The Athletic Hockey Show - Who will be the next coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs?

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Hailey, Max and Sean discuss the Maple Leafs firing Sheldon Keefe, and who might be best to step behind the bench in Toronto? They look back on the Canucks wild comeback win over the Oilers in game one, and the Panthers evening their series with Boston. Plus they took a look at the twenty finalist nicknames for the Utah NHL franchise and they look ahead to Thursday night's games between Dallas and Colorado and Carolina hosting the Rangers.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic hockey show. What's up, everybody? It's another Thursday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Haley, Max, and Sean here with you. Round two of the playoffs have begun, and they're very fun. And we're going to talk about it today. But first, we do have some breaking news this morning, guys. Sheldon Keefe has been fired.

He has two years remaining on a contract extension that hasn't officially kicked in yet. The Leafs had a press release this morning in the quote from Bradtree Living. we determined a new voice is needed to help the team push through to reach our ultimate goal. This is how we've got to start it off today. This is Leif's Talk 2.0 with Haley Max and Sean. Surprise. What do you guys think? I don't think anyone should be surprised by this news.

It's breaking, but not totally unexpected. I didn't think I was going to have to do Leif's coaching talk on two consecutive days, which is just so foolish of me. Like me and Frankie and Sean talked about it a lot yesterday because it is. It's a, it's a, I think it's one of those situations where I love making fun of the overcoverage of the leaves. I love making fun of, you know, how overdone it all is. But this is one of the rare times where the narrative kind of meets reality, where this is a fascinating dynamic. And it is a fascinating situation where the palace intrigue is actually worth, you know,

tracking in a very real way. And I don't think that's, I don't think that's always true, but this is also one of the cases where it, where it kind of is for me. I'm also interested to see like, if this is it, there are other meaningful changes.

Like, see how the next couple days go or the next couple weeks go in, in Toronto, because that'll go a long way, I think, towards, you know, speaking on the way stuff has gone in the past, right? Is, is, we'll know,

we'll get a glimpse into the way things have gone based on the on the moves that get made, you know, or don't get made in the next couple days. It's interesting. Yeah, I think there probably has to be more. Now, I don't know what will happen with the front office and all that. I know people, you know, spotlight on Shanahan a little bit, but the locker room has to have a little bit of a shake up here, too. I mean, the old saying is you change the coach because you can't change all the players,

which is fine. But I think we know the deal with Toronto's core. you made the change off of Mike Babcock to Sheldon Keefe with this same core. I would be pretty surprised if you make it through an entire coach cycle. The core doesn't change. You see no meaningful playoff success and you get to keep the entire core intact too, right? I mean, there has to be some, and obviously Mitch Marner is the obvious name out there right now. I don't know if it's ultimately that simple, but it's not going to be a seismic change to the core in terms of like trading.

two or whatever, but you have to do something with the players, too. This can't just be a Sheldon Keefe thing. For sure. I think Dom had a great story too. I mean, I guess it was kind of polarizing. There were some Leaves fans who like didn't thought it like missed the mark or like wasn't the point. But I thought it was great. I thought it was like very good in its simplicity of just this idea that the Maple Leafs like changed the way that they play in the postseason. Like they overcorrected too much, right? Like, the Leafs started becoming just like a worse version of the Jets with, like, better players or something, essentially. Like, the, they started playing way to, like, safe, chip and chase defensive hockey, which wasn't the right way to play when you have a core

and a bunch of money wrapped up in guys like Mitch Marner, Austin Matthews, and William Nealander, or John Tavares to lesser extent because he's not that like offensively dynamic and to end guy, but, you know, they changed the way that they played too much. Then you watch the Oilers or the abs. Those are better teams, but like those, those are teams that impose their, their tempo and their pace on teams. They don't change the way that they play when it matters. Yeah, you have like strong defense. I mean, the Oilers don't always.

And we can get into that. later in the show, but I don't know, I thought Dom had a great piece just about how they became obsessed with playing the right way and didn't play the right way for the group that they had. And that's ultimately a coaching problem. Yeah. And also they didn't. I mean, they changed the way that they played in some respects, but also didn't in others. Like, win a puck battle.

How about you change that part of the way you play? Yes. Right. Right. And I think that's whenever, whenever Keith came out a couple days ago and said, oh, we need do that we need, he said winning puck battles is one of the things that we need to do. Like that's, don't you, that's wild. Don't you coach them to do that?

I know some of it's a mindset thing. But yeah, that's the problem with like trying to play the right way. Like you can't play a chip and chase style game when you got guys who like don't want to go into the boards and have somebody behind them. It's, this is kind of like a, this is kind of a constant conversation in hockey that I always struggle with. because I don't think, I don't think there's many, if any, teams in the league that that's their, like, out-and-out strategy. They prefer chip. Like, Chip-and-cha is something you do when you are being challenged by a defender. Exactly.

It is one of the few options. When you're a puck carrier, you can skate the puck, pass the puck, shoot the puck, or dump the puck. And when you're pressure- An option. Right. It's one of the four options. And are they doing it too much? You know, other people can decide that. I agree with Sean on the puck battles.

I also think, like, you know, safe hockey. they won, they took this game to game seven OT against Boston and like, you know, they're going to have a huge shakeups or like it's not like they got completely washed out here. Their power play was 5%. I don't think they're playing safe on the power play. But I think there's a lot of smart to what Dom said. The one thing that it kind of made me think of, and I thought this was a really thoughtful article, and I think he kind of hit on this a little bit in it.

When you have a roster construction that dedicates all of your money to these four guys, you're asking them to be more things than a normal, you know, playoff team would ask its top guys to be. So if Austin Matthews is also expected to check top lines and he's a Selky finalist, so yeah, he's going to be asked to do that. It makes a little bit of sense that, you know, he's going to have to play that style in games too. Other teams have stars too, right?

They're not that much better than David Posternak, right? If you're making $11 million, you need to be everything. Maybe not a perfect hockey player, but pretty cool. You can't make $11 million if you're afraid to go into the boards. I'm sorry. Yeah, but I don't think Austin Matthews is really. He's talking about, he's talking about Marner there.

I'm not talking about Austin Matthews. I'm talking about the other guy. I'm making that clear though because Marner was the last player who was, or Matthews was the last player that was named. And then the margin for error from, in terms of the rest of the roster construction is so small because you have to get, not just guys that are pretty good, but guys that are pretty cheap.

And you got to get a lot of, because you're paying a disproportionate amount to not flawed players overall, but flawed players in the sense that, you know, when held relative to the amount of money they make, I mean, they're whatever. They're in trouble. They are. And I think, like, if they did not dedicate so much money up the lineup to these four guys,

then that you are a deeper team that's going to have more of these domy types. who can do everything. They can check. They can score dirty, all this stuff. You have three lines of that, even four lines of that. You start to look a lot more like the Vegas Golden Knights, who I don't think play some high flying style. They do have, you know, some really talented players, obviously.

But I don't think, you know, and there's no, this is, I think, is the crux of Dom's point is. There's no one way to do this. You have to know who your personnel is and play to their personnel. And I think there's a great argument to be made that Toronto should lean into more to how Edmonton's done it. I also think, Edmonton hasn't done it.

Yeah. Edmonton has not done it. So I can understand why they would see that and say, do we want to do that full on? I think they will do it. And I think at some point, Toronto's going to have a good run here once they figure this stuff out. But, you know, I think so anyway, it's a really nuanced article. Everyone should go read it.

Really good stuff. Yeah. I really liked it. I thought it was great. I think the other big question, obviously, as it comes to Sheldon is like who, who replaces Sheldon Keefe? And I also think, like, regardless of what you think, was Sheldon Keefe, a good coach or not, I think that ends up being, like, kind of subjective.

He coached the team to a 212, 97 and 40 record, three straight 100-point seasons, but the big one, only one playoff round one and a losing record in the postseason. You just need to make a change at this point. You can't have, you know, four straight years of playoff disappointment under the same coach in this market specifically and not make a change. So the big question now is who replaces Sheldon Keefe, the coaching carousel and the NHL has been pretty wild lately. There's a lot of guys available in terms of if we want to call them the retreads.

I don't really like that. It's upcycling. Yeah, the upcycled coach. I think the biggest name that's kind of on the market, realistically speaking, like we're not saying like Rod Brindamore or John Cooper here because that's what we were trying to do a few weeks ago. We're like, oh, could they be on the market? I don't know. The big one that we know is available is Craig Brubay.

Agree? He's the big, he's the big fish right now. Yeah, I think so. And he seems to be kind of the style of coach for, you know, now maybe he doesn't,

he's not the style of coach who's going to give them to stop playing safe per se. If you want a coach who's going to really harp on puck battles and all this, stuff that we feel like they did still lacking in spite of maybe a safer approach. Greg Brubai is going to motivate you to win a puck battle. In most instances, yeah, he's also not the coach of the St. Louis Blues anymore because he had some trouble motivating some of those guys that win puck battles and stuff too. But that's just the way it goes, right? That's the life cycle of a coach.

And it's true for it's true for Sheldon Keith, just like it was true for Craig Brubbe. Babe, you know. I mean, Haley, you just said it. This doesn't make Sheldon Keefe a bad hockey coach, but he's certainly not the right hockey coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs anymore. Just like it was probably time for the Blues to move on from Barubei. You know, and now here we are a couple months later, and we're talking about him getting $5 million a year to coach whichever team he wants for the most part. Like that's what it seems like is going to happen. This is a man who was fired three months ago, right? So it's funny. it's funny how the how cyclical things can be.

I also not to veer off too much because we can keep talking about the coaching candidates. I do just think that the, as we're talking about all the things that the organization needs to do, I do think they need to decide if Brad Tree Living is going to be the guy who picks this coach. Like I don't expect them to fire Tree Living after one season. But he also doesn't have the best track record when it comes to hiring coach. I'm trying to think of all the coaches that coach the Flames under Tree Living's tenure. When I was covering them, just me and my two years on the Flames beat, there was Jeff Ward,

Darrell Sutter. I guess he didn't hire Ryan Huska, but that's three. He did fire Brad Tree Living. There was also Glenn Gulletton, Bill Peters, and I think Bob Hartley was the head coach when Tree was initially brought on. That is like five different coaches. That was an issue in Calgary was the coaching carousel in that market specifically. And hire a lot of those coaches who got hired and fired have never had an NHL head coaching job again. So. But then but then the other thing too, you know, the implication here is that like if Brad Tree Living isn't the guy you should make this

hire. Kyle Dubus doesn't work there anymore. Lulamerella doesn't work there anymore. Mike Babcock didn't work out. Sheldon Keefe just got canned. Like what is the through line for all these people who have lost their jobs? Like what is, who is the one constant there in that front office over the last however many years? Like at some point. Are you trying to talk about the Shanna plan?

The Buck is going to stop with Shanna. He's going to run out of people to fire and he's not going to be allowed to make any more, any more replacements. Like, it's, that's always the way it is in sports. If you're an executive, that's, and that's the main reason why so many GMs are so hesitant to fire coaches is because they realize that it reflects badly on them and they're probably not going to get many more replacements after that. right so the guy at the top of the pyramid has all of a sudden you know is tree living the right guy for the job like what how about the guy you hired brad tree living you know second there sean when you were saying what's the what's the through line here i wanted to jump in and say the exact same core of players that too unfortunately it only took about six seconds from my brain to catch up

and realize who picked those players and who has decided to bring them back every time and that goes back to the same road you're you're you're leading us down i also think the point on brad too is like it's it's it's it's a little different hiring a head coach for the trauma maple leaves and the calgary flames i feel like that's probably something that's something that is always going to be a consideration as well but again like i just think it's important to to bring up that was a thing in calgary is a lot of these guys that were hired and fired have not been NHL head coaches since. Yeah.

Except for Daryl Sutter. Money will not be a concern on this hire in the way that it was in the past. Well, I saw, I saw a tweet somewhere like Rod Brindamore must be really happy because now the Keynes are going to have to pay up with the threat of MLSE money coming, right? That Carolina Hurricanes who are currently down to zero in their series against the aggregators. It was just a tweet that I saw. It's fine.

I know. So, yeah, I think Craig Barouba is the big name here. Some of the other names that are kind of out and about that we can, Dean Eveson. Eveson would be funny. Eveson would be like if you can't get something, if you can't get something done with Broube at you. Would you want someone who is Craig Broube flavored? But here's the thing about Aveson is the knock on him as a coach is that he hasn't won in the first round of the playoffs. I don't think the Leafs can get away with that.

No. There's the like, you know, old vets. Bruce Bedrow would be really sweet, would be really great for like a month. And then Leafs fans would probably freak out. I don't want that for Bruce. For him, he doesn't deserve this. Stay home, Bruce. Just like be an assistant or something.

It'd be great. Dude TV. Like, fine. He was good. Yeah. Gerard Gallant. I'll never figure out. I'll never figure out.

never figure out how to say that. I'm sorry. Galant. I always remember because my instinct has always said gallant, but that's not what it is. Like Marchand. It would be a weird one because he never lasts anywhere, which I guess at some point you can just say about all NHL coaches basically these days. But it's the weird pattern.

But early, the teams do get the desired result. So if you're just looking to break this funk and. I don't know. I don't think that's a crazy one. I know it's maybe the most unorthodox of all of these just because it does not seem like a forever fit. But in terms of just like a jolt, like if you really want to just take a crack at this and, you know, you have four years on Austin Matthews's contract. You're not necessarily looking at an eight-year term window here where you got to win. You got to do this pretty quick.

Yeah, for sure. 18 head coaching changes since last season. Max, I feel like this is something that you're very passionate about. And I don't think Sheldon Keefe is the example because he did have, you know, four years, almost 400 games in the league to win something meaningful and didn't. But do you feel like with all these vacancies that some teams are maybe moving on a little too quick? Like, why is everyone getting fired right now? Yeah, I do feel that way.

I think that there's a real rush to pin things at the feet of coaches, really across sports, but it's especially puzzling to me in hockey, which is the sport where you get to call the least set plays and stuff like that. And it feels like, you know, the old meme is that coaches get fired and rewarded based on their goalies, right? Because if a goalie has a good year, the team wins a lot of games and the coach looks like he's a genius. And if the goalie has a bad year, what the hell is going on? I don't know if it's truly that simple, but sometimes it does feel that way. Yeah, exactly. If Sheld, if, if, if Alia Samsonov stops, you know, Trent Frederick on that, on that

breakaway, like, are we, does Sheldon Keefe still have a job? Yeah, right. And, and I just feel like they're the easiest scapegoat because they're, they're, A, they're a consistent face that you talk, like you see talk every day. And so they seem like they have, you know, the biggest share of the blame here. But I think that it's too quick. I don't think it's a good way to run your team. But it's definitely the trend.

And I don't think it doesn't seem like it's reversing course. You say 18 since the start of last year. So we're over half the league is doing this on a two-year cycle. Like how many teams in a given year can be expected to even make a conference final in a two-year window, right? Like it's at most is eight right and it's you're going to have some repeats. So I don't know. It's weird to me. I think coach is getting credit and coaches getting blame is absolutely just a function of the chaos of the sport.

Like people try to see order and you try to see patterns and you try to come up with explanations when a lot of times there's just there isn't any. Like it's it's quarter inches and half inches and good luck and bad luck. and we try to find patterns in this stuff. And that leads us to overcomplicate things. And I know the running joke is, Jack Adams goes to, you know, the guy who had the most randomly good, uh,

goaltender who like outperform expectations. But that's like, that's true. That's true to an extent. Like people try to find patterns. It's human nature. We try to come up with explanations where there aren't any necessarily. And I think that works in both directions.

And the end result is coach. is or geniuses, maybe, maybe, like, lotted as geniuses when they shouldn't be in some cases. And then they're labeled as dopes in others. I also just think, like, people sitting at home, like, don't actually know what goes into being an NHL head coach sometimes. And that's not even to be, like, rude or disrespectful to fans. Like, we don't even know. That's exactly.

If we're not in the coaching room, like, we don't know what goes into being a good coach. We don't know what they do and don't do. So that's my problem sometimes with the coaching conversation is like, what do we actually know about the position? External factors matter tremendously. And this is what Frank was saying about Travis Green yesterday. Like he was like the stuff that he had to deal with in Vancouver was beyond the pale craziness.

So like if you want to dig them for losing a bunch of games, they're like, so be it. But there's stuff that went on there that people just can't. that people don't know or can't understand. And it's like water under the bridge now. But it happened and it was and it was a factor, you know, at the time in a very, very real way.

Yeah. I was surprised to see how angry people were about that. I didn't think that Travis Green was like a, uh, this guy, he'd retread. Uh, he's terrible.

Like I, rookie mistake. I thought he was always somebody who should get another crack at it. It's a rookie mistake by Mike, by Michael Lane Lauer as a, as a, as a pro sports owner. We've seen it.

We've seen it from a lot of downtrod and loser franchises, frankly, in the past, where the owner comes out. I'm saying this as a lifelong fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates. That's mainly where I'm going here. But like when you see, you know, new guns come in and talk about we're going to do this and we're going to do that. Like, you better do it. And if you don't, people are going to remember. So if you're Michael Ann Lowren, you're like, we're getting a best in close, a best in class coach who turns out to be a guy who couldn't turn an interim job. into a full-time one, like, people are going to be pissed.

And that's, and it's unfair to Travis Green, but that's the reality of situation. We talked about this when we were talking about, you know, Barube and, you know, who, you know, whatever, leaf replacements. But I think what gets lost so much of, and so much of this is, like, fit. And this is why it drives me crazy when people do deride, like, hiring a coach who's coached in the NHL before as, like, a retread or, like, somehow, like, worse than hiring a first time. Like, fit is so important to all of these things. And, like, Sean, you make the point with, like,

talk in the circumstances, right? Like, or sorry, not talking at Travis Geen in the circumstances. And I think we can apply that in so many plays. Like how many coaches do we see fired after they're coaching in a rebuild or fired because they went into a team that had expectations of like winning the Stanley Cup and they didn't get it over the hump, right? Like we were talking last week about Jim Montgomery who won the president's

trophy last season and exceeded and that team has exceeded everyone's expectations in both of his years here. And if he had blown a second three one seriously, lead there. Are we talking about his replacements on this show today? We might be. And also, who was, who was nailed more last during this last hiring cycle as a retread than Peter Lavio let? Yes, absolutely. He's like the avatar for the retread discussion. And all that dude is done is improve that team in plenty of meaningful ways. And they're up to, oh, on everybody's favorite stable organization with a genius head coach and blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is

This is a guy who got, who's hiring got slammed by media, by Rangers fans. They were as apoplectic over that team hiring Peter Labelette is sends fans a word about Travis Green. And he's got them, he's got them two games from the sweep over the Carolina Hurricanes. Yeah.

I think that's always like, there were so many columns just being like, when can we stop doing this? It's like, hmm, I think when we look at the coaching carousel itself, I tend to agree with you, Max, I do think some coaches, like some of it is going too quickly. But like when we look at some of this, there's not that many where I say maybe they shouldn't

have done that. I think I was a little surprised about Dave Haxstall, but it seems like there's maybe like more under the hood there with the crack in. Like I think there was, you know, maybe some things with players, but I think they ended up saying that's not true. So I don't know what's going on in Seattle. But Haxstall was maybe a question mark. I think firing David Quinn with that terrible roster, a weird one. Don Granato, I think that can be defensible.

Lindy Rough, that was a disaster. Todd McClellan was there for a very long time and they improved but didn't do a whole lot. Lane Lambert, I mean, Patrick Wogg took that team and they were better. DJ Smith,

you don't get 10 years to try to turn it around. Time's up. Craig Barubei, again, I didn't agree with the timing of that. We've talked about it. um, evison to John Heinz. Jay Woodcroft like he coached like that team was terrible under him at the start of the

season. Brad Larson, the blue jackets were terrible. Gerard Gallant was maybe quick on the draw, but he is somebody who is around for like two, three years and goes. Daryl Sutter had to go. Dallas Eakins.

That was maybe one where you're like, was he supposed to be better than this? I don't know. They could not. They had to make a change there. Yeah. And then Peter Lavio Let and John Hines, those are all the coaching changes. So there's really only a handful where I'm like, that's why would you do this?

So the carousel goes around and around and it seems like a lot when you say it's 18, but then you go down the list. It's just like, eh. Well, that's the thing is I think in every specific circumstance, you can kind of make a case for this, right? But part of that is that we get swept up in, you know, the pitchforks and fire them. Yeah. And like you expect that. these things are like, this has to change and changing the coaches the way to do it.

Sometimes it's changing by like simple regression, right? And like I think we evaluate coaches really weirdly. We got to take a break. We've been talking for too long. We promised that we'd get to the playoffs. But it was big, big coaching newsday. Sheldon Keith fired. Who's going to go next?

There's still some vacancies. So when we come back, we're going to talk about the very fun, very exciting. Round two games. Woohoo. I love the enthusiasm, guys. Thank you. It's time to talk about the second round of the play. playoffs. Second round, best round. The Florida Panthers beat the Boston Bruins 6-1 yesterday.

Series is now tied 1-1. This is- And it's going to get spice in the looks of it, right? That was, yeah, in a tied series, obviously is the most important takeaway here. But, you know, blowout game and the the fights, the scrums that we were seeing in the third period, Matthew Kachuk goes at it with David Pasternak. Lanz a big one, by the way. that good to see David Pasternak seemed to be okay after. By the way, by the way, I thought that that, so I was watching that game in a bar. And for the duration of the fight, I thought he was fighting Sam Reinhardt. I thought it was, I thought it was Posternak versus Sam Rinehart because I thought I was seen.

That happened earlier. I thought it happened. I know. Yeah. I thought they were back. I thought they were back at it. So I was, and then imagine, imagine my. Not surprised, but I was psyched when I thought it was Posternak versus Reinhard.

Imagine how much more excited I got when I realized who the actual other combatant was. Good Lord. I think the funniest part about that fight, and maybe it's not, it's probably not funny if you're a Bruins fan. But the game is already 6 to 1 at that point in the second period, just completely over. Brad Marchand, Patrick Maroon, Justin Brazo, Trent Frederick, James Van Riemstike, and Charlie McAvoy are all in the locker room with 10. Adminate misconducts. And so the game's like, it's getting chippy.

It's 6-1. There's frustration. And so the guy that ends up fighting is David Pasternak. Like, I was just the circumstances around the fight itself too. I was just like, what is going on right now? And I didn't get to watch the game live because I was at the PWHL playoff game. So when I saw that that fight happened, I was like, what is going on right now? What happened? And then everyone's just in the room.

It seemed like everybody loved it. The quotes from Paul Maurice and Jim Montgomery were like, I'm sure it was just, like proud of past stuff you're doing it. I'm sure it was just a coincidence too that that's when Kachuk asked Passernak to fight was with all those dudes completely taken out of the equation. It was just a, just the way the timing worked out.

I'm sure that is nothing. That's kind of unfair because I think Matthew Kachuk has like fought, you know, enough times that he's not just a, he wanted to fight Pasternak when, Passerac, right? He might have. Yeah, of course, Matthew Kachukh would never pick on anybody, right?

Never. How dare you say this about him? What was your question? Yeah. So do you take Posternak fighting Kachuk at the end of that game to be a really good galvanizing, hey, your stars doing it and rally the troops kind of thing? Or do you take that as like a he does that because he goes, uh-oh, I really need the spark? Like, do you take that as a good sign or as a sign of what?

Did, like, there's concern? That, like, they, that they were so screwed that Posernock felt like it was necessary. Yeah, like, to me, that's like push and break glass in case of emergency thing. Yeah. Like, Mike Matthew Kachukh, right? Like, that's not, it's not my first choice for how to, you know, create a spark. Mm-hmm. It seemed like it worked.

Everyone loved it. You see, like, Haley, you mentioned what Montgomery said at his post game. I mean, he was, he was all about it, right? I don't care why I have to. I don't care why it happened. I'm just happy that it did. Also, I said it was 6-1 in the second period. That was stupid.

This fight happened in the third. And it was 6-1 in the third. The score was 6-1. That's the important part to... I started... I was drinking some Buckley's while you guys were talking. Yeah, straight from the bottle, too. My God.

Do you want me to get up and get a spoon and measure it out? Haley, I have a question about Canadian television. I saw a commercial repeatedly last night. I watched on CBC in Detroit. Oh, great. Do you have a show about extreme sandcastle making? Is that on CBC Gem? Max texted me.

I looked up. Yes. It's a CBC Gem show? I don't know what channel it's on. But I was watching on CBC. You watched the sandcastle making? It was called Race Against the Tide. CBC Gem is like,

peacock or whatever, right? It's like the streaming network where, you know, whatever. Teams of sand sculptors race to complete their works of art before the Bay of Bundy tide comes in. The judges choose the winner.

Moments before everything gets washed away. Oh my God. This is episode one. It's called Team Spirit. Ten world class sand sculpting teams arrive in the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick to compete in the ultimate beach showdown. That brings us a sponsor.

They're making like crazy stuff in here. Oh my God. This looks so fun. Oh, I think this would stress me out in the way that like love it or list it stresses me out. Like when I watch people say I have a $3 million dollar budget and I want blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the realtor can't find them anything. I get really stressed. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by CBC Gems, Race Against the Tide, new episodes,

every Thursday. What it feels like to me is one of those shows that you would see on the screens in 30 Rock like NBC's developing. Yeah. Yeah. There's been four seasons of the show made. That's clearly doing well.

Yeah. It's actually brought in part by Explore New Brunswick. So this is clearly like a new Brunswick like tourism show. And we just gave them a bunch of free press. So shout out Max. Well, if they want to fly us out to do a live on site, recording from the bank. I will make a sand castle. Absolutely. No, thanks. Oh, my God, we should enter.

No, thank you. We'll lose in the first week, but that's fine. We'll be in New Brunswick for like two days. Yeah, these are like structural engineers who are out there building stuff out of sand. Like literal. Hang on. Not just like, Max just put a pen behind his ear and now he's an architect. It makes you smarter by 15%. Panthers fans who are listening to the show are like, what the hell. Go back to talking about our team. Go back to the Florida Panthers. Let's just talk about Barkoff for a second,

eight points in his last three games. Still so underrated. It's crazy. I don't even make that joke. But he's been unbelievable. Obviously, it was a big bounceback game for the Panthers, too, after losing 5'1. Wild game, great game.

But I think Barkov has been, you know, unreal during the playoffs. And we shouldn't be. shocked? I think it's fair to be maybe not shocked, but saying like, all right, it's about time. He had never had a run like this. He had never had a series where he, or really a meaningful stretch of playoff games where he was like a high-end offensive producer for them. That doesn't mean that he's not a good player, that he was an important player. I think we've gotten into this argument before. It's because it's true. He had his, he had the first multi-goal game of his

playoff career in the clincher against Tampa Bay. And he's got eight points in his last three. But you're acting like the Panthers had like a bunch of meaningful playoff runs. There isn't a stretch. He's played more than three consecutive playoff games plenty of times in his career. And he's never had eight points before. This is, this is what leveling up looks like in the playoffs. And it's, and it's the kind of game that everybody, every, or the kind of stretch that everybody knows he's capable of because he's fantastic. But part of it, when you're a player who's that good. And when you're the captain of a consistent contender,

which is what the Panthers are at this point, you've got to produce points for a stretch. And he hasn't done it. And part of that's been because he's been, he's a matchup center and he's, and he's, you know, been tasked with taking other guys out of, out of the game,

but rack up some points. And he, and he's doing it. It's cool to, it's cool to see. It's, like I said, it's,

it's the kind of stuff that everybody knew that he had in him, but he hasn't, for whatever, reason been able to show. He looks really good. And if this is, you know, if this is the year that he kind of makes that run, I mean, they went to the cup final, obviously last year. But if he can really put the team on his back here and I know the lot of the big

goals on their runs have been scored by guys like Carter for Hagee. But this is going to be hopefully the end of the underrated talk, as you alluded, but also the start of like him really being in the consideration. You do you? Oh, let's get this. This is a podcast segment. Clearly a parkoff hater. That's a joke, right?

Eight points in his last three playoff games. Yeah. Before that, in his previous 16, he had nine. I'm sorry, that's not elite number one superstar production during the house. Right, but we were just making this point about how, like, he has to do everything else, too. So do a lot of other players. How many centers are required to be point per game players and be the number one matchup center? How many?

If you are a top five center in the NHL, you find a way to do it all. That's just the way he is. And that's the way he's treated. But what other centers are doing both right now? Right now? In the playoffs. In the playoffs, what other centers are producing and being good defensively? At some point, when you're talking about postseason after postseason after postseason,

you're going to have to have a stretch where you do it all. Three years of deep playoff runs for Barkov. It's only been three. You're acting like he's been a bum for seven. If you want to be new Patrice Bergeron, you got to have a couple series where you put the team on your back offensively. That's the way it goes. He needs to produce offensively. He is.

That's what happens. Eight points in three games. Why did this turn into like a negative conversation about Barkov? He's playing very well. That's the point. Totally. I'm with you. I don't know.

No, you're not. 37. And then to like finally. No. He's playing very well. Seven goals in his last. in 35 postseason games that came before this, not good enough for a top five player.

It's not. And now he's looking apart. I think it's great. Max? I don't know. This might be a spicier kitchen than I want to get into here. Max always sits like very still. So he's pretending that his camera's frozen, but he's just sitting very still. Like a like a golden retriever watching television or something. I don't want to get involved in this. Yeah.

Whatever. That was me teeing you guys out to talk about Barkov playing well and Sean just shredded him. So I'm just upset as the host. I'm not shredding him. I think it's great. We all knew he was capable of this and it's something that he hadn't shown. Like this is what it looks like when a player, when a player levels up. It's the kind of, and he's, and he managed to avoid, you know, getting dragged for it like other, like other guys might have.

37 points in 47 playoff game prior to this. playoffs. I think it's fair to say we expect more than we expected and expect more than that from Barkov. Right now he's giving it to us. No one throw anything at me. Whatever. Why does Sean hate Sasha Barkov is what this is going to turn into? I love I love the guy. Yeah, it seems like it. The Vancouver Canucks, uh, great game last night. Huge comeback to beat the Oilers 5'4. They were down 4 to 1. It seemed like, I don't know if this is harsh. I'm going from like defending Barkov to the death and then you know maybe being kind of mean

about the goalies. But it kind of seemed like that was like a really bad goalie game that made everything really fun. Like Seelovs was not good in the first two periods. And then Skinner was very bad in the end and it just turned into a lot of fun for everybody, but especially Kinex fans. Did sheelov start being, did he stop being bad or did Edmonton just stop shooting? Not at any Hucks on that, yeah. What, like, what's the breakdown there? Who knows? Yeah, the Oilers only had four shots in the third period,

eight in the final two frames. So, yeah, they just didn't face many shots. But, yeah, that's a problem for the Oilers. But that was just a fun game. I thought Lys Linholm had a great game. Nikita Zedorov continues to become great. What a blast Dakota Joshua is. as a playoff performer, right?

Did you guys, obviously, if you were watching the game, but the moment where he's like, kind of kneeling there with the stick in his helmet, and there was like, it was like, how did this happen? How did we get here? There was like no call in the play.

It's just somebody's stick ended up in his head. Yeah. Yeah, it was perfect playoff moment. Yeah, the blade went up in the loop, and he was very frustrated. He had to unbuckle his helmet to, to take care of it. So dry-sidal was just cramping.

Is that what the, that's what the line is from Chris Knoblock after the game? Cramping problems. Is that what he said? Is that what you're saying he said? I'm saying that's what he said, which I was unaware of that that's what the prognosis was until. Well, because there was a bit of worry. There was definitely like some worry when he, you saw dry-sidal on the bench, He goes out on a shift and then immediately turns around and goes back to the bench.

And then he went to the room. So cramping issues. Is it a coincidence that the Oilers game went in the toilet as soon as he started working in less than 100%? Like, I don't know. No, no, it is not a coincidence. Don't think that being said, I think Vancouver was good. And I like, I know that the narrative here has to be a lot about the Oilers and they didn't shoot to get enough shots on goal. Stuart Skinner was not good.

Vancouver continues to be really impressive, really resilient. I think we got to give them. I don't know how many of those goals really should have gone in, but they were around it enough to think that they deserved some breaks and they got them. And I think that's part of why I liked, Haley, you mentioned Elias Lindelm. I think that's part of the reason I liked his game so much because when stuff wasn't going for them,

you know, for the first two periods, let's say, he was, his line was a reliable, you know, a reliable source of, you know, possession and action and physicality. I saw him lay the body a couple of times. Like, he helped keep them in it long enough for it, for them to, you know, hang around and then make the run when they need it to. Yeah.

I mean, Dakota Joshua was, was great. Connor Garland gets the game winner. Lyslin home was solid. I think Canucks fans are ready to demand that they, just give Nikita Zadora of a blank check. And it's so funny because I covered Zadora for a couple of years in Calgary. And like he's, he's a really like great quote and like a fun guy to cover.

And I think a fun guy to have on your team, especially now that he's like become less of a frustrating player and like more fun. I think he's figured out his identity. And he kind of knows his moments. Like he had that end to end goal for the Canucks in the last series. He scores a big one and this one. to tie the game that sets up the Connor Garland game winner 39 seconds later. I think Zadorov is really fun.

His quotes are always hilarious. He just kind of says it like it is. He's also been like one of the few guys to kind of come out and talk about the conflict in Ukraine too. Like he's just, I'm a Zadorov fan. And I think it's fun to see like the Canucks fans just be like given whatever he wants. Like, please God. Did he give the world the Nathan McKinnon, chickpea pasta? Yeah, he did.

That was a Zedorov thing. I'm sure I'm sure Nate really appreciates that one. Thanks for things are opening up that story because he loves talking about it. Yeah. Nikita Zedorov, you are a Toronto may believe. All this being said, how was the one that they should have gotten. Anyways, we don't need to talk about it. How terrified would you be?

is Vancouver facing Connor McDavid the game after he gets zero shots on goal. Is he just gonna be one of those things where he's just like, I'm gonna have a hat trick? Yeah, I think it is. In my opinion,

I think he should have decided to shoot the puck a couple more times on net in the third period, in my opinion. If he's apparently capable of doing whatever he wants whenever he wants.

I think he is, honestly. I agree. Like huge hater shit. It's one of my, I hate that the fallback is that, Is that for... He decided to take over the game.

If he can decide to take over a game whenever he wants, then the only logical, you know, end there is that he at times simply chooses to not take over the game. No, I don't think... Can you guys hear this car alarm? Yes. Okay. I'm going to go out of view it. That's the hater siren.

Oh, my God. There's three going on. To me, it's... I don't think it has to be that. Like to me, the takeover a game thing, right? Like, okay,

yeah, obviously I understand what you're saying. It's like, well, then why wouldn't you do it every shift? I think when you have an off night, though, like there are guys who are wired in a certain way.

They find something else in them going into the next game. It doesn't mean you can do it every time you're out there. Although it bears noting he does it most times he's out there. But yes, he can and I think he will. I think he's, yeah, I'll put a four,

Connor McDavid game down for next game. He's still, probably can happen. He's still leading the league in points in the playoffs, but he hasn't been shooting and scoring that much in the postseason either. He had zero shots on goal in 24 minutes last night, one assist dash one.

He's got one goal on the playoffs this season, or like this year. There were two games against the Kings where he had four or five shots, but for the most part, he was shooting like one, once on goal. So definitely been passing more. It's just a catastrophic.

big Connor McDavid goal game. It's just a cat. I mean, I'm like half joking about all that. Like it's just a catastrophic period, right? It happens. But yeah, I think smart money is on him doing something spectacular. I think to Max's original point, there's something a little bit scary about knowing that

Connor McDavid's going to be coming back into game two, knowing that they lost after being up 4-1 and he had zero shots on goal. like you know that that's an internally motivated guy. And you just know that that's going to be a big McDavid game, especially if there is something going on with Drysidal. We talked about this. I feel like we don't want to make a big deal of it, especially if it's just cramping and he's going to be good by game too.

But you can imagine a big Conner MacDavid game too. We talked about this in the LA series, right? Like, LA wins that game and we go, like, are you more encouraged that you win this game and that, you know, you held McDavid and Drysiddle pretty quiet? Or are you more terrified that you held McDavid and Drysidal pretty quiet? and you only won by one goal and you needed overtime, right? And they only won by one goal here.

And it wasn't an OT game, but like, yeah. That has a way part, like psychologically, especially when you're talking about a team like, you know, looking back on the Kings, like lots of ghosts there versus the Oilers, right? So you know, you played about as well as you possibly could have. And, yeah, still wasn't enough. I think, I think we could see some of that for sure. So two great games last night. let's look ahead to Thursday night's games.

It's Rangers, Cains. The Rangers, as Sean mentioned earlier, they're up 2-0-0. The series heads to Carolina. The Cains are a lot better at home in the postseason. And then Avs stars, Avs up 1-0. I went to bed. It was 3-0 stars, and I was like, this is so great. I'm going to have sweet dreams about my Dallas stars Stanley Cup pick,

and then I woke up and was living a nightmare. So, abs up 1-0-0 in that series. very melodramatic. I hate that that's the second round. That should be the conference final. I mean, I think that just speaks to,

you know, the Western conference that we've been talking about, the fact that if you're the Canucks and you get by the Oilers, then you've got to go to either the aves of the stars or if you're the stars,

you get by Vegas. Now you have to play the abs. Just the West is brutal in a very fun way. I've seen people say the same thing about Rangers hurricanes, and then you got the actual East represented from last year's Cup final in the other series against last year's present.

We can say that about all these teams. But only now in the second round. In the first round, it was like, this is our payoff for the worst first round I can remember. Second round. That's why I said second round best round and nobody said anything to me. Everyone ignored me. I try not to bring gambling talk into this all that often

because I'm beyond tired of it. Like, not just in the NHEL. But you're going to do it anyways. Just as a bit. of shorthand for the way the first round went. I mean, you had eight betting favorites win eight series, which like basically never happens, right? So that's, that stinks.

That means that we got, you know, we got a bunch of short series and no upsets at all. But Max, you said it, this is the payback for that, right? This is the payoff that now we have eight, you know, the eight favorites from the first round playing against each other in the second. So whatever. I often have this debate with our mutual friend, Mike Persak, about March Madness, where I am the child that can't resist the cookie on March Madness. I root for the underdogs every first round game of the NCAA tournament.

I just want to see all the low seeds win. And Mike roots for the high seats because he wants to see heavyweights go against each other for the last three rounds. I'm coming around to his way of thinking. It's so. So game two, Rangers, Cains went to O.T. That game was really fun. I know, I think Sean mentioned on the show yesterday.

It was one of the rare nights where you didn't have to watch hockey, but you watched the entire game. It was a fun one. I think that was a great Jake Gensel game. That was the, this is why you trade for Jake Gensel kind of game. It was kind of unfortunate that they lost, considering how well he played.

But I think it's, weird and maybe I don't think, I was going to say it's weird. I don't know if people are giving the Rangers enough credit or like juice and I,

but I need to be careful with that because I don't know if it's people or just like Dom's model. It's dumb. Is it people or is it just Dom? The Rangers are showing through the first two games, obviously there's still a lot of series to go,

but they're showing like, yeah, the president's trophy winners might actually be, the best team. Having as sick of power play as we've seen in years, wow, imagine that.

It's a, it's paying off in a big way. I also had a, I also had a moment. So I was watching the game and Hunter Ryan, who I worked with on the CBC Olympic show was calling the game.

And I heard him talking about Lafferan ear after his first goal. And he was like, the 22 year old, I'm like, Hunter Ryan. Like, come on. He's not 22. And then I did a quick, at Google and was like, wait, I feel like people have been

completely dumping on Lafranier for like eight years. I was like, he's got to be 25 at this point. It's because he looks old. Two-goal game. Yeah, it's the beard. Two-goal game. Huge, huge and huge for the Rangers right now. And this was kind of part of the draw of Alexei Lafranier

as he had that kind of big game flavor to him, right? Like it's one of the reasons that a winger or go. who's first overall in an NHL draft in modern day is that he he had size, he had high compete, he showed well in big stages and it is really nice to see it, see it coming alive here. We knew one of those guys was going to have to pop, whether it was him or him or Kako, and it's pretty clear what direction that's gone in. But no, it's their, Rangers are, Rangers are a blast. How about the Zabanajad Renaissance after there was some debate over who was the one C in New

York, obviously Trochex had a really nice playoffs, too. But Sabana Jed is more than made up for the regular season quietness so far in the playoffs. Yeah, but Sabanajad's not from Upper St. Clair, so I'm less interested in when he brings the table. Brings a lot to the table, but he doesn't bring that. Yeah. Western PA excellence. Talk about Sabanajad for a second. Come on.

He's been good next. That's a very good point. He's been great. He's got 11 points in six games. He's been a big part. of that power play that Sean's talking about. And this is what you need, right? You need your guys like that, your top center to carry you,

especially when you're playing a team like Carolina. He is the kind of guy that they need to score against Carolina. Yeah. And they've been fantastic. I think the depth of like elite offensive talent and also just the depth of the Rangers. I don't know if, yeah, I don't know if people were maybe giving them.

I don't know if people just thought this was like the Rangers of two, three years ago or something, but I mean, they've got a top line of Sabanajed, Panarin, and Teresanko that is clicking right now. Trochec seems like the most annoying person on the planet to play against. Like, for all to talk about Kichuk and Marchand in the other Eastern Conference game and like the rats in there, like the king is Trocheque. He seems just brutal. And then you've got Jacob Truba.

I tried to murder Martin Hs. Let's just call it what it is. Not good. Don't love that. But I think the Rangers look like a real problem. But again, the Canes are better historically in the playoffs at home. So they've got two games to even the series on home ice.

And I don't know. I feel like that's a series that's going to go the distance, right? We don't think the Rangers are going to sweep. As great as the Rangers look right now, It'd be so bizarre for the Cains to not. I didn't think they're going to go up to the series either. So who knows? Yeah.

Okay, the other games, Avs, Avs stars, do you guys have a thought on that series? And what's it kind of expect? You can imagine stars don't want to give up a 3-0 lead again. No, and they really have to take care of it tonight. They can't go down 2-0 on their home ice. I know it was tough circumstances going into the short turnaround on game 1. one, but I don't think you want to let Nathan McKinn, go back to Colorado and let them pick their Nathan McKinnon match up on you in a two-o hole already. They did it once in Vegas to their credit,

but I don't think you can get into this habit and expect to go on the kind of run that they, we all on this show believe that they are capable of, they have to take care of business tonight. All right. Great. Thanks, Max. It's a good preview. Thanks for the analysis. Wow. I talked about that a lot yesterday. It's fine. Let, let, let Max, his turn. Okay. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll do a very quick third segment. We're going to, we're going to pick some Utah names. I have the best choice. Superior choice over everyone's. We'll be right back. Ryan Smith tweeted out a survey

yesterday. Ryan Smith of Smith Entertainment Group, owner of the Utah franchise, in case you didn't know, tweeted out a survey yesterday. Our NHL team is here. Help us choose a name. There were about 20 options, 20 options on this poll. Compiled from an initial poll that ran about a month ago where fans kind of put in different ideas for naming Utah.

This is the final 20. And now they can kind of dwindle it down to a top four. During this kind of next round of voting, I think they're going to just keep doing this. Also, the team is going to just wear like Utah jerseys. They're copying the PWHL big time. And you know what? The haters have been really quiet about this. After hammering me specifically in my coverage of the league saying, why don't they have names and logos? Nobody's really yelling about NHL Utah. And I just think

that's annoying. I just wanted to say that. Okay. Okay. All they had to do is... The chemistry has been like freaking unreal today. All they had to do is come up with a one team name. They didn't have to come up with six. Geez. Yeah. They will though, right? They will.

Who with the PWHL? Yeah. Oh, yeah. They just announced a jersey deal with Bauer starting next season. And it is, the league is not confirming names and logos will be ready there using the company line if it's a work in progress. But I think the expectation is that there's going to be team names and logos on these Bauer jerseys.

Like the quote I had from Mary K. Messier is like, there's going to be way more on the jersey that you can be like excited about. So, you know, it's not just going to be a shoulder patch that says Bauer, you know. I think you can read between the lines there. Wasn't there an initial like leak of, I don't know if they were fake or if they were floated team names that went really badly? Mm-hmm. Yeah, the first. Some of those are, or feel like they've popped up on the Utah list.

equally, equally crummy. Yeah. So there were six initial names that were trademarked. Yeah. And they were not good. It was Boston, Wicked, Minnesota Superior, the Toronto Torch, the New York Sound, the Ottawa Alert, and the Montreal Echo. I feel like that plays a role in how people viewed the like going to the no names after that. It's like, did it see?

No, I think people were. like, you know what? The no names were actually kind of fine. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. Let's spend some more time on this one. Which was the same thing that happened with like the Washington football team, right? Like it was like, oh, this sucks. And then after a year we were all like, eh? And that's why Utah H.C. I like, guess what? Guess what Utah gets to do just like the P-dub got to do is you, for a year, you get to sell generic, quasi-generic stuff, you know, and, and,

in one template, all the diehards can buy it because they're just psyched to have something that says Toronto or Utah or Utah on it. And then you introduce a whole new batch of stuff. It's not a bad marketing decision. That all goes back to Washington. Like, that's like people loved wearing that gear. And I think that's part of the reason we're seeing this now. I mean, I think it's cool.

All those like PWHL jerseys with just like Toronto or Montreal diagonal across the chess, like a lot. I was at the game last night, 8,000 fans. a lot of people were wearing those jerseys. Those are going to end up being like fun little like collector's items or 20 years from now we look back on the league and people are to say I have one of those, you know, year one jerseys. I think it's a cool thing. The colors are good. The colors are good across the board.

They're interesting shades that you don't, that you haven't really quite seen in other spots. I like the primary colors that they picked. The Toronto one's great. I like the purple. I like the green. But let's get to the Utah. names. I don't like many of these. And I think I have an unpopular opinion. I told this, I told Sean and Dom this. And they were both like, you're stupid basically. I like the Utah

Fury. It sounds minor league to me. Yeah. That sounds of H.L. What? You like the Blizzard? No, I like the Mammoth. I kind of like the Mammoth. Here's the ones I like. I like Mammoth, Mountaineers, outlaws. I wish Stingers was on there or something, but it's not. I wish there was a better beehive or a better bee reference than the ones that we got because we got. Why? Are there a lot of bees in Utah? It's the, it's the Beehive State.

That's what it's called. So we got, that's like that. Stingers? I like that. It would be better if it was Salt Lake. Salt Lake Stingers is not on the list, though. We got the bee references we did get were swarm and hive, which I think are. I hate that and I hate squall more than anything.

What is that? I saw that, but I don't know that. Like a snow squaw. Snow squall. Like don't drive. There's a snow squall warning. Oh, that, no. Low visibility.

No. No. Utah mammoth. I, and the other one I like. I think the powder is inappropriate. If you're going to go, okay. If you're going to go eing references. There would be some headlines that wrote themselves over

the long arc of that franchise's I like I like my life flash before my eyes as soon as you said that I was like there's like about a hundred different things I can say here that it'll give me unquestionably immediately fired I like black diamonds

a lot it's a skiing reference why don't one's fine Sean none of them are none of them are that you're done cut the mic Max how much worse is black diamonds you're done then you're done Max what are you Sean Alexander Barkov will never play for the Utah black

so just get that out of your head right now. I like mammoth. I don't hate Yeties, but I know that that's an unpopular. I think mammoth is the best. We got singular Yeti. We got one Yeti. Not yeties. Okay, I have a question and you guys can't make fun of me.

And anyone who listens to the show, you can't make fun of me. Why is the plural of mammoth not? mammoths? Why can't it be mammoths? What's the plural of mammoth? I don't know, actually. It's mammai. Is it really? I don't know. Why can't it be the mammoths? Why is it just one singular mammoth?

Maybe the team name is the adjective. Mammoth as an adjective, not as an out. According to online According to online dictionaries, the plural is mammoths. Okay, so But it sounds weird. THS doesn't work together. That's a, that's an HL team name.

It's, I hate the crack. I think I'm really excited. I'm really excited about the idea of a mammoth mascot. He's going to be huge. It'll be like snuffle up, I guess, from. Yeah. Or are they just going to get him?

It'd be the world's, the world's first two-person mascot, what walking around arena is. Well, I need to have someone as the front half and someone is the back. Okay, but all the other four-legged animals that are mascots stand on their hind legs. So is this mammoth going to stand up straight? Yes.

I don't think it's actually going to be it. To be clear, I don't think it's actually going to be a two-person costume walking around in the arena. What would the mascot for the powder? It was just a funny thing to say because of snuffy from that. from Sesame Street. I don't like the blast. I think that's stupid. I don't like the blizzard.

I don't like the canyons. I could get around to the caribou. I just really like the fury. I don't like glaciers. It's too much. Especially if you say it like that. Yes. If you say it that bizarrely, then...

How do you guys say that word? Glaciers. What did I say? Glaciers. Glaciers. Like The Detroit Family guy would say it

The Detroit Glaciers Just give me something That has an ass on the end of it I don't really care what it is Mammats Tell them the outlaws I don't give it shit

Like it's fine The mountaineers I don't really like any of these I'm not gonna lie I mean either Why don't why don't more animal team names Why do they all have to be like Mythical creatures or concepts

Blame the caribus are real Okay Do you not think that mammoths are real? No, no. Okay. The science is out on that one. Well, mammoths are real, but are mammoths? Were outlaws really real?

Are they also mythical creatures? They're not really animals, though, right? Like, that's like in the vein of, like, knights. Yeah, that's my bad. Nights, you know? Yeah. No offense to the outlaws. I know you got that dog in you.

I think the, I think outlaws is it's, you know, not going to win any point, any creativity points, but. You were hating on all the other ones, but you think that one's an NHL team name. I don't think any of these are really NHL team names. Do you have a better idea that's not on here? Yeah, I think they should just go back to naming teams like the bears or the bobcats or whatever.

That's what I'm trying to say. Cup of shit on this one. I guess it's weak. What's the wildlife like on canyons or like mountains, right? Hey, one second, let me look up. We said that we were going to make this like a five-minute segment, but now we're looking up Utah wildlife. Just give me a second.

It's fine. Chris, if you're listening to this and you're wondering why the show is more than an hour, this is why. And it's fine. It's fine. We've been so good at keeping it under an hour. But this is important. This is the wildlife in the Utah National Parks.

Oh, my God. Black bears, ferrets. Cool. Ferrets. Unfortunately, there's a lot of coyotes. Bad, Badger works. Amphibians.

Mountain lions, but they're quite rare. Don't be like naming the Utah mammals. The pronghorn antelopes. Jack rabbits. The falcons. Sure. The chipmunks. The porcupines.

I think this is unfortunate. There's a lot of small woodland creatures. The desert tortoise. or as Haley calls them, the tortua. Oh, no. I snorted. The bullfrogs. The big horn sheep of southern Utah.

Okay, whatever. Sean is just like ruining the vibe. He's just sitting there like, reminiscing. I'm letting you guys talk. You guys, you guys, you're not interested in the wildlife. You're the one who wanted animals. You're the park ranger, Sean. Ranger, Sean.

Yeah, just call them. Call them the outlaws. So sue me. Or the mountaineers. What about the badgers? You like the badgers? The burrowing owls. The owls?

That's kind of cool. The Utah owls. It doesn't sound right. No. Too many of owls. You can have a... You don't really pick me. It's really annoying.

The Utah Bears. The flying squirrel. The Salt Lake squirrels. There are you. you go. Are they allowed to call themselves Salt Lake? I mean, they could, but they've decided. I think Ryan Smith came out instead. But I think there's more options with Salt Lake. I think I actually like the Salt Lake City Stingers. That actually sounds like a college team. Sorry. It sounds like there is definitely

like a, that sounds like a lacrosse team to me for some reason. So I'm assuming that there was some kind of lacrosse team called the Stingers. The Charlotte Sting was a WNBA team. I know that. Did you guys see the graphic about game one? And it was like the orcas and the water surrounding an oil rig. And it was the Canucks graphic. And it was like protecting our waters. And I just thought how silly it is.

The oil rig would, the oil would kill those orcas. It's a. And I just don't know how there's a matchup. Not a matchup that favors that. that favors Aquatessen. Yes. But I just guess my point is

what would they do for the Oilers and the flames? Extremely flammable substance. My thought is just, I guess it doesn't really matter what you name the team because you could name a team after oil. That's true.

We should go back to the days when we could name them after professions, like Steelers and Packers and Oilers. and whatever. What is a stealer anyway? You know? Steal workers. Thieves.

Their logo. Their logo is the same as the logo for the United Steelworkers Association. Now you know. Seriously? Very similar. Huh. Okay. Well, this has gone on too long and I fear I feel I sound really.

Oh, I sound incredibly stupid right now. So I'm going to end the show after embarrassing myself. the last 10 minutes. But that's okay. Thanks everyone for listening to the Athletic Hockey Show. Please leave us a five-star rating and review if you like the show, especially if you're enjoying this third segment where things typically go off the rails.

Anyways, Max, Corey, Scott Wheeler, Chris Peters. Oh my gosh, everyone's going to be around tomorrow. You guys have the Prospect Series. Friday on the Athletic Hockey Show. We'll be back next Thursday. We won't talk as long. And hopefully I won't be sick anymore and I won't say anything stupid. So thanks everyone. Bye.