The Athletic Hockey Show - Your fantasy NHL changes: listener poll results

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Ian, Hailey, and special guest cohost Sean Gentille, discuss listener responses to a series of questions including which one change should be made to the NHL’s rules/on-ice product, which one change should be made involving the schedule/format, which one change should be made to player contracts/salary cap, and more.Plus, listener suggestions about mandatory offer sheets, commissioner term limits, abolishing the entry draft, adopting relegation, limiting teams to just one coach on the bench at a time, establishing a “gold plan” for eliminated teams, and introducing an “over-and-back” rule for overtime.And, right now you can save 50% on an annual subscription to The Athletic when you visit http://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back, everybody. It's another Monday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show to kick off your week. As always in these chairs, it's Ian Mendez, Haley, Salveen, but Haley, this week we're going to change some things up. For a couple of reasons. Number one, look, it's kind of like the last week of summer, so we wanted to do something fun. And we wanted to bring in the guy who we got to live blog the Canada, USA Women's Game last week, the beatdown. And we wanted to bring them on and embarrass Sean Gentilly because quite, frankly, I didn't feel like we did enough of that, Haley, in the live blog when Canada beat the US 5-1.

So I wanted to bring them in here and see if we could take down the bald eagle and all the stuff that they like to have fun with, right? I think you guys could just sense that I was completely broken up by whatever we witnessed last night. I'd rather not talk about it. Yes. Thank you, by the way. Thank you, by the way, for having me on. My abandonment by Craig Custins, my partner continues. We're on week four or whatever. It's a disgrace. the American show. But look, a big reason why we want

to have you on, though, Sean, is we do have a fun topic. And I think this is right up your alley, which is why we want to get your voice this week's edition of the show. And that is,

we wanted to talk about, like, if we could make a couple of little tweaks or minor changes or in some cases, maybe even major changes, but we put this out on social media, this kind of poll

where fans could vote on, you could change one thing. So the course and the kind of the outline for this week's podcast. It's going to be a little bit different. We're talking about things we'd like to change in the game of hockey. Like if we were making a new set of rules or a CBA. So the first one that I want to start with you guys on this is we asked this question in a poll.

You could pick one thing to change about the NHL as it pertains to the rules and on the ice product. Okay. So this is for on the ice and the rules. Okay. The thing that came back with the biggest amount of 51% of people who voted in our poll said they would like to see us move to three points for a regulation win. Meaning if you win a game, you get three points in regulation. And then maybe if you win in a shootout or overtime, it's two points. That had the most amount of traction.

The other options that we threw in there that got less was you could eliminate the shootout. that got about 26% of the vote and people saying, just play three on three until you get a winner. We had about 10% of vote for people saying, take away a referee from the ice

and move it to an eye in the sky. Haley's probably too young for me to make an Alan Parsons project joke, so we'll just keep moving. And then we also had about 8% of people saying make the nets bigger. If I asked you guys, Haley, let's start with you,

if you were voting on this, you could pick one change out of this grouping of things. what is Haley Picking to change to improve the on-ice product? Yeah, first I just feel like making a young joke doesn't work for you. That's not like an insult to me that you called me youthful. So thank you very much. No, like I think it's the three-point regulation.

I don't know. I think maybe just seeing this season like the Montreal Canadians going to the Stanley Cup final when they had fewer regulation, wins than the Calgary flames. It's super weird. Just getting the extra point overtime, just really, I don't know. I just think the three point regulation would be a good thing. Like, I agree with the overwhelming majority of people who, I guess it was not overwhelming. It was 51%. But I agree with that. Like, I don't care about bigger size nets because if you make the nets bigger, like our goalies equipment just going to get bigger, like they're getting bigger already. I don't know. I feel like

Someone's just going to do something to offset that. I don't really know what the four and I don't care about the other ones, to be honest. I don't know. I have to say when we first started doing this, when Ian came up with this idea, my first reaction was like, there's nothing fun about rules. There's nothing fun about the CBA. But there is something... Disagree.

Have you read the CBA? I read it the other day and I think there's stuff about specifics about dental insurance. I was like, no. But three point regulation could make things a little bit more fun. So I agree with that one. What about you, Sean? Like, if you're looking at this, Sean, and like Haley said, 51% of people out of the five options voted for that.

So that, I mean, it's twice as much as basically anything else got support for. Would you go for that? And do you think it would really change the way the game is played on the ice? It's such a boring answer, right? but it's it's correct it's three point it's three point games it's not about I'm so I'm a pragmatist in that way right where if you tell me I have one chance to do one thing that's what I'm doing because the standings at the end of the season make me mad they still do it's been true it's been true for years I don't I don't like teams coasing into the coasting into the postseason on losers points I never have I never will

So that's it. That's the obvious choice. And it's super duper boring because it's practical and pragmatic and whatever. But I think that the results are that skewed for a reason. Because I think that's something that it's one of those things that makes all the logical sense in the world. And there's no great answer to me for why it is not already in place. Now that being said, would it be great if we had larger nets? Absolutely. We could usher. in the age of sumo goalies. I know that's like a, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, you know, gigantic nets, just have like, 350 pound, uh, uh, goaltenders. I, I, I think that's, I think that's something that would be in play. I'm all for that. Um, just, I think, I think if you have one crack to change one thing, you got to, you got to be, you know, sort of, uh, sort of boring with it. And the, and the answers reflect that. Um, just, and this is going to sound weird on the sumo goalie thing. Was it. Was it. Was it. there's ownership group with Sanjay Kumar and Charles Wong who actually toyed around with the idea of having a sumo wrestler as a goalie? Or am I just, it was that a fever dream? I mean, I think you could say that anything happened with the Charles Wong Islanders

and you'd have a decent chance of being right. You know, I mean, they almost sold the team to, you know, a grifter who, you know, there was actually a really great 30 for 30 documentary about John Spanos,

which is just such a wild, wild chapter in NHI history. So, so yeah, I definitely remember hearing that with the Islanders, and that was just one of, you know, a hundred, a hundred crazy things that they, that they toured around there. Yeah. One of the thing I want to ask you both about on this one is, there was a little bit of support, like 28%, I think, or 26% of people said, eliminate the shootout and play three on three over time until you get a winner. And I think that it would be fun. But here's my question for both of you. Do you feel like three on three has lost its shine. Like when it first came in, we were like, wow, this is

awesome. This is great. Have coaches taken out the fun of three on three? Do the two of you still find three on three super exciting and think, you know what, I would be on board with a little bit more three on three. I mean, I'm never excited for overtime. I don't know. Like it's watching three on three is obviously better. Like it's faster. You never really know what's going to happen. Like a team could have all of the momentum. They could have all the pressure. And then, you know, they get caught on a change or, you know, the other team just gets a nice bounce. And then all of a sudden you lose. So like I still think it's exciting. Like I don't think we've lost the interest in three on three. I don't think it's, it's just not a novelty anymore. It doesn't have that like shiny new toy thing like ring to it anymore. But like

it's so exciting. I think watching overtime. any game, like if I'm covering it or just watching as a hockey fan. Like, it's always exciting. It makes me nervous. I don't like it. It's like you never, you know, I don't know, you watch and you just never know what's going to happen. And so I think it's still pretty exciting. And like, with certain teams, they'll just put one guy in OT the whole time because he's so good at it. Like, Ian, you get to watch Thomas Shabbat play for like the entire overtime period. And usually it doesn't really end up working out for the Sends because he ends up getting gas and like makes a mistake. And it's like, yeah, maybe he shouldn't have played four and a half minutes of three on three

overtime before we lost the game. But, you know, he's the best defenseman and he's one of the better players in the team. So he just like stays out there. I don't know. I don't know how you can say that's boring. It's just not like shiny and new anymore. I think part of it, too, is we've seen coaches adapt. And that's always going to happen where, you know, they've figured out how to eliminate some

of the risk over the last couple years versus, you know, the first year we saw it. was firewagon insanity, right? Like across the board. Yeah, I don't have a problem. I think three on three is deployed correctly. I think we get the right amount of it. I'm also kind of pro shootout. I don't really have a problem with that.

I know that probably puts me in the minority in one way or another, but I'm fine. I'm fine with that deciding regular season games, honestly. I don't think it's any more, I don't think it's any, it's not farther away from regular hockey to me than playing.

whatever, 15 minutes of three-on-three hockey. I'm fine with it. Can we just go back to the sumo goalie thing? I, yes. Why did you just a delayed reaction to the sumo wrestling goalie thing? We just completely skip past it. Like you made one comment and then moved on. And I just looked it up.

And I found a quote from the New York Times in 2012. from Mike Milbury. Oh, yeah. Okay, so it was the Islanders. Yeah, I thought it was. Mike Milbury recalled that Wang wanted to get rid of the team scouts and try out sumo wrestlers as goaltenders. Quote, he assumed that nobody could put a goal past a sumo wrestler. He was a man of his word, a guy who desperately wanted to keep the team on the island.

And so his heart was in the right place. So he, I guess they were tired of losing and just said, like, let's get his sumo wrestler. in the net. No one's going to beat us. Like, no one's going to get past this guy if you just put him in some pads. How much money would you spend to sit in on the meeting between Mike Milbury and Charles Wong where, where sumo goalies came up? I have $200 burning in a hole in my pocket to hop in a time machine and listen to that one.

Oh my God. I'd love to be in on the worst ideas ever pitched, you know? That's not bad. Like, yeah, like, unbelievable. Like, that, yeah. Ian went to sit in on the worst idea He's ever pitched And also sumo goalies

Which is, as we've established One of the best ideas That anybody's ever had. It checks out Like when you think of the best goal tenders Yeah, they're mobile, but like they're big They fill the net. You can't shoot past them

If you just put a guy. Imagine if Ben Bishop weighed 400 pounds. You'd be unstoppable. Six eight, six out records. Shut out records. Yeah, six seven, four hundred and fifteen pounds. That's incredible. that's what I want my rule change to be.

Every team needs one sumo wrestler goalie. Yeah, there we go. That's what I implement. The next question that we asked in our poll. And again, we got some great feedback on this. We asked the question, if you could choose one of the following options to maybe improve or alter the schedule

or the format for the NHL, what would you choose? And this one was a pretty interesting answer. We gave four options, and all of them had at least 10. of the vote. So that kind of indicates that there's some appetite for all of them. I'll run through the options and walk out our listeners through what the support was. And then we'll chat about which one maybe the three of us would pick if we had the choice. So again, what's the one thing you would do to change or alter the schedule of the format?

The most support, 41% of people voted for shifting the playoff format to a one to 16. So you just take the 16 best playoff teams. You rank them 1 to 16. and then that way, in theory, you could have a Stanley Cup that features Vegas versus Colorado or Tampa and Carolina or Boston or whoever you want to put in there and say, it doesn't matter that you're in the same conference,

you will potentially meet for the Stanley Cup. So that had the most support. The next thing that got a lot of support, almost a quarter of people, 24% saying, let's shorten the regular season. Let's go down to 60 games or maybe something similar to what we saw last season in the pandemic, shortened year with 56 games,

almost a quarter of people said, let's shorten the regular season. And then very close behind that, 23% of people said, it's time for the wild card playing. Let's go to, we've seen it in Major League Baseball, we've seen it a little bit in the NBA, let's go to the wildcard playoff format.

And then about 11% of people said, let's get crazy. Let's allow the highest-seated teams to pick their opponents in the first two rounds of the playoffs. So if you're Tampa and you're the number one seat in the east, you get to look down at the seven teams below you and say, you know what,

give me the Rangers or give me whoever, give me Montreal, give me, whoever you think you match up best with or maybe whoever's ravaged by injuries, you do that. Got about 11% of support. So I asked the two of you.

Sean, let's start with you on this one. You get to pick one thing that we mentioned here. What do you pick into, improve or alter the schedule of the format. Are you surprised that 24% of the vote went to shortening the regular season? That seemed like a lot to me. And I don't know. Maybe that's a traditional streak that I have that I didn't know that I had.

And God knows I'm not going to complain because I part, that was the one thing that I enjoyed last season, honestly, was the was the short kind of condensed regular season schedule. So I mean, as a one-off, I was all for it. But, man, I don't, I mean, I can't. get on board with that. I can't get on board with nuking single season records and just record book stuff in general.

I'm not on board with that. And it's wild to me that 24% of the vote went to that. That being said, I am a wild card playing guy. I watched it happen in the NBA in this past season

where you have team 7 through 10 in each kind of plan to decide who gets who gets the seven and eight seeds. It was a blast. It was a nice little, you know, a moose bouche for the, uh, for the actual postseason. And I, and I think it, it also, um, made the back end of the regular season a little bit more interesting, too, because you had, you know, at one point that, not to get too off track, but like the warriors were maybe in the chase at one point after falling out of it, you know, early on. Um, and it made me, as an NBA fan, I don't cover basketball, I just like watching it. It made me pay closer attention,

not just to the, not just to the little mini tournament itself, but to the games that led up to it. So I think that's a, I think that's a great idea. I would love to see it. And I know Pierre LeBron in the not, not too distant pass, is written about that as a pretty legitimate possibility for the league. So I'm on board with it just as a, you know, when in doubt, I pick fun. And that to me is the most fun choice out of those four. Well, it makes sense to expand the playoffs. I'm pretty sure the amount of teams that make it to the playoffs have been the same for a really long time.

And now there's 32 NHL teams, but there's still only 16 spots in the playoffs. So, like, we're expanding the amount of teams in the league, but we're not expanding the postseason. So I think it just makes sense. you know, Gary Betman keeps saying that he's not going to do it. I would go off the board for this, though. Like, I like the plan. I think it's fun to be devil's advocate against the plan. Like, I don't know how, I mean, how many good teams were just knocked out during that

play in round. And that's their fault. Like, you have to win a playoff round. But, you know, you had the Leafs and the Oilers just out. And, you know, those were supposed to be two of the best teams. And then, I mean, we flash forward to this year. And there's no play. round and they both just lose in the first round.

So what difference doesn't make if they're both exiting early? But I think the upsets are fun. I think it adds another layer to the playoffs. But yeah, I'm going to go off the board. Like I want to go back to the old playoff structure personally. Like I don't like the divisional realignment that happened in 2013-14. I hate it. I think it knocks out some of the best teams way too early.

And it takes away some of the better match. it just made more sense before with the, with the reseeding and having it that way with up and down the conference. I don't like it now. I think, I don't know, I hate it. I've always hated it. I always complain about it. So I'd like to go back to like pre-2013, 14 playoff realignment.

Well, it's funny. They took the, they had a goal there, right, which was to set up these rivalry series as much as possible. You want to get Penn's Capitals and you want to get Lease Bruins or whatever, you want to just kind of hammer those and get those teams playing each other as much as possible. That's understandable to some extent. But man, it gets, it gets stale. I mean, it's been, it's been long enough, I think. So yeah, I'm all for, I'm all for changing the playoff structure in one way or another because, yeah, getting away from, from the divisionally based thing,

like, I'm all for that. Well, I mean, for me personally, like, I always find the first and second rounds now way better than the conference final and the final. Like I'm way more interested in the early stuff, which shouldn't, it shouldn't be that way. Like it should get more exciting as it goes on because the stakes are higher. But as it gets on, I'm just like, no, like my favorite two rounds of playoffs this year was Carolina, Nashville and Florida, Tampa. And then after that, I was like, okay, like Tampa's good. Oh, yeah, Tampa just went again. Like, oh, I just didn't, I checked out of the playoffs after the first round. And, you know, yeah, you want to get those matchups. But then, then what's your Stanley Final going to look like?

I mean, you cover the plans, so you were checked out well before the first round. We had game playing during the first round. I was working during the first round of playoffs. Vancouver and Calgary. Don't forget it. Oh, my God. I put that out of my brain. I'm sure the guys who are in those games haven't forgotten them.

Oh, Drans and I were killing it with the postseason coverage on the flames and Kinex. They played one game after three playoff games. I remember specifically tweeting, oh, yes, now the main event. Like, this is the final card of the evening. It was like, meaningless Flames Canucks. They should have gotten some kind of trophy for that series. A banner.

Someone should have won something. Yeah, a banner, exactly. The Flames won that series. So I was the postseason win for Galgrate. Yeah. What a professional highlight that must have been for you covering that. Yeah, I was sitting at home actually watching it. It was great.

I had fun. Anyways, Ian, take it away. Yes. On to, by the way, for the record, I would go for the play-in, the wild card play-in, because I think it's only happened one time organically, and it was that Philly Rangers 2010 last game of the year, and then ironically went through a shootout. But it was great theater, great drama, and you can't expect that to happen organically. If you do it, maybe you get it once every 10 years or 15 years.

Bring it in. It's been great for baseball. Like you said, it's been great for the NBA. But incentivize it so that if you finish at the top of your division or the top, whatever, maybe the top six seats in each conference don't have to play around with this, but incentivize it. Right. Now you've created more races like the race for six so that you're not playing in the play-in game. And, you know, it just, to me, I think it would be a lot better for the National Hockey League.

Three game series, man. Very simple. I do want to hit on one other question before we tackle what I think is going to be the most fun part of this podcast. Not that we haven't had fun already by talking about sumo wrestlers and the Conucks and flames at the end of the year. But I love the fact that this next question got quite a wide array of votes. And I think it's really interesting because I think what it says to me, the results of this poll, is that there's a lot of fans who are unhappy with the current model of the salary cap in the NHM. which is it's really surprised.

It kind of surprised me. Maybe it didn't surprise you, but it's kind of surprised me. So once again, for the purposes of this question, I will walk us through and our listeners through the question, the responses and kind of the amount of traction each of them got the amount of support. Okay. So the question is, hey, you get to change one thing about contracts or salary caps in the NHL.

Like what would you, if we gave you the power to change one thing, what would it be? the number one vote that came in, more than 35% of people voted for, it's time to start factoring in state and provincial taxes to the salary cap. Like, what does that even mean? What does that mean?

Guys, I was blown away that this was number one. Is this some weird Canadian, is this some weird Canadian, like hobby horse where there's like one, where there's like one, fan-based that is like obsessed with this because because this is wild when I saw the list right because Ian Ian you you wrote up you wrote up the poll like all the all the questions are great

and the choices are great but I saw that one I was like I was like who would who would who would vote for that apparently 35 percent of 400 people did which is I want to individually ask every single one of them like what do you think that means to you like tangibly what think that but this is an anger towards the Tampa Bay Lightning like that that people are so angry they think oh there's no it's that state tax in Florida and Stephen Stamcoast can take home more money. Yeah. Oh yeah. Like is this is this all this is is? Yeah. It's like in basketball. It's like in basketball. Everybody says like nobody wants to play for the Raptors because the taxes are crazy in Canada and it's cold. Like when Kauai came here, it was this huge thing like he's not going to stay. It's like cold as

shit and like he's going to get taxed like half of his contract. And like obviously he left, but he said it was because he wanted to play back home, whatever. But like there's this just thing in Canada and you see it more specifically in the NBA because there's just one Canadian team. But you see it like it's not a free agent destination because these players are very well aware that they're not going to take home the same amount of money in Toronto if they sign somewhere else. And you know, everybody knows like you get tax breaks in certain places, which makes them more attractive to play in and then you factor in escrow and you sign with a Canadian team and you're getting taxed and you've got escrow and right now you've got whatever backloaded contracts

that you've signed because of everything with the pandemic and yeah I get it I'm not surprised like for me I'm like okay what does that mean like what are people actually going to do to factor that in but like I'm not shocked you know it's probably all the Canadian fans saying that for sure because they're like nobody wants to come here this is residual anger over over Stamcoast, resigning with the lightning. Like, people haven't forgotten. Right. I was shocked by this.

I'm not going to lie to you. It was the last option I put on because I was like, well, what else can I put on the list? I'll put this on. And it won by a healthy margin. 35% of people. It's a good idea. It's a talking point. I'm being like half facetious.

I know it comes up. It's come up plenty of times, certainly in hoops. 35%. It's crazy. Yeah. And but then 25% of people voted, the next most popular option on this was also salary cap related. And about 25% of people said, look, get rid of the hard salary cap and move to a soft cap, meaning a luxury tax. So, you know, you see this in major league baseball.

You get the big spenders and you, and for the hockey purposes, let's say it's 80 million is the threshold. And once you go, you're allowed to go over 80 million. but once you do, you have to start paying tax. And the problem becomes, I think, and you see it in baseball all the time, when the giant teams, I don't mean San Francisco, I mean the Yankees and the Red Sox, just simply can go ahead and they're like, we don't care, we'll spend $200 million on payroll. And that's fine. The fear would be, I think, in hockey, that teams like the Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs

that it would go back to the late 90s, early 2000s where they could just spend willy-nilly. Were you guys surprised that this was the next most popular. vote that people said get rid of the hard salary cap and move to a luxury tax model? Just considering like how many players and teams are getting pinched because of the flat cap, I'm not super surprised. I think that's like recency bias of people thinking like, oh, well, this guy walks because he couldn't get the contractor. This player, you know, signed over there instead because this team's really tight to the cap.

Like I think this perception that the salary cap has been kind of the greatest enemy. over the last couple years for teams, like there's not that many trades and the free agent market was kind of slow, not this year. There was a ton of, there was millions of dollars spent. But, you know,

I'm not super surprised just because there's been this kind of narrative about, you know, it's because of the flat cap that XYZ is happening right now in the league. So I'm not super shocked, but I think that's recency bias talking because if you went back to the luxury attacks, like the really rich organizations would just build super teams and that's, you know, not that fun.

I will say, though, well, first off, I'm not surprised that we're at 25% on this one because I saw that enormous teal piece of the pie on our graph here for the state provincial taxes. Like, of course, so this is mainly Canadian listeners voted in this. Ian, you know, Ian tweeted out the poll first. Like, it's skewed. Of course, of course Canadian teams are not. are not going to want a salary cap because it because or Canadian fans are not going to want a salary cap because it benefits their teams most directly. I will say about the luxury tax system.

Yes, it benefits whatever, the Dodgers and the Yankees of the world, right? Because it gives them, you know, to some extent, it gives them carte blanche to go out and get who they want. It also causes problems if you have cheap. I don't want to say, I shouldn't say cheap. Look at the, No, well, look at the Boston Red Sox, right? Like, they're not, they're not a cheap, quote-unquote, ownership group necessarily. But when you introduce a luxury tax, you talk about, you have like repeater fines, right? Where if you go over it one year, it's X percent. If you go over another year, it increases the Y percent on and on.

These teams are terrified, terrified of the repeater tax. So the end result there is you have the. Red Sox who punted on last season. They traded Mooky Betts, who's reigning MVP, you know, biggest name in baseball. Everybody loved him. Hero for Red Sox fans and little kids and blah, blah. And they dumped him solely because his next contract was going to put them into that repeater clause area. So it does, there are sort of, you know, the law of unintended consequences is kind of in play here with stuff like that. And it's, it's not necessarily the big markets and the big teams. It's, you're talking about rich people who own these teams who are hell bent on not paying, you know, a certain margin of the tax.

So whatever. But be careful. I guess the upshot there, and that's a really long way of saying it, is that you got to be careful what you wish for whenever you start talking about luxury tax. Because it is because it is not working in baseball. And in the NBA system is complicated to the point where, you know, where it's tough to even cover as a sport. when you're talking about all the various tax rules. So, yeah, I don't, I don't love, I don't love that system in general. My pick here, honestly, is to get rid of entry level of deals and allow rookies to make more money,

which I feel like I just skipped ahead because I know we were going answer by answer, but that's, this is great. But that's, that's, that's, yeah, I'm blown it up. But that's, that's my personal hobby horse. And 12.5% of the voters went with that. And that's kind of where I am, too, personally. Yeah. And you know, the one I would pick is the one that got about 17% of the vote.

And it would be to create a cap out contracts at five years. You could only sign contracts for five years. And I know that you might, when you hear that, you might be thinking that I'm like pro team. I'm actually pro player on this one because I do think, and Austin Matthews is a great example. I think Austin Matthews signing a five-year deal, he's going to be able to maximize his value again. And I think sometimes when you lock yourself in for seven or eight years, when that contract expires,

you don't necessarily have the same amount of runway to monetize. So I would always be, and I think it helps protect the teams too a little bit because sometimes you get into these six, seven, eight-year deals, and then by year three, you're like, what have we done? But I think for the, you're protecting them from themselves, right? You protect the teams from themselves. and then the very best of the best,

you allow them to repeatedly monetize themselves or at least monetize themselves one more time in their prime. So that would be the one for me. I don't know about you, Haley. There was a couple of other options. We said, hey, maybe people would like to get rid of no trade clauses. About 8% of people, 7% of people said, yeah, get rid of no trade clauses.

We don't like to see it. Those are all Oilers fans, by the way. Exactly. What's your pick here, Haley? you can choose one thing to change contracts or the salary cap, what would your vote be? Yeah, I guess, like, just to piggyback off what you said to though, Ian, just about, like, the five-year deals. Like, if I think the bridge deal is the best contract for, like, a star player to sign because

that gives them the most amount of control over their career and the amount of money that they can make, like, you come out of your, you sign a bridge deal for whatever, and then you come out of your bridge deal. And typically you'll have like arbitration rights and then one year until UFA and like you just have all of the leverage, all the control to just sign. You can milk that. So depending on the player, obviously, but you're a, you know, a key RFA for an organization with arbitration rights and you're only one year away from UFA status. Like the team can either sign you to a crazy deal or sign you for one year and then you walk to UFA status. Like it's, that's a crazy amount of control over your career. So like I'm pro, if you're pro player, I'm always pro bridge deal.

I think that just adds nice, lots of chaos, which I enjoy. But to answer this question, like, I don't know, like in terms of the entry level contracts, I don't think we get rid of them, but I think the max that they can sign should be higher. Like, I think that, you know, you have players coming in and they're making like, well, I guess now it's more. I think now the, the, the, the, max that a player can get on their ELC is like 900, 950, 950,000. Like, so you have teams, it allows teams to kind of take that space and then use the money elsewhere and just say like, okay, we're going to maximize the fact we've got to start player making under a million dollars and we can like do all this extra stuff before we

have to actually pay them, which I guess could be like a good fun thing if the team does it right. I know that the Canucks fans were really mad about the way that Vancouver failed to take advantage of the fact that they had Quinn Hughes and Elias Pedersen on entry-level contracts the last two years. But I think like these are potential stars. These are star players. Like these are not insignificant pieces doing nothing through their ELC. Like these are some of the best players at their position depending on who we're talking about. And they're making like $900,000. So I think that's shitty.

I think these players should be making whatever they're worth. I think there's also a decent argument. There's a pro team argument to limiting, uh, I mean, we can say limiting entry level deals, but if, if you have,

if you have guys hitting UFA within five years of the first, of the first game they play, let's just use that as like, is like the baseline. There's a, there's a pro team component there too, because they'll be able to sign players through their actual prime years. So if you have a guy,

if you, if you, if you, if you, if a guy hits UFA, at 23 or whatever rather than 27, the odds that there's a return on the investment is much, much, much higher. And what you see now, and that's why UFA is such a sucker's bet, because these guys are making it to the market once they're on the downside of their career. And it sucks and it makes me feel like 100 years old. But when you're talking about an NHL player who's 27 or 28, the odds are good that, you know, two years in or three years in, he's not going to be worth that deal.

So there is, you know, you are putting more money in players' pockets. getting them more control over their, over their careers, but you're also sort of tilting the scales a little bit differently for teams when it comes to the free agency market. All right. Haley, earlier in this segment and in this show, you said, I love chaos. Okay? I think that's your exact quote. You said, I love chaos. So we wanted to leave a significant chunk of time for us to really embrace chaos here. And the last question we asked in this poll was, hey, tell us something that you'd like to see change in the game that we didn't list in this poll question. And we got a wide array of fun answers, crazy ideas.

This is what we really wanted to do. We wanted to have some problem with this. But I'm going to give you my idea first and you tell me if this is crazy or there's some merit to it. Okay. What if we got rid of offside? And just hear me out. I think you could stretch the ice a little bit. You could like just just explain to me what would be the what would be the worst thing.

As Sean talked about earlier, sometimes there's unintended consequences. So let's just say for fun we got rid of offside. What would happen? Cherry pickers like all day long. Oh no, more goals, more goals. Cherry picking goals. No, you're basically just like allowing, I don't know. just going to allow a team to like have a guy just sit in front of the goalie all the time.

You're going to have like that one power forward. I got a five on four. Like I don't like. I don't know. I get it. It would be so, it would be so unfair to institute the end of the off sides rule whenever Phil Kessel is at the end of his career. That's not right.

That's not right. He should have benefited from this. He'd have, he'd be an 1100 goal player. Like, can you imagine you just, you, you post a guy there and. I don't know. I don't, it's no, it's not my thing. I get it. That would be chaotic.

I get it. Right. I thought you guys would embrace chaos, more offense. No, because then like, you know, you're adding in the goals that this person who's just going to hang out there all the time is going to score. But then like, are we going to lose the kind of speed through the neutral zone? Are we going to lose some of that stuff? Like, what is your incentive to actually like enter and exit the zone cleanly and

nicely with like speed and skill. You can just throw the puck into the guy who's sitting there in the crease waiting for it. We've already, we've already decided that, you know, whether it's three on three or shootout or whatever, we're choosing things to decide games that just deviate immensely from the way hockey is normally played. So maybe we split the baby here. Maybe that's what overtime turns into is that there's no offside in overtime. time.

Yeah, there you go. And that's like, and that's like, that's like, that's the way in. Well. Right. Again, this is, but it's all about, it's all about, it's all about risk assessment. I think, yeah, I think I'm coming over to TV to TV in on this, baby. What's the return on investments if you get rid of. You know what?

We need to start this in the H.L. Like, start in the HAL. Absolutely. Let them be the getting picked for the shit. You're just going to pad their stats and everyone's going to look like the best prospect in the world when you're looking at them on paper. Like, Look at how many goals.

This guy scored. What's more chaotic than having no idea how good a prospect is as he comes in the NHHL. Let's do it. That's going to give poor Corey like a migraine if he has to like deal with everyone being like, but he scored 60 goals in 20 games. And he'd be like, no. Corey needs a break. We've been on the phone a lot over the last couple of days for Olympics.

Oh, that's tough. Just to wrap up this thought and we have a whole bunch of really fun ideas that people submitted. But if you go back to the early, like the early iteration of the NHL, like you weren't allowed to pass the puck forward at one point. Like it's nuts, right? Like you think, right. Like if you think about the rules of the game, like you couldn't pass the puck forward in the offensive zone. Like what?

Like just strange rules that you look back on and you think like, what were they thinking? But obviously the game has evolved. Okay. So on to the super fun stuff. Let's start with this one. And I think, Sean, I think this, when you tweeted this out, actually, I think it was a guy that responded with this. I forgot about this guy. This one's unbelievable.

This is a great idea. And what I think is amazing. And maybe this guy is clairvoyant. He could see the future. But he proposed the offer sheet rule, the mandatory RFA offer sheet rule. And he floated this idea to us before we want to say, make this clear. He floated to this to us before what happened on the weekend with the Carolina Hurricanes of the Montreal Canadiens, of which maximum chaos ensued involving Yes, Pericott, Kenyemi. Okay.

But here's the idea. Here's the premise as we start to sink our teeth into some fun, wacky, weird, off-the-wall ideas. This guy says there's a mandatory RFA offer sheet rule. So every team in the league has to submit an offer sheet to another team's RFA, exactly like what Carolina does. did to Montreal's Jesperi Katkanemi on the weekend. So this is how it would work, okay? Every offseason, if you don't have your RFA player signed after a certain date, he's eligible to be offer sheeted.

And every team, the rule that this guy said is every team has to put in an offer sheet on at least one RFA. This guy is an evil genius, whoever he is. This guy is evil genius. Obviously, we saw it with Kotkenyemi on the weekend. but, you know, Brady Kachuk is out there. The two guys in Vancouver, Quinn Hughes, Elias Pedersen, Rossmas Dahlin.

Like, by this guy's logic and his rule, you have to do this. Every year you have to submit at least one offer sheet to an available RFA. And it would certainly get the blood boiling. We certainly, I think we saw that on the weekend with the habs and the hurricane. So I want to know what this esteemed panel thinks

of this off the wall. idea. What do we think about mandatory RFA offer sheets? Love it. Do it. There needs to be the barn fight period after the after the after the after the after the RFA window closes where it can be Brian Burke versus Kevin Lowe or or whatever. I want I mean my God we've been saying this for 10 years 15 years however long like more offer sheets please like it's it's a tool for it's a tool for insanity that GMs you know just are terrified to her terrified to dip into the toolbox for. Let's make it happen. Anything to kick that into gear, thumbs up. Yeah. And remember when we were like seriously discussing if there's going to be a

Dougie Hamilton sign and trade? And we were like, wait, that never happens. Why are we even talking about this? Like, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Like, why do we even bring this up on the podcast? Idiots. He did not get, there was no sign and trade. But I, I like half of the idea. Like, I like the idea of having an offer sheet window where you have this period where, like, teams can go and do that. Like, I don't think it needs to be mandatory for every team to do it. But, like, if you could have this idea that there's, like, a window for teams to offer sheet players, I think that really, like, ups the ante for the teams to sign their RFAs

and not drag it out until training camp. It also, well, I guess then that kind of, having that window would, like, take away the drama of a guy, like, showing up to camp, like, three, days late because he was sitting out because you have that window where you're they're going to get off and cheated or those guys those guys always show up who cares yeah that's true i guess that's kind of a good thing like we get rid of that like when's he going to sign that's the daily william neelander update of like when's he going to sign i don't know it was like the day of the deadline so maybe that's a good thing if you if you regulate it and you say like okay gms this is this is when you

can do it you take away like the whole summer will it happen won't it happen whatever yeah it's a If you totally it's yeah, regulate it and whatever else. I'm sure you'd see more for sure. Yeah. And it gives like a it would give yeah, just that space where where it's like normal. Like it's a it's a offer sheet window. It's not just this like big scary thing that nobody wants to do anymore. Like it's a part of the NHL off season. And again like it just it gives teams the incentive to sign their RFAs. so we don't have to sit here all summer and be like, when are they going to sign? I don't know. And it's like the same story over and over again all summer.

But I don't think it needs to be mandatory. Sorry, Ian, I cut you off again. The concept, though, that I find interesting about this, he's like, every team is forced to offer sheet one player. Yeah. What if everybody offers sheeted the same guy? That's what I mean. Like, like he said, 30 guys do that.

But then would, like, would there be a public way to find out about? I mean, this is our. be like the expansion draft. Like, it happens. So Frank Sinner Valley is the only one who knows is what you're saying. Yeah, Frank. Frank ruins it for everybody. No, the league would need to have the show, the offer sheet show like an hour after the window closes, not like seven hours.

It needs to happen, close the window. And then they have the hour to like either, ooh, this is fun. I like it. Then I really have like an hour to either match it or the player signs when the offer sheets. It's in place quick. One hour, that's it. Yeah, it's an hour. I started talking like a week, an hour.

Even better, dude, let's go. No, like the window is longer, but you have it like an hour once it closes to decide. Love it. It could be a live show. These are the fun ideas. Now, somebody else wrote in and said there should be a term limit on the commissioner, that 25 or 30 years for the same commissioner is too long. And I want to add to that, would you be on board with,

A, you get term limits, but B, what about like a campaign for the new commissioner? Yes? Like, there's a platform. And we probably wouldn't get to vote. Fans wouldn't get to vote. But maybe the teams do. But wouldn't you be all in on people openly campaigning to be the commissioner and having speeches and having debate? Like, wouldn't that be fun?

What do you think Gary Bettman's campaign slogan would have been? Oh, good question. What's his reelection campaign slogan? if that's... Oh. I'm more focused on what the death match between Bill Daly and John Collins would look like about five years ago.

That would have been awesome. Yeah. Oh my God. No. But I think there's... Wouldn't it... I'm just saying wouldn't it be fun if people openly campaigned for the commissioner

and then there was a voting process and we got to watch a debate and they had a platform. This is all... Like, the only... We need to have debates. That's what needs a... That's what needs a...

out of this. We need like, we need like nine people or 12 people or whatever shouting over each other. Oh my God. Was it, was it in the comments? I love this. Yes. That would just make people like hate whoever the commissioner is even more because you're going to have bad bad news. Who like hated that guy. Like even more so because they see his campaign and they hate the campaign so much. But then he ends up commissioner like you're not just going to hate the new commissioner because he like said something. stupid. Like, you're going to hate him because of his whole campaign that that you would have saw on all the debates that made you think he was an asshole. Like, it's going to make people hate him even more. I was already, I was all ready to sit here and talk about abolishing the draft for

like 15 minutes, which is, you know, another thing entirely, which I would love to do. But now, now I'm all in on televised commissioner debates. Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. Well, you know what, though, that is a good segue into the idea of abolishing the draft. And I know that the, I think it was Josh Cloak who had the column, right, about maybe two months ago, right around the draft time. And it was a great piece by Josh. And it was just, again, thinking outside the box, what if we eliminated the draft? I know everyone's thought was to get angry and oh, you can't do it. But what if that happened?

What if you? Angry? Angry, hockey fans? What? No. It's bizarre. But what, what do you think about the idea of abolishing the entry draft? And essentially, the minute you turn 18.

And the argument is simply this. If you are a student or you're in a university and you graduate, you don't simply just get drafted by like Microsoft has drafted you. Like you have some degree of control over your career coming out of school in virtually. And I understand that there's no collective bargaining. But I understand that. But the concept in the premise is simply this, that you're an adult and you should be able to choose your place of employment.

And you, and people, For the people who automatically think, wow, everyone's going to go to Toronto or everyone's going to go to, you know, Los Angeles or Tampa, there might be players out there who say, wow, those rosters are pretty stacked. I'm not going to get my chance to get playing time, money. I'm going to go, I'm going to Columbus, or I'm going to New Jersey, or I'm going to Nashville or I'm going, right? So is there any merit to the idea of because the best teams can't have everybody? So is there any merit to abolishing the draft? Every team has a set number of entry-level contracts they can sign in a given year. And you have a bonus pool that you work from.

It could be whatever, just make up whatever that is. Every team has the same amount of money they can spend and the same amount of roster spots. They can devote to it and just see what happens. It's a verified, it's a, it's a variation on what you see. And I know I'm coming back to baseball. I hate the way baseball is run, but the draft system is really interesting to me because you have a slot value that's assigned to every player. You can't pay them more than that. If you, if you're a team and you want to max out like your bonus pool on your first overall pick, that's on you.

You can do it. Or you can take a guy who's, you know, who's maybe looking for less, money, save some money there and then spend it on the back end on, say, your second pick or your third pick, the Pittsburgh Pirates just did, did this in a pretty interesting way a couple, a couple months ago. I, I love it. And the only argument against it, honestly, is that, is that it's too much of a, it's too different from, from the system that's in place now, honestly. Yeah, I don't, like, I get it because I, I don't know if this is coming from the last two years of the draft being, like, stupidly long in every one.

one not being able to watch it. But yeah, I just think, I think that, and maybe this is just me being so set in the ways, like I think players do end up having a lot of control in their career. It's not like they're just locked into one team for the rest of their life. That's why teams talk about, okay, like, you are now an unrestricted free agent. You've earned that. You get to earn the, you get to go and choose wherever you want. That's your right as someone who got to UFA status.

You're one of the big fish in this pond. You get to pick wherever you want to go because you've gotten to that point in your career. And I mean, we just saw with Adam Fox in Calgary. He didn't want to play for the flames. And he's not playing for the flames. Like he's in, he forced the trade. And then he didn't want to play in Carolina. And now he's in New York City.

So it's not like these. And that's obviously one example in what's hundreds of kids who've been drafted over the last several years. But it's not like these players are being handcuffed and said like go and work at this like shitty little shopping mall like you're getting drafted into the NHL. I'm not, I don't want to be the one that's like poo-pooing on like you get the right to choose where you work,

but like you're getting drafted into hockey league. I don't think it's that deep. I don't know. I wonder if there is some merit to like again, as we talk about some of these ideas that sometimes we find the middle ground, right? So would there be merit and just, hey, listen, the NHL draft is two rounds.

That's it. Just it. Two rounds. That's it. Maybe. Uh, Yeah, I think that's, you could have like a split system. So I, so one argument against against blowing up the draft is like you're, or that people like to fall back on. Because it is,

it seems like this would happen would be that you're removing tradable assets. So you're taking away first round picks and third round picks and whatever. That's not the way it needs to be. Like you can still, you theoretically could be able to trade entry level contract spots so you could go out and find somebody else. You could trade bonus money. There's ways of structure it so you still sort of keep that you know that element that element in the game i think i think having like a like a draft of first round and second round players would be would be dodgy though because i think you're you're sort of there's two there'd be two different playing fields and two different systems for two different classes of players and i i don't i don't i don't know what that would look like

it's interesting i haven't i haven't really thought about the one all that much and like would the rest So the players just come from like signing spots. Like would you have two rounds of the draft and then you just have like ELC spot so you could go out and find those depth players? Like I get that. I don't know. Maybe I'm just like old and cranky. I'm like no.

I like chaos but not that much. Yeah. You're just, you're just anti-labor. That's fine. I know. I probably come off like such an ass. Oh. Well, actually, Haley's this.

You don't get to choose where you work. Kid, just shut up. Shut up and report to camp. point to camp. Actually, Haley, this next one is one that I think you'd be interested in. We had a couple of people write this in in their write-in poll saying, I would like to see the NHL adopt some sort of soccer slash EPL-style relegation, meaning the teams that finish at the bottom of the standings or as, what do they say

over there, the table? Is that what they sound? Yes. Finish at the bottom of the table. But the teams that finish the bottom would be sent to the HL. I'm just using that for argument's sake. And then the best two or three, whatever teams or whoever wins the AHL comes up. Like, how would this even look, Haley, in the NHL if we were basing it off of the EPL or some sort of model from overseas?

Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you like bring up the EPL because I did just pull up Cloaks article. and he was, I was scrolling through the comments and like one of the first ones is like, nobody should be looking at the Premier League for advice on what to do. Things are not going great over there. No, no.

But I don't know. I think that like obviously in the Premier League, like you have 20 clubs in the EPL. And then there's like, you know, the top of the table, which does like the Champions League, whatever, and then there's just the middle ground and they'll play for whatever little other tournaments there are.

Like, that's the thing. Like, it works in soccer because there's different things that everyone gets to play for. Whereas hockey, like, there's just this one thing. Like, it's just the Stanley Cup and that's it. Whereas, like, it, like, if you don't make the Champions League, you can go to the Super Copa or, like, Copa del Rey, and there's, like, all these different, like,

little Concaf and whatever, however you want to look at it. There's like all these different tournaments that there's like something to play for like up and down the table. And then there's the teams who are trying not to get relegated, which in theory would make, you know, the battle between whatever like Arizona and Buffalo more exciting next year. But then where are they going to go? Like hockey just doesn't have that long history or infrastructure to do that.

Like are they, what are we just going to cut out 12 teams, put them as the lower level league and then have that as like the relegation station. Like it's, I don't know. I don't know. It's weird. It's a good question. Like it could make things more competitive, especially at the bottom of the standings.

But is that what people care about? Like do people want Arizona and Buffalo to like battle royale? I think with hockey, it's tough because so much of the revenue comes from and whatever, this has changed a little bit with a new TV deal. But so much of the revenue comes from tickets. sales. So whenever you're talking about like an HL stadium that's monetized or an HL arena and it's monetized like an HL arena and whatever, don't need to go too far into it, but

with luxury boxes and sponsor activation and blah, blah, blah. There's a lot of really boring business questions that I think would nuke this. That would just, that none of this stuff is going to happen, obviously. The business questions, the economic questions that would issues that that sort of switch would create are enough to make me think that it's something that I wouldn't really want. Because marketing a team that, yeah, they finished last in the league the last couple years, but they're really promising. It's way easier to market that than saying like, yeah, we got relegating and we can't win

our way back up. You know, like it's, it's, I can't imagine it's easy to be trying to market a team that's been in the lower tier league for for years and they're never going to find their way out of it. And then what would that mean for the draft? Like is the the relegation teams? Are they still getting good draft selections or is it the bottom of the top of the table? Like it's just in the other thing. The other thing to imagine if like Syracuse wins the H.L or whatever. Okay. So there'd be geographical issues that come in to play there. Because you're talking on Syracuse versus Buffalo versus whatever else.

But ultimately, an AHL team that jumped up to the NHL would need a new arena. That's just kind of the way, that's just, that's the way it works. So you would, you know, you say, all right, you get a one or two year run. But if there was some random, it would, oh God, if you had any sustained success from that team, and if they actually wanted to stay in the AHL, if a team jumped up a level, then you're talking about getting an arena deal done and dealing. with municipalities and all that sort of stuff. Like, yeah, it would be, it would be a mess.

I just want to picture Connor McDavid rolling into Syracuse. I mean, the guy spent years in Erie. It's close enough. Good Lord. Yeah, good point. It's the Syracuse of Northwestern PA, as they call it. Yeah. It's funny, though, because, like, there was this, there's, like, they do that kind of style

in rugby, too. And there was a rugby team that launched in, Toronto and they like you would run into things like teams in the bottom of the table because like the way it works there is like in rugby the way they did it like this team just like got created and they got the approval and they created this brand new team and it was the Toronto Wolfpack and like the stipulation was that okay you've got to start at the bottom of the table and work your way up and they just went and bought top of the table players like they just went out and signed like some of the best rugby players in the world and they just demolished and they just

demolished everybody in the third tier and the second tier. And then they finally made it to the top tier. And then the Super League had like veto power to be like, no, you can't join. Like it's relegation stuff. It sounds like it could be like this fun, cool thing. But like it's always way more political and business savvy and complicated than you'd think. Okay. A couple of other ones here before we wrap up the show. We'll do these kind of quick hitter style. You tell me, good idea, bad idea, too crazy. We had one person right in. There should be a limit.

And each team should only be allowed to have one coach on their bench at a time. Like it. Don't like it. Too weird. What do you think? Don't like it. You like it? I don't like it.

What would, what good would come of that? I think I think the feeling is that it could lead to more, I don't know, chaos, a little less structure. Right? Like they think that the head coach isn't going to be capable of, you know, saying something about the power play without his like assistant coach there. I don't get it. Like can the equipment guy be there? Because like that would be chaotic. Like if it's the head coach like pulling sticks and shit.

Like no equipment guy on the bench? That's kind of funny. One weekend a year. There should be a game with no coaches. I love that. It's no coaches weekend. And, you know, just wouldn't you just be so curious? Like, what would happen?

What would the, like, what would happen? What would the actual tangible influence on the game be? Which I would assume that there would be, but I just would love to know. I've got, I've got no equipment staff on the brain now. I want to see that. Like, the guy snaps to stick. Like, what's going to happen? Is Darrell, is Daryl Sutter going to, like, go and grab the stick for the guy?

Or is he just going to be, like, get on the bench? Like, what's going to go run? You got to go run down the tunnel and get, like, get like fresh skate laces or something. That'd be great. Yeah, what's going to happen there? But no, I feel like the no coaches game, like the players are, like, I don't think that'd be chaotic because like if they go off script and they play like trash, like they're just going to get ripped by their coach when they go back in the room the next day when the coach's back. It's true. Yeah.

They're going to like do everything so they don't just get like destroyed and bag skated if they just decide to do whatever they want. Wow. You threw, you threw cold water on that one, dude. My God. Okay. It was quick fire. We're supposed to say yes or no. Yeah.

Rapid fire. Yeah. No. A bunch of people wrote this one in in some varying form, which is the gold plan. And for people who don't know what the gold plan or that process is, basically, it's a way for teams who are out of the playoff race to ensure that they don't tank. So let's use Buffalo as an example. I feel bad. I love Buffalo as a city and they got great fans.

But they are unfortunately a bit at the bottom of the standings and likely will be again this year. So the minute you are eliminated from the playoff race mathematically, you then start collecting points and the team with the most points at the end of the year after they've been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, get the first overall pick. And so let's say this year Buffalo gets eliminated March 20th. It helps you because the teams that go right to the wire in the playoff bubble, they just don't have enough time to get points.

Do you like the idea of the, I've seen it, It's called the gold plan or whatever people think it is. Do you like the idea? My problem with the people who are like always trying to come up with things for teams not to tank and always get the first round pick is like we're not just taking into account that a team is trash. Like they're just bad. So like if you implement a point system and a team's just bad and they need the pick to like rebuild

their team, like they're just going to get no points and they're going to get a middling pick and they're going to continue to be bad forever. I mean, it's not forever. It's not that doom and gloom. but like the team is genuinely bad and they genuinely need a draft pick, like that just defeats the purpose of, of them needing the first overall pick. The last few years have completely like tap me out on lottery debates too.

Like I know it's like I'm tired of talking about tanking and anti-tanking, like measures and stuff. Like I like it's really, really, it's really tiring. And that's not to say that it's not that it's not a problem because it certainly is. I think that's something you could do for one year and see what happens because the NHL has shown so much, like they've changed the lottery structure so many times over the last five years. Like, why not?

Just see what happens. See how it, see how it works. But I do, I do agree with Haley, honestly. Like, you know, you don't want to incentivize bad behavior, right? You don't want to incentivize loss, like losses. But sometimes teams are sincerely bad enough where I do feel that, that worst teams. teams do deserve that kind of equity to come from having a high pick. Okay.

Last one that we're going to throw here to bandy about. This again came in from a listener. Introduce an over and back rule in overtime. So teams can't circle back into their own zone after crossing the red line. And basically this fan is saying these full ice resets and overtime are super painful. So essentially just like basketball, right? You can't go once you cross, you know, half court. You can't go back.

Any idea on this one? Like it. Don't like it. Would you even have a factor if we instituted an over and back rule in overtime in the national hockey? It should also be like a five second rule. Thank you. When was that? That was like 10 years ago, right?

When it was Tampa, it was Tampa versus Philly. They just sort of like, they completely. It was Ghibu She in his prime. And Chris Pronger, they just, they just, they just. stood there, right? Yep. Yeah. Um, yeah, sure. We can do, we can do that. I'm more focused on eliminating off sides for overtime. I think, I think that's my favorite idea. I think that's my favorite idea to come out of this, honestly. That's like my laser focus after our little talk here. I have one that I want to throw out here. Okay. I'm taking the host chair for a second.

Since 50% of players in the NHL are from Canada, nine U.S. teams should be relocated north of the border. Sean? No. I'm against that, man. No, where are they? Okay, so you guys, you guys can rattle this off. What are the nine teams, what are the nine markets that would get teams?

Right now. Right now? Halifax, Quebec City, Regina. Another one in Toronto. So that's, what, five? A third in Toronto, a fourth in Toronto. Victoria would get one. And where else?

Haley. Maybe Hamilton. Hamilton would get one, of course. Yeah. There you go. Nashville, shit out of luck. See you later. See you later.

We're going to Hamilton. You're going to Saskatoon. Yeah, that's obviously the big question. Like, what are the major markets that we can place a professional sports franchise in Canada right now? I feel like Houston is on the verge of having a team. That feels that way. Yeah, I don't think we're getting that second team.

and the GTA and all that. Do we really think that after everything that's happened with the coyotes that Gary Betman's just going to be like, yeah, we're done now. Like, no. Yeah. He owned the team for a while. I'm fleeing a fifth on that one. Like, how is he just going to be like, yeah, I think we're done now?

Like, after all this, you're just going to be like, no, we're going to move it. I think there's probably a certain set of circumstances that would take the decision out of his hands, yes. Listen, we'll have to leave it there. but we do appreciate all the feedback we got from people that participated in our poll. And I think, you know what? I think you're right. I think now all I'm going to think about is overtime three on three and no offside.

I think there's something there, right? Hold on a second. And you forgot, sumo goalies. Yeah. Heck yeah. Yeah. I can't believe you just like skimmed over that. And you were like, okay, and next, like, you don't just bring up Sumo goal times and

like move along. Yeah. Just throwing it out there. your pacing was off, Ian. I'm just kidding. You're a great host. My pacing was off. It took you 12 minutes.

You're like, wait a minute. Can we circle back to the sumo? You guys were talking. You guys wouldn't stop talking. I was waiting for my moment. Yeah, it's crazy that we would talk on a podcast. I know. Okay.

We'll leave it there. But we do want to tell people because the calendar is about to flip to September. Haley, here comes Team USA again. Team America that Sean Jantilly, Craig Custon, edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's going to be back with new episodes on Tuesdays. That's right. We got to all shoot our own like cheesy promos, video promos for these things, right?

Just like network back this fall. Yeah, like why did they get some cool like American theme song? Like we just have a jingle. Yeah. Producer Chris. Every other show should have the Canadian anthem play before it. That's fine. Anyway, we'll leave it there.

This is the last episode of August. We do, like I said, coming back in September. Haley and I will be back on Mondays. Myself and Sean McAdoo on Thursdays, Sean Gentilly, Craig Custin's on Tuesdays, and the Prospect Show, Max Boltman, and Corey Prondman. You're going to come back resuming the Prospect Series on Friday. So you've got lots to look forward to.

This was a lot of fun. We want to thank everybody for sticking around and listening to this latest edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Leave us a rating and a review. We would certainly appreciate that. Right now you can get an annual subscription to the Athletic. It's 50% off when you visit theathletic.com slash hockey show.