The Athletic Hockey Show - Why aren’t more NHL’ers wearing neck guards?

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Sean and Sean discuss the scary situation in St. Louis last night when Dylan Holloway took a puck to the neck from a shot by Nick Paul, and why most NHL players don't wear neck guards. Shayna Goldman stops by to tell the boys what we learned in the NHL in the month of October, including Lukas Dostál's solid start in Anaheim, the Bruins struggles, if Artemi Panarin is going to win the Rocket Richard Trophy and the shelf life of a coach.Hosts: Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoeWith: Shayna GoldmanExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff Domet Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic hockey show. What up, what up? This is the Wednesday edition of The Athletic Hockey Show. Sean McIndoo, Sean Gentilly. Frankie Carrado is, I think, on a plane somewhere. I assume one of those 11 games that was taking place last night involved him. I feel like, did the Habs play last night? I don't even know.

I don't even ask questions. I hear Frankie's not here. It's a day off. Fine. We replaced him aptly. Shana Goldman will join us for the second segment. of the show here. But before we do that, pretty busy night in the league last night, 11 games, like I said. Sean, what's up, man?

How you doing? I'm doing great. Doing fantastic, yeah. Let's talk some hockey. It was a busy night last night, and unfortunately, the highlight was kind of a scary situation in St. Louis and a strange one. And I guess we should start by saying that it sounds like everything's okay. Dylan Holloway is as good as you could be expected. Yeah, there's nothing, nothing horrendous has gone wrong with his throat.

He had to leave. He left and went to the emergency room, was examined and all that after getting hit in the throat with the puck. But all systems or go for him. Thank God, because it was, it was terrifying, right? It was, yeah, and, you know, I wasn't watching it live, but, you know, it was one of those things where very quickly kind of came across. Twitter. If people didn't see it, he was hit up, up near the throat in that area with a, with a shot, stayed on the ice, stayed on his feet, made his way to the bench. But even on the way to the bench, you could kind of tell something wasn't right. He was kind of twisting his head around

and sat down and reasonably quickly thereafter it became apparent that, you know, something was wrong, presumably that he was having trouble getting a good breath. And they ended up stopping the game, alerting the officials. We had that awful scene that's reminiscent of some other ones that we've seen where both teams are kind of around the bench area watching. And he left on a stretcher. But all reports afterwards were that he's okay both in the sense that, any sort of emergency situation was mitigated and it doesn't sound like this is a long-term

situation but definitely scary um and man i i i've i've said before that at some point i don't know that it's avoidable that we're we're going to have a really bad outcome um from somebody being hit with a puck it's just i mean it's it's a frozen hard piece of rubber that's that's getting flung around at 80, 90, 100 miles an hour. And there's vulnerable spots. And we've seen it. You know, St. Louis fans saw it with Chris Bronger, where he got hit in the chest. And this is, you know, 20 years ago.

But he got hit in the chest and went down and we've seen other ones. The one that last night reminded me of was the Chris Terry and Trent McCleary incident. I don't know if you remember going back to that. But I remember I was, when did that happen? What year was that? Because I was, I was young. I was a little kid.

2000, I believe. It sounds right. So I would have been in like seventh, third grade and I had a nightmare about it. Like I watched, I saw, I saw Tram McClary get hit in the throat.

I don't remember exactly what the outcome was. I mean, it was. Thank God. So if, you know, for the, for the,

I'm guessing many people who don't, don't remember. Chris Taran wound up, took a slap shot. Trent McClary went down on the ice to block it, sort of did it awkwardly, and it just got him directly in the throat. And Trent McClary was,

it, a little bit unlike the Dylan Holloway situation, it was immediately clear that something was very, very wrong. And he was, pulled off the ice. It was considered a, certainly a life-threatening situation for,

for a while. He was okay. He lived. But it ended up essentially being career-ending. He did try to come back at one point, but it was not an injury. He was able to come back. So it was a really serious situation. And luckily, it sounds like with Dylan Holloway,

it's going to be a better outcome than what we saw in that case. And obviously, Dylan Holloway's status and health is the primary concern here. but anytime something like this happens, you know, you mentioned, you mentioned Chris Tarian. You know, I always,

I always think of, uh, of Marion Hosa. Mm-hmm. In the, in the Brian Barard incident, your mind goes to the guys who are on the other end of things, right?

The guys who, whether it's their stick or their, or their shot or whatever that, um, you know, accidentally cause this, that, this sort of stuff.

So I'm thinking of Nick Paul right now, too, just like I was last night. Yep. And again, glad that it seems as if it turns out okay because, yeah, there are the guys who are on the other side of it. And I wrote a piece for Grantland way back in the day talking about sort of that angle of things. The guys who threw no fault to their own. This isn't somebody who threw a big hit or. you know, gotten a fight or anything like that. You know, the name that comes to mind for us older folks would be Steve Tuttle,

who was the player who went in, you know, hard against the Sabres and ended up cutting Clint Malarchuk, which to this day, I mean, you talk about having nightmares about play. I'm sure there's anyone who saw that remembers it well. I actually interviewed Chris Tarant for that piece about the Trent McClary situation. And it was an interesting conversation. Because the two things that stuck out to me were, number one, he knew it was bad. But it wasn't, they continued the game, they finished the game.

It wasn't until after the game that he got pulled aside. And somebody told him, like, there is a very good chance that Tramaclary may die tonight. Like, he's in a hospital and you need to be prepared for this. And just, you know, having that hit him like a wall of bricks. And then the other thing he told me was that they had actually never spoken about it. because this, you know, in 2000, you couldn't just text a guy. And he couldn't pick up a phone because Trent McClary could not speak for a long time. And, you know, their paths never crossed.

And they did, after that piece ran, the two of them did ultimately connect and have a conversation. But today, did they touch, did they hook up because of you? Is it because the piece? It was because Trent McClure saw the piece. Wow. And, you know, had, because, you know, did. Tristarian, it said in the piece, like, you know, it just because of the circumstances, it never happened. And then, you know, I don't know if I want to reach out. I don't know if he even wants to

hear from me. And, you know, again, it was, it was not something remotely, much like the Nick Paul Dylan Holloway thing. Like, nobody would look at that and say, what was Nick Paul doing? You know, what a dangerous play. It, it was just one of those things. But yeah, they did, ultimately, my understanding is connect and have a private conversation. And, but, I mean, it's, I'm sure everybody in that rank last night was, you know, breathing a sigh of relief, but I'm sure nobody more than Nick Paul. It's also another November where we're talking about neck protection, because I, obviously it's a different, a little bit of a different situation last year, the tragedy of, of Adam Johnson, because it's, it's a skate blade versus versus a puck, but man, it's, it was

hard, it's hard not to have that thought too, where, and these guys are just so exposed in, in, in that area, but also at the same time knowing the way that NHL players are. And like, I've written a few separate things about this. Like, guys don't like neck cards. And that's a, that's a major,

that's a major, a major stumbling point. So the, so the hope, you know, is that as they get, uh, further mandated and more and more kids grow up wearing them up

through college, up, up through the, the, the HL, maybe that you see, you see, you see more of it carry over in the NHL,

but also like, That wasn't a skate blade. That was a puck. That's the question, right? Would that have helped when you're talking about the impact that they were dealing with here? There are products out there that have impact protection. And I've talked to some of the folks who are, you know, behind them. One of the companies is Aegis.

It's Aege. It's A.E. GIS. They make neck guards that have basically the material that motocross, riders like there's you know motorcycle dump protection basically that they have on neck cards which protects from impact as well but again

that gets even further into the question where you know this is that's an extra level of encumbrance right like it's like when you have when you have hockey players who don't want to wear you know turtlenecks essentially to protect from neck guards

if you're asking them to wear something else even more so where there's some degree of plastic around your neck, man, that's a tough, that's a tough ask. So, yeah. And it's, it's going to be like, I think, a lot of the protective equipment, helmets, visors, everything, it's going to be, you mandated at the lower levels. And then you just tell people, like, for God's sakes, don't take it off when you get to the NHL.

Don't, you know, I can understand why going to a 32-year-old NHL player and saying, here's a piece of equipment you haven't used in 25 years of playing hockey, try to to get used to it. I mean, you see how fiddly these guys are with their stick tape, uh, let alone I know something that they're, it's, it's a tough, it's a tough ask, but I, I really feel like this, this, I remember even years ago, we were having debates over, over fighting and it was, somebody's going to die in hockey fight. And I remember saying, even at the time, it's going to be a puck or it's going to be a skate blade. And, and it, and, and I hope it, and, I hope it's, and, and I hope it's, It's not inevitable, but you look at a play like last night, and what can you possibly say?

How do we make this safer? What can you do? One of the guys that I've talked to a lot over the last year about neckguard stuff is Dr. Mike Stewart, who's the chief medical officer for USA hockey. He's involved on the IHS level. He ran the Mayo Clinic Department for Sports Science and Head Injury. is like this is a very, very accomplished, well-regarded man. He is also Brad Stewart's father and Colin Stewart's father and Michael Stewart's father.

Those are three NHL players. Brad Stewart, obviously, defensemen for a million, zillion years. I think he's an assistant on the coach, or on the Jets rather. And Brad Stewart, despite his father dedicating his life to making hockey safer in wearing neck guards. And Dr. Stewart getting involved because one of his sons was cut and it scared the living bejesus out of him when he was in youth hockey. Brad Stewart, old hard-ass defenseman, never played with anything like that.

He played without a visor even though he was in the league when the grandfather rule was adopted. He didn't put one on. So Dr. Stewart is like, he's like, hey, I get it. I like I I I know hockey players as as as as well as you can know hockey players and I and I know that I know that you're you're not gonna like you're not you're not going to change these guys minds where where it does happen just on them on an overall level whether you're talking about arm guards or or whatever is that you just expose kids to them earlier and get them used to it so it's not a thing like you said like you said Sean where it's like hey you're 32 years old and you got to wear this now like good luck because and that's really that's really the only the only way any of this stuff's going to change. I'm with you, man. Yeah, man.

And that, it did, you know, it's funny. We were going to talk about other stuff that happened last night, other, other game-based stuff, but that really did. It was one of those events that kind of feels like it threw a pall over the entire night, like everything else that came after that,

you know, felt like it was. And again, like it was for a play like that, as scary as it was, we got kind of the best. case scenario. As far as we know right now, you know, it doesn't, doesn't sound like Dylan Holloway is even going to miss significant time. So, you know, that's kind of the best case,

but it just is, you know, as soon as you see those benches clear and all the players out there and it, you know, it brings back memories of not only the plays we talked about, but, you know, Nick Peverly and other guys like that, it's just, you just kind of sit there and realize, you know, how, how potentially close a situation like this is every time those guys go out there. It's, and, and I, I almost wish it had been something else where we could sit here and say, the league needs to step in and do this. The players need to stop doing that. Here's how we change it. And I just, I don't see what we can do on something like this other than we just keep her fingers crossed and hope.

Cross your fingers and you hope it doesn't happen again, right? Like there's, there's, there's not much more to do beyond that. All right, that's a very, that's a very downbeat first segment, but whatever, it's the way it goes. We're, we're serious, we're serious fellows here sometimes. We're going to head to Shana for the second segment. But before that, if you're enjoying our show, again, very upbeat, peppy first segment. But if you're enjoying it, you're probably going to like a lot more of the fun, smart podcast across the athletic podcast networks. The NFL trade deadline was Tuesday.

Scoop City has it covered. Diana Racine has all the rumors, all the fallout covered. And you got Chase Daniel, a longtime NFL quarterback sharing the player's perspective as well. So check out Scoop City wherever you get your podcasts. And Shana is coming up next. All right, we are here with this week's Frankie Corado replacement. You've done it. You've replaced them before.

I've replaced a lot of people before. That's what I do. I'm like your HLR. You took it. You took his place on Utica in 2014 or whatever. Shana Goldman, what up? Hi. Let's just, let's just jump into this.

I read the October recap piece. I know that was five days ago. but it still holds up. What goal tending situation, because that was the top of your story, is it was revolved around goal saved above, expected in which teams are out kicking their coverage the most in that particular area?

Which one surprised you most out of the top five, let's say? I feel like there's a correct answer there. The most surprising? I guess it would be DOSO, right? Is that where you're angling? I think so. I think it's like which of these.

I like Lucas Dostal. I had him on my fantasy team for a bit of his hot streak last year. So I'm a Dostal guy. But it's like which of these things doesn't belong in the top five. I feel like is this dude is this dude going to keep it rolling? I mean, that's the big question, right? Because we've seen him be good before. And that's great, wonderful.

But he has not been good as a starter yet because he hasn't been a starter yet. because he hasn't been a starter yet. You never know how a goalie is going to react to a greater workload on a good day, behind a good team, right? Like Jake Otenger, he struggled when he was given, you know, a greater workload in years past. You've seen that adjustment period for a ton of goaltenders. It's the way it goes. But now you're not just asking him to adjust to a starting workload,

which it feels like this is the year he's going to get it. It's do it behind one of the worst defenses in the league. And I know the ducks are working on it. And everyone's talking about they're more boring because they're focusing on defense and this and that. But at the end of the day, like they're one of the worst teams and shots. against. They're one of the worst teams and quality shots against. So you have to think that's going to wear on him as the year goes on. And that's generally been the case in Anaheim, right? Like John Gibson, he starts the year really well, hits a wall, and then it all comes apart because

how long can you withstand that workload? So to do that in potentially a first year as a starter, it's no tall ask, but he's thriving so far. That's wonderful. He's been the difference. He's the reason the ducks are winning some games. And they've got a $6.4 million backup in theory. ready to come back, who may or may not be the backup. I mean, what do we do here? Because I feel like we are into like year five of the John Gibson is not actually still good debate. And the difference is that for years and years and years, it was, you know, whether he's good or not, he's the guy there. And now you've got someone staking a claim to the job.

Do you think if we get significantly further into this season, Dostel is, is showing that he can be the guy. Is there a trademarker for John Gibson if you're the Anaheim Ducks? There should be. But I mean, it's really tough to say. With two years at $6.4 million left after this year? Yeah. Like you look at last season, right?

And you look at how bad a lot of goaltenders were at the beginning of the year. And how many times were we like, there's going to be a goalie trade. Golly trade. It must happen. And then it didn't. And there's a reason for it. Right. Like teams don't like to do midseason trades with goaltenders,

especially goalies that are going to start more games, right? because that adjustment is so hard. You're learning a team system defensively. You have to learn their goalie coaches. You have to learn about the organization. You have to do all of it on the fly. At the deadline, that's even harder to do because you have such a short time period

before the postseason starts. So if you're going to do a goalie trade, you would want it earlier in the season, but teams don't like to jump at that. So all of that convolutes the situation off the bat. If we didn't get a goalie trade last year, why would we this year? But there are teams out there who should be looking for a goaltender.

and they have to be realistic about what John Gibson is, right? And the big question is, will he be better behind a better defensive team? And there's reason to say yes, because he does manage the chaos relatively well through parts of the season in Anaheim. And it's just a ridiculous workload for anybody to handle. But there's that volatility that's that much worse with goaltending. So you look around the league and the teams that have bad numbers to start and you have a team like Colorado Avalanche.

Could he handle that workload? You would think so. or even a team like the Kings or, you know, the Penguins. Could they make the leap? I think you can make the case for it this time, but you really never know because it's such a huge bet. And we should point out that our buddy Jesse Granger, the goalie whisper has been telling me for years that,

no, you don't understand. John Gibson is very, very good. And I'd be like, yeah, save percentage is like, you know, 580. And he'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's a good 580. And then he would go on and explain to me why he was playing so much better than the numbers looked. And it was largely, as he said, the team that he was playing behind was just not giving him a chance. I think I'd like to see him in an actual time share with Dostal once he gets back to. Because Gibson did have the appendectomy.

It seems like their flow plan has returned to the lineup, which is good because appendectomies are pretty gnarly, especially when you're in your 30s or so I've heard. But I would like to see him and Dostal like slide into, you know, a one in one A or a one A and one B situation where they're like just alternate them for a while. See if it goes. See if they can see how they look in general because whatever, the ducks are their points percentage is 417 or whatever. This isn't a good hockey team even with Dostal playing, you know,

over his head to some extent. But I, if I'm Anaheim, I want to see. what that looks like just, just for, you know, research purposes, I think. And then you can rehab

some Gibson's value. You're playing them every other night. You have a legitimate other option next to him and you don't have to, you know, try to sell the team

that needs a goalie on the same line that you've used for the last couple years, which is like, no, his workload is enormous and he gets, he gets shelled every night

and he's making 60 starts or whatever, blah, like that can go out the window. You can say, like this is the best version of John Gibson we can see, which is a dude that's playing two or three times a week. You don't have to worry about, you know, breaking his back in December and January and maybe rehabbing his value up into a point where, you know, a trade is a little bit

more likely or a little bit more palatable, right? Yeah. And if you're doing that too, you're not just doing it for his trade value, right? If you're playing them every other game, there's reason to do it if you're the ducks on a good day because you're like, well, Dressal's been fantastic so far, but we don't want to run him into the ground. And that start is going to weigh on him eventually. And imagine you do trade Gibson, you're going to play him that much more post-trade. So if you can do something to kind of like ease his workload in the middle of the season,

I think that's a really good thing. And if it does rehab his value even better for the ducks, because I'm sure there's going to be GMs looking at it going, well, Dostal's not, you know, wilting under that workload. Why is Gibson? And that could be the conversation. Forget about age, forget about anything else, or the fact that he's been doing this for literally years.

So I definitely like that plan. And he is 33 with a lot of miles, a lot of goalie miles on him. It's, you know, it made me laugh a little bit because you talk about how gives him a struggle behind an Anaheim team that can't really play defense. But as far as potential trade destinations, one of the teams we mentioned was Pittsburgh,

which, I mean, I don't know, there's too many situations. it might be even worse than taking John Gibson and saying, okay, we're going to take you out of the bad defensive team with no Stanley Cup aspirations and go to the bad defensive team that still thinks it can win potentially. And yeah, you're going to have Eric Carlson in front of you 25 minutes tonight. Would that be even worse? And what is going on in Pittsburgh and can they fix it?

Yeah, Pittsburgh's broken. You look at it right now. They're like a bottom five team and expected goals against a five on five, which I don't think any of us saw coming, right? I don't think any of us had them as a good team this year, but not necessarily this bad defensively. And, you know, the personnel, they're struggling. They can't figure out what pairs to run because they're all performing poorly.

Like they tried the Chris Lick Carlson pair, and that was a total disaster. And you know Marcus Pedersen's better with Carlson. You have all of last year's evidence, but Pedersen's not playing his best and just getting completely dragged down by Carlson. Peterson, Pederson playing badly is like that that was the straw that broke the camel's back for that team defensively. Because like, Shay, like you said, like the mix is off now. Like last year, you could at least, you could rely on him being a viable partner for Carlson. And that's just not that hasn't been the way it's played out now.

And now it's chopped, right? It's the cooking show chopped where you have this box of ingredients and it's like some of them, some of them are good and some of them are bad and you're trying to find some way to create a cohesive meal out of it. And it's not, it's not happening. No, it's not. And you go, okay, so they should be better than last year because, you know, they made some improvements on paper. You're like, okay, I could see it. I can see the vision to an extent to fix the damage of past years of management and everything like that. You got rid of Todd Reared in, so the power play should be a little bit more capable decision. Probably should have come sooner. And now you're looking and go, what's next? Because

there's only so much movement you can make with this same group that you have to wonder, like, is it the person who's taking all the ingredients and putting it together? Are they the problem? Like, I wouldn't say Mike Sullivan's a bad coach, but sometimes you wonder, like, do coaches just run a cycle and he doesn't have any answers? Do they need a fresh voice? Like, I literally don't know. They're probably one of the worst position teams possible right now.

And it felt like they were in an okay standing when the season started, but it has just been a total failure. and it's on both ends of the ice. And you can only do so much to get guys to execute, right? If the players can't execute, what are you going to do? So good luck, seriously. 23rd in points percentage Spitzberg is right now. So whatever.

I think they're, I think they're close enough to the bottom where you can, there's probably teams and worse spots than them. They're going to be, they're going to be bad despite not trying to be. It's very funny. Yeah, but teams seem worse spots than them. At least you look at it. You go, okay, well, the Blackhawks are bad, the sharks are bad. but you're like, but the future, like, you're supposed to be bad.

That I'm like, okay, sure. When, like, Corey puts out his organizational prospect rankings, and it's, you know, the teams that are at the bottom of the list are the teams like Tampa that have been good for years. So, yeah, this is how it goes. You're good. You trade away first. And then, like, when you hit a Pittsburgh, like, in the late 20s, you go, uh-oh.

is I gotta be honest speaking of watch me flex my segue muscles here but speaking of you should wait wait a second wait a second that are struggling listeners

I wish you could have seen how hard Mac and do like closed his eyes in concentration that was unbelievable this is this is tough man this is this is not I don't I don't in my writing

I don't do this I just put like a, yeah, just do the line across the train. That's what I've been leaning into. Like, that's how you usually do it. All right.

So speaking of black and gold teams that are struggling. There we go. Boston Bruins, I got to admit, I thought the, I mean, I'm with you guys on the penguins

being in big trouble. I've been pushing back on the Bruins thing for a while now, saying like, this is not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. It's a big market. It's an all my,

you know, all this stuff. It's going to be okay. And then I watch them get absolutely picked apart by the Toronto Maple Leafs power play last night. Humiliating. I'm now ready to panic if I'm a Bruins fan.

Give me the summary of how bad their first month was. Yeah. Last night, you look at it and you go, could the Bruins be trending up? Because they beat a Flyers team. After losing to them, you're like, all right, progress. They're going in the right direction. But to lose to an Austin Matthews list, Toronto,

and allow all of those power play goals. When you know, like, in theory, on paper, a strength of the Bruins is their defensive game is their penalty killing and it just crushed them um the Bruins they're bad i am worried about the Bruins but like i was worried about the Bruins early last year i looked at them and i'm like is this team a contender like are they really because i didn't like their game at five on five i didn't think they were dominating play enough and i was like maybe they need a new coach and then they were like no just kidding we're fine where the bruin's because that's what they always do they always pull it out so this year you

still let's take it with a grain of salt because you're like maybe it's a bad start but maybe they'll just go, just kidding. Like, we're Boston. We always manage. But, you know, it's not getting much better. Even after those two wins that they had, they are not a good five-on-five team right now. And it's up and down the lineup,

they're struggling, right? You see Poshnach and Lin-Home. They're not clicking. Lin-home doesn't look like a top-six center right now. Zodorf does not look like the price of acquisition. Guys like McAvoy and Hampus Lin-home are struggling. And all of that five-on-five play, all of those gaps in the lineup are just rearing their ugly heads.

and then some and then it's weighing on the goaltending. Like, I don't blame Swamen for their start. I have to think missing training camp and everything that extended offseason essentially for him, it has hurt him. But the team is not doing him any favors either. So you're back to wondering, like, is this team truly a contender? How's it finally, have they finally hit that wall and can't just like flip the switch and say, it's fine where the Bruins?

And I'm wondering if that's the case. And I'm wondering about the coaching. I think the fact that we're seeing. sitting here and talking about Jim Montgomery, like it's a point of discussion across the league, right, where you're seeing TSN segments and whatever, asking whether Jim Montgomery is in the hot seat.

The fact that we're there with that dude on November 6th tells you how bad things have gone. Because, you know, I know maybe we're asking that question to some degree last season, but then he turns in an unbelievable, unbelievable coaching job, right? And it was a big part of the,

reason that everybody is so slow to shovel dirt on the on the Bruins at the start of the season and now rightfully because he's benching David Posernock and he had to blow up with with Marchand and there's there's ancillary stuff going on there aside

from just poor performance and like this isn't this isn't just a run of bad percentages either this isn't just this isn't just puck luck this isn't just Lindelman Posernock and Pavlovak and whoever else being colder than they should be otherwise there's a lot of reasons that this is taking place. And I think it speaks to, you know, what a multi-tiered kind of failure it's been for them over the first month that we are legitimately having that conversation.

Like the Jim Montgomery hot seat discussion is very real and very legitimate. And that's shocking. And this is, to remind people, 2003 Jack Adams winner is the year, Jim Montgomery, a year and a bit ago. By the way, do you remember who the other two finalists were that year? Lindy Ruff of the Devils and Dave Hacks still Losie. Oh, my God. Love that. Love that award.

It's a reminder, though, of the ten years of NHL coaches. And this was something, I started looking up last year. And Ian Mendes had a question. Like, do, do. Who? Yeah, former friend. Former friend of the pod. But, like, do NHL coaches have the shortest ten years?

And he was like, I think so. So I was like, oh, let's do the math. because of course, and it's not by a little. If I remember correctly, the average tenure when we did that was like 2.1 years for an NHL coach and it's only gotten worse as the year went on and I'm curious. I definitely have to update this and keep tracking it because the turnover in the NHL is totally wild and, you know, coaches have a shelf life and it's not necessarily a bad thing always, right?

Like think of Barretrauts on Long Island, right? Everybody hipes up Baratrots as the defensive specialist that does everything right. but you know after a couple of years, you're going to need an infusion of offense, right? He's going to come in and do his thing, and then the tide's going to turn and you're going to need a new voice. And it's not always just the coach's bed.

It's just that's how it works in hockey. But here you go, is a coach running out of the answers or are the players not listening to the answers? It feels like a mix of everything happening in Boston right now. And I remember, like, it wasn't that long ago where we used to talk about there were just coaches with short shelf lives,

including some great coaches. If you hire Pat Burns, he would come in, he would transform your program, he would get you up to potentially championship calibers. And you had four years max before you were, the Pat Burns experience was going to be done. A little more recent Ken Hitchcock was another guy who had that reputation. Kevin Constantine. That's all the, it's all sorts of sharks with the penguins. But with those guys, like you were hiring them and it was like four years. You've got four years before everyone's sick of them.

And now it feels like, geez, four years. you might as well be John Cooper. You might as well be Al Arbor if you last four years in a job. Like isn't Martin St. Louis like the sixth, you know, the longest tenure in the league or something. And he got hired like two weeks ago. So I,

yeah. And it's funny. Like you talk about takes that sometimes we have takes that don't age well. And sometimes we have takes that even as we're saying them. We know they're not going to age well. And I remember talking to you, Sean, on the pod in the preseason, we were talking about who's going to be the first coach fired?

and I was like, man, I just can't even find one. I agree. I agree. And now we're a month in. And it's like the race of like, all right. So Sullivan's getting fired and then he'll go to Boston and then Montgomery will be out. And then that's going to this and that. Haven't even mentioned Derek Lovone yet?

My God. Yeah. I mean, geez, that's. And that's a wild one too. You look at like the Detroit. Detroit penalty kill is one of the worst in the league. It is a total disaster. And I get it the personnel's bad.

But like he ran a great penalty kill in Tampa Bay. And he wasn't the only coach to do. it. And that's the thing too with like John Cooper, you think about his long tenure. He's had different assistant coaches along the way. They've made changes and it still works. I don't think we value assistant coaches enough in this league. But here's a long and sometimes I like that take. I like that take very much. It's okay, look at we're talking Lindy rough, right? Look at the devils when they went from Mark Recky running things to Andrew Brunette. Sometimes I don't know if the answer is this is a coach saying this is my system I want it. Implement it. And just some coaches.

assistant coaches are better at it, or if some coaches are saying, what are your ideas in it? How collaborative is it? Does that change things? I think genuinely think that some coaches are simply bench managers. I would say that about Craig Barubi, who doesn't strike me as the most tactically inclined guys and Lindy Ruff, and they just need the best tacticians to elevate their coaching style. But like we don't, we literally don't know enough because we don't get that kind of access to them. We don't get to hear the, you know, the answers to it. And coaches aren't going to tell you. It's a team sport. They're going to be like, well, we did this together. But it's like,

no, I want to know what you did. What is your impact here? Just real quick, I do want to throw it an apology. I was being a kind of a smart alec and I just randomly said Martine San Luis 6th longest tenure coach or whatever like that. Apologies to Martana San Luis. He's the fifth longest tenure coach. I was wrong. I didn't mean to short change you Martin. Yeah, hired in February

of 2022. There are four guys in the entire league who have had their jobs longer than he has. And nothing's going wrong for Montreal, too. That's a, yeah, it's going great. That's a perfect situation.

I like it. I will not stand for Marty St. Louis Slander, okay? As an offensive coach and a guy who can coach Cole Cofield or whatever, like absolutely.

Steve is that I, it's a, let me just say quick, the four guys, Rod Brindamore, Jared Bedner, John Cooper,

Mike Sullivan. So Martina San Luis could be moving up the list soon. Has Sullivan signed a extension this morning has that yeah he's signed he gets another two years so he's at 11 years now so we're going we're going all the way through 23rd it's actually the end of the 2036 season for okay good so i mean right around the time that the rebuild does starts in pittsburg i think shit we we would be remiss if we didn't ask you about the rangers i know they haven't played in a few

days uh is artemie panarin going to win the rocket rachar go no uh You know what? My hot take right now, and we had to do those predictions, is Nikita Kutrov's going to do it. He's going to score all the goals as you everyone expects it's going to be Jake Gensel because you're like sick, you have 40 goals score it. And it's like, don't forget what a sick playmaker Jake Gensel is. So while everyone's expecting him to shoot, he's just going to keep threading these passes to Kutrov and he's going to win it. But Panarin is going to repeat last year and be that dual threat, right? Like you see him shooting the puck more. And it helps that on his line, all three players on that line. And I know they got split up last game.

Trochec, Lafranier, and Panarin generally are the line. And our five-on-five last year, each of them ranked really well in shots off high-danger passes and high-danger passes. You have three dual threats playing together. They can each do a little bit of everything, and it's working, and it's helping him be more than just the elite puck mover that we know him to be. He and McDavid are the two guys that just make me feel like they just decide what kind of season they're going to have.

McDavid, a few years ago, remember he was one in the art Ross, but then we were all, we got, let's face it, we got more to talking about how great Conner, McDavid was. So Austin Matthew scored 60 goals and we're like, Matthews is the best player now. He's the MVP. And it was just like you could hear McDavid be like, all right, you guys want, you guys want 60 goals? We're doing 60 goals. We'll do 65 this year. And, you know, the coacher of 100 assists last year.

Oh, okay. You want goals? We'll do goals this year. No problem. Tell me what it is next time. You want to play D? I'll go net. I don't care.

I'm better than all. All of you. Let's, let's, uh, let's figure it out. Three hundred and three shots for Panarin last year. I knew it was over 300. That's still, that's a hundred more than we'd seen from him basically since, since he was in Columbus. That's crazy. He just, he just like, okay, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've decided to, to be less of a one-dimensional plantmaker. We love it. Yeah, it's fun to see. All right, Shay, we'll let you go. Thanks for jumping on. We'll have you back on at some point. I'm, I'm sure you can be the,

Frankie Crato replacement number one moving forward. You acquitted yourself quite well. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Great stuff from Shana. As always, we love her. Now we're back for segment three. Sean, what have we learned?

What have we learned, Sean? Well, I learned that we have a goaltending interference crisis again. And this is going to shock you, but once again, the crisis is caused by a call going against a team that didn't like that. But this one is getting attention, according to Darren Dregor last night on the Leafs broadcast, he said the league is going to get together and talk about this because a goaltender is mad that a goal count it. And of course, we know goaltenders are very neutral and impartial on this question.

Connor Hallibuck is mad about a goal that was allowed to stand over the weekend. He took a day to gather himself, and then he explained that he, as a completely impartial goaltender, thinks that the goal shouldn't account it. And apparently, we're all just going to go with this and have a conversation. And look, I'm not going to do the whole goaltending interference debate again. If people aren't aware, I wrote a piece a couple years ago where I was like, look, it's not that complicated. It's not that hard to understand. You can get 90% of them. Here's what you need to look for.

I don't think I've ever referred to a post on our website more than I refer to that one. Whether it's for my own news, whether it's me saying on Twitter like, hey, Mac and Do I already did this. I got to say, I see people like on Twitter and, you know, the places, like they'll have a friend melting down and they'll send them the link. And they'll be like, just read this and you'll be okay. It's been cited on Hockey Nunt Canada a couple of times. Wow. Congratulations. I'm very happy with it.

Now, that haven't been said, the call on the weekend with Connor Hellbuck was kind of one of those more gray area calls because it wasn't the usual, hey, they took a shot and there was a guy in the crease and what happened. It was the puck was in and out and the pad got pushed. And I actually think in isolation, Jets fans have kind of have a point about being unhappy with that call. Although the call on the ice was it was a goal and the league has really been more. moving away from overturning calls unless it's it's really clear. So I wasn't shocked that it, uh, that the call stood,

but I get where Connor Hallibuck is coming from. Here, here's all that I want to say on this. As always happens with this sort of thing. What we wind up with is a lot of people saying, it's too, first they say nobody understands a rule, which always just means it went against my team.

But the other thing it means is that it's, nobody understands it in the sense that nobody can look at a play and just, say with 100% certainty, yes or no, the way you can most of the time for offside or other rules. And the reason for that is because it's, and I say this in the piece, it's a very subjective rule. If you dig into the rule, it's much more subjective than you think. It's not about, oh, if your skate is here than this, if your skate is there than that. There's all these other factors in play. And I get that a lot of people, probably including a lot of goalies, would say, they get the subjectivity out of there. Just make it cut and dried. Make it so that we

can all look at a freeze frame and we all know whether the goal is going to count or not. And my answer to that, and this is all I'm going to say and then I'll leave it, if this is what you want, please find a hockey fan who was around in the 90s when we had the skate in the crease rule because that's what we're going to get if we insist that this has to be black and white. We'll go back to what we had in the 90s where if a skate was in the crease, that was it, no goal, no matter what did matter if it had anything to do with the play, go back and find a hockey fan from back then and ask them if they like that rule. And I'll give you the spoiler alert. No, they didn't because everybody hated it. It was the most hated rule in hockey.

It resulted in a ton of goals coming off the board. Nobody understood why. And of course, it all leads to Brett Halls, scaping in the crease in the 99 final and then the league scraps the rule forever. If that's what you want to go back to, go, then yes, keep pushing for it. It has to be objective in black and white. Nobody understands blah, blah, blah. That's what you want. but I'm telling you you don't want that. So just accept that there's going to be some subjectivity. And there's going to be some calls to go against your team. There's going to be calls to go against your favorite goal.

And we don't have to have a national conversation about it every time a goalie gets mad because a goal against them counted. We also learned that Connor Hellebuck has presented on the topic in front of the general managers before. There is a really good piece that Murat published a day or two ago that Maratatatash, our Jets Ryder, went in depth. you know, and, you know, talk to Hella Buck. And he argued his point compellingly, I would say. And part of that is because he has experience. He gave the GMs of 45 minute presentation at some point in the past. So I don't think I realize, look, everybody knows that goleys care about this for the most part.

But I don't think I realize that it was a bunch of a hobby horse for our boy, our boy, Helibuck. This is something that's been on his mind for years, apparently. We love it. I love it. You know when you go to the fantasy football draft and you're like, hey, guys, anything, you know, and then somebody breaks out the PowerPoint. This is why we should go to half a point per reception. And you're like, oh, dude, can it just, we all have to sit through this? Yeah, we've done this every year. We're not flipping to a two QB league. Like, let's just move on. I'm just saying, man, we let the goalies decide it's going to be like if your skate is in the offensive zone, it's no goal. We're just going to leave every, all shots have to be from the red line. And we're just going to let the goalies in their giant equipment. stand in front of their tiny little nets and get shutouts. And that's, which is basically what happened in the late 90s. And yeah, we, we loved it. Find an old hockey fan and tell them that you heard the skate in the crease rule was really cool. And see how that goes for you.

Anti-goly sentiment from Sean McIndoe. Yeah, I continue. And I wear it proudly. Goleys ruin hockey. All of you. Nobody tell Granger what I said. but yeah, he's he's not listening. Who cares?

Okay. What I learned is that I, look, I knew that Nathan McKinnon was on a, was on a point streak to start the season. I did not know that his teammate Kelman Carr was on one as well. So Colorado has their two best players, two of the very best players in the league, on 13 game points streak to start the season, and they are still struggling to pull ahead of the bottom feeders in their division. They're six and four in their last 10.

That's a step up from where they were before. But it is really hard. And Arturi Lekin is back. That's a big deal. But it's hard to look at that team in the level of play that they've gotten from those two guys, which is what they're built around right now, given how their middle six and goaltending issues have propped up.

They need those guys to be great if they want to be good. and they have been just that, right? 13 game points straights to start the season. And we're still talking about them as like mushy middle. I was worried about the Colorado Avalanche. I continue to be worried about the Colorado Avalanche because if those guys are this good and this is where they are in the standings, I don't think it bodes all that well for them moving forward.

And again, we talked about bad takes, like takes at age poorly whenever we're like, oh, which coach is going to get fired first, you know, and now it seems like we're approaching an answer on that. This could easily blow up in my face whenever Colorado wins the division and is the whatever. That's probably more likely than not. But I still don't like what I'm seeing from them. And it's not just because of some bad play from Alexander Georgi ever earlier in the season.

And I'm the flip side. They are my annual team. Every year I pick one team. people are bailing on and I kind of plant the flag and I say they're going to be fine. Yep. They're fine. Last year it was the Oilers. They're going to be fine.

A few years before that, it was Vegas Golden Knights and they missed the playoffs. So I may or may not be any good at this. But I do think, even in my Monday rankings, I said, look, Colorado's making the playoffs. Don't worry about it. But as far as what you learned, I'm going to let you learn something else here because I had somebody passed a stat on to me that I thought was very interesting. You've been waiting all show for this, by the way. Well, because people send me stuff like this because I have a concept that I introduced years and years ago.

It's called the stat spoiler. And basically the idea is that anytime something cool happens in hockey and you see a list of like, here's the six other guys who did this. It's always going to be like Gretzky Lemieux or and then somewhere on that list, there will be someone that just does not belong at all. And you're like, what the hell? Like, why is, you know, how did Ryan Reeves get on that list? What are we doing here?

And this is a good one because you mentioned McCarraninan starting the season with 13 game. point streaks. This is only, according to the NHL, the third time that this has ever happened. The only two other pairs of teammates to start the season with 13 game points. Both happen to be from the same team as the Boston Bruins. The first is in the early 70s,

not a big surprise. Phil Esposito and a kid named Bobby Orr. Both started the season. That way they were, of course, in the 70s, especially in the early 70s, they were rewriting all the record books, absolutely destroying it. Not a surprise. Do you want to take a guess who the other Boston teammates to do this in the, and I'll give you a hint, it's in the, in the 1990s?

It's McKinnon McCar, it's Or Esposito, and it's these two guys. Oh, man. It's the 1992-93 Boston Bruins. Okay. Okay, so Oates was on that team. Oates and Boatts was on that. Oats and Bork seemed too easy. This is going to be.

O for two, not Adam Oates. Of course not. Not Ray Bork. And I'll give you a further hint, not Cam Neelyon. It was Joey Juno. What? Did set the record for assist that year by a left winner. That was the year that he, I think, as a rookie, set that record that stood until

a couple years ago. And the teammate that he did this with, who now stands along McKinnon-McCarr or an Esposito was Dimitri Kvartlanov. That's a guy I know for sure. Right. I mean, a dude I certainly have heard of and not a name I'm hearing for the first time right now. You probably just didn't want to give the obvious answer. He, in case people are wondering, he played that season.

He ended up with 30 goals. He played half a season the following year and never played in the NHL again. We need to crack open the hockey reference play a finder and figure out. out how many guys, how many guys had 70, at 70 point seasons and we're out of the league within, within a calendar year. The 80s and 90s,

it happened for, it happened for a bit. And then you know what happened? We, we changed the goaltending interference rules and we started taking goals off the boards. And that was, the Dimitri Kovartlanovs were like, forget this.

I'm going back home to Russia. Guy played a season and a half in the league. And, but yeah, he got off to a heck of a start. in the 1999, 92-93 season.

He was unstoppable. I'm looking at his scoring log right now. He was playing on a line, not surprising with Juno and Atomotes. So,

I mean, there's your Atomotes connection. Okay. I knew it. I knew it had to come somewhere. He was all over the place. You could not stop him.

You could only hope to contain him. And by the way, most of those points were goals. He was on fire. And then he was not anymore. in a closet in South Boston somewhere there is a Dimitri Kavartlanov jersey I want to I want to hear from

I want to break it out put it on and take a photo and send it to the show all right that'll do it for us Sean you working on anything good this week not really I'm doing some Hall of Fame stuff I've got a piece out that just went today on Wednesday I'm trying to find the worst team in NHL history that had a whole bunch of Hall of Famers on Yeah, I haven't read that yet. It's the flip side of one I did last year where I said, what was the best team to have no Hall of Famers?

And now we're going the other way. And it's amazing how bad a team can be when you have five or six or seven Hall of Famers in the lineup. Is this in honor of the 24-25 Pittsburgh Penguins? It might be. They might be joining the list of us. You should have known. You should have known.

All right, bud. Talk to you next week. Thank you folks for listening. Wednesday night games. We got three of them. Reds Caps, Red Wings, Blackhawks, Golden Knights, Edmonton. Thank you for listening, as always. Haley and I are back tomorrow with a Thursday show, and we'll talk to you then.