The Athletic Hockey Show - Zach Hyman, Sam Reinhart join the 50-goal club

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

On today’s Monday edition of The Athletic Hockey Show, Ian and Laz discuss Laz’s great article on multilingual NHLers, Zach Hyman and Sam Reinhart joining the 50-goal club, guys who scored 50 once and then never came close again, Tom Wilson’s 6-game suspension, which game is this week’s Game of the Week, the NHL’s silly holiday scheduling, and more.Plus, The Athletic’s NHL insiders Pierre LeBrun and Chris Johnston return to the show to give their thoughts on last week’s GM meetings, a new, behind-the-scenes NHL-Amazon series, Pierre’s conversation with Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald, Hart Trophy ballots, and more.And, to close things out, The Athletic’s own Jesse Granger joins the show to talk about Connor Hellebuyck as the runaway betting favorite to win the Vezina and which teams have the most money bet on them to win the Stanley Cup.Subscribe to The Athletic: http://theathletic.com/hockeyshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic hockey show. We're back at it for a Monday edition of the Athletic Hockey Show. It's Ian Menace and Mark Lazar is with you for the next hour or so. Our pals, Pierre LeBron, Chris Johnson are going to drop by Jesse Granger. It's going to be a jam-pack Monday show as always. Lassie, I want to tell you something. And I'm actually going to send you and our producer, Chris Flannery, the little video I took in my grocery store on Sunday afternoon.

So last, I'm minding my own business in the grocery store and guess what song comes on. It's got to be Dancing Queen. Yes. I couldn't believe it. In fact, I can't believe I forgot to tech. Like, you'll have to, like the audio isn't great. But I was like, what are the odds that I would be. It's a quintessential grocery store song. It doesn't surprise me at the least. Like that's going to be on every grocery store soundtrack, I think, every playlist.

We should come up with the ideal grocery store soundtrack. Oh, God, my first ever job was, you know, 150 years ago is I was a stock boy at a drugstore, Genevese drugstore on Long Island. And we had, they had like a CD mix that they would just play on loop. And at like every point of the day, I'm like, oh, it's 2.30 p.m. I'm about to hear I don't want to be alone by the BGs again. And it would just like burrow into your brain to the point where you would just lose your mind of hearing the same songs over and over and over again. So I got a long list, but this was like 25 years ago. So was this one of those six CD changes?

Like it had five or 60s and they would flip it through. Oh man. Those are the days. All right. Hey, I want to start. Before we bring in Chris Johnson, Pierre LeBrun,

I loved, you know what actually I loved? I loved last week you put out, I got a really fun feature that I've been really excited to write for a long time. And it's dropping tomorrow. And I hope you like it. And I was like, hmm,

I wonder what this is going to be. But if it's, if I could get inside it. Laz's brain, I think I'm going to like it because you have a, you know, a very creative, it's a weird brain, but it's a creative brain and it's a funny brain. And I love it. It's a terrifying place. It's a terrifying place.

I loved it. And then I read this story and I retweeted it and I got some great comments because people loved it. So I want you to explain to our listener on the pod how you came up with the idea for delving into the topic of players who speak multiple languages because this was a lot of fun. I think, I think, oh, first of all, thank you. I'm kind of obsessed with multilingualism because it just seems so impossible to me. Like, I took Spanish from middle school through high school, and I got like a 100 in every single marking period.

I was as good as you can be at high school Spanish. Couldn't speak Spanish worth a lick though when it really came down to it, right? And then like a few years ago, I picked it back up again. I did duolingo for literally a thousand consecutive days of a half hour every single day, seven days a week. I completed the entire course of Duolingo, maybe 3% fluent. Like, I got nothing still. I don't understand how someone can just naturally speak in multiple languages. So we're around it all the time.

You hear guys just switching in and out of it all the time. They're going from English to Swedish to Russian to check. Some of these guys speak four, five, six languages. And I just don't know. I'm in awe of them, really. I'm in awe of guys that can sit there and do an interview in a language. They didn't grow up speaking, the courage to do that. And so, you know, I did a story earlier in the year about what it's like to be the only one from your country on a team to be like the only Czech guy, the only Russian guy, and how isolating that can be.

And this was kind of an offshoot of that. Those conversations inevitably through my own just wanting to know spun into what language do you think in. Well, how do you adapt to that? How do you, when the coaches, you know, giving instructions in a video session, are you translating in your head or are you just hearing it and not having to go through that extra step? all that stuff fascinates me. And you know you have a good story idea when the players get excited. They were all kind of caught off guard by the question, but then they really got into it. I didn't even want to write the story.

I just wanted to run transcripts of my interviews. I thought they were fascinating. Like I love when an interview becomes a conversation, like a real conversation, instead of just me interrogating someone. And that happened a lot with this story. That's when I knew I had a fun topic. And you know, you know this as well as anybody. When you're 12 seasons into covering the NHL and the Blackhawks,

you don't get excited about writing about the power play or writing about how the penalty kills structure or this guy moved up to the second line. So I just want to write stories that I'm interested at this point. And my hope, and it's not always the case, I can see the metrics. My hope is that if I'm interested in the story idea, then so will the readers, so will all other hockey fans.

Yeah, I loved it. I thought it was great. And it's funny when you say, like, I wish I could have just put out the transcript. I almost think that those types of conversations with athletes those make great pods, like podcasts. Those are great because it's just a conversation with an athlete and you're not, it's amazing how much they love talking about anything other than hockey.

Right. And what I love about this, they don't know me from a whole. I'm walking into like the Colorado room. These aren't the Blackhawks I'm talking to. I'm going into Colorado's rooms, Seattle's room, like Toronto's room, like just random rooms. And I'm just some random guy who they don't know. But you hit on a topic that like piques their interest. and they start leaning in, right?

And they're starting getting excited about it and they start getting a little more animated. And all of a sudden, Pierre-Edward Belmar is delving deep into his childhood about what it was like to be in Sweden as a French speaker and not know the language. And you just get these guys to open up and it's really exciting as a reporter

when guys are really willing to engage like that. You know, so, and you mentioned that, so when you're in, you grew up on Long Island, so right through the 12th grade, were you taking Spanish through high school? Yeah, 7th through 12th grade. I was an AP Spanish. I was great at it. Yeah. And then I went to Mexico, like that's on a trip, like at the end of all that. And I could barely ask to go to the bathroom somewhere. Like it's just like what you learn in school. You need to be immersed in it. And that's what these players do. They come over and they watch shows on Netflix with the English closed captioning on. And they just get immersed in it because you have no choice. And like I think it was Belmar who told me it's like it's like a survival instinct. Your brain kind of starts processing languages faster because you have no choice. You have to. You have to. to learn it. So I grew up, my, my dad had different jobs. We bounced around all the time when I was a kid. He worked for a private American firm, but we would bounce around. So I actually went to

elementary school labs in Ann Arbor, Michigan for grades one through five. Okay. And then we moved to Canada for grade six. Okay. And I'll never forget because I, my first day of grade six, the teacher actually, you know how in the U.S., I don't know if the kids still do this, but like when I was a kid in elementary school, you would do the Pledge of Allegiance, right? Sure. At the start of the day, okay?

Of course. In Canada, they sing the anthem over the PA system in the school. And the teacher actually taped the lyrics of O Canada on my desk because she thought, this kid's coming from America. But I was, I grew up in, like I was born in Canada. I told her I watched hockey night in Canada

because we lived in, in Michigan. I was like, I know the Canadian anthem. But what I didn't know last was French. Okay? So in the sixth grade, we had this,

I can still remember. In fact, I'm getting the anxiety right now. Do you remember when you're in elementary school and like, there would be like, you're reading a book as a class and then, you know,

you'd go through the class and everyone would read like a paragraph or two. Sure. Yeah. And so they were doing this for this French book. And I'm looking, I'm like, oh, crap. And I'm, you know, you're starting to look ahead, like, what paragraph is going to be mine. You know, you know, the feeling.

And so it gets to me. And now, the French word is formidab, meaning, like, excellent. But when you read it in English, it's formidable. Right, right. But the way it's pronounced in French is formidab. Now, I didn't know that. French doesn't speak any of the letters. It's just like, that's why it's baffling to me.

Yeah, it's for me da. You speak like 32% of the letters that you see on the page. Yeah, exactly. So it comes to me and I'm reading like, you know, je sui, and I'm terrible. And then I get to the last word and it's formidab, and I say,

formidable. And the class, first scout laughing, and I'm like, I last, it was the worst feeling in the world. And clearly 30 some odd years over it. You're totally over it,

I can tell. It's all good. You're not hung up on it at all. I don't need. Yeah. But I ended up taking French all through high school. And actually in the university, I took, you know, first year French. So now, like, but it's the same thing.

I'm not confident. I'm probably, like, I can really understand it. So when I'm in a French speaking press conference, Jacques Martin is asked a question. Or if I'm in Montreal, I can totally understand, like, what the question is, what the answer is. But I don't feel confident to actually, I don't know, I just don't have the confidence.

I think it's like, like I can read Spanish, like, almost flawlessly. Like if you put it Spanish in print, I can read it and understand it. If I listen to it and you speak slowly enough, I got what you're saying. I can get the gist of it. I'll miss some words.

But a native speaker speaking at full speed, no chance. And me speaking it, like, I can put sentences together. My wife and I went to Mexico City last year. And I was able to communicate with like an Uber driver and get us where we needed to go.

But like I can tell that to him I sounded like a moron. So like it's the ability to process a language. without having to translate in your head. When I'm listening to someone speak Spanish even slowly, my brain is going through several steps. It's translating it. It's putting it. It's like, what verb is that?

Okay, how is it conjugated? What tense is it? But when you're speaking in English, it's just there. It just appears as the language, right? So, like, how do you get from point A to point B with the language that you didn't grow up with? That's what I'm fascinated in. You know what else? And we'll bring Pierre LeBron and Chris Johnson into this conversation.

No, we're going to talk about this for an hour and a half. That's all we're going to do. Straight hour. Let's talk about it. our childhood traumas in school. Yes. So one time in gym class, no. So you remember, you remember, well, okay, wait, I'm trying to think.

So you've done a few overseas trips, right, like for work. Yeah. Okay. Have you ever used, and I'm saying this because I want the listeners to use this if you're ever traveling overseas. Have you ever used the Google Translate app? Yes, I did that when I was in Russia for Sochi. We got, we got like a bunch of us went out to like the actual Sochi and we left the Olympic village.

And, you know, it's like there's no, it's a different alphabet. So you can't even like find cognates and figure out what any sign says. So like we were at like a restaurant looking at a menu and just like panicking. And I used the I used to Google Translate. Like I just went online. I typed in what I wanted to say and I held it up in Cyrillic to the server to get the food that we wanted basically. It's so, but now even that was 10 years ago. Now you go to, you go to Europe and you can just like use Google lens or

and it just like makes the words into English. Like it's so much easier to get by now that it used to be. Yeah, like Google Translate Down. I was in Europe last year a couple times for work. And you just hold up the Google, you're right. You just use your camera. You hold it over the menu. And it just flips over to English or whatever language.

It is crazy. Right? Unbelievable. We live in the future, man. We're living in the future. But didn't you think by now, like when you were a kid, like 2024? there'd be like flying cars or something by now. Back to the, back to the future, too, took place in 2015 and they had flying cars and

hoverboards and all that stuff. Like, we really blew it. We supposed to have jet packs and flying cars. I don't have any of that. I still walking around on my feet like a schmuck. Oh, yeah, the hoverboards. Or at least a chip in the puck to let you know that it's crossed the coal line. Give us a chip.

Why can't we have a chip? 2024. Come on. Or at least a vertical camera without the parallax view. Can we at least get that? All right. I'll tell you what, Las, why don't we bring it? I know Pierre LeBron is bilingual.

I don't know. First of all, let's ask, Chris Johnson, do you, do the CJ speak any French? Um, peteepa. Um, petit. Well, we know that, very little. We know that LeBron is fully bilingual. And Laz had, as we were talking about the great piece last week, about hockey players and language, when Pierre LeBron is dreaming,

does Pierre LeBron dream in English or does Pierre LeBron dream in French? So that's a great question. I've had friends ask that. It depends on the dream. I do have dreams from my childhood where it's totally in French and I'm sort of recreating things

that happen in my youth in Hurst, Ontario. And I'm just thinking and speaking in French. And then I have more modern-day dreams. You know, I'm married in English-speaking Toronto gal and so my modern day dreams are English so it goes back and forth would be the answer to that.

By the way, when I worked at ESPN.com years ago, we used to you know, I would still do hits in French for RDS in Montreal and of course work with TSN and I used to say I should have learned Spanish so then I could have done

ESPN Deportes and RDS and TSN and then covered off all the bases for North American hockey. But I failed. I only know two languages. I'm ashamed. My favorite French speaker was Jonathan Taves, because he spoke flawless,

from what I understand, absolutely flawless grammatical French, but he still sounded exactly like Jonathan Taves. So the same accent he said when he spoke English. So it sounded hilarious to me the way, I can't duplicate it because I don't know any French, but it just cracked me up to hear him speak French versus, like, other people I hear speak French,

because he just sounded like Jonathan Taves saying, I didn't understand. Franco Manitoban from a different part of the country, right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, hey, listen, it's great to have you guys back in the pod. Obviously, last week we weren't able to connect with you because you were down in Florida

at the GM meetings. And I know in reading your coverage and watching both of you had hits on TSN, wasn't a ton of news per se to really sink our teeth into. But, CJ, maybe I'll start with you. And on looking at the takeaways or anything that we should keep an eye on. down the road that maybe the seeds were planted at the GM meetings? Well, probably the thing that has me most excited is not really a GM's item, but the fact that some news about this new Amazon series has started to come out around those

meetings that they had the producer of the show. It's the same producer who did the full swing, PGA Tour 1 and it is well, Drive to Survive and F1, come and actually address the GMs and basically share his vision for why it's important that NHL teams buy end of this, that they allow maybe a level of access in the past when we've seen some of these sort of behind the scenes type shows get in, but maybe get blocked. And I think it's kind of interesting that the league is taking it on

at this late stage of the season. I mean, it's only been the last couple weeks that cameras have followed a couple players. They're going to, you know, key in on some of the star guys throughout the playoffs. And, you know, we're going to have a show, you know, personally I'm a huge fan of the full swing golf one. I love the PJ tour.

I binge season two, literally, in four days or something like that. And I'm intrigued to see if maybe hockey can produce something as compelling. And that was something I wasn't aware of before I went to the GM meetings, but came back with a little bit more of an understanding what they're doing. Yeah, that was buzzy. CJ likes buzzy. You know, it was interesting, CJ.

We were at the Oilers and Leif's Morning Skates Saturday, and Connor McDavid was asked about that, right? And I was surprised because I thought from what we had understood, the gym meetings that some of the star players were already being filmed right now, right? For this series. A couple have been done. A couple have been done. It sounded to me like he's not one of them, I guess, right now.

No, I think there was something that with William Nylander and David Pasternak, I heard. Okay. But, you know, a lot of it's going to be the playoffs. There you go. Right. So they'll get to the best player in the world at some point here, for sure, I would imagine. Yeah, that was definitely the, but I think a real nice, buzzer. I think a lot of people enjoyed hearing about that from CJ's reporting.

I guess for me, the biggest takeaway, especially because we talked about it so much leading into the gym meetings, was the LTIR conversation or lack thereof, and how the league stick handled around that last week. It took a little digging, CJ and I in Dregs, to figure out why it wasn't on the official agenda, but then realizing out near the end of the meetings that they had actually dealt with it at the executive committee level. on Sunday night and Bill Daly confirming that he told the six GMs on that committee, we don't want to have this conversation this week with everyone, but go back and canvass all 32 GMs. And if this is really something you guys wanted to get into once and for all, come back to us and we'll decide whether or not we'll go to the NHLPA with it. So I thought that was an interesting way for the league to handle it,

which is that they did speak about it, but only with the executive committee on Sunday night. We'll see where this goes. I'm still not convinced that it may necessarily go anywhere. But I do think there are some motivated GMs on that executive committee that want to go out and trying to find consensus. So we'll see if they do or not. It does feel like we sometimes hype up these GM meetings, like all these seismic changes are going to happen. But the league is so inertial. You know, three on three, no changes.

LTIR will talk about it later. In your experience, how difficult is it for like one or two motivated GMs to really push something through this committee. It's hard. Come on. I mean, first of all, it's 32 GMs. I mean, imagine we put 32 sports writers in a room and tried to come find consensus on anything. It would take a lot of conversation and we probably need a few pines and just going to be a place to eat dinner, right? Exactly. So I think part of it is, you know, I'm not even making fun of them. I think that's part of why one of the exercises they always do is they break into smaller groups because I think it's more productive in terms of at least trying to have a conversation where you're getting

towards that. And, you know, look, there have been times in the history of the league. You know, I think back, it's a long time ago now, but coming out of that 0405 lockout, they did make a sweeping amount of changes, you know, removing the red line at the time, creating the trapezoid and introducing a shootout, all those things all in one. In fact, before, it was before the lockout, even stranger, where they made all those decisions. But I never forget that meeting.

In general, you're right. It's nibbling around the edges, unless there's a major issue. I think back 10 years or so when head hits were kind of in the forefront and they came up with what was called Rule 48 initially at the time. I mean, sometimes under our men's pressure, they can make those kind of decisions. But by and large, it's tweaks. And to be honest, the reason we're down there, it's a great opportunity to catch up with all the GMs to, you know, bank material for other stories, to, you know, repair some relationships maybe after the trade deadline. all those types of things. It's not necessarily just for the news value of the meeting itself.

Yeah, it's not been about the news for me for a long time. It really has been about networking. And, you know, I had sit downs with Patrick Alvin and Caldubis and Tom Fitzgerald. That's more paramount to me than the minutia of the tweaks from the world changes for sure. But to answer your question precisely, Lazz, I mean, if you look at the advent of three-on-three overtime, itself, Ken Holland had proposed three-on-three overtime for about 10 consecutive years before it finally came to light. I'm not kidding. We had talked about going from four-on-four to three-on-three for a decade before, for whatever reason, finally got enough juice and involved the NHLPA,

of course, and so on. But nevertheless, it just gives you an example of just because something didn't happen and you're like, well, why did it discuss it then? Well, sometimes they got a discuss it eight freaking times before it goes anywhere. I love, CJ, you got to expand on, you know, the fact that you go down there and there are some relationships to repair, right? Like, because the trade deadline, it's, it can be a tricky time, right? You guys are, you're trying to get information. But what are those conversations like when you have general manager?

Do they pull you aside? Is that, hey, let's hear this out? How does that play? I don't want to make it too dramatic. I think it's more just, it's a high stress period, you know, leading up to March 8th this year with the deadline. Obviously, part of our job is to pester people, frankly, especially when you get towards the later hours of that deadline period. And what's nice about the GM meetings I find, I mean, look, it's in a great location, sunny 90 degrees. And at this point, I don't think GMs are too stressed.

I mean, obviously there's certain GMs are there. Their teams are in the middle of a playoff race, but there's nothing they can almost do at this point in time. they've kind of made the roster decisions they're going to make. And so I just find it's about as relaxed a period to have conversations with people as you find, maybe other than the middle of the summer or something like that. So, you know,

it's just, I wouldn't say, like I really don't want to be too, but just I think a few people, you might feel like there might be something there and it's a chance to shake a hand and just to have a little bit of a conversation. There's nothing in this case for me. I'm not looting it.

There's nothing so bad that I did a big sit down. But over time, that's happened from time to time for sure. You know, and that's kind of part of the gig on both sides. I think the GMs ultimately understand we have a job to do. And, you know, just sometimes tensions get a little bit high when there's when there's a lot of pressure. And you're in that kind of, you're in that moment. I've always wanted to ask you this.

Do you sit there like the week before the meetings and have like flashcards, make sure you got all the faces and names? I mean, like, I know you, you communicate with these guys all the time, but you don't see them all the time. You don't have like, you know, Tony Hale whispering in your ear of who everybody is, like it's VEP. Do you do a little studying before a meeting like this? Board of governors for sure. I don't know as many the owners or senior presidents of the organizations by face. I mean, the GM's pretty familiar group to us by now. We all know them pretty well.

Yeah, that's not an issue. But I understand your question. Lise that the BOD sometimes you get an owner that you never met and don't know what they look like. But it's not a problem at the GM's level. What I was going to point out, by the way, is that one thing they decided last week as well, and they announced to the group, is that they won't have another GM meetings now until next September.

So this is the second year in a row where they are foregoing the annual GM meetings that's at the draft, which is probably unfortunate for all the beat riders because that was always kind of a buzzy GM meetings where certain GMs were leaving that three-hour meeting with their hair on fire because there were players that were trying to resign before July 1st

and there were trade talks happening and all hell was breaking loose. And so this is the same thing. second year in a row where there is no GM meetings on tap for the draft in Vegas and they're waiting until September to congregate again with the 32 head coaches. So they're doing that again for a second year. So I find all this fascinating. Maybe I'm nerdy about it. But I think it sounds like they're done with this June GM meetings, which is probably going to disappoint a lot of media, I think. Well, it makes sense. So if they're going to centralize draft beyond this year, all the GMs won't be at the draft, right? So I mean, part of it might all be sort of

in lockstep with that as well. Good point. Pierre, you mentioned that you had a chance to chase down Tom Fitzgerald as one of the general managers that you chatted with. That story, that sort of Q&A piece dropped today where you hit on the young blue line,

goaltending and changing out the coach and pretty forthcoming stuff there from the devil's general manager, Tom Fitzgerald. Was there anything that surprised you about the fact that he was pretty open about, hey, he's going to be contacting some general managers here for a goalie in the summer, right? Yeah. So he's one of the more forthcoming GMs in the league for sure. And I think I got a lot of time for Tom Fitzgerald. He's really wearing the frustration of this year. It's really been hard on him. This is probably one of the more disappointing teams this season as far as expectations given what they did last year. I guess one of the surprises would be that, you know, my opening question to him wasn't meant to be about the blue line.

It was just in general, what do you make of this disappointing season? And he went straight to the blue line. And as I said in my piece, probably a lot of people from the outside would have gone to another position to start that conversation. But I think it speaks to probably what matters more to him as far as the development of, you know, Hughes and Simon Emmich. and loves those guys. Those guys are going to be studs forever for them. But I think what he's saying is we're having to live with that rookie and experience. You know, two guys playing huge minutes.

And of course, the goaltending is a huge part of it. And we went down that road. But, yeah, he's very open about the fact that part of his communication to Jake Allen and getting Jake Allen to wave because New Jersey was on the no list for Jake Allen was that he shared with Jake Allen that next year, you're going to be an important part of a tandem in which I'm hoping to go out and get a marquee name, and you're going to be really important 1A, 1B with that. And let's not hide where he's going to call as soon as the season's over.

He's going to call Calgary again on Markstrom. He may call Nashville on Saros, although, geez, the way Nashville is going now is Saros, maybe they're just better extending him. But whatever the case is, the devil's, you know, Tompest Gerald's very open about the fact that he wants a veteran one-two punch next year in goal. And he wants to obviously do away, which was a big issue for that team this year. You guys are plugged in in terms of, you know, the league-wide landscape as anybody. What is your take on the heart race right now? You got, you know, McKinnon, he's got a point in every single home game.

McDavid's going to have 100 assists. Matthews is still threatened 70 goals. Hello Buck is still having a great season, even with a couple of down games. Where do you guys kind of situate yourselves in that debate? Well, don't forget about Nikita Kutcheroff either. Never heard of them. Who's that? In addition to leading the point total as the time of recording this,

he's been in almost 50% of Tampa's goals. And I think some of it comes down to how you interpret that the heart is officially the player and judge to be the most valuable to his team. Well, if you want to really key it on that point, I mean, Kutrov probably fits the bill the most. Honestly, I'm uncomfortable with this one because it's so close. I don't even really have a favor. Like I'm not, and it's not because I'm trying to hide from the question.

to me it's one of Kutrov McKinnon or McDavid right now. I think it was impressive if it was awesome Matthews season is. I just think it's going to be hard for him to crack into that top three on my ballot. Although the good news is it probably got, what, two and a half weeks before I have to file it? It's a tough one. I'm probably, if I had to make the pick today for me, it's Nathan McKinnon, but it's only by a hair. Yeah, CJ covered a lot of it. I'm McKinnon right now.

I've been McKinnon pretty much since Christmas when I did the midseason awards for a call. just my own hairbrain ideas for the awards at Christmas. And I haven't left the McKinnon bandwagon, but there's so many good options that you can argue with right now, as CJ pointed out. One of the reasons I like the McKinnon case is that unlike other seasons, when there's so many other stars around him in that lineup where you could sort of pick away at him as a candidate. Because, well, you know, you got all these other guys scoring, it's actually, you know, with Nuchuskin, you know, entering the program being

gone for a while. Obviously, Landis Cog hasn't played in two years. Key injuries to Lekkonen and other players in that team. I actually think McKinnon's carried that team a lot. And I think it's different than other years that way. I think they've been a very top heavy team that's had to rely on his unbelievable skills. So I think this is maybe the greatest argument he's ever had in this career to win it. And he may not because I can easily argue all the other names that C.J. pointed out. There's another name. He probably won't get on a lot of ballots because there's just too many good candidates. But the way the Predators are finishing the season and they're a team that no one picked and make the playoffs, Roman Yosi, I know from talking to people in the Predators

organization is playing out of his mind and almost no one's noticing. Like he is carrying the National Predators into the playoffs on an unbelievable role and playing crazy minutes, doing it all. But again, when you run down the list of candidates CJ already touched on, where's there room for Roman Yosi? But I just like to point out that there's even names that we're not even bantering about in this discussion. As we wrap up here, real quick, because

Lads mentioned Connor Hala-But. Where do you guys come down on goals? Lads is a big guy. More goalies for heart. Goleys for heart. There you go. Lads has spoken. They got their own awards, lads. Come on. No, that's nonsense. I got the wasn't. I'm just kidding.

That's like the pitchers' trying to VP discussion, and baseball riders, right? Isn't that? I got the Sot Young. Except pitchers play every fifth game and goalies play 60 minutes a game. So I think Hallibach totally deserves to be in the discussion.

I will say, I don't know how CJ feels about this, but the funny thing is, as backup, La Rambro-Waswa has pretty outstanding numbers too. And I'm not, so I'm not, I guess if you wanted to be that guy, you could say, is it more a product of, just as much the product of the Jets' defensive system

than also an excellent. goalie. I think Conno, sorry, well, he is going to win the Bezna, but I think he's a hard candidate. I'm just saying the numbers seem to be good no matter who's in that. Just pointing that out. And I have nothing against voting for a goalie. So actually, I'm with you, Lazik. I think that it's a fair discussion point and thought. And Helbach would be on my list of five or six or seven. That's kind of my short list, I'll call it. You know, we'll see. Winnipeg had a rough weekend. You know, sometimes as much as you hate to say, it's how the season finishes could dictate where the order these guys

fall into. Hence my point on natural. Devin Dubek should have won a few years ago when you traded to Minnesota. I'm still mad about that one. Wow, you're the only one that might be mad about that other than Devin and you, maybe. Yeah. Other than Michael Rousseau maybe. But, you know,

the heart discussion itself is a great debate. Like Bob McKenzie, I think C.J. knows this, but Bob McKenzie was one of the first national guys to say should we change the definition? He wasn't saying he thought we definitely should, but he used to say, like, are we getting lost in the idea of what this award should be?

Wayne Gretzky used to win the heart in his sleep in the 80s, and no one got confused by the fact that he had Mark Messy and Jerry Curry and Paul Coffey and Kevin Lowe and Glenn Anderson on his roster. It didn't use the MVP criteria against Gretz, right? And I think what's happened in the modern day voting, and I've been voting for nearly 30 years, is that as a voting body,

I think we've gone more back to the original criteria, which is MVP. And so there are years where we've held it against Crosby that Malkin had as many points or we've held it against, you know, McDavid with dry Ciddle. And I understand it. So, so, but the point is, should we not just give it to McDavid every year because you're the best player in the planet? I'm just saying, like, you know, like what do we want the heart trophy to be? I guess we'll be the way.

This might be the year, though, McKinnon. I think McKinnon, you could make. argument has maybe been a bit better than McDavid this year. I'm not saying he's the better player forever and ever or anything like that, but in this season, what we're judging, I think he's got at least a case. I like that the players vote on the most outstanding player and the writers vote on the most valuable player. I like that there's a distinction there.

Otherwise, what's the point of having both the words? We're going to just all give it to McDavid every year. I like that there's a distinction. Right. Yeah, good debate. All right. Tell you what, guys. We'll leave the conversation there.

And yeah, it should be a fun, a heart trophy vote. down the stretch. Right. Pierre, CJ, thanks for this. And, yeah, we'll hit you again next week. All right, boys. Have a great week. We're at all. We're at all.

All right. As always, great conversation with LeBron and CJ. Where are you at, by the way, on your heart trophy ballot? Because you brought up Hellebuck there. And you were a biggest rocan guy last year, right? Yep. I've been team Hellebuck all year. He's kind of stumbling a little bit as the jets are stumbling a little bit.

I haven't written him off yet. McKinnon is going to be, I mean, it's one A and one B. with Hellebuck and McKinnon for me right now. The Kutrov argument is great. I think he's like 40 points ahead of his next competitor, which just kind of reminds me of the Taylor Hall year when Hall won MVP for the Devils. He was just so far ahead of his next teammate

that it was kind of undeniable. But, I mean, Connor Hellebuck, the Brasaw argument is interesting because I have Hellebuck on my fantasy team and it's getting frustrating. I'm like, oh, another jet shutout, and I check it and his Brasaw was in net. And I'm like, oh, I get that argument.

McKinnon would be a great choice. Right now, for me, it's Hellabuck and McKinnon. But, I mean, shit, Connor McDavid is going to have 105 assists this year. How do you not have him on there? Like, it's just the stats that these guys are putting up these days, they're staggering. To anyone who grew up post-80s in this sport, it's staggering. Yeah, because with McDavid, the only other guys in the history of the game

down about 100 assists in the season, it's Gretzky, it's Lemieux, and it's ore. It's like, that's the Holy Trinity. Like, you're not getting. better than those three. And McDavid's going to join them. And he might not be a slam dunk or he's not a slam dunk for the MVP. The only thing I will say last is now, and I'm a big fan of the transparency. I do believe in transparency in voting.

I do believe you should be accountable for how you vote. But to blowback everybody's going to get on their ballots this year is going to be wild. Because you're going to have to omit at least one of McDavid. McKinnon, Matthews, Kutcherov off of your final three, right? Or they won't be in the final three. We get five.

You get five. But when the final three come down, one of those guys will be left off and everyone's going to race back to the ballot and say, if only Laz had put Matthews third, he would have been a finalist or, you know, whatever it is, right? And let's face it,

Hello Buck's not going to be in that top three because not enough of my colleagues think that goalies warrant considerations. He's just not going to. So it's going to be probably McKinnon and McDavid as locks. And then it's between Matthews and Kuturov. Does 70 goals woo you? Or does the inherent unbelievable value of Kutrov pay off? And does playing in Toronto versus playing in obscurity in Tampa, does that play into it?

That's going to be the real, like, who's the last finalist? It's going to be down to Matthews and Kutraub. So last night, on Sunday night, I'm in Ottawa, covering Ottawa, Edmonton and Zach Hyman. We're talking about, you know, kind of offensive numbers and how do we, you know, how do we view things? Hyman gets his 50th goal. And then I realized something, I think last night last is, I think that's the first time in my life. And this is, I mean, 40-ish years of being a fan and going to games and covering games. I don't think I've ever been in the building when a guy's got his 50th goal.

So quick question for you, have you ever been in the building when a player gets their 50th goal? Because it never happened to me until Zach Hyman on Sunday night. I don't think so. It happens so infrequently. I don't think it happens. I've been really lucky lately. Alex Ovechkin got his 800th goal in Chicago. I think it was on a hat trick, no less.

And a few months before that, I got to see Mark Andre Fleury's 500th win in Montreal, all of all places. But I don't think I've ever seen a 50th goal before. Yeah. So it just got me thinking. like, wow, that's, it's pretty rare. I saw Heimann do it. It used to be rare. It used to be.

Exactly. And then Zach Hyman did it on this. Imagine, imagine uttering this sentence in October. Zach Hyman and Sam Reinhardt scored their 50th goal on the same night. It's unbelievable. I mean, these are, these are good quality hockey players with high pedigrees. I mean, Ryanhart obviously was a top pick. And Hyman has been a productive player, but the leap they've taken this year.

It's amazing. And it's it's kind of a sign of the times, right? I mean, 50 goals, I don't mean to diminish the accomplishment. That's not what I'm trying to do here. I think if anything, it's just a testament to how good scorers are now. Like the shooters that we have in the league right now. Hymann and Reinhardt, they're kind of greasy guys, get them around the net. You know, Ryanhart gets a lot of power play goals. Hyman gets a lot of goals around the net. They're kind of throwbacks in a lot of way that way. But we have so many, we're going to have more 50 goals scores. We're going to have something like 25, 40 goal scores. this year. I mean, it was less than a decade ago that Jamie Ben won the scoring title with 87 points. The game has changed offensively so dramatically in the last 10 years. And I'm not sure what to chalk it up to. Are guys just that much better at shooting? Like, say, I was looking at up the numbers before we went on the air and save percentage has dropped 9-03 this year. It went from like 915 a couple of years ago to 903. Power play opportunities are the same. Power plays are scoring at about a 2% higher clip. So that's a pretty nominal difference there. I think guys are just so much better at shooting.

You see what Connor Bedard can do with the puck on his stick. You see how guys are figured out the reverse VH or whatever the hell they call in goalie where they leave the shoulder open and guys can bank puck's in off of guys, your goalie's heads and stuff. Like I think guys are just so much better at shooting now than they've ever been. Think about this last season. We had five guys with 50 goals, including two of them, McDavid and Posternak with 60.

And, you know, point square. 40 last year. Ranton and scored 50 last year. Drysidl scored 50 last year. Go back a couple of years before that. Like Chris Kreider got 50. Like this is wild. And then you go back last into that window. How about this?

Between 2012 and 2018, the only guy to get 50 goals in that window was Ovechkin. And he did it, you know, three times in that in that five-year window. And that was it. Nobody else got it. And, you know, you get Reinhardt, Hyman, like I said, Crichter. And so here's a question. And I think Hyman is fantastic.

But nobody in their right mind would have ever predicted a 50 goal year out of him. So we've seen the question kind of get tossed up. I'd love to ask you. I'd love to ask the listeners. Is this the most like unexpected or like who's the most random 50 goal score in NHL history? I mean, it always comes back to Jonathan Chichu, isn't it? I mean, I feel like Tichu is the one where that really came out of nowhere.

That was a different era, I understand. But that felt like, who is it, the Brady Anderson of the Orioles when he randomly hit 50 home runs? Like, it felt like that. What the hell? The sideburns. Yeah, exactly. Like that came out of absolute nowhere. Now this is baseball, so we probably have a reason why that happened.

Yeah. Gee, I wonder, in the mid-90s, somebody just popped off offensively. What a strange phenomenon. But look at how, you know, so Chi-Chi, that was a higher scoring error. So Hyman is unlikely, but we're seeing this now. And I don't, nothing's really changed. They haven't, they haven't really like, this isn't like 05, 06 coming out of the lockout where they completely cracked down on obstruction and goals per game just skyrocketed

for a year until it kind of leveled off again. This is the same league officiated essentially the same way as it was, three years ago, four years ago, seven years ago, 10 years ago. there's no explanation other than goalies are getting worse or shooters are getting better and I tend to lean towards the latter. So let me just defend. If I can defend Jonathan Chichu,

if that's the right word. So Chichu had the 56 goal season, right? Right out of lockout, won the Rocket Richard. You know, the year after, he scored 37. That's not bad. Okay? Well, didn't Hyman have like, didn't Hyman have like 37 goals last year though?

Yeah. So here's a list. I think this is a definitive list. This is the list of everybody in NHL history that's had at least one 50 goal season, but they never had another 40, even so much as a 40 goal season. So it is very much the Brady Anderson kind of,

you popped one time. So obviously, Hyman and Reinhart, he's never scored 40. Chichu had 37. Chris Kreider, How about this one? Old school Ray Shepard. Back in the day, he had a physical goal.

Adam Graves. Never scored 40. This is a real random one, Bobby Carpenter. First American guy, right, to score 50 goals in the season? I think Bobby Carpenter. Yeah, I think Bobby Carpenter was the first American board. You mistake me for McIndoe. Yeah, that's right.

That's a good point. But Bobby Carpenter was really young, too. I think he had his 50 goal year when he was like his early 20, with Washington. And then he topped out at 30, same as, no, actually, topped out at 33. So you could argue he was more random than

Cheechu. But then here's the one that I didn't even know this guy scored 50 in the NHL and Laz. This guy never even scored so much as 30 in another season. I present to you, Wayne Babbage. good God.

That's a poll. I had no idea. That might be our win. That might be our winner. How about this guy? So Wayne Babbage scored 54 goals for the St. Louis Blues in 1981. The 80-81 season. And he led the league with 40 even strength goals.

That's crazy. It's the 80s, though. I almost feel like everything that happened in the 80s has to be like, like you see every time you see a video. video of the 80s, and you see these little tiny goalies, they're like five foot six, they're wearing pads that are like four inches wide, they're standing up and they're just flailing about, and you wonder how everybody didn't score 50 goals a game that year. Yeah. So Wayne Babbage, this is crazy.

54 goals at the age of 22. This guy's the top three pick overall. You're thinking, sky's the limit for this guy, right? After that, Wayne Babbage, 19 goals, 16 goals, 13 goals, 20 goals, 17 goals, 11 goals, and out of the game at 28. Yeah, dude was on three teams as last year in the league. Right? What? I mean, I mean, you know, we've all seen guys like have a few weeks where they're shooting at like a 24% clip, right? And we always say that's unsustainable.

But apparently every now and then you get just a season. where just everything goes in and you know, you're like, you look at the Chris Kreider year and he's such a powerplay specialist, such a deflection, like a Pavelsky type where he can just deflect any puck in. And you can understand how like if the power play gets hot for an extended period of time, it's like when Eric Gustafson had 60 points with the Blackhawks one year. Because every time the power play scored like a 44% clip for like a two and a half month span. And you see that with these guys.

You get a couple of hat tricks in a short amount of time. And all of a sudden, a 35 goal score becomes a 50 goal score. and it's just not sustainable beyond that season, but you just have this magical year where everything seems to go in. Yeah, no, it's remarkable. And like I said, like there was a window of time there where Ovechkin was the only guy.

Lock it in, Alex is getting his 50. And he's heating up again here, Laz. He's actually now going to, he's going to flirt with 30 goals now. And earlier this year, we thought, boy, is this guy even going to get to 20? So tip of the hat, he's on fire. The caps are hanging around.

Here's a question for you, Les. If Washington sneaks into the playoffs, how much love should Spencer Carberry get for coach of the year? Boy, it's a heck of a job because, I mean, everyone had written that team off, you know, just a few weeks ago. Now, part of this is, part of it is it's almost by default that they're going to make the playoffs at this rate, with the way that these Eastern Conference teams are just soiling themselves left and right. I mean, it's just a turtle derby. It's not.

What is that, that, that, there's that German word for when two trucks are on the highway side by side. And one of them can't really pass the others. So you're stuck behind them. It's like, it's like an elephant race. It's like elephant tanum or something. There's some German word for it because the Germans have a word for everything. That's what the Eastern Conference second wildcard spot is like, like Tampa should not be this comfortable. But nobody can catch them because nobody can win more than one game in a row.

It's like the devils and the penguins and the islanders. It's just, there you go. Chris Flannery, our producer, Elephant and Renan, Elephant Racing. That's when you get stuck behind two trucks. And one of them is going 57 miles an hour. And the other one's going 56 miles an hour. And it takes them like an hour and a half to pass. That's the Eastern Conference playoff race right now.

That's like you're stuck behind a Prius and, you know, whatever. Just one of those. Anyway, yeah. But usually, last, when a coach is in the running for a Jack Adams, The first thing you do is you go and look at, well, he's getting goaltending, it's stealing them games, whatever. But like, it's kind of weird is that,

I mean, they're getting okay, like Lingu's been good for them. And the same percentage is pretty good. It's, yeah, 9-12. But it's not like they're getting out of this world goaltending, right? No, it's good goal-tending. I mean, they're an eighth-place team.

They look like an eighth-place team. It's just better than we thought they would be. And they're hanging around. You still got to look at what Tortorella is doing in Philadelphia, the fact that they're still in the race. You got to look at the job that Rick Tocke did in Vancouver. I know it's cool off a little bit, but what about Rick Bonas in Winnipeg? I mean, there's, I don't like that. We always seem to default, and we don't, as writers don't vote on the Jack Adams.

I think it's the, is it the broadcasts? The broadcasters do that. Broadcasters do it. So the broadcasters always seem to default to which team was the most surprising this year. And that's why, you know, someone like John Cooper never had a chance to win because he just always had the best team. And, you know, Jared Bettinard never has a chance to win. It's always the biggest surprise. And to me, Philadelphia is still a much bigger surprise than what Washington's doing.

But what Washington's doing might be harder. Like, they're really hanging around on a team that sold a little bit at the deadline and was kind of packing it in from the outside. And here they are. They're clearly the best of that bunch right now. And they're going to have to go this week without Tom Wilson, a six-game suspension for the stick swinging and. Look, and nobody was like, it was, it was reckless.

It was whatever adjective you want to use. He's not going to appeal it. I did find it funny or interesting when I guess by the letter of the law, Wilson is not deemed to be a repeat offender because you got to repeat within, it's in 18 months. Stupid law. What, what kind of world are we living in? Like to me, if you've been, I get it. If you have one suspension on your record and it happened three or four years

go, okay, you could maybe talk me into guys not a repeat offender. When you've been called to the carpet a half dozen times like Tom Wilson has, it doesn't matter. You've lost the right to have the benefit of the doubt, right? Like, how is it not a repeat offender? I hate that there's not subjectivity in that. There should be subjectivity in whether a guy's repeat defender. The fact that Tom Wilson was treated the same as Morgan Riley.

They got basically the same benefit of the doubt. Morgan Riley, oh, he probably deserves the benefit of the doubt. That was an unusual incident for him. Tom Wilson doesn't deserve shit, man. This is the benefit of the doubt of this guy. You've got to be kidding me. Like, it's just unbelievable. And look, I know that he was immediately apologetic and was like worried the second

he knew he screwed up. But he put the, he reared back and threw his hips into that stick swing and hit a dude in the face. If that's not worth a 20 game suspension in this league, I don't think it's like Donald Trump could shoot a guy in Fifth Avenue, like he says. Apparently you can do that in the NHL too and only get a six game suspension. Tom Wilson, of all people, Tom Wilson, can rear back and just almost decapitate a guy and you only get six game suspension. What is it going to take to see a Rafi Torres 25 game suspension to see a Marty McSorily 20-something game?

A Dale Hunter 25 game suspension. Send a message, man. Like that was one of the worst dick swings I've ever. Look, it didn't. I don't like that we legislate the injury. It should be a suspension whether he injures a guy or not. It's the intent that matters. And that was an intentional stick swing,

even if right in a way, he realized, ooh, I shouldn't have done that. Feeling bad about something does not erase that you did something. Oh, like, it's... He threw his hips into it. He was like a baseball swing. Like, he turned... My daughter takes tennis lessons.

I'm always trying to get her to do that. The swing through the ball. Tom Wilson swung through the ball, man. he was going for it. Like that was not an accident in any definition of the word. And Tom Wilson is a repeat offender in every definition of the word. Yeah. And you're right.

And we've seen 20 games suspensions in the past. What's it going to happen? Yeah. I don't want to know what it's going to take. I don't want to know. Exactly. It's clearly scary to see. Yeah.

It's scary to see. So Washington in the thick of that turtle derby, like last, just for a second. When Jesse Granger pops by, we could really tee up. You know, Vegas, St. Louis on Monday is going to be a heck of a game that has a ton of implications. But I'm going to list off a handful of games. This is a fun week in the NHL. If you're looking at races or you're looking at potential conference final matchups, Stanley Cup matches, you'll give you a handful of games here, lads.

You tell me which is the one Mark Lazarus is sitting down with a big old bag of microwave popcorn, and he's just going to enjoy it. Okay? You got Vegas, St. Louis on Monday. That's going to be great. Boston, Florida on Tuesday, I think if you're a Toronto fan, you're going to be, like, super interested.

And that one could be for the division. Detroit and Washington, two teams in the thick of that playoff race. Rangers, Colorado this week, that's a potential Stanley Cup final. Vancouver, Dallas. That's a potential Western Conference. Like, we've got some fun games here, last.

Of the ones I just listed, What's the one for you? I mean, I love watching the best teams go at it, but I'm not a guy who really cares that much about seeding. I think especially in the Western Conference. It doesn't matter where you are. You're going to be facing a juggernaut. Even Nashville right now is terrifying. Like Vancouver, Dallas, I want to see that in the playoffs. I don't need to see that right now. I want to see a game that has all the meaning in the world. I want Detroit, Washington. We've just talked about Washington. Detroit might be the team best equipped to catch them. And Detroit is so all over the map right now. Or some nights, they looked so bad for a of weeks. If they're looking so great for a couple of weeks, and then they fall apart, but then make this amazing comeback and win in overtime, they are this most erratic team in the league, which is exciting in a playoff race. So I think Washington, Detroit is the game that carries the most weight to me. I think the one, like I will talk to Granger about this, but who doesn't want to see St. Louis beat Vegas in regulation time on Monday?

Who? I mean, God, that Western Conference, has gotten so weird, right? Yes. It's not even, you're not, you're fighting for third place, not even a wild card. Like these are teams that are within striking distance of third place and getting out of that wild card spot

and getting out of potentially playing Colorado or Dallas or whoever's going to be the top seat. It's really gotten fascinating where Vegas loaded up and they're still just kind of treading water a little bit. Yeah, yeah. And you know, as you look at this week, and it's a holiday weekend for most people in North America, right? It's Easter weekend.

I'm going to play out something here last. I'm going to tell you the schedule for Easter weekend in the NHL. You got one game on Friday, 15 games on Saturday, one game on Sunday. So 1, 15, 1. The one game on Friday, Devils at Sabres. The one game on Sunday,

Ducks at Canucks. What's going on here? Like, like, I would be leading into the holidays if I were the league, no? Yeah, I always say like, you know, like the Winter Classic should be on Christmas Day because people are trapped in their house looking for something to watch, right? Yes. That's what, that's what, but the schedule is always like this.

Like, Monday night, there's two games. Tuesday night, every damn team in the league is playing. Wednesday night, there's one game. Thursday night, every day, like, anyone who plays fantasy hockey, and this is my first year playing fantasy hockey in a few years. It is so frustrating where it's like, I've got nobody playing on Monday, and I have to bench like six starting caliber guys on Tuesday

because every team in the league is playing. It's infuriating. And then they all start at 7 p.m. So you can't even flip between them if you're just watching as a fan because they don't stagger the starts. They don't stagger the games in the week. They don't stagger the games each night. It's infuriating, and it makes it so hard to be a fan

beyond your own local team of this league because it's just there's never a game on when you need one. Yeah. So anyway, one, like, I just don't understand, like, like, I think it would work a lot better if you. And I get maybe if you say to yourself, okay, Easter Sunday, maybe people are staying at home and they want it family time. Fine, but like, those are two days, Friday and Sunday that are generally quiet days for a lot of people. Wouldn't you want, like, wouldn't you even almost want afternoon games on good Friday? Yeah. Well, I think, you know,

two o'clock, one o'clock. The teams don't want games on holidays. That's one of the things is the teams have like, we sell more tickets on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Those are the days people want to come to the rink. All right, whatever. But the problem you have is,

I'm struggling how to, I want to put this. It's just like if you don't have games on, if you have all the games on the same night, then you can't watch other teams. You can't grow beyond a local fan into a national fan. And, you know, I get it. In the fall, Friday nights are for high school football in the States and Sundays are for the

NFL. Teams are afraid of going up. They don't want to be counter-programming for that. It's March. Baseball doesn't even start for a few more days. Why haven't there been games every Friday and Sunday and Monday and Wednesday for the last two months? You have this window, this like post-super Bowl pre-baseball window where you have the, it's just

you in basketball. and the league never takes advantage of it by putting games in prime time or in afternoons on the weekends. Look, nobody's doing anything on Friday night. There's no high school football. If you're young, you're going out on any night, whether it's Friday or not, you're not watching hockey.

Old people like us are a home on Friday night, and I want to watch a goddamn hockey game, put the damn hockey on my TV. And it's a purity when all I get is a duck sharks game. Or ducks conucks on Sunday. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody, nobody needs it.

And so that game probably starts like 10 o'clock Eastern time, so it doesn't do anyone any good anyway. Yeah. Oh, boy. It's, it's interesting because I remember, and Easter, obviously, the date of when Easter falls, it changes. But there's been, like, they have no problem when it's playoff time. Games are scheduled right through Easter.

They don't take a break. One of the greatest games of all time. Easter Epic. The Pat Lafontein. Easter, right? Like, yeah, exactly. So for whatever reason, they feel like if it's playoffs, we'll play through. If it's regular season, we won't do it.

It just feels like shooting yourself in the foot. Like, you have an opportunity to expand your audience and you just don't do it year after year after year. And I keep coming back to the fantasy sports angle and it's silly. But like fantasy sports is how you grow your game these days, right? Like part of the reason the NFL is the monstrosity that it is now is because of fantasy football. And fantasy hockey sucks. because there's just not enough.

The games are not spread out. Everyone I know that that plays it is frustrated by the schedule because it's just, you can't put together a roster that makes sense. You have to cut guys and pick up guys just because they play on it. It's a bad system and the league never seems to change. All right, Las, we were talking about Vegas St. Louis, Monday night. And it's a big one. Let's bring in our pal, Jesse Granger, covers the Vegas Golden Knights.

And he's our goal-tending guru. And we bring them in every Monday as a presentation of BetMGM, the exclusive betting partner with the athletic. So let me ask you this question, Jesse. Monday night, it's Vegas in St. Louis. This one matters a lot, especially to St. Louis. What's the feeling there? Is there a feeling like St. Louis can legitimately win this game in regulation time

and suddenly that race gets super tight? Yeah. I mean, the feeling in Vegas is that, like, the fans are definitely nervous. they're living and dying with every game, which hasn't happened in the regular season here, really ever. I mean, the one year that they missed the playoffs, they were trying to win a couple down the stretch to make it. The year they were really banged up two years ago. But outside of that, for seven years, there have been a lot of meaningful games here, but not in the regular season. This is an exciting playoff chase coming down to it.

And so I was listening to you guys before I came on. I totally agree with everything Mark said about the scheduling problems. And now I'm here to praise the NHL for the scheduling because I think they did this by actually. But this road trip for Vegas could not have been better planned. I mean, they go to St. Louis, who's right there in the playoff chase with them. Then they go to Nashville chasing them in the playoffs. Then they go to Winnipeg, potential first round opponent. And then they go to Minnesota, the other team.

There's literally three teams chasing them. They play all three of them on this road trip. It is the perfect way to end the season. So this is a huge road trip for the Golden Knights. And yeah, the fans in Vegas are definitely on the edge of their. seats. There's a lot of nervous this year. The goalie, they're nervous about the goalies. Aidan Hill is, make them sweat.

Make them sweat. It's about time. They had to sweat a little bit. I agree. Finally. Too good for too long. But yeah, no, it should be a really good game and meaningful regular season games. We don't, we don't, it's, like I said, I think it was by accident that the schedule ended up this way, but man, it's going to be fun. Well, shit, if it wasn't by accident, they deserve a lot of credit for their prognostication

abilities. Right. That'd be amazing. Oh, I love it. Yeah. You're right, though. These are the games that matter, and it's a lot of fun. I think Monday will be a ton of fun to watch that Vegas-St. Louis game. So earlier, Laz and I were talking to even we brought LeBron and C.J.

into this about the Hart Trophy, and Laz was pushing Connor Hallibuck, as I think a lot of people should probably open their eyes to the season that he's having. He might not be able to win the heart trophy because of the depth of the field. But, Jesse, can you give us an idea of how much of a lock this guy is to win the Vezna trophy as the top coley? Yeah, it's pretty wild. You, you, like, in an award like the Rocket Richard where it's numbers based, you'll see a huge favorite like Matthews right now because just statistically no one's going to catch him.

But on an award that's voted for, I don't see very many times where a guy at the top is minus 1,100 to win, meaning you'd have to bet $110 on Connor Hellebuck to win the Vezna to win $10. Basically, the sports books are saying, we, do not want you to bet this because it's going to happen. And then the next closest guy is Bobrovsky and he is nine to one to win the Vezina. So it's at this point, it's basically a certainty that Connor Halebock's going to win the Vesina based on the odds. And when you look at the numbers, it's hard to blame them. I did the goalie tandem's power ranking story last week where I ranked not just the starters, but just each kind of team's goal tending, whether it's two or three

guys as a whole. And man, has Winnipeg been good? They have started. stopped 51 goals saved above expected this season, which leads the league. The next closest team is St. Louis with 36. So they're 15 ahead of the second best team. And like you look at save percentage. It tells you the same story. I mean, Winnipeg's team save percentage is over 920. And the next closest team is Boston at 913. There is no one even close. And obviously Hellebuck is the biggest part of that. But Laurent Braswa, who I got to watch here in Vegas last season. He came to Vegas and got a bigger role than he'd ever had in Winnipeg. He was kind of stuck behind Hellebuck, not playing many games. And he came to Vegas and he really improved a lot.

And he was good in the playoffs. He beat his former team, Winnipeg in the playoffs as they chanted, you're a backup to him. Then he re-signs with Winnipeg to become a backup again. And he's been awesome this year. And I think that's part of the reason Helibuck's been so good is they trust Brasua a lot. He's played more than he ever did when he was in Winnipeg for the first stint. And not only do you have Connor Hellebuck playing the best hockey he's ever played. He's the freshest he's ever been at this time of the year. He is on pace to play by far his fewest starts of his career. So a team that, like you said, belongs in the heart conversation because their goalie, they're going to, they should have their goalie at peak performance when the

playoffs start because the backups played so well. It's a really good situation for Winnipeg. It's really incredible. The league's save percentage average is like 903 this year. It's so far down. And for Winnipeg to be as good as it is. We were. talking about this earlier in the show about the, you know, all of a sudden we got all these 50 goals scores. I'm going to have three of them already and we're going to have more as the season goes on. I kind of lean towards, I don't think goaltenders are getting that much worse. Their numbers sure are. Are shooters just getting that much better? Have they, I know they figured out reverse VH a little bit and all that, but like are shooters just this much better than they were even five, 10 years ago?

I think they are. I think the stick technology keeps getting better and better. And like with any technology, like, it's not a steady climb. It just keeps getting faster and faster how good they're making these sticks. But then also, we did a story of, I think it's been a couple months now on the safe percentage going down year by year by year. And Bruce Cassidy here in Vegas, I asked him about it. And he always has interesting thoughts. And I thought he nailed it when he said, it's not just the fact that we're getting more skilled young players. This league's getting younger. The teams are a lot more willing to throw young players on the ice than they used to be. Not only are we getting more skilled players, but those skilled young players are generally replacing

the third line grinders that are just out there to have a yellow puck shift where the puck stays along the boards the entire time and no offense happens of any kind. We're not going to give up a goal, but we're not going to score one. I think you trade a lot of those grinders with offensive young players who maybe aren't as good defensively. So the offensive skill is going up around the whole league. The defensive skill is going down and just the overall experience and hockey IQ on the ice I think is going down a little bit. And it leads to tons of chances either way. And what I found interesting was the goalies I've talked to and that other people have talked to are not upset with the safe percentage going down. In fact, most of the really good goleys are excited about it.

It's like that means the goalies are asked to do more. And therefore, if I am the better goalie, it's going to give my team a bigger advantage. Most goalies want there to be more dangerous chances because they feel like that's how they can give their team an edge. So yes, safe percentage has gone down, I think like five or six years in a row. and this year it's really gone down. And to me, that's just the NHL letting young kids score goals and maybe not worrying as much about the grinding third and fourth lines. Yeah, I mean, those young skilled players are going up against young

defensemen who aren't as good as the defense either. So you get more opportunities for those young players to score too. It's an interesting idea. Yeah, no, and it's funny. Because when scoring exploded out of the lockout, it was like, oh, the new rules and power plays and all that. And that was easy to point the finger at. I love, I love bouncing these theories around,

but I think we can all agree, it's just more entertaining, better, better for the game. So we want to let you kind of throw a trivia question to us, Jesse, here. And every week when we bring you on for bet MGM, we sometimes we look at some lines and we look at some betting odds, and we're going to let you play a little trivia master here with Lazzanai. Cool. So last week we went over which teams we think can possibly win the Stanley Cup.

This time, I want you guys to try to guess. So that MGM published basically the handle percentage, which tells you of all the money bet on teams to win the Stanley Cup this year, what percentage of it is on each team. And there are two teams with over 12% of the money. So most of the teams are 1%, 2%, 3%. And if you get real high, there might be a 5% or a 6% bet on one team. There are only two teams in the league that are above double digits and they're both above 12. So there's significantly more money bet on these two teams than anyone else. One is in the east.

One is in the west. I'll let you guys try to, I guess, give one guess each for which team in each conference is the most bet on to win the standoff. One of them is going to be Toronto, right? It's got to be Toronto just because they have the biggest fan base. Nope. Toronto is not there. Oh, I was thinking it's like the Dallas Cowboys effect.

Every time I'm in Vegas, I put 20 bucks on the Mets to win the World Series. Doesn't mean I think the Mets are going to win the World Series. I just want to have it if it happens. right yeah yeah Toronto's 8.3% so they are one of the higher teams they're probably in the top five but they're not up there with these two teams that are significantly uh okay and can I ask just this is more of like a disclaimer question I just out of curiosity so is this these are like active bats or these like bats that were placed in October like how does that work like it's just all all in one pot I guess it's yeah it's it's all the money that it's all of the tickets that are out there that

the casino could possibly have to pay off so it's It's, yeah, it's every dollar that has been bet on this Stanley Cup since probably last Stanley. I mean, like, they start taking bets as soon as the other cup ends, even maybe before that. So, yeah, this is every dollar that has been bet on any of these teams to win the Stanley Cup since they opened the betting. Give me the New York Rangers. Yes, that is the Eastern Conference team. And that was my second guess. They are, they are the fun team, I think, in the East.

Like, the Panthers are, they kind of went last year. So it's not as fun to pick them. Like, I feel like the team that hasn't been yet. but is exciting and has all the star players and obviously the star goalies. Not surprising to me that New York is up there. Well, for the West now, you scared me with the Toronto thing because I was going to lean Vancouver or Edmonton because I just always think Canada is going to have the most active. But I still think Colorado commands the most respect.

Is it Colorado in the West? It is Colorado. Yes. Good guess. To me, them in New York are the two fancy picks, sexy picks, whatever you want to call it. Those are the two teams that are kind of flying up. up and down the ice, right? I think it's just eye test-wise,

it's easy to see why those teams are the teams people are batting on. And what did we talk about earlier in the show last? Rangers in Colorado this week. Head to head should be a fun game. And yeah, so that's really interesting, like the, the fact that the Rangers would be up there. But man, I was with, I thought, okay, it's going to be Toronto, Vancouver for sure.

Or Toronto, Edna. Yeah, you can always get like the Chicago, Cubs always have terrible odds to win the World Series, even when they're mediocre, because they're the most bet on team because everybody loves the Cubs. And Chicago wins live in Arizona, and they go to Vegas for the weekend. And they just, you know, it's, it just feels like those popular teams tend to have the worst odds. So I want to know then. What do you guys think is, has the, has the Vancouver fan base just been beaten down so much over the years that they just don't even believe in their own team? Because, because Vancouver has the best record in the Western

conference has for basically the entire season. The odds for them, you're getting great odds. I mean, Vancouver, for a team that has a record as good as Vancouver, they're 15 to one to win the Stanley Cup. Wow. They're the 10th best odds to win the Stanley Cup in the NHL. And yet, despite having great odds and a great record and everything that they need to have to win a cup, they've only received 3.2% of the money to go on them.

So there is very little faith in the Canucks amongst anyone willing to put money on this. I'll tell you, having listened to like Halford and Baroff out in Vancouver, yeah, that sounds about right for that fan base. No matter what is happening, the sky is falling. Yeah. It seems a touch high, to be honest with you, at 3%. Okay. So then here's the counter question because Laz and I happened to cover two of the doormats of the league. So if you went to the other side of the equation,

how much money was put on the Anaheim's, Chicago, San Jose, Ottawa's, Columbuses of the, like if you add them all up, does it equal 2%, 1% less than that? It's just out of curiosity. It's definitely less than a percentage. Like the ducks and sharks are at the very bottom, 0.1%. So a 10th of a percentage.

But I will say, of all the team senators are right down there, but of all the teams at the bottom of the standings and at the bottom of the percentage bet on them, the Blackhawks are the highest, and that's probably the badard effect. I think some people at the beginning of the season were like, just in case. So they are at 0.4%. So that's still very, very low, but it is significant higher than others. That is people, just like, I'll put five bucks on my favorite team to win the Stanley Cup while

I'm in Vegas. That ends up. There's a lot of Chicago wins out in the southwest. Right. And and just more than sharks fans apparently. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Hey, listen, before we let you go, so you mentioned Vancouver was running around 3%, whatever 3, 9%. Is there any other kind of, I guess we'll call them heavyweight that's in that same range that like not a lot of people are putting their money, whether it's the Panthers or the stars or like, is somebody else hanging out in that same area? Yeah, most of the the favorites are are higher than that. The Panthers aren't real high. They're only at 5.5%.

So that's a little bit lower than most. The only other team that's really like in a good playoff spot that's, that's lower than the Canucks at 3.2% are the Jets. They're only at 1.5%. So again, that's a really good team with a great goalie, all the pieces you need and not a lot of belief because they haven't done it yet. So we'll see. That destroys our theory of just crazy Canadian fans or just,

all they do is they're blinded by their loyalty in Vancouver, Winnipeg down there. Yeah, here's one that's interesting that I'll throw out this. The only team that's above 2% bet on them that's not in the playoffs or is fighting for a playoff spot. And it's interesting because they have the same amount. Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh's at two.

The Detroit Red Wings are at 3.2%. The same amount of money bet on the Red Wings to win the cup as the Vancouver Canucks to win the cup. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's. Okay.

That paints the picture. there of the craziness around the connects. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow. Okay. Well, I'll tell you why, Jesse, as always, we appreciate the Monday visit. Thanks for, thanks for dropping by the pod. Awesome. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah. And Laz, that, that's actually, well, Jesse, before we let you go, we got to ask you, we opened this show talking about our limited bilingual skills. Me with a little bit of French, Laz with a little bit of Spanish. Does Jesse Granger have a second language in his arsenal. Yeah, I do spanish, but a little Spanish. I took a couple years when I was in school. And at the time, living in America, southern America, seemed like Spanish

was the right call. Did not know I was going to be a hockey writer at the time. Yeah, we should be covering baseball, my man. We should be covering baseball. Yeah, every day I wish. Every day I see Jonathan Marshalls-so speaking with a French reporter, I wish I had taken French because, man, they look like they're having so much fun. You see the French players talk to us And then you see them talk to the French reporters And it's like, man, that looks like such a good interview. I wish I could do that.

I just want you to one time over here, Jonathan Marchesot saying, Ah, Jesse Granger, a trite stupid. He'd say it in English to make sure I could hear. Oh, I love it. Anyway, want to invite our listeners, hit us up, the athletic hockey show, at gmail.com or you can drop us a voicemail.

We would love to hear your voice. 845-4-4-5-8449. That'll be a wrap for the Monday pod. Thanks for listening. Leave us a five-star rating and review. If you're enjoying the show, coming up on Wednesday, it's the Sean and Sean show,

Gentile and Macadoo. They'll be back on Wednesday. We'll be back next one.