The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 351: Quarantine Rewatch, Flyers vs. Penguins 2012

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

Charlie O'Connor helps deep dive the 2012 first round series between the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins, which has all of the goals, fights, and action you could ever possibly ask for from a playoff matchup. The categories we cover include:1:30 What makes this entire series rewatchable9:00 Paul Holmgren's YOLO team building approach15:00 Sizing up how the two teams matched up22:00 Flyers pursuit of number one defensemen and goalies29:30 What aged the best: Flyers forward depth34:00 19-year old Sean Couturier42:00 The highs and lows of Marc-Andre Fleury's career46:00 The dual Jeff Carter and Mike Richards trades53:00 The Penguins lack of secondary scoring in this era1:07:00 James Neal's tirade and the referees blowing it1:11:30 Turning point and most rewatchable sequence1:17:00 Sidney Crosby vs. Claude Giroux1:24:00 Biggest heat check performance and 'That Guy'1:29:00 Peak Pierre McGuire1:37:00 Giroux, Crosby, Malkin and Apex Mountain1:55:00 Who won the game?Stay safe, get comfortable at home, kick back with a beverage of your choice, and watch along with us here. You can also go back into the archives of the show and catch up on the previous Quarantine Rewatchables we’ve already done: Penguins vs. Red Wings 2009 Bruins vs. Maple Leafs 2013 Canucks vs. Blackhawks 2011 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.

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It's the HockeyPedioCast with your host, Dimitri. Welcome to the HockeyPediaocast. My name is Imitrivolovich. And joining me for another episode of the Pee-DioCast. video cast quarantine rewatchable. This is my good buddy, Charlie O'Connor. Charlie, what's going on, man? Hey, Dimitri, it's good to be back.

This is something I've been looking forward to. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, as soon as I decided that I wanted to do this project, and I realized it would be a big undertaking, there was a few kind of classics that I had to do that I think had greater consequences, just because they were later on in the postseason. They were actually competing for the Stanley Cup.

There were sort of, it was like a historical crossroads involving some great players, but I knew that from a pure sort of entertainment value perspective, this Flyers Penguins' 2012 series was going to be unrivaled and unmatched. And I had the good fortune of taking some time to go back and actually we're going to focus here on game three because I think that really kind of leads to this culmination of the first couple games and the wheels completely falling off the penguins. And there's tons of good stuff to actually get into from game three itself.

but it really is kind of this trilogy. And I know the Penguins actually wind up winning 10-3 in game four, I believe, to extend the series and they force a game six. And so there's multiple layers to this beyond this, but just for like a storytelling purpose and kind of trying to capture the moment, I highly recommend people if they have time. And I think we all have plenty of free time these days. If you're cooped up inside, stay safe, stay indoors, queue up YouTube and just watch games

one, two, and three because there's just so much quality. content in there from the series. Yeah, when you brought up the possibility of us doing this, my thought was we could pick any of the first three games and do a great show on it because all three of those first three games were so

watchable and then inherently rewatchable. The funny thing about game three in my mind is that it certainly qualifies as rewatchable. It was a blast to review a couple times over the past week or so, but it's probably the least resembling it

actual hockey game out of the three. It feels like a bunch of extracurriculars and then there was a hockey game going on in the background. But there are long stretches of this game where it really doesn't even feel like hockey. That is definitely true. I think game two, if you're going to pick one purely from a rewatchability perspective, it's that one just because it combines the best of games one and three, I believe. There isn't nearly enough or there isn't nearly the same amount of physicality.

and fighting in rough stuff after the whistle is in game three, but just in terms of the back and fourth goals, but also it being really closely contested, heading into the third, much like game one. Game two really kind of checks all of those boxes, but I think game three is a good one for us to do just because it really does kind of encapsulate everything that had led up to it in this series

in terms of where it went wrong for the penguins, what the flyers were doing well. And there's so many bullet-pocket, points for us to get into and talk about that can lead to many different conversations just in terms of like these little micro events in the game so i think as the game goes on there's a large stretching game two that isn't particularly entertaining and i kind of found myself feeling like i wanted to fast forward through it but game one and uh period one in game three is is um like bang for your buck it's stacked up against anything in terms of just high event hockey goals being

scored fights everything it feels like period one and this game has absolutely everything you Debraiscore. Yeah, it's just, it's just sheer ridiculousness. I think that's, you know, as someone who covers the Flyers and does podcast on the Flyers, whenever, whenever we talk about the 2012 series, the joke we kind of keep throwing out there in our podcast is like, it was a great series, but it wasn't hockey. It was something completely different. And especially, you know, kind of with the way the game is trended, it really feels not, not date it, because I think these type of series would be fun regardless. But it's just, it's so. different from what you expect, even from a playoff series.

At the same time, you know, it's just such a fun, fun series. And obviously for Flyers fans, this is a great one to rewatch because it ended in, you know, there were a couple games, I guess, in the middle that Flyers fans probably don't want to relive. But the way it started and then obviously the way it ended, it's just one of those series that, you know, Flyers fans will always enjoy going back and rewatching. Yeah, this game is like peak WWE. I mean, obviously there's a bunch of wrestling involved as well, but it's like, it's not necessarily sports, it's not necessarily entertainment, it's sports entertainment. And like, we put it all

together and you get this, uh, combination of things. So, um, yeah, I highly recommend people go watch these games as always. Um, on the PDOCs we've released. This is part four of the quarantine watchables. Um, just from a pure entertainment perspective, this is, I think, um, number one on the list that we've done so far. So let's get into the categories and work our way through this because I've got like 10 pages here of notes, uh, of stuff that I wanted to get to. And I want to try to work my way through all of it. I'm sure you have a bunch of observations as well, having relayed this game a couple of times. So let's start off with where were you in. Let's take ourselves back to start off this conversation with jumping back into this kind of

spring of 2012, where hockey was at, where we were at personally, where everything was happening for you. Sure. So I was a year out of college when this series happened. And I'll never forget this, like this particularly the first three games. I'll never forget it because, um, so I went to UPenn and every year they have like the spring fling, which is basically just this big party on campus. And I was a year out of college. So I still had a lot of friends like there were a year below me. So basically my entire college friend group came back to town for the UPenn spring fling. And they, that usually starts on like a Thursday. So this series started on a Wednesday. Um, so Wednesday I just, you know, watched it in my apartment. Um,

Thursday, there wasn't a game. Friday, all of my friends were basically crashing in my apartment. So we all watched game two, which was one of the three totally bonkers games. Then Saturday, there wasn't a game. And that was like the day we went out and partied. So Sunday, it was an afternoon game. And I just remember, you know, we're all just hung over. We're recovering from the weekend. And then this game comes on. And it was insane. Like it was just, it was the perfect game to watch recovering from a weekend of going out and just drinking. mostly. Yeah, I was, I look back at this era of hockey pretty fondly. I think, you know, this was really when I fully decided to immerse myself in this and started thinking that this was a

career path I wanted for myself, whatever capacity that was that I wanted to just, just work in hockey. I remember, you know, I've talked about a bunch in the podcast, but that kind of 2010-11 Vancouver Canucks team, they made it all the way to Stanley Cup final game seven really kind of hooked me into hockey and then leading into this season and then this postseason and then the Kings ironically enough beating the Canucks in round one and sort of being this analytics darling that was the eighth seed but actually was the best team in the league ever since they got Jeff Carter and really just this shot share monster and so I really kind of it hooked me from a storytelling perspective where I was like oh like there's something really interesting

happening here and it feels like hockey's changing and I want to be a part of that and sort of tell whatever stories I can. And so I got into it. And there's also a lot that I don't really remember from this time. Like it was funny when preparing for this podcast and really diving back into this world and rewatching the games bros or reading a bunch of the articles and stuff. I was like, oh yeah, like that happened. It felt like an entirely different world. I mean, we're going to get into a lot of the personnel decisions and how these teams were put together, particularly the flyers. Like it felt like it was a much more of a sort of devil make care attitude. in terms of teams just doing crazy stuff and making all these decisions before it really got

very analytical and turned into much more of a business and much more of science. No, they don't get me wrong. There's still teams that sort of make those types of moves that seem like there well hasn't been much thought or plan put into it. But certainly at this time, it felt like there was a lot more madness and just a lot of wild things going on in the NHL. Yeah, and the Flyers, you know, Paul Holmgren, I think I'm sure we're going to talk about him during the show, but he was the flyer.

Liar's GM at the time, and he was notorious for doing, I don't think crazy is the right word, but just the kind of stuff that always grabbed headlines. That was just his thing. And it was in part because I think that was just his style of general managing. And it was in part because he had, Ed Snyder, the owner, you know, screaming at him that I want to win a Stanley Cup before I die. So they were just always all in. Like, I'm convinced that I didn't cover the Flyers at this point.

I just started blogging about the team, like, right. right after I graduated college. So I was still, I was blogging, but, you know, not on an extremely regular basis. I did get credentialed for this season, but not for the playoff series because they, they cut down the amount of people that they credentialed for the playoffs, obviously, because there's out-of-towners coming in. But Holmgren just, he always was in the news. And I remain convinced that, like, agents would just leak to the media that the flyers were in on a guy,

even if they weren't, just because everyone in hockey, just assume the flyers were in on every single free agent and in on every single trade, because they kind of were. The amount of rumors that were flying around concerning the flyers during this era, which I would say is like maybe like 2009 through like 2013, the flyers were, if you believed everything you read, the flyers were in on everyone. And Paul Hongren,

like I don't know if there's a GM around today that is anywhere near as aggressive as Paul Hongren was during this era. you just don't see it and again that might be because of the way the games changed it also might just be because Paul Holmgren was kind of a one-of-a-kind general manager even in that era yeah one of my favorite it was like the early incarnations of

of hockey Twitter memes was like the picture of Paul Holmgren's face beside the phone yes I just said the caption just soon and it's like him just felt like he was in the middle of everything I think like the peak of it was the Shea Weber Offersheets saga but it felt like I have him down We're going to skip ahead here and do like a Paul Holmgren as a clear apex mountain guy in this period of time because he takes over the team in 2006.

And I think it's a good point to make that he was certainly sort of empowered and enabled by ownership to make these decisions. It's not like it was a rogue GM just getting all crazy. Clearly it was a plan of theirs or sort of calculated risk to try to get to the pinnacle and win a Stanley Cup and they almost did in 2010 without really kind of. carrying about what that's going to look like in the future. But yeah, he takes over this team in 2006 and pretty much right away. I mean, they give six years to 32-year-old chemotiemann in. They give eight years to 29-year-old Danny Breyer. They give the 12 and 11 years to Richards and Carter, respectively, who at least were

in their early to mid-20s at the peak of their careers. But there's like a seven-year deal here for, I don't even know how old Chris Pronger was at the time, I think like 34 maybe or something like that. There's maybe even 37. I think he was really old. Like it was a crazy deal at the time. I specifically remember that because there was a big, one thing that you have to remember about that, or that Flyers fans certainly remember about that year is that it was still pretty early in like

the new CBA, the post, you know, the post lockout CBA. And the Flyers, like, from what I understand, the Flyers, when they signed Pronger to that deal, they signed into the deal when he was 34, but it wasn't going to kick in until he was 35. And they were of the opinion when they signed it, that it wasn't going to count as a 35 plus deal because they signed it before he turned 35, but it turned out it did count as a 35 because it wasn't going to kick in until he turned 35. So he was right on that borderline when they signed him to the deal. Yeah, there was the poison pill. Shea Weber offers sheet, which we mentioned, which the predator is actually matched. But we're going to see the sort of long-term

lasting effects of that potentially in the coming years if there's a recapture penalty. He gives nine years, not only gives nine years, 31-year-old, the Lieberosgolov, but I forgot trades two third round picks so that he can get the rights to him so that he can give him this 42 million deal as if uh you know it had to secure that because you know 42 million itself wasn't nearly good enough to get it done you got a six year deal to 30 year old scott hard no one we get more into that uh one of his final moves was trading for Andy mcdonald and giving him the infamous six year deal I mean there's a I completely forgot but there's a five year deal here for a recently bought out 33 year old vina le Cable yeah like it was just yep I mean it was just pure

pure madness, basically from October 2006 to when he took over to this, I guess, 2014. So it was just like seven-year period which rivals the activity of anyone from this era. So I think Paul Holmugan was a very clear Apex Mountain guy at some point in time during this run because he was just, you certainly can't blame him for a lack of effort, that's for sure. Yeah, it's fascinating. We'll probably get into a little bit more depth about this when we get to all the people on Apex Mountain. But I think this is absolutely Paul Holmgren's high point as general manager because the Brzegallov deal was bad when it was made. But what's always been fascinating to me about the Briss Gullough deal is that it's hard to, it's hard to separate that from the Carter and Richard's trades, which happened not necessarily because they wanted Briss Gullough, but they did have to find a way to fit him and they wanted to shake up the team and whatnot.

And what's hilarious to me is that if you could find a way to just do the Carter and Richards deals without signing Brzegalov, that would have been amazing because those deals both worked out extremely well for the flyers. It was just they also got this goalie who ended up not being very good and they ended up having to use the compliance buyout on him. But this year, like this year and this game aside, because Brzgolf, as we'll talk about, was really bad in this game. Brzgolov was okay. He was decent. He wasn't amazing. He probably had more or less like a league average year, but he didn't hurt the team.

And because the trades that they made ended up working out so well, the Flyers ended up looking like a really, really good team going into this series. And that's something that does, I remember going into this series as a Flyers fan because I really wasn't a media member at the time. And being really annoyed at how the media was just, I think the national media specifically, particularly the people in Canada, just were assuming the penguins were going to roll in this series. And that's not saying the penguins weren't very good. Like obviously you had Malkin at maybe his best. You had Crosby back from the injury and playing great. So I got it from a rational standpoint.

But I just remember thinking, like, I don't think these people understand how good this Flyers team is. And this series showed that they were, I think, a lot better than a lot of the national people thought. Granted, that was in part because I think the national people were just extremely high on the Penguins. But HomeGrid put together a really good team, particularly up front. And that's something we'll talk about later as well. But Briss was one of those pieces where it hadn't gotten terrible yet. So you really got to see all the good things about this roster in this series. Dr. One thing for the Penguins, they're going to have to rely on a lot of their

Stanley Cup experience from 2009 and 08 because right now they're spinning out of control. They need somebody to reel in it. You see those eyes? That's the 1,000. yards there. That's a sign of a team that, well, how did we get ourselves into this situation? There's lack of confidence right now. There's a lack of focus right now. And that's what happens when you sense the inevitability factor. And that is the other guys have our number. Yeah. Well, that kind of leads us neatly into the lasting legacy of this game. We're sort of helping set the scene for what led up to this because, you know, you mentioned how people view the Penguins and obviously whenever you have two of the greatest players of their generation and Crosby

and Malkin I think regardless of who's around them or how the team is looking at the time once you're entering the postseason they're going to get a lot of the national storylines and people are going to be talking about them but I do think you know this penguins team I actually looked it up heading into this postseason they were the odds on favor to win the Stanley Cup they were at four to one ex best for the Rangers who actually were the number one seat in the east that year because Henrik Lunk was absolutely out of his mind and the Canucks who won one playoff game in this postseason so those were ruined Rangers and Canucks were at 11 to 2, but the Penguins were the odds on favorite.

And it was funny to look back at this because, you know, we often bemoan the current playoff seating and the system and sort of how, because the league is looking for these rivalries similar to Penguins flyers, they're trying to shoe in these matchups in divisions. So it leads to this kind of imbalance where you're wondering whether we're properly valuing regular season dominance. and if it's unfavorably skewed to one division or one conference at a time. But looking back at the system we had at this point in time, it's funny because I kind of forgot that the top three seeds were automatically given in each conference to the three division winners.

So in this particular season in 2011-12, the division with the penguins, the Rangers, the Flyers, and the Devils was just insanely stacked. And it led to the fact that the Rangers win the East and they're the one seed with 108 point or 109. points. The penguins actually have 108. They're one point behind them, but they fall into the four seed, even though they're second in the east in points, second in the east in goal differential, and they play this Flyers team in the 4-5 matchup that's third in the east in points, and fourth in the east in goal differential. And so I was looking at this, and pretty much by any objective measure, you would say that the Penguins and Flyers heading into this series were two of the top

seven or eight teams in the entire NHL this time. And so it's crazy to look back at it where they're playing in this four or five matchup, but there's so much more to it. And I guess, yeah, you're right, the penguin just kind of ran into this team that was sneakily much better than we would have given them credit for. But there was so much more nuance and layers to it beyond just your typical four or five matchup. Yeah, I think everyone knew it was going to be a fantastic series to watch. But I do think there was a feeling that the penguins were ultimately going to win it. And it's funny to look back as a Flyers fan, because to me, the legacy of this series for the

Flyers is that this clearly was, this series in particular, was clearly the high point of the rest of the decade. Like, this is as good as the Flyers got in the 2010s because after this series, they then played the Devils, who they were heavily favored against. They win game one and overtime, and then they lose the next four. So they, they lose the series. Then the next summer is when we talk about Paul Holgren, it's this, this is the summer when Paul Holmgren's like heater just ended because he so he he loses Yager he loses Matt Carl

he goes because because what he did is he went and tried to get both um the two guys who both ended up going to Minnesota. Zach Perise and Ryan Suter and he actually offered them more money than Minnesota did but they they both wanted to go to Minnesota. That's why they went. So because he was kind of because he was in that in that pursuit, he loses Yager. and he loses Carl. So then, because now his roster's weaker, he didn't get, he didn't get Suter, Porese, or both, which is I think what they were,

I think they wanted Souter more, but they figure, well, we'll offer both. Well, then he goes out and he offers Sheets Weber. He doesn't get him. So what you end up with, oh, and this was also the summer when he traded James Van Rheemstike for Luke Shen, because apparently one of the driving forces behind that

was that the devils after the series claim that it was very easy to forecheck the flyers because they didn't have a right-handed shot on defense. So they go and they trade James Van Riemstike for Luke Shen, who obviously was not a particularly good defenseman. So I look at this 2012 summer as the summer that like started to kill the flyers. And then after that, like they make the playoffs the year after, but they're never this deep, particularly up front ever again. And then what you end up having is you end up having the guys that are left from this team, particularly Claude Drew and Jake Vorichick.

They end up having to carry a very, very thin Flyers team through the rest of the decade just to keep them like mildly relevant. And I don't think anybody realized, anybody who followed the Flyers realized while watching the series that like this was as good as it was going to get for the Flyers because after this, they trend downward for pretty much the rest of the decade really up until this year where they finally seem like they're re-emerging as legitimate threat. But this was really as good as it got for the Flyers, and I don't think anybody at the time realized it.

Well, I think it also, it felt like during this era, Paul Hungren had, and the Flyers in general, I guess, had this, like, obsessive desire to solve their goaltending issues with the number one. And so they go out and spend all this money on Braboski, on Brzgalov, and there's obviously this lasting sort of domino effect where they give away Babrovsky and all this stuff happens. But then they also had this like lust for a top number one defenseman, preferably a big body guy who could eat a lot of minutes. I think it started with the sort of little taste that Pronger gave them before his career ended.

And then they go after a suitor. They go after Weber. There was a period of time here where they gave up a pick that get the rights for Ham used to try and sign him long term before he chose the Canucks. They trade for Shen. Like it felt like they were like, we're going to get this number one guy at any cost. And it's funny to look back at that now. I think that's where GMs and teams can really. back themselves into a corner and get into trouble where they try to, at any cost,

like lock down one specific type of player prototype or need because they feel like that's the way you have to build your team. And that's often when you can kind of talk yourself and work yourself into a series of issues. Yeah. And you mentioned Pronger. And I think that's something that obviously has to be talked about when you talk about kind of the downfall of the 2010 Flyers because that all changes if Chris Pronger doesn't get hurt.

Because, you know, who knows how he would have aged had he not had the, you know, the severe concussion and eye injury that essentially ended his career. But that came out of nowhere. And he was still a really good defenseman right up to that injury. Like, I think the, this year is when it happens. It happens at the beginning of this year. He plays like 15 games or something, right? Yeah, like, and I think he had like 11 points of 15 games. He was still a very, very good defenseman.

And if Pronger stays healthy, like I, even now, like, I watch, I watch Zadano Char. And like Zadano Char obviously isn't as good as he used to be, you know, as he is now. But like he's still a useful defenseman. And really up until maybe two years ago, he was still a legitimate top pair of defenseman. And I watch him and I always have in the back of my head like, man, I wonder how Chris Pronger would have aged. Like I wonder if Pronger honestly could have played until the end of that ridiculous contract. And I think there's a decent chance he might have because he's an all-time. great. Like he's an all-time great defenseman.

And as much criticism as Holmgren got for that contract, if he doesn't get hurt, I think he probably ages pretty well because he was just so smart. And the fact that they lost him, that's what then sends Holmgren on this desperate quest to fix the defense. And that's what gets him Luke Shen. That's what gets a manager McDonald. Like, they just start going for guys that I believe Holmgren was a very good talent evaluator of forwards. I do not think he was a good talent evaluator of defensemen. Like beyond like obviously everybody knew Chris Pronger was a great defenseman. But when he loses Pronger, the guys he targeted just were not that good.

And they were all like a lot of them were very much like that old school type of, you know, type of defenseman. And I think that was just a blind spot that became so much more obvious and so much more painful for the flyers because Pronger gets hurt. If he doesn't get hurt, I have a very, very, very. good feeling that this Flyers team at least stays good through the midpoint of the 2010. Not just because he's a great player, but because of all the moves that the loss of Pronger then inspired. Yeah.

I think the injury itself certainly blinds out of them. I think if you take a step back and you're like, okay, a 38-year-old with whatever, 13 or 4,400 games that played during this brutal, much more barbaric era of hockey that we had back then for the meat of his career gets hurt. It's much less of a surprise. So I don't know. I think you're right. Like this is Dano Chara, for example,

but I think that's sort of the exception that proves the rule. I think expecting guys to still carry that type of weight for them is when you can get yourself into trouble. But, I mean, it's funny. Watch this game three in particular. There's like a sequence where Braden Coburn does something really well. And Pierre Maguire goes like, keep in mind, this is a team that doesn't have Chris Pronger,

Andre Mazaros, but Braden Coburn is carrying the heavy lifting for that. them, it was like, oh, my God. Like, I totally forgot that they were sort of still using that as a thing. Like, oh, my God, I wish we had Chris Pronger in this series because I totally forgotten that he'd even played 13 or 14 games in that regular season. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was a key part of this team. And I do think he probably would have, you know, dealt with injuries.

Like the year before Pronger missed a lot of the season due to injury. But when he played, he was still very good. And then he came back this year and he played very well to start the year and then obviously had the injury. And then I think that just sent the flyers. on this run of we need to fix the defense and they never could. Kind of changing gears, you know, kind of go to the penguins. You know, obviously the penguins stayed competitive through the 2010s.

They didn't fall off after this. They stayed a good team. They eventually won their cups. But, you know, I looked at this as, you know, this series in some ways to me, it kind of hinted at the problems, like the underlying problems below the surface with the penguins that they needed to fix before they could win again. And to me, like, you have, you know, obviously the goaltending was bad in this series. I don't think Flurry is a bad goalie, but, you know, they don't win until they get, until they get merry.

And then the coaching. I mean, they don't win until they change coaches. And they get, you know, they end up with, you know, they, I guess what they end up with Johnson, who was bad. And then obviously, you know, you make the change and you win, you get Sullivan. But it's fascinating to me because the flaws that show in this series, you know, coach. goal-tending, and then just sometimes they struggle to keep their cool. I think, you know, they sort of popped up throughout the rest of the decade, and they didn't start winning championships again until they found a way to resolve those problems.

Yeah. Okay, well, we're going to get into all that. I think the last sort of lasting legacy of this game was, you know, it's obviously the ballot Pennsylvania. I think there was a bunch of bad blood here. They keep referencing an April 1st game towards in the regular season where things kind of got out of hand. It was a third time meeting in the postseason in five years.

I remember this, and we're going to get into flurry here, but kind of the goaltending itself, just completely self-combusting for both teams. Like the Flyers win this, and I think in game two in particular, or it was really a game one, I forget that it all kind of blends together now, but Brzgalab actually makes a number of key saves that sort of helps write the ship, but just considering the name value and also how many resources financially the teams had respectively invested in these guys, I remember at the time with all the goals piling up, everyone was like, how could this possibly be happening? So we're going to get into all that.

I think let's sort of set the scene here. So in game one, the Flyers come back from a 3-0 deficit. And the 3-1 goal to really kickstart that comeback is this egregious offside where Danny Breyer comes in and scores on a breakaway. And then I think Flurry gives up like a really bad one to make a 3-2. And they eventually wind up winning 4-3 in overtime. In game 2, they similarly come back. and it was really fascinating because we're going to get into what Claudeau-Rue does in this series,

but there's a bunch of sort of things here that he does remarkably well. He obviously has the hat-trick and the six-point game. Jean Couturee has his own hat-trick. They wind up winning in the third period and win 8-5 after an empty netter. And then in this game three, it's 8-4 Flyers. So, yeah, just the fact that there was like 45 goals combined between these teams in the four games. It was crazy. and that speaks to this sort of high event peak entertainment,

just complete bad shit nature of it. But I don't know, beyond all of that, what age the best for you here? Let's start off with yours. And then I've got like a full list of things that really age well for me. Yeah. So the one thing I would say that, you know, rewatching the series that aged really well is just the quality of the Flyers

forwards. Like I don't think we realize in the moment just how good they were because we didn't know what was going to happen. But, like, because obviously you have Drew, you know, I, I would definitely put him on Apex Mountain here. And then you have Scott Hartnell had a great year that year. But like, you also have, you have Yager on this team. And I don't, no one realized that he was going to stay really good through like the middle

of his 40s. I think there was a feeling in this series that, well, this might be like the last we see of Yager and certainly wasn't. You have Danny Breyer who's scoring a ton of goals. You have Wayne Simmons who just. just had his first good year, like a good scoring year, and he was going to turn into this, you know, 30-goal year, best net front guy in the league type of guy for the rest of this decade, pretty much.

You have Brayden Shen, who ended up being like a first-liner on a cup team with the Blues. You have Jake Forrecheck, who starts the series on line four, and he becomes a first-liner. And then you have Sean Gatorier, who is now one of the best two-way players in hockey. Like, I look at this, and I say, like, they had eight guys who were, like, first-line. caliber talents. And then you have Max Talbot who had the best year of his career this year in the regular season. You had Matt Reed who led all rookies and goal scoring, which is something that I think doctors out there. It was like, wait, really? He did.

But he was older, right? Because he played in college, I think. Yeah, yeah. They signed him out of the Minji State. But like, the quality of the flyers forwards in the series was unreal. And they didn't even have James Van Riems like for the start of the series. Like, he was hurt. He comes back later in the series. So you might, if you want to consider him a first line caliber player. Like, the amount of talent the Flyers had in this series up front was just staggering. Certainly. Yeah, they had an embarrassment of Riches up front to the point where it was funny seeing at

the start of this series that, you know, on their lineup sheet, Forecheck was listed as a fourth liner. Now, La Villette was really putting the lines in a blender here. I actually think, funny enough, the Shen Breyer-Simmons trio was one of the only lines that was held together. Like, you had a lot of Yager with Girou and Harnaud, but you'd see Drew playing all over the place. They tried to get him out on the ice as much as possible,

and you'd have him playing with Voracek, with Reed, with Kutriya here and there, depending on the situation. So they're really mixing it up, but Vorichick actually winds up scoring the overtime winner in Game 1 playing with Drew. So it was really funny to see all that and just kind of relive that. You're right, JBR doesn't play until, I think, game 4 or 5 in this series coming back from an injury,

and they wind up trading them after the series, after the season. So we don't see them at real full form. It felt like they were constantly missing one or two guys here. But it was just ridiculous, which I think makes it even worse that Zach Rinaldo was getting such consistent minutes when you had this kind of glut of talent. And it was like, we need to find a way to get Zach Rinaldo out there. Like he was legitimately, I think he was like a regular on the third line this season, right?

Like I think Sean Cotrier's two most common line mates in his rookie year were Max Talbot and Zach Ronaldo. Yeah, for whatever reason, Peter Lavillette has always loved Zachernaldo. Like, Zachernaldo, what always cracks me out of Zachernaldo with Lavalette. So the year before this, when they played Buffalo in the first round, and that was a bizarre series because the Flyers were a way better team and they end up getting taken to seven games against them. And then Lavalette lost his mind with the goalies. He was cycling through everybody. He brought Michael Layton back in. But one of the, like, hilarious things that I think back on is that Zachernaldo had, never played an NHL game before, and

Laviolet puts him in that playoff series. Like, for whatever reason, Peter Lavillette, and he even like used him a lot in Nashville. So Peter Lavelle, for whatever reason, just had a thing for Zach Rinaldo. But kind of going back to this fourth thing, I mean, one thing I definitely believe aged extremely

well. You hear it a lot when you watch this game, you obviously see it in game two, but just Sean Gatorrier, this is, I think, the first time that everybody sees the players that he's ultimately going to become. And during the series, Pierre is gushing over him,

like, how good is this guy going to be? But, like, looking back, now we know how good he was going to be. So this is, like, the first time where the entire league, you know, the entirety of North America got to see Sean Gatoria and his potential. And obviously, that ages really well because now we know what was going to ultimately happen with the rest of his career and his progression. He takes a hit to make the play. And then they go out, look who's back thought.

Sean Gatorier, back against Malcolon defensively responded. Look at his hand. He goes right away, Malcon played that with a high stick. That's amazing awareness by a young player. Watch his hand. As soon as we play with the high stick, this kid just... I think it was really funny, though, because Pierre, throughout these first couple games of the series,

keeps reminding us that Sean Gachery is only 19 years old. And you keep saying, can you imagine what this guy's going to look like when he's 21? And it's funny because, and part of it was because of the way they used them, obviously, and who he was playing with and not being on the top unit powerpoint and all that. So like his counting stats finally get there in what, 27, 18 when they pair on with Juru and kind of get the most out of both those guys. And he hasn't looked back since. But it actually takes him a while.

So if anything, it ages really well, but it's also a good sort of reminder about patience with players or how rolled the pendant and how kind of circumstantial just box card production can be for players because I think Pierre McGuire just assumes that, oh, my God, if this is what a chariot is at right now at night. every single year from here on out, he's going to get better. And that's not necessarily always the way it works with young players. Like, it makes sense that you'd think at one point he has like a collision in game two, I think, with Brooks Warpick.

And Pierre says, oh, Brooks Orpick's lucky to get out of that one. Because if you had run into 21-year-old, Sean Couturee there, you'd be in some serious trouble. And that makes sense from like a putting on weight perspective. He certainly looks remarkably sort of gangly and lanky in this series. But it does take him a while. I think he doesn't really break out offensively until he's like 24, 25 years old or something around there. So it's just a good reminder of how sometimes that progression for young players can go in NHL. Yeah, and he's a lot slower in this series than, you know, then he ends up becoming.

Like, he's never, he's obviously not like a burner now, but he's, he's a legitimately solid skater, I think, now. And in this series, like, there are definitely pucks that he doesn't get to because he's just, you know, that was one of the reasons why he slipped to eight that and the fact that he had, he had mono in his draft year. that kind of made his draft minus one season or his draft one season just looked like, it was okay. It wasn't as good as we thought. But, you know, he definitely works on his skating, his puck handling ability. But you certainly see in this series, like what he, what he can become and what he

ultimately will become. But, you know, I'm obviously looking at this more from a, you know, from a flyer's perspective. I'm curious to hear what, what you think age the best. Well, one more thing on Katrina, it's really fascinating because I think he, I mean, he was only 19 years old in the series, so we need to remember that. But he has, you know, he has that hat-tricking game two. What was fascinating, what I didn't really remember was how aggressively, and this sort of speaks to how good he already was defensively, and also

how much Peter Alavila trust him at this point of his career, where they were like exclusively hunting that Malkin versus Kratrudea matchup. I think in game one, they keep reciting the stat where he was out there for like 15 of Malkins' 24 shifts or something like that, 5-1-5. And Malkin actually, in these first couple of games, he produces some nice. nice goals on the power play but at five on five he pretty much is completely neutralized by the combination of katrari and talbot um in game two katurier is out there for the opening draw and dan bylasma sends the crosbie line because he gets the last change and so funny enough to watch that laviolette doesn't like that matchup he wants katurier out there to save himself for the malk and neal

combo and so he quickly right after the draw tries to pull the katiria line and send jeru out there instead and crosbie winds up scoring like 15 seconds into game two and it was just funny to look back at that now and be like oh my god they were like very serious about how much they relied upon katurier to play pretty much exclusively against malkin to the point where in game three when the game's getting out of hand we're going to talk more about what james neil does but you can see that kind of bubbling frustration of how they've bottled him up at five on five and he finally snaps and just completely um cheap shots katurier when the puck's not even around him and so i i think if anything like katrudey should view that

as a badge of honor because it just shows the job he did on those two guys who combined for 90 goals during the regular season between the two of them. Yeah, and we were talking about this I guess over DM a few days ago that like we shouldn't, we have to to note just how good Evgeny Malkin was in this season. Like he was incredible that this was, I believe, his first MVP year, right? Yeah, yeah, he was, I mean, let's save that for Apex Mountain because I have a lot of I'm all in thoughts. I think we should say that.

You know what age is best for me here? The 24-7 series and the road to the winter classic. So it wasn't from this series, but just in terms of letting us in and giving us a peek behind the scenes to familiarize ourselves nationally with the players involved in the game that we watch play hockey, it was, I remember this as the Flyers and the Rangers were on this year,

and there were just so many classic moments from the Drew-O-O-T-O-T-O-T-O-T-O-Face-off where he was telling him to go look up his percentage on NHL.com. He's like, yeah, no doubt you're a pretty good player, but I'm going to win his draw. There's the, you know, Briss Gullab, obviously, with his comments on the universe and everything. And funny enough, he talks about how important it is to protect tigers. So maybe he was ahead of the curve there with a whole Tiger King thing. Oh, God. You've got, you've got Churier.

As a teenager living with like Danny Breyer and his kids. And I remember there was a ton of unintentional comedy involved in that. You've got on the other side, I think for the Rangers, you've got Artemisimov scoring that goal and then shooting at one of the, with a stick at one of the lightning players and having this brawl. And so I remember there was like so many talking points and things that came away from that. And I was just thinking about now when during this time of quarantine, we don't have any hockey games on.

We see teams still trying to sort of churn out content. and give us access to the players. And I know it's a completely different time. There's so much going on and we need to factor all that in. But you see how, like, forced it is with players just, like, sitting at home, trying to show personality on some of these interviews or Q&As. And it's like just going back to then how organically they made it seem and how much I enjoyed it. I remember on a weekly basis, I was like, I can't wait for those four or five weeks to watch this to see what these players and what these coaches are up to.

And so just thinking back on that fondly, I know they did it a couple more times. but I think that HL could certainly do a much better job of sort of showing us that behind-the-scenes stuff and what these players are all about. Yeah, I think, and this is something that Flyers fans have talked a lot about, especially during the lean years, which is part of the reason why this season was becoming so much fun for Flyers fans, is that this Flyers team, like, even setting aside the fact that they were a really good team, they were just a lot of fun. They had a lot of personalities.

Scott Hartnell is a gigantic person out. Danny Breyer was super popular. You have Wayne Simmons establishing himself. You know, you have Drew still young and developing. Like, this was a team that was just flat out fun. They were fun to watch. They were fun to follow. Like, going into this playoffs, the Flyers played the Penguins, you know, a few weeks

before the season ended, I believe. And that was the game where you have Lavioette, like, standing up and screaming at Bilesma. And that was, it was just the kind of crazy stuff that was happening where, like, this team, was just a lot of fun to watch. And I think going back to 24-7, that was something that 24-7 certainly highlighted was that this was a legitimately intriguing bunch of people

that were a fond... I mean, I didn't really cover them, but they must have been a fun team to cover, and they certainly were a fun team to follow from a fan perspective just because they actually did show their personalities. I've got, on what age is the best as well, Mark Andre Fleury,

because I remember at this point in time, there was a while there where he was pretty much a league average, probably even slightly below league average goalie by any sort of underlying metric of goalie performance when you're adjusting for circumstances and all that.

But he was riding his draft pedigree and then that 09 playoff cup ring. And so everyone just kind of similar to what we do with Kerry Price now, I feel. It was funny seeing the NHLPA player poll where the players still voted

him as the number one goalie or the goal you'd want most if you had to win one game, even though it's been a couple years now since I think he's been the best goalie in the league. But some of these sort of narratives or beliefs on player performance are so tough to shake and generally take a couple of years beyond their expiry date. But for Flurry at this time, everyone just would shoehorn him into all of these debates about who was the best goalie, like who was the most reliable come playoff time. And in 09-10, he's an 891, say a percentage is in playoffs. This year, he has an 834, and the wheels just completely come off.

And we hear so much about how, you know, for goalies, it's like similar to boxers. Like, when you get punched ones, like, you're never the same again. For goalies, it's considered to be so much, like, between the years in terms of psychology and confidence. And once you lose that and get shaken, maybe you never get it back. And so I think it was certainly fair to wonder what Flurrie's career was going to look like after this point. In 2012, 13, the Penguins make it to the conference final, but he actually loses the crease in

round one to Thomas Vokun, which I almost forgot. And then it takes a while. And, you know, he has a couple sort of league average regular seasons again. Then Matt Murray comes in and steals the crease from him. But in that 16-17 playoff stretch where he comes in when Murray got hurt and especially against the capitals plays so remarkably well. And then goes to Vegas and has this second shelf life to his career. So that's why I had him what age the best because I think at this point in time, if you ask me what the most realistic outcome for him was. I would have honestly said that I just, I don't think his career would have been over,

but I wouldn't have thought that he would ever get to those heights again. And then just based on what he's done over the past couple of years in Vegas and on his way out in Pittsburgh during that cup run for them as the backup, like I think he certainly salvaged what looked like it was a pretty bad situation. Based on some of the goals that have gone in in this series of end story. Yeah, yeah, he really has had a fascinating career. And obviously the, you know, the Vegas season is just going to be, I would assume he probably will get elected into the Hall of Fame, I would think, you know,

just based on like the types of things that Hall of Fame voters tend to, tend to value. And that season of Vegas, and I guess the one playoff run he had, like with Pittsburgh, those are going to be the things that get him in there if and when he does. But I remember as a, like, as just a Flyers fan at the time, I remember being, feeling so satisfied that like Flurry fell apart. not just because the Flyers won the series, but because for a couple years leading up to the series, I had been one of the people screaming that Mark Andre Fleary isn't actually that good

and that he's overrated. And this was just purely from a fan perspective, it was satisfied because this was like the proof for everyone to see that Mark Andre Fleury wasn't this top three goalie, and actually you guys were all overrating him because of he was on a really good team and because of that one playoff run. My final, what age the best? And this probably is the correct answer.

what actually aged the best, it was the result of that dual Jeff Carter, Mike Richards trade from June 23rd, 2011, right? Because we can do that here. Like, there's obviously a lot of nuance and a lot of layers to it, but just when you look at the fact that they got back Voracek, Kuchre, Kuchre, Chen, Simmons, and like, I think three other draft picks, I don't think ultimately amounted to anything, but just that volume. And when you look at all those guys who U-25 at this point, basically, that are making peanuts, especially compared to the players they were traded for. You know, unfortunately, the Flyers mismanaged that cap and use those savings poorly.

But just when you look at this series, how good all those guys already were playing against Crosby and Malkin and a really good Penguins team, it's just remarkable to look back that they were able to get that volume and that quality of pieces for those two guys. Yeah, and it goes back to what we're saying. saying about home and kind of being on apex mountain because, I mean, these, the Carter Richard trades were, you know, in a sense mandated by Ed Snyder. I mean, the whole thing kind of stemmed from, you know, number one, there were, there were obviously those questions about, you know, their extracurriculars.

But the big thing was, was that the goalie situation was such a mess in 2011 in the playoffs because Lavellett lost total faith of Bovrovsky and then turned to his backups and ended up throwing late in. And basically Snyder just decided. it like never again. We're never going to have goalie issues again. So we need to get the best goalie on the market, who at that time was Briss Ghaloff. And then it became, okay, well, how do we make it work? And, you know, Carter, you know, Carter had just signed that deal, but hadn't kicked in yet. And Richards, I believe, had a no movement clause that was going to kick in. And they just decide that

we're going to replenish our team. And the, uh, the line that Holgren said after the trades was that, like, I don't know if we got better, but we certainly got different or something to that extent. And, And I mean, Holmgren was a huge Mike Richards fan. Like I believe he like teared up when he was explaining having to trade him because he loved the player so much. And the fact that Holmgren was able to extract that much value. Like those trades could have been disastrous. Like he that's not those aren't trades that you are guaranteed to win, trading way two guys in the prime of their careers who were basically the faces of the franchise. And he got back four players who all became really, really good players.

And, you know, credit to Holmgren, credit to the scouting department that identified the right players to target. And again, it goes back to Apex Mountain because, you know, this is the same guy who a couple years later is going to identify Andrew McDonald as the guy to target of the trade deadline and then give $30 million to. But, like, he was also capable of identifying that Jake Voracek was a future star. And he wasn't getting, you know, maybe the minutes and the usage that would allow him to do that in Columbus. And that Wayne Simmons could be a really good goal score if he was using the top power play unit. Like there was, this was a really, really good job done by by Holgren, just looking at those trades. And it's a height that he really never reaches again. Yeah, I just remember how stunning it was at the time that both trades came out on the same day and just, you know, it's something you very rarely see in NHL at the time of the trade.

Richards and Carter were both 26 years old. Richards had nine years left with 5.75 million per. And I think he actually had a no move clause that kicked into that coming summer. So yeah. I wonder how much of it was sort of motivated from getting out of that while they still could. Whereas with Carter, it was funny to look back at the fact that I didn't realize that his deal hadn't even kicked in yet. It was an 11-year deal at 5.272.

And, you know, if you told me at the time, I certainly think that number, volume of years for those guys would have been a problem regardless. But it's funny enough because I think Jeff Carter has actually aged significantly better than I would have thought he would have at the time just based on his body type and his skating. sort of all the stories about dry island and how they were conducting themselves behind the scenes and the fact that he's still you know he's his kind of the attrition is taken its toll on his body and he certainly missed a growing number of games over the past couple years but he's still like an effective NHL player who's capable of scoring goals and I think if you told me back at this point

of time when this trade happened that that would still be happening uh you know not a decade later basically I wouldn't have believed you yeah yeah I I've said on multiple occasions that if you told me that Carter and not Richards was the one that would age well, I would have been shocked at the time. But I guess in retrospect, it kind of makes sense because, you know, Carter, I wouldn't say Carter was a finesse player because that's not fair to him. But Richards definitely was a guy who, you know, his style of play, you know, always was when he was at his peak was, you know, he played bigger than his size. and he was always, you know, getting in corners and making big hits and whatnot. And, you know, I always kind of wonder with Richards, you know, setting aside, you know, the rumors about partying and things like that. Like, I just don't know if his body was ever going to be able to stand up considering the way he played.

I mean, that's an understatement. By 2015, he's 30 years old and he's out of the league. Like it's, you know, and with Carter, he scored 46, 33, and 36 goals in his final three years in Philly. in his early 20s. He got over 30 once after that. He had 32 and 1617. Now he had 26 and 45 games during the lockout short in season 2012-13.

So that stat needs to be kind of considered that as well. But it kind of worked out, I guess, because both guys won two cups in L.A. in 2012 and 2014. And the Flyers sort of retooled their franchise on the fly and kind of gave themselves a younger facelift and still have a number of those key contributors as faces the franchise.

So it was one of those things that ultimately want to working out for everyone involved. Yeah, yeah. And people will always say, like, well, if they wouldn't have traded them, I don't know. Like, as I said, if you could, if you could, uh, if you could somehow do the Carter-Richers trades without getting Brzegal off, because then you have Boprofsky, and now we know what Boprofsky was going to turn into. So you, you have your goalie solution already on the roster that they just decided, well, you know, we're, we're not patient enough to wait for him to develop.

If you could somehow do the trades without getting Briss, then the Flyers are in a much better spot for the rest of the decade. Yeah, but that's part of the Paul Holmgren roller coaster. So they got to take the good with the bad. Do you have any other what age the best or should we move on to what age the worst? I think we should move on to what age is the worst. All right, here's mine. I guess this is kind of like an unanswerable question too,

but how are the penguins so bad at finding complimentary talent at this point of their franchise? you've got Malkin Crosby stall, Neil, and let's put Dupuy and Koonitz's in there as their top six forwards. After that, here's the list of guys, they were cranking out in their bottom six who were playing key roles. Tyler Kennedy, 34-year-old Matt Cook on his last legs, I was shocking number of 38-year-old Steve Sullivan minutes here playing with Crosby. I know, right? A stunning amount of Steve Sullivan. Dustin Jeffrey, 36-year-old Richard Park, who's out of the league after this season, 35-year-old Craig Adams, Aaron Ashum, Eric Tank, Reddy, Joe Vitale.

It's just crazy that they weren't able to find guys, especially when you spin it forward to that 2015-16 team that gets out of the hump and wins the first cup for them where they've got Kessel, Hornquist, Bonino, Hagelin, Rust, Shiri, and they were really able to sort of, I guess, figure out a better way to get guys into their system in the H-A-HL, let them marinate and then bring them up and be key contributors. And it's funny now, like the Penguins are considered to be this one of the best franchises in the NHL at calling up Joe Schmo or Mark Dong, quote unquote, from the HL and having them instantly play in the top six and score 20, 25 goals.

And then you look back to this era and they were just so stunningly bad at it. Yeah, that was something I had on my way to age the worst as well, just the penguin supporting cast because you're absolutely right. And I think it's something that this series really does, like, put a spotlight on. Because in the moment, I don't think a lot of people realized how weak the supporting cast was. Because you look at it and it's like, oh, well, they have Crosby and Malkin and they have James Neal with his amazing season. And Jordan Stahl, obviously, is a really good center. And then it just kind of stopped.

And I think everyone just sort of were like, well, yeah, the Penguins are great up front. And they were from a star level standpoint. But, you know, we talked a bit earlier about the Flyers' depth. And I think more than anything, that's the reason why the Flyers win this series is because, you know, this was such a bizarre series just because everyone is scoring. You know, the goalies are playing terribly. And what it boils down to is, like, who has the most viable goal scores? And the Flyers had 10. And the Penguins had, like, four.

And when you have a series where the goalies aren't stopping anything, you know, it doesn't matter that Crawlsby and Malkin are the two best players in the series probably. They're, you know, just from a sheer volume standpoint, the team with 10 legitimate goal scores is going to beat the team with four. And that's, I think, in a lot of ways, kind of what happened here. And this was the first series where you saw, you know, kind of going back to what I said about, you know, the legacy of this game for me from a penguin's perspective was it hinted at a lot of problems that needed to be fixed for this team to end up getting back

on the cup winning track. And the supporting cast is a big part of it. I mean, they needed to do a much better. job of finding guys to put around, you know, put around their big guns. And it took them a while to do it. And this series, I think, really showed how important that was and how devastating that was to their, to their ability to, you know, not to still be successful. Because you have Crosby and Malkin, you're going to make the playoffs every year.

You're going to be a team that teams don't want to play against the playoffs. But it just, it makes it so much easier to go on long runs. And this series, even though, I mean, you can make an argument. This series is like, you know, at least going in. end of the series. This is Malkin at his best and arguably Crosby at his best because these are probably his best years. Sadly, they were, you know, cut short by concussions. But, you know, from, at his peak standpoint, this is pretty close. And they just don't have guys around them, you know, aside from Neil who's great and Saul, who's good, that can really, you know,

support them when they're not scoring three, four goals a game. Charlie, I'm sick of you stepping on my toes with all this Malkin stuff. We're saving it for Apex Mountain. Don't, I'm not going to getting to my Malkin thoughts, my Crosby thoughts. We're going to save that prevex mountain. Okay. No, but you're completely right. And I think, you know, if you're someone who's affiliated right now with Edmonton Oilers, there's a lot of lessons to be learned in terms of how the penguins conducted themselves

during this era. Here's what else age the worst. The flyers just goaltending decisions. And I think, you know, there's so many layers we've already talked about to the brisgall of contract and kind of how it was tied into everything. You can't just view it in a vacuum. But during this era, the Flyers had this obsession with getting that number one goalie and paying and doing it at whatever price necessary. And so they trade a couple of picks to get Bruez's rights.

They sign him. But the weird thing to me is before this happens, so in 2009-10, they make the Stanley Cup final with like just this rag-tag group of like, Brian Boucher and Michael Layton and so on and so forth. In 2010-11, they have a 22-year-old Sergey Barclay. who in 54 games is a 915 save percentage and a plus 12 goals saved above expected. And then that would make this Flyers team, if anything, realize how you would think how sort of not volatile opposition is, but how sort of overrated it can be in terms of having that name brand number one guy when you've had the success they've had, just kind of inserting and plugging and playing guys. And I guess maybe that sort of took its mental toll on them where they

were just sick of that kind of uncertainty and that sort of revolving door and spinning carousel. But, you know, Brissgala, funny enough, maybe this is what age the best or the worst, but it didn't wind up working out for them. They wind up trading Bobrovsky shortly thereafter. And then basically up until this point now, when they have Carter Hart, beyond a brief Steve Mason cameo there, like, it just, that revolving door and that wound up recurring for them for the better part of the decade ahead. And so it's funny to see how all that played out now that we have the benefit of hindsight.

Yeah, and you hit the nail right on the head with regards to like the summer before kind of being the last straw. Because you're absolutely right. The Flyers for years, you know, kind of went with that, you know, stopgap type of approach. And it was funny because, I mean, I think it still absolutely exists in the analytics community. But it was really prevalent back then was just the idea that like you don't spend money on goalies. You know, you just, you know, you just kind of go with one. guy for a year and you pick and choose and whatnot and then you because goalies are so you know they're so fickle in terms of year over year production and the flyers did that for years they you know they had

marty biron a few years before this obviously they had the latent run you know they they had roman checkmonic in the 2000s like they definitely were the kind of team that would all would have a new goalie every couple years and they would just try to win on the strength of the the depth of the rest of their roster but that that playoff run in 2011 was the last straw for Red Snyder. And that was when, you know, it's, it's kind of, it is ironic and it's one of those like your tragic ironies where, you know, for years they tried throwing guys out there who probably weren't as good as they sold them to be. And then they finally find the guy in Vibrovsky who actually is as good as they sold him to be. And that was the time. They finally had

him. And that was the time when they was like the last straw, like, we can't do this anymore. Like, you had them. All you had to do was just. wait and you had him but instead that was the moment when you lost your mind and we're like no we need to break our our philosophy of kind of just picking goalies up on the fly and we need to get the guy and obviously bris didn't work out and obviously pop did well on bris last two years there and then they buy him out and they're still paying him to this day and obviously not up against their cap but it's funny i guess it worked out so poorly that i'm not sure if the league was already headed this way but just before the Bobrovsky contract with Florida this past summer, the examples of high-price

switching team and unrestricted free agency was just so minimal, right? Like, I was looking for examples, and it was Ben Bishop with the Stars, although it was a pretty low A-A-V, just a bunch of years on the deal. It was like Scott Darling with the Hurricanes, James Reimer with the Panthers, like Yarrow-Halak with the Islanders. There's very few examples. A lot of those are like three-year-deal. It's very few sort of significant fighting.

financial commitments to goalie switching teams. And I wonder how much of that was just it working out so badly for the flyers and Brazcalov that they got scared off from it and didn't want that albatross on their hands. And how much of it was just the league heading that way naturally anyways. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I'll be fascinated. I mean, who knows how the off season is going to look. But I'll be really fascinated to see what kind of deal, Braden Holpe gets this summer. Because, I mean, he's obviously that kind of guy with pedigree.

He's won a cup, but he's trending downwards. So be extremely curious. he'll be a nice case study to see just how, you know, the league views, you know, views goalies in the modern day because he's the kind of guy where, you know, if he hit, if he hit the market the same time, Briss did, I guarantee you, he probably gets, you know, a seven, eight, nine year deal. All right. What else age the worst for you? Okay. This to me was number one, what age the worst? Oh my God, the Flyers defense. Like, somehow, I think, in this, in the moment we knew it was bad, but we didn't quite realize just how bad it was.

So in game three, teaming gets kicked out for fighting Chris LaTang. And that leaves for the rest of the game for the Flyers, that leaves them with Braden Coburn, Matt Carl, Nicholas Grossman, who wasn't very good to begin with, but played hurt in this series.

Andreas Lillia and Pavel Cubina. So going through these guys, like Coburn has a decent career the rest of this decade, with he ends up getting traded by the Flyers to Tampa and he turns himself in the kind of like a useful role play in defenseman but he's like the clear number one here with teaming and out and Pierre was praising him up and down for taking all the minutes like he was not a number one defenseman he really wasn't even a top pair defenseman then you have Matt Carl who actually was very good for the

flyers but he then goes to Tampa after the series and immediately falls off a cliff like his his underlying numbers go in the toilet the very next season to the point where like he just becomes an albatross for Tampa. Lillia has one more year, one more really bad year, and then is done. Grossman was really bad the rest of his tenure in Philadelphia. Kubina is

done after the series. Like, he doesn't play in the NHL ever again. And those are the five guys that the Flyers roll out there to try to hold down, you know, 45 plus minutes in game three of a playoff series. And it's just mind-boggling to me that they got away with it.

Yeah, teaming in being booted out of this game and he was still really good at this time and he was playing a lot but he was kind of long the tooth as well certainly and they're relying on him a ton when he gets i mean even while he was still playing in games one and two like brain coburn is playing in the in the mid-twenties per game um in fact like i think like yeah they're relying you know grossman um gets talked about pierre maguire in this series like he's nicholas lidsram like he's like yeah right he's spotlighting him in game one like oh the penguins are really really going after Grossman here. He's banged up. They're like a, they smell blood in the water.

And then it goes to a point where during one of those coaches interviews during the game, uh, in game one, Pierre McGuire like specifically asks Dan Bilesmaa if their, if their game plan is to target Nicholas Grossman physically. It's like, how is this the main talking point or storyline? It's like, then we got a really target Nicholas Grossman here. The amount of play he got in hindsight was, was stunning. So yeah, you're right. I think it, it's certainly, uh, aged poorly. But I, they got away. with it. I guess it just speaks to how good their forwards were that they were able to patch it up. And funny enough, you spin it forward however many years, like, look at that the blue line

that the penguins won the cup with, where it was like Ron Hainsey was their number one defenseman. So I don't think there's like a lesson to be learned there. The defensemen are overrated. But I guess when your forwards are as good as those specific teams were, you can kind of work, work around it or sort of patch it up and make it work with guys who aren't typically that good. Yeah, I mean, I think the lesson here with regards to the flyers is, just that, you know, looking at this defense, it explains why the Flyers fell apart the rest of this decade because they just had no one. And they had no prospects really coming. And that's why they had to rebuild their entire pipeline. You draft Travis Sandheim. You draft Ivan Proveroff. You dig up Phil

Myers. You would draft it, I guess, Ghost gets drafted, I guess, a couple months after this, because he's 2012. But it took time. It took time to rebuild this defense. And, you know, you have all these great forwards and they lose some of them. You know, they lose JBR. They lose Yager in the off season. Brie air starts falling off the next season.

But you have all these great forwards that you compiled. And you just couldn't take full advantage of them because the defense was just so bad. And watching this series, it really hammers home just how bad this defense was on paper. And it hammers home exactly why they went after super. or in exactly why they tried to get Weber. It wasn't just the, it wasn't just the we need a number one defenseman. It was just our defense is awful and we really need to improve it.

And they just never really could. I mean, part of that was because they were going after the wrong people like Andrew McDonald. But part of that is just because it's really hard to rebuild a defense core if you're not home growing it. And they eventually did rebuild it. But it took years, years and years of drafting and developing to get to that point. Complaining about officiating is like the last. lowest hanging fruit in my opinion, but I thought it was particularly notable how bad the officiating was in these first three games, just rewatching it. In game one, it's funny because

on my most recent rewatchable, I was talking with Drans about how the coach's challenges and how offside are sort of reviewed consistently in today's game has really changed my, it's kind to kind of conditioned me similar to like flags and football where something great happens and you're just waiting for it to get called back and you kind of like you can't emotionally get invested in it because you're not sure if it's actually going to count and stick and so um i kind of don't love that part of it but at the same time you watch this and like danny brier's offside goal in game one is so egregious it's not as bad as the mat duches one but it is really bad to the point that pierre mcguire is like actually calling out the referees for how they missed it and

yeah they make some decisions i mean beyond just like the penalty calls themselves and i think kind of a tough series to appreciate because it was very physical. But in game three, when the game just is out of hand, I think it's already 7-4 at that point. James Neal completely launches himself at Sean Coutureerier. And the puck is nowhere in sight. It's like the definition of a predatory hit, just for no reason, leaves his feet, hits him, Sean Cucurier has to get helped off the ice. The referees not only don't give James Neal any sort of punishment for it, but he stays on the ice for the ensuing shift. And as the play proceeds, he goes down the ice and takes another gratuitous shot at

Claudeau's head to the point where Giroux kind of like stumbles off the ice and loses his balance and you wonder what happened there. And the refs are like, okay, like, you know, this is getting out of hand. And the play stops, there's a couple fights. And instead of just tossing James Neal and just being like, this game's over, we need to get control of the situation. they send James Neal to the penalty box for a two-minute line. And so he's on the Penguins bench at this point.

And so he has to do this kind of walk of shame to get to the penalty box. In the meantime, that exposes him to Wayne Simmons going after him, which leads to this another sort of complete line brawl between these teams where Craig Adams fights Hartnall and pulls his hair. And Hartnall has a 37-goal season here, and he's just having this unnecessary fight with Craig Adams because the referees just couldn't handle the situation. And fortunately, nothing horrible happened and no one got heard from it.

But just their entire handling of that, like it escalated so quickly for no reason just because they refused to do the right thing initially and just toss Neil because it was clear that he had like blood in his eyes. And Neil, see, this is why they should have just given Neil 10. Why would they just expose him to go across the ice now Hartnell's there? This was all starting. There was no need to do this with Neil. This is where I think the officials are.

Yeah, yeah, this, I think this kind of goes hand in hand with my last, what age, the worst thing was just, just how vicious this game was. Like, this was a vicious game and, like, it's fun to see, you know, these line brawls and kind of the craziness and the shenanigans. But, like, there's some really vicious plays in this game. Like, you have the, you have the Aaron Asham crosscheck to Brayne's neck, and then he's punching him while he's on the ice. You have the, the Neil jumping into Coturier thing. you have the elbow to Drew's head. I mean, you have some really vicious plays that, like, I mean, I don't think they ever, they ever were good, but even now, just what we know about concussions,

they really age poorly. And going kind of on that same note, like, one thing that age very poorly for me rewatching this is, like, how quickly the guys who get hit come back. Yeah. Like, Braden Shen is on the ice for a significant period of time. He's back three minutes later. like Sean Couturey returns before the end of the line brawl. Like he's back on the bench while everyone's still fighting.

Drew never leaves. Like Drew, as you said, stumbles. He never, I don't think he ever got checked out for this. And like knowing what we know about concussions, that age extremely poorly because all those guys should have been sent to the quiet room for an extended period of time. Like, who knows if they all got concussed, it's possible. But they were back out there. So I can't imagine like they were checked out.

Even if they weren't concussed, I can't imagine they were checked out as, you know, as well as they probably should have been. So that age really poorly. And it goes hand in hand with your criticism of the officiating because, you know, I don't know if a lot of those plays happen if the officials have a better handle on the game. And the, the Neil on Gatorre one is the classic. Like, how do you not get him out of the game there?

I don't know. I guess they all missed it. But how do you miss that? That was mind-boggling to me. All right. let's uh let's go to tsaid turning point you know this game gets out of hand eventually but um i'd say with eight minutes left in the first it's early on but the there's a big brawl there where the flyers are already up three one at this point and um crosbie and drew go at it and they have a fight

and nothing really happens crosbie actually lands like a sneaky good uppercut i would just Rue is kind of in the grasp of the referees, though, but let's hang in teaming and go at it. And I completely forgot that both guys just got tossed at this point. It's funny comparing that to how sort of carefree they were with the whole Neal incident. Like at this point, they could tell that something bad was happening, and they're just like, we're going to get both these guys out of the game, and they're unequivocally the team's number one defenseman, and they're just gone, like, 12 minutes in. So that was kind of a turning point because you could sort of view it as like, oh, the penguins

could make a little bit of a comeback here, and they actually did and kept it close before it got out of hand. is there a sort of turning point where this game completely swings for you where in one direction or another? So I know exactly what sequence you're talking about. I actually have that as a sequence we're going to talk about in a second, but I think it could fit for both. To me, the turning point of this game is it's the Flyers first goal. It's Talbot short-handed because the Flyers go down one-nothing in this game.

And then they go on the – then Pittsburgh goes in the power play. and they have an opportunity here to go up to nothing. And Talbot gets this goal, this shorthand a goal, and it is an unbelievably bad goal that Flurry allows. Like, Drew takes a shot. It comes back out. Talbot flutters a backhander while he's falling. And Flurry tries to cover it with his glove and just misses the puck.

Like he literally just misses the puck, which isn't going that fast, and it skitters behind him, Flurry dives back, doesn't get it. So the score's tied. on a short-handed goal, and then right after that. Like, the goal happens and then a brawl kicks off. So to me, like, that's the moment where, number one, you find out that Flurry just doesn't have it. Number two, the score is tied.

Number three, the game is already devolving into the war that it would become. Like, I think it starts because, and it's funny, I honestly had forgotten that Matt Niskin was on this penguin's team in this series. It's funny because it's a flyer now. But he's on top of Talbot after Talbot scores. and Drew comes in and blast Niskenen because Niskin is still on top of Talbot. And I'm convinced rewatching this

that Matt Niskenen was not like being a jerk to Talbot. He was just so shocked that Flurry let that in, that he just kind of was stunned and was already on top of Talbot from knocking him over in the first place. And then Drew comes in and blast Niskinan and that starts this big brawl. You have like Matt Carl versus Matt Cook

and Drew fights Niskinan. I kind of wonder if like that was, that was something that they ever talked about when this getting got traded to the Flyers last summer. But that to me is just the turning point because, you know, the Flyers tie this game and in the process start to turn this game into just the bonkers fight fest that it's inevitably going to be. Like after this, LaTang takes a dumb cross-checking penalty that ultimately turns into a two-man

advantage that gives the Flyers a lead. And like, this was in my mind the start of just this game just turning into just really a total shit show. Yeah, I've got that as my most. rewatchable sequence. So I guess we're on the same page. It's with 13. We just flip-flop them basically, yeah.

Yes. It's 13, 23 left in the first, and the penguins are up one, one-nothing after a bad Jordan Stahl goal. And they have the power play, and they just completely just self-combust. The Juru and Talbot create that short-ended goal, makes a one-one, immediately a ball breaks out. And then within five minutes, it's three-one flyers. Yeah.

I think, I'd say probably the first period is just the most re-watchable sequence. You've got six goals. 72 penalty minutes and 31 shots on goal. So it's certainly not a low in terms of action value. Like the full game on YouTube is two hours and 24 minutes and the first period alone takes up an hour. So there's a lot of stoppages, but there's also a lot of just complete mayhem. And I guess the first period does the best job of sort of encapsulating what this game's

all about. Yeah. And it's funny, you know, like I had the talbot goal as the turning point. I had the line brawl at 758 as the most rewatchable. and we basically just flip-flop them. It's like, like, I just feel like that, that first goal is the turning point because the game could have theoretically gotten out of hand

in the Penguins favor, and that completely turns it. But, like, that line brawl at 7.58, you, you talked about it a little bit earlier. Like, the one part that just will always crack me up, like, even just as a hockey fan, is, like, it starts out with the, you know, just with a post-wistle scrum,

like, DuPui takes an extra, extra, extra, extra, extra whack at Briss, which like, whatever, it's playoff hockey. That's what happens. You know, they're all fighting. And then out of nowhere, it gets back going again. And then after it finally dies down, they show what sparked it. And what sparked it getting back going is Crosby pushing Vorechek's glove away from him when he tries to go pick it up. And that's just like one of those like incredible iconic hockey moments where it's like, Crosby, what are you doing? Drew doesn't like it. They're standing up through gets his guy. Teammie and get him. But you know what? I will say it was childish, but I loved it because you so rarely said, like,

Sidney Crosby being a human being. You know what I mean? Like, he's such a sort of emotionless robot at times for the better. Like, it's what's kind of made him special. But for him to sort of lose it in that moment. And then he fights, he tries to fight teaming in. And then Drew steps in and they have a bit of a tussle. And then late in the third, after all of that Neil stuff transpired,

uh, Braven Shen tries to fight Crosby or he asks him if he wants to fight. and like the camera zooms in and Crosby's just like, hell no, I'm not fighting you. And it's like, it's just funny to see that like, we've had so few instances over his career so far of Sidney Crosby like showing emotion and just being a regular guy who lets the moment get the best of him. So in that moment, I was like, oh, like he's just being kind of like, he's being a dick there. And I just kind of enjoyed it. It was, I thought it was pretty funny.

Oh, I mean, it's hilarious. And like, you know, coming from someone who during the series was just like purely on the, like, the fan side and not the media side, I mean. I was livid at the time, but in retrospect, like, it is just really funny. It's a really funny sequence, and it's just so, as you said, so out of character for Crosby that makes it even funnier. The one thing about this, too, that, like, that does crack me up watching it again is, you know, he gets into the fight with Juru after the pushing of Woreshack's glove.

And there's a part where, like, Crosby is just, like, screaming curses at Jureu. And it's, like, clearly very angry. and then there's like a smash cut to Drew and Drew just has this big smile on his face and you can tell that like in that moment Drew knew that like we are under his skin that this is like this is exactly what we wanted to do

he's the best player in the world and he's thinking more about pushing gloves than he is about coming back from this this 3-1 deficit and it was just like it was the classic example of you know I think a lot of times we in the media tend to you know try to play amateur psychologists and put ourselves in the mind of players of like, man, you know, they're, they're unraveling. They've lost their composure.

This is a time where like the Penguins absolutely lost their composure. And it's just rewatching that and seeing Giroux just smile at Crosby was just like, Drew knew that they had lost their composure and he was just reveling in it. We still haven't, we're kind of danced around the Drew Crosby thing. I think, you know, it's clear that Drew is the best player in this series. I think he has, he has the hat trick in the six points in game two. He has 14 points, I believe, in the in the six games in the series. But I think it was kind of a reminder of

why it's dangerous to make like wide sweeping statements after one playoff series or one playoff run. Because prior to, unlike contrary to popular belief, Claudeau did not take the baton from Sydney Crosby as the best player in the world after this series. Yeah, that probably could fit in like the what age the worst. just that comment from from LaViolette that he had become he was the best player in the world because obviously he wasn't and this is this is Claude Giroux like at his absolute best and he definitely outplays Crosby in the series but yeah that that age poorly and that's something that you know in some ways I almost wonder if over the long term that kind of hurt Drew because it sort of kind of became a joke of like ha ha best player in the world Claude Drew which he wasn't but he was still an amazing player and I think in some corners of the hockey world, like, that Drew almost just became a stand-in for this idea of,

like, let's not overreact to a good series. Whereas in reality, like, Drew is still one of the best players of this decade. He's not the best, but he's top 10. And I think that whole best player in the world thing almost allows people, some people, to almost think of it as this big joke that Claude Drew is an elite player, where he is this elite player, he's just not a Sidney Crosby. Yeah. Well, we spent a lot of time. At this point, I guess it's like it's boring to just, like we're going to get into this with McDavid over the next couple of years. I feel like if we haven't already, we've already seen it with like the heart trophy discussions where we tried to find guys who are more

deserving than him because he didn't make the playoffs. And it's just boring to have one guy viewed universally as the best player in the world and have no debates about it. So I get it. Like it's kind of run counterintuitive to how the hockey world and sports and the online discussion works. But we spent so much time in this era, whether it was after this series with Drew. I talked with Drans on my most recent show for years there. People were trying to make Taves out

as the best player in the world because of all the success that the Blackhawks had in the playoffs. And I guess kind of just the cream eventually rose to the top with Crosby where it took a couple years. He had injuries. The team flamed out early in the playoffs. But you look back at it now and it's so funny

remembering in hindsight these conversations that like legitimately were happening in the hockey world about where Crosby was compared to others and after every year, depending on how the playoffs would go, we'd try to position some new center as the best player in the world and better than Crosby. And then years later, it wound up being not the case, obviously.

Yeah, and, I mean, Flyers fans obviously reveled in this at the time, this idea that Drew was better than Crosby. And Drew had an amazing year this year. I mean, he was fantastic. But it's just, in retrospect, you know, I guarantee you if it was a Penguins writer breaking down the series, like the whole Drew is the best player in the, the world thing absolutely would have been like, you know, his or her first thing about, you know,

what age the worst, because it did age very poorly. But as I said, it's not like Drew wasn't a great player. He just wasn't like the defining player of this era. And that became abundantly clear over the following next couple years. Biggest heat check performance. This is the top one because in this particular game, I wouldn't say there was an obvious one. Like, I just, Claudeau for game two, obviously. He has a great game here. He has a couple points. He has a goal.

But, you know, not necessarily like a super standout performance. Was there anyone that really stood out to you as like just this guy took his game to a next level in this particular game? Yeah, not really. I mean, I think Drew actually, it's funny, going back through the first three games, you know, obviously Drew has the massive three goal, three assist game. sets the franchise record for most points in a playoff game in game two. But in terms of like shift over shift impact, I was actually, I thought he looked better in game three. I thought he was like some of the plays he was making, some of the passes he was making.

There's one play where like he's got a guy like on top of him in the neutral zone. He still sets up this pass to set up a teammate like and Pierre like loses his mind of how good it was. Like he was just making these incredible plays like they were nothing. And it reminds you like Drew was still a really good player. but he's not as physically, like he's not as fast as he was back in this series. He doesn't play as physical as he did in this series. Like, he's obviously gotten older,

and there's things that he can't do that he could do when he was, you know, 22, 23, 24 years old. And it just kind of, watching this game, a particular reminder me of, like, just how good peak physical Claude Drew was. You were talking about heat check performance. Like, the one guy I had in terms of, like, who did the most with the least in this game

in particular. Like, Matt Reed scores two goals. And that kind of came out of nowhere. Yeah, I think that's a good one. I think Max Talbot also. Max Talbot, I think, leads the team and, like, he plays, like, 22 minutes or something in his game. Yeah, yeah, because, like, I mean, so many people went in the penalty box and, you know,

Drew has five minutes for fighting. Talbot has, he has the big goal in the beginning and then he chips in one at the end. Talbot had a real good year this year. You know, they signed him to a five-year deal. That was another one of, like, the Holmgren. and okay, that was bizarre, but he goes and takes Max Talbot, who at the time was most

known for, I believe it was the 20, 2009 playoffs, the Flyers played the Penguins. Yeah, play the, well, no, no, I'm even talking about just from a Flyers perspective. So in that first round, the Flyers played the Penguins. And Talbot gets into a fight

with the Flyers up in the game that ultimately clinched the series for the Penguins, and Talbot gets crushed in the fight, gets killed. And then, he gets up and does the the sh thing to the crowd and then immediately like the game changes and the penguins come back and win and because of that flyers fans hate it max talbot so paul homer goes and signs him and then talbot i think gets 19 goals that year so like he was like a legitimately viable third liner on this team Matt reed is just fascinated me because he gets signed out

of the minchi stage he's an undirect to free agent he's 25 years old and he leads the league in goals for rookies and he has two goals in this game like that was very very very important. very much an out-of-nowhere type of performance, not really with the game because he was good all year, but definitely with regards to, like, no one expected Matt Reed to be this useful considering where he came from. Well, when I did the rewatch of Red Wings Penguins 2009

with Craig Custins, we had Max Talbot as her biggest heat check performance. So maybe his entire career at this point was just a heat check performance. Biggest that guy. Man, you mentioned the Flyers D. I had them, like Pavel, Kokubina, Nick Grossman, Andreas Lilia, you're just like, oh, I remember all these names from the past.

I can't believe they're playing such big roles. The Penguins supporting cast, I mean, seriously, like the amount of Steve Sullivan going on is just ludicrous. Like, how big of a role he was playing at this stage of his career with how much he had left in the tank. I think he had a decent season playing with Crosby on the second line and DePuy as well, but it really kind of highlighted the underlying issues for those Penguins team that they were relying on him that much. Yeah, yeah, I was shocked to see as much of Steve Sullivan as I did. You know, the guy who I had for this, and we talked about him a little earlier, is just like, you look at the Flyers Forward Court, and it's so good.

And again, we talked about how they didn't have JVR in this game, and then they're throwing Zach Rinaldo out. Oh, yeah. How is Zach Rinaldo on this team? It's just, it's mind-boggling because, like, he's not, like, he's barely an NHL caliber player, and he's going out there for shifts with Sean Couturee. It's just, it's one of those things you look back and you're like, how did they justify this to themselves? He had 232 penalty minutes in 66 games this year in the regular season and then 48 and five playoff games.

So, you know what I mean? It was weird because this was the era where it wasn't in the postseason, but during the regular season, the Flyers used Jody Shelley for 30 games. They used Tom Cistito for 14 games. They used Ronaldo for 66. Like, there was much more of that element of having these guys out there to play six to eight minutes and fight. but it was stunning to see how big of a role Ronaldo was playing throughout this entire year alongside Katruria. And the fact that he's still in the league in 2020 playing for the Flames is stunning.

So, yeah, I think Ronaldo was a really good choice for the biggest that guy. Yeah, it's just, as I said, you know, he was always a Lavalette guy. Lavialat always loved him. And it's not like he was getting that many minutes in this series. Like in this game, he gets 524. And I think at the end was it at the end of the game in the third period, like after that line brawl we were talking about with with hartnell getting his hair pulled like rinaldo tries to go out and start something and finally the refs like i guess finally they had had

enough but they're just like get the hell out of here like we're we're done with this and that was just like classic rinaldo um doc and eddie's commentary corner so we get a two man booth here of uh doc emrick and then pierre maguire is between the bench um in game two we got kenny albert instead of doc emrick and and i wish we had gotten him for this game three because because Kenny Albert's one of my most underrated play-by-play guys in the league. But we get peak, peak, peak, peak, Pierre Maguire in this game. He refers to whatever the arena was called at a time as a bubbling caldrum of animosity. At one point, he tells us that he received a text message from Wayne Gretzky that was talking about Claudeau's greatness.

About Giroux. What do you put it? What are you putting the odds of that story actually being true? Like, five percent? Like, there's no way Wayne Gretzky's texting Pierre McGuire just randomly. about Claudeau. Like, he makes it seem like they're like text buddies that talk all the time. He's like, yeah, my buddy Wayne just messaged me the other day.

And, you know, he told me like, hey, watch for that Claudeau guy. He's pretty good. Like, this is just, that did not happen. It was, it was so funny. I laughed out loud when I, when I heard him drop that tidbit. Um, I think the, the one I, the one that cracked me up the most just because it's so cheesy is, uh, after, after the second goal by Pittsburgh, um, the James Neal scores, Pierre drops a how do you spell relief?

N-E-A-L-Neil and I died. I was like, that is so, so cheesy. It is amazing. But, you know, after kind of given Pierre some crap for that, I will say this, I was, I was surprised at how much, because I'm like not a big Pierre fan. I was surprised at how much I liked his commentary in this game. Yep. Especially because he's not, like, he's the color guy, and he's the color guy between the boards,

because they don't have the two. man team up in the, up in the booth. And he actually, like, he has some really, really good insights here. There's one part where, and this was actually, I thought, like, legitimately a really good call. And it was, I believe it was right after Drew scores the goal off of what was a fantastic puck protection play by Yager, who somehow we haven't talked about, even though it's Yarmur Yager on the Flyers against the Penguins in a playoff series, which shows just how crazy the

series was. But the call, he goes, strength, skill, just overpowering. will the will of the flyers has been exceptional this whole series and like that's like a really good eloquent call and the fact that he does that while he's between the boards like that's really good and i mean i imagine he's like staring at a small screen to watch replays because he's not up in the booth and he's having you know players screaming in his ear because these teams hated each other and like he does a really good job considering what i imagine is very difficult circumstances like i was I've had one of my co-hosts on on BSAH radio

Kelly Henkel, she said for years that she thinks that Pierre is Pierre is in the wrong role that like all the people that hate Pierre like they they get annoyed with like the constant references to junior hockey and just this feeling like Pierre always seems like he has to show that he's he knows more than everybody else. But like you know, I almost wonder if like color commentary might be a better role for Pierre after watching game three because I liked most of what he was saying. And I thought he did a pretty pretty. good job, especially considering how difficult it must have been, because you don't have, like,

it's, I'm sure it's much easier to have chemistry with a play-by-play guy when you're standing right next to the play-by-play guy. And he's not anywhere near him, and he does a pretty good job. Well, in the context here, too, I can't imagine how much swearing was going on at ice level with when these two teams. So he must have been working on the mute button very aggressively. Yeah, I noticed, too, that he, like, if you think about his calls these days, he's so buddy, buddy with everyone. It really feels like he's very reluctant to actually be critical of anyone because he clearly wants to maintain those relationships and friendships and he doesn't want to come off as just completely destroying someone in this game. He is just roasting Mark Andre Fleury. I think at one point

even, I forget which goal Flurry gives up, but then on the ensuing shift, he kind of makes a shaky save that gives off a rebound. And Doc Emmerich asks him, like, oh, do you think, do you think Flurry stabilized now after he makes that save and Pierre McGuire was like, no, that was very shaky. And he goes on this like diatribe about how shaky, flurry looks out there. And I appreciate it. I think we do need more of that. Although he was, don't worry about it. He was vintage Pierre because towards the end of the game, he starts talking about Eric

Wellwood. And he talks about the Windsor Spitfires. He talks about Taylor Hall and Adam Henrique and the Memorial Cup. And so he really kind of shows off all of his Pierre Maguireness in this game with all that stuff. but what I actually noticed that was funny to me was you remember the Mark Specter column about the 200 hockey men talking about Hall and Adam Larson.

I think this was the origin of 200 hockeymen because at one point Doc Emmerich says that on a March 26th issue of Sports Illustrated 200 players were pulled on the question of whether the NHL should ban fighting. Oh, geez. One of them said yes, a hundred ninety-nine of them said no.

And so I think that was the, I think that was the origin of 200 hockey men, the poll of 200 hockey players about asking if fighting should be banned. Oh man, yeah, I didn't think of that, but that would be fascinating if that was actually what inspired that classic specter tweet. Because yeah, I remember that.

And that was one of those things where, like, as I heard it, you almost, it's hard to push this, like, years in the future, even where we are today. But I almost wonder if, like, if we were to go back and watch this in 20 years, if that's a call that we would say age the worst, like, you know, the idea that, like, fighting is always going to be this essential part of hockey. Like, I kind of wonder if in 20 years, you know, there's the next round of rewatchables, whether you're doing it or whether it's much younger people, then we will be at that point in time doing it. And they're like, man, like, you know, you have the commentator basically acting like fighting is always going to be huge in hockey. And, you know, we know now that it's not because, I mean, I don't know if, I don't know if, I don't know if, fighting is ever going to be completely removed from the game, but we're certainly trending in

the direction of it happening less and less. So I wonder in 20 years if that's going to be one of those calls that is talked about as aging the worst. I think, yeah, it's going to change. I think about it's been less than a decade and we're horrified looking at how nonchalant the flyers are with Claudeau like tripping over himself after he gets hit in the head and staying in the game. And that wouldn't ever, it still happens unfortunately in today's game, but we're much more like aware and critical of it at the time. So, which is, compared to then, that's something I certainly was not thinking about myself. Most unanswerable questions, we've already gotten into a lot of them.

For me, it was like, how are the penguins so bad at finding complimentary talent, why the Flyers did certain things the summer before and the summer after? Was there anything lingering from this that kind of fits that bill for you? Yeah, so this was one that I thought of this watching. When I first went through these, I watched game three. I watched it twice, and then I went back and I watched. games one and two yesterday, but the one that kept popping up in my head, just especially game three, was what this series, and this is both both like the games and then all the other stuff

that was happening between the whistles, what this series might have been like if Chris Pronger had played in it. Because to me, like, this is, this is a Chris Pronger series. Like he was just, like, his antics and his physicality and his willingness to mix them to mix up and make big hits and do like dirty plays and stuff like i i can't imagine how crazy the series would have been if you stick chris pronger in it yeah that's a good one um okay apex mountain i'm ready i'm ready to have uh conversations about malkin and crosbie but i want to start with jeru actually here because i think this is pretty clearly his apex yeah um yeah absolutely in 2017 18 he has that resurgence season playing mostly on the wing with Caturier just in terms of his point production.

He reaches career highs and he probably should have gotten a hard vote, but it was just such a loaded class. But at this point of his career, just rewatching the physical abilities he had in terms of just dancing with a puck through the neutral zone, how spry he still looks to go along with the vision and the actual talent with the puck on his stick. I think it's that perfect nexus for him between his two forms, right, where he still has kind of that grinder mentality that a lot of young players have earlier in their career when they're trying to assert themselves and move up the lineup where he's still killing penalties at this point.

I think in this season, he averages like two and a half minutes per game on the penalty kill for them. And in this series, him and Talbot single-handedly create at least three or four short-handed goals for them that completely swing the momentum in these games. But he's obviously got that high-end talent as well where they're using him and all the high-level scoring situations as well. So it's a really fascinating dynamic and conversation for me about what happens with players in terms of their career arcs. It's similar to in baseball, for example, like when you see young players come into the league, they generally steal a ton of bases kind of to show that they can do it, but also because I guess they're at that like physical apex of theirs.

And then as they're in the league for longer, they stop running and they start focusing more on the power game and hitting as many home runs as they can. And that happened. in the NHL law where young players come into the league and they are killing penalties, they're kind of grinding more, they're sort of resembling all of those traits. But then I guess at some point, whether they physically deteriorate or that it's a preservation tactic or they're just so valuable to their team offensively in terms of using them in the high leverage situations where they can't afford to have them out there killing penalties anymore so they're preserving them.

And it kind of takes a bit of the fun out of it for me. Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, Drew does still kill penalties for the Flyers. obviously he's now more of like a like a face off guy because he's so good at it and he can still you know kill penalties with the best of them when he does but a lot of it is as you said just just self-preservation but yeah drew was he was great this whole season but this series like he was just on an entirely different level and you talk about you know the the grinder aspects to his game which kind of have taken a back seat as he's gotten older i think in a lot of ways

from a self-preservation standpoint but you know we didn't talk we don't talk about how the series ends because we've talked a lot about games one through three, but, you know, game six, like the shift Drew has to start game six, which is the game of the Flyers clinch the series, where, you know, he absolutely blows off Sidney Crosby in the neutral zone, and then he comes through the middle of the ice, comes to the neutral zone, like, shortly thereafter, and just rips a shot by Flurry to give the Flyers a 1-0 lead, you know, early in the game, they end up winning a 5-1.

And that was just like the classic early career Claude Drew of, you know, he had the ability to just be relentless, in puck battles and was willing to throw his weight around, despite the fact that he's a small guy, but he also had this incredible skill level as well, which he still has. And that's just a moment. Like, I think for most people,

most Flyers fans, that's like the quintessential Claude Drew moment, like the moment that people will always remember about him, even more so, I think, than his game winner in game three of the cup final in 2010. But, you know, it's interesting with Giroux, because, you know, comparing him, say, to somebody like Crosby,

where, you know, Crosby comes in and, you know, he was kind of designated as the next superstar. Like, everybody knew he was going to be a star. He comes in. He's immediately, like, in the top six getting those minutes. Like, Drew was not supposed to be as good as he ended up coming. You know, he's the, he's not taking the top 20 of his draft. You know, he spends two years, his full two years in junior hockey in the queue, doesn't even make the flyers out of his first post, you know, junior eligible. training camp.

And then kind of just slowly moves up the lineup and doesn't really turn into Claude Jureau until the season before this, which was the year I think he had like 76 or 77 points in a full season. And I think that's part the reason why, you know, he kind of at this point still had that, you know, that like mentality of like being a third liner almost because that's kind of what he was for the first couple years of his career. And it took a while, I think, for him. to kind of get in his head that like, you know, maybe I don't, you know, sell myself out physically

on every shift anymore because I'm the first line center and I'm the team's best player and I can't do that anymore. But at this point, you know, he still has that mentality because he's not that far removed from that stage of his career, but he also has developed the skills that make him, you know, an elite player. So this was a really fun part of Drew's career to watch. I can tell you that. Yeah, he's so special on the penalty kill here where like they send out, Lavillet sends out him and Talbot and they're just like this like energy tandem that is just creating chances while they're down a man and and yeah this year he's third and scoring behind malcon and stamcoes he's fourth and hard voting between the behind those guys and lunkwist and it's well deserved if anything like his

underlying profile is even more impressive where at this stage of his career he using that speed he's drawing so many penalties he's generating scoring chances like crazy and he never really has been the same player since then. He's had a fantastic career. Don't get me wrong. But it's just like, I remember at this time, if you told me like, this is just kind of the start of it, I would have totally believed it and it wound up being probably his best season. So I do think this is Apex Mountain for him. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I know we've been teasing it. So I want to hear your, your Gettie Malkin, Apex Mountain run. Yeah. So it's tough because I think that stretch from 2008, from 2007 to 2009, where they're make back-to-back-back-up finals and he wins the con smite like his production in those two years

is so ridiculous that it's very fair to say that those two years are his apex but in this season in 75 games he has 50 goals 109 points the crazy thing is 96 of those 109 are primary so it only has 13 secondary assists he's playing 21 minutes a night he takes 611 shots which is first in the league ahead of of etchkin which happened only a couple times in the past whatever years. He draws 48 penalties, which is the third most. He serves up a 40-goal season on a silver platter for James Neal here, where after this season, Neil's next best is 31 with the Predators. He's never reached these heights before, and only 12 of those 40 were not assisted by Malkin. He's just on another level, and he's doing most of it without Crosby. Crosby only plays

22 games this season, yet the Penguins don't really miss a beat. Like Malkin is just so good and playing so much for them that he's single-handedly carry them he wins the art ross he wins the ted lindsay he gets a hundred forty four out of 149 first place votes for the heart and just going back and rewatching it on youtube like he obviously has that legendary goal against the lightning where like he just cuts and weaves through the entire defense and scores on a ridiculous solo effort but he's got any number of ones there's this goal he scores against the abs where it's just like the peak combination for him of ability to be fast but also using that frame and still creativity and he's still healthy.

And so I think this is for me the best of Guinea-Malkin ever was, even though they lose in round one. And I guess that speaks to how ridiculously good Sean Couturee was that at 5-on-5, he basically neutralizes him and James Neal in this series. Like, you really don't see that caliber of play for Malkin in these six games. Yeah, and he definitely gets frustrated. You know, absolutely gets frustrated in this series. That said, I mean, he has his moments.

He definitely has some brilliant moments. I think in the beginning of game three, I think it's Pierre, who's like, yeah, this is like Malkin looks like the guy they need to see. Then obviously the whole thing kind of falls apart. And by the third period, I think he's criticizing him. But, you know, there are moments where you see just why Malkin was so good this regular season. There's one sequence in game two. I think Drew or Talbot scores a shorthanded goal. And I forget what they made the score.

But Pierre McGuire points out how Dan Baelsma was going to keep Malkin out there because he made a mistake on that short-handed goal and he wants him to play angry. And literally Malkin on the ensuing face-off, wins the face-off cleanly, takes the puck down ice, does this like spinnerama pass and the penguin score within six seconds. And you're like, he just physically decided that he was going to create a goal there. And he did it within six seconds in a playoff game. I understand it's not a very repeatable thing. You can't just keep banking on that. but it just shows that unique talent and physical ability of when, like, he was pissed off and when he wanted to, he could do something that really no one else in the world could have. Yeah, I think there's, and I think this is something that even like some Pittsburgh writers buy into, this idea that Malkin plays his best when Crosby isn't playing.

Because it's just almost this feeling of like, now I got to be the guy. And this season was a year where Crosby spent most of the year out because of the concussions. And this season, I think, is where maybe that idea, that theory sort of stems from because he was just so dominant almost because the penguins needed him to be that dominant. We've talked about how they didn't have incredible forward depth, beyond him, Crosby, Neal, and Stahl. So part of the reason why the penguins were so good this season is because Malkin was so good. And yeah, they get Crosby back in the end. And that's part the reason why I think everybody viewed them as slammed dunk favorites. it's like, well, how good are they going to be when they get Crosby back?

And you almost do wonder if there is something to that, that Malkin was a guy where, you know, when he felt like he had to be the, you know, the alpha that he just upped his game to an entirely different level. Yeah. I think there's also, I mean, I'm sure there's a psychological element. I'm sure it's also like playing with better players. Yeah. Like, yeah, there's a, but then you can make the argument that he's playing against

the other teams of best players as well. So, yeah, it's, it's quite a debate. And with Crosby, it's tough because, pretty clearly his apex to me is right before that first concussion in 2010-11 where he had the 50 points in 25 games and he had like 25 goals during that stretch he was just out of this world um but you know it's looking back at this era i watching these games was really thrown back into that mindset of remembering just how weird of a time it was as a hockey fan watching crosbie play because you were kind of on pins and needles watching each collision involving him where you were like

like oh my god like is he kind of get up from that he gets up and he kind of makes a weird face and you're wondering whether he's never going to see him again and it was a it was a weird time that's what was also like so jarring seeing him getting so physical in this game fighting jeru like almost fighting shan again and you know they win that cup in 2009 he they stunningly lose in 2010 to the habs in round two they don't have malkin or crosbie in 2011 in the playoffs when they lose to the lightning and then i think that's why people were so high on the penguins heading into this postseason because it had been so long since we'd seen them at full health with Crosby and Malkin and Crosby only plays 22 regular season games in this year and he comes back sort of mid-March

and looks great and he has like 37 points in 22 games or something and so I think that's kind of speaks to why everyone was so high on them but at the same time I so distinctly remember being just so terrified each time he took a hit wondering whether he was going to re-aggravate it and whether he was going to miss an extended period of time again and it's crazy to think about that when you think about just how good he was at that time and he was at his absolute apex, but we got deprived of such large periods of time from him. Yeah, and I think, too, just speaking from purely from a hockey fan perspective, like it does, because I had kind of forgotten about that until you just mentioned it,

that feeling of like, oh God, the next hit the Sydney Crosby takes could be the last one of his career considering these concussion issues that he's having. And it kind of makes to take a step back and just be thankful that he was able to get past that. I mean, we, yeah, we got cheated out of a couple years that may have been Crosby's best years, especially with regards to what we know about, you know, the statistical aging curve and things like that. But like, we've got, we got the entire second half of the 2010s of Crosby pretty much playing every game and being, you know, the best or one of the best players in the world in all of those years. And looking back to where our minds are at in 2012 in this

series, like that was far from a foregone conclusion. Well, looking back at that time, so from that first stretch of concussions in 2011 to 2013, he misses 113 games in that time. In the games he played in those seasons, he had 159 points in 99 games. Jeez. So, yeah, that was like his clear sort of apex. And it's funny, like, to think about him, you know, we've had all these conversations this season about Ovechkin moving up the all-time goal score.

leaderboard and thinking about where Crosby stands all time in terms of points and you sort of remove that from the equation. You also, not to mention obviously the 2012 lockout, missing all these regular season games now with this pandemic, but also just think about where the league was at in this stretch from like 2011 or 2017 where there was such a dip in offense to the point where Jamie Ben's winning the Ross one season with 87 points. And it's like, imagine if he had played healthy at his prime during this kind of current era where goal scoring was so up and everyone was putting up these video game totals. I guess you're right. We should be taking a glass half full approach where we've gotten so much from his career and especially those back-to-back

cups with that sort of second stage of Malkin and Crosby. It was such a, it was so volatile that the fact that we got that is a good thing. But there's also so much left on the table and it's tough not to think about like what could have been if he had been healthy. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. So I've got Malkin as Apex. I've got Claudeau. I've got Paul Holmgren, as we mentioned. This was a perfect combination of an era where teams were just so gratuitously spending long-term contracts in the double digits were allowed.

But there was also a lack of understanding of aging curves. Or maybe teams just didn't care about the future. But I remember at this time, it was sort of, I think public thought was generally that players age. between 28 and 32, maybe even towards 33, 34, like people legitimately thought that. And now we obviously know that it's much before that. But I think that speaks to why there were so many contracts being handed out to UFAs that were 27, 28 for like 7, 8 years ahead of time. Yeah, I guess you could say this was like Apex Mountain for that style of general managing

because it never really came back after this. And Paul Ungerman was the poster child for just like aggressiveness to a fault about everything as as we mentioned um i guess another guy who this probably was his apex interestingly enough he he isn't that good in this series but like this this is probably scott hartnell's apex this is when he's on a line with jeru and yager and he just racks up the goals because he's in the center of that power play unit um which became like one of the best if not the best uh pp one in hockey during this part of the decade. And he scores 37 goals.

And he's obviously a good player the rest of his career. But this is definitely his moment of, you know, first line winger Scott Hartnell, where you didn't say that. And you said that and you weren't laughing as you were saying. He actually was very, very good. He was, I remember this very distinctly. I had him on my fantasy team. He was an absolute rock star.

He had 37 goals, 67 points, 136 penalty minutes, 230 shots, 16 power play goals, and he was playing like 18 minutes a night. And I remember from a likability perspective, he was also at his apex. Remember he had in the all-star games stuck at Funnuff. And then I think in this season, shortly thereafter they play the Leafs and he scores a goal and then literally fights Funnuff right after he scores. Yeah, he had the Hartnell down, the Hartnell down thing where like there was a fan on Twitter that made the joke about Hartnell falling all the time and he turned it into a heartinal down hashtag. And then Hartnell got totally behind. it and actually turned it into a charity.

Like that was just kind of the guy he was and why he connected really well with the city. Yep. He was really likable. And, you know, he shoots 16% this season. And the Flyers this summer sign him to a six-year $28.5 million deal that kicks in when he's 32. Now, the reason why I bring that up is because they signed him in advance, similar to what you're talking about with Pronger, where the deal actually kicked in the year after. So during that lockout short in season, he plays only 32 games.

He has 11 points, but they've already committed 28.5 million to him. And he makes it a couple of years. And then they trade him in basically a salary dump to Columbus. They get R.J. Umberger, who's a worst player. They wind up buying him out as well. And CBJ is still paying, is still paying Hartnell for the next two seasons. So I guess those are just kind of some fun facts. And I have the reminder of why you shouldn't be buying at a guy's absolute apex for long term

him when he has a shooting percentage spike and everything goes well the way it did for him here. So it was a great year, but it's also peak Paul Holmgren from the decision to pay a guy so far in advance for such a long period of time just because he had that one great year. Yeah, definitely. Definitely functions as a cautionary tale without a doubt. Who won this game? That's a fascinating question because I don't like, it was just such a bizarre game. It's hard to point out one person.

You know, yeah, I think if you wanted to get creative, you could theoretically argue Paul Holmgren won this game. Yep. But if we're talking about a player, you know, a guy who, again, we didn't really talk about that much. Danny Breyer really does turn this game. I mean, it basically, he gets the goal that puts the Flyers up to one. He gets that on the, I believe it's a two-man advantage when he gets that goal. And he just like, he then scores the goal that puts him up three. three one as well, which was one of like, it's on a three on two and he just plays the three on two

perfectly. He center, he does a middle lane drive and just goes past both defensemen and redirects the puck in. And then he sets up the Matt Reed goal at the end of this period by just absolutely outworking Derek Angelen. And, you know, if you're talking about like a player who wins this game, Breyer just made three fantastic plays in the first period that really give the a lead that they're never going to relinquish. But as I said, if you want to get creative, I think you could argue homegrown just because of the sheer forward depth that he created and how they took advantage of it in this game. Yeah. Yeah, I was thrown right back into that time where I forgot the legend of Danny Breyer in his postseason production. He scores two goals in game

one and turns that game around. He scores a couple on this one and turns it around as well. They're talking on the broadcast about how, I guess, Klajuru had lived with him the year before, and then Sean Kutri is living with him this season. Yeah, it's just, it was just, I totally forgot because it's been so long now, and he plays for the habs a bit after this after they buy them out. But there's a lot of Danny Breyer. Yeah, I think the Flyers, young players. And then I guess that makes Paul Holmgren just because you see so much from pretty much all of them.

Like Wayne Simmons, who we haven't really talked about a lot, scores a beautiful goal that basically puts this game on ice. Yeah. And then mixes it up physically at the end of it. You've got, and he's on that power play, which was so good with him, Hardnell, Drew, Voracek. and then either Teaminen or when teaming got tossed, I think that Matt Carl on the point.

But, yeah, Braden Shen is involved in this one. Gerture, obviously, Vorichick as well. So those guys, I think it has to be Claudeau just because he produces offensively in this game. You mentioned, like, physically he looks probably even more effective than he did when he had six points in game two. But he also just really gets in Crosby's head and drives him crazy as well. And so you put all of that together,

and it's just kind of this perfect marriage of, him just doing everything that made him special during his time. So I think you could probably make the case for Drew. But the fact that we're having this conversation sort of speaks to how versatile and deep this Flyers team was that there isn't really one choice because they had such a team effort of guys just chipping in pretty much from every different direction. Yeah, I think you can absolutely make a case for Drew. And if you're looking purely at like who played the best in the game, I think it's probably Drew. Like as I said, watching this game, I was blown away at how good he looked throughout the 60 minutes.

He gets a Gordy Hal Hattrick in this game. And somehow that seemed like whatever, because the game before he had three goals and three assists. But, you know, he fights Crosby. He scores that great goal at the start of the third. He gets an assist on the Talbot goal, and he's just all over the ice. So, you know, I, Brier has the benefit of, like, he got the goals

and he set up the goals more than Drew did. But I agree, if you're talking purely about, like, who played the best in this. game. I think it's probably Drew. We didn't really talk that. We talked about what he did at the end in terms of James Neal. I totally forgot that insane goal he scores, where he splits the Flyers D and they run into each other.

And he scores another sweet power play goal after. I think he has like double-digit shots in this game. He's so active, but it also knowing that he completely freaked out and just went off the deep end and wound up getting suspended because of it. It was kind of ominous. see how physically involved he was in his game leading up to that incident too. There's a moment where Nicholas Grossman goes knee on knee with him. There's a moment where Braden Coburn, like, after the play, kind of like rubs him out against

the boards. And you're just like, you could just see now that we know how it turns out that he was sort of like a ticking time bomb from like each of those probably led to him just ultimately being like, I'm so sick of this and just acting out. And it turned out horribly for both him and the penguins. Yeah, it's funny. I had notes taken on that as well because that was something that I had, like, obviously I watched this game as a Flyers fan. So that stuff didn't bother me at the time.

In retrospect, on a rewatch, it was like, you know, it doesn't absolve him for totally losing his mind. But at the same time, you're right, you can sort of see, you can see the progression. You can see like, yeah, the Flyers were trying to get under his skin. They were taking some liberties with them from the start of this game. And you could sort of see how, you know, add in the fact. that, you know, the team's about to go down 3-0, add in the fact that the game was particularly, you know, a particularly frustrating game, this game, add in the cup expectations going into the series and then have a guy like Neil who already had a reputation of being a little

bit of a hothead, you know, has players kind of running him a little bit in the first half of this game. You can, you can kind of understand why he would just say screw it and just start taking cheap shots. It doesn't make it right. But it's sort of, it doesn't make you like sort of to put yourself in his shoes and be like, yeah, you know, it makes a little bit more sense now why he lost his mind in the third. Yeah, it certainly did not come out of nowhere. I'll just say that. Man, this was a, this was a lot of fun. We, I think this is the first ever to our PDO cast. So, oh God. But you know what? I think this series and this game justified it. There were so many different angles to it that we had to get to it all. So I'm glad we did. I think we did it justice.

I think we did all the main storylines and talking points. I highly recommend people go watch this on YouTube. All of the games are available in their entirety. Charlie, plug some stuff. What are you up to these days and where can people find you online? Yeah, so still, you know, writing on a regular basis at the athletic, you know, trying to pump out articles in this hockey pause world. So definitely, definitely check that out. If you're a subscriber, if you're not, we got that 90-day free trial thing. So if you want to check out the articles I've been writing and don't, you know, don't want to pay right away. We got that 90-day free trial thing going on.

And then also, just from a podcast standpoint, I still do the podcast with BSH radio. And we're still pumping out the content, doing five, six, seven shows a week, even with no hockey. So I'm not on all the shows. We have a ton of great people on that. Steph Driver, Kelly Hinkle, Bill Matt,

the Fipherporelli crew. It's a lot of good stuff. Even if you're not a Flyers fan, I think it's fun content. I'm doing a show that's literally just like I pick a movie or an album and then the person that's on the show with me picks a movie or an album that either one of us hasn't seen and then we just talked through it for an hour. So we're just trying to keep busy during this time without hockey. And if you're if you're interested in podcasts, I think we've got a pretty good, pretty good bunch. So yeah, that's kind of what I'm doing right now.

Awesome, man. Well, stay safe during this crazy time. Be well. Yeah, you too. I'm glad we got to do this. and let's definitely do it again soon. All right. Thanks a lot for having me, DmitryoCast of Dmitri Filipovich.

Follow on Twitter at Dimm Philipovich and on SoundCloud at soundcloud.com slash hockeypedocast.