The Athletic Hockey Show - Which Gary Bettman comment is worse?, should the NHL update its awards’ names?, Granger Things, listener questions, and more

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

On a brand new Thursday episode of The Athletic Hockey Show, Ian asks Sean which recent Gary Bettman comment he has a bigger problem with, the guys discuss whether the NHL should follow the NBA’s lead and change the names of their awards, and more.Plus, Jesse Granger stops by in Granger Things as the guys debate an NHL playoff play-in round, discuss the vetting process for NHL owners, and answer listener questions in the mailbag to close things out. Have a question for Ian and Sean? Email [e-mail] or leave a VM: [phone]!Subscribe to The Athletic Hockey Show's Youtube Channel: youtube.com/@theathletichockeyshowGet a 1-year subscription to The Athletic for $2 a month when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the Athletic Hockey Show. It is a Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Ian Mendez-Shawn McIndoo with you. As always, in these seats. Coming up, Jesse Granger is going to drop by for Granger things. We've got a whole bunch of emails from listeners, too, that we want to get to lots of stuff. But I want to lead off with this, Sean, because,

and look, I listen to a good chunk of the Wednesday edition of the pod, and I know that they touched on the board of governors stuff as well, you know, with everything that came out of there. But I want to ask you this, because I know that sometimes you get a little bit fired up on stuff that comes out of the commissioner at these types of things. So I'm going to give you kind of a, you know,

which one did you have a bigger problem with? Or maybe you didn't have a problem with either of these things. But I know that. You know that. I know that doesn't feel right. I will warn people. I'm really under the, the weather now, so you're not getting fired up today.

We can dial the expectations down on that, but, uh, they, I, uh, I, yeah, I, I, I, I had an issue with, with, uh, both of the things he said. Okay. But, but, but, but that's, you know what? You might be under the weather, but it gives you that good, kind of rich, deep podcast voice. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's what you got going.

That's what I'm looking for. Yeah. By the way, I, I, if I'm not mistaken, I feel, I feel like 80% of, North America is under the weather right now. So you're certainly not, you're certainly not alone. This is, this is the, I've got the same voice I had going when we did the live show from the draft in Montreal. But that was a, it was a very different set of circumstances. Yeah, that was, yeah, that was self-inflicted. Okay. Yeah.

So here we go. Gary Bettman comes out of the board of governors meetings. And look, I'm a Pierre LeBron truther. Okay. And when Pierre LeBrun says he wants to... And look, quick side note here. So I'm listening to the Wednesday pod, right? And those guys with Rousseau,

and maybe we'll drag Granger into this, because Granger was the biggest one saying, I don't have a single problem with the playoff format. I don't know what anyone's talking about. Like, we don't need to expand the playoffs. Rob Pizzo was saying the same thing. I was like, what? You guys...

Anyway, that's it. You know, maybe we'll attack Grasman. Ranger when he comes in for that. But, yeah, I'm all in favor of that. And look, I'm in favor of expanding the playoffs with a play in round. So, and, and the, the kind of way that I thread the needle is I don't even say that we expand the playoffs because we're still going to have a 16 team playoff. I just like the idea of a play in round to get the last of those 16 teams, give us something

to look forward to. And I made the case before. And the main thing is, you know, people say that it devaluing. is the regular season, and I disagree. I think it makes the regular season more interesting because you now have important inflection points at different spots in the standings. You want to finish, you know, obviously you want to finish in, let's say, the top 10 to get into the playoff round, but you also really want to finish sixth so that you don't have to play the playing round. You get right in. And you also want to finish first or second because

you're going to get a play-in team who's going to be tired because, you know, they haven't had the rest that you've been having while they're doing the play-in round. versus a scenario like last year where you talk about devaluing the regular season. We knew the eight Eastern Conference playoff teams in late November last year. And none of the rest of it mattered. Because in the NHL, the upsets are so frequent and everything that whole mice really doesn't matter. It's not like playing for seating is all that interesting. So that's my argument for doing it.

But I will say two things. First of all, I do get the arguments. There are certain things where I've got opinions on the NHL, and I'm just sitting there going, if you don't agree, you're just wrong. You know, I'm, you know, if you like the loser point, you're just wrong. I'm sorry, there's, you know, there is not a good argument for it. This doesn't fall into that category.

There are good arguments for it, and I do understand, I hear a lot of feedback from hockey fans in different channels. There's an awful lot of fans out there who agree with Gary Benman. They don't want to see this. They agree with Granger and everyone. they don't want to see it. They think it's just fine the way it is. I get that and I respect that.

So in that sense, I didn't like Gary Bettman being all dismissive about it. But I do get that there's a lot of people saying, you know what, for once, good for the commissioner for saying no to something that they also don't want to see. Okay. So here are the two comments from Bettman. I'm going to read out two quotes. You tell me what you had a bigger problem with. One quote from Betman is, quote, you're looking to fix a problem that doesn't exist. That's Gary Betman on the playoff format.

The other quote is, quote, the polling we do with our fans gives us the feedback that it's a non-issue. That's Gary Bettman on digital rinkboard advertising. So let me ask you. You can only pick one comment that you really want to zero in on. and nitpick and say, you know what, I'd like to push back on this one. Which one are you going to push back on? If you're in an elevator with Gary Bettman and you get a chance to push back on one of these things, what are you doing?

It's going to be the second one. And again, because the first one, I see where he's coming from. He doesn't need to be this dismissive and combative all the time. You know, he could absolutely say, hey, I see the argument for it. Here is my argument against it. And, you know, we could have that conversation instead of just sneering. at people and, you know, they're making up issues that don't exist, just like we all made up, you know, the, wanting to know what the cap hits were back when they weren't releasing that information. And he said, nobody cares about that and, you know, all of this stuff. So I don't like that approach. And I will say this, all the people, every time I criticize Gary Bedman, I was here from somebody saying, well, Gary Bettman doesn't actually make these decisions. It's the owners, it's the teams. He just reports to them. He's just basically a glorified stenographer. Pierre reported that he talked to 12 governors, and all 12 wanted to expand the playoffs.

Right. But he said that they won't bring, they're not pushing for it because they know they will face the wrath of Gary Bettman, was I think how he put it. So just remember that the next time you're trying to defend Gary Betman saying, oh, he doesn't actually get to make the decisions. In this case, at least, he certainly does have the ability to flex on his so-called bosses and tell them what to do.

Now, the one that really bothered me was that second one with the digital ads. Because I said, you know, I hear feedback from fans. I know that a lot of them are fine with the playoffs. I know a lot of fans hate these new digital ads. They hate that they're animated. They hate that they glitch. I hear from some fans who say, well, as long as they don't glitch and they don't animate, I don't mind them. Well, they do glitch and they do animate.

So, you know, that's not much of a defense of them. And again, we all get it. It's revenue, right? They're making a ton of money off of this. If Gary Betman just said, look, it's an important revenue stream, it's new technology. We're very happy with how it's working, but we get that it's not perfect. We're still working on it. We hear the feedback, but we're going to keep moving forward with it. I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. But he's got to go and give us this,

this fake fan survey. I'll just say it because he pulls this out all the time. Whenever he's criticized on something, he's always got some fan survey or some feedback. He's always saying, well, the fans I talk to always say that what fans does he talk to? What, you know, has anyone out there ever had an avenue to communicate with Gary Batman and send their opinions? I posted on Twitter. I said, please, if you were, you know, I've got 100,000 hockey fan followers. One of you must have been part of this survey that they did. Tell me what it was. Let me know what the questions were. I'd love to see it. There's nothing out there. This is just, you know, because not only did Gary Betman say that the fans didn't mind it. And again, I know that some fans don't mind it. Some

fans are fine with it. He said it actually enhanced their viewing experience. There was some sort of comment that it was, the feedback from fans was this was actually making it better. Nobody said that. Let's just say, Gary Bettman, nobody said that. There is not one fan out there who was like, you know what, this aggressive marketing really enhances my experience, having animated pucks and cars flying around the ice really does enhance my experience. There's a lot of fans who don't mind it. There's a lot of fans who probably don't love it, but they understand, hey, we all want the cap to go up, go get some revenue. You're a business. We get it. But again, they're just the arrogance of him just not being able to just acknowledge another side.

And he's got to go and make up these nonsense surveys that he says he's doing, which I really hope are fake, because the other option is there are people in the NHL office whose job is to create these surveys that just tell Gary Benman when he wants to hear. And that is a total dereliction of leadership if that's how it's going. So I sure hope they're fake because the alternative is even worse. Yeah, it's, it's remarkable to me because they are visually distracting. Like, and that's, at best, at best, they're visually distracting. And look, we went through this in the 90s when we had a tracker on a puck and people were like, ah, this is, this is too distracting. And people hated it, but at least that was trying.

And it was in the game. Like, it was like game related, right? And it wasn't taking your attention away from the puck. Yeah. Yeah. The laser puck was at least somebody sitting down saying, I'm thinking from a fan's perspective. There's a lot of fans in the U.S.

who have trouble following the puck. Let's solve a problem for the fans. And if it didn't work, it didn't work. And, you know, obviously the fact that we don't have it anymore suggests that it didn't work. But at least that was a case of, you know, they were coming at it from the right. angle. There was a great threat. I don't know if you saw it from somebody in marketing where the last week, I think, on Twitter, where they went through and they're like, here's why

the ads might bother you in a way that you're just sort of like, I don't know why they bother me, but they're, you know, I just, I just don't like them and how, you know, like, let's be honest, hockey is, even if you're a long time diehard fan, it's a tough sport to follow on TV. The puck's very small. Things are moving very, very fast. That's what we love about it, right? It's the fastest sport in the world. There are, there are, things are happening. You've got to pay attention to a whole bunch of stuff. And if you're a long-time fan, you've probably just gotten used to doing all that stuff. But if you're new, it's a really tough sport to watch.

I mean, that's one of the reasons why one of the first things you always say, if someone's like, I'm trying to get into hockey, what should I do? Is you say, go to a game. Don't just watch on TV because it's hard to watch on TV. It's better in person. And, you know, this is not helping that. You know, even when they work and even when they're not. not animated. They're changing during the play. That's no good. They're just, they've got, like, the colors are just a little too crisp. Like, there is something that, the way the marketer on,

Twitter described it, like, there's just something that feels artificial about them. And that kind of distracts your brain. Your brain is sort of going like, what, there's something wrong here. There's something off. And it's, and it just becomes, becomes frustrating. So, you know, again, And you want to make money. We get it. You know, no issue with them saying, hey, this isn't perfect, but we're making a ton of money on it. And, you know, we'll keep working on it. But to have some fake survey that you're going to throw out there, throw back in our faces, it's, you know, like a few people are saying on Twitter, this is the equivalent of Gary Bettman's like secret girlfriend that goes to a different school.

And you don't know her. But she's definitely there. And she says that he's very cute and cool. Yeah, it's, yeah, and it's always the one ad where the truck or the car is moving that bothers everybody, right? Like, that's the one where, like, I mean, the idea that they animated them, again, clearly, I'm sure at some point, some partner said, hey, we'll, we'll pay you more if you let us animate them. And the NHL made a decision to go, okay, I, you know, it's a business. We get it. But don't sit there and say, well, that, yeah, that really enhances the experience. Like, who are you kidding? And I will say there's a lot of fans that just absolutely can't stand these things.

So for, you know, for Gary Bettman, and I know he's a big listener of the Thursday, Thursday pod, if you really are getting handed surveys that say actually everyone loves these things and they think they're great, you're not getting the full feedback because there are a ton of fans out there who absolutely cannot stand these things. You know, imagine like baseball has the digital ad behind home plate. that changes, right? Regardless of what network is showing the game, you often, like, you see, like, lumber liquidators, but, like, there's different ads behind home plate.

Can you imagine if those were animated and moving around? Like, your eye would go to it. They would never do that in a million years. So, to me, like you said, hockey is tough enough to follow with a puck to add that element of here's, by the way, here's a moving Chevy vehicle barreling around the rink at the same time as the puck.

it's it doesn't work. The only comparison is, and if you've been watching the World Cup, you've seen it in soccer, they do have kind of the equivalent on the boards around the soccer field pitch, whatever. But that's not part of the playing surface. You know, that's back of the out of bounds. You know, it's not like hockey where the boards are in play. Like, that is the playing service. So, you know, I've seen people say, hey, I'm a soccer fan.

and we've had this for years to get used to it. Maybe. And maybe this is the sort of thing we will just get used to. But I don't think the soccer comparison holds because, again, it's near the field of play. But there's a world of difference between that and actually be part of the field to play. Yeah. You know, one of the thing I want to hit on with you is, and I'm pretty sure you talked about this on your other podcast, is the idea of, is it time?

Should we rename some trophies in the NHL or come up with some new trophies? And this comes out of the NBA and that. And I know that we sometimes are, we accuse the NHL just mimicking the NBA. But the NBA announced that, hey, the MVP award is now going to be called the Michael Jordan Trophy. Best defensive player is going to be the Akeem Elijah on trophy, you know, things of that nature. You know, and it kind of got us wondering, you know, either A, is it time to, do we need to, like, okay, let me ask you this first.

Is there any scenario in which you think that we should just update the, like, could you take art, like, I'm just going to use this as an example? example, could you take Art Ross's name off of the scoring trophy and rename it to Wayne Gretzky? Or is that wrong, poor form? Like, let's start with that. No, absolutely. You could do that. You just take, it's the same award and you just update it with a new name.

We've done it. We did it with what used to be the Pearson Award, which is the best player has voted by the players. It's now the Ted Lindsay Award. We took it and we, you know, that was a perfect example, right? It was something he was named after some, you know, politician. It wasn't a great name. Didn't really have anything to do with NHL history. And we took it.

We renamed it after a guy like in Ted Lindsay, who was not just a great player, but was instrumental in forming the union. And, you know, it's just a, you know, a massively important figure in the evolution of the game from a player's perspective. Perfect. Nobody complained about that.

You know, nobody looks back and says, oh, I'm confused. Why were there two names for it? It's the same award. You just give it an update. name. No, no issue at all. The thing I love about Art Ross is, like, look, and Art Ross is more known as being a coach,

but as a player scored one goal, right? Yeah, one career point. Yeah. Or is it just one point? I know he had a goal. Just the one point. He's considered the guy, and that's news to a lot of fans. I got a lot of fans go, you know, I don't know who Art Ross is, but they just

assume he was like some Joe Malone level star of the, but he's not. He was better known as a coach, but most of these awards that we have are named after either whoever donated them. So, you know, the Lady Bing

and others like that, including the Stanley Cup, which nobody wants to rename. Or they're named after members of the old boys club. It's owners or coaches or G. You know, back in the day, there were, you know, a dozen or so figures of power and they all got awards named after them or their families,

like the Norris and, you know, all of this. Change them. Yeah, I'd have no issue with it. I don't feel super strong. strongly about it. I'm not sitting there going, you know, we have to change this, although I'm, I am sympathetic to the idea that with some of the stuff we know about Con Smythe, that that one should be changed regardless. But yeah, I don't feel super strongly about it, but I've got no issue with it. And it makes for a fun discussion, right? We can all argue over who should be named after one. Okay. Now, help me out here. Like, I'm having this sudden flashback to our

childhood 80s, 90s, was there a plus minus award handed out to the person with the best plus minus? And let me add one other really weird caveat. Was Alka Selzer the sponsor for this award? Oh boy. Like Alka Selzer plus minus. And for some reason, I feel like Mark Howe,

Gordy Howe's son, who played for Philadelphia, had a year where he was like plus 82 or something. And he won the, maybe we could Google it. Or maybe we can ask our producer, Chris Flannery, to look this up while we're speaking. Was there an Alka-Seltzer plus-minus award in the NHL. And did Mark Howe win it?

Or is that just a fever dream I had? No, you know what? I think there was. I don't know if it was Elka-Seltzer or like the NHTHA used to have like these three, like Gillette's name was on everything. Right. I've written about this. In fact, I'm calling up.

my article now because there were, there are quite a few defunct awards. So let me, let me go down the list on some of this. I wrote this about three years ago. The O'Brien trophy. You ever heard of that one? The O'Brien, yeah. It was the Stanley Cup runner up got the O'Brien trophy back in the day. There was the NHL Foundation Player Award, which most recently in 2017.

So this was, this was one. that I've made the point that I get why they do it. We have too many awards for NHL players for being like just good guys. We have two men like leadership and community and King Clancy and y'all. I get why we want to have that. We should absolutely recognize that stuff. But it feels like half the award shows is this stuff. How about this one?

The Roger Crozier Saving Grace Award to the goaltender with the best save percentage. And that was as recent as 2007. It began in 2000. and it was around for about seven or eight years. The Saving Grace Award. Roger Crozier's Saving Grace Award. Yeah. What were they?

I guess you would have had to have played 25 games to qualify? Yep, that was exactly at minimum 25 games played. And yeah, it's interesting because Roger Crozier himself never led the league in save percentage. But another one, the NHL Fan Fave Award. And it was actually fanfave, not fan favorite. that that was that was as recent as 2009 and there was a group of finalists which apparently Steve Mason was in the running for this award so I don't know and by the way Chris Flannery has looked it up and there was an Alka-Seltzer sponsored plus minus award from 1989

to 1996 I've been the first winner was it was a not Mark Howe, it was Paul Cavalini. Wow. I've got to hear as it went all the way to 2008. Again, there was a lot of awards. Now, maybe it didn't, it must have dropped the Alka-Seltzer. No, but, but, here, the award was replaced by the Bud Ice plus minus award. There you go. Following the 95-96 season. What's Bud Ice? Merrick Malik won the award. Michael Roosevelt won in 2006. Do these guys have, like, on Paul Cavalini's mantle or, or whatever, is there like an

Alka-Seltzer plus award that he had, like, a physical plaque? Like, I need to know this. Here's, here's a good one. This award was given out exactly once in 2004, the road performer award to the player who accumulates the most road points. Oh, tell me it was sponsored by like a hotel or something. It's got to be. sponsored by Sheraton.

Yeah. So this is just an obvious advertising. Getting your Sheraton points. And then they got, and then they got rid of it. And then they shut the league down is what happened. Yeah. They shut the league down.

And then everybody was on the road. And there also used to be an NHL lifetime achievement award. And again, that one went up until 2009. Like a lot of these are not way back in the olden days. What was that? Was the award show just like four hours long in 2006? and I missed it.

I don't remember any of these. No. But so maybe, look, instead of renaming things, maybe we just need to bring some things back. Yeah. The initial Lifetime Achievement Award was two seasons. It was Gordy Howe and Jean Beliveau

and then they got rid of it. So. The Lifetime Achievement Award, what's the Hall of Fame for? Exactly. Exactly. Is this like a, I don't know.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, listen, I, I love to hear from listeners too. Like, you want to, rename some awards or I think we just need to just go back and bring in some of these plus minus awards. Bring back the Road Performer Award. Road performer.

And the NHL fan fave. That's what we really need is something for fans to just be mad at each other about. And the Roger Crozier Saving Grace Award. Yes. That one definitely has got to come back. Yeah. Man. Anyway, we'd love to hear from people if they want to see some awards.

renamed. Real quick, just to wrap up this portion of it, like, you'll hear a lot of people saying on the Defenseman Award, it's time to create a Bobby Orr award, which recognizes the best off the, the defensemen at the best offensive season, and then you keep the Norris separate and maybe that helps separate sometimes when guys just rack up points and whatever. Where do you come down on that argument? Or would you like to see the Norris just rename the Bobby Orr? Yeah, I would go, here's what I would do for the major awards. If we're putting stuff in play.

I would go, Norris becomes the Bobby Orr. The Vezina, we have to have a debate over that because there's a number of guys that we could argue with on that. And then I'm going to bring in, whether it's Wayne Gretzky, Maryland, me, whatever, I'm going to be forward of the year. Because we don't have that. We've got defensive forward. and but we don't and then that that sort of reinforces that

the MVP is not just a forward award that's how it gets voted on and I think part of the reason for that is that everybody you fill out your ballot you do your best defense me and do your best goalies and now you go okay now I got to do Connor McDavid and Austin Matthews

and so they get on the heart trophy and I had I even had somebody suggest to me that hey you give out those three awards right the Bobby or the Hasick or whatever you call the Vezina and the Wayne Gretzky and then those three become your finalists

for the MVP somehow and maybe you know you go and put that out there. I don't know if that would work I don't know how the voting would go. I think that's kind of a cool idea though. I could do something. Yeah, I like that. I also hear about people saying, you know,

rename the, if you want to really honor, say, and I would say if you're doing like the ultimate Mount Rushmore of this sport, you're probably, and look, it's always open to debate, but you would probably go Gretzky, Lemieux, Orr and Howe, you know, that's easy, you can rename the divisions that way, right?

Like, yeah, you could. You could. And maybe that's one way. But then it gets tricky, how do you, you know, who, or and how, man, those teams are in the same, same division.

You got to end up, somebody's, somebody's going to be mad. I don't know, but Bobby Orr did play for the, play for the hot. So. Yeah, exactly.

I think of them as Chicago, just like I think of Oregon and Hartford. Wayne and St. Louis, right? That's right. Yeah, exactly. There we go. All right, here we go. It's a little Granger things with our pal, Jesse Granger,

brought to you by BetMGM, the exclusive betting partner with us at The Athletic. And, Sean, you know, earlier in the episode, I said, you know, I spent some time on Thursday morning driving, had to drop my daughter off to school across the city. And I said, I got to download the Wednesday pot. I'm going to listen to it on the commute, which, by the way, the kids in the car, they weren't happy with that, but I don't really care. I'm in control.

I'm behind the wheel. And I got to tell I was shocked that the trifecta of, of Rob Pizzo, Jesse Granger, and Mike Russo. We're all in universal agreement that the NHL playoff format does not need to change. In fact, Jesse Granger, I felt like you were the most adamant of the three saying, come on, we don't need to change the playoff format. So Sean and I earlier, we kind of laid out the case where we'd love to see a play in. Like, give us 9 and 10 playing 7 and 8, and then after that, the playoffs begin.

Can you tell us why you oppose that of kind of expanding the playoff field to include four more teams in a in a play in format? Yeah. Just to clarify, I would be in favor of changing the playoffs, but just back to the one versus eight thing. I don't like the divisional stuff as much. But in terms of adding more teams, I feel like we already have enough. I just, I think back to the bubble season. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm, my, uh, you on this is warped because, uh, that bubble season, the Golden Knights played the Chicago Blackhawks in the first round.

And that Blackhawks team was just horrible. I'm talking a, the worst hockey team I've ever seen play in a playoff game. And it just, to me, it screams this team, this league already has half the teams making it, which to me is too many, but the Stanley Cup playoffs are perfect. I don't want to touch them. I just don't think adding more teams is going to make the playoffs better. These teams are not going to be good teams because we're already getting, in my opinion, some not great teams in the bottom of the playoffs.

I think that it's also going to lessen the chance that you see first round upsets because I think those 9, 10 teams, 7, 8 teams are going to get beat up. They're going to beat each other up, and then they're going to have to play against the one seed directly after. So I think it might take away some of the excitement we see in the first round. I think the NHL is probably maybe baseball, most likely to see an upset like that, whereas in basketball and football, the top seats usually kill everyone. So I think it might lower that.

And then the other thing is I think one of the bigger arguments I've seen for adding the playoff or the play in is that it keeps fan bases in it longer. It keeps them excited. They have a chance. And to me, the loser point already does that too much. It already has, the loser point has made terrible hockey teams look like they're good enough to make the playoffs and keep them in this playoff run long enough. So I feel like they're already accomplishing that with, I'd actually want to get rid of that thing too. Maybe, maybe.

It's a trade. We get rid of the loser point. We get the play in. I love it. Yes. Rubber stand. I don't know if this is, if many people out there will agree with me. but I just, I don't know.

I like watching the best teams. I feel like the playoffs should be the best teams. And we already get some not so great teams in the playoffs with what we've got. So, Jesse, first of all, a lot of people would agree with you. I absolutely know there's a lot of people screaming at their device right now going, like, he's right. Don't change a playoffs. We love the playoffs.

I got to say, I love that it's the Vegas guy who's like the crusty conservative on this one. Like, don't change. It's tradition. Come on. My only response on that is I would make the argument that, you know, I agree with something you said, which is you're not sure that this would actually make the playoffs better.

I would agree with it. My main argument for this is it makes the regular season better. It makes it more meaningful. It gets us away from these playoff races that are already decided months before the season ends and gives us something to, you know, some excitement to look forward to. And, you know, I'm, I bounce back and forth on these upsets. I know there's a lot of people out there. You ask them, what do you love?

about the NHL playoffs, the first thing that they will say is the upsets. Any team can beat any other team. The 8 seed can absolutely beat the one seed. It's not like, for example, the NBA, where, I mean, how often does an 8 beat a 1? It's, it barely ever happens. It's not even like the old NHL where the Oilers or the Islanders, they weren't losing in the first round. There was no way. But, you know, I think some upsets are great. But if it's happening all the time, they're not upsets anymore. Now it just feels like we're flipping coins. And, you know, when you said that, you know, you said, I want to see the best teams.

Yeah, so do why. But I want to see the best teams also in round two in round three. And, you know, I don't want to see, frankly, the Montreal Canadians go to the Stanley Cup final. You know, I would love to see them have to go, have a little steeper hill to climb so that the teams like, you know, I would have much rather seen Vegas in Tampa in that final. I would have seen, you know, I would have preferred a lot of these, you know, up-tete teams. Let's give them a higher mountain to climb. Let's make it a little easier on these one teams. If you're the number one seed, you've earned something.

You've done something. And I feel like it makes the season worth more because right now, what are we playing 82 games for, really? I mean, it's 82 games to get whole mice advantage that doesn't even matter through the playoffs. And you're a 55% favorite instead of 50-50. I like the idea of making it easier on the good teams and let's get, you know, another Colorado, Tampa final. That was amazing. I would love to see more stuff like that. Yeah.

You know, I think it was funny too, Sean, is when Jesse said the 2020 Chicago Blackhawks were the worst team he's ever seen in the playoffs. And I'm like, tell us you didn't live in the 80s without telling us he didn't live in the 80s. Yeah. I didn't. The 91 North Stars are like, yeah. Yeah. The North Division when you used to make it. And look, nobody say we go back to, yeah, back then when there were 21 teams, 16 made the playoffs.

And literally, there were, I mean, I was a Leifes fan and you just had to beat the North Stars. And the Leifes made the playoffs with like 55 points some years. It was absolutely terrible. I don't think we need to go back to that. But I like the idea of having a play in round. And then you, whatever, once the play in rounds done, that's the playoffs. So we still have 16 teams. We still have a first round, you know, and all of that.

I like it that way. But again, I know you, you've Vegas traditionalists, man. You just, you just will not, will not get off of the way that things used to be. I do like your points that making it easier on the top teams. I, I'll agree with that part. I will admit you've swayed me a bit on making it easier for the top teams. One of the things I said yesterday was I want to draft where the top teams pick, pick their opponent. Think of the theater of that. Right. That's what I mean. The storylines. Like, we, and, and make it an event too. Hold a TV show and have the GM. I want the general manager of the one seed to have to walk up to the podium and say, yeah, we want the sharks or whoever it is they

pick. And then that way when there is the upset and that you know that there's going to be, it'd be so much more fun. And that's why that will never ever happen. The GM's boy, I mean, these guys aren't getting rid of the loser point. Can you imagine making that? Because I'll tell you right now, like, you know, Kyle Dubas gets a lot of heat for the Leafs. not winning in the first rank. Can you imagine if the Leafs got up to the podium and said, we want the HABS and then lost that series and Kyle Dubas would be fired, you know,

before the final buzzer. There is no way that any GM wants any part of that, which is a great reason to do it anyways. I would just love thinking of like ESPN and Sportsnet carrying it. Devils GM, Tom Fitzgerald gets to the podium. We'll take the Rangers. Right. You know what I mean?

Like it would just be phenomenal. They just fire everything. everybody up. I love that. Okay, one other thing I wanted to touch on with you from, actually, maybe, maybe Sean, we need to make the Thursday podcast. All it is is just a follow up of the Wednesday podcast with like, that's right. Lingering questions that I have. So one thing that Sean and I have kind of, we've, we've often roasted, and we're not alone on this, we've often roasted the NHL for their lack of like kind of deep investigations into things. Like if there's a, if there's a big controversy, we kind of laugh and we're like,

oh yeah, the NHL did its due diligence and they kind of move on. You had a really interesting nugget that I just want to pick on just for one second here on the Wednesday pot. And that's in light of how the NHL vets potential owners. And it sounds like it's a completely different process than some of the other investigations. And for the benefit of our listeners that didn't listen to the Wednesday pot, can you just share with us what the NHL did to kind of vet Bill Foley? as the owner of the Vegas Golden Knights because this was a fascinating little nugget

that I think you shared on Wednesday. Yeah, I was shocked when he told me. I had a Q&A with him. It's been about a month ago now, and it actually just went final the other day. He has purchased AFC Bournemouth, Premier League team, soccer team over in Europe. And I was talking to him about it,

and he's like, yeah, right now we're in the process of the background check. And I was like, okay, I didn't even realize they did that. I mean, now that you say it, it's like, okay, yeah, it makes sense. And he goes, yeah, I don't think I'll have any problems, though, because it's nowhere near as intensive as the NHLs. Bill Foley is 78, and the NHL went back and talked to people who served in the military with him

back when he was in the Army in his, I think, 20s, which is crazy. Like, I totally get wanting to make sure, like, especially after what happened with the Islanders, I'm sure we've all seen the 30 for 30, where they're. He sold it to a guy who had no money. I totally get, like, wanting to talk to some of Bill Foley's, like, business partners and, like, just to make sure he is who he's saying he is. But to go all the way back to a guy who's 78 years old and talk to people that served in the military with him is impressive and surprising. Did not expect that at all. But, yeah, apparently, buying an NHL team, you've got quite the background search.

That's fascinating. I want to know now if the Seattle guys got the same deal or, if this was like a, you know, just maybe a little special Vegas treatment, just in case. But yeah, you're right. It's much, much better than the 90s where they just went. Do you have money? And the guy would go, yeah, I got money. And they go, okay, we'll take your word for it. And that was the entire screening process. Yeah, that was the John Span. You're right. If you haven't seen the 30 for 30, it's, it's fascinating. And yeah, anyway, I just thought that was really interesting because people wonder, you know, what's this? Because Ottawa's up for sale right now. And there's a handful of

perspective owners and you, I think, shared some insight there. It's for people wondering, you know, people who often say, well, how come the process is going to take so long? Well, it's because they're trying to track down people from their past. But wouldn't you love to have that? I would love to have that job where I'm trying to track that because, you know, wouldn't you love to just go back through either Facebook or like you have to track down somebody's high school yearbook? I would love that if that was my full-time job. That would be fun. And who's the person right now, calling everyone who's ever been in a movie with Ryan Reynolds and just getting the, I don't know.

The van, you're pausing the, as the Van Wilder credits are rolling, you're hitting pause and you're like, you're calling Tara Reid up. Hey, look, do you need tonight? Does he, does he owe you any money? Did he ever have to pick up lunch and he didn't pay you back? What's, what's going on? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Hey, listen, Jesse, this was great. I appreciate you dropping by. And I do want to plug the, I, I, I feel like we sometimes don't, well, we all hate the Tuesday show. We can agree with that. But the Wednesday show, we got to show some love with the Wednesday show. So make sure you check it out.

Thanks for dropping by, as always for Granger Things. Have a great week, and we'll get you again next Thursday. Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me, guys. All right, thanks, Jesse. All right, always great to have Jesse Granger joining us for Granger things. Let's get on over to the mailbag, and you can reach us via email at the athletic hockey show at gmail.com or we always love these. Drop us a voicemail.

Leave us a message. And we got one here. The phone number, by the way, is 845, 445, 445, 8459. And we were talking about how Haley Salvean and I did an attendance story last week. Devil's fans got a little bit hot because New Jersey was ranked 30th in attendance. And they're having just a terrific season. Well, Chris, who is a Devils fan and kind of lives in that area, he left us a voicemail with his thoughts on New Jersey's attendance situation.

Thursday show New Jersey area code Chris calling here just here to talking about the attendance and as a big devils fan and big hockey fan I'm not

I'm actually shocked that you said 86% I'm not shocked that the devils are at the bottom of attendance and I've always thought going to games that attendance there has kind of been disappointing

and a lot of away fans especially for Rangers and local teams, Flyers, Islanders, want to usually show up in pretty big numbers. And I've always been disappointed in fan attendance at the Rock. I feel like it could be better.

Obviously, the team hasn't been good. But it's pretty laughable. The people are upset about that. If they go to the games, they wouldn't be too surprised. Thank you. All right. So that's the voice. but let me also read a quick email here too, Sean, from Jason,

who's kind of, you know, writing it on the same topic and says, hey, everyone, I don't want to be the typical upset Devils fan and rant, but I think you guys need a little bit of context here with their attendance. Since Ian is the Sends guy, I think he knows all about the little brother syndrome thing that some teams have. Well, the Devils are the third fiddle in their own market for hockey, and there are nine, count them nine big four teams in this market. It's definitely a sore spot that we hear.

from Rangers fans all the time, even when the devils are dominant. I know this is more of a league-wide look at attendance, but it's always been a sore spot for Devils fans. So there's a little bit of context here. And I appreciate the email from Jason and the voicemail from Chris as it pertains to it pertains to Devils attendance here, Sean. And, you know, that's, again, it's, it's fair. But as we said last week, you're, you're just posting the numbers.

You know, don't, don't shoot the messenger on that. I will say this. You know, it was last week you were getting yelled at over the attendance thing. You know, I had some Devils fans mad at me over different things. And I did my little mini rant where I said Devils fans were, you know, getting a reputation for being the most sensitive. And, you know, they needed to chill out a little bit. Big thanks to Sean Fitzgerald for taking some of the heat off by dropping his Scott Stevens the next day. And I just, I just want to play.

That's Sean Fitzgerald. Different Sean. I know it's confusing. Half of us are named Sean in this around the. this place, but I want to thank him for that. By the way, I thought it was a great piece. I thought he absolutely took a great angle and it was, it was a fascinating, fascinating greed. But yeah, he definitely stepped up and took the, gave the, gave the, gave us the distraction to slip out the back door on the devil's fans thing, I think. Yeah, absolutely. We talked about

Kevin Stevens last week and this week in hockey history. Adam writes in, says Ian and Sean want to drop a little bit more knowledge on Kevin Stevens for you guys. You're both right, Sean. You were right. Kevin Stevens did play like a wrecking ball at his peak. And Ian, you were right that the reckon ball was, Mark Recky's nickname, that was bestowed upon him by the legendary

play-by-play guy Mike Lang. Also thought you guys needed to know, Lang had a great nickname for Kevin Stevens as well. Kevin Stevens' nickname around the team was Artie because he looked like or he had the spitting image and personality of his dad Arthur. And since Stevens played the way that he did like a freight train,

Mike Lang started calling him the RT Express. So that was his, I guess his nickname in Pittsburgh. I didn't know this. Kevin Stevens was R.D. And Mike Lang called him the RT Express, which my only question would be, would there not be some confusion when Rick Tockett entered the equation? Oh, boy. There it is.

This is our RT. And all these guys. The RTD Express. He came over in the Mark Recky Trade. So maybe then you could free up a wrecking ball. That's a tough one. I got to say, Matt, love Mike Lang. I've always been a fan of his.

The only thing that bothers me about Mike Lang is the two guys, there's Mike Lang and there's Rick Jenneret, who were very creative, very. And then it feels like they were so good that they spawned a generation of copycats, where it's like, you know, you ever be flipping around and it's a some random out of market game and you hear the guy tried, ah, scratch his back with the, you know, you're just like, oh, dude, you're not Mike Lang.

You're not Rick Jenneret. Settled out. Two of a kind will never have, no one will ever be as good at the, as those two at the style that they did. Yeah. Okay, we spent a lot of time talking about foot hockey,

socky, ball hockey, cosum hockey, whatever. And Jeremy writes in, and Jeremy, grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey. And Jeremy says, look, I need to let you guys know, we played something called foam hockey in high school,

in Teaneck, New Jersey. So in gym class and non-class periods, we'd have two v2 or three-v-three games. We would put the nets on either side of the gym, so kind of in a basketball court horizontally. The ball was a wiffle ball. These guys were the modern-day pickleball people. But anyway, they used a wiffle ball.

the sticks were plastic rods with large foam blades that we bent into a curve. Those foam blades would break all the time. We would end up covering the cracks with duct tape. The games would be just a two, and you weren't allowed to use your hands unless you were playing goalie. And then here's what I find funny.

When one team would score the winning goal, the losing team would have to drop their sticks, and then it became a free-for-all between the winning team and the next team up for the sticks with the blades in the best working condition. I don't remember much from high school, but I remember foam hockey. That's from Jeremy from Teaneck, New Jersey.

That was between the foam hockey and the, the cause of hockey, those plastic sticks, man. The curves on, though, there was no such thing as too much of a curve. Everybody was just like hammering them. You think Bobby Hall had the banana blade in the 60s. I mean, people were out there with like a full-on V. And you'd go to take a wrist shot and, I mean, it would bounce off the roof of the gym. And you'd stick with it, man.

Nobody was going out there with the subtle curve. And then Doug Gilmore came along with the flat stick. And suddenly everyone, at least where I was, everyone changed to try to copy that. Yeah. Okay. Let's wrap up the show with a little this week in hockey history. And I got one thing for you. And I'll be honest with you.

I didn't know about this. I'm wondering if you did. So we talked about this, I think last week of the week before, that Ian Turnbull, the Toronto Maple Leafs holds the record for most goals in a game by a defenseman with five. In fact, I think we talked about this around the time that Tage Thompson had the five-goal game. We're like, wow, I can't believe only one defenseman has hit the five-gold mark. And it was a very random guy from the late 70s, early 80s, named Ian Turnbull, who scored five goals in game for Toronto. What I did not know, Sean, I need to ask you about this, is that in December of 1981, December 12th, to be exact,

Ian Turnbull, then of the L.A. Kings, scored four goals in a game. game. I need to know. Did you know that Ian Turnbull, the guy who scored five goals in the game as a defenseman, also had a four-gold game on his resume? It's one of those things. It's like, it's given me like a vague, like maybe I knew that on some level, but certainly if you would ask me, you know, last week, hey, did Turnbull have any other big games? I wouldn't have thought of that. Now, he's with the Kings there. I mean, we all know that anything, anything that happens with the Maple Leafs is more important than, uh, than anyone else. And yeah, he probably did it in a yellow and purple uniform or or whatever.

But yeah, that's, boy, when he got heated up, apparently he was hard to stop. But, okay, so I'm trying to, like, just to give our listeners some context here, Ian Turnbull in his career, scored 123 goals, okay? Mm-hmm. He had a five-goal game and a four-goal game, which means if I, if I, my math is correct on this,

nine goals out of 123 is roughly seven percent. of his career goals were scored in a two-game window. That's great. That's a great way to look at it. This guy played 628 games in the NHL and scored 7% of his goals in two games. Yep. That's wild. That's pretty good.

That's, uh, yeah, that's something. Anyway, and then he's out of the league in his late 20s. Like he was 20, like what happened there? It's, yeah. I mean, it was just, we talked about the stat spoilers, man. Most of them are from the 80s. You get to, uh, you know, notice, you ever notice that I've talked about this before where the NHL is, anytime you see a

stat from the NHL these days, there's always that little like fine print saying like since 1996. Yeah. And the reason they do that, it's, you know, it's not that they're trying to emphasize more, the more recent history. It's just it would all be 80s. You know, you, Tage Thompson has done something that hasn't been done since 1996, but it happened 14 times in one season. Yeah, exactly. So all the all the Stasney brothers did it in one game. That's right. Yeah. You got it. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. All right. We'll leave it there. This was great.

We wanted a little promo. The Straight from the Source pod with Rousseau and Smith, they're going to have Wild GM Bill Guerr, Bill Guerr with them this week. So look, if we know one thing, when Rousseau sits down with Bill Garron, there's always going to be something newsworthy, right? Yep. What was his call? Who was it thinking of the summertime with Cam Talbot?

Was he like, I don't have shit to do? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, was he the one who got that, that question? Yeah, it was Russo. Yep, that was the quarter of the summer from Quarter of the draft. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, make sure you hang out and check out straight from the source this week.

Rousseau and Joe Smith will have Bill Garron. You know, that'll be a lot of fun. All right, thanks for listening to the Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. You want to drop us a voicemail. You can do that at 845, 445, 8458459. An email as well, the Athletic Hockey Show at gmail.com. You can follow us on YouTube as well. YouTube.com slash at the athletic hockey show.

Right now, great deal. You get a one year subscription to the athletic. It's $2 a month. Visit the athletic.com slash hockey show.