The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 39: The Blue Jackets Gets Yosted

Episode Date: December 18, 2015

We set our sights on the situation unfolding in Columbus in which John Tortorella has, to the surprise of absolutely no one, healthy scratched his best player in a misguided attempt to try and prove a point. We also discuss whether there's been any tangible difference in their level of play since the Blue Jackets made the coaching change, and wonder much of the blame Jarmo Kekäläinen should be taking for not only the hire itself but the seemingly inevitable cap hell they're about to find themselves in. Every episode of this podcast is available on iTunes, Soundcloud, and can also be streamed from our website. Make sure to not only subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new shows as they’re released, but also take a minute to leave us a glowing review. If you’ve been enjoying the work we’ve been doing please also consider chipping in to help support the show (www.hockeypdocast.com/donate). There are a handful of housekeeping costs associated with producing the show that need to be covered, and every little bit helps. Thanks for listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

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Travis, what's going on, man? Getting sick for the holidays as his tradition. Yeah. Yeah, we're coming to you from Detroit West, as you called it. We can officially start the clock on the next time we, until we hear a siren just blaring in the background. I love how many people have noticed that. I almost regret pointing it out now because I wish I never would have said anything and then see how many people are like, does Dimitri live in Detroit?

What's the situation here? Yeah, man, it's become a, it's as a life of its own now. It's pretty funny to me. But yeah, we probably weren't going to actually record tonight. I mean, it's a really busy night as Thursdays generally are. And you're not feeling 100%, I guess. But, I mean, everyone needs to have their flu game. And John Tortorella, God bless his little feisty heart is single-handedly making sure that we stick true to our schedule.

So here we are. I'm on the bed right now. I've got the IV, just like Jordan did. Definitely prepped for a Thursday night flu game. By the way, when they play that game on NBA classics, I still, on NBA TV, I still to this day can't believe that I've never seen a guy look so exhausted in my entire life and he dominated for relative to what I don't even know if I would have been able to get out of the chair that Michael Jordan got out of when he played that game. Yeah, well, Michael Jordan has a pretty good basketball player. You know, who's a pretty good hockey player? Ryan Jansen. What about the guy who's Michael Jordan, but his name is spelled entirely differently? It's Michael Yordawn. Yeah.

Amazing. He's one of a great collection of defensemen along with Brett Pesci and Jake Slavin, but it's Jacob with two Cs. And yeah, these guys are actual members of their blue line. And Ron Hainesie's like in the top 10 and in 515 usage in the league. everything about Carolina is amazing. Ron Hainsey, steady defenseman, steady litigator, potential future litigator. One of my favorite lockout stories, we're going off on a total tangent here, but one of my favorite lockout stories, wasn't it Ron Hainsey? They said almost came to blows with, I can't remember if it was the owner of Minnesota, the owner of Calgary,

it was one of the two, and I can't remember which one it was, but apparently talks got so heated during the lockout, Ron Hainsey, and whoever it was, We're about to trade blows in the middle of a hallway or something. That's a, that's, for that and for that only, I'll always be a Ron Hainzy fan. Yeah, we're all around Hanzi fans. Okay, so let's talk about Columbus. Basically, for those that somehow, I guess, have been, like, living under Iraq and haven't heard the news, today, Johansson was scratched, healthy scratched, so that he could watch the game from the press box

and become a better player by kind of seeing from a distance what it takes to win. Those are like actual quotes from John Tororello, which is amazing. And this comes a day after I saw Darren Dregor went on radio and kind of implied that Yarmo is, I guess, heavily shopping him or looking for suitable offers. And if one presents itself, and I'm sure the price tag is going to be pretty hefty, but if it presents itself, he kind of seemed to imply that the jackets are fully on board with trading Johansson, which I think is an interesting thing. So we can tackle this from two perspectives.

Let's talk about Johansen first as a player. Not having a great season. Obviously not even in my universe of benching. To his, I think it should be pointed out that I think it was Aaron Portsline, got some quotes from him this morning. And Ryan Johansson pretty much took in his stride and said something to the effect of, yeah, I've kind of sucked recently. So maybe this will help because I've made a few errors.

And so I don't know, like he could just be saying that, but at least, I don't know, maybe it's the main, it's almost impossible to tell sometimes when you were trying to read quotes. And you don't really, you can't really pull the demeanor or attitude of a player from that. But it sounded like he was trying to stay positive and kind of embracing that, yeah, maybe I haven't played great. And so, okay. But I don't really, I don't know how you get from there to, hey, we're taking a first line, top six center for sure to help these scratch territory. And this is my. total frustration with how coaches treat lineups in general. It seems like you're either a one or a two or you're out of the lineup. And if Ryan Newhanson is struggling, why not move him down the lineup a bit or why not peel back his minutes a bit? There is almost certainly nothing to be gained from him being healthy scratched. I don't really ever buy the, yeah, it's going to help you if you watch games from the press box. Like take an off day and then go to a Montreal game and sit up in the press box and watch Montreal or whatever. team you want to watch if that's you can do that on your off day i don't see how there's any value added in not playing the game there's also this thing called like having game tape and watching it after the fact

as well i mean you don't have to necessarily be like sitting on a press box watching a game to really glean some stuff about the way you're playing or the way your teammates are playing you can just kind of turn on games in our live or or you know whatever and just check it out that way i feel like it seems pretty crazy to take a take a night off from work to to do that he can just download the NHL scraper package and just pulled the stats from every game and he didn't any days and he doesn't have to watch any games. He can just tell us how every game was played by just scraping his own stats for it. There we go.

But no, to my other point. So I have to ask you this because I was going to get into it this morning and I was like, nah, I just don't care. You got to save it for the podcast, man. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. What percentage of blame, if you were allocating a portion of percentage, I should say, for this whole situation? Because to me it sounds like you don't agree either that Ryan Johansson should be scratched, correct?

I think that's fair to say, yes. Okay. What percentage of blame would you place on the shoulders of John Tortorella in this situation? For Johansson's play this year or just everything? No, just as you can, I guess it's fair to point out that's a combination of both. So his play, but really what I was addressing was his scratching today. Like what percentage of blame do you hold, where do you hold John Torturel responsible as it pertains to today's scratcher? I think, I mean, in terms of that, I think pretty much like 100% honestly, just purely based on like we've seen this from Tortorella, right?

Like everyone was making jokes about how this kind of thing would totally happen. And then it's funny to see it playing out the way exactly everyone said it would. right like he he comes in and he tries to like prove that he's the he's the guy wielding the big stick he's the new sheriff in town and and everyone needs to fall in line and he's going to make an example of the best player by you know showing everyone else that uh accountability is the most important thing and and that uh you're not going to get away with like half-assing it or whatever but i think that it's like a massive miscalculation on his part in terms of like maybe that stuff used to work 10 years ago but in like 2015 i just don't think that

players, especially like younger guys, which Columbus has a generally pretty young team, especially up front, is like going to respond to it that way. I don't think that he's the type of coach these days that can just like get through to those guys and kind of communicate with them in an efficient manner. And I think that that was honestly like Yarmokik Kalinen's biggest mistake there where he just like, I guess it was his miscalculation that he thought that Tortorella would be the guy for the job and he'd provide them with some sort of structure. And I just don't think that's the case at all, honestly. So I've got a pretty hot take here. But if you ask, what I was trying to get to was, if you ask me the reverse question, I would probably say it's less than 1% on Tordarella.

This entire situation is on the shoulders of Yarmot to me as it pertains to. So look at it just high level, 30,000 foot view. You scratch your prime young centerman who clearly isn't one of the, you know, isn't the 13th best forward on this team right now. And that's, and that's a, and that's a That's a separate issue entirely. But okay, do you, you're either left with two questions. Torrella went rogue and was like, I'm going to teach his kid a lesson, or the GM fully endorsed his coach doing this. And when the, I believe it was Aaron Ports on again, who got a microphone in front of, of Yarmo. And it was pretty much, yeah, I support the coach's decision.

And so much of this screams that Yarmow thinks that Tortorella is. So I don't know which is worth. He either thinks that Tortorella is the right fit and he's doing the right things or he didn't vet Tortorella, which is inexcusable because this is his, he's a one-trick pony. This is what he does. And that's why I find it so weird that so many people are just raking Tortorella over the coach. Coles, look, the guy is not a good coach, but he hasn't been for years. the secret was this wasn't a really tight kept secret

in a vault at a U.S. naval base. This was kind of out there that Tororella was really struggled, especially to adapt with the modern brand of hockey, I guess. And go ahead. You know what I don't understand though? So you're talking about how

like either Tortorella went rogue or this was like a team decision. Like I don't understand if Yarmo really is like fielding offers for Johansson and kind of trying to trade him. I don't think one game is going to necessarily totally crater his value by any means. He has enough tape and dad out there to kind of speak for himself as a player. But I just find it hard to believe that this is the best way to boost up an asset.

And if you are actually are going to try and flip it. No way. No way. But let me, and that's where I'm getting to because I have grown increasingly, I mean, rapidly suspicious of Yarmo as a GM over the last two years. And I didn't know a ton about him when he first came into the league. There was a lot of hype around him as kind of a modern thinker and doing all the right things and saying all the right things. And it was interesting to monitor Columbus.

But outside of maybe that first year or so where he oversaw the team, his moves have been extremely questionable. I mean, if you look at their current roster setup, I mean, he's been at the home for a few years. Now, you look at their roster breakdown and the dollars they have allocated to certain players, that is a really, really bad situation right now. And I don't think that can be underlined and underscored enough. And this ties back to my point about Torderella. People want to kill Torderella for sitting maybe their most talented forward. I absolutely can see it. He hasn't had a great start to the season. But this to me sounds something like what Jarmal wants out of this. And that's the crazy. part to me. And I don't, I don't know how you can hold the head coach accountable because it was, to me, it feels like he was hired to do just this. And that, and that's the crazy part. Yeah. Well, okay, so I'm looking at your hands in numbers right now. And I mean, he's not on the, on the same paces necessarily in terms of like the box car stats that he was in the past two years. But based on the underlying stuff, there isn't really anything here to suggest that, you know, he's been like taking a massive step back as a player and hasn't been developing properly. Like I, I, I, I, I, I, Last year, he was playing with Nick Folino, who was riding some insane PDO magic pretty much all year. And I just like this year, that hasn't really played out. And he's been kind of shuffled around the lineup playing with various different guys and hasn't been able to find the right fit. And I just like, I don't think that he, as you mentioned, like, has warranted being benched or demoted in any way.

It's crazy to me. Like, Colorado does this all the time, right? where every time Gabe Landiscaug misses a game, Grigorenko moves up to the top line and plays with, with Dushan and McKinnon. And then as soon as Lanniscag gets back in the lineup, Grigrenko goes down to fourth line center with Cody McLeod and Jack Scilly. And I'm like,

isn't there like a middle ground there? Can you play on the second line maybe or even the third line? Like, I don't understand like how coaches like pigeonhole these guys. All the lines are playing different sports. That's why. That's why it has to be a, no, but look, I just, I don't know how. well, I can sell this. But if you go look back at Jarmo's last two years of transactions,

it is not flattering. And this is, to me, this has flown really under the radar, his kind of tenure, I guess, as a GM. And I am, I understand that there are, he is, he does not have the type of executive power that maybe other GMs unilaterally do and other. markets and I get that there's pressure from certain areas. But I don't think it's also a unique situation. I think he's been at the helm or controls for a lot of these moves. And to me, when you talk about why this team sucks and who to hold accountable, it's amazing that, you know, obviously they're going to throw Richards under the bus.

They did that. The team still is bad. Tortorella now bench is their best young player. And now the people who don't want him benched are losing. their minds over Tortorella. And I don't know, the whole thing just screams of a GM who thinks that this is going to work. And maybe to his testament, if this was a one-off, if this was a one-off situation, I would be much more on the fence about hearing why this player needed to be scratched.

I don't think I'd buy it because, as you said, maybe his underlying numbers or his counting numbers aren't as sharp as they were a year ago. but they're still pretty respectable on an otherwise bad team. It's not why he's getting a lot of quality of teammate help either. The troubling part to me is if you surround this situation with the last 10 or 15 or 20 moves that Yarm was made, it's not very good. And I just feel like he has a lot more, deserves a lot more blame, like exponentially more blame for what's happened in Columbus than a lot of people are actually showing. Man, they're like their caps.

Seriously, this, this, I'm, I'm dead serious, to Maitre. This is the best kept secret, I guess. I don't know how to describe it. Like, no one realizes how bad their cap situation is. And it's not like, oh, they're a dollar away from the cap. It's just they have so many of these contracts that are just not good. I mean, go through the list. I'm going to, I'm going to explode your brain right now.

So the following guys are making a combined $31 million in 2016, 17, and 2017, 18. David Clarkson, Nick Falino, Federtudin, Jack Johnson, David Savard, and their goalie. Those guys are making over $30 million combined. So, I mean, where do you want to start? Do you want to start with the Nick Folino contract? Because there was a classic case of, oh, yep, we saw the last year, and the last year is the real player, so we're going to pay them accordingly. What I don't understand is, and I love some clarification on this, like I understand that

Yarmot is sort of like a hockey guy, right? He has a scouting background, I guess, and all that. But when he came to the Blue Jackets, I feel like he was sort of pegged as this kind of more progressive thinker, right? Like, he wasn't necessarily like an analytics guy by any means, but he seemed like to be at least portrayed as someone who would either surround himself with guys who would be able to kind of tell him this stuff and then would be willing to listen to it and make moves accordingly. And some of these moves, like the Nick Felino thing, it just showed like a lack of basic understanding about how percentages work, honestly. Yeah. And people talk a lot about the Clarkson contract in that trade entirely. But that's kind of a weird dynamic because there's a lot more financial pressure, I think, to make a move like that.

Whereas the Nick Falino deal is you literally have this allocation of $30 or $35 million, whatever he's signed to. And you chose to spend that money on Nick Falino. And great. Like I think Nick Felino is a nice player. Don't get me wrong. But like he's a second line guy, probably a third line guy and a really good team. He is not what he showed one year ago. And I think a lot of people recognize it.

That's not a criticism anyway. Sometimes players have career years. But it almost feels like they paid him on a career year because they expected that career year to kind of roll over. And that to me is the craziest part. Now, I think I should point this out. I think, and this might be drawing lines. So you can tell me if you disagree with this. I think that Yarmot's biggest complaint with the team right now

is that they are not playing well defensively at all. And that's what's driving those awful safe percentages early in the year. And the thing I struggle with is, well, for a variety of reasons, I didn't think that horrible safe percentage was real, number one. But number two, it seems like it's underpinning every move they make, starting with hiring John Tortorella because he's some, like, defensive savant. just not true at all.

So I'm looking at their splits right now. I mean, let's just go through these numbers a little bit. Like, so they were 0 and 7 when they fired Todd Richards and they had an ungodly minus 22 goal differential and it's completely easy to look at that. And I think at the time we actually recorded a podcast like maybe the day before he was fired and we were like, yeah, this is this is going to be tough. Like we completely understand that while it's probably not Todd Richards's fault, like someone's kind of got to take the blame here.

And at the time, they were like a roughly a 50% possess. team and most of it was just like they were getting like 85, 86% save percentage of 5 on 5 and we're shooting under 5% and since Tortorella's come in, the possession rates dropped 3%. And the shooting percentages jump 3% and they're getting like a 930 save percentage. And I don't think that Tortorella is some sort of percentage whisper where he's, right? There's still like 11 and 15ish with Tororella, right? Like it's not. Yeah.

Yeah. No, they're 11, 12, and 3. So they're like, they're still one of the worst teams in the league. And it's the whole situation was just butchered from the start, considering they gave up a compensatory second round pick, which is a pretty valuable asset. Like, no, it's not. It is. It is, though. And they gave it away.

And then two months later, the league changes the rule. And now no one else is going to be giving away these compensatory picks. Like, it just like, seems like, just missing, like, a basic understanding of how things work. and I don't understand what's going on here. I wonder if Yarmel was just like kind of cracking under the pressure and just making a bunch of super bizarre decisions that don't really make any sense. I honestly can't explain it.

I'd like to see the Excel workbook and analysis that was done that said we have Todd Richards. In exchange for Todd Richards, we'll take John Tortorella and we'll give you a second round pick and we're going to come out net wins. Forget the dollars. I mean, that's just crazy. That is absolutely insane.

Like just putting it out there like that, we're going to, we're going to, because to be perfectly honest, I don't even, I don't even know that John Toro is a better coach than Todd Richards. I actually am suspicious. He's not a better coach in Todd Richards. So it's very possible slash likely that they downgraded at the coaching position and then pay the second round pick to downgrade at the coaching position. And that's, again, this is, if it was a one-off situation, we talked about this literally last podcast where we said, look, great teams do dumb things from time to time. And if this was the dumb

thing, fine. But again, go through their contracts right now and count out on one, you can count on one hand how many good contracts they have right now in the organization. It's a really bad position. It's a bad situation for the team. And I have to say, like, Yarmot, I was getting back to your point about how a lot of people build him as a super progressive guy and that he would do really well overseas from over as an overseas import in the in the national hockey league i kind of bought into it i was i was curious i was reading the quotes i was reading the stories i was like it's going to be fascinating to monitor i have 180 on him as hard as i have 180 since i said the kyle turris for david runblad trade was shaky bad on how it was end so i look i mean

well okay is the last like good move he made getting the flyers to take rj umberger and getting scott hardnall in return like basically yeah but it was all right yes can we we even count it though it was the flyers yeah no we can't that's not even an hl transaction that's uh no it's a fair point separate from that what name me the move name me the move of the contract yeah it's it's not good like i think johansen is literally their best contract right now yeah he's at four million next year they're they're talking about trading him for 75 cents on the dollar it's it's uh it's it's gonna be interesting to see what happens this off season with that team because Tortorella, it sounds like he's the long-term guy,

and I fully believe that the organization believes that he can turn this team around. And I think John Tortorale is getting a ton of rope right now because what the team saw was, man, we were so bad, negative 22 in seven games. And, you know, this team's not great under Torterella, but we're making strides. And it's like, you played seven bad, really bad games, admittedly. But I don't think that, I think that they're going to give Torrella so much rope, total by total fluke or accident or happenstance after seven games. And I think that's going to kill them for even longer than they would have anticipated.

Man, I'm just so happy that this podcast was a part of my life before I went fully on the record, liking the Blue Jackets this year. And you kind of talked me out of that because that was just like one of those situations where a friend can't let another friend say that the Blue Jackets are going to make the playoffs in the Metro. And I feel really, really blessed that you took the time to kind of, Show me the light, Travis. There is me establishing my point, though. I can't remember if I said it on the podcast,

but I'm glad you jogged my memory a bit. I just, even at the time, like forget this year, like so many people were talking them up. And look, I've been guilty of that with teams past two where I'll talk up a team and they fall flat on their face. Look at Anaheim, for example. They're not playing that well. And I was really high on Anaheim.

But that Columbus roster, just the way it was built out, so much of the bet on that team this year seem to be, well, they're healthy. They're going to be better. And I'm looking down the roster. And I'm like, this isn't really that talented of a team. I like their goaltending. They have some interesting skill players in certain spots. But for the most part, like, I don't think the roster is constructed very well.

They don't have any flexibility because they have a, to me, it was no matter how this plays out, you can flip a coin on six of these contracts that they have, and three of them are going to end up being poisonous, whether it's Hartnell, Fulino, whoever down the line. I don't know. It's just, it's, it's, it's not a good spot. And I wonder, I, I truly wonder how much rope Yarmow has as a GM because the blue jackets have been an organization of turnover for as long as they've been in the league.

He's been in that spot for how many years now? I mean, they haven't really moved the needle much in the past few years. It's going to be, uh, his name might be a curious hot seat candidate. I don't really, it's always hard to gauge how much power these guys have and how well embraced they are in organizations, but his name might be an interesting hot seat candidate and they are going forward. Man, Travis, right now Columbus is playing a game with Arizona where they're up four, three, halfway through the game, and they have four goals on 10 shots.

Yeah, so the goaltending, yeah, that sounds about right. The goaltending matchup, I believe it was. Curtis McElheny versus Andrew Limback. Andrews Limbaugh, sorry, yeah, that's crazy. And I read a side note. I always like when a goaltender, I can't remember who wrote it, but when a goaltender gets hurt long term, and the backup, no matter who it is,

you'll hear that his chance is now, and I'm like, it's Anderson back. His chance is not now. His chance was four years ago. Trust me, it's not happening. But the only way it's happening is because he's replacing Mike Smith, who's not very good either. By the way, that's actually an interesting way to wrap up this discussion,

because I think we've hit all the points with Columbus. Jumping to Arizona for a minute. The coyotes got to you, didn't they? Yeah, they did. They hooked me. I read a clip today that suggested that the coyotes were actually going to be heavily in the market for a goaltender with Mike Smith that long term. And I wonder if that's, I don't know if that's partly driven by the fact that they're actually in a playoff race because of this unbelievable first 15 game PDO run that they went on. But either way, I also wonder if it's hedging against Mike Smith going forward.

but I wonder, is that he, like, I was trying to briefly draw connections as potential trade candidates. Does Ben Bishop make the most sense for Arizona if they are truly in the trade market? Yeah, he makes a lot of sense, but I don't really understand why they would be necessarily. Like, I think it's in their best interest to play Anders Limbaugh as many times as they can for the rest of the season, honestly. And that's not to suggest that Mike Smith is some awesome goalie that's way better than Limbaugh. He's been one of the worst regular goalies in the league for a couple years now. But I think that this is like the perfect storm for them, isn't it? Right.

Like, they're going to score a bunch of goals, like just like tonight, right? They're down four, three halfway through the game. And they're going to provide optimism for their fans. And they're going to showcase some of these young forwards, which we talked about when we adopted them the other day. And they're ultimately going to wind up losing and getting a really high pick. And maybe that pick will wind up being Austin Matthews. Maybe it'll wind up being someone else.

But then next year, they'll come back and, you know, those young guys will all hopefully take us at least a small step and they'll you know like they're a pretty progressive team i don't think that it would make sense for them to try and go all in regardless of how bad the pacific division is like this is something that i've been trying to trying to talk about in terms of the canucks where it's like yes they're currently technically like in the pacific division race but that literally means nothing like they're one of the worst five teams in the league so i don't understand like what the what the end goal is here to get two home playoff games and make some money like it just makes no sense the best thing is how

Blumbeck accidentally always finds himself on these bad losing teams the same way OJ Simpson always finds himself around crime scenes it's a complete accident it's not by design at all and it's not driven by them at all it's uh I remember last last trade deadline Buffalo right around right before I think they uh they had that circus circus of goaltenders in Buffalo and I remember at one point

there was this real thought that any goaltender who played good for like more than two games was going to get traded out of the organization because Buffalo was slowly catching Arizona last year in that in that points race and they gave it to Anders Limback and I was like trust me we're fine here. There's no hope here

and he has a game where he went like 31 or 32 and Sabres fans were killing me on Twitter I thought you said this guy was horrible and then of course he was horrible but uh... now he's in Arizona and they're going to rely on him to tank it away again. It's just What a career this guy said. I remember when we talked about the other day how each GM, like no GM is infallible

and makes questionable decisions regardless of how good and how smart they are as a hockey mind. And I'm thinking back to the trade where Steve Eisenman gave up like three or four draft picks to get Anders Limback. And I remember all the quotes being like, well, he showed really well in the 15 or so games in Nashville. And, you know, he's this big Swedish goalie. So he's probably going to wind up being pretty good. I think we can turn him into our number one. And he just wound up flaming out so quickly and so hilariously.

And every GM kind of makes these moves. And I guess it's just like they gave up like a couple seconds and a third or something like that. So it wasn't a catastrophic move by any means. But it's just another example that all these guys sometimes make mistakes like that. Who is, I'm trying to even think. I'm trying to go through the rolodex of goaltenders. But who would even be a separate target other than Ben Bishop that they could realistically get that would actually help them along because it sounded like they were willing to.

Jimmy Howard is a possibility. How old is he now? He's got to be. He's like in his late 20s, maybe early 30s, but I think that he's on a good contract, honestly. Like it's, I think it's for a couple more years. I'll look it up right now and it's not very pricey by any means.

And I think he's not a good contract. He's not an elite goalie by any means, but like he's definitely like in that like top half. Like right? Like he's like somewhere in that 10 to 15ish range. And, like, I think that that would be a pretty monumental upgrade for them in net if they do decide to do that. I'm just not sure that that's the best way to approach it. Yeah, so he's 31 right now.

And after this season, he's on the books for three more years at 5.29 per hour. So, I mean, that's like, that's very reasonable. Like, I think they could easily, easily eat that contract. But I just, I'm not sure that's something you really want to even try to try to go through. I've got another name. Jonathan Bernier makes sense there, too. Yeah. I know he's been struggling a bit.

it's so funny because the expectations around Jonathan Bernier were amazingly high because the entire old regime in the Toronto front office talked him up like he was his second coming of Marty Broder during that ridiculous the 2012-2013 seasons and then it's so funny how they kind of back-seated James Reimer who's just as productive if not a bit better and now it seems like Reimer's running with it in Toronto but it's going to be interesting to watch how Toronto handles the goaltenders going forward because if they truly

are willing to I don't want to say cut ties with Bernier but see what's out there for the market and kind of roll with Rimer plus whatever else they can get whether internally or externally Bernie could be a name that's available it can make sense like I think it gets lost in lease fans like Bernier

despite all those ridiculous expectations he was pretty productive he had that ridiculous start to his career and then tapered off and I just don't think he's showing, he's getting pretty damn unlucky right now. And whether you want to call it a confidence thing or a variance thing or whatever the case may be, it doesn't really seem to marry with his career splits. I think that could be an interesting target for Arizona, too. So we got three potential trade candidates there. Yeah. Well, it'll be an interesting thing to

follow. I think that, uh, yeah, Arizona's, Arizona's feisty. And I guess that, you know, for them, it might actually sort of make sense to not, they're like, not mortgaging the future by any means, but if they like go for it kind of half-heartedly, I guess, and see if maybe even like a league average goalie for on the cheap can kind of help help them make the playoffs, like that, that would be a really positive development for that market in the situation they're in. I bet if you polygraphed the Arizona front office right now as to why they want a goaltender now, I don't even think it would be about playoffs.

I think it would be more so about they don't want to demoralize a young team with really bad goaltending. And I have to say, I think that's a semi-fair point. I don't know if it's their best, I don't think it's in their best interest in terms of strategy in terms of getting that top pick in the draft lottery. But I get it. I kind of get it from a front office situation. You don't want to see a team that's working their ass off. And they may not be talented, but they're really young. And basically, they're conceding on one of every eight shots because you get Andrews-Lenback playing 50 games a year. That's not what you want. That would be a toxic situation, even if short-lived.

But why didn't they just put in a bit on Anton Kudobin? I feel like that would have been a pretty kind of a nice measure there, right? That was right. So that was, I believe he went through waivers. First off, I guarantee they were cool on him like everyone else for whatever reason. I don't get it. But I wonder if that was right before Smith went out long term. Was it not?

It was. But I think that he was like already sort of, he was out for a while and the timeline wasn't established. but I kind of feel like they must have at least suspected that Smith would be out for a while. Yeah, yeah. All right. So we've got three trade candidates and we've roasted Yarmah when we made John Torrell look like a good guy. We've yosted him.

Yeah, we've yosted them. Yeah. Okay, one final thing before we go, because I kind of broached the subject on Twitter a few days ago and a couple people replied and said that they wanted us to talk about it. And I was wondering, like, if you could have put together the, like, the most lethal or the funnest three guys to compete in a three on three. right now, who would they be? I can pick any three.

It's two forwards, one defenseman. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I guess. I mean, in theory, you could pick three forwards, but let's just go with two forwards one defenseman. Oh. I mean, Johnny Goddrow has to be on that list, right? Like, he's been insane at three on three.

He's basically like an automatic goal. So the third, I would give him last, last consideration for that final spot because Eric Carlson and Alex Ovechkin are going to be locks in those two positions. Just because I think the dynamic between those two would be unbelievable to watch, too, if I was creating a dream team. Just Eric Carlson feeding Alex Ovechkin one-timers in three-on-three situation playing give-and-go sequences too. The third, the third, Johnny Goddrow is definitely up there. I mean, you can't go wrong with a guy like Teresanko or even like Sagan and Ben, right? Yeah, I was trying to say Tresenko.

I mean, I was Sagan. Well, okay, let's just go SIG and Ben and Klingberg. That's our dream trio. Dallas. Patrick Kane is. got to be up there. I think this would be more fun if we went Dark Horse three-on-three, not actual three-on-three dream teams,

because it's going to be one of those six guys that we mentioned. Right. So maybe we revisit this debate, but we put a salary cap. We put a salary cap ceiling on our team at like, I don't know, X million dollars where we can't peak above that, which forces to take young players slash crappy players who are quietly good at three-on-three.

I think that would be more interesting than saying, And Alex O'Vecan and Eric Carlson and Joddy Goddrae are really good at three-on-three. Surprise! Yeah, hold on. Let me pull up the scoring leaders and just pick a couple of these guys here. All right, man, let's wrap it up. I feel like the 35 minutes or so we did there was pretty good, considering we weren't even really planning on doing a show today. We're going to – we said we were going to adopt the Blues.

We'll do that sometime next week. I think that schedule is permitting. We're going to try to bang out at least a couple shows next week early on. I know that people are going to be traveling and whatnot for a holidays. so I'm sure that there's going to be people out there that would appreciate having some material to listen to whether they're commuting or whatnot. So we'll make sure to do that. We will, on Christmas Day, we'll just sit in and simulcast. We'll just do a play-by-play of Warriors' Cavs.

We have the audience for it. We can do it. Yeah, definitely. All right, man. We'll talk next week. All right. Have a good one. Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, or follow on Twitter at Dim Filipovich and at Travis Yost.