The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 48: The Right to a Fair Trial

Episode Date: January 8, 2016

We discuss the leap of faith the Blue Jackets are taking with Seth Jones, whether the Predators got the best deal they possibly could've, how we're cheering for Vinny Lecavalier to end the season on a personal tear and why the Flyers have the best fanbase on the internet. There's also a brief 'Making A Murderer' discussion towards the end of the show, though don't worry if you haven't gotten into the show yet because there aren't necessarily any spoilers involved. 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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No, they don't. That's because you didn't say it. But we were, I've never felt more blessed to record than the trades that the NHL gave us in the last 72 hours. I feel like we have like 10 days worth of stuff to get to. Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, I feel like we were kind of really reaching a lot. Like the last time we were just randomly talking about Clark MacArthur and while obviously concussions. are definitely a subject that we all should be talking about more.

I feel like it wasn't a very topical thing by any means. So it's good that we actually finally have some real material to get into. So let's just like not waste any time. Let's just do it right away. Let's start with the big one. The Forsberg. Sorry, not the Forzor. I'm thinking about the Predators.

It's the Seth Jones for Ryan Johansson. So you really blew a chance there. Because when you said let's get to the big one, I was waiting for you to say, Vingale Cavalier. Well, I was actually going to go like Dustin Tarkarski for Max Freeberg. Even better. Okay, fair enough. Jones for Johansson.

Yeah. Okay. So this is an interesting one. And I should mention that I just recorded earlier today with Chris Johnston. And I know you haven't had a chance to listen to it because it's not up yet. But as people are listening to this when it goes online, that one will be up as well. So they'll kind of be able to look at both those perspectives. But the reason I bring that up is because I asked him whether the pairers had offered,

Shea Weber in this trade instead of Seth Jones. And he said that he couldn't say definitively, but he was pretty sure that the blue jackets just weren't interested in all on that. So I've heard more or less the same exact thing. It was never spelled out explicitly that way. It was like, yeah, the blue jackets can't acquire Shea Weber. And I didn't know if that meant they just were not going to or they were offered it and denied it.

regardless, I don't want to make this a Shea Weber discussion, but I don't think Columbus was a fit for him. I do wonder, the whole point, and it ties into my article today attsn.ca, I'm just curious. What I really want to know, and this is the only element I want to know, is how far down the road did Nashville go, Ray, entertaining a potential Shea Weber trade before they kind of switch gears or change courts? and said, okay, let's move one of the younger guys. And you knew it was, when you got to that point, you knew it was going to be Seth Jones because he's an expiring contract and a lot of the other guys don't necessarily make sense in a trade deal. I think this is a fascinating deal. And I think that Nashville did more than okay here in this trade.

I just wonder, the whole point of today's article was to, and I encourage anyone who hasn't read it to go check it out, I really just wanted to speak to, like, sometimes doing okay, you can do a lot better than okay. And I feel like Nashville had this very big opportunity to get a very, very major deal done. And we talked about this on Tuesday. We said that, look, there's a lot of chance here for Nashville. I find it impossible to believe that a team wouldn't offer to the house, at least one team in the league, wouldn't offer the house or close to it for Shea Weber. And I wonder how far Nashville has went down that road, if at all.

But look, they decided not to for whether they wanted to or not. And we have this major young star for young star trade that is just blue shockwaves through Twitter. Right. Yeah. And it's awesome because we so rarely see something like this. And I don't know. I think it's not necessarily the hottest of takes, but it's kind of okay to be like I think both teams kind of did well here.

Like right? Like this is sort of a trade, not this exact one, but it was something we've talked about in the past where it was like, okay, the predators desperately need some offense, and particularly down the middle. And we were talking about guys like Douchain and Ryan Higgins. So we actually talked about this exact trade, like literally to the detail, except it was Duchenne instead of Ryan Newhantz. And we tossed out, like, Ryan Nugent Hopkins as well as a potential guy in a trade like this.

And I think that Ryan Yohanssen definitely has some flaws in his game. But, I mean, the numbers sort of speak for themselves, is just in the way that he's such a consistently effective goal score. And it's huge for them because now they can move guys like Ribero down to the second line center and, and Fisher goes to the third line. And they have Paul Goss that is the fourth center and all sort of makes more sense. I feel like before this, a lot of guys were kind of being asked to do way too much compared to what they're actually capable of doing. And that was a problem.

And I feel like for the Preds, this is a really big haul because they're right there in it now in that central division. And this trade might not necessarily mean that they're going to, you know, win even a playoff series just based on how good the other teams that division are. But it kind of at least gives them a fighting chance. So based on what you're saying, it sounds like you're of the opinion that both teams are adding wins going forward by virtue of this deal. Is that fair to say? Well, not necessarily for this season in Columbus's case.

Let's go next five, seven years. Are both teams adding wins net? I should say, are both teams adding net wins as a result of this trade? I think so. Okay. So who is adding more net wins of the two? Well, that's an interesting question. I'm very, like, kind of divided on Seth Jones because I feel like people can't seem to be rational about him.

And this is, like, the case for all sort of young prospects that show stuff at the NHL level before fully blossoming, right? Like, Seth Jones has put up remarkable numbers of the underlying variety, and he's shown, like, the physical tools to be this dominant player from the back end. But, like, it just seems disingenuous to suggest that he's an automatic lock to be this stud that's going to play. 25 minutes a game and just dominate on both ends of the ice. Like, we just haven't necessarily seen that. There's been, like, good signs, but there's still, like, a leap of faith there to be made. So I think that for Columbus, it was a worthwhile gamble because you kind of need to do stuff like this.

Like, I don't feel like Cody Golubeff is going to get it done for you. And Dalton Prout, like, you definitely need to do something there. But it's not a move that's just like a no-brainer by any means. I also wonder if, so regardless of what. this trade was at one point or what it ended up being. I don't really know any of those details, but I wonder if some teams are upset with Nashville because I almost wonder if Nashville kind of let Columbus off the hook a little bit here. And that's no slight to the predators because I think they benefited big here. And I think the Blue Jackets did well here too. But I really

wonder how tough of a spot Columbus had kind of boxed themselves into with the whole, yeah, I mean, it was public knowledge that they were trading Ryan Newhant at some point in the foreseeable future. And usually, more often than not, when we see teams and players in those positions, GMs lose those trades. And like, I think Columbus did reasonably well here. I am of the same opinion as you that if I had to guess who would add more net wins going forward, I think it would be Nashville. I think just Ryan Johanson is this whole yeah he's got flaws in his game

it's really emanating from like a shaky 20 game stretch of his entire career because for the most part he's been really really good and I think there's more I think it's fair to say there's more gray area right now with Seth Jones and maybe that's just the realities of

evaluating forwards versus evaluating defeceman right like everyone to a man regardless of what they think is a better forward evaluation right now than they are a defenseman evaluator. That's just the reality of kind of how we read the game visually, how we study the game statistically. We have a better feel for pervasive talent for forwards. And I feel like the fact that a lot of people think these guys are on par pretty close to it, I think that probably is being a bit kind to Seth Jones. And again, I am very pro Seth Jones,

but I do think Nashville made out well here while at the same time saying, boy, I wonder if someone could have even gotten a better deal for Ryan Newhanssen. Right. Just like a sort of replacement value for them, right? Like look who Ryan Johansson is stepping in for the predators. Like it's just such a massive upgrade for them that it can definitely help them more than Seth Jones helps Columbus while still acknowledging that Thess Jones might have more value to Columbus based on this ceiling we perceive them to have as a blue liner, right?

Like it's, it can go both ways. It's not necessarily, oh, this team won and this team lost. There's definitely like a gray area there. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. The one thing I'm going to be arrested to see is how Seth Jones looks maybe two years out. I just kind of getting back to the point about how I guess there's a gray area with Seth Jones where I'm just like, I don't really have any. I feel like he's going to be a good player. I feel like he is a good player.

But there is a lot of room to move in both directions. I want to see how he develops in Columbus. I think the organization is relatively poisonous to most organizations around the league. I do not like the coaching situation at all. I almost wonder if that's working against Seth Jones relative to Ryan Johansson right now because I love the Nashville coaching staff and I think most of what the predators do is really sharp. So it's, look, the biggest winner in this trade is Ryan Johanson. Do we agree with this?

Absolutely. Dog House to the Penn House. I mean, just living in Nashville seems like a lot funner than living in Columbus. Yeah, I think that's a slight step up there. Hey, look, we might have a pretty big fan base in Columbus. They might hear this come after you with your police sirens in the background of Vancouver. Any closing thoughts on this? No, yeah.

I'm curious to see how Seth Jones looks. I mean, there is, I'm wondering just right off the bat how much they're going to feed him, right? Like, we've seen him on occasion when the predators have had injuries in the past, step in and play more than he generally does. we haven't seen him consistently play like 20, 23 to 25 minutes a night. And I'll be curious to see whether they do that right away. I think that they might just need to add a necessity

because they just have, like, Jack Johnson's playing like 24 minutes a night. And Ryan Murray is getting caved in at 5-on-5, and yet he's still playing a ton. And I just hope it doesn't stunt his development, but I feel like we don't really know how that actually works. Oh, well, in fairness to Seth Jones. It's not like he hasn't played behind a big defenseman

that gets caved in every single season. This is kind of his wheelhouse, right? I think he's more than prepared for this situation. You just keep bringing this back to Shea Weber, don't you? I can't, I can't resist. The comment section today, I was ready to go in there and start boxing people for 11 rounds. But it's just so frustrating. All right, Kings.

Yeah, let's do the Kingsland. So basically, how it boiled down to was it was the Cavalier, Luke Shen, and in return, the Flyers got a third Jordan wheel, and they retained some salary. They got nothing. Yeah. Well, I think it might be a little bit of an addition to my situation. action. Well, yeah, what they got was, I guess, cap space and all the things that are associated with cap space and clearing bad contracts. This, the most curious part of this trade is, oh, Dino, my guy, he, uh, after what, two months ago, I was reading how he was offended by a

player who acted so out of character and, you know, all those things that we heard with the Mike Richard's situation. And basically what underpin this entire trade, if I'm correct, was Vinila Cavalier saying, yeah, trust me, I'm going to retire at the end of the year. And look, I think he is going to retire at the end of the year because I think he's toast. I don't see him adding any value to this LA team. And if we, if for whatever reason, that dynamic, that team dynamic jump starts his game and he's got 10 goals in the next, I don't know, 45 days, I will come right back on here and say, wow, holy shit, Vinnie La Cavillier is reasonably back.

But I will say this. So I think he's toast. I don't see what the purpose of this trade really is for L.A. and at least from the La Cavillier perspective. But I kind of went on a mini rant tonight on Twitter. I'm like, you can't tell me the chance of Vinnie La Cavillier not retiring is 0%. You just cannot tell me that. How many times have we seen professional athletes who have millions of dollars on the line?

and I'm not saying Vinnie La Cablee needs the money. I'm just saying there is an incentive to play for another season because he's going to be paid millions. If he goes through a little luck bender, he's kneeing a couple pucks in, he's feeling it, he hits a couple nice shots. Love in L.A. Yeah, love in L.A. Oh, man, loves his teammates. You can't tell me this is a 0% chance where he doesn't go, yeah, you know what? I think I have it for one more year. And L.A. is basically operating the impression that that is a 0% chance.

And so I'm curious if there are any behind the scenes stuff. There's not a lot that L.A. really can do in terms of contract law and under the CBA. But I wonder, I wonder if that no move clause that Calvillet has. I wonder if they can play around with that a little bit as a modifier of the trade. And maybe they can hold that against the Cavalier to some capacity. I just, I don't know, I feel like L.A. is taking unbelievable risk that they haven't really realized. Well, I mean, we've never seen L.A. kind of get around a contract and make it work for them. And we've also never seen a player be like, no, you know what? I think I actually do want to keep playing because, yeah, no, it's going to be a fascinating thing. But we've discussed us in the past, right? In the sense that it's a different thing, but it's sort of the same where like, why wouldn't teams that aren't going to make the playoffs or aren't going to make any noise trade away a guy and be like, listen, legally we can't like agree to that you're going to come back for sure. But please come back to us this summer. And we'll, we'll be. will get like a pick and a prospect or something and you'll get to play with it for us again.

And like there's this sort of stuff happens in the NHL, but it's kind of fascinating to see like how people are just taking it as if it's a given and a lot can change between now and the end of the season. Well, Daniel Winnic basically did that last year. Yeah. Regardless though. So like how would you, I feel like if you're working in the King's finance group, you have to weigh the risk of him saying, I'm going to play another year, right?

Like that has to factor in because, and the only reason why it matters so much is go look at their contract situation and go look at their cap space for the following year. If they don't have a cavalier off the books in some capacity, they are S-T-R-E-W-E-D. And I don't know any other way to describe that. And I just, I don't know, that was, I guess I caught up on that deal late and I was slammed at work and I only, the details only hit me like six hours later. But I was like, oh my God. It's just, and it was so odd coming from Lombardi because here's a guy who was personally aggrieved and taken back to like an exponential degree that a player, the whole Richard's situation, which I don't need to get into. Everyone knows a story behind it. He was so like his mind was blown away. And I'm like, I don't know. I just feel like this is the whole point of why the CBA and contracts exist. It's like if you don't stick to them or you pretend that the other party's not going to stick to them for your personal gain, You may be proven wrong in the foreseeable future. A good example of this, it's kind of the reverse.

But if you remember when Daniel Alfredson left Ottawa for Detroit, the whole backstory that was underpinning that was Ottawa made a gentleman's agreement with Daniel Alpherson. I think it was to play the final year of his contract super cheap. It was kind of one of those backdiving deals where he played really cheap. And Ottawa basically said, you know, as a part of this deal, you know, we're going to extend you and we'll make it right. We'll make you whole on the subsequent contract. So Alpherton becomes a free agent, and Ottawa all of a sudden has a huge of heart.

And this is why things are, you know, this is why contracts are written out. This is why they are executed by all interested parties. It's not, yeah, I'm going to tell you, trust me, right? Because you can always, even in a situation where it's like Daniel Alfordton would never play for another team, you can't ever not expect someone to pull out a rug. It's going to happen from time to time. I don't know. I just,

I kind of like speechless is that whole situation. I think Dean Lombardi's going to have Vinila Calais's family under under team supervision until he finally files those retirement papers. I know if he needs someone, I'm not even going to get it to this. Yeah, we shouldn't. I was going to segue into making a murder joke. Yeah,

we shouldn't do that. But okay, so let's discuss Luke Shen a little bit because I think he's sort of weirdly been underrated, just in the sense of like people view him as this guy that went fifth overall. and was traded for JVR and just the way Brian Burke was talking about him for all those years. Like it kind of became like a running joke. But he's actually turned into sort of like a very usable fourth or fifth defenseman. And I think that he's a nice little upgrade for them.

I mean, that blue line's pretty good and pretty mobile. And they can definitely move the puck. I just, this like cavalier angle is like, I honestly tweeted like an hour before, uh, the trade actually happened. Like I remember Bob McKenzie tweeted out like, oh, yeah, there's rumbling that, uh, the flyers are talking with people who will be the La Calvier. and I was like, okay, like, that's great. But like, I, like, I also want to play for a contender.

Like, it doesn't mean I'm going to get to do it and actually be good at it. But, like, it's amazing to me that the Kings felt the need to do this because they're just, like, running away with the Pacific and there's still so much time till the deadline. Like, I just don't understand the desperation angle here from them. Well, okay. So let's assume that Luke Shen is a four or five on a good team. Now, you mentioned how L.A. moves the puck so well and they've got this mobile back end. then Luke Chen is just neither of those really. He's just not a great puck mover.

I will concede he's a, I do think he, the point you made about him maybe being slightly underrated now because just how overrated he was for the first four, five, six years of his career felt like. Right. There might be truth to that. Like I think me and James Murdo were talking about this actually literally two hours ago. And he made the point that, you know, I think he's a pretty serviceable third-parent guy. And I agree with that.

I agree with that assessment. I think that's his wheelhouse. and if you kind of insulate him and give him limited minutes, he'll be more than adequate for you. But so look at this from an L.A. perspective. As a team with, it is completely fair to say, they are a Stanley Cup favorite. They are in that group of like three or four teams that are very likely to win Stanley Cup. This is going to eat away some of your cap space. I just, is the best you could do Vinnie LaCavalier and Luke Shen, even with some contracts being retained by Philadelphia in the middle of January?

I don't, you can't possibly convince me that they couldn't have had a better deal in the next two months from 28 other teams around the league looking to shop random guy on maybe a not terrible deal and maybe you have to give up a little for him, but that's the whole point of like contending and this is your window and you move some futures, you get a reliable player like I they're really rolling the dice here on two guys, one guy who's been up and down his entire career and the other guy is just toast. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's look at it from from Philadelphia's pretty. perspective because it's actually a move that sort of makes sense. And they've been doing a lot of of these recently. And I don't just looking at their cap situation right now. It's like it's night and

day between what it was like a year ago. What do you mean when they had when they had McDonald's the cavalier and 80 other horrendous contracts on the books? Nicholas Grossman was on there. They had the Chris Pronger deal. Can we just go back and read go back like a year and a half onto General Fannager and just go down the list of contracts that they had signed. I don't know, like 18 months ago. Yeah, no, it's insane. And it's looking a lot more clear now. And there's, you can see there's like a sort of a plan in place and they're actually

with some of these moves thinking about the future, which is something we haven't seen from the Flyer organization. So it's a positive development for them, for sure. Do we, how do we feel about Philadelphia's, I don't want to say long-term prospects? How do we feel about them going forward this season? Do they have any hopes of getting back into the playoff race? I think they're pretty minimal. I'm sure you would love for them to be very high,

considering how high you were on them in the season. I need them to, yeah, this is a myth. That is grown out. I was like, yeah, they can slot it to the fifth. It's become traphead them coming out of the east. Yeah. No, I would like to see them rally a little bit for my own self-confidence. They're kind of just toiling in the middle of nowhere.

They had a fun little game against Minnesota tonight. There are two games behind the penguins with a game in hand, which is pretty remarkable. Well, just Pittsburgh is so unremarkable that maybe it's not so remarkable. I just, I don't know, the whole division, that whole division in and of itself is just a huge, giant, colossal question mark after Washington. Remember we were talking about this mission? We were like, yeah, we feel really good about these four teams. So the Rangers have just been slipsliding away, and we talked about that at length. The Islanders have had maybe the weirdest quietest season of any team in the league.

They're just not good. They're just not bad. They're just kind of floating there. You have Pittsburgh who has just been so unremarkable. It's almost comical to this point of the season. Philadelphia, you can't remember a single game they've played this year. How come you haven't mentioned the Hockey P.DioCast favorite New Jersey Devils? Yeah, so I'm getting to.

New Jersey is the one team that took a step forward. But I don't know, how reasonably confident can you be in that team to sustain? Well, only in the sense that I'm pretty sure Corey Schneider is going to keep being like a 925 goalie. So that helps their case. But, yeah, I mean, especially considering like they seem like a fairly smart team that is probably going to deal some of these guys like Lee Stepniak, for example, at the deadline. So that could definitely hurt their cause. So if season started today and I gave you a pick between New Jersey, Philadelphia, Columbus, Carolina, which of those teams? is going to end up with the most points from January 6th or 7th to the end of the season.

I think Philly is definitely up there. I feel like you could make a very logical argument for them. I mean, their goaltending has been remarkable once again. And it's crazy how Steve Mason went from just being like a laughing stock and a joke to just being a really, really good goalie. Like I definitely did not see that coming. That's been, that might be, that may grade out as. one of the biggest surprises since, like, the stat era has enveloped or begun in whatever, whatever year you want to start, 2007, 8, 9, whatever year you want to start it.

Like, Steve Mason whole career trajectory is just so mind-blowing. He literally had, and there's some interesting articles written out about modifications they've had to his game since the trade and things that may have helped them. And I never know if these things are true or not because it's always easy to say, let's guys playing great. Let me go talk to his goalie-co. What did you do? This is what I did. I told him the cough twice before he took the ice, and that's how Steve Mason found his game. And you have no idea whether or not a lot of these things actually improve a, have improved or worsened a player or a goaltender.

But his whole career trajectory is just unbelievable because I think everyone had him just continuing to slide and eventually at this point in his career probably in permanent backup duty. It's been the reverse of that. Like he has been one of the more reliable goaltenders in the entire league. and it's been true for at least three seasons now. And for Philadelphia, the funniest thing is, you know, you talk about Cory Schneider in New Jersey, and it's like, I know Corey Schneider is going to be an extremely good goaltender going forward,

and that's why I give them a fighting chance. Maybe I'm a little less confident in Steve Mason than Corey Schneider, but I feel like he's going to be reliable going forward to him, and that's crazy. Yeah, I know. He's been remarkably consistent, and I don't know, it's fascinating how much time we spend kind of evaluating and analyzing these players, and then there's these things that were just like not privy to like i there's a great story i won't reveal who told me it but it was while uh carrie letton was in was in Atlanta and obviously he was a super high pick and he was very highly regarded but like his diet was just incredibly poor and he would just like

constantly just eat fast food and and his and his car was always filled up with like like big mac rappers and whatnot right and then and then he comes to Dallas and totally changes his diet and and starts like taking uh the training more seriously and obviously that leads to success more success and We would just never really know that until like after the fact. Like it's all like post hoc stuff. But it's it just kind of goes to show how much stuff there is going on that just like sort of like out of our control as analysts. When you said he started taking the training seriously, I almost swore I heard started taking the train. And I was like, oh, Gary Layton became this massive, you know, this mass transit guy.

He was all about. He's saving the earth, man. He was all about the L-line on Monday's coming up. no, and these things happen and it's, this is why one of the things I try and bring it to focus sometimes when I write and I lose side of it

frequently and sometimes I have to remind myself of it. There's only a portion of things that we can explain about a player or a team and like the best way to think about it is this massive pie that sliced a million different ways. You know, like for example, like it's so easy to say

like the team level is probably the best way to describe it, right? Team that drive crazy. shot differentials, crazy positive or crazy negative, you will see the gold differentials follow accordingly. Now, shot differentials don't predict gold differentials perfectly. The correlation is not one. It is, you know, it's remarkably consistent year over year, but there's still a lot of unknown in that equation. So then you go into, okay, now people delve into shot quality and okay, that's a sliver of the pie. And then, you know, shot quality against or goaltending performance. That's goaltending performance is a huge cut of that pie.

But even still, all these things add up and you're still left with slivers and it's like, I don't know what this is. And maybe it's repeatable and maybe it's not. We just aren't privy to it yet or it's just totally random. So it could be one of those two things. And at the player level, I feel like that pie is more unknown than not sometimes. But especially with goaltenders. And, you know, we've talked about goaltenders in the past too and it's just like so hard to pin down.

And really the goaltenders that we're confident in are the guys like Monquist and and Rask and Price and Halpy and guys who have just done year over year over year. The Mason thing, if you could think of a better example of someone just coming out of nowhere or someone going completely in a tank despite all evidence to the contrary, I don't think this is a better example, is there? No, I honestly can't think of it. I used to have good fun and making fun of Steve Mason and I was even like when they gave him that contract extension, I was like, yeah, okay, this is going to work out.

Great for the flyers. Just think about the flyers giving the Steve Mason. We thought he was a contract. It was like the perfect joke. Like it was just great. And it seemed like a gift for all of us. And it's actually now he's making $4.1 million. And he's just one like what?

He's one of the best 12 to 15 goalies in the league. Like some of this stuff is just always so random. I really don't want to ruin the joke because it was so funny when I read it, but I have to share it. When we were talking about the Seth Jones and Shay Weber stuff and the offer sheet, that precluded the whole Shea Weber, Nashville, Philadelphia thing. Someone messaged me and said, can you imagine if Philadelphia, if Nashville didn't match that and Philadelphia had Shea Weber on the books too?

Oh, my God. He said they probably would have to have him killed. And I don't know why. I thought that was the funniest thing in the world. I'm just in this whole making a, we have to do another podcast on the making a murderer thing. Yeah, I'm like five episodes in and it's disgusting. Like, I spend the entire episode with just like my brow furrowed. And I'm just like, ah, I just don't want to keep watching this,

but I'm also so intrigued that I have to keep watching it. And it's eating away. I mean, I just, like, some of these characters are just so ridiculous. The, the,

and I don't want to jump down this hole, but I'm going through because the show is so damn good. And I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to watch it. A lot of my friends and just people I interact with, the way they talk about the show, it's a lot of, especially early on, and it's understandable,

it's a lot of, is he innocent or is he guilty? Or is Brendan Dassey innocent or is he guilty? And I, I started watching it from that prism too, but every episode you get in, you realize it's not really about as much about innocence or guilt as it is the right to a fair trial. And once you start watching it through that lens, the last seven or eight episodes are sickening because you try and put yourself in Steve Avery or Brennan Dassey's situation and you're sitting there and you don't

know if you did it or not, but all you want is both sides to kind of litigate the matter fairly. And And I find that probably the most interesting way to describe it because the whole trial, and I'm only into, in fairness, I'm only probably in, I think I'm in episode starting episode seven now. But like just you see some of the stuff going on and it's beyond mind blowing. Nothing like I've ever seen before. And especially the 1980s sexual assault case. That was like the stuff that kind of lays the foundation to what was going on up there. that was just eye-opening to the nth degree we got to get len kachinsky on this podcast man we've got to get a performance was tour the force we've got to get someone who practiced criminally I think I think jello castella practiced criminal law well she's a friend of the podcast already I feel like we could easily get her back on I can't remember if she practiced criminal law or not but I feel like she may have so if that's the case we'll bring her on and then we and I believe Tyler Dello of practice no I think he was

insurance offense, actually, so I'd pull that back on. We're going to need to just get, we put a $300 an hour retainer on a criminal lawyer to just kind of break down the case details. Special guest analyst. We'll sandwich it at the end of a podcast. That way the people who come for the hockey can just blow it right off. And the 10 people who know what we're talking about can just stay and they can listen to someone who has expertise in that specific field talk about it. That sounds like every podcast we do. The 10 people that stick around until the end. Yeah, let's wrap this up. So in the end, How do you grade this?

I guess we can close with this. How do you grade that trade for the flyers? One to ten. Well, I mean, it's a ten in the sense of what they were trying to accomplish. Obviously, it doesn't move the needle that much, but it was just like a no-brainer win for them. All right, Kings. Oh, man, like a two and a half.

I still have yet to see a logical explanation for why they would want these players. So I would even go one and a half too because I think the opportunity of the unknown opportunity that they have now. Stabs him in the back? Yeah. They have now sacrificed at least a portion of potential flexibility for the next two months with a trade to acquire a respectable third pairing guy and a center who I am sure is not going to add any value.

So it's perplexing from LA's standpoint. Great though for Flyers fans. I feel good for the Flyers fans today. That fan base is hilarious on Twitter. I think they are just so. They're so good at being self-deprecating that I kind of want them to stay bad because it's just like it's more fun for our selfish entertainment. Like if they're actually good, I feel like it won't be nearly as fun. They're extremely cynical.

Like I, so I'm obviously a Knicks fan and I follow a lot of Knicks people. And between, when you have Flyer Game Nights and Nick game nights running concurrently, this year has kind of been a turning point because the Knicks are kind of rallying a bit out of their usual 17 win season. But for like four years straight, it was, it's pure comedy. And I, you know, there are people out there who. were like Knicks Flyers and whatever other horrible team you want to put in there. It was like a trio and it's, it was always fun to watch Flyers. Like they've actually turned into a really fun, probably the best fan base on Twitter. But so I'm going to, I'm going to pat them on the back for this one.

They can enjoy this moment because this is a fun, good deal for that organization. Yep, completely agree. Okay, we're going to get out of here. I know we promised last time that we were going to adopt the Islanders and the Bruins, but obviously we were blessed with actual kind of news to discuss. So we'll do that early next week, I would promise. So yeah, I guess that's going to be it, Travis. We'll talk soon.

At least two Islanders fans threaten me that if we start the podcast talking about the Islanders and then immediately veer into Rangers trade talk, they will have any killed. So let's make sure to do that to piss them off. Yep, absolutely. Okay, man, we'll talk soon. Take care. The Hockey PEOCast online at HockeyPedocast.com. Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, or follow on Twitter at Dim Filipovich and at Travis Yost.