The Hockey PDOcast - Episode 53: What Are You Drouin?

Episode Date: January 22, 2016

We discuss the latest developments in the Jonathan Drouin trade saga with the Lightning, and how it impacts things for both parties moving forward. We also look at the difference in approach between the Anaheim Ducks and Montreal Canadiens in the face of a shooting percentage swoon. While one has actively changed their style of play on the fly to try and counteract it, the other has been sitting on its hands waiting for things to magically change on a dime. Most importantly: when will Colin Campbell learn not to send incriminating emails? 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.

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

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Joining me as always, Travis Yost. Travis, what's going on, man? I am doing all right. How are you doing, Dimitra? We should tell our listeners, we're really gutting through this one. Your internet's been all messed up, and you're gutting it out, using your data, and there's a bunch of really good hockey games on. But we figured that we usually do Thursday shows, so today's going to be no different, and we're just going to get through it anyways.

I also lost my voice, and it's just coming back today. And I don't know, I just saw Ottawa gave up five goals. in a period. I didn't even get to see it. It just must have been so legendary. Yeah, against New Jersey, no less. It was perfect. Who has five goals all season, but yeah, all right. Okay, let's quickly talk about Jonathan Druand, because we have spent quite a bit of time on the show discussing it in the past. So I don't think there are too many new things for us to kind of get into here, but there are some developments for those that somehow missed it. He basically decided not to report to an HL game and the Lightning suspended him.

him and then Alan Walsh's agent came out with a statement saying that he wouldn't participate in any Tampa Bay Lightning team-related activities until they traded him. And then Eisenman held a press conference today and said that this wouldn't change anything. They're still looking for a deal, but nothing's imminent. So I don't know. Nothing really in use happened here, but I figured we might as well address it just because it's been sort of the main talking point on hockey Twitter lately. Yeah, so the interesting discussion is really whether or not he's making the right business

decision for himself, I guess. And I don't know, I kind of floated this out there yesterday, but as someone who probably hates the NHL draft more than anyone on the planet, I was curious if Jonathan Druand wanted to ever play in Tampa Bay. I have no idea. Because to me, it could have been a situation where maybe he was cool on the idea and then the relationship soured with the head coach and he's not playing and now so it went from bad to worse.

Or is it just, I don't get a little. along with my coach and I don't want to play here anymore. I don't know what it is. And I just, as someone who just feverishly hates the draft, I'm always more willing to sympathize with a guy who feels like he got put in a terrible position by being selected by a team or in a city that he didn't want to work in. Only in professional sports can that happen. But I don't know that that's the case, but it is an interesting development because I don't know that we've really seen this kind of player team breakdown. since what like i don't know Kyle turas i guess maybe i don't know is there anyone since

yeah it's been a while because it's not even a type of thing where it's like right after the draft like he's actually played for this team so it's it's it's kind of a unique situation right it's different than like lindross for example or something like that yeah it's funny too because you're a lot of people talking up jonathan drew in and like basically every team wants to get their hands on murray fan base i should say wants to get their hands on him and i think a lot of it is it's funny tying it back to the whole kyle turas saga like there there was a lot of if you remember He was this highly touted offensive player, and he plays in Phoenix, and there are questions about his defensive game and whatnot. Then the points slow down a bit, and then there's questions about, well, how good of an NHL is he really, he gets traded for pennies on the dollar, and now he is a bona fide top six centermen and has been for years.

And I wonder if that's kind of keying maybe some of the interest in teams and players. And to be honest, whether it's, you know, Taurus or another player or anything else, it's just so hard. hard to give up on a really young player with such a limited sample. And it's not like he's a young player with a limited sample where all the early signs are that he's terrible. He scored at a decent rate. He obviously was very good at junior levels. I think there are enough signs or warning or red flags as to raise as to understand why a team might be a bit apprehensive with him. But I mean, really, I mean, that's kind of grasping for straws. For the most part, he looks like he's going to be a fine player so I can kind of understand why everyone wants to get him at this point.

Right. Well, we don't, yeah, I mean, he hasn't played nearly enough for us to say with any, like, definitive certainty what he is as a player. But I think that that sort of makes him even more intriguing to certain teams, right? Where if you can get him for way less than he's potentially worth and then he winds up becoming a star, like, those are the types of moves you should be making if you're a team that's kind of mediocre or not very good right now and is looking for that star talent and can't really necessarily afford it on the free agent.

market or something like that and you kind of have to get creative in acquiring those sorts of players and I don't know for drouin it's it's interesting because obviously the first thing was like people were just kind of dragging his name through the mud like oh this is so unprofessional how can you know I wouldn't want my team to have this guy like this guy was such bad character it's like okay well one he's 22 20 years old and uh he would definitely wouldn't be the first 20 year old to make bad decisions but even more importantly this sort of reeks of like an agent decision like it's it's definitely it certainly seems like Alan Wallace is being like, listen, like, we're going to make a power move here. Like, they're not going to tell us what to do. And he's like, okay, well, whatever, you're my

agent. I guess you know what to do. And I don't know, I just, I find it hard to get like super up in arms about what Jonathan Druand is doing as a player and kind of as an indictment against his character. Like, it's just one of those business decisions that happens. So, um, well, it is an agent decision. I mean, we know that. That's, that's clear his day. It's, it's extremely unlikely that he would have come up with this plan. of action on his own. I am guessing that he conferred quite a bit, and that's the landing spot that they arrived at, that they were going to sit games out and they're going to wait for the trade.

I think really the curious question is to hear from Tampa Bay's perspective is, does their recent winning streak help their position here, or does it hurt it or what? I mean, how do the lightning now react now that they're kind of moving along a bit in the standings? and they have this situation, I guess, kind of simmering in the H.O. right now. I don't think it changes anything because, I mean, first of all, Aserman doesn't sort of strike me as a type of guy that's going to budge here and, like, panic, trade him just for the sake of getting rid of a headache.

And, like, at the same time, I mean, think about it this way. Ever since this stuff sort of developed, have you heard anyone really talking about the whole Stamco situation? Because I certainly haven't. Like, I feel like it's died down quite a bit. This is, like, the way the internet works is you can only really, like, kind of focus on one thing at one time. It seems like there's, like, tunnel vision.

and I haven't really seen anyone really discussing that much ever since this sort of popped up. Did you see that, not to do Stamco's again, but did you see that snippet of a quote? I want to say within the last three or four days where someone, I guess, and I'm paraphrasing here, someone said like, too in his direction or to him, like, oh, so there have been no talks recently. And Stamco said something along the lines of that's not necessarily true, that there haven't been any talks. I found that interesting because you might be extrapolable. leaning a bit here, but that's like the first, like, even remotely optimistic I've really heard of anything from the, uh, from these potential contract negotiations.

Yeah. Okay. Well, one last thing on, before we, before we move on. And, uh, I haven't really seen anyone really mentioned this. It's like, on the one hand, he signed a two-way deal, meaning that the lightning, in theory, have the power to decide where he gets the play. Like, that's how contracts work. But at the same time, like, I don't think people realize what the HAL game is like.

I mean, recently a light was kind of shining. on it when Brian McGrath and had that fight and had that freak injury. And that sort of stuff is like pretty commonplace in the AHA where it's it can be a good breeding ground for young talent to kind of cut their teeth at. But there's also so many of these kind of A.HL lifers that are just, you know, trying to keep playing hockey and trying to keep the dream alive. And I don't know. Like, let's say Jonathan Druand gets hurt playing a game for the Syracuse crunch and

it dramatically impacts his career. Like, do you really think that the lightning are going to be standing beside him? in any sort of like significant devoted manner because I really don't think so. So it's just one of those things where it's like it really is a business and you kind of have everyone has to sort of look out for themselves and I guess people just need to remember that when discussing him as a player. It all starts with the draft. Let's always blame the draft above all else.

No, seriously, how many of these issues could you cut down on if a player got the chose where he signed a hard cap. What's the solution then? Well, the solution is you have a hard cap league and players get to sign wherever much they want for however much they want. Oh, for however much they want. That's interesting. Yeah, so it's a hard-cap league. So if you're going to offer Connor McDavid's $15 million a year and you think he's worth 15 years at $15 million per, fill your boots. And it's still a hard-cap league. So you've got all this money tied up in an 18-year-old. He better damn sure be worth $15 million a year. And your core player is now an 18-year-old and you've got to build around him. And maybe that's the right move and maybe it's not. But this is ultimately, it just kills me how so many players get paid in free agency for what they've done in the past and never really what they're going to do in the future.

I mean, that's just the right. We talk exhaustively about how players' primes are between 23 and 26 or 23 and 27, and most of these guys hit UFA at 26 and 27, and those are the guys inking fairly decent deals. And it's a smart team. It's a smart team's giving him that money too, right? Like, no one's infallible in this regard. Like, even you see with the Blackhawks, like, look at that contract they gave Brent Seabrook this summer. Like, it's absurd. Like, there's no way he's going to be worth that, but they're sort of rewarding him for what he's done as a Black Hawk. And everyone was praising them being like, well, it's this sort of. culture they've instilled where they reward guys that do stuff for them. It's like, that's not a good way to handle things, I don't think. And not so subtly, well, actually very subtly, but the reality is the Blackhawks, their success will be entirely predicated now on two parts. One, all of these veteran players making unbelievable amounts of money and maybe a guy like Taves or Kane deserves it, maybe Seabrook, not so much. And it's also reliant on extremely cheap labor filling out the roster. and maybe a lot of those guys filling out the roster deserve an awful lot more money than they are making right now.

The entry-level contracts kill me, the restrictions on them. The whole idea of restrictive range kills me as well. So personally, I just hate everything about it, and it all stems from the draft. And I would envision, I would guess at least, that if you were trying to say, okay, eliminate the draft, and this is an idea that we're going to seriously consider. One of the benefits that you would realize is players would try and sign where they want rather than where they get roped into. And if you don't think that it matters for a kid growing up in Phoenix,

that he's going to get drafted and play for a team in Montreal or vice versa, I mean, you're totally out to lunch. These are 18, 19-year-old kids. It's not, I mean, it's a move that would be daunting for adults. So I never, I'm saving that draft. for another day, but I just hate the draft so much. Yeah, we should do that in the summertime or something if we're still doing the show. Anyways, let's move on and talk about, okay, well, let's mention this, this catch for a

garbage trade, not because it's necessarily an impactful deal by any means. Well, because listen, I'm a broadcasting professional, and I realize it's a good segue because you wrote about the Ducks recently. And I think that, I like it, I like it. I think this deal sort of ties in just purely from the sense, like, if you're looking at it from the Ducks perspective, you're wondering, why would the Ducks want Ryan Garbett? Like, it's not a year he said thatch was a great player by any means. They got him for pretty cheap and he hasn't really worked out for them and it's fine. Like, whatever, they're decided it's not

worth it anymore. But like Ryan Garbit is a 30 year old and we know basically what he is. He's sort of like a third line, fourth line grinder who can generate a little bit of offense but sort of just like plays that kind of like gritty game. And it makes sense because you wrote about this with the Ducks where. where they're running on a historically bad shooting percentage stretch now where I think no teams shot worse at 5 on 5 or just overall since 05, right? And it's one of those things where we have to commend them for the job that they've done in sort of realizing that and rather than just sitting on their hands complacently

and being like, well, we've been unlucky. Eventually we hope it turns around. They've made a concerted effort to play a more kind of bogged down defensive style of game where they wear the other team out and they try to keep it. 2-1, for example. And, you know, you can kind of rant against that in terms of how nice it is to watch as a viewer, but there's no doubt that it's helped them win games here recently. And they've needed it considering how poorly they started out. So I don't know, it's interesting because Ryan Garbutt sort of fits the bill of that type of player of the type of game they want

to play there, right? So it's, it's absolutely why they pulled the trigger on that deal. And like, you say what you will about, first off, Anaheim is like the biggest trap team in the league right now. That's number one. Number two, say what you will about kind of reacting to bad shooting percentages, but the whole point of the piece, I wrote Tuesday, and if you haven't read it, I encourage you to do so. Like Bruce Boudreau, the seat was on fire. It was scalding. Like, they have, when you're in that position, I don't care who you are. If you're Bruce Boudreau or Travis Yost, Demetri Filippovich, or any one of a million different people, if you know your job is on the line and the status quo, the last 30 games, or whatever you want to

all it have been just gruesome, you're going to change something. And I kill people coaches at times because oftentimes it's, okay, let's put this scrub fourth liner on the top line and let's get the energy and hustle game going. And it's like, no, but he sucks. That's why he's not playing on the first line. What Anaheim did is they, for a lack of better phrasing, they overhauled their system. They are an extreme trap team now. I mentioned Mark Geradano was like, it's the most ridiculous trap I've seen in like forever. And what it's done is it's driven their performance and their results. And I delineate that because I think it's an important consideration.

Anaheim's numbers at five-on-five in terms of their shot differential have really spiked big time. I don't know, over the last 20 or so games, they're one of the best teams in the league in pure shot differential and score and chance differential. The other part of it is they're winning games now. And you can say, okay, maybe the trap system isn't an optimal long-term or viable long-term strategy for this Anheim team right now. but you can't just sit on a 4% shooting funk forever if you're the guy that's coaching the team and you know you're going to get fired. I would call it a smart overhaul. A dumb overhaul would be let's put any number of the Anaheim fourth line players up top with Ryan Getslaff and see what happens there. It's just not going to work out well.

And it's an important kind of parallel to the Montreal situation, which. exact same scenario. The only difference is, okay, they lost an unbelievably talented goaltender. You cannot ignore that. It's going to impact the win loss. But that said, their shooting percentage has also nosedive to, like, unbelievable low levels. And they really haven't done anything to account for that. I feel like they are going through the motions every single game. And it's troubling if you're, you know, Michelle Terrian's job is apparently safe through the rest of the year, but you can't tell me if you're Mark Barsivan and kind of analyzing your coaching staff and their performance that they've done in their inputs and outputs, just kind of repeating

the same thing over and over and over again and hoping for some subtle change. Maybe not the best strategy, right? Because you're kind of just betting that variance is going to return favorably. And don't get me wrong, at some point it's going to return and they will go back to shooting 7% or 8%. But in the meantime, you're kind of in this rut here. are there tweets you can make that don't adversely impact your team, but at the same time might be able to offset some of the ugly win-wals

differentials right now. And I haven't seen Montreal do anything. No. Well, they haven't. They've basically been exactly sitting on their hands and just waiting for things to turn around. And it just seems like a questionable thing. Like Michelle Tarian is paid to kind of tinker with stuff.

And if something's not working, it's your job to be like, okay, well, how can we improve that to change the results? Like, I'm all for sticking with a process and not being like, okay, we've been struggling here, getting saves or scoring goals for 10 games. Let's just stick with the process and grind it out. Like, they're still winning the shot battle. But it's been over 20 games now. They have four wins in their last 21, like, times.

Like, it's something eventually needs to give. And they were sitting atop the league in the standings before this. And now they're outside looking in in the playoff picture. And I don't know. Which is insane, by the way. Yeah. No, it's a historically bad run. And the thing is, like, what I think,

is interesting about it. It brings the light. People say about Michelle Terry and like his defenders go, okay, well, look how much this team was winning with Kerry Price. Obviously now that they don't have their best player, they're going to struggle. And that's totally fine. But like, it just sort of shows that Kerry Price was so good. He was probably the best goalie in the league over the past two years that he masks a lot of those concerns.

And then now when the baseline shrinks and the room for error shrinks, they don't really have anything to fall back on. And I feel like that is a testament to a poor. a coaching job than Michelle Tarian is doing because there's just no other plan. It's basically, okay, Carrie Price is going to bail us out. And when he's not around, it's like, oh, well, let's just wait until he comes back. That's not a strategy. Yeah, it's not. Just like firing your coach is a strategy, right? That's how I concluded it. Like, if they want to file Michelle Tarian, that's fine. Like, I don't think he's a great coach. I don't think he's a horrific

coach. He's probably closer to bed than good. But if you fire Michelle Tarian, you got to have a back-up plan. Like Bruce Brue-Drow, that would be. a great backup plan. If Anaheim, for whatever reason, fired him. And let me, let me say this. Just because Anaheim's on a bit of a role here, and it looks like they're going to get into the playoffs, if they lose in the first round, second round again, you might see, look, Anaheim, I feel like is the most subtle do-it-right team. I don't know how or why, but they really, they're good to bad ratio is very high. Firing Boudreau, though, would be a catastrophic mistake. I just think it would be a totally poor decision. We've echoed this.

exhaustively, but for example, in the event that happened, and you're Montreal and you're sitting on a guy where, eh, we're not really sure how good he is. Yeah. How do you not make that change? Now, that's, that's a plan. Yeah. But, well, does he actually speak French? I mean, he has a vaguely French sounding name, but I don't think he actually speaks French, so that clearly keeps him out of that consideration. The last name might sell him, they might just not have him talk. He might just do sign language. Just add like an X at the end of his last name. One final thing on the HABS, because I should tell the listeners, like, even though we both wrote about them at length this week, we didn't kind of pre-plan it.

It was just one of those things where we both took different routes to getting to the same conclusion. And what I noted with the HABS was they had this horribly kind of dated breakout plan where it's a whole lot of just flipping the puck out of the zone and letting the defense reset. And early in the season, they were kind of being lauded for it because they were winning a lot of those buck battles and creating some goals from it and people were like, oh, this is, this is an interesting, unique strategy. No one else is really doing this. And first of all, I should note, like, the Kings as well do something differently than most teams in the league where

you'd expect a team that dumps the puck in as much as they do to struggle and not be as effective as they are. And we've noted this on the show and many times before where it's pretty clearly a considered effort by Darrell Sutter looking at his personnel to go, okay, this is our best way to win. And for the HABs, I, I'm not necessarily knocking them for doing something different, but it just makes no sense looking at their lineup. Like other than the goal tending, I feel like their biggest strength is probably the fact that they have a pretty mobile blue line. And like instead of letting them kind of create stuff and operate, they're basically just dumping it into the neutral zone and hoping that they win like 50, what, 55% of those puck battles as opposed to other teams winning slightly less than that. And it just like, it makes no sense to me.

So that's basically what I was saying with Michelle Tarian, where I just think that he hasn't, really deviated from his plan at all for 20-something games now. And as new information presents itself, you have to kind of recalibrate and act accordingly and nothing's really changed there. So I think that's like, like that's the kind of main issue you and I take with the situation there. Yeah. And it's not going to get any better either, right? I just read the carry price might be out for another month. Yeah. And then when he gets back, who knows if he's going to be carry price. That's another thing. Like the, the banking on him returning in full health, like maybe, right? Maybe not. I don't really know the answer. I, you expect.

that if he's at full health, full performance will follow, but not always. I pointed this out before. Guys who are injured tend to get injured more frequently after their first injury, and guys who are injured long term tend to more frequently get injured long term, and it makes intuitive sense, but obviously playing injured is suboptimal, and your performance is going to struggle as a result of this. So, look, Montreal is in kind of a dark situation right now. The only shining light is, as we conclude every discussion, that's.

That division sucks. It doesn't really matter. Yeah, no, that's very true. All right, let's conclude on this one final subject because I want to say these terms because I've been kind of dreaming my whole life of using the terms King Rat, Little Shithead, and Dickhead. And it's Colin Campbell's emails, which are going to reportedly be sort of released here. And I don't know, our man Rick Westhead has been doing a fantastic job on TSN kind of just following the situation. and I don't know, it's fascinating because the line that stuck out to me in his latest report was Colin Campbell asked the court to keep these emails secret because they would embarrass him and hurt the NHL's reputation as if the NHL currently has some sort of reputation, some sterling reputation to uphold here where they could really not take a hit.

And it's just like, if that's the case, why are you sending these emails? Like, what's wrong with you? Like, it's not like he has this sort of track record of not sending stuff like this in the past. It's like, dude, learn for your mistakes. Like, come on now. Didn't we not recirculate this entire story a couple of years ago? Like literally the story was Colin Campbell emails released and they are not flattering to the league. And it's literally the least surprising thing in the universe that his, a sampling of his other emails are just as unflattering to him in the league.

And I can only envision what these emails are going to say. So I was checking, I checked PACER this morning in my five-minute window of time that I had. I checked PACER this morning and I didn't see any exhibits uploaded. So I'm not really sure how the exhibits or how these emails are going to be matriculated. I'm assuming well-connected people in the media are going to get them first, which would not be me. But if they are up on, if they do get posted as exhibits at some point through PACER or whether they come through other means, I will be sure to get them out. But I was checking because I am so, so curious.

I mean, I know I'm friendly with a number of people who I believe will be connected or I know are going to be connected in these emails in some capacity. So as an innocent, as an innocent neutral third party observer, I am unbelievably joystricken to see what comes out of this. Just because I think it's just going to be so horrible for the league. And, you know, and this is, first off, not even the most embarrassing. story of the day, though. Can we even get, can we get to the point where they, they announced four celebrity coaches, and I didn't know who any of them were. Did you, all right, did you know, and all right, I have more Twitter followers than the one guy. That should disqualify you from being a

celebrity, right? I mean, that's, if he can be a celebrity, then I could be a celebrity. Yeah, I think we, some people would argue that listen to this podcast that we are celebrities, Travis. So, so maybe they should put us behind the bench. No, I, I came up with, like, you could put a little be the bass god there. Katie Bakes from Granlin. I had this list, this master list of eight people that I'd want to see behind the benches. But I, oh yeah, so this this all-star game, not to just totally

go on a tangent here, but how great is it? Like the NBA all-star game coaches, I think it's like Drake and all these A-list celebrities in the NHL, it's like, guy I never heard of, guy I never heard of, guy I never heard. And then, of course, you get one person you mentioned, it's like, you know, he is this ridiculously popular

country singer, how do you not know him? Couldn't they have gone like Carrie Underwood or something? At least there's like the Mike Fisher connection there, like adds a little diversity to the game. Like I don't, I don't. She probably get the invite and put it through the paper shredder. NHL. You know, I'm good. Yeah, I'm good.

Yeah, so that's, that's, you know, and in getting back to Colin Campbell emails too, though, I also like how, you know, in pleading's and emotion work, you have to also recognize what the parties are doing. So in some ways, I understand. But this doesn't prevent me from making jokes. Like, I love how the league thinks this is what's going to embarrass them and not, like, the three lockouts that I've already lived through and, you know, the litany of other transgressions on the NHL's rap sheet. But, you know, I encourage anyone who has an hour or two of their time and is curious as to what's going on behind the scenes in this NHL lawsuit to just go through the pleadings. A lot of them are already public, the ones that aren't public, if you want, you can contact me. and I will send you, I have a zip file of all the files that have been posted in the concussion

lawsuit. I just encourage you to read through it because I think a lot of people don't recognize the kind of seriousness that is invoked or enveloped the NHL here. The pleadings time and time again, and if you remember, the first couple of concussion lawsuits, they were comically bad. And then as each new complaint was drafted, the quality improved. And you kind of anticipated that. But we are now at the point where I think respectable firms are handling the process for the plaintiffs. They have a very, very serious and real argument. And the NHL is trying to swipe away the footprints as much as possible,

but in some ways they are winning and in other ways they are losing. And there are certain things that are going to be released. And the Colin Campbell emails, you know, we might be able to get some funny little material out of it. But this is a very, very serious and significant issue. And there's going to be other very material stuff that comes out of this. I just encourage people to read it and get up to date on where this is. Because unless you are really reading through all the pleading stuff, you're really

only seeing what, you know, maybe a guy like Rick West said or someone who's really actively following cases, maybe floating on Twitter or one of his articles. I just think I think it's really. so critical to understanding why the NHL is changing and how it's changing and the sport of hockey, where it's going to go and in the negligence or purported negligence of the league and trying to, I guess, suppress that development over time. Yeah. Well, it's an important distinction to make that, you know, we started off by making those jokes about the terminology that Colin Campbell was using in those emails, but like it's definitely not a laughing matter. And I feel like we're sort of resorting to jokes

just because we honestly don't know like what else to say like it's so ridiculous that how long this sort of stuff's been going on where just sweeping it under the rug or looking the other way and it's very serious life alterings matter right it's not like just about the game it's like it's life so in parallel the derrick bougar lawsuit is uh is also running um as well as steve matthor lawsuit which was recently filed as well um Derek another case that if you have an hour read through the Derek Bougard case because you are going to find just some unbelievable facts. They just, I think, filed the second amendment complaint back in the end of October. And some of the prescription details for what, now, not to make this about entirely about him,

but the complaint there is, guy was addicted to painkillers, the NHL kept pumping him full of painkillers. He got checked into a rehab facility. And then the subsequent year, they just kept pumping them through a painkillers again, basically to keep him on the ice. and that the league in some ways in conjunction with the concussion in other ways not so much but that the league knew far more about the dangers of the road that Derek was heading down than Derek.

Of course they did. I mean, they're not idiots, right? Like they had to move. So the whole point of the lawsuit is to open up or shine light in discovery on what the NHL did know and that maybe wasn't matriculated to the players and the Associated Players Association. But it's just an unbelievable detail. I mean, there's a run where Derek is prescribed 190 pills in two weeks and then gets checked to do a rehab facility out of rehab.

And obviously under their protocol, he's prescribed another 368 pills, I think it is, in the following year. And it's just got, and this is over like a two-month stretch. And, you know, I talk to some people who are, whether they've used painkillers in the past for treatment purposes or whether they just have an addiction or whatever it is. I don't certainly know enough about it, and I can't opine on it medically. But some people say, wow, that's extremely high use. Other people say, well, maybe not so much. But the really indicting part is that the NHL knew that he was addicted to these painkiller drugs, then checked them into a rehab facility, and then kept writing the prescriptions.

And again, this is a major thing. And it's not just about Derek. It's about so many other players around the league, very likely having a same or similar situation. and we just don't know about it because concussion, you know, lawsuits haven't been filed, and discovery hasn't been concurred, basically. So this is, this situation that, you know, I encourage everyone to obviously dig as much as you can into this stuff because I think it's important for the people to know and you're not going to hear from the NHL. So unless you do your own homework or you know the one or two media people that are going to get it out there,

you're going to be in the dark a bit. Well, I think as stuff leaks and comes to the surface will, try to kind of at least mention it on this show because it is kind of important for I'm sure our listeners are interested in in getting to know more about this and kind of just being aware of it I guess and I don't know it's unfortunate that we do have to talk about it but it is an important thing that's going on in the league so we can't just look the other way. All right that's going to be it for today's once again we didn't adopt the islanders and it's been pointed out to me that it's kind of becoming one of those running jokes where you know how like in a sitcom they keep referencing a character but

they never actually show them and those are basically the islanders. for us. Like, we're running on, I think, like, six or seven shows now where we're like, okay, we're going to finally get to the Islanders and we never do. And I don't know, maybe at this point we're just better off just vague knowledge. No matter what, no matter what, barring a stamp coast trade, no matter what, we will do Islanders on Tuesday. Barring a stampcoast watch. Now, Ovecans can be traded for you have picks. Yeah. All right, fine. So we have that to look forward to. So yeah, we'll be back next week and we'll cover the Islanders then. All right.

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