The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Postgame Show: The Talking Hockey While Nobody Is Here Show

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Roy Bellamy chats with David Dwork about all things NHL! Roy and David kick things off with an update on the hometown Florida Panthers, a look around the Atlantic Division, and the potential return of Connor McDavid. Then, ESPN Senior NHL Writer Greg Wyshynski enters "The Penalty Box" with Roy and David to discuss the Shane Pinto gambling suspension, the Calgary Flames struggles, the NHL's reversal on "themed tape," and the Frozen Frenzy on ESPN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. Welcome to the Talking Hockey. While nobody is here, my name is Roy Bellamy. David Dwork from The Hockey News is joining me here and we are talking hockey because nobody can stop us because again, nobody is here. So let's talk about the Florida Panthers. We start locally here for a little bit. The Panthers are three, three and zero with six points so far.

Second and last in the division, a bit of a slow start, but we do see some promising returns from this team right now. Currently Alexander Barkoff is ill. We saw that the Meetri Kulakakov is also caught a little bit of the bug. So they didn't make practice today, but some good sign here. Sam Bennett has joined the Panthers in practice, even what you got. Yeah, what's like, Sam Bennett is trending toward playing

in Florida's game on Saturday against the Seattle Crack. And Paul Marie said last week that Bennett was getting closer. He started skating on his own and that he wanted him to get into two good practices before he put him into a game. Saturday against the Seattle crack and Paul Marie said last week that Bennett was getting closer. He started skating on his own and that he wanted him to get into two good practices before he put him into a game. So that would be today. Tomorrow's practice lining him up for Saturday, which would be good. Dependence coming off of a win versus San Jose Sharks.

They are the U.S. team in the league. Unfortunately for Anthony Duclair, who we did get to see, they gave him a trippy video which was also get to see, they gave him a trippy video, which was also great to see. We did see the Panthers control the puck mostly during that game. That was a good sign there as well. Golden is held up. So you're a golden.

So you've seen you know what's going on in the crease. What are you going for that? I've been really happy with the gold tending so far. And I think if you kind of look at my track record over the last few years, I've been fairly critical of Sergey Burrowski deservedly so in my opinion. I think Bob has been great. He's a goalie that usually does not start the season. Well, it takes him while to get going.

And I think he's been really much better than I would have expected early in the year, which is a great sign. And then the backup Anthony Stolars, this massive tank of a man, he's like 66 to 50, 250. And yet somehow he's moving out there with the ebb and flows and ease and beauty of a gold tender. So what's like the Panthers are really set well in their gold and eventually Spencer Knight will be back. And he looked great during camp as well. So it was pretty well set up in the crease.

Well, Team D difference did not look good versus the one of the big jets and at disappointing loss versus the Vancouver Connux. That didn't look great as well but minnesota they look good and they look good versus handles a uh... what you see with the defense i think overall the defense is gonna be okay i mean you mentioned it before they're missing to their key players in air net black and bread and montour

so that's obviously going to set you back but the guys they brought in the alvaret men laris and nickel meekle uva spalin's this who's been a great find basically out of nowhere as they pulled them out of the check extra leader. And he's over here looking like an starting NHL defense and playing quite well. So I think the Panthers are set up pretty good with defense when the big guys get back could just be an embarrassment of rich a situation where the Panthers had made some moves and, you know, maybe bring in some more depth, maybe bolster that team for a playoff run. Very quickly, let's talk about the Atlantic

division. What surprises have you seen out of this division right now? Detroit, just coming out like gangbusters. I mean, it's all Alex the Brinkette, not all, but it's Alex the Brinkette and Dylan Larkin, just spectacular. They've kind of done what we've expected Ottawa to do the last few years, which is be that next good team in granted. We're just a few games into the season, but yeah, Detroit looks great.

And Leaguewide, there has been one huge disappointment. And that's been the M and Tn all is granted. Small or injury, but kind of economic, David. But he seems to be returning for Sunday's heritage classic. What do you got on that? Yeah, it looks like, but David will be back in the line. I mean, they're they're not saying for sure yet, but you know that they want to get them out there for the big game Outdoors Edmonton Calgary I conner McDavid they're gonna do everything they can to get them in the lineup, but overall Edmonton I don't know what's going on

I guess if you were gonna tell me that Edmonton would be the worst team in the league or one of the worst teams in the league and had given up the most goals in the That's not terribly surprising because it's always the question is is there golden and gonna hold up similar to Toronto But yeah, I mean you would think that Edmonton with all that firepower, the mid-David to dry side, they'd be better. You think they're gonna turn it around, but yeah, not the greatest start. All right, the penalty box door has opened. We got some I-8 to serve a five minute major and that person is Greg Versinsky. He's the senior NHL writer for ESPN.com.

He's also the co-host for the drop. Now we had some news come in and recording us on Thursday. Some major major news come in from the NHL. We have a big time suspension for the first time in league history. Well, maybe not even league history, but for the first time in league history during this sports online sports betting era, somebody has been suspended. Shane Pinto, who's currently a restrictive free agent for the Ottawa Senators, has been suspended 41 games of violating the NHL sports betting policy. Greg, give us some information on this. Yeah, it's a bummer. That's 41 games. We won't get to see Shane Pinto with a gambling

advertiser on his helmet for the auto with centers. My God. They were the first team to wear one when it became a kosher in the NHL. But no, again, the thing we have to stress here is that Shane Pinto did not bet on hockey. The NHL was very explicit in that had he bet on hockey, Commissioner Gary Betman probably would abandon for a year or more. That is the one thing you cannot do in this league is bet on hockey. They have it posted in all the locker rooms to not do that.

In this case, the NHL's betting integrity partner found something kind of anomalous on apparently a US online account associated with Pinto bought to the league and it was enough for them to suspend the guy. Look, the bottom line is, whoever was was enough for them to suspend the guy. Look, the bottom line is whoever was going to get suspended first since the NHL started to really partner with these sportsbooks was going to get the hammer. I mean, they were going to get the band hammer pretty hard. 41 games is a lot for whatever Pinto did, but it is a clear signal from the NHL that they're

not going gonna humor anything that looks untoward or challenges the integrity of these games. And Pinto's not appealing, so it apparently is gonna be something he'll serve out until January. And for what I saw, the suspension officially starts the first game of the season for Ottawa.

So him being a restricted free agent, he can very well sign with the team, play with the team and go out from there, right? Yeah. So he's going to be free of sign with them in January. He's a different kind of restricted free agent. Normally, restricted free agents have to sign with their team by December 1st. He's in a different category. So he's able to go and sign with them in January past that deadline. And again, like he, it's funny. Like there's been all this reporting about why is Shane Pinto playing? He's good

player. Like he's pleased. He's gonna end during his fourth season. Good young offensive player for Ottawa. People were like, why is he signed a contract? Why is he in the lineup? But now we understand why, which is that they had an ongoing investigation into this gambling stuff. And so, you know, expect me to rejoin the team in January, but obviously 41 games into the season at the very least. Right, shifting gears, but staying north of the border. I wanted to ask you about what's happening in Calgary right now. Nikita Zedorov came out recently a couple days ago

and really gave it to his teammates up there. Just basically called them out, saying there was no excuses for the team's poor start. I mean, we know what they've gone through in Calgary, the players. I mean, going from Jail Sutter to maybe a more soft coach now, but I just wanted to get your take on what's going on in Calgary because I really feel bad for some of the four to four, former four to Panthers that are up there right now. Yeah. I mean, read between the lines. I think Zdora was basically saying, look, you guys didn't want Darryl Sutter to be the coach. You all called him out. You all said he was the problem.

They get rid of him. And now he still thinks. So like, what's going on here with you guys? Look, the problem with the Calgary Flames is pretty simple. They are a supporting cast in search of a star, right? They are a team that clearly has a lot of talent surrounding what should be there, but is not there in the fact that Johnny Gidro and Matthew Kachuk left two years ago, and then you had a Tyler to fully trade it at the devil's last season or last off season, I should say.

So there are good team, but there just seems to be a hole in that lineup that they simply can't fill. And I think that's one of the reasons why they're going to struggle this year. Going to the pride tape situation and the theme nights, the NHL has changed its mind about players using any sort of tape, I guess, at this point for these theme nights. And all it took was one plan, to all of the time for the Arizona coyotes. Why don't you give us some more information about that? Yeah, the pride tape thing was related to the ban on specialty jerseys. The NHL had during the off season.

So, you know, if you remember last year, you had guys that were boycotting wearing pride night jerseys and warm-ups because of their personal beliefs, usually religious beliefs. The NHL decided to address this by banning all specialty jerseys, be it military appreciation, hockey fights, cancer, whatever, from warm-ups and games and things like that. So then they went one step further and said that players weren't allowed to use the rainbow-colored pride tape on their sticks to support the gay community either. And that resulted in a huge backlash that well, well outside the hockey bubble, you had, you know, social media accounts that are usually tracking who

Arianna Grande is dating, writing about Pride tape, all of a sudden. So a really bad look for the league. The NHL has what's called a players coalition inside their organization. It's co-chaired by PK Sue Bannon and Anson Carter. And that coalition really got the ball rolling internally to say, hey, look, the Pride tape thing was one step too far. We should address this. The NHL, NHL PA, and the coalition all met. And then about a week later, Dermat wrapped his stick with Pride tape during a Coyote's game. And so the combination of those two things led to the reversal of this policy

and look, it only makes sense. If you're going to protect the personal beliefs of a minority of your players based on their religion or what have you, you should also respect the majority of your players' beliefs and wanted to support some of these causes, including the gay community. So it was the right thing to do. And I'm glad that it took a while, but they finally got there. Before we let you out of the penalty box, right, it did wanted to talk to you about something that ESPN did this week. That I thought was awesome as a hockey fan.

And that was the frozen frenzy. We had every single team, if you guys didn't realize this, we had every single NHL team playing on the same day, staggered starts. What I really loved was you guys had whip around coverage, channel like the NFL Red Zone with John Butchardross and Kevin Weitz, and it was just amazing. But from your side of it, I just wanted to get how was it received from the production side?

How is ESPN guys seeing this? It was awesome. The numbers were good. And I think what it did was create a moment for hockey fans to all congregate and have that shared experience. Shared experiences in the current media landscape are very few and far between. You got like the Super Bowl

and like the Game of Thrones finale, right? And like that's it. But for hockey fans, it was a night for a bit to just watch these games, comment on them on social media. The start times are all staggered and it went throughout the night. And the biggest thing from our perspective,

I think, was the reaction. You know, hockey fans, I don't know if you know this guy, a little cynical. A little, a little cynical when it comes to liking things, usually, especially new things or changes to things. But universally, there was a lot of praise for the frozen frenzy, not only in its conception, but it's an execution. So I'd be surprised if we don't do it again. And I think the most fulfilling thing again was the fact that we were able to create something that hockey fans really dug. And that's not an easy thing to do. And my notes on this is this, doing an April and have the game start earlier. He's for the love of the past. I believe in that.

I think in a perfect world, we do one of these in October, get everybody's appetite, wet for hockey. And then like the weekend after the Super Bowl, we do another one of them because the weekend after the Super Bowl is the official start of the NHL season and many people's minds. And so, so we do one early, we do one late, and we do it like twice a year. I mean, again, like I couldn't be happier with the way the thing came off and everybody kind of digging it. So it was, it was fun to see. Greg Rysyski, see you at any show right of ESPN.com and co-hosted a job. Thank you for joining

us anytime. Anytime.