lot of fun here as Jesse Grangel drop by, talk about some early season trends. I got some really fun this week in hockey history. I'm going to talk about two things that happened 20 years ago this week

that I think might be unbreakable record. So we're going to get into that. And, of course, we got a lot to get into with the current new cycle in the NHL. Okay, but let me ask you this here to kick off the show as we head in the Halloween weekend. Okay. All right. First, I mean, I know Halloween's on Monday, but this is like the weekend for Halloween parties. NHL teams are doing their Halloween parties, all that stuff.

First of all, when's the last time you dressed up for Halloween? Oh, boy. As an adult man. When is the last time you put on a car? costume. I mean, I've, I've got kids, so I've throwing on like a pair of bunny ears or some low effort thing like that to take them trick or treating. But no, I think the last time I remember going to a party, like, this has got to be 20 years ago that the wife and I dressed up for. And other than that, I've never been a Halloween guy. Like, as a little kid, yeah, sure, but I've,

I've never been a grown-up Halloween costume sort of guy. No, you're not going like, no couple's costumes for you? No, the, the one that, the last one that I remember was my wife and I, we dressed up as, she, she dressed up as a tiger and, you know, with the face stripes and everything. And, and I just put on a shirt and put a bunch of blood on it. And we went as Roy and Manicor. Well, exactly. That was the reaction that we got from, yeah.

So that's why, that's, maybe that's why we didn't. oh my god come on people are dressing up as zombies and stuff like that it didn't yeah but that's fake that was like a real also this was like a week after it happened so it was it was yeah i i i hear you and i i have heard that feedback and that's probably why we we haven't uh we haven't got back to the we haven't actually been invited back to any halloween party yeah maybe i think yeah as as we do later on we're going to do this week in hockey history this week in Halloween history sean and his wife get punted from every Yeah, I never really connected the dots on that one,

but that might be it right there. Okay. Oh my gosh. Okay. So here's a question for you. Is it possible to have like a clever hockey themed Halloween costume? Or is that, is it just too, or am I asking the wrong guy here?

Because you just said you're not a Halloween guy. Yeah, this is clearly not my area of experience. I mean, clever Halloween costumes on their own are. are always dicey because there's like different categories you can go as just the all out like I've got a great costume um you know some of those are bought a lot of them are homemade and you're just like people are like wow they put a ton of effort into their their costume but as far as being clever like you get into like the little puns which that's right up your alley like you strike me as a pun costume guy but then a lot of those like you walk in and people are like what's going on and then

you got to be like well this is this is what I'm supposed to be and people go oh okay and they chuckle and then it's like, all right, I'm going to get a drink. I don't, this is, I don't know. I mean, what do you, hockey wise, you could, I mean, you, you know, you throw in the referee shirt, the dark glasses and the cane. Like, you know, that's, that, that's a classic. You can dress up as. But is anybody doing that in the year 2020?

I hope not. I hope not. I mean, you could, you know, you, you just, if you want something low effort, right, you just go and get your, like your golf gear that, you know, break it out of, out of the closet from the summer and throw on a leaf skis. cap and, you know, I'm a Toronto Maple Leaf in the second round of the playoffs. You could do that. Like, but I don't, pun-based ones? Like, are people out there putting on, like, are in our Temi-Panren jersey and, like, carrying a loaf of bread around or something? Like, is that the

level we're going for here, or is there something, something better? Like, you're the pun guy. People, I don't know if people know this about you. You are the ultimate pun guy. So I feel like this is exactly, exactly right up your alley. But it is, you know, the best hockey-themed Halloween costume I remember is actually from an NBA. H-L player. Do you remember this? So this would have been, I think, probably Halloween, maybe 15 years ago. And the Edmonton Oilers thought they had traded. Do you remember this? They thought they had traded for Danny Heatley. And the deal would have been, I believe, Dustin Penner, Ladislav Smead, and, man, it might have been Cogliano, whatever it was, was supposed to come back to Ottawa. And then

Danny Heatley was like, I got a no trade clause. This deal isn't happening. He's demer. Manded a trade out of Ottawa, but he uses his no trade to scuttle a trade out of Yeah, I said I wanted to be traded. I just didn't want to be traded there. So at the Oilers Halloween party that year, and I believe it was Dustin Penner, he dressed up as Santa Claus. And on the back of his Santa Claus outfit, it had a name bar that said no trade. And people said, who are you?

He says, I'm no trade clause. True clause. Okay. That was pretty good. That's not bad. That was good. I get, you know, that's, yeah, that's okay. I get, yeah, that's all right.

Let me, let me pitch a couple of ideas at you. Okay, here we go. Again, I'm, obviously I'm somebody, I need feedback on my Halloween costume choices. So I want you to be honest here. Okay, first one, um, Leaf jersey. Yeah. Number 34 on the back. Gene shorts, knee brace, a beer in each hand, Stone Cold Steve Austin Matthews.

What do you think? I see, I don't know anything about wrestling. Don't act like you don't know who Stonehold is. I do. I do. And I like, okay, I like that because now, as you don't, I like the puns. That's clever, right? You're combining two people into one.

I like it. Right. Okay. What if you also gave a, okay, hold on. What if you give him a Vegas Golden Knights hat as well? And now he's Mark Stone Cold. Wow. Okay.

You know what? Now are we getting two flier? Now we're now we're cooking. Let's see how long. How long can we get, can we get, you know, like you put the little check mark and now he's checkmarked stone. I don't know. It feels like there's a long way you could go on that one. But all right.

Yeah, there we go. Here's my other one that's more timely. And I feel like this one is not, this isn't clever in the sense that there's probably people out there maybe already planning this costume. But if you're looking for, you know, for something, here's the idea. It is this this works if you're like a middle-aged schlubby kind of balding dude you go you can even bore your kids like you know it's too small it's too tight whatever Tony Stark Marvel costume yeah Ironman and you go is Phil Castle oh yeah yeah yeah right I mean you could do that right oh I mean that one's got the stamp of approval okay then yeah we're we're we're on to something here

okay that that that one's for free that one's because that one's this year only you're You got a window on that. You got to go right now. Well, if anyone knows about timely Halloween costumes, it's you. You know, just maybe, maybe, maybe just go back to the drawing board and just really nail it down. Just make sure you're sure. This could be your last, it's, well, you know what, that's all right. You're not missing out.

Yeah. Don't mind me. I'm still trying to add to that. I'm thinking Mark Stone called Austin Matthews Kachuk. Okay. Yep. Okay. Yeah. I think that might be the extent of it.

Maybe. I feel like we can go further than that, man. We can probably go further. There's got to be a way, yep. The word chain. Hey, you know, you said to me earlier, you're like, hey, you're to the pun guy. And I do. I appreciate me a good pun.

I want to know what you think about this. Islanders and Rangers played on Wednesday. And the Islanders unveiled a brand new campaign, a new product called Potvan Sox. Of course, if you go to Rangers games, Madison Square Garden, almost on a nightly basis, at least once, they still do the whistle, and then everyone yells, Pot van sucks. And so the Islanders figure, we're going to flip the script on this, we're going to sell Pot van socks.

I kind of like it. But I don't know. I don't know if I, I don't know, maybe because I know Danny very well. I liked it, but I need to know from you, Potvin socks, clever or not. This is, this is exactly the kind of humor that is that is not my thing. I didn't want to like it. I do like it though. Okay, good.

I got to say, man, that was good. I like it. Yeah. It was, yeah, that is what I saw that. I could feel like both sides of me fighting it out because immediately like my first reaction was that's pretty clever. I like that. I want a pair.

And then, you know, the more sophisticated part of me was like, no, come on. That's the lowest four re-reuber. But you know what? Puffin socks. That's good. Kudos to whoever came up with that. Yeah, it is pretty good. But now we don't want to see a whole like refue socks or anything like that.

No. End it now. End it now. That's it. Yeah. Exactly. We got it. I never like what did you think of?

Remember that Mike Babcock, the Babsocks? Like I didn't even think those were great. I thought I think pot van socks were great. I didn't, I didn't think Bab socks were a brilliant idea. You know what I mean? They were, I mean, those are fine. Those were, you know, they were kind of cute. and then they actually made them and you could buy them.

And then like other people started showing up on socks and it didn't really, I don't know. Maybe the whole, uh, it's, you know, we always talk about the Mike Babcock story. And we're always trying to write these redemptions. Maybe we got to get like the Mike Babsox redemption. Like that was who really lost when Mike Babcock got fired. He's still getting paid. You know, he was still making lots of money from the Maple Leafs. But we got to, we got to check on the socks guy.

I don't know. Do you think he, like, do you think he even tried anything with, like, Sheldon Keefe? Was there any, like, any options there? Hanker. Is he? Hanker, he's. Right there. I'm telling you, this guy is the pun.

You cannot stump him. Yeah. After been Hanker Keeves. Somebody got on that. And quickly, you might want to, you might want to move on that one. Yeah, there we go. Don't wait for Christmas. Just get him, get him now.

Get him now before, before Halloween. Okay. I thought this was interesting. And everything we say on this, on these podcasts, whether it's our show, other editions of the athletic hockey show, I'm pretty sure we're all couching everything with, hey, it's early.

Like it is. It's almost not even Halloween. But we're starting to see some trends here. And I thought it was interesting. Dom Lus Chishin has, and by the way, a free promotion here for Salvean and Gentilly, the, what do they call their show,

the Friday edition? Because they record on Thursdays, but it drops on Friday. Anyway, they're going to have Dom on. So we don't want to go too deep. on this because I know they will too. But Dom had his new projections out this week. And it's crazy when you look at some of the teams how much the needle has moved already

in the span of two weeks. Like Vancouver, Sean, is down to basically a 12, I think 12% chance of making the playoffs this after being north of 40 to start the season. Like they have tumbled. Like you look at their, it looks like the Blackberry stock from back in the day where it just goes Absolutely. Absolutely my favorite part of the the projections is if, you know, I know when you click on them and you scroll down, you see like, okay, here's how many points he thinks people are going to get. Here who's going to be likely or unlikely to make the playoffs.

You got to keep scrolling. You got to get to the little line graph where you see the teams moving up and down. That is the best part easily. And yeah, right. I mean, nobody has plunged like the, like the Canucks. It's not even a plunge. It's a steady downward march. They're now, they recently, according to this little graph, have even been passed by the Seattle Cracken as far as playoff chances.

That's not good. Now, we got to say anytime, I always feel like we have to make this point. Anytime we're looking at Dom stuff, because I feel like people miss this, 13% is not good, but 13% is not 0%. And if you're looking at teams that are at 90% or 95% or even 99% you're going like, I can't believe Dom thinks there are a lot. 90-something% is not 100%. And I feel like sometimes the mistake people get is they look at this and they group it into, you know, anyone who's in the 50s is a coin toss, everyone else has already been determined.

If you're, you know, you're 80% or more, that means Dom says you're a lot. No, he doesn't. He's saying 80% means 80%. That means one out of five times you're not going to make it. It's not a sure thing. He's not trying to say that all these stuff is determined. So that's my little bit of hope to Canucks fans. Is it 13%?

He's not 0%. And if every team in the league was at that sort of extreme, you would expect three or four teams to defy the odds and make it or not make it. But it's bad in Vancouver. It's really bad. That's as far as I can go for you. 13% is not 0%, but it's also not 45%

or whatever it was to start the season. And I bet a lot of Canucks fans at the start of the year probably said only 45%, God, we got to be better than that with this lineup. Hasn't gone that way. Do you feel like, as we record this on Thursday morning, Vancouver and Seattle, Thursday night?

Is that a potential tipping point game in your mind that I know the Connucks play again on Friday so maybe they don't do anything rash? But I just feel like, my goodness, If you lose to Seattle and start the season with eight consecutive losses, granted they get a couple of overtime losses, but still you lose your first eight games. There's still losses. And game eight is against Seattle. Is that a potential tipping point for you?

There have been a few tipping points already for Vancouver. The home opener against Buffalo was one. And obviously Buffalo is playing well. They had just gone through Alberta. But that's one that you look and say on paper, on home ice, we should win that one. They didn't. They lose five to one. gave Carolina a game.

I feel like the next 48 hours does feel like a tipping point because they're in Seattle tonight. A game that, again, I don't know when you're 0.7, nobody is a game that you should win. But this is a very winnable game against the, you know, against the Cracken team that has been better this year, but are not great. But then you look at they got to play this game tonight. Turn around. They got to go home, play tomorrow night. They got the Pittsburgh Penguins. And the Penguins have been off for a few days.

So the penguins are in Vancouver right now, chilling out, relaxing, getting rested up while Vancouver is in Seattle getting ready for a game. They got to fly back. They got to play arrested penguins. If both of those games are lost, they lose in Seattle. They come home, face those rested penguins. I really feel like that's where I'm moving to very worried about Bruce Bruehryl because then they've got three games off and then they've got a nice home stretch. Devils, ducks, predators.

Those are three winnable games. I always look at the schedule. I don't know how much truth there always is to this, but it always feels like when teams make midseason changes, they like to do it right before a point in the schedule where A, they've got a bit of a break. You don't want a new coach necessarily coming in like on game day. and also where they've got some winnable games. You don't want to, you don't want your new coach coming in when it's, you know,

hurricanes, avalanche, you know, Panthers coming in and you're going on, man, we're going to go old three and get off to a bad start. You want to give the new guy a chance. Boy, I look at that devil's, ducks, ducks, predators, all at home stretch. And I go, that could be a point where a change gets made if they're 0 and 9. And 0 and 9 feels like it's really on the table right now. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting to me because, look, Vancouver's odds have plummeted,

thanks to a slow start under Dom's model. Chicago hasn't really moved, right? Chicago remains down at basically, you know, and now it's not pulling up for me, but they're down at like, what, 0%? I'm looking down there and they, yeah, they are still sitting at 0%. They're at 0%, but they're above Arizona's 0%. Right. But yet Chicago's off to a, like, this is a remarkable start.

You want to talk about teams that I thought they could be 0 in 6, 7. Chicago would have been on my list. I mean, you have to be a little bit worried as Chicago fan that your team has won in a year in which it feels like you've designed to tank that you've won four games in a row, right? Yep. Yeah. I mean, you probably do. And so, I mean, first of all, we should say if people aren't familiar with it. Like, Dom's model is looking at the results, absolutely, but it's not just based on results.

And, you know, anytime, you know, I do my power rankings. And sometimes people are like, how can you rank this team ahead of that team? They've got more, you know, this team's got a better record. If you just want to look at what teams have the better record, I got a great site for you. It's called the NHL standings page. Like, we already have that. You don't need anybody to tell you what teams are winning or what teams are winning. We already have that.

So Dom's model does look at that, but it's also looking at the talent. It's looking at the projections, all of those sorts of things. of the results in recent years even for that particular roster. And that's why Chicago, despite, you know, if the playoffs started today, they'd be in it. They're not, and they're not viewed as having a chance because the roster is just so weak. But that said, yeah, four straight wins. First of all, you know, kudos to the team. We've said all along, yes, the Blackhawks are tanking, but players don't tank.

That's not how hockey players are wired. The players are always going to give you the top effort. And kudos to Luke Richardson. I mean, a guy that, you know, you know well, has been waiting for this chance for a very long time and comes into a situation that for a lot of people might look at and say, that's a miserable situation for the coach to come into. And yet, you know, maybe the reverse is true. Maybe you come in. There's no expectations. You know, nobody's going to care if you finish dead last.

And, you know, he's got this team playing well. They're getting an identity. They're hard to play against all of those things. it's not going to last. But they're not getting embarrassed out there. And, you know, that's pretty good. And, you know, it's funny. We always say that, you know, you can't clinch your playoff spot in October,

but you can lose one. And sometimes those October games count just as much as the March and April ones. And sometimes a team looks back and they miss the playoffs by one or two points. And they say, man, if we grab one of those games that we should have had in October, that would have been the difference of the whole season. It can work the same way for a drive. lottery. And you do wonder if Chicago at the end of the year is going to be looking back on

if we had just lost a couple of those games, even one of those games, that would have put us into the right spot to get Connor Boudard. You never know. I'm sure Kyle Davidson is thinking about it, but clearly Luke Richardson and the Blackhawks players are not. The other one, a couple of other things that jumped out of me

at Dom's new projections, the devil's right now projected the finish slightly higher than the Rangers. Yeah, I did a real double take on that one. Yeah, I was the same way. I was like, wait, what? Like, I was like, that can't be right. And sure not. But now, look,

they're basically lined up to finish in the exact same spot. But the devil's, a team that, you know, clearly missed the playoffs by a wide gap last year, the Rangers who went to the conference final. And now two weeks into the season, the model is saying, hey, the devils might be better than we think, and the Rangers

maybe not so much. New Jersey had to the Rangers, to me, that was probably the biggest surprise in the projections. It was, and, you know, I sort of, you know, really had to go and check it because, you know, a week into the season, the Devils did not look very good. Goaltending was no good again. All the thing, you know, the Lindy Roughwatch was on already.

And the Rangers had looked very good. They had had, you know, a couple of big wins where they had looked really impressive. And since then, it's sort of been a bit of a flip. And again, the model isn't just saying, well, the Devils have won a couple of games and the Rangers have lost, so I'll swap them in the standings. It's more than that. The devils are a fascinating team because it seems like every year in the analytics era, there is one team or sometimes a couple that the smart people are saying,

look, the underlying numbers tell us that there's more here than the standings are showing us. And in the devil's case, they were a very good five-on-five team, even last year, which was a hugely disappointing season. But they got let down by a few things. special teams and goaltending especially. The goaltending stunk last year. Yeah. And the devils were the one team that you looked at above all the others and said if they had had even average goaltending, they could have really had something. And that's why a lot of people were looking at, you know, I didn't see a lot of people picking the devils to make the playoffs, but a lot of people were,

even as we were getting caught up in teams like Ottawa and Detroit that had actively gone out and improved the roster, there were a lot of people saying, keep it. I know, New Jersey, because even though they got all this, this big gap to make up, a lot of, the system seems to be in place. If the gold hitting just gets a little bit better, and so far it's, you know, the gold thing's has been a little bit better. It hasn't been great, but they've started over the last week or so to get some saves. And I think that's what the model is seeing.

It's, it's looking at this devil's team saying, they check a lot of boxes that we look for when we're trying to project success into the future, things that tend to be sustainable, things that tend to work out. Well, and this is all very familiar to Rangers fans because Rangers fans spent all last year hearing how the Rangers were the opposite. They weren't a good five-on-five team. It was all special teams and goal-tending.

And, yeah, I mean, it's, goaltending's part of hockey. And if you got the best goalie in the world, which the Rangers might have, then you count on that. And the Rangers kind of interestingly have been better five-on-five for a big chunk of this year. But just over the last little while,

it hasn't translated to those wins. So I don't know, man. Like if you gave me even odds on these two teams who's going to finish higher in the standings right now, I'm taking the Rangers all day long. I'm not buying into this being a coinflint between these two teams. But as I sit down and think about it, I'm not shocked that the gap has closed as much as it seems to over the last little while. Because I do feel like, you know, his model had the devil's around that 40% cent mark to start the season, which would have felt high to a lot of people if you're just

looking at last year's standings going. They got 20, 30 points to make up. But it's, it's the Rangers have sort of, again, plunged would be an extreme word, but it's, it's really over the last week that they've dropped. And, you know, look, we're going to chat some early season trends here with Jesse Granger in a second. Before we get to Granger things, one other thing that I thought was interesting. the Tampa Bay Lightning, who are, of course, the defending Eastern Conference champions

three straight years, into the Stanley Cup, three stray years, are right now under Dom's model, Sean, projected to finish with fewer than 100 points, which kind of puts them into, I don't know if playoff bubble is a strong term,

but, you know, and they win on Wednesday night against Anaheim, so maybe that alleviates a little bit of the feeling that they've had a flat start. But I think that's kind of interesting to me that Tampa is, is anything but a lock. They're not hanging out with, you know, some of the, the teams that are up in in the upper 90s in terms of percentage chances to make the playoffs. He's got Toronto, Boston, Florida

is 97 or percent or better, which again, is not 100, but it is pretty close to lock territory, especially for this early in the year. And Tampa, it's a, I mean, the Atlantic graph is fascinating because you got those three teams we just mentioned at the very top, you've got Detroit, Buffalo. they've shown a little bit of a pulse, but it's not really reflected in their odds. Montreal is just chugging along at 0%. And then you got the two teams in the middle, which is Tampa making a steady drop down. And it's mostly the Ottawa senators who are reaping that and are now up over 50% in, according to Dom's model to make the playoffs.

Now remember, you can have five teams from a division make the playoffs. So it's not that they necessarily have to take Tampa spot. They could grab a wild card from the Metro. But that's pretty impressive if you're a Senators fan. I'm not worried about the lighting. I'm really not. Even in the years that they were winning Stanley Cups or last year when they went to the final, you look back at the standings.

They weren't having great seasons. The Tampa Bay Lightning have always been a team, or at least the last few years, have been a team that seems happy to say, you know, we'll finish second, we'll finish third, we'll start the playoffs on the road, no problem. We know what to do when we get there. You saw it against the Leaves. Leaves had home ice. It didn't matter.

Tampa knew how to win that series. So I'm not concerned if they're around a hundred point pace. That seems fine to them. It doesn't make me think less of them as contenders. The only thing that does stick in your mind a little bit is we have seen this team, this Tampa Bay Lightning team, have a season like that where all year long we're all gone, it's the Lightning. They're not going to miss the playoffs.

Yeah. And then it was, what, 2016, where? 1617, I think, right? Yeah, all year long, you're waiting. You're right, 2016, 17. And you get to the end of the year and they miss the playoffs by one point. And you're just sitting there going, wait a second, that can't be right. And yet it happened.

So we do see that happen with teams sometimes. And it could be happening to the lightning. But right now, they're relatively healthy. they're you know which in one sense is a bad sign because they're they're they're not racking up with wins even if they're healthy so what's going to happen when the injuries come in obviously you know Andre vasselowski gets hurt all all bets are off for this for this team and there you know there's some other guys that you can you can point to i got to say though i'm not i'm not concerned if i'm if i'm a tampa fan i'm concerned because that's what fans do but as an outsider i still

I still think Tampa's got, you know, one of the five or six or seven or eight true Stanley Cup containers in this league. I just can't picture them not making the playoffs. All right. On a Thursday, as always, it's time for a little Granger things. Brought to you by BetMGM, the exclusive betting partner with us at The Athletic. Jesse Granger drops by in this spot. We talk about some lines and some different, you know, odds as the season is starting to unfold.

Before we get to that, Jesse, Sean has told me people like Phil Kessel. That's not what I said. That's not what I said. Quote me accurately. I said people love Phil Kessel. What did I just say? You said people like.

You were dialing it down on me. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay. I lied. Don't undersell it. People love Phil. The Thrill, who is certainly in the news cycle this week, the Iron Man.

Give us a sense here of what it's been like being around Phil Kessel, Jesse, in a week in which he's, hey, he's, he's being celebrated for being the NFL's Ironman. Yeah, he's, he's been the center of the hockey world's attention for the last week, and he hates it so badly. That's my takeaway. I knew Phil Kessel was a guy who didn't really like the spotlight.

He kind of just likes to play hockey, and that's about it. But this week, the fact that it was Toronto, he was playing, so there was quite a bit of Canadian media in town. You could just tell. He was like, I just want to play hockey. it's I think what makes him so like part of what makes him so endearing like the reason people love Phil Castle is because he's so relatable. He's just a guy who plays who happens to be really good at hockey and he just wants to do that. I talked to his brother for the story that I wrote on him,

Blake Castle and he said basically that's how he's been his whole life. He just isn't a big fan of the spotlight. He likes to do his thing and keep to his own. I thought it was very appropriate that the guy who doesn't want the attention when he breaks the Ironman streak, the whole pregame ceremony, the whole, all the, all the fanfare that came along with it was not on TV because the game was, they were still showing the end of the Rangers Ave's game on ESPN. So Phil got what he wanted. He did not have as many people watching him. That's a shame.

Hate to see it. How is Phil playing, by the way? Because we all, when he signed in Vegas, we all kind of went, oh, well, that's great. he'll break the record, but then is he going to stay in the lineup? Like, has he, is he been a good fit? Yeah, it's, to be honest with you, he hasn't, it's been a rough start. I think he's still trying to find his footing here. He started up on the top line with Jack Eichel and Riley Smith, and he wasn't producing.

He scored his 400th goal, and that was his first goal of the season. Took him seven games to get there. And he, he did have a couple of assists, but he hasn't been the offensive spark, especially on the power play that they were hoping, but he has come along. I think these last two games have definitely been the best two games, and it's actually come with them moving him down the lineup. He's playing on the third line now with Brett Houdin and Michael Amadio. So that's quite a different cast from Eichl and Smith.

And I think, I don't know if it's, whether it's the matchups that they're getting on the third line or whatever. Maybe it's more that he can, he just feels like he can be the man on that line and carry the puck a little more, as opposed to kind of deferring to Eichl. But whatever it is, he has played better these last two games. But it's been a bit of a rough start. I don't know where he's going to fit into the lineup. could see him possibly maybe scratch down the line. Just because Cassidy likes his third line to be defensive.

So to me, Ikel's got to be, is he going to be a top six player? Or is he going to fit on one of these defensive lines? I'm not really sure where he fits him with the Golden Knights. But his game certainly seems to be going in the right direction. Yeah, that's what you just described. That was like shades of Pittsburgh, right? Where he, when he was traded over, we thought, oh, they're going to put him with Crosby. They'll put him with Malkin.

And then he ended up on his own line, the third line. and then he was, they ended up being unstoppable, that HBK line. Yep. You can hear me just pumping Phil's tires just in case Cassidy's listening. Like, this is great, man. There's no need to, you got to, we got to get him to a thousand, right? Like, we all agree that that's exactly. It would be nice.

Get it to a thousand. No, not it'll be nice. We got to get him to a thousand. Jesse, you've got influence down there. You can make this happen. I'll talk to Bush. There we go. Okay.

So we got to talk a little bit about a few trends maybe, Jesse, that are starting to develop. Yeah, we're closing out the month of October here. You know, there's some trends. So let's start here. Let's start the ball rolling here. Maybe we're looking at a couple of teams here. Maybe that, you know, in the first couple weeks of the season, you're like, hey, I'm starting to see something here. Yeah.

One of the first things I was looking at was I like to check the profitability rating. So basically it's a, it takes every team. And if you were to bet $100, that's just the number they use. That's not saying you've got to bet $100 on every game. But if you were to bet $100 on every game that these teams played, it tells you how much in the hole you'd be, how much you would have won. Buffalo is tops in the league. Usually it's underdog teams that are winning games.

Buffalo, if you would have bet every Buffalo game so far, you'd be up $490. Obviously, lowest would be Vancouver. If you bet $700, I mean, if you bet $100 on every Vancouver game, you would have lost $700. But the team that sticks out to me, the team that... Hold on. Let me run the numbers. Yep. Yep. It checks out. Right. Right. The team that shocked me is the Arizona Coyotes, because they aren't surprising anyone. They're two and four. I mean, I guess we might be

surprised if they've won two games and not zero, but it's not like they've, they're Buffalo where they're winning more games than people expected or Philly. But despite going two and four, if you were to have bet every Coyote's game, you'd actually be up 240. $5 right now just because they are so heavily underdogs in these games that you only need to win one out of every three games in order to make money on the coyotes. So for those betters out there, I don't know if the coyotes can keep up this one in three games streak. It's not a very high bar to clear. But I'm just saying it's, I was shocked to see plus $200 just going two and four. Somebody called Gary Betman. We have finally cracked the code on how to make money on the Arizona coyotes. There we go. Bad on them. And every third game, yeah,

you're going to be ahead. Hey, what did you guys think, by the way, speaking of the coyotes. Do you guys saw that tweet they put out, like kind of mocking the jackets

after they scrolled them the other day with the cannon? No, I didn't see this. You guys don't diligently follow the coyotes. I do not follow any NHS. Oh, yeah. Actually,

this is a good question. Do you guys follow any team account? Well, I guess, Jesse, you must follow the Golden Knights account. I'll be honest. I wish I didn't. It gets on my nerves at times.

It's they're a lot. They tweet a lot. I'm the Golden Knights now have a communications Twitter that I'm very happy for. But I do got to say the the, the, the, with the Golden Knights, the, the photo they tweeted out of the night pointing at Phil Kessel, that was a, and that was an A plus tweet. That is the call back to the Doug Jarvis photo from, uh, from the 80s with, with for some reason, a guy in a night suit is, uh, is pointing at him. Uh, that was, that was an excellent. I mean, there's probably like six of us on the planet who, got it, but that was still, I really appreciated that one. Their Twitter has plenty of wins. It's just a lot. Yeah. So one of the other trends, Sean, I like this one. I was looking at the teams that have gone the over the most and under the most. And I'm just stunned that the team that you would be the

most profitable by betting the under in every game so far. Toronto Maple Leafs have had one in their of seven games go over the total. Six go under the total. They're 20. 26th in scoring. Obviously, everybody knows about Austin Matthews struggles to put the puck in the net. But Ilya Sampsonov, though, they were just in Vegas. Man, I was impressed with him in that. He's got a 9-3-2 save percentage. He's one of the better goalies in the league and goals saved above average. Coming into this year, I would have guessed the Leafs. You can bet the over pretty much every game. When you look at that offense, you look at the goalies that they brought in. Everyone was kind of laughing about it. And suddenly the Leafs are in nail-biting, low-scoring games every night. Is this exactly how you thought it would go, Sean? Not exactly the way I thought it would go. You know, certainly those two factors you mentioned, Austin Matthews not scoring yet, and the goaltending being pretty good were both things that we wouldn't have expected. But I will say this, the Leafs, even you go back to last year, the offense was good.

The defense was also very good. There is this permanent reputation attached to the Leafs that they're this running gun team. They don't play defense. They can't hold the lead and all of this stuff. And then you look at the numbers. And they're one of the better defenses, certainly in the Sheldon Keyfaro, since he's been able to really install his system, they've been much better defensively than they get credit for. Now, you know, does that ultimately matter if it doesn't lead to success? Probably not. But, you know, if you're trying to work an over-under, just keep in mind the perception on this team might not completely match their reality. They hold on to puck so well. I feel like that is also like maybe their best defense is you just can't get the puck from them. If you don't have the puck, you can't score. And they, like, I was impressed.

they didn't play particularly well in Vegas, but I thought it's like, man, this team holds on the puck. Like every guy can use his body to shield the puck. I don't know. I was impressed with the Leaf's ability to hold on to pucks and corners. Yeah, that's what they're looking to do this year, Jesse. The whole goal is can they hold on the puck's corners? Right.

So where to go? To go to the third trend I noticed before we get too deep on the Leaf's rabbit hole. I know a lot of people like to play, player props. They're becoming more and more popular. It's almost, when I go on my Twitter timeline and I follow quite a bit of like sports gambling accounts, I see almost more of that than the actual betting on the games. And one of the trends, man, Tim O'Meire, the sharks are running their offense through him. Vegas played San Jose

last night and he had eight shots on goal. So that was kind of what I'm like, man, it seems like he has a shot on every single shift. So I looked it up. And he leads the league with 42 shots on goal, averaging nearly five per game. So most guys shot it's on goal lines are either two and a half or three and a half for Meyer, obviously, for obvious reasons. He's three and a half, but you will not see a over under shot line for most guys over three and a half. For Meyer, it's been three and a half every game this year. So a guy that's averaging five shots a game, that's well above three and a half. Just something I noticed, he shoots the puck a ton. San Jose is obviously not a good hockey team, but they do have a few really good players,

and Timo Meyer is one of them. They are running the offense through him. So if you're a player, if you're a player prop better out there, Timo Meyer over in shots has been a great trend to jump on. Wow. Look at that lead in the league. And, you know, it's funny.

Like last year, he really, looking at his career numbers, like he took a giant step forward. Yeah. You know, obviously got to kind of throw out the 56 game season. But, you know, prior to that, he was like a guy that was getting in the neighborhood of 200-ish shots on goal per season, we'll call it

220. And last year you have 326. So like the volume is certainly increased, right? Yeah. And you know, even putting aside the gambling aspect, just from a hockey perspective, that's what you want to see from an offensive player is you want to see the volume go up.

Sometimes you see a guy, the goals go up and it's the shooting percentage. The volume of shots is staying the same, but they're getting the higher percentage shooting. That usually it doesn't sustain over the long term. But when you see the volume go up, sometimes that does signal that a guy is playing in a different way. And so that's good news for Sharks fans.

And that's a fan base that could probably use some good news because there hasn't been very much. Right. They've struggled. It's interesting. Like, Alex DeBrinke hit in Ottawa doesn't have a goal this year. His only goal is an empty netter. So he hasn't scored a goal with an opposition goalian.

And he's got 28 shots on goal, which I think is pretty good through six games, right? I think it is, 28 shots on goal. But boy, there's some people panicking. They're like, look, this guy's a legitimate, you know, two-time 40-goal score. He hasn't scored now and we're getting, you know, a few weeks in the season. But like Sean said, I think it's important to look at the number of shots on these guys.

And to me, 28 is a good number. Like, it's interesting, too. Like, Sean, like Austin Matthews is off to, I think what we would classify a bit of a pedestrian start by his standards, right? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. And so, yeah. Hasn't shot in. scored yet this year because this one goal was on a tip. So we have not seen Austin Matthews

snap one of those shots home yet this season. Yeah. And it's, again, it's interesting. But it's early in the year. And, you know, these are the, the types of trends that we start to see. But yeah, to me, it is funny. You said, you said some people in Ottawa are panicking. Alex DeBrickett's agent might be one of those guys who's panicking. Oh, I mean, yeah, exactly. There should be, there should be like one of those big charity number. totals, except the totals going down every time every time he rigs one off the post. It's the 50-50 draftle, like on the banner

going around the arena. Yeah, with his his AAV. Yeah, that's it. Hey, one other question I want to ask you guys. And I look this out, I know that earlier this week, the Rangers and the Avs played a game that went to a shootout. And if I'm not mistaken, I think there's only been three shootout games this year. I think. Yeah, something like that. Does that seem weird to you guys?

There's only been one through the first week. Yeah. And then, yeah. Yes, there are three. I just looked it up. Yeah. As we look at trends, I'm trying to figure out, I'm trying to figure out like, why is this? Like, I don't know.

Maybe there's no reason. Doesn't it feel like you don't even want to talk about it? Like it's sort of like when a pitcher has a no hitter going or something. And you're just like, come on, man. Sean's afraid we're going to jinx it. Yeah. Well, I mean, hey, look, I hate to shoot out. I'd be happy if there weren't any.

I'm thrilled that there's, there's been so few. man, that Colorado New York game should not have gone to a shootout. Like, there should be a thing where like, you know, if enough of us hit a buzzer, then it's like just keep going on over. Enough people are paying attention to the game. Yeah, exactly. If the ratings are over a certain number, don't get it. If it's Columbus and Arizona, then go ahead and do the shootout and let everyone go home.

But yeah, if it's a national game, let them just keep playing and playing. And then we all miss Phil Kessel's entire record-breaking game and everyone's happy. How about that game, though? It was that game for, like, you talk about putting hockey on showcase for national TV in America. That game was spectacular. Yeah. Yeah. And how about Georgiev's, again, I know we don't love the shootout, but man, watching him celebrate was pretty cool.

The triple fist pump. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. Yeah, you don't often see that with a goalie in a regular season game, but that was pretty, that was pretty cool. All right. So, okay, I apologize for talking about that, bringing it into the public realm that we don't seem to be having a lot of shootouts. So go ahead and book it multiple shootouts Thursday night. If there's a whole bunch of shootouts, everybody, you know where to go. You know where to complain to.

Yeah. Awesome. Jesse, thanks for this as always and we'll hit you up again next week. Yep. Thanks for having me, guys. Thanks, Jesse. All right. Fun stuff, as always with our pal Jesse Granger.

And yes, I've probably willed a bunch of shootouts into existence for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, whatever. Let's open up the mailbag. You can hit this up via email at the athletic hockey show at gmail.com, leave us a voicemail at 8454-4-5-8449. This is one from Joe. Let's start with this one. Joe is saying, look, you guys have your athletic, you know, the best 99 players of the post-expansion era feature coming out. Mark Andre Fleury is on that list, certainly a Hall of Famer.

I think Pecarine has a chance to get into the Hall of Fame. My question for you guys is, how the hell is Thomas Vokoon? Not in consideration. 700 games played 917 career save percentage, a four-time Vezna finalist, got some heart trophy votes. He was amazing, but just played for some bad teams. 300 wins, but look at those teams he played for. I think he's the second best check goalie ever, and he feels like he's a nobody.

Come on. Help me out with this egregious oversight from the media fans in the league, or am I way off? I'll shut up if I am way. off that's from Joe. Well, you're way off in one sense, and I'll just to correct the record, he's not a four-time Vesna finalist. He was never a Vesna finalist. When we talk about a Vesna finalist, we're saying finalists, we're saying final three.

He was never that. He got votes for the Vesda in four years. He finished 10th, eighth, ninth, and then there was the one year that he did finish fourth. That was his best season. So that would be the argument against him being an all-time grade. Never won a Vesna was never an all-star, you know, postseason all-star. never came all that close. If you look at the postseason all-star voting,

which again, it's the media, but it's not bad. It's not a bad measure of how somebody is viewed at the time. Never finished higher than fifth. So this was the guy who was never in the best goalie conversation in the league. He did win 300 games. He certainly had some seasons where he put up some success. And he's right to point out that he wasn't on very good teams.

I mean, Thomas Focoon led the league. and losses twice. And that's not a reflection on how he played. That was just the fact that he wasn't on very good teams. You know, my instinct is to look at his numbers and say, you know what, we can say that Thomas Focoon was underrated and didn't get enough credit in his career without going crazy and saying he's a Hall of Fame or saying he's up there with Mark Andre Fleury or one of the top 100 players or something like that. And I think that's where I come down. But one thing I do like to do, and again, it's certainly not a perfect metric. but I like to look at the hockey reference similarity scores.

And, you know, when I saw this message from the listener, I thought, well, I'm going to go and I'm going to look at that. We'll go look at all the average names that Vokoun's listed as. Let me read you his similarity scores, some of his, the players that are here, okay? Number one, Carrie Price. What? Hmm. Okay. And this is, by the way, it's based on point shares, which, again, not a perfect metric,

but it's kind of a catch-all number and it's based on the length of their career and basically looks for players who had similar numbers as far as their best season, their second best season, and on down the line. Kerry Price, number one.

Number two, Curtis Joseph. Borderline Hall of Fame are not in yet, but certainly a guy who's got a case. Some of the other names on the line, Roji Vaichon in the Hall of Fame. Martan Broder and Patrick Waugh show up on this list.

Maybe Joe isn't that far out to lunch here. And then two other guys, Pecker-Reney and Ryan. Ryan Miller. Two other guys that are certainly going to make for interesting Hall of Fame conversations. So based on that, based on those numbers, and again, certainly not a perfect metric. And we can all find guys where you look at, it's very common when you're looking at that number. It gives you 10 similar, similar guys. It's very common to find one or two guys where you're like, no, that doesn't fit at all. But when you see six or seven or eight

guys that are on that list that it's got to make you think a little bit. He may be on to something. Again, never, the lack of not just any awards, but not even coming close. Right. It typically is a deal breaker. But again, you know, Vezna's voted on by the GMs. And the criticism is that they always look at wins as the number one thing. And if you're on bad teams. I mean, maybe I still feel like the answer here is not a Hall of Famer, not a top 100 player, not a guy who belongs in the conversation with a flurry or even with the Peckerene's and maybe Tuka Rask's of the league. But maybe a grossly underrated player that a lot of us go. Because I feel like if you said best goalies of the, you know, the 2000, decades, give me your

list. I feel like a lot of hockey fans would get. 10, 15 guys deep and not even think of Thomas Wocoon. And I think there's a good case here, partly made by our listener and partly made by the numbers that he's somebody that does not get enough appreciation from hockey fans and hockey media, myself included, even if maybe he didn't quite get into that top tier of the all-time grades. And, you know, for me, the fun Thomas Focoon fact, if you ever want to stump your friends at trivia and say, you know, give me a list of goalies who,

won 300 games who played with the Montreal Canadiens at some point in their career. Nice. You want to talk about going 10 or 15 goalies deep. Most people would forget that the HABs actually had Thomas Foukoun in their system and exposed him in the 90s where you would just play one game in the NHL. I think he only played one period. I don't think he played a game, right? Yeah, he got in there.

It was a very short appearance and it was back in the day where in order to put a goalie, to make a goalie available in the expense. He had to have played in the NHL so you see a lot of guys who got in for just one game. And he got in and got shelved, by the way. His career numbers in Montreal, 714 save percentage, a 12.0 goals against average. That's not great. Even for the late 90s, Canadians. That wasn't fantastic.

And then doesn't show up in the NHL again for another couple of years when he's in Nashville. Do you think Andre Rasico looked at that guy and was like, man, see, at least somebody else is giving up goals like this? He's looking at him going, you're lucky your last name didn't start with our, buddy. Yeah. They would have hung that on it. What a brutal nickname. What a brutal nickname. Yeah.

And Andre Rascal wasn't even that bad. You look at his numbers for the 80s and 90s. Yeah. He was okay. Like, he was not a terrible goalie, but he just, he was one of those guys. There was a few other guys too. That's like Vincent Riendo was red light Rendo for a while. But we all remember.

He was? I don't remember that. I feel like any goalie whose last name started with R who had a few bad games probably got stuck with that for a little bit. But yeah, there were other guys. But Andre Roscoe just for some reason has it. Right. You know what? I bet you we all had our laughs and maybe he can't hear us because he's got his

Stanley Cup ring stuck in his ear. Yeah. Yeah. Last week we were talking about, we were wondering if every franchise had that one player who just for whatever reason was so popular with the fan base that, you know, they would elicit huge cheers when they walked into the arena. I thought this was a good one from Morgan, who says the non-superstar that the New Jersey Devils fans love,

and they go nuts for, Sergey Breeland. We love the Sarge, a three-time Stanley Cup champion who did anything to win for those Devils teams. He would block shots, play on the PK, move up to the top six if somebody got hurt, et cetera. It was a big deal when he got promoted to assistant coach from Utica to the Devils this year. He's our guy, put him up there right with Bordur and Stevens.

I got to admit, I didn't realize the level of popularity. I had a few people from New Jersey. So did I. Yeah. And I was like, I had no idea that Sergey Breedler was this guy. That would not have been on my list. I mean, Danico, I know is up there. I do love how Morgan says.

He's a guy right up there with Broder's, Stevens, et cetera. So congratulations to Scott Niedermeyer for being relegated, et cetera status. But yeah, no, see, that's a great one. And that's the kind of stuff I wanted to know because I would have never thought of that name for Devils fans. But you're right. We heard from a few different Devils fans. who wanted to throw that name out there. You know what?

Speaking of the Devils and Ken Danico, why don't we wrap it up with a little this week in hockey history? Because actually, 20 years ago, this week, Ken Danico was kind of in the news cycle. Now, Ken Danico ended up scoring a goal this week, Sean, in 2002, that basically made him, or gave him, I should say, what's wrong with me here? Why can't I just say it?

It ended. It ended a streak. My good Lord. What's wrong with me? 250. Ken Danico went 256 games without scoring a goal, which is the longest goalless street in NHL history. This week in 2002, Ken Danico scored a goal against Buffalo.

Now, I was looking at this up. So I got a little bit of context here, okay? So there are 11 guys in NHL history that have had a 200 game goal list streak. Okay. Wow. Okay. 11 guys. And Danico, obviously, was the one who got to 256.

I'll give you a couple of names here just so give you an idea of who's on the list because you'll never get. You'll know the names, but you would never guess them. Okay. Number two all time is Rich Pilon. Okay. Rich Pylon, 245 games. Right. And the greatest name of all time for an overpaid defenseman.

Yeah. Rich Pylon? No, no, it's Rich Pylon. Yeah, exactly. Imagine your name is Rich Pylon and you play defense and you got a crazy contract. Yeah. Anyway, no, he's like, no, no, it's Pilon. You don't.

Rich. Yeah. Yeah, please. Anyway, Rob Zettler is on this list. Anyway, so this giving you an idea of kind of who's on. A lot of defensive defensemen, I'm guessing. and then probably some tough guys, right? Derek Bougard is on there, yeah, absolutely.

Is Ken Baumgartner on the list? I remember him. No, no, he's not. Anyway, there's some guys from the 70s that I'd never heard of. Yeah. Anyway, so here's my question. Can Danico, 256 game goalless streak as a skater,

do we need to put that on the list of unbreakable records? Is that potentially an unbreakable record? That's got to be up there because the thing with him is it was it was the perfect storm because he's a defensive defenseman. He's not there to score goals. He scored five or six goals a year even in his prime. Yeah. Now he's in his like late 30s, I think, around that timeline.

So, you know, he's any offensive, any wheels that he had are long gone. he's not a guy there or a score anyways and he's doing it in the middle of the depths of the dead puck era and you know I will go to my grave fighting this fight that the dead puck era has not ended you know we keep patting ourselves

on the back when scoring goes up point one goals a game we're still in a low scoring era but it was lower scoring back then and you know we're never going to see we will certainly never see another forward in this league who plays

for years at a time without any without offering any offense at all. We have seen, you know, very rarely we'll see a guy goes, guys go a whole season. But to go three plus years, no, that's not going to happen. The tough guys could have done it. But it's got to be a defenseman.

The idea of this stay-at-home defenseman is sort of no longer a thing in the NHL. We understand now better that, you know, being able to move the puck a little bit. I don't know if I'd say unbreakable, because we have seen guys go, you know, triple digits. Certainly there's usually, you know, a few guys that get up there. But, man, three full seasons of full time.

Yeah. That's pretty tough. I mean, my boy, Joel Hanley with the stars, he was, he got to 100 last year and exactly 100. But I don't think, and I checked it again this year, I don't think anyone has an active streak over 100. There is one now. And it's Matt Benning. Matt Benning is at 102 right now, the defenseman with San Jose.

He's at 102. Ryan Murray is at 96. Mark Borvietzky is at 86. Okay. Yeah, that's a long way to go. Boy. And yeah, I think this is one of those

where it feels pretty close to unbreakable. maybe not quite. I mean, it's not like the Glenn Hall 502 straight starts or something like that where you're like, we'll never see that again. But it's in that next year down.

Yeah, it's, I think Ken's record is probably pretty safe. Okay. Do we know what the goal looked like, by the way, that he scored? Yeah, you know what?

End rush, tough show. No, it was a, I do know this because I looked it up, but I couldn't find video of it, but apparently it was on a delayed penalty. Okay. And it was a slagely. shot from the point.

Okay, so it was a real goal. It wasn't like, you know, he didn't throw it on net and have it to tip off. Okay, well, good for him. It sounded like a slap shot on a delayed penalty. All right. That's how he scored. I'm sure that goal, whatever goal he gave that up, probably. Didn't, never heard the end of it.

Yeah. So that happened October 25th, 2002. The next night, October 26, 2002. I'm going to ask you, I think this is an unbreakable record. That night, Sean, the St. Louis Blue, with a win from Fred Brathwaite became the first team in NHL history to post a four-game winning streak

in which all four wins were recorded by four different goalies. The streak started with a, and I'm pretty sure we're never going to utter this guy's name again on the podcast, but we've got to drop it in. Reinhard Davis. Wow.

Reinhard Davis. That's a deep cut. Curtis Sanford, Cody Rudkowski, and Frank. Brett Brathwaite. And the reason why I say this is absolutely unequivocally an unbreakable record is because to break this record, you would need to win five games in a row with five different goalies. That ain't happening. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, I was, I was thinking four is manageable. I think, you know, to tie it is potentially you could do. But, you know, I should say

that we've, we have seen teams use a lot of goalies in a season. We've seen six, six, and seven is it did for the longest time six was the record I feel like a couple teams got to seven this feels like a record that maybe during the COVID era you could have seen like when I say the COVID era I mean the last couple seasons where we guys were coming in and out and and it wasn't uncommon at all for for guys to go um it you know obviously two very doable every team probably will do that at at various points this year to get to three even not a lot of teams carry a third goalie so you're probably in a situation when maybe it's an injury or something. I can imagine how you could get to four, especially if it's the goalie of record.

So, you know, one night you got your veteran, you know, the regular starters out. So, you know, the backup comes in and he plays well. And then the next game, it's the backup and the third string. But oh, the third string has to come in. So he gets the win. He gets credit. And now the veterans back. How you get that fourth guy's tough?

maybe there's a trade, maybe the guys are coming in and out. Boy, you know, I could see getting to four in our lifetime, but you're right. To break the record and get to five, I can't imagine that. Because, again, you know, five different goalies in a row to just a play seems hard to conceive of. You've got to win those games. You know, that's the part that really, and, you know, I'm looking at the blues and, you know, when you were describing that and I was like, well, I mean, they're probably. they, you know, they're probably a mess.

They probably stunk, and I'm looking at it. There was a hundred point team. So, yeah, good for them, winning in spite of goaltending, for sure. Yeah, all right. And there you go. Reinhard Davis. I'm not sure that we'll ever utter that name again. You know who else play?

I'm looking at the St. Louis Blues that season. Was Jim McClendon on that team? He wasn't, no, but Chris Osgood shows up on that team. And Tom Barrasso, this is the year that. Tom Barrasso shows up for six games for the, because, you know, I mean, Tom Barrasso had to, he did that retirement tour where he played for every team. There was a rule that he had to play for, he was like,

Carolina, come on down. Yep. Him and Paul Coffey were just, like, cycling around the league. And it's like, you get to the game. Oh, it's Paul Coffee Night. Cool. And, you know, Tom Brasso would be in the other net. Oh, man. All right.

We'll leave it there. Love to hear from our listeners. Hit us up with, you know, Halloween costume ideas. Do you like the pot van socks? All that stuff. You know where to get us. The Athletic Hockey Show and, Gmail.com. The voicemail, it's 845, 4445, 8459. Not a subscriber with us. You can join us at

theathletic.com slash hockey show. Get an annual subscription for a dollar a month. For six months, you can also subscribe to something we have called the Athletic Audio Plus. Apple Podcasts, it's all of our bonus content from the entire network. We'll start with a 30-day free trial and then it's just 99 cents a month after that.