The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 299: Thank You, Next

Episode Date: June 15, 2019

Alex Prewitt joins the show to put a bow on the Stanley Cup Final, discuss how the Blues finally won it all and how they celebrated after behind the scenes. Plus we get into offseason scuttlebutt, the Flyers and Capitals making a trade, the Islanders immediately splashing some cash, and a hockey documentary everyone needs to see.5:00 How Game 7 was won24:00 Offseason rumours and buzz38:00 The Blues celebration behind the scenes46:00 Matt Niskanen being traded for Radko Gudas56:00 The Islanders spending money1:03:00 The Russian FiveSee acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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and joining me is my good buddy Alex Pruitt. Alex, what's going on? It's story time with Alex. Well, not well, Demetri. I have a broken kneecap, broken jaw, broken sternum, re-agravated thumb, and a sprained hand. Yeah, Ben, I think your larynx.

Oh, and a broken humorous. Your larynx is okay, so you should be able to podcast on today. That's actually the worst part of how I'm doing right now, I think is the voice. I think it's totally shot. Yeah. Oh, man.

Poor Kevin Miller. That injury list. Like, I think it's people that have been following the game kind of know it's like a, it's a, It's a tradition where at the end of the season, these lists come out and you're like, how were half of these guys even playing? And it's remarkable that they were as effective as they were. But I think you could tell, especially with that Bruins team as that series is going on,

that they were just like being held together by like scotch tape and band-aids and stuff. It still shocks me, though, just the extent of it, the medical verbiage that seems to come out. Because we get so little of it, right, during the year, all we get is, you know, the most will get as like a re-agravated lower body injury. but the specificity that seems to come out on on breakdown day it's it's aptly named breakdown day i mean we've talked about this on a podcast a bunch and it's not necessarily ground-baking information but and it's never we're never going to take games off of the slate because then you're taking money out of people's pockets and that's never going to happen but man it's it's i mean the fact that

that last game was on june 12th and you know season starts what first week of october and the mileage and just how difficult these games are, especially in the postseason, just how, I don't know, at some point it stops feeling and not to take anything away from the blues. And I think certainly durability and having enough depth to make up for those injuries is a skill and teams should be lauded for it. But at some point, it kind of stops being like fully about just like skill and who's the best team and just more like luck and sort of just who can withstand the war of attrition the best or the least worst or, or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure from the inside there's so much reward and gratification that comes with playing through that stuff that comes with, especially winning when you're banged up, when the sacrifice is tangible, when you can feel it in your body. But from the outside, I'm just like, what the hell are you doing? Like, what are you playing through here? Like the hockey culture of just suck it up and kind of grit through some of these things, especially when it falls kind of nebulous stuff like the head. I'm kind of baffled sometimes.

I mean, it's amazing at once and also kind of disturbing, no? Yeah, no, well, that's the thing. There's certain injuries, I guess you could say, like, realistically, you can only make it so much worse, or it's a type of thing where it might just be a pain tolerance issue, and then after, you know, you have a summer off, you'll be good to go. But then there's certain stuff where it's like, if you're, like, putting your long-term future health when you're in your 40s in jeopardy because of this, like, I get the bravado and sort of the culture around hockey and sort of this warrior mentality.

But I mean, you got to kind of weigh the risk or reward and think about this stuff a bit more rationally. Everyone wants to win the cup, obviously. But man, when you're putting your literal quality of life after hockey and jeopardy, that's something that as we learn more, especially about the head injuries component of it, is becoming like really tough to rationale and reconcile just as a fan. Yeah. Whereas like I'm worried about, you know, having too many watermen. melon sour gummies in the press box or something like what problems we have i mean i'm so washed up i'm getting worried these days like if i'm if i'm starting to have a couple beers i'm like oh man i got i

better get better get the waters going tomorrow morning's to be really rough for me that's that's the other part i started thinking about this when the caps were celebrating last year and they just went all day drinking constantly like these guys are machines these guys are drinking machines and maybe maybe this kind of speaks to what we don't know behind the scenes or maybe they're just you know athletes and they can kind of take a lot of punishment and rehydrate really quickly. But man, just like, I was kind of standing there in the blues locker room as they were, you know, celebrating and throwing champagne everywhere and everyone's taking a turn chugging out of the cup right from the equipment guys to owner Tom Stillman.

And they were about to fly home at like 2 a.m. land at 8, land at in St. Louis. And then immediately go to the arena for another party. I'm like, how do you have the stamina for this right now? And then you're going to do it for the next couple of days. Like, like you said, I had two beers last night. dinner and like I'm I was fine it was great but I don't want to do it anymore no I know it really takes its toll I don't know these guys are are wired differently they're animals but there's probably some like um scientific like metabolism component to this as well oh for sure their bodies

handle it a bit better than you and I do um okay let's talk a bit about so we're going to do a bit of game seven stuff kind of put a bow on the cup final in the series you were obviously there you were bouncing around between st louis and boston and and I want to hear about uh sort of what people we're talking about behind the scenes and what some of the buzz for the summer was. But let's first get to that game seven because obviously we're recording this on a Saturday morning slash early afternoon. And we've had a few days here to marinate on it as opposed to just like immediately churning out an instant reaction podcast.

And as time's gone on, like it's just thinking about that game seven, it's amazing how I think if the Bruins do get one of those goals early on when they were just peppering the blues and peppering Jordan Bennington with shots, this game. games obviously like entirely different right just the fact that bittington stepped up made some of those big saves in the first period and allow them to kind of get their sea legs a little bit and score those two goals early like after that it was just completely unlock in the second and third period with one of the better sort of team defensive efforts that i can remember seeing in some time yeah i think if they get one of those 12 in the first period against jordan vittenden as you said or if bradmarshand's

mind doesn't go for a walk with 10 seconds left and decide to change and let alks betrangelo kind of walk at the slot after a pretty nice play admittedly from jane schwartz but you can kind of see marcia was on tire legs right there as he whiffs for a hit and then doesn't even really turn around to see what's going on he just heads right to the bench and um i thought that was kind of a killer there with 10 seconds left to obviously go up 2-0 but um yeah i know you're right back to the kind of physical going to down part of it um that's been the blues mo's since bruby took over i think um they're maybe not going to win the shot battle every night but um they're going to protect the house pretty well. And I was particularly impressed with their ability to kind of get sticks and lanes,

especially in the neutral zone. There was nothing north-south that I thought Boston was really able to get of substance, especially as the game plotted on and they were able to tighten up there on the St. Louis end. So, yeah, it was kind of a typical St. Louis victory, I thought, just wear him down, wear him down. Opportunistic goal here or there, you know, take advantage of a guy, you know, a nice tip by O'Reilly or a guy going to the bench for a chain, a suboptimal change like Marchand. And then you're up and you just kind of rely on the structure. that got you there. Yeah, I mean, the Blues, the Bruins had six high danger chances in first period, and then they had, I think, three combined the rest of the way. There you go. And that kind of is

the story of this game. And, you know, full credit to Jordan Bittington, because I did a sort of Game seven preview before it with Justin Boren. And I was talking about how I really hope that he didn't win the cons my eighth, even if the Blues won. And he ultimately didn't know went to Ryan O'Reilly just because I felt like he wasn't deserving of it. It's obviously a great story in terms of him coming in halfway through the year getting hot carrying this team of this far a rookie goalie uh winning all 16 playoff games for first time ever like i get all that but just watching some of these games like and i guess this is sort of um the risk versus reward with him or the or sort of um you could kind of look at it as a glass half full sort of mentality because i thought there were

certain games where he certainly wasn't nearly as good as people would make you think that he was but then it seems like every time he did have a bad game like in game six for example he'd come back in game seven and just have a world-class performance. And we saw it again here, and I think that's sort of what's drawing in people with this story about him and his performance this year is sort of that like kind of cool, confident demeanor that leads to some of these strong bounce back performances where he seems a bit unflappable like he has a bad game. And then no matter what, you don't think it's going to spiral into three or four bad

games in a row, he'll kind of bounce back and give them a chance to win. And that's exactly what happened here. Where was he on your hypothetical cons, Khan-Smith ballot. I mean, I honestly had him behind Rask. I had, mine was like, Pariko one, O'Reilly, two, Rask, three, and then it probably would get into like, I might even have Alex Petrangelo ahead of him, to be honest, but like then I'd start considering it. Like, I just, game five, he was awesome, obviously, and he helped them steal that game in Boston and in game seven in the first period. He was a difference maker, but if you watch these games, like, I ultimately

think the Blues won this year, not because they had the better goaler, because Jordan Biddington's in his head, but because they just had the better, healthier team, like flat out. Yeah, a lot of first saves from Jordan and then a lot of nice rebounds that St. Louis won 50-50 races too. Well, and that's the thing. That's when I talk about, like, how he's in a great position. Like, the Blues are clearly a strong defensive team, and we saw that in the second and third period in terms of how they can limit the quality and sort of how they can clog up the neutral zone. But I think that's like an under-talked-bought component of this where I do think, as this postseason went along, his rebound control was pretty suspect.

and just it seems like every time he does carve up a rebound, like there's someone there from wearing a blues jersey to quickly clean it up for him. And that must be a pretty sweet, luxurious spot to be in as a goalie as a goalie where you know you really just need to focus on making that one first save. I will say that in game seven, he was magnificent. He was, as the game went on, I thought for sure. But yeah, to your point, yeah, he's, you know, looking at what he loses in game three, he has five goals, gets pulled for the first time, comes back,

save two goals allowed in game four one goal allowed in game five and 38 saves and then another kind of stinker in game six and yeah so I mean calm cool collected was a story with him I was kind of he's kind of a little hot head though no like I mean you go back to the miners where he's starting to brawl by slashing guy and um the little interaction he had with bishop in the second round I think was pretty premeditated I think he was like trying to agitate a little bit I think he has that that impulse in him where um he's he's self-aware enough to know that um he has the reputation is kind of the icy calm guy. So if he sneaks a little slash in there,

if he jabs a guy or throws an elbow or something after the whistle, he might get away with it. I think he's a little more calculated than people think in that regard. No, I think the kind of comical demeanor is like off the ice where he doesn't really seem to show a bunch of emotion or get too high or too low. On the ice, it's certainly a different story. Definitely. Yeah, no, I think, I mean, it is really that simple.

Like, if that game just entirely shifted, but just based on how that first period went. And just watching those second and third periods, clearly the Bruins were sort of running on fumes and didn't have that much left in the tank to begin with, but any sort of inspiration or hopes they might have had entering that second period to come back from that two-gold deficit, like almost immediately the Blues just shut the door on that

with what I thought was a neutral zone master class where how many times did the Bruins cleanly just exit, and then carry into the offensive zone without like two blues defenders just all up in their space, either disrupting them or stealing the puck or making it difficult for them. Like it just felt like they were everywhere. And it was sort of like the beauty of this blues team down the stretch under Craig Baroube, where it did really feel like they were kind of like all pushing and pulling in the same direction as one cohesive unit.

And that was really fun to watch. Having a guy like O'Reilly, who is as good as any defenseman at retrieving pucks, is definitely helpful, especially when you guys have pinching, the guys pinching the offensive zone. I thought Boston might have tried to go airborne a little bit more, kind of the lob to space and maybe rely on some of their small forwards to go get it and enter cleanly. But at the same time, St. Louis's guys are so good at getting back.

I mean, Perrako is an oak tree, but he skates pretty well. Even Trando is pretty sound. And obviously, a guy like Dunn, I think maybe changed the complexion of the series when he came back in the lineup what he was able to do in terms of retrievals and moving the puck north-south unlike some of the other guys back there. So, yeah, I know tough time. I was, like you, I was pretty impressed with the number of, you know, maybe little saucer passes or stuff off the boards that Boston try,

you know, a little chip to space or kind of little short area plays that they normally are pretty good at to spring their guys and come and clean in the offensive zone. And then every time it seemed to be that there was a stick there, wave in it, and it was knocked down and it was going the other way or it was knocked down and it was getting held it all the way back to Bennington or whoever the last knee man back was. And up they go and dump in and wear them down and kind of rinse and repeat. Well, you mentioned. having Ryan O'Reilly certainly helps.

Having Alex Petrangelo and Colin Preco, at least one of them out there for, I believe, like, 51 of the 60 minutes, certainly helps. Like, it felt like as the game was going on, you know, they were getting Edmondson and Gunnerson and Dunn out there, but it felt like they scrapped the idea of having three defense bearings that were just like, okay, we're just going to have Preco and Petrangelo, and then we're going to just mix and match with all of the other guys. and they played a heck of a game, they played a heck of a series in postseason. And I, you know, credit, I guess, to Craig Barouba for sort of, it seems obvious. It's like, oh, player, best players, but considering all the angst with Mike Babcock in round one and some stuff we've seen and talked about this postseason, like it's not necessarily that simple. It is a bit ballsy, especially this late in the year where the guys might not necessarily have as much left in the tank as they would have otherwise.

And for those two guys to be just absolute workhorses for them, certainly, you know, kudos to Barubi. and the blues for trusting them and riding them and kudos to those guys for playing as well as they did 54 minutes 5 seconds of 5u 5u 5 time on ice total in game 7 and parakego and petrangelo combined for 4832 did you uh i tweeted this preco i promise uh i am not a colden preiko's agent

i've uh i've been talking about quite a bit here recently but you know in round one him and bohmey's just struggled a little bit just with that shipler wheeler wheeler line and i'll give him a pass for that because those guys are so defensively and and they gave up five goals against a 5-1-5 in that series after that. So in rounds 2, 3, 4 against the star, sharks, and Bruins, all three pretty, you know, not the stars were in a great offensive team, but they had great offensive players that could really beat you. And Pariko was playing against those guys pretty much exclusively. And 430 total 5-on-5 minutes in those three series

combined, the Blues gave up eight goals in that time, which is just absolutely insane. And it speaks to when he was on the ice, it was pretty much just game over for the other team, like regardless of whether they had their best guys or the best defensive pairings out there, they just weren't going to score any goals because he was just shutting everything down. And obviously having Bennington to make the space behind him as well certainly helps. But yeah, it was, and that's why I had him as first on my, on my cons my ballot. I just thought that he was the most impactful player for this Blues team. O'Reilly was in this series, certainly, but it's not like the NBA where it's an NBA Finals award.

It's a full postseason longevity award. And I thought Breako was their best player from start to finish. I don't know if we'll ever get enough counting stats to be in Norris Trophy conversation, especially as they went to Dunn on PP1 away from him. And I think kind of shifted the focus away from that big boomer of a slap shot on top of the point. But he was the best defenseman in the playoffs for sure. I feel like we should, yeah, definitely take some time to acknowledge the job that he did. Locking down those top lines.

And also to that extent, I feel like free in Petrangelo up a little bit. Just looking at the number of Patrangelo was like, plus seven in 5E5 goal differential in the entire series. And I think he led the team with like a 55 coursey four. So springing him up, freeing him up a little bit. I mean, Dunn's offensive zone starts when he came back in the lineup where 80% or something crazy like that and the shot differential reflected that. So the trickle down effect that also that you had of having such a sturdy rock back there,

like Colton Pereko. And look, Jay Beaumister was not the dead weight that I think people might have expected him to be when he was getting talked about getting waived in the middle of the season either. No, he wasn't. But playing with Golden Breco, I imagine, makes a lot of guys look better than it might be. It makes up for a lot of your mistakes with that long reach of his. No, you're right. It all kind of ties together.

And this kind of, you know, ties to the Bruin struggles, right? Like, it's at the end of the day, obviously they made it to this game seven at home. I think it's disappointing for them not to have sealed a deal and won it. But you look at it, I mean, their top line with all three of those guys out there scored zero goals in this series. like Bergeron and Marshan created that 1-5-1-5 goal late in game 6 when it was already over. But Bergeron was on the ice for zero goals, four, and six goals against 5-15 and 80 minutes in the series. And a lot of that is going against Pariko and Beaumaster. And that certainly makes life difficult.

But what I wanted to get into more is like, and there's certainly injuries, right? Like we saw that, you know, I think Bergeron, even at the start of this postseason, just moving up and down the ice, did not look like the Patrice-Ber's. is wrong we've come to know and love and and Pastornak with that thumb injury you had you know you could see certainly on some of the one timers there wasn't as much zip on them as there might have been during the regular season

but there's also this like element of um and I don't mean to relitigate this like does skill win in the post season or is it you know toughness and intangibles it's clearly a combination of both and you need a certain baseline level of skill to do it but it felt like for that top ruin's top line you know what made them so special throughout the season was

that sort of crisp precision passing of theirs where they're just going east-west across the ice and getting the goalie moving and opening up the defense and those pastur-knack one-timers. And we saw, you know, Marshaun did score that one beautiful goal on the power play with that similar type of passing play in game six. But it felt like they were still trying to go back to that well because that's what they know and that's what makes them so successful throughout the year. But whether it was the combination of the injuries or playing against Preclo and Beaumaster or the horrible ice, I thought the puck was just bouncing.

around everywhere as that series went along. Yeah. A lot of those passing plays just kind of died, right? Like there wasn't the same crispness or movement to them. It allowed Bennington and the Blues defense to get set maybe even like a half second more than they would have otherwise under ideal circumstances. And so that's ultimately, I think, a big reason why we saw that lethargic lack of offense from them.

It's just, it was this kind of confluence of factors that made it really tough for them to do what they want to do out there when they're really humming and firing on all cylinders. How about you? I'm all four moving the cup final up. so we don't get this kind of mid-June, 90-degree nonsense, where the ice is affected like it was. Because, I mean, you're absolutely right, especially as a series we're on, the quality of passes.

I don't think that these players magically lost their touch. I feel like it's more of the surface to blame than anything. It does take away a little bit. And, you know, maybe Boston should adjust it, especially that top line. Maybe they should have, you know, tried to find a way to change their game a little bit. But when you're, you know, literally known as the perfection line. Okay, come on.

No one calls in that. That is like the most. Oh boy. I mean, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, though, because I mean, I read so many stories where especially, even from St. Louis media,

you know, just dropping into St. Louis for games three and four, there was, you know, so much written about, shutting down the so-called perfection line and stuff. I'm like, when did this become a nickname?

But, I mean, look, they were probably the best line in hockey for other season, you know, definitely top three. But they were that way because they were maybe,

to your point, playing a little bit more of a regular season style of hockey. at least something that you can't get away with when A, the ice is that bad and then be the defensive structure on the other side is that good. Yeah, and the injuries and everything. And I mean, just go back and look at that game seven. Like some of the saves by Bennington were certainly, you know, remarkable athletic

feats like with the stretching out and the reaction time and everything. But most of those saves, if you look at them, are Bruins shooters not getting right into the pads. Oh yeah, it's like all in the ice like Pucks balancing. It's a lot of like just kind of half-hearted not not half-hearted efforts, but like they're not getting the full zip on them. And so in today's game like most of these goalies, we constantly see like, oh, this goalie's weakness is high glove. This goalie's weakness is high blocker. It's like yeah, generally like a perfect shot that's like off the bar and in is going to be much tougher to stop than something on the ice where these ridiculous size pads they're wearing these days are just going to just stop everything. And so in that game, the Bruins, especially in the first period, had a lot of chances.

But a lot of them was stuff along the ice where it made life a bit easier for Binnington to just stretch its pads out and block it. Yeah, agreed. All right, let's take a quick break here. We're going to hear from a sponsor. And then I want to pick a random bunch of stuff. Get that cash. Get that paper. Yeah.

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pick up on some stuff, people are gravitating towards a couple topics, whether it's, you know, summer transactions or rule changes or, or kind of stuff that they've been hearing and that's being passed along. Like, you hear a lot of like, you know, rumor mongering or you hear a lot of scuttle butt. And I'm kind of curious on what was going on there. So let's start with some the behind the scene stuff and we'll transition into, into the buzz that it was around the series. The initial premise assumes that I'm out having beers and having dinner with people. Oh, I've seen, I've seen, I've seen Alex Pruitt out in town. I was.

Don't worry. None of them are like you. I was definitely tapered this cup, I think, than I've ever been. As far as, no, I was just kind of busy. You know, we, the magazine schedule was such that we basically had to plan for both the blues and the Bruins winning. And I kind of had to have something ready at the gun. And then that went all to hell when St. Louis ended up winning game six. And I was kind of running around crazy trying to get something for game seven.

Is Sports Illustrated going to send your Bruins win the Stanley Cup? Um, go straight down, an article to like, uh, people in need that they can like read it for entertainment. Yeah, exactly. Like they send it with like merchandise. They should send something else in if they want entertainment. Here's what I love about kind of a social aspect. And we can get to the scuttle button in a second.

But, um, all sorts of cultures come together at the Stanley Cup. I feel like in a way, um, that is probably not the case in other sports, at least from a reporter standpoint. Um, you have groups of fins. You have groups of Russians. You have groups of Swedes. Um, obviously it kind of depends on the nationalities of people. who are in the cup final.

You have interviews being conducted in French. I mean, one of my favorite things to come out of this was, I don't know if you saw the article from Chris Johnson, front of the program, writing about what one of the members of the Finnish media were asking Tuka asked. Just these absolutely really silly questions because normally the way it works is, you know,

you get a press conference, English-speaking media asked the majority of the questions, and then they'll tack on a foreign language one at the end. So this Finnish report, Dante, kind of forget his last name, but apologies to him for that. He just started asking Tuka Rask kind of silly questions, referencing old stuff that happened like the time he played an entire tennis match against a pro who was using a frying pan and Tuka lost.

Just these little things that you wouldn't know and wouldn't really learn about unless either A, you take the time to ask or B, you know the language. And then to see, you know, all these cultures kind of coming out together. And like you said, exchanging a little info because, you know, these guys get to know people like Tuka Rask or the Czechs get to know David Posternak or whomever, or whomever at a much deeper level than we do. It's like if I was working in Russia and covering an American guy in the KHL or something,

we would kind of develop a relationship, I think, that is unique, at least among native speakers of that country. So that was one thing I took away. As far as the Scuttle Book goes, I don't know, we can talk about whatever. Big thing I'm looking forward to in the offseason is kind of seeing what happens with maybe the best RFA class

that we've had in recent memory, whether some GMs are finally going to throw some offer sheets and kind of back up the talk that we seem to hear every year about, oh, this is the year where it might happen, where one GM might buck the status quo and go against the establishment and throw a whole bunch of money at people, because there are some names out there. I mean, obviously the big ones, Rotten and Marner, Kachuk Point, Line A, et cetera. But on down the list, may a guy like Casbury Capitan and get taken advantage of as far as Toronto's cap situation goes or let someone take a run at Timelmeyer depending on what San Jose decides to do with Eric Carlson and where their cap situation is.

There's a lot of interesting storylines I feel like as far as that goes, but I wish I was more plugged into the ground as far as rumors and I could just be like a TSN trade center here and just kind of spitting stuff out, but I was a little bit more head down. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of that stuff's really going to ramp up around the draft, both in terms of transactions but also in terms of like you know these rumors that we're hearing about and sort of stuff to look forward to ahead of july first but it yeah the uh it's tough because on the one hand we do this like annual dance where i do really want to get excited about it feels like this year more

so than any both because there's such a high volume of these high priced rfas but also because it seems like most of the teams that have them are in a bit of a financial bind and are either going to have to get ahead of it and, you know, move quality players similar to how, like, the Blackhawks did for all those championship years just to clear up space so they can keep some other guys or there is going to be stuff that happens here, right? Like, it's, I don't know, this whole idea that, um, you don't want to sign an offer sheet for another team's player because you worry that there's going to be retribution and they're going to come back after you.

It's like, well, that's great. But if you just do your job well and handle your finances and don't sign terrible contracts, you will always be able to retain your best players. Like, that's not something I would be particularly worried about if I was a GM. I wouldn't be worried about retribution either because you get the player. Exactly. Yeah. Well, theoretically, right?

They have to sign. There's a lot that has to go into it. The team won't match and all this, et cetera. But I think that would be a risk worth taking because you get the better player in it. Like, what's the retribution going to be? You know, he doesn't trade with you for a lesser player. Well, I think the worry is like when you are in a similar spot as them and you have a young RFA, they're going to come back and throw a max offer sheet at them.

And it's like, okay, well, either. Well, you should be smarter then. Like, you'll learn from that first time and you won't do the same mistakes that they do. I don't know. Well, yeah. And also, it's like if they come back and offer sheet one of your best young players for a lot of money, either he's worth it and then you can just match that offer sheet or you just take a bunch compensatory picks that they give you if you deem that that guy's not worth it and that's perfectly

fine as well like there's no i don't know this idea that like it's going to come back to bite you in the ass it just seems so uh silly to me but i listen these guys want to maintain the status quo it is a bit of an old boys club and and they want to maintain their friendships and so they don't want to bring any bridges and that's why this stuff happens but from a viewership and entertainment perspective i feels like all we really need is one i know we've had a couple instances here and there in the past but it feels like this summer, if there's like one offer sheet that comes out of the gate hot, I feel like it could open the door for some other shenanigans down the line. We've already had the Capitol's drought and the Blues drought.

And now let's have the offer sheet drought. It's the drought no one's talking about. I mean, also from kind of an entertainment, I guess viewership perspective, maybe not from a human perspective because I don't like to see people lose their jobs. But there's a lot of buyout candidates. It feels like some big names with big salaries out west. And not necessarily who's getting bought out because I feel like the list. of Luchich-Erikson, Finoff, Perry, et cetera,

is kind of set at least as candidates, but what those teams are going to do with that space because there's a lot of teams out West that need to make some moves from the Kings, Canucks, Oilers, and Ducks, I feel like, are kind of the big four right now. Looking to see what kind of leaps they make with some of these albatross contracts,

what they're going to do to, I don't know if Jim Benning is going to go out and buy an entire third line, like he bought a fourth line last year with the cap space that he has. But, you know, some pretty good teams from years gone by in the ducks and in the kings are probably going to shed some big contracts. So looking to see what kind of noise they make. Are they candidates for that offer stuff?

I don't know. Are they candidates just for a little more noise and free agency? But kind of the retooling at the bottom of the standings, I think, is something I'm going to be paying attention to. Here's the other thing. Obviously, there's the upcoming expansion draft to consider. And we're going to see a lot of that in terms of teams worrying about the contracts they have in place. in terms of obviously we've seen a lot of teams like make sure that they have that backup goalie signed long term so they can expose them and and you know you don't want to necessarily be handing out

or taking on a bunch of contracts with no move clauses because then you automatically you have to protect them and then maybe it kind of ties your hands with another younger player but there's also this kind of added element of you know the CBA's coming up soon and whether that's going to result in a lockout or not we'll see but it's presumed that there's going to be some more compliance buyouts coming down the road with that as well to kind of allow GMs get out of jail free card. And so that's another such like a fascinating element or wrinkle to this where I'm curious to see what the trickle down effect is with some of these contracts that are going to be handed

out because GMs can act knowing that they can kind of swing for the fences. And if it doesn't work out, they've got this get out of jail free card in their back pocket. So that's another thing. There's like this so many with the expansion draft with the RFAs with the rising cats. with everything, there's so much potential, I guess, for movement. And then I guess maybe as hockey fans, we should know that we shouldn't get too excited because usually the buzz doesn't necessarily line up with what actually ultimately happens. Yeah.

At the same time, though, I'm hopeful. It feels like maybe we're at the cusp of this, but I'm certainly hopeful that we're entering an age of where free agents actually take agency upon themselves. Obviously, we saw it with John Tavares and probably going to see it again. Fingers crossed, because I think that's great from entertainment perspective, the bidding process, the rumors, et cetera. It's great for the game with Eric Carlson and Matthew Shea and this year,

and Sergey Barbowski and Artemie Panarin. Feels like it's as good a free agent class as we've had in the past couple of years, assuming those guys don't get locked up beforehand. So I would obviously like to see more of that. I don't know. I'm sure like term limits aren't going to be on the table, reduce term limits in the next CBA, but that's something I feel like that has benefited the NBA transaction wire,

giving guys the opportunity to get out. their deals a little bit earlier, evaluate the market, and then that in turn generates a lot of buzz. Yeah, I would love to see the, like, the player option at least introduced, you know, so guys can get out of their deals a bit earlier, and it does give star players with, I guess, the leverage for, like, earning power, the opportunity to control their own fate. I'm not sure if that's a pipe dream or not. But, I mean, I feel like you were put on this earth to document these, like, interview processes and give us a behind the scenes look at like the whining and dining and and everything that's going on

with some of these star players as they visit different markets and try to get wooed like I I would love to see that I think uh you and I talked about this obviously the Tiberas was one the stamp goes was another but I feel like I'd like to see a bit more of that and and and uh you know with the social media era and with everything in 2019 um it lends itself to really like giving giving the fans um like a passenger seat for that ride to kind of follow along and and see what's going on in some of these circles with some of these star players that and arbitration are i think kind of my two narrative white whales at this point yeah something that would love to be kind of on the

inside and peel back the curtain too but um it's a two-way and sometimes three-way street when you're dealing with both the teams and the players themselves um and there's a lot of a lot of deep-rooted hockey culture to overcome as far as like convincing guys to open up their lives and open up meetings and get a little bit under the hood in that way. Well, oh, man, the contentious arbitration ones. Like, I would love, I don't think it necessarily turned out that nasty, but I imagine, I guess we'll see what William Carlson's next contract looks like, right? But obviously after the year he had, after their expansion season, and then what he got paid

and how he followed it up this year, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for the nights negotiating that one-year deal. that he just got this year as opposed to what he was probably asking for after scoring 40 goals. If you remember, when they took Nate Schmidt, they went to arbitration with him. Pretty unnecessarily, I thought. I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think that was the only RFA that they had an issue with coming out of the expansion draft resigning. And it did seem to me like a little bit of posturing. Like they kind of wanted to set a hard line with one of their guys and like go there rightly or longly.

So I could see, yeah, this is getting a little contentious now that William Carlson is up. And, you know, given the 40 goal season and then obviously the regression that was expected to happen and did happen. Because he's not going to have 40 every year. He's not going to go on a PDO vendor every year. And then how that's going to be reflected in RBA discussions. I think history shows that George McPhee, he'll go to war for that stuff. He will. But I mean, what, he scored like probably 25 goals or something this year off the top of my head.

And as we're given his two-way value at that position, like he's going to get paid handsomily. I'm not worried about it. And it should be, yeah, 24 goals, 56 points. Like that's probably where William Carlson is. Yeah, yeah. I think that's going to work out for both parties. What was the, I know you wanted to share, because you obviously wrote about this at Sports Illustrated, and people should go read that, but were there a couple of nuggets you wanted to share

from the behind the scenes of the celebration after game seven or any stuff that was left on the cutting room floor that you can give us? Yeah, yeah. I don't know how this happened. I wound up basically just in the corner of the locker room. as all the champagne is getting sprayed and all the beers being drank. And this is like right after the all nice stuff, right after the family's kind of cleared out.

And all the players decamp and the coaches, they retreated the locker room for their own little private celebration. I hadn't thought about this ahead of time, but I was wearing a rain jacket to the game just because that's one of the warmest jackets I own. That turned out to be a very smart move. It's like a poncho. I was like standing on top of like a little curtain platform

because the entire floor was just a puddle of beer and champagne at that point by the time I came in. And this little routine developed where everyone, anytime anyone knew came in, and this is from medical trainers, equipment managers, players, coaches. At one point, there was a big cheer up of, let's find Larry for Larry Robinson. Everyone was referring to Larry as 10. Anytime they wanted Larry to drink, they would just yell out 10 because the number of cups that he had won. and on down the list people would come in this room

the cup was at the center of it then people would come in they would pour a bunch of beer in it everyone would start chanting the baseline of Seven Nation Army everyone would start spraying champagne and beer this like giant car wash of booze and then they would take a drink from the cup

and this went on for like an hour an hour and a half or so where like pretty much to the point you know PR people social media managers alumni etc everyone's just kind of drinking from the cup and getting to share it together. So that's something I'll remember.

You know, I hadn't been, this is my fourth cup for SI. The first year, I'm trying to think. First year was Nashville, or sorry, Pittsburgh San Jose. Didn't get a heck of a lot of behind the scenes there. The second year I was basically parked outside the Pittsburgh dressing room when they went in Nashville. And I think I was like hanging on to Phil Pritchard, the Hall of Fame guy, definitely hanging on to an agent at some point.

And just basically just watching, kind of observing. But this was the, this was the club. closest I'd ever gotten to like actually seeing kind of the celebration that you that you get to watch, you know, via reporters in the NFL, baseball, basketball, where, you know, everyone's wearing the goggles and all the locker rooms are kind of tarped down and everyone's spraying champagne. This was a little bit more of a, I don't know, just a basic operation. There was no tarps. There were no goggles.

There were just buckets of beer and boxes of champagne. Like I said, the party was, it started there, but it continued to, you know, it continued, raging right onto those charter buses and straight to the airport and then all the way back home where they stayed partying at nationwide so yeah i mean going through my notebook you know tom stillman got the same treatment as as the equipment guys did where he comes in and um he basically just has you know two like two bottles of beer poured over his head while he's drinking from the cup and this is the owner um jake allen emergent from the locker room onto the ice with a slice of pizza and this is like before everyone's gone back in and the only thing he says is oh got to establish a base here

Did someone toss Jake Allen a beer and it went through his hand and he couldn't stop it? Oh, yes. That's Stanley Cup champion Jake Allen to me. That's Stanley Cup champion Jake Allen to you. Professional door opener, Jake Allen. What was Michael Delzato after? Was he DJing? No, Braden Shend was the DJ.

They had already played Gloria by the time I got in there. Although when I got in there, he had quieted everyone down and said, we're going to put a song on. and then he put on shipping up to Boston. Nice. He put on a little bit of Dropkick Murmys, I think. It was a nice little troll move. I would say Ivan Barbershev's, the early candidate for the Jacob Varana

Drunkest Euro Award. Oh, man, I really hope Jacob Rana last year getting a wrist tattoo and then taking a selfie and lifting up the sleeve of his t-shirt to show off his wrist tattoo is peak drunkenness. And I hope Ivan Barbershev. I mean, those are big shoes for him to fill the summer. For those of people who haven't seen the video of Jacob Oran, with Caps play-by-play guy Joe Beninati at like 2 a.m. at a restaurant where

Jacob's trying to do Joe's goal calls. Please go check it out on Twitter. You know, I saw Barbachev. He was time and time again, basically just pouring entire bottles of beer over his own head while he was face-timing with friends. There was an entire rack of PDa light that was just unattended. And I always saw like two players have some Gatorade. So they went pretty hard. Not a lot of rehydration going on. Yeah, who was, uh, well, you, I was going to say that, you know, we saw some pictures from the team playing and it looked like Patty Maroon and Ryan O'Reilly certainly kept the party going on there at least. But was there anyone that was really sticking out in terms of going hard with the

drinking? There were two championship belts that were floating around. So I feel like every time that reached a new person, that person seemed a little bit more emboldened. I'm not sure where they got where they got them from these like wrestling belts. They had the NHL logo on them. So I assume the league gave it to them. I don't know. I got a chance to talk with Jordan Bennington for maybe like 10 minutes or so, I just kind of stole him away before they left to the bus. He was already changed out of his clothes or out of his champagne soaked championship t-shirt stuff. And we just kind of sat on the bench for a little while.

And he was kind of reflecting about his journey. And I think that was maybe a little more open than I've heard Jordan be in the past. You know, talking about a couple years back, he'd, you know, he was partying like any normal, I think 20-something would over the summer. But the way Matt Nicol framed it to him was basically, you know, to be an NHL goaltender is not normal. Like you've got to cut some of that stuff out. And the way he,

the way Matt, for people who don't know, runs the bio steel gym where, you know, McDavid and Sagan and Tom Wilson and Wayne Simmons and all these guys train, the way he framed it to Jordan was basically like,

you know, you can party now like you're doing or you can work really hard now and have a really big party later. And this is a really big party. You know, the last thing he said to me, I asked him,

you know, if so else are you going to have a, big party now and he goes oh yeah i'm going to drop 50k on my party easily um so i think his mind had had kind of wandered he was you know obviously like we talked about so stone cold focus throughout this entire thing but um you know as they're up four one or at a three one whatever in the um in the third period i think his mind kind of started to to drift towards the magnitude of his story and um just how far he really has come from being the fourth string goalie so to kind of get him away from the celebration like that um where it's died down you know he's sitting on the

bench that there's Gatorade bottles and beer beer cans everywhere and the ice is empty and he's looking at the spot where all the teammates came off the bench and went to flood him and goal and he's kind of talking about just how far he had come since he's you know getting demoted to the ECHL and refusing that assignment and sitting at home for two weeks because no team really wants them. Those are the kind of quiet moments that that as a storyteller I kind of cherish in the aftermath of the Stanley Cup and I had gotten to a certain point where I was just like standing in that room and people were there was just you know another champagne spray after another champagne spray I'm like all right I kind of get the gist here like I can only I can only say I can

only say he popped a bottle so many times yeah but you know it was also Bobby plague are sitting outside in the hallway and he refused to go in because he had only one suit and he didn't want to get it wet I and this was kind of a blind quote because I didn't write down who said it but somebody somebody came up to Bobby at one point one of the players and said we can curse on here right yeah absolutely he said quote we lost the first game and I was shitting my pants And it's, you know, that's kind of the honesty that comes out, kind of the big release after, to tie back to the beginning, after all the physical and emotional investment, it's, you know, Vlad Tarasenko hugging Doug Armstrong and basically telling him, like,

thanks for not trading us all away, because look at where it got us. So those are the kind of scenes that, you know, it was very worthwhile for me to be back there and stuff that hopefully made a good story. So, yeah, please, please go read it. That's awesome, man. Yeah, and I enjoyed it. I recommend everyone goes to read it. And I think let's move on from this cup final. I feel like we did it justice. We put a bow on it.

Was there anything else that we wanted to get to from this series? No, I would like to break some extremely important news that just came off Twitter, though. Okay. The flyers have placed Andrew McDonald on waivers for the purpose of the buyout. Wow. Wow. It's the stuff your listeners really, really want to know. The end of an era.

I mean, honestly, the fact that he made it this deal. into that contract. Pretty amazing. It's a testament to him, the ineptitude of the flyers. It's all of it. I remember when that trade happened and when that contract came out, man, there were people that were actually at the time still defending the value of a player like Andrew McDonald and sort of how you needed to pay those guys and how they were a very valuable

defenseman. And it does feel like for all the consternation about how there's still pushback and there's still old school types in the media and around the game. game. It feels like we've come a long way since the days of arguing about Andrew McDonald and whether he was worth a five-year-old, five-year deals. I don't think we need to spend any more time there. No, but I do want to talk about the flyers. Please. They made a trade. They did. And it was an interesting one because we do very rarely see these types of trades in hockey where it's like, it's the quote-unquote like just good old-fashioned hockey trade where it's like a one-for-one,

but it's two guys who play the same position, who are in relative same parts of their career in terms of they're both veteran roster players. And with Matt Niskin and being traded for Raku Goudas, it was really fascinating to see sort of the discourse on Twitter about it and see how people were taking it because, I don't know, maybe it's just because of who the two players are in question, right? Like it feels like Goudas because of all of the suspension stuff

and all the head hunting and all of that. Like it's very easy to make the joke. about him and to think that he's just sort of this goon who doesn't actually play hockey. And that's not true because he's actually a pretty valuable defenseman when he's not doing all of that, all of those shenanigans. But then you have Matt Niskinan who was so valuable to this capitals team when I still remember when they went out and paid for him and brought him in and free agency. And it felt like that was just a big move in terms of like signaling like where they were

headed as a franchise and how well he and Orlov played as their top pairing throughout that Stanley Cup run last year. And so for them to move off of them after just one year, one being one year removed from that run, like there's a lot of stuff and a lot of competing factors going in here that make this such a fascinating, complicated trade. Yeah. Brian McClown, if nothing else, has shown pretty good, pretty solid acumen, I think, for knowing when players are on the decline and knowing when to part with players and try to

get value for some guys. I think about the Troy Brower trade for OSHA a couple years ago. And I think Niskenen maybe falls into that bucket where he didn't have a great year this year. Injuries might have been a part of it for sure. But I feel like you kind of know what you're going to get with him. You know, very sturdy kind of defensive-minded, right-shot guy. It might not give you a ton of offense, but I think one of the best sticks in the league, one of the best guys as far as just kind of one-on-one battles with with guys who are trying to stick coming around him. But they had to clear space, right? This is kind of the hangover

stuff that we talk about with teams that end up not winning it. They're definitely going to have to pay Verona a pretty hefty number, and they're going to need some money. I think to retool their third line a little bit with Burkowski probably leaving. I don't know what they're going to do. He's an RFA, but if they don't qualify him, and he leaves, and then Connolly leaves as a UFA, then there's probably both sides of Lars Eller right now that you want to address, and you probably feel like you can get a little bit of an upgrade at. You know, I didn't hate the trade for Washington simply because they were able to shed space

and Philly retained Goudis's salary. And I think in an ideal scenario, Goudis is a 6-7 guy that they have two pretty young left shots on the third pair right now in Jus and Siegand. thaller and then a young right shot in the system in Lucas Johansson but um I mean their top four does seem pretty locked in now that they have jensen they signed them that long deal and McClellan seems to like them and um for philly's perspective I think it's it's Matt niskeno you know versus either rakio gudis or Andrew macdonald I think it probably gives you a little bit more of sturdiness um I think niskenens a really good locker room guy as well and um some of the young

defenseman there that they have in philly I think are going to benefit from his presence yeah yeah well So from the CAF's perspective, you know, going out of the deadline and getting Nick Hansen and then resigning him long term immediately, I do feel like that's kind of, you know, a big driving force or factory hero where they clearly feel comfortable bumping him up into that permanent top four role. And then now, even if you get Goudas as a third parent defenseman and Orpix gone and they're probably not going to bring them back this summer, like that blue line does make sense. And then you hope some of those young guys can take a step for them. And clearly, I mean, what, they save 3.5 million or so on the cap this year, especially with the flyers retaining some salary on Goudas. So for them, with a cap crunch they're in and trying to kind of fit all these pieces in under the cap, it makes a lot of sense because I don't think that as much as I love Matt Niskinin,

in terms of the career he's had, and I completely buy all that stuff in terms of, I think he's going to be a very great, like, sort of steadying veteran presence for some of those flyers, defensemen, and he meant so much to the capitals. at this point of his career, I don't think just from an on-ice perspective that the value between what he'll give you as a player and what Goudas could potentially give you if he has his head on right and isn't getting suspended all the time. It's negligible, especially with the 3.5 million savings and what that means in terms of being able to retain a guy like Rana. So for the caps, it certainly makes sense. It's a bit alarming to have Tom Wilson and Radka Goudas on the same team. I feel like.

Oh, someone tweeted out a picture of the Bash Brothers from the Mighty Ducks, which thought was perfect. Because like Tom Wilson already looks like Dean Portner. a little bit. But it is kind of terrifying. Yeah. I mean, look, this is two years in a row now, though, to go back to Jensen, that the Capitol has identified a guy as a complementary piece at the deadline and then liked what they saw and immediately resigned him to a long-term deal.

Kempney obviously worked out tremendous during their cup run. And I think him next to Carlson and then Jensen as the complimentary piece next to Orlov is a pretty solid top four because you guys who were going to kind of carry the puck moving load in Carlson and Orlov. But those are two guys in Kempney and Jensen who can compliment them, I think, pretty well in terms of North South game. Yeah, and they miss Kempney quite a bit as he got injured and missed that first round series. Very much so. You know, Goudas is interesting because his underlying numbers are great.

And at worst, I think he's a very valuable third-paran defenseman who can probably play a bit up in the lineup if you have injuries or whatnot. But then, like, the cons of his game are so obvious in that, I mean, first off, you really don't know what you're going to get in terms of, like, it feels like any shift he takes could be literally the last shift of his NHL. career because he's just going to publicly execute someone with a wild hit. So that's alarming. But, you know, he only has the one year left on his deal. So for the caps, it makes sense as like a dice roll to bring him in and see what you're going to get from a stylistic perspective. The flyers over the past couple of years have really struggled with just how much of

their offense is revolved around point shots from our defensemen. And it felt like as teams focused more on increasing their quality and working around the net and hammering that's the slot shot. So for them, it was just like bombing from the point. And Goudas loves to shoot from that right point. And I'm very curious to see how that fits in with the Capitals, because they're like the kings of shot quality, both under Trots and under Reardon in terms of where they want to get the puck

and what they want to focus on. And so I'm curious to see how that sort of like stylistic fit is going to be whether Goudas can change his game or whether just the Capitals are just going to let him do whatever he wants in those third pairing minutes or whether there's going to be kind of a happy balance or happy medium between those two and how he fits into that, into that system. So that's going to be something to watch as well. Todd Reardon does seem to fancy himself something of a defenseman whisperer. I mean, to go back to when Orpick and Niskin, they signed them for combined, what was it,

you know, $67.75 million or something a couple summers ago, I think, especially with Orpick, kind of some hands went up. But that, at least internally, had a big effect, kind of symbolizing not only the willingness to go out and spend money on defensemen, which haven't really happened in the George Murphy era, but also bringing in some guys who, I didn't chase the culture there, but the important thing, as we've seen with some other cup winners in the past, is to know when to cut bait. And both Miskinen and Orpick are coming off the books this year, and you're able to transition to a new core. So I think they got as much use out of those guys as they could, even bringing Orpick back last year. And on you move. And that's how you retool.

You have top-heavy guys like Baxter and Obeschian eaten up the top of your cap. You're going to have to make some sacrifice on the back end. Yeah, that emotional attachment, I think, is probably one of the best skills you could have is a GM, and you can certainly get out of a lot of trouble by knowing when to cut bait. And with Niskinin, I think the Flyers are banking on the fact that this year was a bit of a throwaway just because they played so deep last year, and Niskinin put so many miles on his body, and maybe he just never was right this year. And after a regular long offseason, he's going to look fresher and younger and better.

next year and I think they're banking on that and they better be right because considering how much he's making if he's kind of beyond this trajectory that he looked like he was on this year where he really took a step back and him and Orlov really struggled as a pair all of a sudden if you're paying that type of guy 5.75 or whatever he's making for the next two years like that it is the only two years but it still is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow considering it's a lot of money for a guy who really really struggled this year I guess yeah and he's And he's turning 33. And he's turning 33.

He has a modified no move as well. I think he'll look quite good next to Gostas Bear or Provarov. I think him and Provarov especially would be a pretty good shutdown pair. But he might just be the kind of steady, you know, stay-at-home defensive influence that Gossus Bear needs as all next to him. Yeah. I buy that. And not Andrew McDonnell. Yeah.

So the other thing, I guess I don't really have too many thoughts on this. I wanted to talk about the Islanders a little bit because. you know, they've gotten ahead of it with some of their UFAs. They gave Brock Nelson a six-year deal for six-mill per. They signed Jordan Eberley. I thought the Eberley one was particularly fascinating because it certainly looked like he would get paid quite a bit more on the open market, and I'm sure he would have if he ever made it there,

but he decided to take less for the financial security and to just stay with Islanders. I guess he likes it there. And so, you know, that's a good deal for them, especially, I mean, the money is one thing, but also just like the five-year term. It's very reasonable. and I guess it's one of those things where it's like,

we always like this like hot day culture and oh my God, what a terrible signing. Oh my God. What a great signing. What a steal for the team. It's like, oh, this one's just like a perfectly reasonable deal for both the team and the player. We often talk about pay cuts.

I feel like retroactively in terms of offers like, oh, this guy took less money. He took a pay cut to come here. Jordan Eberle literally took a pay cut. Like he was making $6 million last year and now he's at five and a half. I thought that was a really good deal for New York. And Nelson too. I thought that was pretty solid for what he is.

I mean, he's probably a middle-six center on a good team. I don't think he's going to give you anything more than that. And Everly's not going to probably shouldn't be leading your team in scoring if you're winning the cup. But again, a very necessary complementary piece that you have at $5.5 million. I mean, just looking at their cap-friendly chart right now, their money is spread around pretty well. I mean, no one on their roster is making $6 million right now. They have 22 to burn. They don't, I mean, Beauvilliers has to get signed as an RFA, but.

and Del Cole. But I mean, other than that, I think Lou Lemorella is set up to do some damage this off season, no? Yeah. Well, the biggest winner of that Brock Nelson signing was Kevin Hayes. He must have been like, oh, my God, six times six, Brock Nelson. And he's one of the only centers left on the market. It's like, oh, this is a- Especially after the playoffs he had.

Like, coming off that, maybe you're a little down about how your market value might have changed, how perception of you might have changed. And then that's a nice pick-me-up. Well, and the Flyers giving up a pick to acquire your rates. Like, oh, man, this is all lining up for. Kevin Hayes to have a really nice summer. Yeah, no, the Islanders, I mean, they have a lot of money to play with, and they've been linked to Dushane and Panarin and so on and so forth.

And, you know, they still need to figure out what they're going to do with Lennar and how much they want to reward him financially for the season he had for them. And there's a lot of kind of moving parts there. But, you know, especially with the Eberle signing, like, I think from his perspective, you're probably looking at it and you're like, I'm sure he enjoys it there. And he's had two productive years this year. He took a bit of a step back during the regular season. he really came on hot in the postseason and looked really good, especially in that Penguin series.

And for him, like, I think as a scorer, you're just looking at the stuff pragmatically. You're like, man, the opportunity is here for me, right? Whether it's playing with Barzal or whether they bring in another senator, like he's going to be locked into a top six scoring role no matter what, just because there's so little competition in terms of guys who can actually put the puck in the net there right now. And so for him, he must be looking at it, looking his lips going like, I could score 25 to 30 goals here for at least an couple of years and I'm just going to have fun doing so and I'm going to be paid pretty nicely and even though it's less than I might have made on the open market it works out for him as well so it's uh yeah just a nice tidy piece of business and I'm really curious that both New York teams seem

like they're going to be on the forefront of a lot of the stuff that's going on this offseason I'm curious to see what happens on the Islander's back end um I mean they have some really good contracts right now Poulog's making two million and one year left devonte 700k and pellix at 1.6 million with two years left but all those guys are going to have to get paid at some point. So that's the issue of like if you try to go out and get another guy and try to fix some of the top. I mean, Boy Chuck has three years left at age 35 right now. It's not terribly a great contract. But you have pretty good money spread around on the back end.

And I think that's an area of upgrade, but you have to be obviously be mindful of some of the contracts. You're going to have to pay up in the next couple of years and what getting someone now would mean for that. Yep. I think they're and they have every right to be. but I think they're very, very excited and optimistic about Noah Dobson coming in as well, whether it's this year or whether it's at some point into next season. And he will obviously be playing on an ELC as well, which kind of gives them the financial flexibility to spend money elsewhere for the next couple of years.

So, yeah, no, there's some fascinating moving parts there. And I'm not sure, you know, it seems like just based on the percentages, unless they bring in a bunch of really impactful players, they're probably going to take a bit of a step back next year. But they have the wiggle room here to, have the type of talent infusion that can at least mitigate some of that regression and actually allow them to, you know, create more offensive than they did last year, which will go a long way towards helping replicate some of the success they had this season.

Same. I mean, same for the Rangers, minus the whole success this season part. I mean, if they buy out Chatton Kirk, could they buy out Brendan Smith? I think that's going to clear them over $20 million in terms of current cap space. So curious to see what they do as well. well um just as a thought exercise like if they went out and they just landed panarin and eric carlson like what would be what would the i understand it really goes again like we've been praising them for being so methodical over the past year and a half or whatever in terms of this rebuild and accumulating assets and that would just be like such like a mid two thousand's rangers move to go out and just spend a ton of money on two guys not knowing what you're going to be getting from them a

couple years for now but i think both those guys are so good that especially for the next whatever two, three seasons, like you can bank on superstar production from them. And so I'd be fascinated to see what that team would look like with the combination of all these young guys and then still having like, you know, Lunk was obviously there and probably there's a couple years left in them with Crider and Zabinajad. Like, I don't know. On the one hand, I really want to see them just play this rebuild out for the next year or so or two years and maybe having one more big draft and then really go for it in 20,

or whatever. But at the same time, like there's a part of me that's like, man, that would just be really fun to watch them go and just spend a bunch of cash on those two superstars right away. If only for the uniqueness of it, where you had to, like you said, a team that methodically rebuilt, accumulated picks, and develop their prospects and very patient this year and very on New York team, right? But then just to go and just do what New York teams always do and just throw a whole bunch of money and lure people to the bright lights, I'm all for that because we have patient methodically rebuilding teams in the league so far. Those are dime a dozen.

feels like at times and to have a team that has done that, but then also has the capital to go land some big fish. It might not be the smartest thing to do for them long term, but it's definitely the most exciting thing short term. It would be fun as hell. Yeah, I think that's definitely true. I wanted to talk about the, I was telling you off the year, I watched the Russian Five documentary yesterday, but you haven't seen it. Yeah, tell me. I haven't seen it, yeah. Well, I highly recommend everyone goes, checks it out. I think it's available on I don't know, Apple or iTunes or Amazon or wherever people can buy and stream these movies. But it was really fun to watch because obviously a lot of this stuff happened where I was like super young and I don't, I was at all following the league as closely as I am now.

And it was a completely different era in terms of accessibility and transparency and so on and so forth. But just kind of being taken back to that and sort of learning some of the details and also like the kind of like wild like behind the scenes, machinations and espionage and stuff that was going. on in terms of what the Red Wings had to do to get Sergey Federer of and a couple of other Russian players overseas and bringing them to North America. It was so fascinating. I just thought it was really well done. So it was a must watch, I think, for hockey fans, especially considering like sort of the arc and the story that that Red Wings franchise went through and winning 61 games or whatever in 95, 96 and falling short and then bouncing back the following season and the parallels to what we can draw from that for the lightning moving forward. And so stuff

like that. I just think it was a fascinating must watch and I highly recommend it to everyone out there who hasn't seen it yet. Cued up. Let's, yeah, maybe when you watch it, let's get you back on the show and let's talk about it. I feel like you'd be, I'd have a good conversation. Yeah, moving, you know, we'd have story time with Alex Pruitt. Now we could have movie time with Alex Pruitt. Sounds good. All right, man. Let's get out of here. Enjoy your summer. Obviously, there's still a couple busy weeks here left ahead of us, but it feels like most of the heavy wet lifting is done. What are you working on? What do you got on the docket? Where can people check you out?

Well, s.com. I have a few non-hockey stories coming up soon. For people who are interested in Chinese basketball, I spent about 10 days in China a couple months ago, touring around, trying to see why it is that so many ex-MBA guys wind up going overseas to play in the Chinese Basketball Association. And then I also ended up spending a couple hours interviewing Yao Ming, who is the head of literally everything regarding Chinese basketball.

He's the commissioner of the league. He's the chairman of the National Basketball Federation, which runs the grassroots programs, the women's basketball league, and the national team. So he is working hard over there, and I'm as well trying to get a nice story out for the Where Are They Now issue. I might end up in St. Louis over the next couple days, the parades today. But I think we're going to pass on that.

And I may wind up there just kind of doing a follow to see I guess how the cup has affected that market. Awesome, man. Well, I'm looking forward to that. Enjoy your summer. And let's check in soon. You know, the offseason is great because there's obviously so much less going on after free agency, especially like late July, early August.

And maybe we can just talk about. We can just watch movies and just talk about it. Just two guys bullshit. Yeah, just two guys bullshit. All right, man. Have a good one. Later. Cheers.

The Hockey PEDEOCast with Dmitri Filipovich. Follow on Twitter at Dim Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypediocast.