The Steve Dangle Podcast - Atlantic Antics | April 16, 2025

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Join our playoff bracket challenge: https://app.sparc.fun/b/sdpnbracket On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, 00:00 The sdpn bracket challenge! 05:00 Leafs win the Division 37:00 Darnell Nurse is suspended 1 game 48:00 Boston apologizes 59:00 The NHLPA Player Poll 1:20:00 Devan Dubnyk on goaltending and the playoffs Visit this episode's sponsors: Visit your local Tim Hortons, or download the Tims App, to start collecting their NEW Retrospective Rookies Hockey Cards. Every pack features current and retired NHL and PWHL players from their Rookie year, plus the chance to win prizes like autographed jerseys. Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code DANGLE at checkout. Download the Saily app or go to https://saily.com/DANGLE Subscribe to the sdpn YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sdpn?sub_confirmation=1Join - SDP VIP: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0a0z05HiddEn7k6OGnDprg/join Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/thestevedanglepodcast Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sdpvip/subscribe - Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.BlakeJoin us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/MtTmw9rrz7 For general inquiries email: [e-mail] Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sometimes life throws your curveballs and you don't have time to get to them and that's where TaskRabbit comes in and I think you should check this out because here's the deal. One of the things, one of the weird quirks about my condo building is that they use my floor to repel down and clean all the windows but they never clean my windows. And their way around on that is like, well, it's a patio window, you can do that yourself. And I'm like, well, hang on a second. What if I don't want to? I don't have the stuff because you got to have that scraper thing and the washer thing.

The chemicals, you got to have the right chemicals. see what i'm saying that's why i used task rabbit and i employed a tasker here's the thing task rabbit connects you with taskers in your area for furniture assembly home repairs lawn maintenance mounting window cleaning all that stuff here's the deal 3.4 million pieces of furniture have been assembled 700 000 home repairs 1.5 million moves and counting go ahead and get ahead of your to-do list 15 off your first task at taskrabbit.ca or on the task rabbit app using the promo code dangle taskers across canada book up fast especially for same day tasks get 15 off your first task right now with the promo code dangle at taskrabbit.ca or the task rabbit app you should

download that taskrabbit.ca code dangle what is sailing what is it but we've we've talked about them often you don't know well i just i i just wanted it's a pop quiz jesse what's sailing it's an e-sim service that's right it's brought to you by nord security steve where else what where is it available oh it's all over the place 160 countries in eight regions exactly steve dangle yep the detailed steve dangle that's what we call him and listen if you've ever been lost abroad or badly needed an internet connection with no wi-fi spot in sight you'll understand what a difference a local sim card can make maddie goes on trips all the time and she uses our saley discount you know it's true and here's the thing it also protects you from those pesky roaming fees that those

companies that shall remain nameless like to charge it's just hey you're going on vacation and leaving the office and leaving the country

we're gonna make you pay for that because we're a cell phone company I thought their empire fell a long time ago nah it didn't it didn't

it's too bad it's too bad so here's the thing download the app Saley eSIM plans are compatible with iOS and Android devices and work with all

smartphones supporting eSIM technology you buy a plan or multiple plans in over 160 countries and 8 regions and by the way we have a discount

for you right now. Isn't that cool? Saley.com slash Dangle. Get a 15% exclusive discount on Saley data plans. S-A-I-L-Y dot com slash Dangle. Use the code Dangle at checkout. You will get 15% off exclusive

Saley data plans. Download the Saley app or go to Saley.com slash Dangle. Let's start the show. S-D-P-P The Steve Dangle Podcast. With your host Steve Dangle, Adam Wilde and jesse blake bracket challenge will open if montreal scores a point tonight and you will be

able to edit your brackets right up until the leafs start on sunday scores a point in the stand yeah not in the game yeah yeah a point in the standings yeah i think everybody kind of no okay maybe not maybe not montreal needs to basically lock up a playoff spot there you go uh and we can talk about that whole thing later but the bracket challenge this year is a lot like previous bracket challenge only this time we're using our own site uh and it's uh the link is in the description again it's our friends at spark um and essentially you have round one two three and four you go through the bracket steve you're going to do a video on this oh yeah and you pick in the first second and third rounds you're going to pick who's going to win how many games and then

in the stanley cup final who's going to win how many games plus tiebreaker how many goals are scored throughout the finals and i'm going to nail all of them are you oh i i nail none of them ever it'll be fun because it'll be a competition amongst all of us and you listening but also against the sdpn employees because we'll have a little leaderboard on the side in the spark app where you can follow along with all of our brackets so if you want to see how well chris is doing or how well julian's doing or drew i assume everybody's gonna be cheering against drew you can see that right in the app exactly exactly it's going to be a riot um and if you want to dunk on us specifically drew i'm thinking um most people i think would want that uh you can

see them right along there so it's going to be with the same company that we do all the trivia with uh there will be prizes we haven't announced them yet uh but trust me they're going to be good ones and we gave away a really good one yesterday on the stream a uh i was referring to it as a austin matthews adult doll but really it's a mcfarland uh figurine and it was you can't even buy it yet the austin matthews four nations figurine which you gave i was about to say i when we were giving it away i was reading it and trying not to sound surprised i was like i didn't know this was an item you well it actually came in we actually got the shipment after you left on monday and jesse i'll hear jesse all down the hall going oh that's really cool oh yeah so there

are more of those so wait it's still in the building yes so i could still just leave with it you could there are more of them okay you could technically leave with one oh ideally i think you you leave with one and show it off on your video and go look what you could win and then bring it back so people can actually win sorry you cut out at the last part yeah there it is look out Look, first off, check out that beard. Look at that. Look at that. It's pretty cool.

And by the way, you can't buy them yet. You can't even buy them. We got them first. So we're so excited to hook you up with those. And as I say, plenty, plenty more in terms of scale of pricing. It's going to be a big one. Usually we get well over 1,000 people signing up for our brackets. This year, we're hoping for more.

So let's get you signed up. uh it opens as soon as montreal scores a point in the standings tonight uh if they don't well then it's gonna have to wait a little bit longer i was about to say we need to log up that damn playoff we'll do it if columbus gets in too it's just uh we're gonna have to wait we are so i think that covers what we needed to announce today doesn't it no and yes and the start of the show oh it's like you mean right now yeah start of the show yeah well first thing i think uh we should probably talk about we're going to start with because ultimately we're based out of toronto and we're leaf homers uh the leafs have clenched first place with both cheeks uh it's finally

happened yes the toronto maple leafs have won their division now the last time the least won the division it was the canadian division and covid we don't talk about that and then the time before that was like 98 99 with matt sandin uh or 99 2000 whatever it doesn't even really matter whatever that wasn't the atlantic division the leafs have never won the atlantic division and i was saying last night on the stream two of the last three president's trophy winners have come out of the atlantic division if when people go oh that's pretty sad sorry i while i agree with you uh florida having a crazy year and then boston having a record-setting best year of all time kind of prevented this from happening recently yes and so uh you know let new york last year

won the uh the president's trophy which is hard to believe now it's a big deal and i want to talk a little bit about and we could what throw this up there give it to me so i was looking since the beginning of the matthews era the leafs are third in the entire nhl oh wait what the hell why is it out of order this stupid website the leafs are third in the entire nhl in wins since the beginning of the matthews era the two teams above them are atlantic division teams so boston boston and tampa boston and tampa wow extremely frustrating yeah well and you look at the fact that florida teams have been in the finals four of the last five years five of the last five years whatever the hell it is five straight yeah uh they've all come from the atlantic so it's been a really competitive

division so for them to win this one uh is a big deal you mentioned the northeast division win in 99 2000 or was it 98 90 one of the 99 i think it was the second kujo year i think so do you know their last division win before that one it was pre-67 wasn't it it was probably named like the odie claghorn memorial division they won the division in 62 63 when there was three teams in it jesse that's the conference yes they won that's insane yes they did win the cup as well that year but like that from 63 till 99 zero division wins this team has been awful for a long time so these wins are mean something yes this does mean something you can tell it means something so i think uh uh let's let's talk about why because people were asking me on the stream

last night like well who do you prefer like what if florida falls and then how it will be whatever now the battle of ontario is locked it doesn't matter i think sometimes when you win first place you go i've taken control of what i can take control of the rest of it the cards fall into place yeah you have home would you rather have home ice advantage or be the road team you'd rather have home ice advantage well guess what you get that and if you're lucky enough to win in part because you have home ice advantage guess what next round you have home ice advantage as well i took allergy meds they just have a kick okay i i can hear how terrible i know it's it's coming don't worry it's all right it's coming it's coming it's the better real book again

now i'm starting to leak oh it's brutal anyway sorry no i feel great it's gonna be fun during those streams by the way that's all it's gonna be i hope it's over by then i don't know every year it happens for an indeterminate amount of time and then it goes away um what were we talking about leaves go leaves go go leaves i'm pretty happy about it yeah as you should be as you should yes uh so yeah uh mitch marner becomes the fourth fourth leaf ever but the seventh time a leaf has ever gotten a 100 point season i want you to i want to put that into context 110 years this team has been around yes only three Leafs have done it previously they've all done it twice it's Gilmore it's Sittler and it's Matthews Mitch is the fourth Leaf ever and this is the seventh season ever

we've seen a 100 point player not only is that pathetic yeah yeah but it's cool for Mitch oh it's super super cool for these are great stats for the people accomplishing them like the team and and Mitch and Austin hitting all these numbers but they're also really depressing and a sad state for the franchise as a whole, you know? The individual guys, fucking fantastic. You're breaking all these records. But to look at the history of the Leafs, it's sad. It shows how hard it is to do.

Like, Sundin didn't even do it. He did have a 100-point season with the Nordiques, and no one cares about that. Like, some of the Leafs' best players kind of played in the heart of the trap era. That's true. Or, like, pre-1970, pre-moon landing. Right.

And it's a hard milestone. But he finally, jeez, guy got 99. And it looked like he might sit there again. And then he ends up hitting 100 with like the sexiest goal ever. Oh, it's amazing. That was such a nasty play. Oh, my God. That was beautiful.

And it was a great setup by Matthews. Great setup by Matthew Nyes, too. Both of them figured in that, which I think was important. It was great. Yes. Oh, it was awesome. And what was awesome was the celebration, too. Matthew Nyes grabbed Marner immediately.

was like yeah and Matthews you could see was pointing at someone I guess it was one of the defensemen to go get the puck yeah yeah and then when Matthews scores his 400th which I know you're getting to uh who went and grabbed the puck I don't know Mitch well there you go well so then obviously like as Steve mentioned Austin Matthews gets his uh 400th career goal he is the second Leaf ever to do it again 110 year old franchise only two Leafs have ever scored 400 goals the Oilers are like, uh, what? What? I know.

Well, it's hard to get guys to stick around. Like elite guys to stick around. Well, we also traded everybody all the time. Well, this is, yeah, that's true too. It's hard to get guys to stick around. The ones that do stick around, they often made stupid decisions with them. Yep. And some of them just straight up weren't good enough.

Austin hit 400 goals, sixth fastest in NHL history. I believe on that is like Mario Lemieux, Yerry Curry, Wayne Gretzky. Not Ovi. Not Ovi. He is scoring at a faster clip than Alexander Ovechkin, and it took Matt Sending 981 games to hit 420 goals as a Leaf.

Actually, it probably took him less than that. But Matthews did it in 628, which is crazy. Willie's like two seasons away from cracking the top five. Next season, Austin Matthews will be the all-time goals leader for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Like around Christmas. That is insane. Does he do it by Christmas?

If he returns to last year's total. So I was talking about this in the LFR two games ago. Matthews is on pace, his goal scoring pace. It might have gone up last night. It's around 39 or 40, which is obviously good, but obviously way, way, way down from 69. his point total is somewhere between 95 and 96 and last year he only had 106 well only had 106 this season's been categorized as a disaster for him it's obviously a step backwards offensively

but if you look at his overall point total or point pace it's actually not that bad he also missed a month he missed a month and we look at a point totals are we looking at points per game what was more damaging i think is the time he didn't miss while he was playing obviously broken right right you don't fly to germany to fix a problem uh that occurs overnight i i think well unless you own a german car in which case you do have to order in german parts well that would that's very yeah and i i want to say this for austin i felt like first off after four nations people were really hard on him uh he still was on like a 12 game point streak or something like that was crazy yeah but especially lately guys i felt like i'm like oh there is like a little bit

more i i won't deny that he wasn't 70 70 goal form 69 goal form nice uh austin matthews of last year uh but i have felt lately that within the new system yes uh he is becoming not just the defensive thing that that craig berube wants but he's also we're starting to see the austin matthews sort of come through him and marner are legitimately a great two-way one-two punch and matthew nize has joined them in the fight like instead of being this like young talented hired gun he's just this fridge yeah like fridge with agility a frigidity i don't know i'm waiting for the meds to kick in um he i've seen some people still be like oh man you gotta break matthews and marner up uh i used to be on that train but when new evidence presents itself you're

allowed to change your mind yeah yeah and that line's friggin great don't ever break it up and like william tavaris is working great and then they have this uh changing cast of guys at left wing but like they all bring something different to the table so i don't think it's a matter of oh we got to find something that works it's about the right mix for the right situation the Leafs are in such a good place uh I don't I don't know about comparing to all recent years but definitely compared to last year they're in a really really good place the the Mitch and and Austin thing about them playing separately it would just be arguing with a wall it would be belaboring a point if you were to continue that conversation at this point because Craig

Berube has played them together more than any other coach this is the most minutes they've played together in a single season in their entire careers he has doubled down on what Babcock hated and then what Keefe started and then now Berube loves this more than any other coach so this is what he wants to run out there it's Nyes it's Matthews it's Marner and that's what it's going to be so it doesn't make sense for us to bring it up and try and argue against that because that's what it's going to be their work down low and on the wall like they're just such a unit um and nize is such a huge part of that like god bless bunting who was really good for a time um nize is quickly becoming like uh one of those unicorns in in the league or

like a class of player a a type of player a phenotype that just it kind of went away for a while we had such a fascinating conversation years and years ago about tom wilson and how was that when he signed his extension after the finals yeah he got his might might have been was it before that i i feel like we were in one of the sports net studios when we had the conversation But it was his long extension that was like 5 million or something. I don't think he had ever eclipsed 50 points. And this is when the league was going small. And the market inefficiency was small skilled guys.

For years and years, these players were overlooked and teams underdrafted them. Well, now everyone's drafting them, right? Or has for about a decade. and the unicorns the guys that everybody is looking for are Tom Wilson are Brady Kachuk are you know huge belligerent violent players who can score and Matthew Nyes I mean the Leafs haven't drafted a player like him the Leafs haven't had a player like him couldn't even tell you the the closest argument is Zach Hyman right and I don't think Zach Hyman ever had a 29 goal season for the Leafs he scored he scored at the pace but never quite got there

never quite got he doesn't bring the physicality that Nize does because of how big Nize is you know they're different different kinds of strength I think yeah like Zach Hyman's so great out front and so is Nize but I feel like Nize has more presence out there in terms of the way he plays He, instead of having the worst whistle in the league, which he still struggles with at times, he's drawing calls now because of the fact that he doesn't quit and you can't stop him also. I don't remember. Was it Quinn? Someone got a penalty on him last night simply because Nyes kept going. Right.

He's such a, such a jeep. He kept his feet moving. Right. And then he got a holding call. He drew a holding call because he kept his feet going. I'm starting to see more and more nice jerseys. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Out there. And so, you know, that line had a great, I noticed they were like, Berube kept throwing them out there. Like, go get this done so we can play the Marlies in game 80. Right? Like, win this game, get your points.

Okay, we're done now. Right? And the other thing I want to mention is the play of Anthony Stullers, who had a shutout last night. Oh, my God. He has played a career high of 34 games this year.

And it's been absolutely spectacular. Last year, he led all goalies who had played more than 25 games in save percentage. He had a 925 save percentage. This year, he leads all goalies that have played more than 25 games. Oh, he's ahead of Hellebuck. Yes, with a 926. Jesse, thoughts? I'm not surprised.

Yeah, 926. Hellebuck has a 924. Fraud. So, you know, Anthony Stoller's being as good as he's being is something that I think people could have questioned before the season started. Oh, was it, you know, was it a great Florida defense that was playing in front of him? Was it, you know, he got Hellebuyck's, or not Hellebuyck, Bobrovsky's nights off. But, you know, I mean, what is this really? This guy has been lights out for the Leafs.

There were a few conversations at the beginning of the season where the math didn't add up. We're like, all right, Matthew scored 69 goals and they finished third. What if he scores less? How do you make that up? the other conversation was joseph wool's career high in games played as this anthony solar's career high in games played as this that doesn't add up we're missing i can't remember what it was probably 20 games it was like 25 like 25 30 games like who makes this up a few guys got their chance looked terrifying at times uh but you know one major injury to stoller's one major injury

to wool um but for the most part at least one of them was there and holding the fort and no one did it better than stallers uh he was probably there were times this year where i thought wall was the better goalie but for the most part it's been stallers is it possible to give him a vesna vote because yes at 34 games played i wouldn't give him top if you pull up the the safe percentage leaders there it's stallers 34 games played 926 and then hellebuck 62 games played 924 are you are you are are you carrying water for connor hellebuck kemper 50 games played 922 vasileski 63 games played 921 got this in 58 914 when did vasileski become the most underrated goalie in hockey i know i know when did that happen it's crazy yeah like do you get five vesna votes or

three it's a top three but i think they vote five they i would vote five deep right five if you get five i think there's a good argument for stallers if it's three that's tricky and he did miss six weeks with bone fragments or something in his knee or bone pebbles what do they call them whatever was nothing nice there's a pebble in the knee yeah yeah you ever had a pebble on the knee anyway long story short operation uh connor hellebuck with a 46 and 12 record is probably going to run away with the Vesna trophy and Winnipeg Jets fans can dunk on Jesse about that later the reality is that the Leafs have not had this is not about the rest of the league this is about the Leafs and the Leafs had a goalie last year who was catastrophically bad his confidence was terrible

and then Joseph Wall stepped in got injured and then Ilya Samsonov catastrophically bad regains his confidence plays well and then and then in the last week before the season some scary things happen the final four games of the season samsonov allowed 11 goals in two games and uh jones and wool played the other two games all at all that's right all in all the leafs allowed 22 goals in their final four games of the season last year it there was a reason we didn't feel very good they literally won six of seven and we all went look at them go and then exploded yeah yeah it was they could not have gone into the playoffs looking worse right yeah and then they lost the first playoff game 5-1 yeah they were real bad yeah they were real bad

real bad and then the Bruins are like let's fuck this up and play all mark it was really like that was a weird choice yeah it was it was this hey everything went perfect in game one let's super overthink this it was the idea was this is how we got to this point why would we switch it uh well and then the leafs went here's why and the bruins ended up winning they did because they did because but because a bunch of stuff okay because a bunch of well i think part of it was joseph wald was not playing in game seven uh lenis olmark said it lenis olmark was like yo like when they kept starting ilia samson off we kept being like great yeah he said that in an interview after the season.

And Samsonov got cheesed about it, understandably so. I'm not saying Allmark's bad because the Leafs are about to head into a playoff series against Allmark. It was just, I don't know. I just don't think that's a thing you do in the playoffs. I think you change goalies when one of them's bad. You don't change goalies after game one

for something to do. How much of a leash does Stoller's have? Let's say game one, worst case scenario, to blow up six goals. he gets pulled even or something like that do you start wall next game or do you go back to him uh i think stallers gets at least two okay agreed i agree with that too yeah i agree with that too and that's not uh not that joseph wools had any sort of bad bad season but that's the great thing about having two goalies yeah i think no matter how good or bad game one goes stallers has earned

at least a couple yeah you know just based on what he's done the last few weeks it's his you also got to show confidence in your guys when they deserve it exactly he deserves it now the Leafs have nothing to play for on Thursday against Detroit. We will still watch because we're hard-headed and frustrating like that. We're frustrating people. Which Marlies are you most excited to see? They can't play any Marlies. They don't have any salary cap.

They have none? Yeah, so they're not allowed to bring up anybody unless they played shorthanded last night, which is how they got to bring up people last Saturday. So they can't do anything. The 20 guys on the roster are the only 20 guys they're allowed to play next game. Here's the lineup. Wow. Are you ready?

Got it. Okay. So take the lineup that the Leafs posted on Twitter and Instagram and all that. Fourth line plays the most. Third line plays the second most. I, for one, am excited for Nicholas Robertson to be a 25-minute-a-night guy. If Matthews and Marner play more than 15 minutes, I'm going to frigging fire Craig Berube myself. Well, I think I want to give Nicholas Robertson a bit of a shout-out

because he also broke a personal record last night and it was the first season he ever got 15 goals. You know what, man? And that was a great goal, by the way. Oh, it was a great goal. Dangled UPL. Dangled. It's gross.

Robertson and Holmberg have elevated their game. I'll throw Lorenz in there, too. A lot of these guys have elevated their game. You know who's looking better and better? Friggin' Scott Lawton. Yes. looks real good which yay listen i know they gave up a lot i know they gave up a lot and the fact he has a 1.5 million dollar cap in next season does the leafs no favors right now but the vast

majority he's played hundreds and hundreds of games in this league and been better than a guy who gets you no points ever give him a sec let him cook he'll be fine i also think he's so much better at center like i like yeah i hate the fact that he's got to be a fourth liner because the optics of being a fourth liner but that line works in my opinion you know him with lorenz there and yarn croak i feel like is is what they should go with in the playoffs because he's a center and i feel like he's so much more useful than being on domi's wing i agree i also feel like people have gone back to crapping all over yarn croak for no reason i thought he's come back and been fine guy missed 60 friggin games has come back has been defensively responsible people like man

this guy sucks i'm like dude are you what game are you watching also look what it's crazy look what's being asked of him no one's asking yarn croak to score five goals a night and be a 60 goal score they're asking to be a defensive responsible fourth liner on a wing and like and he's very capable of that like i i would argue he's playing under his ability i would a hundred percent agree this is a guy that was regularly with Tavares and Nylander yeah I don't understand any yarn croquet uh yeah if you bring that up one more time the lines so this is like what they had last night basically um it is what they had last night yeah I liked Domi with Tavares Nylander we can get to that in a second yeah yeah he's he's had some magic with uh he had a good

goal with Tavares the other night but he's had some chemistry with Nylander before so I don't care what you call the third and the fourth line it's just about purpose mcmahon holmberg robertson is a line i think i would have looked at a month ago and said what are we doing here like that line's nothing it doesn't have a purpose they're not particularly good at anything they're going to forecheck and skate the hell out of you that is a line where berube uh if he can strategically deploy them properly is going to exhaust the opposition lorenz lot and yarn croak is just a different version of that i think honestly so he's got two lines that are defensively responsible but are purposed for scoring and then he's got north south bang bang

bang uh on the bottom two lines that's their purpose and guess what here's the great thing about uh having lawton now and having a guy like domi is if it doesn't work out you just scramble it you like you it works for a game or two and then it doesn't work and then you scramble the versatility uh uh that lawton allows you to have is so important don't me too but adding Lawton to that where you have the luxury of playing one or both of them at wing it's it's pretty good uh I do want to bring the focus back to Nick Robertson for just a second because that's where we started uh you know he started the season uh you know well he started July 1st with a trade request that kind of got buried the Leafs were like we're not trading you

and then he could not have asked for it on a worse day signs for 875 grand and I would say guys reinvents his game you know one of the things that we talked about last year and a little bit early on this year is he did a little bit of it last night too he is the king of the ghost fall i don't know so there's times where he just it's like wow a ghost must have tripped him and he oh listen skating's hard skating's hard but you always used to say yeah stay on your feet yes and he's doing that a lot more he is defensively responsible and he's he's kind of a bastard like he i love the fact that he's going head to head with guys cross-checking guys oh you know fighting fighting back against guys that are six four six five they don't like the lumber

yeah no he's uh he's being a prick yeah a prick out there and holmberg you know holmberg's funny um because he's doing a little bit of that too and he can draw penalties and stuff like that i mean he's not the greatest offensively we all know that but what what were we excited about when pontus holmberg came over do you remember uh well i mean he was the swedish mvp in the playoffs yeah yeah yeah he was playoff mvp over there we like that we do like that like i'm listen it's the leafs i know what we're gonna sound like playing the parade and all that i feel good about this group now oel and mccabe uh brube said well we don't have to make a decision on them playing yet and don't have to do that probably till Sunday.

I don't believe him. He's downplaying anything with detail. Jesse, is your sense that both of them are just going to have to manage things like most players do through the playoffs? Yeah, Berube said last week that McCabe would play game 82, but maybe those plans have changed.

Plans change all the time with these guys in their bodies. So I think he'll be ready in OEL too. He knows what it's like to get through a Stanley Cup playoffs. He'll be able to play. I got no worries about them being in the lineup at all come game one.

no yeah like yeah they're probably had to sit them like even if even if mccabe is ready sit him and play him game one he's fine if mccabe is missing game one that's obviously concerning oel's good i think they survive do you do you make room for uh camp camp or patch ready in this lineup or you just leave it the way it is no they're too hot like that that those four lines are too well oiled at this point and this these last two weeks have been great for the Leafs like every time we're like okay here's a test they've lived up to it so I don't know how you can go away from that lineup nothing against either of those guys like there's just no reason to make a change yeah understanding that last night was not the most important game on either the Sabres or the

Leafs schedule uh Simon Benoit played what I thought pretty well next to Chris Tanev um and has had at moments this year moments to make you go god ah why did you do that but i feel like lately i've seen this guy turn into what they need him to be and not be too much he's not trying to do too much right he's got to play a simple game i think he embodies being a third pair defenseman too much when he's on the third pair it's like he takes advantage of it and he's like he just goes out and he throws hits and i'm not gonna get as many minutes and i'm just gonna go out there and blow everybody up that's it's nice that he's been playing well but he's not in game one lineup if the world is correct no but but you don't think he's in the lineup at all for game one

yeah benoit it oel and mccabe would take uh benoit and murmis right and then carlo myers no myers myers uh sorry yeah um it would be it would be oel on the right oel okay so you're putting oel and myers a spot yes benoit on the left side yes and then mccabe on the left side okay there you go yeah there yeah that's that's what bruby was doing mostly before those guys went yeah so the matter of if you want Benoit or Myers in there and I guess it's Benoit you could take Benoit out put OEL on the left and someone else on the right I'm assuming Myers but or Hockenpah which everyone's forgetting about but Hockenpah is also an option that's crazy that's so nuts yeah the uh I have to say the play of Dakota Mermis last night I didn't mind it at all and again I know it's not

the most important game of the year but he's had a good season with the Marlies after breaking his jaw which uh and then getting waved and then getting waved again and coming back that sucks that's a tough year he played one game with utah minus two and it's like well yeah i shouldn't be here so yeah i liked his i liked his mobility though i was like okay listen you have to understand as toronto maple leaf fans defense has always been bad we've gone into playoff series unironically with martin marincin in the top four uh we've gone into playoff series unironically Ron Hainsey playing 25 minutes a night. Guys, and no disrespect to Ron Hainsey,

but he was like 38. It's this defense core for us, if you're not a non-League fan, is a revelation. Brandon Carlo, Chris Tanev, alone. If you had told me on July 1st last year that by April 16th this year, we would have them,

I'd have been like, man, stop right there. I'm in. Tanev alone probably makes it the best right side. Ever. you've had at least in this generation yeah to have him and carlo oh and that top four looks so nice riley's place since carlo has gotten here as that took a moment yeah it took a moment which is understandable no they look great uh so leafs head into the playoffs against the ottawa senators we'll do a full preview breakdown of this uh but i do want to throw this out there matthew nice 77

games 56 points brady kachuk 71s games 55 points and for fun zach hyman 73 games 44 points so oh wow just uh just just saying by the way matthew nice has outscored all of them well technically brady and matthew are they're tied you know what out there i'm patting the tires of my guy head in your own boat that's right they're playing great and damn everybody else i don't give a crab how they're playing sometimes life throws your curveballs and you don't have time to get to them and that's where task rabbit comes in and i think you should check this out because here's the deal one of the things one of the weird quirks about my condo building is that they use my floor to repel down and clean all the windows but they never clean my windows oh and they're way around

on that it's like well it's a patio window you can do that yourself and i'm like well hang on a second what if i don't want to i don't have the stuff because you gotta have that scraper thing and the washer thing. The chemicals. You've got to have the right chemicals. See, that's what I'm saying. That's why I used TaskRabbit and I employed a tasker.

Here's the thing. TaskRabbit connects you with taskers in your area for furniture assembly, home repairs, lawn maintenance, mounting, window cleaning,

all that stuff. Here's the deal. 3.4 million pieces of furniture have been assembled. 700,000 home repairs, 1.5 million moves and counting. Go ahead and get ahead of your to-do list. $15 off your first task

at TaskRabbit.ca or on the TaskRabbit app using the promo code DANGLE. Taskers across Canada book up fast, especially for same-day tasks. Get $15 off your first task right now with the promo code DANGLE at TaskRabbit.ca or the TaskRabbit app. You should download that.

TaskRabbit.ca, code DANGLE. Now, another series that we're going to see, this one is four years running. The Edmonton Oilers and the Los Angeles Kings. I really can't believe that. has made things just that much more exciting because Darnell Nurse got suspended. Do we want to play the player safety video?

Do we want to play the audio of it, Jesse? Do we care? Here, can I point something out that I think is going to be a funny little Easter egg? So our Oilers Kings preview, we've already shot. It has not gone up yet. We shot it the day this game happened.

Yeah, so we didn't get to see this. We shot it hours before it happened. But I specifically remember saying, Darnell Nurse is going to be so important in games one and two. to wear the Kings down and hurt guys. And he didn't even wait. No, he didn't.

He was ready to get his head start. And that was a cross-check on Quinton Byfield. And it was not just that, like, he sort of hooked his stick around him and then cross-checked him. Yeah, this suspension is catastrophic. Matt, you can't show this, but we'll listen. Monday night in Edmonton,

Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse was assessed a major penalty and a game misconduct for cross-checking Kings forward Quinton Byfield. He should have got two. As the video shows, in the second period of a game that the Oilers are losing 4-0, Byfield and Nurse battle for a loose puck at the Edmonton net front. As the Edmonton goaltender covers the puck,

Nurse wraps up Byfield's upper body and takes him to the ice. Then, with Byfield on the ice, and after the play has ended, Nurse pulls back his stick and shoves downward onto Byfield, striking him in the head. Wow. This is cross-checking. It's a terrible idea. It is important to note that Nurse is in control throughout the entirety of this sequence

and makes the decision to deliver an intentional cross-check that makes head contact on an opponent lying on the ice and is delivered with requisite force for supplemental discipline. And while we agree with the assertion that this cross-check is not delivered with exceptional force, It is only because of that fact that this incident is not met with much more harsh discipline. To summarize, this is cross-checking. Nurse has been suspended three times and fined once during his 716-game NHL career. There you go. Cross-checking and history.

So let me pull up the still of him shoving Byfield's head into the ice. Shoving, buddy. So this is a fine. It's a fine. it's fine he misses yeah he gets suspended for a game look he gets suspended for a game but the game literally doesn't matter that word gets overused it literally doesn't matter so all that happens is nurse loses the money that uh he's gonna lose due to the suspension the game check it is a fine yep this is a fine um honestly nurse not being all that good at this is the only

thing that saved him here because he tried to cross check by field in the neck twice and missed twice he did oh not exceptional force at the very beginning of the video which the nhl the department of player safety won't often do they reference the score right why would they do that right why would they reference the score why do you think why do you think tell us because the oilers are getting blown out and the heavy implication of referencing the score is nurse was just getting his pound of flesh which is the colloquial way of saying intentionally tried to injure an opponent so he got fined for intentionally trying to injure a guy he's going to meet in the playoffs in less than a week this league is catastrophic well what would you have had them do

suspend him for at least a playoff game okay this was made with playoff this this infraction was made heavily with playoff undertones sure nurse is trying to get uh a piece he's trying to get a chunk of a player an important player for his opponent in a playoff series that's going to begin in a few days and his punishment is he suspended for a meaningless game at the end of the season that doesn't matter to either team you take that trade every time every single time the NHL implied that this is intent to injure they didn't say that but to me I having uh you know a few decades of experience with the english language the heavy implication is the nhl believes nurse tried to injure quentin byfield we we know the intention and they said oh well the fact he what

was it he didn't connect or the force wasn't that heavy the force was light is the only reason that he didn't get more what a joke they suspend the result they don't suspend the action yeah that's What a joke. If Byfield was out for the first round, he would be suspended. So Philip Deneau said they dressed their B squad and they're just running around trying to hurt us. Yes. And Corey Perry. Which is hilarious.

Great chirp. Great chirp. Yeah. Oh, because chirp, statement of fact, as backed up by the NHL's Department of Player Safety. Right. Right. He might as well have been, these fucking pigeons are down 4-0. So they just started laying the lumber because they suck ass.

That was the heavy implication. So, okay. Now, my question here is, I feel like the NHL is playing this a little bit like we don't want to do that. We don't want to suspend them because this makes the first round even spicier from game one. I think that's what I want. No, no. Then what are we doing here? The NHL never does anything for entertainment purposes.

they played opposite of that there's there's two precedents that they had to draw from okay there is jamie ben trying to guillotine mark stone's head off yeah which was a two-game suspension but it was really three he got he got kicked out of a playoff game in the first minute so it's three or there was andrew manjapani on jared mccann and that was one regular season game they went with one regular season game when they know the purpose of this hit was to try to injure a playoff opponent. You got to use common sense here.

This has to at least fall in the middle. It's bad. Now, they got it completely wrong. Like, it should have been at least two games. I would have even been happy with three. He did get the game misconduct in the moment, so maybe they looked at that, but I think even that...

In a 4-0 game! So then three probably is a little too much. Two is the right amount. You have to suspend him for that one playoff game. They got it wrong, and they continue to get it wrong, and I don't know why. He was essentially suspended a preseason game and given a fine.

Because this game does not matter. Yeah, and this game against the Kings, that they lost 5-0, also didn't matter. So he was in two games that didn't matter, and he got kicked out of one that didn't matter, and now he doesn't have to play the next one. No. And the joke on Twitter was that

the Department of Player Safety is actually helping out the Kings by allowing Darnell Nurse to play. Yes, that was Graves. And a good shot. That was Graves? Which is a hilarious shot at the Oilers and Darnell Nurse.

But he shouldn't be in that game. Any idiots knew exactly what that game was going to be. Because home ice was still on the line. So the Oilers are going to start that game trying. While the Kings go ahead. They go more ahead.

they go more ahead they go more ahead and as the game gets out of hand the oilers are like well we would have liked to win the game but as that no longer seems to be an option gunk they just start doinking guys in the head yep if you need any more proof that this was intent to injure cory perry said it wasn't oh well that that absolves them yeah local knife upset at anti stabbing rhetoric uh connor mcdavid is upset at the rhetoric that the oilers are the walking wounded he said i don't like the whole notion that we're the walking wounded here we're ready to roll guys are healthier than it may seem i think we have this kind of aura around us that we're the walking wounded but we're just fine everybody's going to be ready to roll yeah that's

terrifying i was looking at the oilers like that and then he said that and i'm like oh oh shit could he just be covering i mean conor mcdavid would never lie but i mean it could be competitive it could be cope you think it's cool uh no i don't because a lot of you i mean the la kings are getting to the point where with all the media reports that the la kings are quote-unquote becoming like heavy favorites in this series i don't know that that's necessarily the case yet i need to see them play hockey wait oh right to me it's like if the leafs were heavy favorites against the bruins last year oh geez well because it's it's not a bad comparable it was the fourth time the leafs played the bruins not the fourth consecutive year um the fact that the oilers

like listen i picked the kings i did but the oilers have won their series against the kings more handily which with each passing year so if i'm the oilers and people are picking the favorites hell yeah i'm pissed haven't you been watching uh that's what i would be saying they played four games against each other this year including the one we're referencing on the 14th fart and the oilers only won one of them steve yeah uh i couldn't couldn't bring myself to care less that you have three consecutive years of playoff games to draw from who gives a shit what the regular season record was okay who cares all right now oftentimes this time of year we have a team that falls out of the playoffs and fans are upset and the owners write a note and the this

has happened I believe the Leafs were the first team to do this because failure was our brand for a long long time and what was great about it was it came on the heels of like missing the playoffs for 10 straight years or something it was a crazy amount yes uh and what i love about the rangers doing it and now today the boston bruins doing it is that they missed it like a couple of times and boston missed it once and then they're that's how accountable they are to their fans whereas in toronto it's like i will give it a decade see what happens for the rangers one was was good at the time and it got better with age well yeah because they came back almost immediately panarin became available within a season they drafted well and you know she's still getting emerged and

there you go they made it to the cup finals fell off won a prize and immediately went back to contending yeah yeah it was like oh this will be a three-year rebuild it was like nope one i think the notes are more about expectation right right when you're coming into the year and your expectations are that you're going to be a playoff team and contend and then you fall short of that you have to apologize to your fans and tell them that you're going to be better because that's not what they wanted this season if you're if you're let's say what if you're the san jose sharks there's no need to apologize for losing because that's what people expected but the bruins i think everybody thought they'd be contenders this year so it's rather it's rather

upsetting to fans that they weren't now i don't know if you guys remember the old tiktok sound that's a lot of words um and usually these notes are that's a lot of words too bad but this is from charlie jacobs and i'll skip through most of it uh but he basically said uh it's clear we have a lot of work to do and that the work is already underway despite how difficult it has been to say goodbye to some of our most beloved bruins this season these decisions were rooted in the best interests of the future of the franchise together we will see our hockey operations leaders uh sorry together with our hockey operations leaders we are actively preparing for the nhl draft and to anticipate a top tier selection which they will get uh and more draft

capital in hand than we've had in recent years we are eager to bolster our roster through free agency and open the door for some of our young prospects and take the next step in their development charlie jacobs who uh is the ceo uh president ceo of uh the boston bruins so um accountable to fans yes and being boston they were all like oh that's so great you're cool man that's awesome no they reacted negatively and said that ain't enough and what i love about bruins fans is they're right this is the beginning of the apology to bruins fans what they're gonna have to do which they have to an extent a little bit fallen off on yeah is draft well well here's what the bruins need to do they made their statement now they need to shut up that's

shut up and do the fuck up until you find out the results of the draft lottery then if you want to talk again you can but until you learn the results of the draft lottery definitely shut the fuck up and it's this isn't against the bruins it's when teams in this position where they're like oh shit we're bad like they didn't mean to be this bad they eventually did but for the most part they didn't it felt like it wasn't even that long ago we were like are they gonna miss the playoffs i didn't believe it and now they're last in the east i never would have predicted that at points this year they were at significant points this year they were in the playoff oh yeah oh they were like nipping at the leafs heels we're like

this is so annoying but i give the bruins credit if you're gonna lose lose hard oh yeah it's heavy lose a lot oh yeah buddy like listen we could talk i want to talk about the calgary flames i enjoyed the fight does it benefit them to finish uh just outside the playoff picture well we'll talk about that uh also by the way did you know you guys remember this the tampa bay lightning also wrote a note like this in 2019 they missed the playoffs no they lost to columbus oh they lost to columbus they won like they had the greatest regular season they had their best regular season in the last like during their cup runs that like that season was better than all these other ones at the time it was the best regular season any team had ever had yeah and

then the boston bruins who now suck uh took that over one of my favorite sweets is thank you mr jacobs we have total faith that don sweeney will turn this top five pick into a solid third liner that seems to be yeah that seems to be the sentiment right now and you know what you want to run the bruins and own the bruins and be in management the bruins you should expect fans to be you better start winning oh yeah i'm sure he knows i like it i don't think don sweeney is a very good people manager like just seeing the way the coaches have gone through by the wayside the last couple years seeing the way he's fumbled contract negotiations with the goaltenders like it doesn't i don't think he's he's right for the next era of nhl now presidenting it felt jesse i

agree with you but it feels a little bit like shanny dubas in the sense that whatever don does he's got to run up the pole to cam and the reason i feel like cam neely has got to take some ownership here is because when the jeremy swayman contract thing blew up and paul bissonette is saying one thing and the bruins have to what do they call it the the spitting something like he was oh spit up on yourself yeah like oh my god yeah no but i think those two guys are the same guy to me okay like neely and sweeney like they're two peas in a pod they're enough they're conjoined twins i think like if you want an organizational change it wouldn't be about firing sweeney being the general manager firing

Cam being the president like it's getting rid of both of them if they want to actual change that's why I don't think it's like Shani Dubas at all yeah I think these guys are way more aligned that's where I'm on that side too where it's like I think they think the same and both of their their moves are made in tandem

with each other so I think if the Bruins want actual change it'd be about moving on from both of them it's it's going to be very interesting you know Cam Neely sure sat tall preseason saying boy i'm glad we haven't signed jeremy swim we don't want to get ripped off turns out it was over like two million dollars or four million dollars over eight years that that swayman missed training camp absolutely set the season off on the wrong thing and i think they

never really recovered from it uh swayman's play never really recovered from it it's a uh it's a tough thing to lose a training camp it's a tough thing to lose guys like brad marchand that sucks they fired a good head coach for when when i think of like the large part of the reason the Bruins sucked and and the coach wasn't successful was the roster like it wasn't on the coaching and he's gone on to prove that that's the case and Jesse where's Monty now uh having a lot of success in the playoffs um yeah there's never been more definitive proof that firing a coach was the wrong choice at the time also we're gonna get into award season and there's gonna be a lot of well he did his team did make the playoffs his team didn't david posternak

should probably get heart votes this year and i doubt he gets very many if any because the bruins finished last in the east can i show you how little he had to do with that last year he had 47 goals he played 82 games last year and this year last year he had 47 goals this year he had 43. Last year, he had 63 assists. This year, he had 63 assists. Last year, he had 110 points. This year, he had 106. Last year, he had 47 penalty minutes. This year, he had 42. Statistically, he's nearly identical to last season. His contributions to the Bruins this year were nearly identical to his contributions to the Bruins last year. Here's the difference. he had 106 points the next closest Bruin is Morgan Geeky at 57 yep and that big contract

they handed to Elias Lindholm I mean he did have 47 points so maybe that's good enough for third no it isn't dude 17 goals 47 points in 82 games boo fart hiss diarrhea what are you talking about what are you talking marshan was third probably would have had more than the 57 that geeky got had he stayed but he didn't so and then you know and then you got the nikita zadorov contract which when it was signed he was coming off a real hot playoff the big x factor is next year the bruins are essentially going to gain a top pair which is crazy yeah like they're going to have the best offseason acquisitions of any team they're gonna get their entire top hair back yeah hampus little charlie mcavoy yeah yeah um but there's a that's a chasm up front like you couldn't

have hoped and prayed for a 33 goal season at a morgan geeky like that is way beyond expectation and the chasm between pashinak and the next closest guy is still unfathomable yeah don Sweeney and and Cam Neely looked at Patrice Bergeron retiring and said you know what we don't need to replace that player and we don't need to get any any great player up front at all you know let's just let's just carry on and they they've never found a way to replace that up front and their forward group I think is really lacking and I don't I don't know if you can overhaul it this offseason entirely but I'm not too high on them going in the next year depending on how free agency goes or their trades actually because I don't know if they can sign anybody to fix

everything they have five forwards who scored over 30 points this season and they traded one of them so they have four left it's not that's pretty bad man that's not a lot of points they have they do have 30 30 there's how many Leafs got 30 goals uh four four no Marner's not there ah um three they do have 26 million to spend this offseason uh Yokiharu is a UFA uh Cole Kepke uh vinnie letary uh kuznetdinov geeky uh beecher and farinacci are rfa so they do have some resigning to do but it seems like they could probably make something happen there um fraser minton might be like a legitimately big and important part of the bruins next year yeah i don't see why not i'm happy for uh yeah really interesting oh no i wasn't flagging it like oh no

like it's dude they're uh it's uh tight times should we talk about the nhlpa player poll okay you guys ready so uh jesse did a video on this on his channel uh which was great and i enjoyed watching uh so do i do i want to do i want to phrase this as do i want to just tell you guys and react to it or do you guys want to guess what everybody said i want to guess you want to guess because jesse's got in front of him so we won't and jesse already did a whole video I'm assuming he knows. So I'll just guess. Okay, so who is the best goalie overall as voted by 663 NHL players?

Got to be Conor Hellebuck. He is third. What? Igor? Second. What? Andre Vasilevsky. Yes.

Okay, you know what? He's underrated to play people outside because you mentioned it earlier. Yeah. Completely still the most respected goalie in the game for those playing it. Wow. You see Soros and Bobrovsky are on that list. I'm surprised you see Soros is on there, but me too.

Bit of recency bias. He had a bad year. It happens. He's still UC Soros. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

Wow. No, I mean, that's the right answer. Like respect to Shusterkin, but I still think year in year out, Vasilevsky is the best goalie in the world. Best overall forward is going to be obvious.

Okay. I'm going to ask you who the top five are. Right. Name them in Hopkins in order. Um, so from one to five, because it gets harder. number one is connor mcdavid correct number two nathan mckinnon that is correct

now oh this gets real hard number three this one's not that hard is leon dry sidle nope nikita kutra yes then leon dry sidle nope no austin matthews nope fast forward i feel like i'm forgetting someone very obvious uh there's pasta nope who cole harbor oh still number four and then a fifth one have i said their name and by the way they're tied crosby and this player are tied have i said their name no what if you had i would have said this is where they placed you ready plays in the west plays in the central plays in green okay land of lakes hayden oh caprizo yeah

damn damn isn't that crazy so mckinnon kucherov sydney crosby and caprizov here's how disrespected um the minnesota wild art when you went plays in green i'm like who on dallas oh no that was immediately in my head i mean it's fair they have some good forwards in dallas um he's been so out of sight out of mind okay crosby i mean all his most important games this season weren't in a penguins uniform they were in team canada yeah okay best overall defenseman 645 players voted on this it's obvious who number one is is it is it 71 percent of nhl players said this guy is it obvious to steve mccarr okay what's less obvious is who came second place with so we have 71 almost 72 of nhlers said this guy's the best defenseman number two got 7.4 of the vote

that's got to be quinn hughes right it is okay okay because he's i don't know he's he's controversial like not a lot of people love his defensive game well and also in montreal they'd be like lane hudson so uh okay let's he just got here no i'll call him he's the best he's he is Larry Robinson incarnate also some of his best hockey's been recently so yeah like it wouldn't be represented in their answers uh next on the list give me give me three four give me two

three four and five is Hedman still on the list yes he is number three number three okay um there are a couple surprises at four and five Jesse wouldn't you say yeah I was shocked by these uh no the the five it makes sense

the five makes sense you think I don't know four I probably have them backwards four because I don't have it in front of me so steve can't see it yeah a four makes sense five i was like oh they think about him like that all right is jacob slavin on this list he's not but he should be ah is miro haskin in on this list he's not but he could be oh best defenseman in the end oh zach wierenski on this list not on the list wow think older think defenseman who has scored a hundred points recently yeah Eric no the other one oh no

a hundred mustard central you saw a Stanley Cup final game Barry trots Stanley Cup final mustard team you love Eddie oh Roman Yossi you love Eddie George Roman Yossi Roman Yossi

is another star superstar player who's been why would you pay attention to Nashville's been so their ass great ass Now, Jesse, what do you think the chances are Steve gets? No, this one, this is the guessing game will take 10 years. New York Ranger.

Yeah. Fox? Yeah. 1.17% or 1.71%. There you go. Must have asked them before the four nation face off. Yeah. I'm surprised Fox beat out a guy like Slavin or Highskin or whatever.

I wonder if that just came. You gave a lot of names that I think this season you should definitely put ahead of Adam Fox. Yeah. 1.71%. How many people do we think that is? uh you can calculate it's 645 votes so it's like five i don't i'm not gonna math six i mean either yeah okay basically if you actually want to know how much but i don't care that much no i don't give a shit all right now this is an interesting one and there are one two three four five six

people because there is an almost high at number one uh most complete player and by the way these are all forwards uh barkov is number two yep most complete player is matthews on the list number five okay is mcdavid on the list yes number four nice matthews by the way is tied with somebody callie yarn complete is crosby on the list he's number one what you gotta think about how these guys are thinking about it yes the defenseman thing opened my eyes because it's not how they saw this season going or who's right this year it's like what has this guy done in his career and what are his top end abilities what do i know that this guy can do well some of the online discourse i've seen this season is like oh man victor headman's falling off and these guys

don't think that way no they know who victor headman is same with vasilevsky like they know who he is that's why he's number one you know okay so sorry what have i gotten crosby at one barkov at two mcdavid at four matthews at five but he's tied for fifth with somebody else so you need number three most complete player and you need the guy who's tied with sydney or sorry yeah with austin matthews at number five is it possible mitch marner's on this list is not i think he could be in a certain circumstance yeah but all of these guys are centers and i think that yeah oh he doesn't have the goal scoring like some of those guys doesn't play center is nate on the list nate is number three okay yeah that was that should have been a free

square yeah well i don't know like it's complete so like they might galaxy brain it or something oh no they're not that's the thing they're not galaxy braining any of this yeah eichel no oh and that's the right answer this one is interesting because this player has extended their career much longer i think than a lot of people thought they could based on the game they play and remember he is tied for fifth place uh and you have to think like an nhler thinks the respect you would have for this player for the years they've put in and the cups that they've won and the abs like they've been through hell and back with this team okay the cups multiple two well okay it's not stamp coast point nope do i have the right team nope multiple long tenured veteran two cups you gotta

give them better hits um give them the conference uh palm trees western conference oh so california then he would go patar there you go wow which is i think fair yeah i think so he's uh what what what's he at this season in terms of points yeah weren't we at one point like hey does anyone else know that kopitar who was once nominated for the heart is having a career year kopitar in this 80 games he has 21 goals 46 assists 67 points oh okay well that's pretty good that's still pretty good it's not again he's like 39 yeah uh okay we're gonna move on to best playmaker uh number one will surprise you mcdavid is number two it's sure of number one there you go yeah he is no that doesn't surprise me yeah uh i i was surprised that i guess i shouldn't be surprised kucherov

is the best playmaker i guess i shouldn't he's the most skilled i think at like the hockey deception part yes where it's like he thinks the game better than anybody else in this league he's he makes everything look so easy because he's so ahead of the best in the world that doing everything in the ice yeah he's i've never seen a playmaker so good at making plays out of fear what do you mean like players look at him and they go and that allows him to go okay and now i give it to someone else yeah um to a lesser mortal um so we got kucherov mcdavid yeah and then you've got uh is marner on the list no he's not really marner doesn't make this the player poll damn no i think that's a little disrespectful yeah a bit like playmaker one of the one of the

best power plays in the league since jan 1st but remember it's long-term respect look look what he's done in the playoff. Is Sid there again? Is Sid there again? He's number five. Wow. As he should be. Wow.

Good for Sid. So you need three and you need four. Neither will surprise you when you name them. One is in the East. One is in the West. Best playmakers.

One is in the East. One is... Both have been to the finals and I don't believe have won. Huh. yep no not that this player has not won either so both players have not won a cup both have been to the finals eastern team that has been the best playmaker been to the finals never won i mean it can't be pasta no no uh i don't know you ready yes okay well first one is in the metro division

and is a kill surprise given the season that his team had, but is still a spectacular player. One of the only guys in the league making over $11 million. Oh. Who? Artemi Panarin. Number four. Wow.

And number three. It wasn't the who can also play defense category. I thought you were going to throw Jack Hughes at me. Number three, Leon Dreisaitl. Ah. ah yeah i was gonna earlier i was like they're gonna be hipster about this and be like no he's actually sick at that well i wouldn't blame you but again i know and i know he's sick at that but

whatever okay now let's let's play a little gun to the earth oh shit it's the stanley cup finals and if you don't beat the monstars they take over the planet and kang and kratos uh uh lead us into the future oh shit okay you need to win a face-off who do you pick there are five names barkov is number five wow two of two of the people on this list will shock you barkov what the barkov think think a little bit of the names some of the names you've heard before long tenured respected crosby number one wow number three is also long tenured respected and you were surprised was on this list earlier dude i will bring up sydney crosby for no good reason on the show at any given opportunity and even i'm surprised by the

chinese you got to think about it in that that context i was saying it yesterday like if you were you have a gold medal game it's canada versus usa and i say steve line up a player for canada or for any team you're steve dangle team at the face-off dot who are you picking who are you picking sydney crosby nate he's not on there is mcdavid that good at face-offs i feel like he's not on there no long tenured steve long better hint what okay so number two kopitar again Kopitar is number three. What? Yeah.

All right. Now, there are two guys on this that are total shockers. Okay. Number one, former Leaf. Ryan O'Reilly. Yes. He's number two on the list. Number four is guy who randomly scored a bunch against the Leafs this year in one game.

And we were like, yo, what the hell? Dude, you can't score at all most of the time. Is a member of trio of brothers that have played in the NHL. Is the last remaining one. Oh, is this Jordan Stahl? Jordan Stahl. really yeah so this one i thought was it actually i was like oh we learned something here because who's gonna know who's good at face-offs the guys going up against the guys yeah so this one wasn't

more of like uh hey it's just everybody defaulting to vassy or whatever this is an actual skill the guys know ryan o'reilly's great at face-offs and they're voting for him the guys know barkov and stall and kopitar are great at face so this i thought was a really cool question and answer yeah yeah smartest overall player uh sid yes number two easy uh mcdavid he's number three kucherov number two yeah number four number five one will not shock you the other will shock you smartest overall player leon nope florida panther barcoff right the one that will shock you and i'm just going to give it to you is that NHL players love Barkov they do yeah he's always underrated perennially underrated people don't recognize defense enough and I think NHLers recognize that

and give double the amount of praise that they give to Barkov yeah one of my favorite uh like trivia moments uh it was my last year at Sportsnet I was at the player media tour who's the most underrated player in the league and every player goes Barkov Barkov Barkov Barkov and Riley goes he had the only different answer which was well I assume everyone said Barkov and I go yes he goes okay well I'm going to be different and say Zach Hyman and then I'm pretty sure

Zach Hyman scored 50 goals the fifth one I'm going to give to you please do Adam Fox hey smartest what is the category smartest player yeah smartest overall listen the Rangers vote for their guys okay best

overall skater this is an easy one to start Connor. Yep. Number two. These are not forwards. It can be anybody. Nate. Nate's number three. Makar. Number two. Give me two more. Best overall skater. Mitch? Nope. I keep saying Mitch. I told you he

didn't make the list. Oh, at all? Like for nothing? Wow. Best overall skater. Defenseman. Oh, Quinn? Yep. And then New Jersey he double jack nope oh brought yep yep he's unbelievable okay this one's gonna be more fun okay best fashion sense and it's a tie for first austin yes and same division same division

hab nope ruin yep pasta yep 50 and then oh really no no that was it i said so i said yeah so so So, Pasternak and Matthews tie for one. Willie is second. Hilarious. Hilarious. And then you got two that are, when I say the names or when you figure it out, you're going to be like, yeah. So, one of them is a have.

In the fourth spot, there is a have. In the fifth spot, it is a Dallas star. A Dallas star. I don't know enough about these guys and their fashion. Liney. Liney. Yeah, he's got great. And then, Rupe Hintz.

you oh my god you could have given me all day i wouldn't have guessed either of those guys yeah yeah wow pretty cool pretty cool there you go boom and then okay very quickly here uh player who will be a good broadcaster when they retire marshand he's number three um i don't think you can guess most of this list yeah just both kachuk brothers no they're not on there what hayes i think yeah strome marshan maroon comrie johnson and felino marcus kevin hayes ryan strome brown marshan patrick patrick yeah eric comrie is a very fascinating one eric johnson and marcus felino huh so the guys clearly just voted for like guys they know because of how little the percentages are like 4.85 wins the vote and only 550 guys voted so like

it's not many people all of those answers are guys where i'm like that makes sense ryan strome's weird actually i didn't know that about him yeah yeah and now a couple more things and i'm not going to make a guess on this one i loved this question which pwhl rule book change would you like to see in the nhl and jail 30 said jailbreak yeah uh 24 said the three two one zero point uh system uh 16 said finish first place finisher chooses their playoff opponent which i also love uh uh the so the fourth place is the 86.4 shootout a player is eligible at any time to take any number of shots as often as the shooting team desires in the shootout uh so if you have a shootout you can just keep running the same player i freaking love that that would be sick that's how

the league works and the one and then number five was the 1.8 goaltenders area no uh get rid of the trapezoid yeah no restricted goaltenders area which will be known as the trapezoid uh now this is an interesting one best ice in the nhl just take one guess and i'll tell you the rest oh newest arena is seattle uh and did not make the list it's the bell center the santa bell oh in montreal edmonton at number two winnipeg number three minnesota number four in vegas number five four cold weather locations and lost in las vegas so one thing i realized reading this was that all of these teams don't have a basketball team also playing there because Montreal, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Minnesota, Vegas don't have NBA teams.

Minnesota, the T-Wolves, they don't play at the XL Energy. They play at a different arena in Minnesota. So I thought that was probably the reason. That's a lot of reason the Scotiabank Arena sucks. It was made for basketball. The Raptors are always in there. There's always concerts in there. And all these teams are just hockey and concerts.

Those are new-ish arenas, some of them. Yep. Winnipeg's, like, that's an ancient arena. Yeah. That's, wow, good for them. Helps when it's cold outside, too. I'm sure it does. And I assume, like, the main thing they do is the hockey games.

Yeah. I don't know how many concerts come through Canada Life Centre, but can't be as much as some of these other locations. Do the Moose play there, too? They do. There you go. Hockey. So there you go.

Anyway, that's the NHL player poll. Now, coming up, which we're very excited about, somebody who is intimately involved and intelligent when it comes to goaltending, because if you're a goaltender, is joining us for the very, very first time. And it's a former wild goalie and many other teams as well. Devin Dubnik is going to join us up next. We're going to talk a little playoff goaltending with Devin right now.

Hear that? It's your money calling. It wants a promotion. Elevate your savings with the Scotia High Interest Savings Account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. Visit scotiabank.com slash H-I-S-A to learn more. scotiabank you're richer than you think

very excited to welcome for the very first time to the steve dangle podcast mr devin dubnik thank you so much for joining us we're so excited to be here goaltending in the playoffs which is honestly uh goaltending is the most confusing position in the whole world devin i have to ask you firstly why why did you choose to be one because it seems like an insane thing to be well i i don't know i couldn't tell you i i do know that i'm getting uh paid back and my oldest son is the goalie now oh and uh i mean he's he's 11 years old and i like i i've lost years of my life uh watching games already and now i got my nine-year-old is is wanting to play so i mean it is karma it all comes back to get you but uh i i instantly two

games into the season this year i i had to call my parents and apologize for everything my uh my four-year-old just finished his first uh year of hockey school and i was i was driving him home and he goes daddy when i start playing games i want to play goalie um how do i stop that how do i make that happen you say no no i don't think that's an option uh okay well there's other ways there's other ways there's other ways to go about it um you can tape them to the net like goldberg and just yeah yeah rip slap shots at them use tennis balls though don't go with pucks right away we don't want any serious injuries uh you can hit them with a few tennis balls though those can sting a little bit yeah um if you're really mean you could just put

him in a game that you know he's going to give up 50 um that'll usually steer them the other direction as well so there's there's definitely different avenues you can go uh to get them out of there but i think with the with the little kids um they know they're fascinated with the equipment i was too so yeah you know they like they like to put it on they like to get dressed a lot of times you'll find you stick them out there for a couple ice times and they either don't like getting scored on or they're bored especially at the young age uh my guy with the equipment growing up was felix potvin who was yours oh that was a big one for me too felix pot man i had uh my first pair of pads i had the uh the blue pads with the white uh claws at the

bottom so cool coho revolutions yeah i got i had the tiny little like 27 inch pads those are my first pads so uh they build them a little different nowadays for sure with just a bit the ones my kids use them but uh felix pot man was was a big one for me curtis joseph too uh with some of his cool ones with the oilers where he had like the not really my style but the the wolf mouth uh on the pads on the louisville pads right um always big fan of that oh yeah yeah okay now man you're throwing us back here now devin the reason we have you on is we want to talk a little bit about playoff goaltending and you are a goaltender so you see the game in a way that we will never see it right you know thousands of hours in watching footage being on the ice with goaltending coaches

at the pro level at several different teams um you've played in the playoffs yourself you know what it's like so who are your three favorite goalies going into the playoffs this year who do you think is in for a great playoff based on what you were watching right now uh yeah you know it's fun i'm gonna go with four because one's a combination and one's a combination so i'm gonna start off with with vasilevsky and brodsky and what an absolute treat this is a goaltending dream matchup between these two uh because now with brovsky he's got his cup now uh they both have winning cup experience and these are two of my favorite guys but brovsky's always been one of my favorite guys um to watch i think he's just an absolute freak athlete uh the way he plays the way

he skates is just it doesn't make sense to me never has and he seems to continue to to just grow on that skating ability uh his power his strength is just is just awesome and now he has that you know he had his bumps at the start when he got when he got signed with Florida everybody's all over him uh not surprised you know how much money he's making then he kind of started to build almost got there and then finally got there so now he has that experience um of the ups and downs and playoffs to go with and then you go back to Vasilevsky it's it's the guy we we talked about him all the time he was auto number one auto number one and then we you know I don't know if people got bored talking about him or or he just wasn't his normal 920 self for

for a year or two uh still an incredible goalie but his numbers this year are actually better than they have been um they're his best numbers he's had in in five or six years and so uh don't sleep on on vasilevsky he's still the auto pick if you ask somebody if you could have a goalie to play one game uh who's it going to be you're gonna you're gonna get 60 70 percent of people are going to say andre vasilevsky so these are two guys that i love uh that if separated could meet in the Stanley Cup final but fortunately for our fans sake we get to see him in the first round which is always

always to me the most exciting round well and if the Leafs are able to pull out a first round victory they only have to see probably well they only have to see one of them which is nice but they're guaranteed to see one of them that is the problem that is the problem

okay all right so who else is on your list here next up obvious Connor Hellebuck um you know playoff best away in the league right now well that's the thing we got to get there now playoff Connor Hellebuck before I look at this Jets team and and this is a team that that is is much better um they're built they're still he is still a main piece he's still you know they're still winning games three to one uh two to one like Hellebuck brings them along I think he's their MVP uh what he's doing this year or what he does every year uh I still don't love the amount

of games that he's played but you know you got 46 wins you can't argue that but there has been that that history of call it what you want whether it's a running out of gas um in the playoffs but i also think that this this jets team is a lot better than they were before um in in the ability to support him goals for and goals against so um it's tough to argue against Kelly, he's, he's one of the best, if not the best, uh, at reading the game in front of him. He's always in position. He's always there. He makes everything look easy. Um, but there is that question of, of the history of the playoffs. Yes. And one of the guys on this show, Jesse Blake, I have to ask you, Jesse, I mean, I mean, you've had Connor Hellebuck on fraud watch all

season long. Uh, what, where, how do you feel now that Devin Dubnick is saying this is one of the best goalies? Well, he's, I think Hellebuck's proven that he's one of the best goalies this entire season like no no don't back down down at the beginning of the season i questioned if he would be able to get it done and what he did was prove me wrong in every single way but now it's about getting it done in the playoffs and the playoffs are a different animal like i i don't know about you devin but like how much of that mental game being a goaltender where you're kind of out there on all all alone where there's so much pressure on you does it ramp up with the playoffs or do you just go with that mentality like it's every other game and you kind of just

get through it that way you have to you try to keep it as in check as you can but there's there's definitely an emotional ramp up and intensity level all of that stuff and and an interesting thing with the playoffs as well is you have you get scouted a lot harder and so if there are tendencies uh especially with analytics now i mean you get scouted hard years and years ago too but now uh with the click of a button they can pick off every single uh weakness or tendency that you have um so that's that's going to be an issue i'm sure it's going to be an issue um it's something that they're going to have to work with and is that something that that has that has plagued him in the past where they do find uh a tendency that they can pick apart offensively going after him

and not just him but the team defensively because they have been a great defensive team he has had great numbers all the time and then all of a sudden in a playoff series the goals start to go in so is that something that another team's seeing that obviously they're not going to let you know i have i have an idea i'm not going to share it on the show because i don't want to uh so i'm more i'm more curious uh i want to i want to see if i'm right uh can we revisit this later in the playoffs devin we can revisit it we can revisit it for sure yeah um but things like that where And the thing that I think with Hellebuck is he's not exciting to watch. He's exciting for me to watch because I love goaltending and he's unbelievable.

But he doesn't look like Shosturkin and he doesn't look like Bobrovsky and Vasilevsky and these like freaky athletes who are doing backflips and doing the splits and all this stuff. He doesn't look exciting when he plays, but that's why he's so good and that's why it's so sustainable what he does because you get the consistency out of him all the time because of his reads because of his positioning but he doesn't have that athletic uh excitement level uh that these other guys have i was hoping to complete an exercise with you uh where i start a sentence and you finish it

and and there is a correct answer here okay if you're a goaltender he doesn't know that he doesn't know it oh stop the puck yes i don't think he's heard that oh wait i've heard this play goal if you're a goaltender tend the goal um that is so i used to do like a blooper segment uh at sports net and anytime a goalie went out of their net just say jake markstrom No, well, it was very often Jake Markstrom. The reason I'm being coy is I'm pretty sure I've featured Devin at least once. Oh, 100%.

Multiple times. Multiple times that would have been on there. And I just want to know, what goes into the decision-making of playing the puck, and who are some of the best goalies in the league at it? Well, it's a very important thing to do. You know what drives defensemen nuts is when goalies don't go get the puck, And then they, you'll get to go back there with a guy with a full head of steam and they're

trying to make a split second decision, knowing that they're about to get plastered against the glass. So it does help your defense. When you go back out there, you can't get hit. You can give an option, not just your D man, but, but clean breakouts. And it depends on your, on your ability. There's guys that are extremely good, um, not at being able to read a breakout and then execute it.

and a huge part about playing the puck as a goalie is is the ability to see up ice while you go get the puck and so that's going as you're going behind the net how are you able to get your body and head up the ice to see what's coming because if i go behind the net with my face turned to the glass just focused on picking up the puck i'm gonna have no idea what's behind me and the only thing i can do is blindly throw it away or throw it to a corner and hope that my d-man gets it I wasn't very good at handling the puck I had to work on it a lot I was right-handed growing up so I can shoot both ways now sort of but I never had a great shot so I always just wanted to move to the defense and it was get out there find my option in the corner and move it every once in a

while I'd clench up and maybe try to hit the winger but that was that was a big step for me but it does it when you get guys like you look at Mike Smith when he played obviously he had a lot of blunders but you know you look at the amount of times he touched the puck the good outweighed the bad for sure um but those guys were the best at getting turned up ice and then being able to read the play like a defenseman and make plays and it's frustrating for other teams when you get a guy that every time you throw the puck in they're coming right back out on a clean breakout so if you have a guy that can do that it's a huge asset there aren't that many guys that are really good at it um she's circling really good at it sneaky good at it uh but there aren't that many guys in

the league that are really really good at it which defenseman would complain the most when you didn't play the park um oh gosh i don't know they're the d d men and goalies are pretty tight we're a little family so uh you usually they didn't have to complain you just knew uh because well yeah because you're picking they're picking themselves up off the ice as you realize you left a trickler behind the net and they went and got it and got annihilated by somebody and you're like oh yeah sorry about that um uh devin before we get to your last goalie how many jordan binnington fake blocker punches did you throw over your career oh no i i threw the whole thing you threw the whole thing you connected i threw the whole thing

yeah i was usually careful with the blocker because they they uh you can get you can get suspensions and stuff the blocker but it was for me it was mainly stick um i was a little bit of an idiot in there i was a little old school um my dad taught me to hit guys when they were in front of me he was a goalie growing up too in the in the uh the slap shot days so uh i've got lots of good stories from him but he always taught me from a young age somebody stands in front of you whack him in the back of the leg and i took that all the way through uh many times not warranted for the guy in front of me lots of times warranted i used to get into it with land of scog all the time uh we became really good buddies when i got traded there uh i learned the hard way i slashed

anders lee really hard one time and he turned around and grabbed me by the jersey and i felt like a small child i had no control over my body he just bent me over the crossbar and sat me to the ground so you got to pick your spots a little bit there um but i had my fair share i think i had 47 penalty minutes one year in my last year of junior. Wow. Mostly slashing penalties, yes. Oh, my God. That's awesome.

Okay, so last goalie. So we've talked about Bobrovsky. We've talked about Vasilevsky. We've talked about Hellebuck. Who's your last? And this is going to hurt. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I think Lena Solmark is one to watch.

Okay. Oh, no. He's got a reason for redemption. Obviously, the year in Boston, the incredible regular season, Everybody had Boston tags, and he struggled in the playoffs, and it hurt. He was hurt after the playoffs. You could see he was upset with himself and hasn't had a chance to get back yet.

He is back and looking really, really good for Ottawa. I wrote down here, he's 6-1 in his past seven, and so not ideal for Toronto to be running into him, but he's a big boy. He moves well. He's athletic. He will do anything to make a save. If he can get rolling and doesn't slide into the way he played last time for Boston, he's a guy that can do some special stuff and break out.

He'll make diving saves. He'll do just about anything. He's extremely athletic for a guy that's 6'5", and he's got a reason to want to perform in the playoffs. Yeah, I think we're having connection issues. And Stollars. Oh, and Stollars. Oh, Gary.

Thank you. thank you you know you know that the leafs just feel better yeah no that's a lot better the leafs just clinched their first divisional win in the atlantic division history right they got the canadian division win blah blah nobody cares and the last one was like 99 2000 and so i have had less than 24 hours to feel good about that before the anxiety that you foisted upon us has come back up you have you have to understand we have some scars as fans here in this city i my brother is as big a leaf fan as anybody always has been growing up so i've been a leaf fan um not always by choice but i became one uh forcefully as a kid uh growing up

so i've i've always rooted for the leafs even when i was playing i had a small root for the leafs because they were in the east so it didn't matter and just for my brother's uh emotional well-being and sanity i always rooted for the leafs so i'm not rooting against them i do think they're they're a much better looking team than they have been in the past plus they got sort of over the hump uh with one one series win uh and hey they might run into a hotliness hallmark it doesn't mean they can't win a series right right there you go love that love that okay one last thing uh before you go i just you mentioned gabriel landis cog for a second there because obviously at the end of your career you you played with him in colorado um him coming back from the

injury i mean he hadn't played professional hockey since the stanley cup win he plays with the colorado eagles last weekend he scores he's going to be with the abs for the playoffs can you just talk about what his effect will be on that dressing room what kind of a teammate he is uh how much this would mean to the abs oh it's it's unbelievable um for many reasons one uh as a person you see when you see that it's just it just hurts to see somebody when the longer it goes the more you start to wonder if he's ever going to be able to play again and for someone to to have a something taken away from them for health reasons just just hurts and it hurts more because uh in a short period of time i was there um just watching him operate uh one of the best captains i've ever been

around does everything right says everything right and and that's a that's a different hockey team with him in the lineup it just is uh it was most noticeable uh well all the time but there when they did win the stanley cup um when he was when he was i believe he's out for a while before the playoff started and then he came back and they're just a different team he's their leader in the dressing room he's their leader on the ice he hits he fights he scores he kills penalties he's on the he does absolutely everything and he and he keeps you know he is the leader of a group of very very good hockey players um you know and you got one of the best in the world nathan mckinnon and kale Makar and all these, they have a really

really good roster and he is the leader, hands down of that entire group, so this is a different hockey team with him on the ice and holy are they a good looking hockey team right now and they remade the whole franchise on the fly this season, it's crazy

Devin, we want to catch up with you a couple times throughout the playoffs because you've been such a pleasure to have on so I hope that you've got time in your schedule for us because we'll always make time for you man, you've been great today Absolutely. I'll be back for sure.

S-T-E-P. The Steve Dangle Podcast. Follow the guys on Twitter at Steve underscore Dangle, at Adam W-Y-L-D-E, and at Jesse Blake. Connection complete.