The Athletic Hockey Show - Will the Oilers match offer sheets for Holloway and Broberg?

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Mark Lazerus and Jesse Granger discuss the St. Louis Blues twin offer sheets for Oilers forward Dylan Holloway and defender Philip Broberg from the Edmonton Oilers. Can the Oilers match the offer? Does the injury to Evander Kane help them? The guys discuss the Maple Leafs announcement to change the captaincy from John Tavares to Auston Matthews and how this is the right move at this time, plus the guys ask, what is hockey equivalent of Steph and LeBron carrying Team USA to victory?Hosts: Mark Lazerus and Jesse GrangerExecutive Producer: Chris FlanneryProducer: Jeff Domet Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic hockey show. Hello and welcome into the athletic hockey show. Summerstyle. I am Mark Lazarus, joined today by the athletics golden nights and goaltending guru, Jesse Granger. Jesse, my kids went back to school this week, so I've been suddenly getting up at 6.20 a.m. after sleeping in all summer. So if I just like, I don't know, nod off in the middle of a segment, can you vamp for me? Can you handle that?

Yeah, I will try to help you out. I've been seeing all the posts on social media about kids back to school. I live right next to a high school. I saw all the kids. It's quite that. It's crazy time of year. I'm so glad I don't have to partake in any of this. It's great.

You're in Vegas, of course. And I used to go to Vegas every year in mid-August with a couple of friends of mine. And it's basically unlivable. How are kids going to school in this weather? If you stand at the bus stop for more than 30 seconds, you burst into flames. Yeah, it's been hot. You know, we're actually like in the middle of our monsoon season right now. It is raining every day.

I got hailed on yesterday in my backyard. You get chunks of ice falling from the sky in Vegas? And it's a hundred and five. Yeah, it's 105. And there are chunks. I was talking to my wife. I cannot figure out scientifically how this is possible.

But we're just all going to die and this planet is just going to explode any day now, isn't it? Yes. Yes. You know, it's funny. This is nominally the Monday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. But we decided to wait a day to, to record the desperate hope that something would happen for us to talk about. And wouldn't you know it, the Toronto Maple Leafs in St. Louis Blues coming through for the athletic hockey show.

I'd love to see it. The Lees are taking the sea off of John Tavares's jersey and they're giving it to Austin Matthews. But we're going to start with the Blues. Two offer sheets. We got two offer sheets from one team to one other team. We've had two offer sheets in the last, I think, 11 years. You had the Montreal Canadiens and the Carolina Hurricanes, you know, kind of punching each other in the gut a little bit with Sebastian Ajo and Yisperi Kokkiyemi. And here we get two in a day.

Let's break it down. These are, this is pretty significant to see this at all, but these are significant young players to the Oilers. The Blues offer sheeted Philip Broberg that the young defenseman, I think is the 2019 or 2020 first round pick of the Oilers for two years at just about $4.58 million, $1 below the 9.5. next level of compensation. And they offer sheeted Dylan Holloway, a young speedy forward. I think it was the other first round draft pick from that era, two years at about $2.29 million. So this is just, this is brilliant stuff from St. Louis because both of them are $1 under the limit for the compensation.

So they would only lose a second rounder for Broberg and a third rounder for Holloway. This is, this is exciting. What do you do if you're the Oilers? Like, you need these guys. These are your future. They've played in the NHL. they were playing playoff games this year, but you have no money to spend. What do you do if you're Edmonton right now?

Right. And no money to spend. And I love that they did it to two players at once because I feel like if you had done it to one of these guys, it's like Edmonton can shuffle some money around and find money to pay one of them. I don't know if they can find money to pay that type of Aav to both of them. It was a brilliant move. It's so much fun.

I can't wait to see how it plays out. I am hoping so badly that this works out for St. Louis. They get one or both of these players and they're good. And you see how quickly trends spread in the NHL. Like they've all had this gentleman's agreement not to do this to each other for however long. And it's ruined the system because the system would be so much more fun if they used it the way they should. And like example, Golden Knights, I think it's been six years ago. They were the middleman in a trade and got a draft pick and retained salary.

It was during the Ryan Reeves trade when they got Ryan Reeves. and now it's used, it had never been used prior to that. Now it's every trade you see at the deadline. There's a third team working as a broker. Things can go from never happening in the NHL to that's the regular standard practice very quickly. Please let signing RFAs and trying to steal them off on the teams become standard practice because one, it's good for the players. It gets these young players paid faster than they currently get paid because I think it takes NHL players way too long to earn what they're worth. on the current system. And two, it makes the league way more fun with player movement. The NBA

is becoming one of the most popular leagues in the world. And it's all because of the player movement and transactions. And I feel like the NHL would be a lot more fun if we had players that weren't 27, 28, 30 moving around the league. Wholeheartedly agree. I mean, we've talked a lot about how we wish these guys would take shorter term contracts instead of always going for the seven or eight year deal because it would create more player movement. That's just not the way hockey players are wired. But this is great because this gives some agency to restricted free agents, right? Like if you're an RFA, like nobody's going to, you know, shed a tear for these guys making millions of dollars, but you don't have a whole lot of say in your career when you're an RFA.

You are, you are, your rights are the property of this team and they control you. That's what we always talk about is player control. And these guys are controlled up until they're 26, 27, 28 years old, their primes are over. If you're a forward and you're 27 years old, you're already past your prime in the modern day NHL. So your entire prime is dictated by who drafted you essentially. And other than waiting out your four years after the draft and becoming a free agent, there's no real path to this. So this is a great way for players to get some agency. It's a great way to juice up the offseason.

I mean, this is just the absolute dead of August to get something like this. This is manna from heaven to get something to talk about like this on the hot stove. And these are two good players. These are players that are a big, big part of what the Oilers are planning to do long term. and they can become a big part of what the blues are doing. These aren't just some scrubs they're trying to get. And these are fair value. Like, you know, 4.5 million for two years for Broberg,

that's a good deal for a good promising young defenseman who's got playoff experience. Like this is Doug Armstrong, should get all the flowers for doing this and the sneakiness of making it $1 below the threshold for first round picks. I mean, you're never going to see, you know, Connor Bedard get offer sheeted because the price you have to pay is like 14,000 first round draft. It's insane.

But from these ones, I was surprised at how reasonable it was. This is nothing. A second round pick? We never see these offer sheets. So I feel like when I saw the contracts, I was like, I have no idea with this. Like in my head, I'm like, what is it? Two first round picks, something crazy. No, second round pick.

Like second round picks don't are nothing. You end up playing in the NHL? I don't know. To trade a second round pick for a 24 year old defenseman who was a first round pick. That's like the easiest trade in the world to make. I think that if somehow this breaks down this barrier that all these GMs have of just not doing this to each other and suddenly teams are, because every year, every off season, I go through this. I go to the website, okay, who are the pending you, or who are the pending free agents? And you click on it and you see all these awesome names.

It's like, oh, my God. And then you're like, oh, wait, I don't have it filtered to UFAs. Right, right. Let me go to UFAs. Wow. Well, all the fun names are gone now. It's just all the old guys. It's just a bunch of T.J. Brodies out there, right?

If suddenly, and like you said, you're not going to offer sheet everyone, the superstars are not going to get offered you to because the compensation is too much. But if suddenly these 24, 25-year-olds that are constantly hitting the RFA market that we look at as basically nothing. When you see a player with RFA status, it's like, okay, so they're going to need a new deal. That person is not a free agent. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah, not a free agent in the slightest.

You just think, oh, well, they're going to get a new deal with that team event. Jeremy Swamen right now. No panic in the world that Jeremy Swamen. He's one of the best goalies in the world. He's the most important player on the Boston Bruins. Not signed. Nobody cares. It's not a concern.

Why? Because he's an RFA and what happens with RFAs. They end up signing with the team eventually. So if suddenly there's just a little bit of question whether an RFA will be on your team next year, I think the offseason becomes way more fun. I agree. But I don't know if it's going to be a trendset or if this is an outlier. We kind of thought when the Habs and Keynes kind of went at it there that that might

opened the door. And that was, Kockinymi was like four or five years ago now. And this is the first one since then. We just do not see offer sheets at all. And I'd love to see it. And you talk about the gentleman's agreement. I always wondered, is the gentleman's agreement there because it's mutually beneficial or is it there because GMs are just terrified?

Right. I don't want to do this because they're going to, they're going to retaliate at me and I'm scared. Like, NHL GMs are like a very timid bunch, right? They don't want to make the big trades. It's, oh, it's hard. Sean McIndow always talks about it's too hard to make a trade. Oh my God.

And then you have like the offer sheets. Oh, I don't want them to retaliate at me. I would love to see this become an absolute just outright free agent war, right? Where you got guys just trying to poach players left and right every year. And I don't know. We should have seen this more over the last four or five off seasons when the cap was flat. Because now that the cap's going way up, allegedly, we've heard that story before. but now the cap's going way up, you're going to have a lot, you know, far fewer teams in this like

cap hell. This should have been such a useful weapon the last four years in the flat cap era. And it's almost malpracticed by these GMs not to have used it. Yeah, I agree that it's definitely going to become less of a problem with the cap going up. But it almost makes you have to like manage your cap a little different. If this were to become a regular thing, it's like, we go to the off season, well, we couldn't, we can't sign that UFA because if we do, we'll be. against the cap and we've got these three RFAs and someone could come in an offer sheet. You have to keep that in the back of your mind in your planning of we have to have

the money available in case in the event that these RFAs were to be offer sheeted. A little rainy day fund, right? Exactly. Well, it'll be interesting because, you know, there's reports out there that Evander Kane might start the season on LTIR. He's going to be having some surgery. And I wonder if that gives the oilers just enough wiggle room to pull this off and kick the can down the road and then worry about it mid-season, just assume that someone else will get hurt

and they can keep, you know, you don't know anything about LTIR being in Vegas, but it's this tool that you can use to go over the cap. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. But I wonder if they can pull this off because if you lose either of these guys and get just a second or a third round pick for it, that's a devastating blow to your team building here, because these are players that the Oilers are very high on. Yeah, and a team that is in the championship, championship window that is pressed against the cap. How do you improve when you're pressed against the cap? They made some small additions in the off season, but the way the Oilers improve is their young players take another step. And these are two of the better ones. So yeah, it's, it's a very interesting situation. I cannot wait to see how it plays out. I hope it becomes a trend. I think what does your gut tell you? My gut tells you the Oilers find a way to sign these guys. I don't think they're going to St. Louis. I think so too. I think, again, the Evander Kane surgery will give them just enough wiggle room to kick the can down the road here, which will be a bummer because you kind of want to see it work.

You want to see the blues rewarded for being bold here because really in the past, most of these offer sheets that we have seen have been almost like a needle in the eye of another team, like, oh, we're going to make you overpay a little bit for this guy by offering him this, even though we know you're going to match it, but it'll hurt your cap a little bit down the road. And that's, you know, do that to like a division rival. That's kind of fun, I suppose. But I want to see Doug Armstrong rewarded for the boldness here.

Like, this is exactly the. kind of player you go after. A guy who's four or five years past his draft, 23, 24 years old, has already cracked the NHL, but isn't a star yet. You can get him for a reasonable price, and you can pay just a little bit more than the players team

can. I mean, this is just, it's brilliant on the surface. I just wonder if the cane injury is going to give the Oilers just enough leeway to make it work. Yep. I was, so I immediately went to look at RFA's for next year, just out of curiosity, as soon as I saw this. And

not going to be surprising to you, but I looked at the goalies. And next year's RFA class has probably the three or four best young goalies in the entire world are all RFAs next year. And it made me wonder, like, a position. So teams don't like investing high draft picks and goalies because they're so unpredictable. It's hard to project an 18-year-old what he's going to be when he's whatever. What if you just stopped drafting goalies and waited until they're 22 when you could actually see what they are? and oh my God, Gesper Walsett,

Yaroslav Ascarov, Devin Levi, all three, the top three prospects in the world at goalie. All three are RFAs. Teams don't like paying their goalies. I feel like you could compensate, you could offer sheet one of those

and get a team in a huge problem very quickly and skip the 18 to 23-year-old or 22-year-old form, like part of drafting a goalie prospect and just start offer-sheeting young goalies that teams aren't ready to pay and don't have the cap space to pay because they have bigger, more expensive goalies currently on the roster.

I don't know. I think with goalies specifically, this RFA, if offer sheets were to become a regular thing, it would be very interesting. You could take a lot of the guesswork out of finding a young goalie. I love that. Yeah, like a guy like Ascarov you're talking about,

he's now trapped behind UC Saros for the next, you know, eight years. In a couple of years, that's an easy call to make because if you're in Nashville, you can't be investing $15 million into your goaltending. Right. So that's exactly the kind of guy you should be targeting is someone who is like not a luxury to a team, but not like a central piece. Right. Like yes for one.

Secondary tertiary player is the kind of guy you should be targeting on these good teams because these good teams have lots of depth. They have players that are in smaller roles. You can give them a bigger role. You can give them just a little bit more money than they because they're probably in cap hell. I mean, this is exactly the kind of player you target. We always dream about like, oh, we're going to offer sheet Austin Matthews. It's like, that's not going to happen. But this is the kind of.

player that you can go after and can really improve your team and take a lot of the guesswork out of the draft because if you draft a guy in the second round, if he's in the NHL four years later, that's a bonanza for you. So why not just go straight, skip, stick straight to the 24 year old joining your team, right? Yeah, I'll just give you a second round pick and I've got a player that I know is ready for the NHL. I love that they picked, like you mentioned that they went after two guys at once because I think the best case scenario in terms of just like the theater of this is.

is Edmonton having to choose? Do they choose Holloway or do they choose Broverg? Right? Like I love this like Sophie's choice nature of this. It's like, which one of these guys do you really like? Yep. Then all season we get to compare how the two players are playing. Why do you imagine the bitterness, the player who isn't picked is going to feel when he plays

Edmonton, he's going to go ham on them. Oh my gosh. Just the drama and the theater of the opera sheet, man. It would just make the hockey summer so much more fun. Yep. I know people complain about like, you know, when there's too much player movement, you're just rooting for laundry and all that. But this is the modern sports world, man.

Guys change teams. Very few players do what Patrice Bergeron did and just stay on a team forever. This is the reality of the situation. At least let's make it fun. Yeah, I mean, I don't ever hear anyone that likes the NFL or the NBA complain about player movement because it's awesome. It's fun. It's the most like in the NBA, I feel like people care more about free agency than they do the actual games. Oh, absolutely. Just like NFL draft is bigger than the NFL.

Right. Yeah, I think that I understand the argument of, okay, I don't want too much player movement. I like my players that are my favorites to stay on my team. But I also think that anyone saying that like if hockey is the main sport you're watching, you know, I just want to stay how it is. Try watching the NBA off season. I don't even like basketball. And I can't stop watching the NBA off season because of movement. It's, it makes the league more fun. I'd like to see maybe I've heard people argue like,

well, there should be like an exception to the cap for like every team gets to designated one superstar player who's an exception to the cap. And then maybe that would encourage more movement among second tier guys. I'm not opposed to that. Like you want your superstar to become like a franchise pillar. I get that. But I mean, the hard cap's not going anywhere.

The NHL is not going to budge on that. They won that hard. They won that hard cap the hard way. And as anti-labor as it is, this is the reality of the NHL. I don't see that changing anytime soon. There's not going to be exceptions. There's not going to be a luxury tax or a soft cap. This is the way the world's going to be.

So go after those 24-year-olds who are on really good teams and are having trouble breaking into a full-time job because those are the ones that you can have for third-round pick. A third-round pick? For a 20-20-first rounder, yeah. This is just an absolute no-brainer. Well, let's move on to Toronto because we're legally required to talk about Toronto

in every edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. contracts. We got some news out of them that Austin Matthews is going to be named captain tomorrow at a press conference. John Tavares is still there. Now, there's some discussion of whether he's, is he being stripped of it? Is he willingly letting it go? Was it his idea?

Was it management came to him and asked him? We don't know the details of that yet. But I'm pretty sure that John Tavares doesn't want the sea removed from his chest. He might be going along with it because he's, he's a good team guy and he understands Austin Matthew's stature. But any way you look at this, this is an insult to John Tavares, isn't it? Right. So, yeah, I totally agree that first of all, there's zero percent chance.

This was John Tavares's idea. Zero percent. I'll just say it. Absolutely no way he went to Maple Leafs Management and said, hey, I got an idea. That didn't happen. So once Maple Leafs Management comes to you and suggests, hey, we're thinking about it, well, what is he supposed to say? You can't say, no, I'm the captain.

That's just going to create all kinds of problems. So, of course, being the good team he is and realizing the position he's in, he says, okay, let's do it. I'll go along with it. To me, it makes no difference. There's no difference between them stripping him and him handing it over because in the end, Maple Leafs management decided he didn't need to be the captain anymore. And I don't know how this is going to turn out.

I don't see how it changes a direction of the team because you're telling me, Austin Matthews didn't have a voice in the locker room and now all of a sudden everyone's going to be like, oh, now let's listen to Austin. He was a shy, timid mouse in the corner of the locker room. I don't have a see on my shirt. I can't say anything. Yeah, very odd. It's not like this is some new player coming in and they're

like, you know what, I think it would really help the direction of this team if this guy were to be the leader. Right, I mean, the Leafs went out. I made a snarky comment on Twitter yesterday saying, oh, this will fix everything. Not not changing the roster, but doing this. And it's not entirely fair because the Leafs did add you know,

Kristanov and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, they're adding to the defense. They got Craig Verruby and his head coach, but the least problem is they can't score in the playoffs. They have all this offensive talent. They can't score in the playoffs. This doesn't change that at all. You're running back basically the exact same forward group next year

that hasn't been able to score. And I don't think having a different letter on Austin Matthews jersey changes that. I agree, but I also think that there are other ways to win in the play. I think I, if it were me personally and you told me fix the Maple Leafs, I would go the direction they went, which is, okay, we're not going to be able to score in the playoffs because nobody scores in the playoffs,

because it's hard to score in the playoffs. How about we just don't give up as many goals? So you get rid of Ily some son off. You bring in a better goalie to me in Solars. You get two stud defensemen to bolster your defense. To me, they're trying to play and win playoff hockey rather than, no, we're just going to score a bunch of goals. And then you get there and it's like, now watch, we'll score.

And then you don't because it's hard to score in the playoffs. scored two goals in 13 of their last 14 playoff games. Two goals are fewer. Yeah, that's bad. Cannot win that way. I don't care how good your goaltending and defense is you're not going to win. They do need to score more than two goals every game, for sure. But I think that you play good defense and goals find you.

Like that defense gets offense. That's every coach's Montre. Yeah. And I watched the Golden Knights win a Stanley Cup doing it. They didn't have nearly the scoring power that Toronto has. They played really good defense and you get transition opportunities and you score. I think I like the direction of the Toronto roster building. The captain switch to me is nonsense.

It does absolutely nothing. It could not be more meaningless. And it embarrasses one of your most important players. John DeVar, John Tavares gets such a bad rap. Like he is, he is like not exactly beloved by that Toronto fan base. Like obviously he burned the bridge with the Islanders fan base.

Now in Toronto, all he's done is play really well. Like he's a good, he was a point to game guy just the season before this last. He scores 30, 35 goals every year. He's been a good captain. Like, he's done nothing wrong. And it seems like he gets a lot of shit for it, doesn't it? I could not agree more.

I saw a comment from a, I would assume an Islanders fan on athletic story saying, they have a way about them, don't they? It is a, it is a like jealous, angry comment. But it does have some truth to it. And I wonder how John Tavar feels in the comment basically said, like, He went from going to have your jersey retired on Long Island to just getting harassed by the Maple Leafs fans, getting publicly humiliated by having the sea taken off. Do you think he regrets that decision?

He made a bunch of money. He was going to make a bunch of money anywhere he played. He got to go to his childhood team and play. But it hasn't been exactly the most fun ride being there. I wonder if John Tavares regrets the decision. Because I agree with you, he hasn't done a whole lot to deserve. of all this, but he sure he sure is getting it, whether he's serving it or not. He's the same player in Toronto that he was in Long Island, basically.

Like, he's a very, very good, not mega star, but very, very good all around center. He is a legitimate star player. And all he does is play well. But yeah, he'd never admit that he would, that he regrets the move. Obviously, that's never going to happen. Maybe on his deathbed 50 years from now, he'll finally acknowledge, I regret leaving Long Island. But yeah, it is, it's one of those things.

we were just talking about we want more player movement we want more player movement but this is what happens is sometimes you leave a great situation on if it's a great situation but you leave the situation that's right for you for one that seems better and the grass isn't always greener on the other side yeah i mean it's drama that's that's that's the best part of the sports it's it creates drama when he when he went back to long island that was one of the more dramatic scenes we've seen in hockey like it's it's great um but i yeah it's it's it is interesting because when he left Islanders to go to Toronto. It felt like this is going to be awful for the Islanders and it hasn't worked out that way. Yeah, the Islanders went to the final four twice without them.

Right. The elites haven't done anything. Yeah. It's funny how that works out. Do we, this is probably a sacrilege to say, considering the team I cover on the regular, but is the captaincy overrated? We make such a big deal about who's the captain of a team and like they're the leader and we all love talking about these intangibles and all the stuff they bring to locker room. Look, look, I cover Jonathan Taves. He is universally hailed as one of the best captains, maybe in NHL history. He won the Mark Messier Leadership Award once. Um, he, uh, but Brent Seabrook was the leader of that team in a lot of ways, right? Brent Seabrook was the vocal leader. He was the emotional leader. He was, he was an alternate captain. For some of that, he wasn't even an alternate

captain. He, it didn't matter who wore the sea. Like, Jonathan Taves might have like set the tone and led the way, but, but Brent Seabrook was the beating heart of that team. There's no reason Austin Matthews couldn't have done that as an alternate captain. And I'm sure he's been the beating heart of that team. It certainly seems that he and maybe Willie Nealander is a big personality. There's big personalities in that room. I'm sure that wearing the sea is not really going to change the way Austin Matthews behaves. Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's nonsense. I don't think it changes anything. In terms of captain CBN up, so like I'll talk about the dressing room that I'm in every day in Vegas. And it's interesting because I almost have two different arguments like

fighting against each other. So the first is you don't need a captain. Most best vibes on a team in the history of the NHL was the Vegas Golden Knights inaugural season. Not a single captain on that team. None of them had ever like it was it was a group. They called themselves the golden misfits. It was a bunch of dudes that they, Gerard Gallant, the coach at the time, said that they've got 23 captains. They did not need one. They didn't have one. They didn't miss one. I've never seen a team more confident, better vibes in the play all through the cup final run. That team proved you do not need a captain to have a good locker room environment that can win. But now they've got Mark Stone as the captain and he is an excellent captain and this team is not the same when Mark Stone and

trust me, he's not there a lot because he's been hurt a bunch. He hasn't played more than half a season in three years. And instead of a ski on his jersey, he gets an L, a T, a nine, and R. Exactly. When he's not there, and it's not just him on the ice, because they obviously miss him on the ice, he's an important player. But when Mark Stone is not on this team and not around the team, they aren't the same. They don't play with the same intensity.

They aren't the same. I think that Mark Stone being the captain is incredibly important to this Vegas golden night. So I think, I guess. But when he's not there, he's not there. If he didn't have the sea on his jersey and he was still in the room, he would still be bring in those vibes. That is a good point. So I guess, yeah, I guess talking through this, the sea is not as important, but I do think those leaders make a difference. I guess is how absolutely. 100%. No, I, I buy in on the intangibles and I buy in on what it means to be a guy who

does lead lead your team that way. I think that is important. And it seems to be more important in hockey than in other sports. Yeah. Because the players buy into it, right? It doesn't matter what we think. It doesn't matter what a fan thinks. We can snark all we want. It matters to the players. Yep. that's where and so if if having the sea on Austin Matthews jersey changes the way the players look at him that's weird but I all right I guess that's it just seems like it's almost like an honorarium as much as anything right it's just it's it's a it's a feathering your cap I totally agree and it and it it makes sense that Austin Matthews is the captain of the Maple Leafs that part sure yeah I have no problem with it's just taking it from Tavares who this isn't like we

We've seen other captains stripped where it's like, yeah, I mean, that guy was not the best captain. He probably needed a strip. That's not the case here. This is more of a, well, you've been good, but we think it'd be cooler if that guy had to see. So yeah. Like when Patrick Marlow had his seat taken away in San Jose, it was kind of, it was weird. It was awkward. We've seen it lead to problems.

And obviously, John Tavaris is being a very good teammate here. He's going along with it. But you know he's hurt by this. He has to be hurt. He was captain of the Toronto freaking Maple Leafs. That's like one of the premier, you know, designated roles in all of sports. And he has that taken away from him, surely, like you said, against his will. Yeah.

And there's no way that doesn't hurt. And there's no way it doesn't affect his confidence. I felt like if it like this is going to be something he's going to have to play through to deal with this season that didn't exist yesterday. And it's just another brick in that wall of like, well, I came here to like for my hometown franchise. and I just, I'm not being, I'm not treated right by the fans. Now I'm not being treated right by the team. I mean, he's a, he's a good soldier and he's just going to fight through it, I'm sure, and not raise a stink about it.

But inside his head, this really has to suck. Yeah. Or Austin Matthews is going to be the greatest captain ever and the Leafs are going to win the cup and we're all going to look back at this school. I think it was Eric Hornick, who's been writing, working with the Islanders for decades. He pointed out that in 1979, Clark Gillies had his captaincy given to Dennis Popvin, and the islanders went on to win four straight cups immediately. And Clark Gilly seemed to be okay with it.

So it might all work out in the end. If John Tavaris gets four Stanley Cups in the next four years, he will not complain about not being the captain. So I'm sure I think it would be all right. I don't think that's going to happen, though. I am going to go with history and agree with you there. Oh, let's talk a little Olympics. The Olympics just ended in Paris.

They were fantastic, other than, you know, Gay K. rolling trying to get people attacked online. It was such a good Olympics. It was, you know, it's the right kind of Olympics, right? When it's in Europe, it's so good for us because everything's live during the day. And then you can kind of watch the package at night, if you miss it. The visuals of everything being at the Eiffel Tower. It is just incredible to watch.

And then you had just both the men's and women's basketball was just, it was phenomenal in the way that the games ended. And, you know, Steph and LeBron just carrying Team USA to victory and Steph Curry going night night. like it was everything you want out of the Olympics. The NHL's finally going back in 2026. It's going to be in Italy. We all want to go cover it, I'm sure. It's been since 2014 and Sochi was the last time NHL players went to the Olympics.

I don't think the NBA needed this. Even the WNBA, it's been so hot lately that I'm not sure this makes a huge dent in that because they were already on the up and up. Yeah, but it certainly helps the momentum, I would say. Sure, yeah. I mean, the viewership was outstanding. It's just more people seeing how good the women's game is. The NHL is a lot closer to the WMBA than it is the NBA in terms of viewership and in terms of popularity.

How much, if anything, is riding on the 2026 Olympics for the NHL, do you think? I would say it can only be like in terms of riding on, I feel like that insinuates that if it goes wrong, it's going to like hurt the NHL. I don't think it can hurt it. But I do think that there, it was. The NHL's floor is pretty high. It's a ceiling that's pretty low. I think it can certainly help if we get an awesome tournament with the world's best.

And if we get the, because to me, it's like you need those big moments. And the way hockey gets that big moment is a U.S. versus Canada final. Like, that's how it happens. And if they meet in the semifinals, it'll still be big. But like, to me, you need the U.S. can. And no offense to Sweden and Finland, all can win this. win the gold, you need U.S. Canada in that final. Right, right. Sweden's an awesome team.

And if Canada, Sweden final would be great, but it wouldn't be the moment that the NHL needs to get a boost from it. You need another Vancouver, basically, right? Right, right. And you need that golden goal moment. And you need the world, like you mentioned, like every person I talk to, that's all they're talking about is how, oh, man, watching LeBron and Curry do their thing, like in the moment, like vintage LeBron, vintage.

We need Sidney Crosby setting up Connor McDavid for like a huge goal at a big moment or like, you need the stars for the biggest countries to show up in the biggest moment. And like, I feel like that's what you'd get. If you like, there's so many stars on both sides. Like it's almost hard for that not to happen if we get a best. Like Canada didn't need, I mean, Canada needed Crosby to score that golden goal because the whole identity was wrapped up in that particular Olympics was so crucial to them. But hockey was fine in Canada.

If Austin Matthews scores the gold medal winning goal in overtime in a game that is on at a reasonable hour in the United States, that's a big thing. Italy is going to be similar to France that way, whereas the last three Olympics, you know, Sochi and Beijing, it was, you know, in the middle of, it was like 5 a.m. starts. This will be all in a time where people can watch it. If Austin Matthews scores the gold medal winning goal over Canada, you know, it would be incredible. I think it would be a big moment. This is potentially. We always think of talking about growing the game, and it doesn't always work that way. But this one, this particular one, their first time back in three Olympics and not a decent

time zone difference and just the strength of this U.S. team. Like, I feel like the U.S. needs this more than any other country does. I look at what the World Cup does for soccer every four years. And man, it would be nice if that did that for hockey. And it's not the same because all the World Cup, the whole world is part of it. And hockey, it's just, that's just not the case. But it could be a miniature version of what the World Cup does for soccer. And I think that we've been comparing hockey to other sports, so I apologize to the listeners

for continually doing this. But you look at that basketball tournament. Why was the basketball tournament so much fun? Because the other countries are getting good at basketball. That's why it used to be a slaughter. The U.S. would slaughter everyone. And if they lose any game or even have a competitive game, it's like an embarrassment. I can't even believe that this other team played with it.

Now, you look at all the United States. these other countries and like they're stacked. And in hockey, the tournament would be good. It's not like Canada, like it used to be where Canada is so much better. No, US is right there. Finland, Sweden, Russia, if they have a team, I don't even know what to do with that. But if Russia has a team, they're going to be really, really good. I think that that tournament, the competitiveness of that tournament and the fact that it's not slam dunks all the way for one country are what it's, it's what made that basketball tournament so good. And I think you'd get that in hockey. Yeah, I mean, it's what we always talk about and what we always want and we don't always get it.

I think Vancouver is the only time we got it. We got exactly what we wanted and exactly the storybook. I was in Sochi for the 2014 Olympics and it was a ton of fun. But that tournament sucked. It was bad. Team Canada was the most boring team that they just suffocated. They were so good that like, you know, Carrie Price, I think he fell asleep during some of these games. And it didn't matter.

Like every game was one nothing, two one. It was a bad tournament. It just wasn't terribly exciting other than that big U.S. Russia game with the long shootout, which was in the prelims and proved to mean nothing because both of those teams flamed out. Like, we need the tournament of our dreams here, the first time back, to really cement the Olympics as a big deal again. Because I don't feel like outside of like the hardcore hockey fans, I don't feel like we

missed hockey in the Olympics the last. Like most of your average fan didn't really care. Yeah, I agree. And well, and the thing is, is if you have that and you have all the best players, hockey becomes a premier part of the Winter Olympics. Because when you think in Summer Olympics, it's like, oh, basketball. Like everybody's excited for that.

You look forward to it. I feel like because we haven't had the best players in hockey and it's a bunch of guys that nobody knows, that sport kind of gets pushed to the side. It's not on the prime time slots. It's not part of the discussion. You talk about all the other sports, snowboarding, ice skating, whatever. To me, you get all the best players in the world playing that sport. And suddenly, you're not competing with the other big, like hockey's in constant competition

with baseball and football and basketball. You're not in competition with any of those. You're in competition with Olympic sports. And I feel like you can be the star of the winter Olympics if you have the best players and we get a good tournament. Let's just sit. And you'll hear a lot of people talking, I brought this up as like, well, why don't you have the hockey in the summer Olympics?

Hockey and basketball are the same time of year, right? They're both winter sports. Why does basketball get to have it out of their season? and hockey's got to stop its season. But if hockey were in the summer Olympics, there's so many glamour sports in the summer Olympics, it would get drowned out. It wouldn't be a big deal.

In the winter Olympics, all the sports are weird and scary to North Americans for the most part. It's like, why are they cross-country skiing with a gun on their back? What is happening here? So, like, hockey has a chance to really take it over and become the big deal. Right, the star of those go.

Yeah, like it's that in figure skating, and that's basically it, right? And those are two kind of different audiences to begin with. So it has a chance, and I hope it works out because I love that the idea of just sitting on my butt from like noon to 8 p.m. or like 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. central time just watching hockey all day, because that's when the timing is going to line up. And you can potentially have that gold medal game being at an hour where people are home and ready to watch. It could be a big moment. Like, we always seem to overrate and overinflate what the Olympics means, but this one could be a really big deal, as long as the four nations face off.

and Steelers Thunder. I mean, you mentioned, like, the Vancouver, like, we still talk about that moment. Yeah. That's one of the biggest moments of hockey in my lifetime. And, and, like, it just means more when it happens at the Olympics. Like, Crosby scored a bunch of big goals in his life, but that is the one that everyone always thinks of. It's, like I said, you get the best players in the world.

It's almost, to me, it's like, if it all works out and all the players that we expect to play, play, and nothing goes haywire, because you know how they're, you know how this is we've been battling this for years now. I feel like if all the players are on the ice, it's almost a certainty that we're going to get something awesome. I just don't see a way that it doesn't work out and we get that big moment, assuming that we get the players that we need to on the ice. At least Mike Babcock won't be there to suck the life out of the game again like he did in Sochi.

I can't. Thank God for the women's tournament in that year, by the way. That Canada, the U.S. Where, you know, the shot off the post, like that overtime me, was one of the best games I've ever attended in my life. That, like, salvaged the Olympic hockey for me in that tournament because, God, Canada, just they were so good, but they were so good in the most boring way possible. That happens in soccer, like Spain, where it's just like, we're just going to,

we're going to score a goal, and then we're just going to pass the ball around, and you'll never going to touch it again. Like, sometimes the team, be too good. Yeah, that was the year that John Tavares hurt his leg in that one, too. I remember that was to get back to John Tavaris, that that's always the risk of the Olympics mid-season, right? Is that something like that could happen? It's not been a good show for John Well, we're showing sympathy for him.

Right, right. He doesn't get it at home. Let's wrap up here. There's been a lot of we're in like peak cup day season, right? Like Phil Pritchard, the keeper of the cup. His Twitter feed is just nonstop, you know, guys holding the cup in front of lakes or at community centers because that's what everybody does with their cup day is kind of the same thing they bring it home. And I'm, and I'm I was thinking, you know, what would you do with your cup day? Like I feel like we're getting kind of, we're pretty rude.

Like everyone feels like almost like obligated to go back to their hometown, to go to their college, to go to their community. Like like, like it's nice that they do that and everyone's excited to see it. But like, I kind of, I kind of missed. There used to be some creativity in these cup days, didn't there? Yeah, people taking them like up a mountain. I've got. Was it Copa tar that climbed a mountain with the cup?

Would you, would you eat out of the cup? We always see we've seen cereal, candy, perogies. obviously lots of beverages, ice cream. Yeah, beer would be my chance. I know that Phil's clean in that thing all the time. My daughter's butt has been in the Stanley Cup when she was like 13 months old. Her butt was in that cup. Like,

and I'm sure there's a lot of babies that have been in that cup and a lot of gross things have happened in that. Would you get out of that thing? I think I would. Yeah, probably just for the novelty, right? Yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah, I'm risking a little silver polish poisoning.

Whatever, it won't kill me. Yeah, all right, I drank beer out of the Stanley Cup. It's worth it. I don't know. I was thinking like what would I do with it? I don't know. So part of me is like, I didn't go with the Golden Knights on their day with the cup, but I saw lots of videos of when they took it golfing with them. That looks fun. I'm a golfer. Dragging the cup around a golf course would be fun. Like Marcia So's got it sitting next to him while he's like chipping from the side of the green.

That looks fun. But like I used to, so when I first started playing hockey, I'd play like street roller hockey in the parking lot. And all the friends on my street every couple months, we would have this. huge game at this parking lot at elementary school nearby. And my grandpa had a wood shop in the backyard. And I cut a Stanley Cup out of wood and spray painted it silver. And we would play for it. If I won the Stanley Cup, I'd get all those people together. And we'd play on that parking lot at Venetucci Elementary in Colorado Springs.

And we'd have the real Stanley Cup sitting there on the sidewalk so that whoever wins it gets to carry that thing around. That's what I would do. What if you used to? We used to when we didn't have a goalie, we would just put a garbage can in front of the net. But if you use the Stanley Cup as the goalie, would they allow that? Yeah, I'll play on one end and the cup will play on the other. And I bet you a hundred bucks, the cup makes more saves than I do. I asked my eight-year-old this morning what she would do

if she had a day with the cup. And she said she would do the same thing she does for a birthday party every year, which just have a bunch of friends in the backyard. But the cup would have to stay in the bounty castle the entire time. Nice. I'm a big, I'm a big, like, roller coaster guy. Would they let me take the Stanley Cup at like Cedar Point on like, you know, uh, Maverick or or a millennium force, would that, would that violate policy? Like, what's, what's the limit of what, how much danger can you put the Stanley Cup in? I, based on all the stories and all the dense and everything, I think there's a pretty high bar for the danger. That's why they have three of them, right?

Just in case. Are you, are you strapping the cup into a seat next to you? Are you holding the cup above your head as you go down the roller coaster? That would be the hardest, a 35 pound weight over. It's hard enough to keep your arms up when you're going down there like that, the whole of the forces on your. G-forces. I am not strong enough to keep the Stanley Cup up for a minute and a half long roller coaster, but I would like to try. But no, I'd like to strap it in me next to me, you know, put the harness down over it and just give the cup a good time, man.

I like it. Man, I haven't been on a roller coaster and so long. I used to like him when I was a kid. Oh, man, I still like that's the best thing. That's one of the good things about having kids is my kids love going to six flags and they go on all the rides. So now I get to go on them all again and not look like a weird, creepy adult who's just going on roller coasters by himself. Is there a six flags in Chicago? And the north suburbs, yeah, it's about an hour north of me.

Six Flags Great America. It's not bad. We had a six flags in Denver growing up. Cedar Point is only four hours east to me. So like it's a doable pilgrimage for me. The Midwest is like, I feel like that's like theme park. Like that's like the theme park hot dad. Yeah.

Oh, there's plenty on the coast too. I mean, you go to Tampa, you got Bush Gardens, right? Disney and all that. Now, there's a million of them in California. But yeah, no, we like to have a good time in the Midwest. You'd have brought hop on a coaster, you know? great combo. All right.

Our thanks to the Toronto Maple Leafs and St. Louis Blues for giving us something to talk about today. That was really clutched by them. It's the most clutch thing the least have done in years, quite frankly.

So thanks for listening to the athletic hockey show. Please leave us a five-star rating and review if you're enjoying the show. Haley and Sean at the next episode on Thursday. And if you're a Spotify listener, you can now leave comments

on our episodes. Oh, what could possibly go wrong there with leaving comments on episodes of this show? Oh, my God. Anyway, until next time, enjoy your summer. That's Jesse Granger. I am Mark Lazarus.

Y'all have a great week.