The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 33: The NHL's Expansion Plan

Episode Date: December 9, 2015

We look at the NHL's reignited plans for expansion from as many angles as possible based on the information we currently have. How will the draft itself differ from the one held all the way back in 2000, which types of rules can be put into place to even the playing field for the new organizations, and will the looming possibility of this actually coming to pass influence how teams approach this coming summer? You can listen to every episode of this podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud, or stream it from our website. Make sure to not only subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new shows, but also leave us a nice review (if you think we’ve earned it!) Please also consider chipping in to help support the show (www.hockeypdocast.com/donate). A handful of you have done so already, and we greatly appreciate it. We’d love to be able to improve our equipment and cover some of the housekeeping costs associated with running this podcast. Thanks for listening! See 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.

Are you ready for the most ridiculous internet sports show you have ever seen? Welcome to React, home of the most outrageous and hilarious videos the web has to offer. So join me, Rocky Theos, and my co-host, Raiders Pro Bowl defensive end, Max Crosby, as we invite your favorite athletes, celebrities, influencers, entertainers in for an episode of games, laughs, and of course the funniest reactions to the wildest web clips out there. Catch React on YouTube, and that is React, R-E-A-X-X. Don't miss it. This podcast episode is brought to you by Coors Light.

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Travis, what's going on, man? I'm doing good. How are you doing, Dimitri? I'm doing great, man. I'm really excited. I'm not sure when people are listening to this. They'll have access to the new artwork we got done, but I'm pretty jazzed up about the drawing we had made.

That's like the most professional thing I've ever seen, by the way. Yeah, you're wearing a suit and everything. It's very fancy. I am very for the record anti-suit, anti-pretty-much all. If you see me in public or whatever, I am as least, I'll have the minimum required dress coat on at all time. So if I can get away with business casual, I will always be in business casual. I admire these people who go out and spend thousands of thousands of dollars on suits.

It'll look great. But I just, I can't fit. That's not my wheelhouse. Well, you know what? When I was talking to the artist, I sent him a couple pictures of myself. And then I was like, if you type in Travis Yost on Google, images. There's a few pictures there, but honestly, he's sort of a man of mystery. No one really knows much about him. And he's like, all right, I'll see what I can do. And he sends me the

picture a few days later. He's like, yeah, you're right. Travis is definitely a hard man to peg down. And yeah, because I feel like you have like five pictures out there and three of them are in suits and then two of them are in like tank top. So I feel like there's like a tough balance to strike there. I'm very pro tank top. But if you ever get caught with a picture in a tank on Twitter or wherever, you'll just never hear the end of it. It's all why Instagram straight flex and nonstop. Meanwhile, I'm not even on Instagram. All right. I'm sure if you were, you'd be taking a lot of pictures of your meals and stuff. Yeah, I'd be hearing about those too. All right, man. So today we're going to talk about the concept of this expansion draft. It's obviously something that I feel like

was, you know, very topical, not this past summer, but the summer before. And, you know, it gained a lot attraction, a lot of steam and people were talking about it a lot. And then I'm sure in some circles it was still kind of brought up occasionally, but I feel like it kind of died down a little bit. And for whatever reason today, it, it sparked back up. So we figured that it would be a good time to kind of have a little fun with it. Well, the reason why it died down is because the league, the league, from what I read into it anyway, was really trying to get a real third bid in that mix. And it's so funny because that bitch is not materializing in time. And Vegas has been such a guarantee for two years now.

And it seems like Quebec City is a very strong play right now as well for that second team. But like you could just tell the league so desperately wanted Seattle in the mix for a couple of years. And that just hasn't materialized as quickly as I guess they anticipated. So all the bubbling hype around the potential expansive process, like the whole timeline I think was just fascinating. to watch from a, from a 30,000 foot view because like if you remember like six months ago and that it might be plus or minus a month, but there was like so much expansion hype talk, whatever you want to call it. And then it just kind of simmered away and then very quietly behind the scenes, expansion into Vegas and QC got pushed a year. And that's like, that's like

now everyone knows that expansion's earmarked for 2017, 2018. When like, I don't know, nine months ago it was like a lock for a year sooner. I don't know. The whole, like, I guess there's a lot of money on the line and they want to make sure they get it right to the extent that what they want to do. But it certainly feels that that played a big role. So for anyone that hasn't read it, I feel like they should go on ESPN and look at what Craig Custin has written up because I feel like he's really been like covering this from all the angles you'd hope to read about. And he's done a great job doing that. And the interesting thing that he brought up was this is going to be the first potential expansion draft in the salary cap era, right?

So that really kind of puts an interesting wrinkle into it just because it'll be, we still don't know, like, how the whole no movement clause thing will work, whether like that'll apply here and players, like, will not be eligible for it if they have one and they decide to exercise it. And same goes for the idea of teams just, you know, trying to get rid of all their bad contract and I'm sure the NHL wouldn't like the expansion team to just be stuck with with a bunch of Dan Gerardis and Dave Boland. So it's a really kind of unique process to try and figure it out. Like I went into kind of mapping out potential players that would be available for each team

and whatnot and who they leave unprotected. And I sort of went off to 2000 rules where you could like if you kept one goalie, it would impact it this way. And if you kept two goalies and you keep fewer forwards and defensemen and all that stuff. And it was just like an impossible exercise because it's who knows what teams are going to do. So I think it's like way too preliminary to kind of try and map that out. From a contract law perspective, the tidbit about no move clauses or no trade clauses is an interesting one. So a player, let's say with a full no movement clause, I'm not sure how the NHL gets around that because by definition, that player has full

control over his movement off of a roster. So I would have to thumb back through the CBA, but I'm pretty sure it does not speak in plain language to the exception of an expansion draft. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it does not. And if that's the case, I would assume players with full no move clauses are exempt from that. And it actually gets more interesting when he start talking about limited clauses in a lot of these players' contracts. But that's not a small nugget of information because so many players in the league have these embedments in their contracts.

So that's something that you have to sort out relatively quickly, I'm assuming, because teams are going to have to start. I think in that Craig Custon's piece, and if it wasn't his, someone else's very recently, that there were already a couple teams. kind of taking a long-term view and kind of already prepping for this playing out. And like, it's kind of hard to do if you don't know the full work scope of this expansion drift. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things where I feel like, you know, as recently as maybe six or seven years

ago or whatever, like a no movement clause kind of put you in a certain stature in the league where there weren't very many of them thrown around. And then these days I feel like anyway, like pretty much everyone that signs even a moderately sized contract just gets one all of a sudden and it puts teams in very precarious situations and uh in this instance in particular i think it might put the league in an interesting situation so uh customs also noted that there might be a like a rule put in place by the league that each team has to expose like a minimum amount of of uh contract dollars i guess if you will and that's interesting because generally speaking um most teams don't

really have more than like, I don't know, seven or eight really good players that are worth a lot. And if they can protect those guys and then just expose like bottom of the bottom of the barrel guys, that's not going to leave the expansion team in a very good situation. But if they have to sort of make it work money-wise, it'll be, do you think we might actually see like a certain quality of players on the certain, on teams in the expansion draft? So there's two wrinkles to this. The first one being, this is precisely why the league needs to sort out the clause aspect of the expansion draft, because newsflash, the players with no movement clauses are also the ones carrying around the contracts because by extension of the draft and the hard cap rule, the league, has ensured that the most protected constituency of the NHL Players Association are the veterans who get these loftier contracts and your no movement clauses. but to a more granular point, I guess, the whole money issue reeks of we want to make sure Las Vegas has a fairly competitive team and is not dying for years.

Because I just, it doesn't strike me as much as it would be as much of a concern as if you put a crappy team in QC for a couple of years. And the place is going to be packed regardless, right? Like, it just doesn't matter. I think the league, and we honestly, we could talk about Las Vegas expansion for years. I think it's one of the most fascinating topics in the NHL that they've really addressed in the last, I don't know, half a dozen or so years. But I think their one concern is that they want to ensure that this team isn't really from day one in a super long term rebuild like a lot of expansion teams get. And like when we were, and we're not on this podcast, but I remember me and you had talked previously this about a year ago or so about maybe how an expansion draft might even look.

And this was just tentatively when everyone was like, oh, yeah, Vegas is going to get a team. Like the number of players, or the type of players that we had expected to fill out this expansion draft, it was pretty rough, right? Like it's not, it's not a, it was like easily the superstar. Yeah, it's not a great, and he's not going to be in there. So it's not a, it's not a, oh, he might be. depending on how it plays out. Yeah, I guess. It's not a great selection pool.

And I think the league sees Vegas is two things. One, a potential huge moneymaker in great marketing for the league. And two, a chance to be the first mover in a market. I remember for the life of me, I've mentioned this probably a half dozen times. And I can't remember where this tidbit came from, but it was legitimate. How aggrieved the league was with the success the NBA had in Oklahoma. city. And I think that kind of glosses over a bit over the Kevin Durant element of that. Like, that team wouldn't necessarily be very good if they didn't get, if Seattle didn't grab him in

year one and then they relocate. But that's kind of been part of the big driver towards the NHL eyeing a really big, a really big market in the U.S. in a new sports market and being the first mover there. So I just think a lot of what you're going to see now and in article today and in article six months from now will be at least some levels of protections for an expansion team to ensure they're not like a 12-1 team in their first year. Yeah, it'll be, I'm really curious. Like, I think it's a fun exercise to do in theory just because I was looking back at the 2000 expansion draft with Minnesota and Columbus and the first six guys were all goalies.

And, you know, no offense to a friend of the podcast, who's also one of the better kind of color guys in the league right now, but Jamie McClennan was the second pick taken in that draft, and I feel like he'd be the first to admit that, you know, he was in like an NHL caliber starting goalie, and Rick Tabarachi was the first one, and then it was a washed up Mike Vernon and, you know, going down the line, Chris Terreri, Frederick Chabot, like, I've never even like heard of these guys. So these were like the top picks in this expansion draft, and I feel like maybe this is a testament to just how much better goaltending has gotten all across the league, but I feel like the one place where these expansion teams will potentially will not, you know, struggle is they

should have like league average goaltending. Because when I was going through the first handful of, of NHL teams kind of trying to figure out who they'd protect and who they wouldn't, I quickly realized that like, there's going to be some relatively interesting goalies at the very least available. Like the forward market is going to be brutal because the first six or seven teams I went through an alphabetical order, like Andrew Cogliano was quite easily the first guy that I think would be left unprotected. and I think that that's going to be an issue.

Has it gone on mention, by the way, the Jamie Clinton thing, I think we're allowed to rake him over the calls a little bit because a few weeks ago I mentioned he is quickly, like he is in my top three best color analysts in the league. Like it's clear cut. He's in that top three group. And for a guy who has done this for a very limited amount of time, I generally always come impressed to come away impressed with his work.

So we're allowed to kill him a little bit for his inclusion in the expansion draft. But separate to that point, I do think that one thing, and maybe people are talking about this, and I just haven't paid enough attention to this aspect of the expansion draft stuff, but punting the Vegas and Quebec expansion back a year, it certainly protects the future of Austin Matthews, does it not? Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that goes on notice because, again, you know I don't really follow prospects that much because they bore me to tears for the most part. But I don't believe that 2017, 2018 NHL draft has the same high level caliber of talent that you're going to see in this year's draft. And like I feel that's, I feel like that's kind of unfortunate because Austin Matthews in Vegas makes a ton of sense.

And Austin Matthews in Quebec City makes a ton of sense. and he's probably going to go to, let me spin the wheel, Edmonton, and then, like, I just don't know, I truly don't know enough of what's out there in a year past. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's more high-end talent, but I don't believe that's the case. And that's like an interesting side thing that's played out that I've kind of noticed. And it doesn't seem like a lot of people are talking about that. Maybe that's for the better. Don't you think that it would be in the NHL's best interest to get Austin Matthews on an expansion team? Like, I feel like that would be a good, a good, a good, business approach. I don't know, I don't know if they're making a conscious decision here to do that, is what I'm saying, I guess.

Right. But he is such, I guess I could look at this. Like, you could see, whenever it comes to a discussion like this, the first question I was asked is, where is there going to be pushed back from, right? Like, so any topic, anything you want to address, anything you want to write about, talk about, whatever, you have to always say, okay, who would push back on this and why? and NHL owners are going to get their money regardless from this expansion deal. And I'm not saying this is the reason why they punt that expansion a year off. There's a lot of reasons for that. And this probably grades out as one millionth. But if that is the case, then one millionth is, hey, look, Austin Matthews goes to one of our 30 current constituents and not one of the two in the new expansion markets.

I don't know. Maybe to your point, maybe that's not even how they think about it. Maybe they would prefer to have Austin Matthews in one of these two markets, but I don't know necessarily that the current owners would want that, right? Like, he is that good of a player and there is that much hype around him that it would seem to me that your 5, 6, 7, 8 lottery teams vying for that last pick would feel a bit slighted if an expansion team leapfrog them when they had a 57 point season. I don't know.

I think that's a real possibility. Yeah, no, that's definitely a very good angle look at it. It is interesting, though, because I feel like both the, you know, Loss Vegas and Quebec City or two markets where like a guy like Austin Matthews wouldn't necessarily be buried or anything like that, right? So that's an interesting thing. So for reasons, I'm going to put on the moderator hat and I'm going to have you play the role of a GM and you're going to walk me through how a GM goes through the expansion process and I'm going to spin my wheel and pick a random team and that team is Vancouver. So tell me if you were the GM of the Vancouver Canucks

how they would approach the expansion draft. So you can give it to me from two different ways. You can do it from how you think Vancouver is going to do it and how you would do it. Well, I think those are, I'm on the record as saying those are two very different approaches. So, okay, let's look at it from the angle of the 2000 expansion draft. I think that there will be some tweaks there, but that's sort of like a good baseline to go off. And basically the rules there were each team can protect either one goalie, five defensemen, and nine forwards or two goalies, three defensemen and seven forwards, right? So it's fascinating, right? Because I don't

think that the Canucks would expose Ryan Miller, for example, to this expansion draft. Obviously, I would because he's a 35-year-old goalie who's not good. He's not good enough for them to get rid of them. Yeah, he probably wouldn't even get picked up based on the other goleys that are going to be available, honestly, which is kind of sad in and of itself. But so it's like working under the assumption that they're going to keep both Markstrom and Miller. That's tough. That means they can keep only three defensemen, and Edler and Tannave are the no-brainers.

And then I think Ben Hutton as well is also the no-brainer. So that basically kind of leaves all the other guys out to dry. And I know it's going to really hurt Jim Benning to let someone else potentially take Lucas Biza. But as you mentioned, I think it's also another one of those examples where there's no way Lucas Biza actually gets claimed, right? Like I guess he's young enough that someone might potentially.

be like vaguely interested in him but I don't know 3.6 billion for the next two years after this one is pretty brutal. The great unknown is what kind of competency we should expect from the Vegas and Quebec organizations. We have no idea. They could be the most competent organizations and certain things may pass a sniff test and other things won't or they could be Atlantis Thrasher's level. There was a great thing floating around Twitter today that went through like a six-month or one-year range of Atlanta Thrasher's trades. It was, I forgot, I almost forgot about how bad the Ilya Kovalchuk deal was. And then Nicholas Brickfors was supposed to be the next big thing, man. Yeah. And then, but the Marion hosted deal too.

I mean, not to like, I guess it is, this is a fair segue. I guess because Atlanta was an expansion team. But have you, I mean, what do you think is even the worst trade of that era? Because if you just go through the list. They traded away Hosa from Magic Beans. They traded away Kovilchuk from Magic Beans. I think the Kachuk won honestly, though, right? Like they gave up a bunch of picks for him, didn't it? Yeah, they did. So that was their buy move. They bought Kachuk for

a ton of stuff. And then they traded away the best shooter I've ever seen of my lifetime or close to it. And then they traded away like the craziest most two-way, complete European import that we've seen in two decades for

magic beans as well. And it was, like, it's, it's pretty hard to botch as many moves in a row as they did. But, uh, yeah. That was an impressive little run. They went on. So that, I mean, that speaks to my point, though. Like, we have, that's, it is a wide range of what we can and maybe should expect from both of those organizations.

But, uh, I think to your point, I mean, the, just from the pure defenseman exercise that you went through at the Vancouver level, um, like, if you're going to be sending out, like, you know, four or five Lucas Spices and maybe one guy, a slice above him. Yeah. Might not be a great time that you're having in year one. What do you think the fellow group looks like? So I think that I'm going to include Redeem Verbata in this just because he's obviously a UFA and he's probably not going to be back with the Canucks.

But if you start kind of discounting, impending free agents, it's just a whole other ordeal. So I have both the Cydines, Verbada, obviously Boer, Badger, McCann, and then, you and Jake Fritannan and Brendan Sutter. So how much is that six or seven? That's six? Six. And then I guess the seventh is like, I don't know. Yanuk Hansen, I guess, maybe.

Like, he's younger than Burroughs and Higgins. So I feel like that kind of gives him the slight edge there. So the remaining crop is dire? Yeah, it's like, it's like role players, right? It's Burroughs, it's Higgins, it's Dorset, it's Pruss. It's, yeah, magic beans, as you said. No, but like this is, so this is, my general high-level concern, because I think that both teams, no matter how the NFL

structures it, I think you're really going to get into this position where both teams are icing four third lines. And I can't emphasize this enough. The organization of the two that gets sharp, savvy people in there who can differentiate between third-liners and the range in third-and-fourth-liners, if you look at points isn't that big, but if you look at overall production and the underlying numbers, you can have a really, really good third liner and a third liner who's really like a sixth liner, even though we both speak about them.

You know, we speak about them both as third liners. But to my point, like, you might not have a great time in year one, but if you can find the quality depth forwards, yes, some of them are absolutely going to be playing out of their element when they're matched up against Taves and Copatar and the rest of the Western Conference or EasterCon, whoever it is. But the idea is you would come in waves, right?

And it might not be a great wave, but it'd be like an annoying. We're kind of competitive. We'll win like, I don't know. We'll pick up like 68, 74 points in year one and we'll be bad, but not horrific. And, you know, like that's, I think, like the target for year one. It depends a little bit on how they structure everything. But I just kind of envision that. It's just going to be a massive pool of third line talent available.

Yeah, pretty much. I think, yeah, forwards and defensemen, there's just like, you're not going to get anyone that would realistically be in, like, a top six or a top four on the back end for any good team, right? So that's kind of an issue when, like, your number one defenseman's probably like a five or a six on a decent team. And your best forward is like a third liner on a good team. And it's just like, I don't know, it's tough to compete in the league. But I guess if you have good goaltending and at the very least, you really kind of need to nail that first draft to just sort of like give fans hope and something to, like, clink. on to, right? Because I think that the excitement is definitely going to be there for that first season in whichever market they go to. But if there's like no redeeming qualities really,

I think that's going to quickly fade. Like the luster is going to like is going to fade off of it. And that's where you get into like having a smart front office of hopefully like analytical types that are able to sort of make these decisions where they can kind of draw the value out of these third liners and potentially put them in more prominent. roles and have them exceed what they've done at this point in their careers. So I guess that'll be something to look for moving forward. So one of the things I wonder if the NHL could do, and actually I'm guessing the answer is almost certainly no, but I wonder if they could create a situation where every NHL team

was forced to expose one player between the age of, let's say, 18 to 22, that had been a prior first or second round pick. And I feel like that would create a mini uproar, but I also feel like, and let me be clear, too, a lot of that would be undeveloped talent for the two teams to work with. But at the same time, when you're getting your shot at, I don't know, call it 16 or 15, sorry, 15 first or former first or second round picks, you're going to get some bust in there. The teams already know they have an idea that are busts, but you might get a couple that might really pan out. And that would be a potential hope for an organization that they can build on. I'm just trying to think of ways that they can acquire this talent because they're not going

to get it through the expansion draft. Yeah, that's one of those things where we've spent like 20-something minutes talking about it really from the angle of the expansion teams themselves and how they're going to be built and stuff like that. But it is kind of important to keep in mind that there's very important decisions to be made here that are going to be heavily contested by the. existing teams in the league, right? Like, I'm sure any GM out there will not be very happy about some sort of rule that's put in place to even things out where they, like, have to give up on a

guy they might, you know, like. So that's, it's tough. But I think that something like that is a very smart move to potentially kind of bake in there because you don't really want, what you're going to see is you're going to see a lot of, like, older guys who we know, like, aren't very good anymore. And that's, that's not what you want in this situation. Like, You don't want these new fan bases to have to watch these guys who are in their early to mid-30s, kind of like lugging around joylessly out there. And you want like a younger team that's going to at least give the fans some to look forward to and kind of invest in it longer term as opposed to just like the excitement of that first year.

How about a soft cap for the Vegas and Quebec teams in the first two years of their existence? So they pay the tax, they pay a tax once they exceed $74 million up to XX. 100 millions, let's call it, I don't know, 95 million. So it would allow them to spend $21 million above the cap, but as soon as they spend a dollar into the cap, they would pay a tax. It would be recirculated through the, I don't know. Like that would be another way where you can create a layer of,

okay, now two teams have purchasing power over other teams in the league that, look, they're not going to get Stephen Stamco's in his ilk when they go to free agency because those guys don't want to play for expansion teams. But you might get your second pairing defensemen or a second. line winger that will commit for one more year and $4 million over those, you know, that additional year, whatever the case may be. Right. Like I'm sure, I'm sure Cody Franzen would have taken their money this summer, for example, right?

Yeah, it's a perfect example. And so let's say from France, it might not be the best example because he was really, like, to your point, you're right, but I'm trying to think of a really good example of a player who, oh God, Matt Boleski's not, that's not a good example. You see my point, though, like a true second line guy. he's kind of weighing a couple options, and then a team like Quebec comes in and says, yeah, we'll give you an additional year and $6 million because we can. That would be, that would create an interesting option for these second two players. Yeah, I like that a lot.

I think that there's definitely some like interesting little wrinkles here that can be thrown into potentially even out of odds just a little bit and give these teams some hope, but they kind of need to tread lightly here because it can go wrong in a hurry. But speaking of like the existing teams right now, Custin's also brought up an interesting thing in that article about how, current GMs are sort of, you know, different, like there's two different approaches here, right?

Like David Poil, for example, said that he doesn't really care about this right now because we don't know how it's going to look and how it's going to shape up and he's not even going to think about it until we get more word on the actual details themselves. And whether he's telling the truth there or not or whether he's, like, kind of hiding his cards,

is like, it's up for debate, I guess. But then there's guys like Ray Shiro, for example, who said that they're definitely going to kind of weigh the options this summer in terms of how they approach free agency knowing that, you know, the landscape might look completely different a year or two for now. So I think that that's going to be a fascinating thing to follow this summer just to see like if certain signings are handled a lot differently than what we're used to just based on that. They have to iron out the,

I know we keep coming back. This is the third time we come back this, but they have to iron out the no movement clauses before free agency of this year because I'll explain why. if teams don't, and maybe this is figured out, and I am not privy to it, but I'm guessing no. But if this isn't ironed out, you're going to see a lot of teams racing to sign these mid-tier guys.

It may be a slight dollar premium so that they don't have to put in for the exemption. I'm sorry, so that they don't have to add a clause in, let's say. They win the player. The player pans out, they win. The player doesn't pan out. He's the type that they exposed to the expansion draft,

no harm, no foul. So I, like, it wouldn't, I'm talking small dollars here, and it's not crippling to the cap in any particular way, but there's going to be an incentive now to move away from no movement causes as long as there's that ambiguity. And funnily enough, they might only be reserved for the elite high-end players, which is who the guy should be getting these no-movement clauses are. But, you know, historically, that hasn't ever been the case. Yeah.

All right. I think we've kind of covered the expansion draft from all angles, at least based on, like, the information we have right now, right? we're going to have to get uh Bill Foley on the podcast and have him chat it up a bit. Well hopefully we'll get Custin's on maybe in a couple weeks or so or maybe early in the new year and he can kind of drop some knowledge on us about some of these

these nuances that we don't really we can't really discuss yet. I'm very pro Craig Custons. Love is uh love his uh love is uh, love his work. Uh, yes we're recording this on a Tuesday evening. Did you watch that Starscape? Um, no, I was watching the Blues Coyotes and I was watching Ottawa, Florida. I saw it was

4-0-0 and I was actually watching with a couple of people when I said something to be effect of yeah that game's blah I'm not going to go to it and get a message from you that it's 6-5 or something for that effect. Stars are stars and it was incredible they were up 5-1 and and Carolina storms right back and then of course they wind up winning it on a power play goal with like 20 seconds left which was like the perfect stars game 6-5 it was back and forth it was everything you'd want from from a stars game we have done we have done many a hockey p.o cast where the ending line or what are the ending lines is,

oh, by the way, did you see the Stars game tonight? Well, either the ending or the beginning. Sometimes we actually just decide to record purely because we're so hype from the end of a Starz game that we just got to get it out of our system. Regrettably, I have some internalized rules where I really make an effort not to miss a team for more than, I don't know, an extended period of time.

So if I, like the stars I watch all the time, so I always give them priority. But I hadn't seen a Coyote's game in probably 10 days. So I was like, I'll slide into the coyotes game. And it was, I wish I had a secretary of schedule planner who could give me the best, the optimal watching schedule over the course of a six-month season. But the reality is I don't have that.

So I'm left to kind of piecemeal a day by day and try and figure out, all right, what am I going to watch? So last week we said we were going to adopt the coyotes and caps at some point. Do you think we should just save that for the next time we record since we're already like, I think 30 something minutes into the show? Yeah, people are already falling asleep. We'll give them a two-day reprieve. All right, man. Before we go, let me give a couple quick Patreon shoutouts to Alex Brooks, Wes Gaddy, Jonathan Press, and Brett Schartrand for, I guess, helping the cause and supporting us. So thanks to all you guys out there. And if anyone else feels inspired to do so, you guys can go on either PayPal or Patreon and do so. And I guess next time, we'll devote a large chunk of the show to the

capitals and the coyotes. You see that? I didn't even know it. And I was doing my homework on the coyotes. Yeah, you're getting ready. Look at you. So, Travis, if you want us to edit this outpost, we can. But I feel like we got to address the elephant in the room and the people are listening, are probably listening to this solely to find out what happened to you on Twitter the other day. I was just a disappearance for a day. I don't know what. A lot of talk for not a lot of action.

It was a 24-hour reprieve. Yeah, it was the speculation was running. Are you not buying that? I'm not. I'm actually sort of a little upset with you because you know, no doing of my own. My DMs were out of control with

people freaking out, wondering what had happened to you and whether I had the lowdown for what was on and I'm just like, hey man, I'm like the rest of you guys. I don't know. I'm just, Travis is a man of mystery. I probably wearing a tank top somewhere. Just, just walking around doing his thing. Yeah, from time to time, you know, you got to slide back a bit. And no, I'm still, I'm still around. I still got a pulse. I'm still hanging in there. Nice. Excellent. All right, man. Well, that's good to hear. And next time, we will, I promise,

do the, do the caps and the Yotes. And I guess if people have some comments about the expansion draft and whatnot, they can get at us about that if there's any angles we missed to it. And maybe once we eventually kind of find out what the framework is going to be, we can actually do a fun little back-and-forth mock draft to figure out who the best players available actually are going to be. I like it. I like the layout. Sounds good.

Cool, man. Okay. We'll talk soon. All right. The HockeyPedocast online at HockeyPedocast.com. Subscribe on iTunes. or follow on Twitter at Dim Filipovich and at Travis Yost.