The Steve Dangle Podcast - Before the Lights Go Out | November 10, 2019

Episode Date: November 11, 2019

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, we're joined by Sean Sean Fitz-Gerald of The Athletic! Find him on Twitter, @SeanFitz_Gerald, and get his book, Before the Lights Go Out, right now online and at all major book retailers! AND who wore the crown!(00:00), we address Don Cherry's comments Saturday night during Coaches Corner (07:30), let's deep dive into the state of hockey and its shrinking enrolment (34:00), hockey happened too! Leafs lose to the Flyers in a shootout Saturday night (1:19:00), the relationship between the coaching staff, Babcock and Dubas (1:31:00), Ron MacLean apologies on Hometown Hockey (1:40:00), and the press conference: books, OT, and the Olympics (1:52:00). Originally aired: November 10, 2019 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/dM5bG-DSqLM Merch: https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/fancydangleshirts Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Subscribe to us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/steve-dangle-podcast/id669828195?mt=2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Panago Pizza presents S.S.D.P.P. The Steve Dangle Podcast with your hosts Steve Dangle, Adam Wylde, and Jesse Blake. Let's go! Well. Well. Eventful 24 hours I would say. A little bit. But I think first we need to acknowledge the guy in the room. Not the elephant in the room. But the guy in the room. He is newly in the intro, and I'm still not over what an accomplishment that is. Thank you. His new book is called Before the Lights Go Out, A Season Inside a Game on the Brink.

His name is Sean Fitzgerald. He works at The Athletic, and he's here. Hey! Hey. He's also, I'm not going to lie, pretty good defensive shitty player. Not going to lie. Oh, my God. Sorry, was that shinny with an N?

Shinny. Shinny with an N. Two Ns. I thought I heard a T in there. I thought I might have heard a T. Well, you never let him score, though. Well, no, we went to that race for the puck once, and we were both so out of gas that we couldn't actually touch the puck once it got close to the net. I mean, that hurt.

I went for my asthma inhaler after that. I took mine beforehand, so I wouldn't have to during the game. See, that's a veteran move. Right? There was one moment during Shinny the other day where the puck was in the neutral zone and no one went for it. And I'm like, okay, I think we're done. Yeah. Let's get off the air.

We were toast. We were pretty tired. But you know what? A lot of fun playing, and it was nice to have everybody out. Mike Stevens was there from Leafs Nation. Lots of folks. Yeah, lots of good people. It was a great time. Now, we've got, as I said, we've got a heck of a show lined up.

Yes, we are going to talk about the Don Cherry. Yes, we are going to talk about the Leafs last night, Crosby, the Flames. I got a question about the Flames. Are they the Leafs West? I believe it. Or the Leafs Flames East? If you were to ask someone from the West, they'd be like, hey. No, the West has to take their cues from the East. That's how it works out. And Robbie Favre is looking amazing with the Red Wings.

Hi, Sean. But first! Hi, Sean. Hi, Sean. Steve Dangle podcast. That was Steve Dangle who said that. Hi, Sean. Who wore the crown? So, obviously, every week we do this, or every show we do this.

Live generously. Life will treat you royally. Crown Royal has sponsored this segment because they want to know which Leaf lives the generous life. Gives it all for the team. You can use your hashtag, OurTownOurCrown, to get your votes in for yours. Steve, I'm going to start you off. Best player on the ice for the Leafs. Fred Vember, baby.

Keeps on trucking. Fred Vember. October Freddy is done. Fred Vember is fully a go. That three-save sequence in the third was absolutely ridiculous, and he stole a point for the Leafs last night. Wow. Fred Vember.

Sean Fitzgerald, what do you think? I liked, in a really slow start, I mean, Freddie Anderson is obviously the answer here. I'm not going to duplicate it. I'm just going to say that before he went down, Mitch Marner had a really good play at the end of a Jake Muzzin stretch pass, and that was, like, it was so quiet, you could hear the electricity in the building kind of thing that night.

Like, they're down 1-0. Jake Muzzin hits Mitch Marner on a stretch pass going across the blue line. He just misses it, and he's racing full bore for Brian Elliott. Brian Elliott pokes it away at the last minute, sends Marner flying. But it was the kind of hustle play that, I mean, you need that guy to make. And it was something that could have sparked it had he also not potentially obliterated his ankle shortly thereafter. Man, that was painful. We'll look at that, too.

A lot of people saying Willie Nylander, and I know somebody else who might. But I'm just going to say, firstly, before we get to that, Travis Dermott, to me, coming back, We saw what William Nylander looked like coming back December 1st, not from an injury last year. Travis Dermott is coming back from a six-month recovery process. Yeah, with an injury. Scored last night, but more importantly, has been making clean breakouts and great first passes

and all the things that Travis Dermott was doing beforehand. And I know they're warming him up. I know they're getting him third pair minutes right now. But boy, does he look really good. And I don't know how much longer they're going to be able to hold him down back there. I thought Kelly Ruddy had a really good breakdown last night. Like, shaky first few shifts, a couple giveaways, and then he started being a dick. Like, Travis Dermott is, like, low-key a real jerk to play against.

And then he obviously had the goal, and, like, it's just Red Bull for blood. Yeah. I love him. No, I don't know if anybody likes scoring more than Travis Dermott. Oh, he should do it more. He should, absolutely. Give it a shot. Producer Jesse.

Yes. Sir, we need to know. I'm dying to know. Who did you crown? Who you crowned? Well, it was a hard choice, but I think it has to be William Nylander. Oh, wow. And not for any reason that you guys think.

I think we have to give him credit for bailing out Austin Matthews, who once again tried the lacrosse goal, didn't get it, and had to pass it to Willie Nealon. Nope. I'm putting my tinfoil hat on. Matthews did that on purpose. You think so? He 100% did that on purpose.

He said after the game he did, and he said he tried to do lacrosse. It didn't work, so he just passed. You've never told a lie? I don't think Austin Matthews is lying. He's a dirty liar. He 100% set that play up Knowing that it would create space for William Nylander And Nylander got the best

The easiest goal of his career You sound like a conservative pundit right now You're like, Austin Matthews, liar or failure? Austin Matthews He was behind the net trying to do the Michigan lacrosse goal there And he sent a frog onto William Nylander's stick And it went in That's how I saw it

Was it a gay frog though? It was, yes Thank you Joe Rogan, yes it was You know what I'm talking about. It's the Alex Jones, the water's turning the frogs gay moment, okay? That's the joke. Which is not even on the Mount Rushmore of craziest things that he has said. Yeah, no kidding.

No kidding. So, hey, listen, here's the deal. That's who wore the crown for this week. Welcome to the show, Sean. All of the Our Town, Our Crown went to William Nylander. And the reason for that is that shootout goal that he had. Yes. That kept them in.

I hate when a sexy goal gets wasted. I know. It was so good. The Giroux one was really good. It was. Like, good for him for doing the clapper. That was interesting, because Freddie seemed upset about it. Were you in the locker room last night?

Yeah, no, I think, I was wondering, I can't remember who the next shooter was, but I was wondering if, because I'd been at a game where you do a full clapper from inside the hash, like, the next shot on the penalty is their guy doing the exact same thing. Right. And I was kind of wondering, like, did they do that? It was in Buffalo a couple years ago. It was in the Phil Kessel era that we don't talk about that much. No.

And it led to a brawl. And I was wondering, is the next shot going towards Elliot's head? And it wasn't. But yeah, no, absolutely. That was one, so audacious, and two, incredible, because it did hit that top corner. It did. Yeah, and it's amazing how close he was. And Freddie was well-positioned.

It's like one of those code things that doesn't really come up because you so rarely see it. It seemed like a poorly-timed bunt or something like that. Yeah, baseball is weird because there's a hundred of those little things, and people always try and break them. It doesn't take your pitcher's face off. Yeah, exactly. And if that one hit Anderson's face, we're talking about, like, hey, so who are the Leafs going to have as a starter for the rest of the season? Yeah, it's like if you could intentionally line drive a pitcher in the head.

100%. Yeah, it was, I understand why he was mad, and I think the next Leafs-Flyers game might be interesting. Well, I mean. Well, Dmitry Timoshev is probably going to throw a hit at some point in the late first period to early second, and we will forget about it by the third, But we'll cheer in that moment

That's Who Wore the Crown for this week Brought to you by Crown Royal as always Next time the puck drops, why not? Why not? Live generously and treat your relief's crew to a Crown Royal old-fashioned So, we had a game last night And then we had the segment within the game The segment within the game is the thing that's taken over today

And I'm just going to leave it to the room Do we want to talk about the game first? Or do we want to talk about the segment? We should probably talk about what was said You want to talk about what was said in Canada? Yeah, that's the most important thing you get the most important thing first so don cherry's uh don cherry basically uh and we're going to just so you know i can i can play it off the board right now but the the levels always suck

so what i'm going to have jess jesse do is insert the file later can you do that of the audio yeah sure just so people can hear it and people can see it one more time so you can know what we're talking about so we'll do that right now you know i was talking to a veteran i said i'm not going to run the poppy thing anymore because what's the sense i live in mississauga nobody wears a very few people wear a poppy downtown toronto forget it downtown toronto nobody wears a poppy and i'm not going to he says wait a minute how about running it for the people that buy them now you go to the small cities and you know you you know those the rolls and rolls you people love you they come here whatever it is you love our way of life you love our milk and honey at least you

can pay a couple of bucks for poppies or something like that these guys pay for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada. These guys paid the biggest price. Anyhow, I'm going to run it again for you great people and good Canadians that bought a poppy. I'm still going to run it. Anyhow, I don't know what it is about the computer on this board, but it's a bit of a nightmare and we're still trying to get it fixed. But essentially, you heard you heard what he said there. It's about 40 seconds. And what's you know, there's a lot of people who don't understand. And I think I think that we at least ought to go through why. Oh, I'm sure we'll

hear from him. Sure. Because, you know, I'm a liberal puke, cuck, whatever you call me today, for not liking this comment. Puke? Puke's old school. Puke's old, yeah. It's a new one. It's very bully from Power Rangers. Yes! Yeah, exactly. Punk. You're punk.

Basically, the issue that people have is Don Cherry, it's not that he wants people to wear poppies. You know, I think nobody's gonna argue him on that that's an inarguable stance they'll be except for if you're from ireland and that's a completely different story yeah but that was one of the most ironic things in last night i'm like the only people i ever hear about it are irish someone who i'm sure

don jerry would never criticize right exactly now the issue was he said all you people come here yeah and you like our milk and honey i'm paraphrasing yeah you like our way of life these guys laid down the law you should be buying poppies and i think maybe it went under the radar to some, but I sort of caught it. The no one wears a poppy in downtown Toronto thing. I thought that was very pointed. And it's also pointed bullshit.

It is pointed bullshit, but like you know, Toronto, most multicultural city in the city or city in the city, city in the country. I thought it was pretty pointed. And the fact that he specifically said downtown. Yeah, you go to these small towns and I'm like

there's at least three dog whistles in there. One of them was louder than the other. So, and Sean, you've been on this story all day for The Athletic, have you not? Yes. Are we allowed to talk about that? Absolutely. Okay, and so I guess... That's not out yet, is it?

The Athletic? No, it's been up for about three years now. It's a subscription site. It's based in San Francisco. We have operations in markets across North America and the UK now. Got it. I hope it works out for you guys. No, thank you.

No, it's just out. It's good. It's a hard removal. I hear it's really cheap to subscribe. It's great. It's basically a cup of coffee a month. We can talk about that more. We can insert that audio later.

That would be amazing. full disclosure by the way not to keep cutting you off I live in Toronto and I went a good long time without a poppy because it fell off I think that's what we need to start talking it falls off

I'm wearing it now, I'll get up, I'll sneeze it'll fall off, I mean I have violent sneezes but it'll fall off I think part of the reason though they're meant to fall off because the idea is you go back and buy another one that's what I have heard I think that's a tinfoil.

That is a worse conspiracy theory than Matthews didn't mean to do the whatever. Fair enough. Whatever it is. You know, I agree. I think we had ones when I was on breakfast television that actually had a... Canada pin? No, not a Canada pin. It was the same black inside, but it was one of those pins that has a little clasp on the back.

And that way it didn't fall off on camera, right? Because you didn't want it to fall off while you were on the air. Right. Because, again, if you get if you're not if you're on the air without one, people are going to tell you. And that's fair. So, again, people are not I don't think anybody would be upset with somebody going, hey, I'm not seeing enough poppies this year. And it's it's you know, it's hurtful. And that, you know, let's remind ourselves why we're here, why we have the freedoms we have. I don't think anyone's going to disagree on that. The issue was you people. You people that come here And

When we talk about downtown Toronto Or we talk about you people that come here We know Who we're talking about We know what that means If you are from here Or if you are born a Canadian Like born on this soil

And you're not wearing a poppy He's not talking to you Even if you don't have a poppy I was saying in the video today Like, my grandfather came here, my grandmother came here. He's not talking about them. No. He's talking about recent immigrants.

Yes. From countries that are not the same culturally. Yeah. That's what it means. Yeah. And, you know, obviously the reaction today has been huge. And I'm just going to read through a couple statements here, guys, before we really get into this. Sportsnet this morning made a statement.

And this is from the head of Sportsnet. This is Bart Yabsley. He said, Don's discriminatory comments are offensive and they do not represent our values and what we stand for as a network. We have spoken with Don about the severity of the issue and we sincerely apologize for these divisive remarks.

I'm going to keep going. Hockey Canada released a statement. And this was actually just a few minutes ago. I'm glad you caught this, Steve. Interestingly in this, Hockey Canada does not call out Don by name. They say the hockey community does not stand for the comments made last night. Hockey is Canada's game because it brings the country together.

Be it around the television or at local arenas uh belonging and inclusivity are an integral part of the game now that kind of leads us into sean your book which touches on this a little bit among other things uh and some fun stuff yeah yeah no this is great yeah no it's let's talk about don cherry in the book well i was hoping there'd be more of a buffer there no yeah the thing okay we'll go in and out yeah it's fine the don cherry thing he said a bunch of stuff before hot take right like he's talked about visors he's talked about fighting he's talked about francophones a whole bunch of things no yeah i remember um you know alpo the dog food thing like the winnipeg jets uh player way back go back and google that

alfo suhonen you call them alpo like the dog food it's like he's got a track record of some really awful stuff um this one this one hurt people i talked to people today like like lifelong hockey fans like and i talked to an oiler fan i mean talk to people who've had a rough time watching hockey enough as it is lately um and he's like like i grew up in windsor and you know i never knew walking down the street was today the day i'm going to get jumped again it's today today somebody's going to call me a name is today today somebody's going to try and take my turban off like we eventually had to leave windsor and now we live in brampton and it's a wonderful community and it's 2019 and i thought we were past all this and now we're not what don did yesterday was he

othered people he's on a national platform and it's you know hockey is supposed to be very like hockey and hockey night in canada is what people do historically it's what one of the things that link us together and he othered the audience he sat there and he said they're basically there's my canadians and you canadians and they're not the same thing and they're others and that's what he did whether or not he intended to do it or not that's what he did and that is that's bad like not to put too harsh a word on it that's bad like you you you can't you can't consciously do that, because it ignores not only the history of all of the people

who have come to this country, who come from backgrounds where their grandparents did fight in these wars. Under empires that were completely out of their control. And not fighting for their own liberty because they were under colonial rule at the time. Like, bled on foreign soils for the cause

that was fighting for this country, and pointed out that, you know, Don didn't really serve. Like, he's done a lot of good stuff. He's, you know, in terms of veterans and And the activism that he's done to maintain their memories, but didn't serve. And what he did by othering them and neglecting their histories was he kind of erased them. It's like, well, you know, there's our Canadians and there's the other ones.

And that diminished the other ones to a point that I'm still struggling to put into words, honestly. And I think that's what it is. And I'm not being, I don't think it's melodramatic. Like this, this one's a big one. like what this one isn't making fun of guys for not wearing visors or wearing visors or punching people or not punching people he used to call mangling names like to call the french guys sweethearts and stuff like that yeah no and i'm not diminishing how bad it's been to this point but the difference is is that this isn't something that he's doing that's retrograde on

the ice and hockey this isn't saying we need people to punch people in the face when we know chronic traumatic encephalopathy like this is this is cutting to the the core of like what it is to be canadian somehow and that's that's what's really wrong about this that's why that's what like either you need an apology or you can't even apologize like can you apologize for something you can and then it's up to the audience and it's up to canadians to decide whether or not they want to forgive them or not it's it's funny you know we we talk about this and this is a completely different context but a show like south park can get away with things because they've established a precedent where other shows cannot go their family guy does this too where they they go there

on jokes, and it's like, holy smokes, wow. Now, Don was not joking, and this is a completely different thing, but the precedent that Don has set, the history that has led to this, I mean, to be honest, is anybody in this room surprised? Did anybody

not sort of know that this is probably how he felt anyway, based on some tweets that he had earlier this year about murder in Toronto, about crime in Toronto, he was talking about that. It wasn't just Toronto, by the way, he mentioned Mississauga where he lives, so he brought up mississauga and that's important that is important um because mississauga and brampton for those

listening who don't live in the gta like those are mississauga brampton are two of the largest cities in canada right now um and they are home to a significant you know south asian population um so by saying mississauga like and then othering everybody who's not on cherry um like that's that's an important thing that he just did and not in a good way no no and for a company and let's let's look at this from a pragmatic view for a second here business okay we know that we know the social impact this had and i sean i think you put it in better words than any and the three of us could have said it um that's not possible no it is very possible but but i think from a i think what what people are confused by and this is why i brought up the precedent thing is there are many people

who have been calling for this for years because of the multiple things that have piled up on the resume. And people go, well, if none of those things got him fired, how does this one get him fired or how does this one get him reprimanded? And really, what does a reprimand to the public look like? Was he going to get suspended for a few weeks? Like from a and from a Rogers Sportsnet perspective and the NHL as well, because, you know, the NHL is making some calls today and they had a statement as well.

And I'll read that in a sec. is business wise what's going on behind the scenes right now like are they looking at this

as like okay the apology I read to you earlier is that is that going to be their statement and that's it you know you're

probably going to hear from Ron on Hometown Hockey tonight but where does it go from here there are a lot of executives

in this city who had a very bad Sunday I would say because it's not just I mean the CBC put out a statement

saying look like this is Rogers owns Hockey Night in Canada I mean they we sub-license the games, but we don't control the editorial content. But CBC is part of this. Rogers and Sportsnet are part of this. But it's not just them. It's Scotiabank,

which is a presenting sponsor and the champion of hockey. And it's also Budweiser, which is a title sponsor for Coach's Corner. Like there's a lot of very large companies that are now tied into this as their brands are tied and riding on Don Cherry and Coach's Corner and their associated with this so i would imagine that today a lot of calls or texts or whatever it is the kids do these days in the c-suites uh to communicate with each other that those were all going around to try and figure out like what is the next step and i think i mean there's so many outcomes um you know does does do don and ron appear on hometown hockey to apologize um which we'll know by the time this is posted yes at the time if they don't then you know do they apologize at

some point in the next few days you have to think wrong if they don't apologize is there a suspension is there a termination like this isn't the end that that statement was i think uh ambiguous enough that it leaves sports net room to say upon further reflection we are why would they want that why would they take and for and i'm gonna guess they didn't have a lot of time to put a statement together with 10 000 phone calls they're getting today from corporate sponsors saying what on god's green earth is happening here. And I think if it was easy to get rid of Don Cherry, it would have been done already. Well, there's no

question. I mean, listen, let's call it what it is. They're in a budget crunch right now. They are. People were let go. I'm just going to pretend like I'm not here. Yeah, well, I know. I understand. But they are. And they would admit that. That's publicly stated information. And so the fact that if they do get rid of Don,

unless you can take them to court, and in a lot of contrasts this exists, unless you can take them to court and say he was fired with cause and that voided his deal, they're probably just going to have to pay out his deal if they want to get rid of him. I don't even mean from like a business perspective. I just mean like culturally. Culturally. Do you think it would be hard, though? Because I don't know if it would be that hard anymore. At this point now, we've reached a point, I feel like, where there would be a groundswell of support to get rid of him. But up until this point, it feels like there would

be a group of people who would be very upset if he was taken off the air. Right. And I think you saw that when Steve Simmons's story came out in the springtime, that rumor that this would be, he wouldn't even come back this year right all the people were fighting back on that that was just a report it's i i had a thought like i'm not totally proud of because like this isn't even the only time in recent memory he's he's generated a fuss or upset people but i just remember uh this morning wake you know i saw the reaction last night and i woke up this morning and i saw the reaction continue and the thought i'm not totally proud of was oh people are like really mad this time you know what i mean like you know why i'm not like totally proud of that like i

should have seen this coming i should have understand as understood that because like i think you alluded to earlier this isn't the worst thing he's ever said on the air well it's not even leave that to sean is this the worst is this as bad as it's gotten because are you asking me because I'm the oldest one at the table here. Well, I think you've got a better memory than the three of us. Remember when CBC came on the air and OTT5 and... No, I... Is that a thing?

Well, the reason I ask is because you've got a better memory than we do. You've probably done more research on this today than we have. You've interviewed Doug. Yeah, no. I mean, I don't have them... I think I have done sort of the encyclopedia before. At some point within the last 20 years. I don't have them at the tip of my tongue, but there are things that you don't have to go very far into the archives for.

And if you have a Toronto Public Library card, you can go into the Globe and Star archives for free. And they're amazing. To see that, yeah, there's some things that you'll go back through in the 90s, in the late 80s, like not as long ago as you'd think. And you'll have your eyes pop open and say, huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he'd said some things before where you're like, huh? Right. But, again, like, to Steve's point, it's been, well, this is the one that's going to get Don.

And then it's like, oh, nevertheless. Right. It's like the Donald Trump tweet. Right. So. How interesting. Yeah. Like, this one, this one is, this one's big because this one, this one cuts outside of sport in a way, if that makes sense.

I mean, so much of what he's done, I'm not diminishing anything and the hurt that he's caused by what he said before. I mean, you know, we say, oh, it's just hockey, but like, you know, punching and fighting like chronic traumatic encephalopathy ruins lives. So I'm not diminishing any of that. But this one cuts so deep into what it means to be Canadian. Cultural fabric. And what we are as Canadians that I think that's one of the reasons that this is continuing. Not to echo today. It's building.

Like people are still legitimately angry today and getting more so because they're not getting a response correctly. and the apology came out or the statement whatever and people just went nope because it's not from don it's not from don right right it's one yeah it's not from don it's not from ron so i read a tweet today and i want to read it out to you guys because i think it hit at the at the core of why this bothers so many people and it was from roger the shrubber just a guy 413 followers but it took off he retweeted the don cherry video and he said the problem with canada isn't that we're a country of don cherries we're not it's that we're a country of ron mclean's and now we've all talked to worked with ron mclean before and i'll i have no problem saying that i don't believe for a second

that ron mclean is a racist a uh a xenophobe any i don't believe anything i do not believe that ron is anything but the best intentioned human being out there. I've known him for years. He's come on this show. You talk to anybody. They don't really have any bad things to say about Ron. However,

people do make mistakes, and I think he errored last night. He may not have been paying attention, which has been suggested, but he errored last night by giving the thumbs up at the end of that segment and not challenging Don on what Don said. There's a chance he didn't catch it, and I'm not

making I'm not making excuses for the guy I'll do it so the the the earpiece thing there's probably people talking in his ear doing the countdown yeah now he's been on tv forever um so he's probably used to it by now when it happens to me on ice surfing I you can you can watch my brain short circuit I I don't know how to do it I don't know how to listen and speak at the same time Right. It's really difficult. So there's a chance that the person sitting next to him on national television who was speaking, he might not have even been paying attention to what he was saying. Right. We should all hope that that's the case, because otherwise, then he's sitting there, he is complicit in somebody who's clearly speaking out of line right next to him. Right. And I think whether or not he heard it, he is.

Yep. That's a tough one. Because it's not about what happened. It's about how it looks. And it's not a good look. And I got to, you know, if I am running Sportsnet right now, which thank God I'm not, because that would be far too much responsibility. I have to look at this as here are my two tenured heritage personalities. Guys that are bankable.

Guys that have gotten ratings for years. And quite frankly, as part of a company that is owned by a company that primarily sells Internet and cable, you know, you want those that older audience because they still buy cable. They still buy cable packages, which a lot of younger people aren't doing anymore. And, you know, you if not, not only does this bring Dawn down wherever this brings Dawn to, Ron is now sucked into that vortex. And Ron is the guy who is the goodwill ambassador for Hockey Night in Canada for years. And that, to me, is a major problem that nobody's talked about, purely from a pragmatic perspective. You know, if you look at it from the business side of things, they're going, this guy is such a wild card on the air and so closed off in his views that he's pulling our other personalities down with him. Like, is there a person before last night on that show with a better reputation than Ron McLean?

You look at what's hometown hockey. Like, you're a hockey evangelist. Yes. Ron McLean has become a hockey evangelist. That's what hometown hockey is. Like you go to Welland. I think they're in Welland tonight. You go out to Kamloops, home of James Myrtle. You go to, you know, Cape Breton, you go Nunavut, you go anywhere. With that show, you become a hockey evangelist to those people, to the rest of the country saying, look, here's hockey. Here's a story that you might understand and that might reflect who you are in your reality, where you are, even though we're 3000 kilometers away. Here's a story of Canada. that's the message that they want hometown hockey to it's hockey is for everybody here's canada we have so many differences you know from uh out west to out east um but we have this thing that tethers us together and now you have after last night you have a them and us vibe and and how can you have an evangelical view of hockey when you've othered a significant portion of

this population right and what does that mean for ron like what are your thoughts on just personally you know yeah he yes he's done all those things but this is also something that's happened and whether or not he heard it no matter what happened in that room only the two of them will ever know i don't know i don't know but this is not a good look and there's no escaping that this is unacceptable and there's no escaping that not to make a joke of it but i'm picturing that scene from uh anchorman where go f yourself san diego and he didn't realize he said it i think that went pretty well and everyone else in the studio is like did you hear what you just said well i don't know the weird thing about all this guys is that this segment made it online it made it

through the editing bay and was posted on the internet and then overnight they took it down i used to post those yeah so that that call came from but how did the editors not say yeah i probably shouldn't post this well it's on the internet who's gonna see it on the internet yeah right and once you delete it it's gone that's a tough one that's a tough one for the editor i'll just say because your job you have your list of stuff that you're supposed to post. Your job is to do your job. Your job is to do your job.

My job is to post Hockey Night in Canada every Saturday. You just do it. And it's sponsored content so if you just on a whim go, oh I'm not going to post this. Well you wouldn't do that but you'd have to flag it. Well I think you're overestimating the amount of pull someone who just posts

clip online has. Fair. That's why I'm bringing it up. Yeah so I would not blame that person i'd say uh it didn't go ideally but it went about as well as it could have gone okay i think like the the fact that it went up as bad the fact that it was taken down as good should have never been up it's down right and sean you've been you've been following this all day what have you deduced from all this other than some executives had a bad day where do you think this goes you said it's building like what does it build into that's my that's the whole story It's 10 words. Executives had a bad day. Please subscribe.

And a lot of people feel alienated, too. And I think we should talk about that. Yeah. Part of it was sort of gathering reactions. So, you know, some of it, you know, I reached out to some of the folks on Twitter who sort of shared their story and their reaction, whether it be, you know, grandparents who who fought in the Second World War for, you know, from India and Pakistan where they grew up before partition. and, you know, the sacrifices that they made and how that, you know, that's basically what had been pushed aside by this. Like, and the anger of growing up and believing that, you know, you're bringing your children into a better Canada than the one that you had to endure because of who you are and what you wore or the color of your skin,

that all of these things had been moved past. And, you know, obviously, you know, they're not saying that they thought until Don Cherry that we'd moved past all these things but that steps had been taken and that you know

they were moving we were moving in the right direction as a country and that they were bringing their children into a better Canada than the one

that they had inherited and what this was was like well no like these perspectives can still be shared on a national platform

for an audience of untold millions I guess it's not going to be untold when we get the overnight ratings and when it goes onto the internet

I mean if people ever figure out what the internet isn't dial into it maybe one day maybe one to dial up but no like that's the thing so yeah today like i guess the short version of that rambling answer is he hurt people like that's you distill it down he hurt people in a deep meaningful way and and that's not going to be erased or healed real quick all right well listen uh it was not the it was not the fun topics everybody wanted to talk about but i still think it was worth broaching guys appreciate your thoughts does

anybody have any parting thoughts on that before we go well let's move to before we move to the games and everything else going on in the nhl it's so many levels down from mattering like uh but like i'm embarrassed you know what i mean like seeing all this shit all day and i i sent a text to uh the person who manages sports nets twitter and i was just like praying for you today and they were like thanks yeah um it's just and and like i know myself and this person like there's lots of others right it's it's embarrassing and anybody that listens to the show and feels like a second-class citizen because of the comments you're not this is one man uh and uh and and you know i think we are true true believers that it is for everyone but i think we need to do a better

job of making people feel that way and that's that's sort of where we do want to you know we do want to talk to you sean about that with the book and everything because they're from what i understand um hockey people signing up for hockey is like way down in the last 10 years my my thought when he said you people i'm like don they're not watching yeah the people you're talking about are not watching and that's are we getting into this yeah like yeah we're getting into the preface the forward and all that stuff yeah no so um i mean my wife my wife is she was born in mumbai uh her family's from goa which is a beautiful beach sort of touristy region um in india and she moved here when she was 10 god i'm gonna get in trouble was it 12 please oh god uh 10 or 12 long time ago yeah

um didn't have a real connection to hockey even though she you know grew up here for for a lot of her formative years and we have two children an eight-year-old and a four-year-old and she is now a fully fledged hockey mom our our eight-year-old's on the ice and this is gonna sound really gross but he's on the ice like five times a week our four years our four-year-old daughter uh the future all-time penalty minutes leader for the canadian olympic women's team she just started hockey school a couple weeks ago so we're in the rink all the time right and i was a bit like steve i didn't get to play organized hockey until i mean i started when i was 13 um so when i was really good when i went through the first time i didn't really

understand all this stuff but now going through it with this lens and i'm building back to the book here i swear no no um going through it with kids and with somebody who's going in through hockey the first time you really see the benefit of what hockey is that we take for granted and And this that you can have somebody in Vancouver or Halifax or Saskatoon and have nothing in common. One could be NDP, conservative, liberal, whatever. One could be a farmer. One could be a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, whatever. But there's a real good chance that right now you have a background in hockey or you play beer league hockey or that you're a terrible hockey or whatever.

You've got a kid in hockey. So you say, oh, my God, this cost me this much. You have that tether so that if you land together at a conference in Windsor, Ontario for something and you end up in a bar, you have that tether as Canadians. If I can make maybe a clearer example, last year our son was starting grade two at a school here in Toronto. And a little boy had just moved here from Vancouver and he was wearing a Canucks hat. Didn't know a soul, like brand new, like, you know, in the city for about a month. So the teacher looks at this little boy and our little guy and knows our little guy is a hockey nut. And again, knowing that seven-year-olds are notoriously unreliable journalists, I'm told the conversation went something like this when she put them together, that my favorite player is Brock Besser.

I love P.K. Subban. I play for East York. I play for Ted Reed. If you want to be best friends, let's be best friends. So now that little boy's dad is on my Thursday night beer league team. Those two boys are inseparable. That little boy has a sister, and his sister and our daughter are friends. We had dinner together three weeks ago as two families.

Like, so from nothing more than having hockey, that connected two families from, you know, British Columbia to Ontario just through hockey. Would they have found each other without it? Maybe, maybe not. But through that thing. And I think that that interaction, that transaction repeats itself more often than we even understand because it's just always been there as Canadians. The challenge now is that with fewer Canadians signing up, with fewer Canadians having that tethered to the game, we're allowing barriers to grow up around it where, you know, this wonderful thing that we can all share, fewer of us are able to share it. And that's going to be a real problem. Well, and what are those barriers? Oh, God. Does this go on until Thursday? Yeah, we've got two-hour shows. You've got time.

Yeah, awesome. No, it'll be Don Cherry's great-great-grandchildren who will be hosting Coach's Corner by the time we're done here. So the barriers. One is cost. I mean, we've been talking about that since, like, I had hair. And we're on podcast. So that's a really long time. I'm very bald, is what I'm saying.

So the cost. Like, the legend of the $300 stick isn't a legend. Like, it's real. But that's been going on for decades, right? Like, it's been really expensive. Now it's that at the grassroots level, the game's being professionalized. So baby Steve Dangle today can go and he'll have a coach come out every Wednesday practice who will be a skills development coach

that'll work with his peewee or his tyke team. And there'll be a professional skills coach to work with the goalie on his team. And then at March break, Christmas break, and summer break, he can go to a week-long hockey camp where he's on the ice five hours a day at a CrossFit gym for another hour of the day

and then go for lunch. And it's $800 a week, so there's $2,400 there. So the professionalization raises the cost exponentially more than just the $300 hockey stick. That's just a capital investment. Now you have the soft costs of, do you have a car? Do you have the kind of job where you can peace out of work on a Friday?

Because that's when hockey tournaments start now, on a Friday. So you have to pull little Jane or little Jimmy out of school on a Friday. So you have to get out of work. Can you get out of work at 3.15 because your kid has a game on the other side of town in Toronto at 6.30? And you have to be there an hour before. Do you have the willingness to give up your weekends from now until the end of time or May? Because you have practices every weekend. if you're just above house league um so you're not going to go skiing you're not going to sit

down and watch college football you're not going to like do crochet or anything that you enjoy doing because it's going to be in that rink that if you're in a little bit you're in a lot and then the other barrier is uh the retention that hockey for the kids like we're talking right off the top of it how much fun it was to play the other night right like all of us were out on the ice and having fun for kids because of the professionalization like imagine that except you had an that they're yelling you know dump it in what are you doing you can't circle you can't do that lazy cut like it's not fun so kids who are in it are dropping out because they're like this sucks every time i walk different things every time i walk by a pad of ice in an arena with with a kid

and a skills coach on it the kid never looks so good either they always look so miserable so i mean and they're also really good there's so many ways to go with this but like like hockey canada is trying to say hey coaches make sure you have fun right but coaches are beholdens like some paid coaches i'm a volunteer coach with with our kids team um and we have fun like we do fun drills like you remember american gladiators like the old one from the 80s great your favorite your favorite game was probably the one that they played at the end where there was the gladiator with the tennis ball cannon oh yeah yeah right like it's the best thing in the world so there's a hockey canada drill in one of their books and they have giant books for each age group that are

like lesson plans like you teachers have except for coaches and they call it hockey gladiators So you have pylons, and they're zigzags. So you have the kids start in the corner, and they skate around one pylon, skate around the other pylon, get to the third, pick up a puck, go around the fourth pylon, and then shoot on the net. Easy, right? Yeah, except there's a coach with a giant bucket of tennis balls firing the tennis balls at the kids. Now, the first time we did this, it horrified the parents. And to be clear, we also had a coach whose kill rate was a little bit higher than maybe should have been. But what it does is it teaches the kids, you know, duck down, skate with your head up, work inside edge, outside edge.

And they're doing all of this stuff. They're learning all these really important skills while having a blast. And it's great. And Hockey Canada provides a lot of these ideas. The challenge is that coaches, I mean, that's kind of, you know, counterintuitive that you want them to work on their inside edge, outside edge in a drill that looks like they're performing something in a hockey game. And those aren't fun. Those are what I imagine like a Soviet practice looked like in 1968. Like it's very emotionless.

It's very clinical. It's not a lot of fun. So unless you have coaches across the country who buy into that fun principle, kids are going to peace out because it's not fun. So it's not creative. No. And these are all barriers that we've allowed to grow up around the game, the professionalization, the cost rising, the fact that there are indirectly, you know, ways that we've othered people that, you know, because minor hockey associations, which are run by really, really well-meaning people, but they're volunteers.

And if they don't have connections to communities that aren't represented directly into that rink, they have real challenges reaching into those communities. So, I mean, we're talking about Brampton, which has struggled mightily. Like there was a stat 20 years ago in Brampton, 4,200 kids were playing hockey in Brampton. So what's happened in the intervening 20 years?

The population of Brampton has gone on like aviation fuel to the moon and back, right? There's 2,000 kids playing hockey in Brampton right now. So why is that? Because you're not reaching communities. It's funny because my parents came here in the 80s as immigrants from Caribbean islands. And hockey was never in the spectrum for me to play. Like I played high-level sports up until like my teenage years.

But it was never hockey. And like I think about all those barriers you listed and those are exactly the reasons why. And then when I go into my adulthood, I don't really see my kid playing hockey either because of the next steps of just how expensive it is. and how just everything you need to do to get into hockey. And it's like, that'll be, like, I'm a Canadian now. Like, I was born here. They became Canadians. But my kids might still not be able to play hockey,

which is such a shame because of all the great stuff it brings to, like, your life growing up. Like, we're talking about not even growing up. Like, and this is a second, I don't know, I lost count of how many tent poles we've talked about here. But, like, the other night, we're on the ice. That was probably my 10th time ever being on ice. And I'm going to play my second game ever next Friday.

And I'm 27 now. Was that fun? Oh, my God, it was unbelievable. It was the best time ever. You disagree, but you're way better than you were last year. And you're way better than you should be. Yeah, he's clearly an athlete. Yeah, but I didn't grow up playing.

So, like, in the room before, you showed up a bit late, to the ones before but afterwards like joking around hanging out like you're making connections whether or not you realize or not like that's what that is right like there's a reason to call it beer league and it's because you're hanging out there and you're chatting and you're you know refreshing friendships or whatever it is that's half the fun so you're being physically active on the ice that's well i mean okay other people are being physically active i'm sitting there coasting in the neutral zone but like everybody else is being physically active but it's it's The social connection is after.

So why isn't that so widely available to everybody? And if you look at just the environment around the game, if I say, hey, my kid can play hockey or he can play soccer, where he's going to see a bunch of more kids from different backgrounds who are going to be more accepting of who he is or who she is, I would probably lean towards that one. Would I not? Just by default? And it's also the time contribution, what you can manage. Equipment contribution. It's a pair of shoes and a soccer ball Yeah I play baseball because it was easy

I paid for the uniform and a glove and a bat And to be clear like adults can Do we swear here? Yeah Adults can fuck up anything they touch Like high level basketball is ridiculously expensive If you're listening to this podcast and you were A competitive swimmer or if you're A dancer

If you're a child in competitive dance If you have a kid in competitive dance And like those are great pursuits because your kid's being active, your kid's making friends, your kid's doing all these things, learning physical literacy, which helps develop confidence in a whole bunch of different facets of life. So competitive dance and competitive swimming are amazing. But if you're listening to that and you have experience in those,

you're like, hockey's the cheapest fucking thing in the earth. Like, no, the reason we're picking on hockey here is because hockey was on the back of our $5 bill. Like, hockey's what Rock Carrier wrote about in the hockey sweater. And we close our eyes and you think of what does it mean to be Canadian, And as it relates to hockey, you think of a gentle snow falling on a frozen pond against the backdrop of children's laughter while they play hockey. That's what you think about. And that's what's supposed to bind us together.

But because of all of these things that have allowed to go unchecked for so long, so many people have been streamed out of hockey that it's, I mean, it sounds melodramatic to say, but it really is at risk of becoming a niche sport in this country. I think it was Anthony Stewart had a pretty funny tweet a couple of weeks back. He's like, a reporter will go, so, what are some of your fondest memories playing hockey on a pond growing up? And any player under 30 is like, uh. Yeah, she's not a boss. Concordia University had a really interesting study.

I guess it'd be five years. And I'm going to mangle all these numbers now because I'm old and my memory's faded. Well, we're going to tell people to buy the book anyway. So if they want to see the exact figures and then tweet you about how wrong you were afterwards, make sure you buy Sean's book. And they will.

Before the lights go out. McClellan-Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House. From Penguin, yeah, Penguin Random House. Concordia University did a study years ago, and there's other ones like rinkwatch.org do it too, where I think they said that to have good outdoor natural ice, you need three days straight of minus five or below. So it has to be minus five, five below for three straight days,

and you've got a sheet of ice that you can play on. And they figured that with climate change and the changing patterns, that for something like 90% of the Canadian population, within 25 years so we're probably within 20 years now it will be impossible to have natural ice

across most of Canada oh wow where Canadians can play hockey because it's just going to be too warm in the populous areas it just doesn't

it just wouldn't be there 100% I walked across a frozen pond twice my entire life I was scared shitless here in Toronto we're lucky that the city

has a bunch of artificially refrigerated rinks that are outdoors I mean they're still scheduled within an inch of their lives like you can't just

show up after school and play But they're there at least. But for a lot of Canadians, that outdoor pond thing, it's going to be like, well, why would I go swimming in December? Yeah. I used to skate on my parents. We were lucky enough to have a cottage growing up and used to skate on the ice there, you know, when it got thick enough. And, you know, we'd get the auger out and just check the ice levels and that sort of thing to make sure that it was thick enough.

um and it was to to your point some of the most magical moments of my life are just me alone you know only child right so there's no one to play with it you know it's cottage so it's freezing cold inside you may as well be outside how many people were out there nobody's there my parents are like hell no neither of them played hockey my dad's an auto racing fan and my stepmom was never really in sports um and uh you know they supported me but it was never their thing and they are some of the best memories I've ever had just I remember you're outside, it's quiet

it's so quiet, it's the middle of the day and all you hear are the cracks from the lake ice in the distance and they sound, they're terrifying and then it's like you and your dog my dog Max used to love to chase pucks so I'd like deke him out and put the puck through his feet

and that sort of thing, he'd run after it and it's such a shame that, and I know that I realize that that's not a possibility for like 99% of people. I realize how lucky I am to have that experience. But the fact that even the people that do have that opportunity, you know, if you do live in a smaller town and you're able to go, go out to, you know, a frozen pond or something like that. I mean, we in Scarborough, where we grew up, we were able to go down into near the bluffs area and it would freeze in the wintertime near the beach. Oh, I never went.

Yeah. And you could skate on that. And because that so that was that was a lot of fun. But the fact that that will not even be a possibility just based on climate change will suck and it you know Okay, so how much so we rented ice at a at an arena at 10 o'clock. That is a Barn barn like it's it barn. Yeah, the arena's gotta be 50 years old. It's Moss Park Arena. Look it up Oh, you had a ridiculous stat about arenas in Toronto. Well, hang on So just to that point about cost right

points at guests that was ridiculous I know right I know so how many guys were there how many guys were there Steve

12 12 of us 12 guys it was still $25 a guy yeah for one hour one hour

just one hour in a barn and by the way this was Moss Park which is my neighborhood by the way is one of the

one of the tougher areas in downtown Toronto and frankly there's not a lot of people there on a Friday night anyway and it's not one of those arenas that on a Friday night

Like there's men's leagues forever. Like you go to Oakville and they get the big sliding doors and the 40 rinks and the bars upstairs. This is not one of those. This is like everything you imagine from like forties, fifties, sixties hockey. This is what this, this place is. And it was still $300. And like drinking out of the tap.

Like, well, I've had a good life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. You have to wear, you're, you're not going in the shower with bare feet. Like, uh, it's one of those, like, and I, I, I found that interesting.

I was like, holy smokes. It's still $300. And it's like the barrier for the professional level, going back to what you're saying, is in other sports it's more. But it's just culturally hockey is so important that the barrier to just play every day should be so much easier. Like I knew guys who went down to the States because there's not opportunities to play basketball here and like AAU. So the barrier for professional basketball is I have to move countries. But for hockey, the barrier to just play should be so easy. It shouldn't be $25 for one hour.

No, no. It should just be, hey, let's go do this. Right. Right. And in some, the ridiculousness that you're talking about earlier is that basically in Toronto, speaking just here, municipal rinks haven't really been built since 1967, since the centennial fund. So some of the new rinks that you have in the city are privately owned. So if you're playing a beer league, it's going to be privately owned. And those prices can be, I mean, they're 400 plus sometimes. And depending on the time, you're paying a premium for that ice time. So it's really expensive. So then you can counter with saying, well, you know, why don't you just have your kid play house league? You know, house leagues in the city, they're fine. They're great. You play a game every Saturday and you can practice

every other Sunday. So that's six hours of ice time a month. That's basically, you know, going for a music lesson, which is great. It's fine. It's good. It's important to know music and have music lessons, but that's not sort of what we're talking about. If you're just on the ice four hours a month um for hockey that's not what we're talking about when we talk about hockey we're talking about something that you know you know rock carrier and it's one of my it might be my favorite short story about anything anywhere at any time was he'd go to school and you think about hockey you'd go to you know listen to maurice richard on the radio and the montreal canadians and think of hockey that it was what he loved and he could access it in any number of ways where

if you just play house league you know you're doing it once a week for one hour so then why You go to the competitive level, which is select, which is, you know, the level that our eight-year-old plays and our four-year-old, assuming she stays out of legal trouble between now and then. But then you're drinking out of the fire hose, and that's everything we're talking about. Yeah. Like he has, you know, I'm an assistant. I'm a volunteer coach. I'm ripping the sweater, actually. He's on the ice Wednesdays, and that's skills day.

So we have a professional coach come and skate and work on skills with the kids. Former IHL? No, I don't know. He's definitely more skilled than me. And then that's at one end of the S. At the other end of the S, we have a professional goalie instructor work with our goalies. That's once a week. And we're just, we're a novice team.

So that's, they're eight years old, going on nine. And it only goes up from here. So, you know, by the time you get to your minor midget year, if you are in that competitive stream, and I'm not saying that we'll be there, it's, if you're AAA minor midget, Like, if you're a parent, you can easily expect a $15,000 door charge. Jesus. Right? That's crazy.

That's, like, how? Like, how could you? Dude, there's, like, 40 last names in the NHL. Like, no wonder. Right? If you go, so one of the really cool things that I like going to do is going to the top prospects game, the GTHL, which is the biggest minor hockey organization on this planet. Not this country, this planet.

And they have a top prospects game. So that's the best minor midget kids in the city. Those are the kids who are primed for the OHL draft, usually. I mean, they can go to college or whatever, but usually the OHL draft. So they all go there and their parents are there. And these are still 15-year-old kids. So they're not driving yet. So their parents are out there.

And you pull into the parking lot. And there are a whole bunch of times. I've gone, I think, three years in a row. And I pulled in and I've looked around. I'm like, they're going to call the police on me because somebody is going to say, there's a Honda Civic in this parking lot. I don't know what that person's motivations are, but it doesn't belong here. It should be with all these Mercedes. Yeah, because here's a Mercedes, a Range Rover, a Lexus, a Beamer, like, a Hovercraft.

Yeah, somebody bought, like, their rocket ship. Like, it was really weird, right? But, like, and then you go inside, and you're like, like, I, wow. Like, I don't make enough to, like, any. Like, the stratosphere is, I think, we really don't understand it. Like, the Hamilton Spectator, maybe this will help it. The Hamilton Spectator, five years ago, Terry Pekoske, who's a wonderful journalist, she did just a brilliant series trying to quantify what I'm now stammering over.

And what she did was she sent away to all of the OHL teams saying, look, I don't want private data of the kids on your roster. Just give me the postal codes of where they live. That's all I want, just their postal codes. Give me the postal codes. And I think all but three or four teams got back to her. So what she did was she ran those postal codes through StatsCan data. And what she found was, and again, because my memory is terrible, I'm going to mangle these exact numbers.

But it was something like 80% of kids came from cities, urban areas. So like Ottawa, Toronto, the Windsor corridor. And of those 80%, 80% of those came from parts of the cities where the median income was much higher than everywhere else. So what you get is a picture of, you know, it's not the guys that Tom Cochran used to sing about in big league where hockey was the one way out of the mining town. It's like you're from a really nice part of a really nice city and you have access to all of these teaching tools and the best coaches that money can buy to get you to this level. Wow. It's funny in sports like football in the States, this might have something to do with the fact that refrigeration is expensive. You can play football pretty much at any point, right?

Like you can play it all year long if you want to. Football, basketball, high-level basketball, yeah, granted, is expensive. But you see a lot of guys in football and basketball specifically. And I guess you could say the same for all the guys that come from Latino countries in baseball. A lot of these guys are coming from nothing. They come from nothing. They have backgrounds where, you know, they happen to be brilliant athletically, and they were able to raise themselves up, and that's amazing, right?

I don't hear a lot of rags-to-riches stories in hockey. Like, Wayne Simmons is one, and the only reason I know that story is because, you know, we grew up with Wayne. We grew up with him. Well, you did. Well, and he's like an elder statesman now. Yeah, yeah, but you don't hear, like,

you hear in football every year, you know, here's a guy who, you know, from a single-parent home who went through this and went through that, and they were on food stamps. Like, you hear that all the time, and those stories are brilliant. You don't hear that in hockey.

You just don't. it's it's he's so-and-so son he's so-and-so's nephew um and and i i wanted to ask you about this because obviously there's a genetic component in families where if you are an if you are an athlete you are genetically probably predispositioned to be you got better hand-eye coordination you probably heal faster there's a bunch of things that they when they study athletes they're like yeah they're a little bit different than you did watch me play the other such grace i can't i can't speak i'm just gonna hang up and listen but but the there is a we're seeing this more and more someone's son someone's nephew someone

who already made it and then all of a sudden it's like they had all the tools in front of them for someone else to make it and that in a vacuum there's nothing wrong with that but if you get too inside with it then you're then you're excluding everyone do you know what i'm saying Yeah, I mean, to back up to the other sports, you know, baseball and basketball, like those are getting ruined, too. The New York Times did a really neat feature, again, I think it was last year, it could have even been earlier this year, about campuses in the U.S. that are growing up around, not university or college campuses, but like for these tournaments, so AAU tournaments or baseball tournaments. You know, they have a bunch of gyms, they have a bunch of fields, and they have a bunch of hotels. It's like smart centers, you know, where you have the malls and it's all in there.

So what they do is like, hey, you're playing in this tournament. You're going to play on these fields. You're staying in these hotels. And since we're in the middle of nowhere, you're going to eat in these restaurants. It's an entire industry built up around youth sports. So it costs money, basketball, baseball, whatever. It's really expensive. So it's not just hockey.

The reason we're singling out hockey here is because, again, it's on the back of our $5 bill. It's, you know, one of our two official sports, all of these things. and yeah there are stories of you know not everybody in hockey is filthy rich but it doesn't hurt like anything I guess it's just like sorry to go back to our shinny session last

Friday but it was that good it was that good well Jesse and I are talking as co-hat trick getters you got four yeah Austin Matthews over here it was pretty good when there was no goalie but like if last Friday the

the 12 of us didn't have $25, but we all wanted to play sports. We would go out and we'd play basketball or soccer. Something else. We wouldn't pick hockey if we didn't have the money to. Yeah, or the gear. I mean, think of this is the other point that was raised over the course of this book. I mean, it was three years of sort of exploring all of this stuff. And, you know, I think it was more than 200 interviews.

So I was really lucky that a lot of people gave me their time to sort of share their stories. And the other one that, again, if you're in the game, you don't really think about, if you're in that bubble, is the delta that we ask people to cross now. That if you're not in hockey, like if you're a parent and you're not in hockey, you don't have a background in hockey, the delta of signing your kid up and getting them all this gear. Like, do you know, does the shin pad go on before the pants? Do the skates go on before the pants? It's like these things that you used to just sort of absorb through osmosis because like gym, gym class, I grew up in Burlington. So the Halton District, like part of our gym class would be like a couple of times a month you do public skating down at the local rink, right? Like you get skates, you get a crappy pair of skates and you learn from just looking at the person next to you.

Oh, this is the skates going this way or whatever. Like, so if you're new to the country or you're new to the game, you have to navigate all of this stuff. What kind of equipment do you need to get? And there's so much equipment now that, you know, neck guards, jocks, cups, do you get, do you get garters or do you get the long pants? Like there's, there's such a variety. It can be really daunting and people are so busy now that like, well, I could get those 14 different things or we could just go do something else. And if it's just do something else, then do something else looks real easy because we're all busy. Right.

And like, like there's lots of choice. There's lots of things and kids have more choice and kids have more things. And you cannot play sports at all. You can play e-sports. You can be on Twitch. You can do a whole bunch of things. And if hockey is just a thing, man, like, it's really easy to scratch off that thing and do something else. Absolutely.

It's not all glamorous. You did have to ride the bus with the Peterborough Peets there, which I think was right at the beginning of the book. You got to ride with some of the most near and dear people to our listeners' hearts. One of the best defensemen in the system. Yes. The Toronto Maple Leafs system was on that bus. He's going to be maybe one of the best defensemen in Toronto. Yeah, no, like, so the reason we picked Peterborough, I'll back up a bit, is that Peterborough, and I didn't know this until we really got into it.

Like, we picked Peterborough, I'm talking about my editor Jordan Ginsberg and I, because Peterborough is kind of a proxy for the rest of Canada on so many things. like something like 14 of the last federal last 15 federal elections that if your party wins its seat in peterborough you form government in ottawa wow and the streak the streak is even longer provincially that if you win the seat in peterborough you go on to form the government in queens park something like 16 of the last like it's it's insane um and in peterborough used to be the town where i don't know say you wanted to test the timbit that was going to sell a moose jaw or Halifax. He test marketed it in Peterborough.

Wow. Because it was reflective in so many ways politically and economically of Canada that it became a test case. And because the Peets are a hockey team in a hockey town, we thought, why don't we explore some of these issues through the lens of the Peterborough Peets? So yeah, followed the Peets for a season and a half. They were supposed to be challenging for a Memorial Cup that year. And they had a bunch of Leafs and Leafs adjacent people.

I don't know if you remember the name, Nikita Korostelev. Oh, yeah. He could shoot the puck like a video game, but the problem was his skating. He had to work on that. Logan DeNobel came to camp as, you know, one of the guys who wears number 57 for two or three days in camp and then just sort of goes. And then there's Nick Robertson, who is, you know, California born, second round draft pick, who's eventually going to be a forward with the Leafs. It's going to happen Imagine they actually give him a try

They're like, hey, we need more mobility in the back And they actually put him there And SDS Steve Preshev was also on the team So follow them around And sort of explore Who are the kids who are playing junior hockey Which is a step or two below the NHL

Where are they coming from What are the challenges they're facing And then in Peterborough What does hockey look like in Peterborough In 2017, 2018, 2019 And yeah, like Minor Hockey Association in Peterborough had lost 100 kids from their roles every year for three straight years. There's a Catholic school around the corner from the rink, 400 meters away from the rink. And these folks for tri-hockey went up there.

And what they do is they'll go to the school and they'll hold an assembly and say, hey, who plays hockey? And then they'll play ball hockey and say, if you haven't played ice hockey but you're curious, come to the rink this weekend. We'll set you up. We'll get you on the ice, blah, blah, blah. They went and held an assembly at the school, and they're like, hey, who plays hockey? 400 kids, not a single hand went up. That's in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. And, yeah, they have a vibrant and growing house league basketball program.

Sure. Fleming College has a cricket program. There's a travel cricket program in the city. You know, the president of the Peterborough Hockey Association went to get his haircut in the middle of Pete's season, and the family there, everybody was wearing TFC shirts. and they didn't want to talk about pizza they want to talk about tfc um all of the pressures that we're talking about here uh esports other sports not playing any sports um you know underrepresented communities they all exist in peterborough and that's why we wanted to spend

that time exploring them through the lens of the pizza and peterborough let me ask you something do you think that hockey canada and uh upper man upper leadership at the nhl level uh you know obviously the americans have their own system and that sort of thing but the most you know as canadians um we hear most from gary batman and bill daly and we hear from the hockey canada group which used to be bob nicholson who's now with the oilers do you think they're equipped or even aware that was one thing is that i expected to go through this and run into i was going to say don cherry but i don't want to mention that name again today um was you know a bunch of people who say oh hockey's fine like what are you talking about you're this whole thing hockey's fine like

get your head out of your ass. All of the minor hockey association people I spoke with, and I traveled Saskatoon, I talked to people out in BC, I talked to people in Montreal and Ottawa and out east, they all said, yeah, like, it's expensive. We have problems reaching out to new communities. There are success stories in that regard for sure, but by and large, they have issues.

And Tom Rennie, who is near the head of Hockey Canada, you know understands the issues um he he acknowledges that they exist the challenge is going to be um how do you find solutions and then how do you implement them because in canada like a solution that might work here in toronto we're talking about moss park which is a vital downtown recreational facility yes for hockey and it is a great sheet of ice it's expensive but it's a good sheet of ice um like you know coming up with a solution that might work in Moss Park isn't going to work in one of those massive megaplexes out in Mississauga or Oakville, or out in Brampton, or out in one of the brand new ones at Oshawa or Whitby.

So, you know, if you have that problem here in Southern Ontario, imagine finding a solution that will also work in Saskatoon and, you know, Coal Harbour or whatever. So what are the solutions and then how do you possibly implement them in a place so broad and diverse as Canada? And that's where the real challenge is going to be. Because there are ideas to address some of the things we're talking about, whether it be cost or accessibility. But how do you come up with a national scheme? Do they have any, like, theories on how they could do that? Yeah, there's a couple of things here.

So one is we talked about fun. How do you make it fun? So we'll start with that and then we'll go on to the money side of it. The fun part is, is that, you know, when baby Steve Dangle would have been four, five, six, seven. And I know, I mean, you didn't get a chance to play, but if you had, you would have had to play full ice. So you would have been playing against kids who were skating since they were spermatozoa. Yep. Like, boom.

Now, when I started in grade four, that's what happened. Were you already behind? Oh, wait. And you're just getting windmilled, right? Turnstile. The whole game. The whole game. And it's not fun.

It's not fun. When I was 10 years old, my parents said, hey, if you want, we'll put you in hockey. And all my friends play like rap. And I'm like, dude, I'm going to have a terrible time. Somebody should put that in a profile somewhere. They should include that one in a profile. I'm glad I started it. It'd be really good.

I caught up, but it took a lot of time. It took a lot of practice. So what they've done now, and that's not fun, right? So you peeled out. You didn't pursue it. I didn't even get on the ice. Right? Yeah.

So what they do now is Hockey Canada had developed, I think it's something like 35 years ago, this thing they call the initiation program. They didn't mandate it. So, you know, Sweden, a lot of Scandinavian countries mandated it. USA Hockey adopted it. Somebody named Austin Matthews ended up playing in a system very familiar to this. And what they do is, so at 4, 5, and 6, you don't play full ice because that's ridiculous. Why would you play that full sheet of ice?

Do you want to compete for a kid with, like, little legs? The Zest thing is the first period intermission where they do the Timbitz hockey, and you watch them just go, and it takes them, like, 15 seconds just all the way in. 30 strides to get from blue line to blue line. Which is, oddly enough, pretty representative of what we did on the ice on Friday night. Yes. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah.

So what they do now is they divide the ice into thirds. So you play sideboard to sideboard. So if you think about it, you divide it into thirds. So from the blue line in and the blue line in, playing sideboard to sideboard, you have two games. So you have eight kids in each game, right? And then in the middle, you have a water station and some skills development where they go around cones and do that stuff. And then you rotate. So the kids are on the ice for the full hour.

So instead of driving and, you know, being on the ice one every three shifts, you're on the ice basically the whole time. The second best part of this, there's no scoreboard. So there's no parents yelling, shoot, shoot. So there's a lot of people who are upset about that. Oh, 100 percent, because it doesn't look like hockey. And that's the point. And the genius of this is that we're talking about, you know, your memories of being up at the cottage and sort of the weird sense of purity of just being out there on the ice and playing. So what it allows at this entry level now, it sort of replicates pond hockey.

There's no adults out there yelling at them because there's no scoreboard. I mean, the adults, the parents are all leaning over the railings, drinking their terrible arena coffee that's been filtered through a sweat sock. And they're watching it. But what they're watching is the kids are just goofing around. They're spinning, they're passing, they're touching the puck more, they're shooting the puck more, goalies are facing more shots. And then as they get up, you know, at novice, so our son's eight years old,

they now play half ice. So they put a big sort of, you know, temporary arena board in the middle on the red line and you can have two games going at once. Wow. So again, you come off the ice for one shift, you're on, you know, so you're on every other shift. But again, you can have the kids who have been skating since their spermatozoa at one end and they can swim like sharks and kill each other over here. And then you have the kids who are learning at their own pace at the other end. So they can touch the puck more. They can build confidence, develop their skills at their own pace and eventually guess what happens if they have fun they will catch up with the other kids yeah um and that's what happens is that you know the challenge with hockey is that they stream kids

out by the time they're 8 9 10 11 12 which is just bonkers because they're not having fun or they're getting turnstiled whereas other sports you know such as basketball or football that you can walk into high school and be like hey i've got four years here to develop both physically mentally emotionally that's not both that's three things um and and i have plenty i have a longer window to develop into this game whereas hockey we seem to say oh if you're not a superstar by 12 sorry dude yes sorry little girl you're out yeah um so what what tom renny is doing and what hockey canada is doing by implementing this system um which will then continue to go up until about the peewee level um is trying to preserve some of that fun that's just one aspect but again there

was huge pushback. In Toronto, there were threats of lawsuits of, you can't tell me how to teach my children how to play hockey. There are renegade leagues for five-year-olds where parents can have their children play full ice. They're not sanctioned by Hockey Canada. They cost a ton of money. They're run, you know, kind of a sort of aside from the regular Hockey Canada programming, but you can have your little daughter play full ice if you want at five years of age. Imagine running a renegade league for an actual toddler. But you know what you're doing? You're making tons of money. Oh, yeah.

There's so much money in these points. I got to tell you, when I first heard that they weren't keeping score, I kind of hated it. Because one of the things that I loved... Is yelling at little children. You got to shoot the puck. You're the guy at the end of the center. I love that. Shoot.

No, I know. You don't score, you're walking home. The reason I hated it was because you took so much pride in winning. But the kids keep score. The kids know what the score is. For sure, the kids do. And I thought about that later. Because initially it's a new idea, so you're like, reject it.

And then, well, maybe I'll think about that a little bit. And so what I what I remember was I hated to lose, but I had to learn how I had to learn how to accept that. And I think the argument against what you're saying is, well, you know, these kids are never going to learn how to lose. We're just going to hold their hand through life and they've got to learn how to lose. But the kids do know, like they keep track of how many goals they had. Like we do. Steve just mentioned it here. He talked about how many goals he had and how many goals Jesse had. I know how many goals I scored.

It's the 30s. It's Aberdeensy. And so, you know, so that's something that they'll keep track of anyway. I wish the reasoning that was brought up in opposition of this was as deeply thought out as the point you just raised. Because a lot of it that I heard in some of the meetings was like, well, how are they going to learn offsides? There's no blue line. How are they going to learn offsides? They're not learning the proper game.

And it's like, well, they'll pick that up. Dude, they don't know how to move yet. No, I mean, some of them still, like, five years old. think back, there's still a 30% chance that at least once a month they're peeing in the bed at night. They're not reading full chapter books. Why do they need to know offside?

Who cares? Let's have them handle the pump for a couple strides. I'm projecting. That's actually just me that has that. No, no, no. I peed the bed till later. Much, much later. All the way through freshman year. I did last night. The Leafs lost. It's a habit of mine. There was a

tweet last night from Evolving Wild which is Adam's burner account. That's right, yeah. Smart Adam. Yeah, and it was just, do you ever just stop and think about how hard hockey is? So, like, when I was playing soccer at, like, four or five, six years old, you want to keep score then, I think that's fine.

Hockey at that age? Dude, you don't even know what you're doing. You don't have full control of your body when you're on the ice. What's the point of, man, learning the rules, let alone keeping score? It's fun now that, like, the really fun part is watching them when they do develop and they do learn. And so we spent, I don't know how long here, just crapping all over the game at the grassroots level. That we all love. That we all love.

And there's a reason because it is hockey and we pick on it because it, you know, historically has a lot of meaning to us. But the real benefit here is that, I mean, you mentioned the growth, the curve. Like, hockey is a strange game to pick up, especially at 4, 5, 6. But now that like we're, you know, for the eldest, eight going on nine and the youngest who's four and in hockey school, you see what they learn in the confidence. So, you know, there's a tournament in Buffalo last year and there were seven and eight back then. And so we stayed in Niagara Falls at a hotel and they had a couple of games downtown and a beautiful outdoor facility that they have in Buffalo, like gorgeous, gorgeous. It's a covered outdoor arena and then a couple up in Niagara Falls. But every second that they weren't on the ice, they're in the hotel pool.

Every second that they weren't in the hotel pool or on the ice, they're playing mini sticks in the rented room that we had. And then they're having pizza together. They're playing tag. They're hanging out. The parents are hanging out. So, you know, we live in the most populous city in Canada. And our corner of East York feels like Norwood or like, you know, Listowel, Letterkenny. It feels like something like that because, you know, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker that, you know, these kids don't go to school together.

But, you know, there are from, I mean, again, not as varied as they should be, but they're from different backgrounds, different parts. And they build that one physical literacy of being on the ice and doing all that crazy stuff on the ice. But the social engagement, the fun stuff that they're going to remember forever that, you know, maybe they don't have the cottage where they can go and skate outdoors. is because, by the way, you know, there's just icebergs now because the whole lake's melted. Right. But they have those memories of playing hockey, and they'll have those relationships for probably a little bit longer

than they will for the kids that they went to kindergarten with because they're playing hockey with these kids for three, four, five years. And that's the real benefit, that they have so much fun. And it is so great that they can go and have these different experiences. We're going to a tournament in Barrie, and we're staying in some hotel up there that has a pool and stuff like that this winter and the kids are going to have a blast.

It is such a wonderful experience, but wouldn't it be even more wonderful if everybody could experience that and not just people with the means? Right. That's the point. Yeah. We're fortunate. We're lucky. We have the flexibility to take time off work.

Hey, boss, shame the myrtle. Like we have that ability. We are lucky. We are. So why can't everybody have the same experience? because you know what used to canadians used to gordy how learned to skate with a pair of rusty skates from a rucksack during the great depression like why why can't we get back to somewhere this country was at its poorest the game was easiest easier for people to get to than now think of

how many guys have their names up in the rafters at scotia bank arena and you're like did that i mean they're hanging in bay street now but like did they have parents who worked on bay street No. They worked in mining towns. I mean, the origin stories for these guys are from all over the place. But now, compare and contrast the best Leafs of the past with the current Leafs now. And I'm not blaming anybody on the Leafs for where they came from. But take a look at where these kids come from. It's not from those northern mining towns anymore. Right, right, wow Well, you know what, it's going to be a fascinating reading You've got to check out Before the Lights Go Out with Sean Fitzgerald I'm sure, Sean, we're going to reference this for the rest of the show

But we do need to get to what happened in hockey In the last few days I feel like I haven't spoken for half an hour I've just been a student I feel like, I'm like, this show sounds really great With us not talking Like, it's amazing Yeah, can you like, freak off and not steal our jobs?

Sean You were at the game last night, right? You covered it? I was. It was my first game of the year. Sorry about that, Mitch Marner. Yeah, right? So it's all Sean's fault, just in case anyone wants to know.

But we were, you know, obviously coming out of the first period, you know, they're down to nothing, but pretty much everybody thinks, and Steve, I need you on this one too. Yeah, sorry. Everybody thinks coming out of that first period that they deserve better. I looked at it as they made their own luck a little bit. I'm not quite sure how the partial three-on-two started on the first goal. But Barry, I guess, didn't quite trust Matthews enough. All of a sudden, they're weak on one side, which should be fine because Jake Muzzin broke up the pass.

Oh, he whacked it straight to a flyer, and now they're boned. And he puts on a perfect shot. The second one, on the power play, or on the penalty kill, I guess. Mikheyev, dumb penalty. Was not a smart penalty, and the ref gave him two chances before that. Freddie the Goat was playing more PK than I was used to him seeing, and this was before Marner even got hurt. And I didn't like him out there at all.

And then because he was— Well, isn't he just the face-off guy and then he goes off? Isn't that supposed to be his role? That's how it's supposed to go, but it doesn't always work out that way, right? Because if you lose that face-off, all of a sudden you're just a straight-up penalty killer. So he botches that, he attacked the point when he shouldn't have, if I know the Leafs penalty kill correctly. Justin Holl is completely in no man's land, connecting, takes a shot, and it goes off

a friggin' shin. Yep. So, I thought it was a bit of bad luck, I thought they made their own bad luck. They fought back to tie it with one of their best players injured, and then they lost on a thing that's not even hockey. Right. That's how I looked at the game. Sean, what did you see?

Would you like, would you not like? i mean and also can i ask you quickly absolutely were you there for the mike babcock comments about tyson berry before the game no i had uh i had an eight-year-old hockey practice i had to be there in the morning so i wasn't there for the morning skate so before you priorities yeah of course well before you get into those before you get into your thoughts i know i've just asked you that question but the tyke hockey practice or no well do you want to get those too but the tyson berry comments from mike babcock saying hey you know he's gonna have to adjust uh because he's not going to get first line power play like he used to so he's it's he's got a bit you know

reinvent himself is in in both your estimation is that an unfair ask for mike babcock to to to be for mike for tyson berry or does tyson berry have enough skill that it you know yeah he might take a deduction a little bit in points this year but it shouldn't matter he should still play better it shouldn't matter he should still play better he's a professional but i mean it was also kind of a thing to watch on that first power play i think he got on for the last 40 seconds and 20 of it was spent behind his net stick handling looking for an outlet because they're in the middle of a change and i felt kind of bad i'm like here you are 40 seconds oh you gotta wait for a play to develop and then it was a turnover so it it was like watching me play on a power play

it's just like a lot of lost opportunity they like i know people were were yelling for the first power play to get more time and it looks like they're they're getting more this year but it's to the point where i'm like why even have a second unit because of that 20 second they're really they have 20 to 30 seconds to make something happen yeah and it's just not going to happen and it's probably only because you can't possibly leave morgan riley out there for two minutes because if they do get caught in the defensive zone after the penalty's over it's like well he's just going to lie down and sort of take a nap and catch his breath there was a moment in the third period yeah there was a moment in the third period where i'm like has he left the ice

like he was just playing so so much yeah but so but now you get this guy you traded an extremely good player to get him, what are you going to do? How are you going to utilize this asset? And what is the right way to use him? You have a right-handed shot who knows how to generate scoring that you've been dying for, and you have him for less than $3 million, because for whatever reason

Joe Sackick decided to retain half and all it cost you was, like, Callie Rosen. He was really good in the second unit, three-on-three in overtime. So you had Morgan Riley come out and then you had Tyson Berry go. So in those five minutes maybe that's what you're playing for. Right. Just a really good dynamic defensive skater and then, yeah. No, I don't

know what you do with the power play because i mean morgan riley kind of deserves it right yeah like yeah it's 70 point season yeah no he's pretty i mean not i don't want to take it too complex above my understanding here but he's he's pretty good at hockey yeah right he's fast he's dynamic he he's been here a long time like it's it's his show i i think so i don't know how you take that away from unless there's a fear of wear and tear i mean certainly you can't play 30 minutes a night so maybe that's the way you get around it's like hey we need you to rest up because you know if you get 30 minutes a night in november that's not as important as 30 minutes a night in late april early may right what gets me is okay first unit second unit whatever he's allowed to

score five on five and last year with the avalanche he did and he's still on pace for i want to say 25 points on the entire season so i went back and i looked at some of the things the avalanche did to help him succeed. And I just don't really feel like the Leafs do that. They scored? They scored. There was that. But like Nathan McKinnon, A, attacking with speed,

and B, attacking the middle with speed, which they just don't do. Tyson Berry being allowed to fly into the zone, which they just don't do. Didn't Tyson Berry have a quote not that long ago where he said that McKinnon would sometimes chirp him if he left the ice too early because he wanted him on the ice with him that often?

Like that's a pretty good pat on the back, right? But the thing is, you've got Morgan Rielly Right What do you do? I think we've all seen the drop pass thing that they're doing They keep drop passing, drop pass, drop pass What is this development that you're talking about? Is there another team in the league

That drop passes as much as they do? And haven't teams Haven't we figured out by now that teams picked up on that About 18 months ago and they cannot Are you talking about the zone entry? The zone entry stuff is so, it's painful to watch And yet, it's like, and every time they do it Every time you know who it's going to,

you know it'll end up with Morgan Riley or Mitch Marner. It's going to be one of the two. And then they're going to try to skate it up, and then they'll drop it to the other guy, and then try to get it to Nylander. Nylander tries to get it across, and then they gain zone entry. But teams know. I think we drastically, drastically overestimated

the impact Paul McFarlane was going to have. This power play looks identical to last year's, except Matthews and Marner switched. But then why is that? If they brought in a guy specifically to fix an issue, a guy who clearly had success in Florida, but I think it was the number two power play in the league, and then he comes in and then nothing changes, then what was the change?

Maybe we oversimplified the issue. I don't know. I don't know what you mean by that. Like maybe we're overestimating. Like it's not as simple as DJ Smith did the penalty kill and I didn't like the penalty kill, so he has to go. And Jim Hiller did the power play and I didn't like the power play, so Jim Hiller's got to go.

Paul McFarlane had a good power play in Florida, So we bring him in, and all of a sudden, it's the second best. But then what else could it be? Sorry, whose voice is that? I don't know. That's my dumb brain voice. I'm like, oh, well, he does this. Okay, so if it didn't fix, then what was happening?

I don't mean to pick on the guy, but the one constant on the coaching staff is the head coach. Well, it's also the players. It's also the players. I don't know. Maybe the players just suck on the power play. Do you think that all those guys want to drop pass all day? I don't think so. I don't think so.

Well, I think they want to blow through the neutral zone. Yes. I think they want to skate because they can. I think they want to pass because they can. Why are we so... And I wonder if McFarlane's coming in on, well, I got to take some action or direction from Mike Babcock. It's not like he can just be out on his own and do whatever he wants.

And Mike's like, yeah, whatever. You think Mike Babcock's the kind of guy that's not going to want some control over that? And that's... to your point Steve I think there might be an issue there and I wonder how long are they going

to continue to go with this and Sean I'm really interested to get your thoughts on this how long are they going to keep doing this banging their heads against the wall

before they go we got to change this yeah I mean there's a piece up on The Athletic a couple days ago never heard of it it's great

I think Ian Ian Tulloch had it you know sort of mulling through some of this which is you know basically why the Leafs

are playing boring hockey these days why is it boring And and like, yeah, for the first period, like it was it was really boring last night. Like they're down to nothing. There was nothing that's like, wow, that's awesome. I mean, Mitch Marner went flying through the air, but it's a low event game that they're playing now. And more than that, yeah, there's the drop pass and the zone entry issues on the power play. But also that, you know, what Ian highlighted was they're also really relying on shots from the point, like low percentage shots from the point to get to the net.

And if you take a look at the heat map, it is left point, right point, and not a lot of shots coming from the slot, which you would usually equate with the score zone, which is what it was last year. So something fundamentally in that planning has shifted. And, you know, the question was, you know, is it something where they're, you know, working with a defensive zone or a defensive minded system or a low percentage system, you know, with the mind that eventually they're going to free them and say, hey, here's how you play responsibly defensively. You know, incorporate that with your natural instincts, go play and score lots of goals. But that doesn't really make a ton of sense. So the big long-winded answer is, I have no idea. What would be the point of having this much talent up front, this much offensive talent up front, and playing low-event hockey? Like, that doesn't make any sense.

You're playing, like, you play low-event hockey when you don't have skill. When your team, when you are compensating, when you're going, like what the Leafs were in 15-16 when Babcock took over, That team played low event hockey Because that team needed to If they played run and gun They were a team of fourth liners Or not even that And if you play run and gun

In that style with that talent group Well you're going to get torched every night And that group looked good Because they bought into the Well we're going to have to play low event They were kind of a team you could sort of get behind 16-17 was so fun Because they tried to teach them

To defend And then at some point they were just like, all right, I guess you don't know how to do that. So go have fun. And they just tried to win every game 5-4 and they won enough of them that they made the playoffs. It was awesome. So what could possibly be the logic of not playing to that? What could possibly be the reason that you have $40 million wrapped up in four forwards? And you're not going to play high event hockey?

I mean, come on. But that just to me is, that's a disconnect to me between what this team is and what someone wants them to be. I think it's pretty clear. I think everybody's talked about the answer that actually naming it is that Zach Hyman's the Hart Trophy. I think that's the answer that nobody's really brave enough to say right here. And Steve's mentioned it before, Sean, but should a team be, should a line be this affected by Zach Hyman not being there? Should a team be this affected because they don't have Hyman and Dermott? Really?

Like, not to take away from what those guys bring, but really? I mean, line makeup's kind of interesting. You know, in the modern game, you know, left wing, right wing, center. I mean, it might be one thing for our beer league team or the team that will hit the ice later this week. Whereas now it's sort of, you know, different defined roles where you have somebody goes in and digs, somebody can go in and distribute, and somebody can go in and finish. And I think maybe that, yeah, like Hyman's the guy who can go in there And he's not going to necessarily dangle, but he will be a bulldog in the corner, dig it out, and then sort of send it down the assembly line.

So, you know, maybe, maybe that's it. Maybe it is. I just can't help but feel, and I hate picking on the coach and going back to the coach, but it just feels like an I'm right fest. The Barry is not what I need. And Muzzin can't play on the right. Well, Barry plays on the right there, Mike. And Hyman's pretty good, huh? Remember that comment?

Hyman's pretty good, huh? And also the usage of Jason Spezza and how this could eventually really hamstring Kyle Dubas if, say, you want to get other low-cost UFAs in town, and if this poor guy gets waived and ends up playing in the AHL, and then you go down to another person who might come on a discount, and, oh, by the way, you might end up in the ECHL, but hey, come on. Patan's going to play center. How about I try that once, we lose, and I say, fuck you forever?

Which is basically what happened It's basically what happened to that hockey player How long can they go this way? How long can this continue? Aren't we done here? I need to know What was that? I said when the Leafs were losing

And now they won three straight And then lost in the shootout I said guys Did you credit them as full three wins for those? Yeah I mean Vegas LA and was it Philly? Do you get

There were a couple sloppy ones Do you get half points in there for a close win over LA You know the way they were playing I'm like good At least you won and then they played Vegas Just asking I totally get where you're coming from and believe me My mentions have been full of it

But I just I look at the constant I look at the trend I look at Justin Hall and go They didn't let him play hockey last year You know what I mean There's a huge from the outside looking in disconnect between the coach and the GM

and at some point I still stand by what I said a couple weeks ago I think if it were 100% up to the GM he'd be gone by now there's no he undercuts him at every turn at every turn every move he makes

is not good enough for him and at what point is this just not a match Sean what do you think the makeup of that is the makeup of the relationship makeup of the relationship and the makeup of kyle dubas's opinion like the power structure yeah do you think that kyle dubas went to management this offseason we have no we don't know do you think kyle dubas went to upper management said i want

to let this guy go and they said no he's got to hang out one more year do you think that he's insanely patient because he doesn't kyle dubas is a lot of things he doesn't strike me as an insanely patient person based on the moves he made this summer? I mean, anything I'd have would just be pure...

I have no... Yeah, we're not... That is so far above my opinion on this one. That's the lifeblood of this show, to be honest. Yeah, we're not reporters.

We're just talking. Sorry, can I... Guessing. Yeah, can I call a friend? This is a Steve Dangle journalistic podcast. The thing is, I mean,

what's always fascinated me, and I'm not going to dance entirely around the question of... Mike Babcock as a character study has always fascinated me and more so over the last couple of years.

And this one's going to seem like it starts in left field and maybe it might end in left field. We'll see how this goes. I did a story, I think it was last year. I just showed up at the skate for the first time in a long time, stood in the back of the room and listened to Mike Babcock talk. I'd just come back from Saskatoon reporting for the book. And when I went to Saskatoon, what struck me was

none of these people sound like Mike Babcock. Oh, okay. Like I didn't go to the 7-Eleven and it's like, hey, you know, can I get this pack of gum? Yep, that'll be 25 cents. Like, nobody's like that. Sound like normal people, yeah. Yeah, can I get my coffee?

You want the large double-double? You got a high motor in there. It's real good coffee. Yeah, right? Real good coffee, real good energy. You sound like Yogi Bear. Well, that's it, right? He loves coffee.

So I came back, and I'm like, filter's hard. Sorry. This good man loves paywalls. Sorry, sorry. Anyway. So I came back, and I'm standing there, And I'm like, one, I have no idea what he's talking about because all I can think about is his accent.

Like, what that, like, where did it come from? No, that's exactly it. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, this isn't from Saskatoon. Like, unless I went to the wrong Saskatoon. Like, did I book the wrong frigging airline ticket? So what I did was, because I'm a professional journalist and I take things very seriously, I started calling linguists. I started calling linguists at the University of Toronto, University of Manitoba, University of Saskatchewan, I believe, and started asking them, like, okay, I'd send them audio files of Mike Babcock talking. Oh, my God.

You sent linguists, doctors, people who are studying this, Mike Babcock. Mike Babcock talking. Okay, this is great. Right? So, and here's the background on Mike Babcock, is that he grew up, some of his early formative years were in a place because his dad was either in mining or geology or maybe one of those two things, or both. grew up in a place called tungsten which i think was in the yukon and it only existed because of hey guess what tungsten yeah i guess you are you know this story and then they moved uh to a place in northern manitoba that existed only by the grace of the government again for mining so the

people who lived in tungsten guess what weren't born and raised in tungsten they came from all over the place and the people in northern manitoba again from all over the place the north everywhere and then finally settled in the regina when he was a teenager and that's sort of where he you know he sort of identifies as being from there so if you think about it growing up you'd have picked up accents the way you talk like we have a southern ontario accent which sounds like southern ontario to us but it might sound something somebody else so he picked all this up and it's this weird sort of melange of like letter kenny meets yogi bear meets all of this stuff right but that's part of it so you know the linguists identified okay these are some of the regional dialects these are some

of how the vowels sound. This is some of the nomenclature, some of the way the words sound. That's one part of it. The second part of it is, and this gets into Mike Badcock, is that, okay, so he grew up in Saskatoon,

but then he went and he coached, came, you know, went to McGill, so he lived in Montreal. Then he went out west and coached again. Then he went to London

and coached in the UK. Then he moved to, you know, LA. By the way, his London flow, that hair, right? oh yeah the hair was great so then he lived in southern california and then he lived in michigan and those are you know some of them especially have real strong regional dialogue sure yeah i don't know if this happens to you guys like sometimes i'll be interviewing somebody on the

phone from say the u.s south and i'll be talking to like a football coach in alabama or you know a hockey coach somewhere in tennessee for a story and just through the course of a long conversation i might start twanging some accents just because that's what i'm hearing you know coming back at me over the phone and you know nobody's called me on it yet they're like are you making fun of me i'm like no it's just subconscious like i'm not going to drop a y'all but like you know you start reflecting maybe you you flatten out some of your a's or your accents because it's just you're listening you're empathetic you you just can't help it right it's like yeah if you live in england you're going to start to sound british after a while yes exactly um but mike babcock

went to england went to michigan went to la guess what he sounds exactly like friggin mike Babcock would have been about 30 years ago, right? So talking to the linguists, like, how does this happen? Like, you know, people develop accents usually where they move. And they said, well, what that usually indicates is, is that somebody has a very strong, unshakable sense of self and self-confidence and awareness of who they are and feel absolutely no need to not conform with wherever it is they are because this is who they are, this is who they've always been.

Wow. Sean, you ever go to the TFC game and have an Italian sausage there? What the hell is that about? They're unfreaking believable. Funny, but like... Unfreaking believable. Unfreaking believable.

Because that's what he does, though. He brings you in, and then he goes, all right, let's talk hockey. And that, to me, that, to me, is Mike Babcock. Yeah. From his accent.

And I'm sorry that's a shaggy dog story, but that, to me, that, to me, is Mike Babcock, that this is who he is, this is what's got him here. He is, by the way, one of the most successful ever to do his job anywhere in the NHL. And he is who he is, he is who he was, and he is who he always will be.

And good luck. Okay. Interesting. So with that, Jesse, I'm going to ask, do you have the TV remote? Because what I know, according to Ken Campbell, is that from what he was told, Ron McLean is going to address last night's comments at the top of Hometown Hockey, which for us right now will start in about five minutes.

So we're going to try to get it up, and if we do, we'll pause, we'll watch, and then we'll react. Address what happened last night on Hockey Night in Canada. Don Cherry made remarks which were hurtful, discriminatory, which were flat out wrong. We at Sportsnet have apologized. It certainly doesn't stand for what Sportsnet or Rogers represents. We know diversity is the strength of the country. We see it in the travels with our show and with Hockey Night in Canada. So I owe you an apology, too.

That's the big thing that I want to emphasize. I sat there, did not catch it, did not respond. Catherine Tenise, Tsitsana First Nation, once said, in any wrongdoing, the real key is recognition and acknowledgement. And I wanted to let you know that first. And then you work on the relationship so that it isn't divisive, so that something can be a unifying event. And Idle No More was a great lesson to all of us.

Last night was a really great lesson to Don and me. We were wrong, and I sincerely apologize. And I wanted to thank you for calling me and Don on that last night. Okay, so I don't know, by this point you've seen the, you may have seen the apology. Essentially, if you didn't, it basically went like this, and I will paraphrase this because I'm not going to try to attempt to say what Ron McLean said word for word. You can look it up online. It's available. do you want me to insert that'd be great so people have heard it bingo so here's the deal

he owned it he wrecked he acknowledged he owned ron yes acknowledged owned and said you know we gotta and reference and i think this is important reference that some people have been hurt and relationships need to be uh mended and rebuilt and frankly new ones need to be forged uh you know based on our conversation earlier in the show. However, I have to say personally that I think it's awful toothless and awful gutless that Don Cherry was not there. Yeah, Ron had to jump on the grenade.

So why does Ron McClain, who played a pretty minor role in this, and he said, I didn't catch it, and that's sort of what I thought might have been happening. Now, you could say it was wrong anyway, and it was, but for me, personally, and these are just my thoughts, how is

they're in Welland tonight Welland ain't far Don lives in Mississauga why isn't he there? Because Ron is eloquent and can talk I assume there's a lot more going on behind the scenes that prevent him from being there

whether it be his job on the line or him being bullish about it That's the part that worries me That he doesn't want to apologize And I don't think he does Because he's got Twitter There's a reason we haven't heard from him A. Don should apologize

B. Is there anywhere He should be less than in front of a camera At this moment Especially They couldn't put him on live there I wouldn't trust him at this point Dear God I'm going to get in shit.

Why? I don't know. Go on, Ron. Sean, what do you think? What did you catch from that? I'm just going to sit here and watch Steve trying to swallow his tongue here. Yeah, right? Until I choke.

It's actually bleeding. You can see it coming out of his mouth. He's just biting down so hard. The only way you get in trouble is if there's conjecture about something being untrue. I think we're asking you your opinion. Oh, if I can borrow a line from Leonard Keddie. Fucking embarrassing. Okay.

Sean? That is a line from Letterkenny. I mean, listen, I know you're working on a story for this, and I want you to blow the whole thing. No, no, no, no, no, no. I think it's interesting that Don wasn't part of it. I do. I think Steve's... Did you think he was going to be a part of it?

Okay, so the thing about it being in Welland is there's technology that you could do a double-ender, and that's where you're both on the screen. So Ron could have been like Brady Bunch, you know, with Don over his shoulder saying, yes, yes, yes, or no, no, no. They could have done a double-ender, but I suspect that Jesse was right, too, that having Don on live television the day after that would be like playing with fire while also maybe covering yourself with aviation fuel. There's some inherent risk involved, and the stakes, I think, would be so high for Sportsnet and Rogers right now with corporate sponsors whose names are attached. Like, this isn't the Scotiabank. No, this is Rogers Hometown Hockey.

But Scotiabank is, like, a presenting sponsor. Budweiser is the presenting sponsor. The clip of Don that went on to Twitter had Budweiser right in the middle of it. You know, they can't be happy about that. There's some heavy hitters as part of this. Like, there's a lot on the lines that if this was live, like, you're on the high wire above Niagara Falls. Like, that's what Ron just had to walk there. And if you had Don Cherry jumping up and down on that high wire, like, who knows what could have happened.

So, I mean, yeah, with all of that being said, if Don was out there and was contrite and did say this isn't what I meant or I'm sorry or I've learned a lot over the last 24 hours or whatever, contrition would have been important. It would have been key. um the fact that he wasn't there um now i think uh lets this all live for at least another six days because everybody's going to be wondering what happens saturday so if don's there does he address it does he not address it does don not make it to saturday does something happen in between does rogers issue a press release to say you know we we've evaluated we've talked to people and we've decided to make this move dot dot dot his twitter account he has one and it's filtered You can prim and proper it up as much as you like.

It's filtered by a woman who, by the way, has such tenure in the industry that the fact that she has to do that is so beneath her. What were you going to say, Jesse? I was just going to say, as someone who enjoys watching Toronto sports media, I'm very interested to see how it plays out tomorrow on the outlet, TSN and Sportsnet,

on just how much they're allowed to talk about it over their airwaves and what their bosses are going to say that they're allowed to and they can't say. Not a single person has tweeted about it. Not a single sportsman. Personality from sportsmen. I have not seen a single one.

That's what I'm interested to see. Have they been told by upper management, hey, this is the mandate? Scott McArthur tweeted about it and he's got a relatively big role, right? He's on the Fan Morning Show. Michael Grange has tweeted that he's wearing a poppy on air

as a symbol for, all caps, all Canadians. So he has tweeted about it. He's retweeted. There have been, yes. I don't know if he can blanket it all. But this is the biggest story in hockey right now. Is it going to lead every sports show on the network tomorrow?

No. Well, if Mitch Marner comes out tonight and he has a torn Achilles, then that's the biggest story. Mike Babcock, by the way, did talk about that. I know it's been a big day for you He says he's stiff He says he's real stiff

That's good news I hope so, maybe a high ankle sprain or something But that's not great news if it is a high ankle sprain But it's still not a ripped up torn up ankle or something I'm not a doctor, but the fact he got back on the ice at all suggests that it's not something

Yeah, twice And looked like he wanted to finish the game suggests it's not catastrophic He shouldn't have finished that game and he shouldn't be playing tonight. So all that's above board. Right. Back to what we were saying,

is that, you know, I think... So you're embarrassed. Yeah. It's mortifying, man. Like... No, tell us how you feel. And you're not... Listen, I don't want you to be afraid

because I don't think you're going to say anything that's going to be like, well... No, I know. I'm trying to... No, I'm trying to figure out... Sportsnet's not the victim here, right? No. So I'm trying to talk about it

in a way that properly articulates my feelings without trying to make this about Sportsnet. You know what I mean? They're not the victims here. But I get to see the statement come out from the company, and it's one giant company. They can only make one statement. But I get to see all these people that I work with

on a daily basis go, fuck. yeah you know what i mean like go oh yeah yeah because it's not representative of the other employees that's for sure like if if you're if you manage the social accounts just resign to the fact that it's going to be a shitty week for you if you do anything online just resign to the fact that it's going to be a shitty week for you and like anyone who's working on hockey night like your whole week's efforts are going towards this upcoming saturday and somehow redeeming yourself and knowing that um it all hinges on a guy who won't even get on camera and apologize for it all and how do you win how do you win right like if you're if you're an employee or

of your sports net the brand if you're an employee you don't you don't the employees unfortunately what whatever the employees believe uh and i can tell you from the limited time i worked there um they are um a inclusive kind good group of people i loved it there it was so much fun and one guy who can make this close to better and he hasn't shown up yeah and that's what it is The worst part about it, and again, Jesse, I think you made a really good point. It seems like it's either they don't trust him to say it properly, or he doesn't want to apologize. They're both unacceptable answers. Right.

But what's unfortunate is these guys, the guys that are not Don Cherry, that Don Cherry is probably not thinking about when he makes those comments, is all the people that are there every single day working their butts off, who are younger and trying to carve out a career in sports, in an industry that's in contraction right now and here he is making it a lot tougher on them too, you know, we've obviously not the victim here, but it's

also, there's also there's shrapnel and it's a shame so anyway, I mean, listen like I said, I always will respect somebody that comes out and owns it and I'm not surprised by anything that Ron McLean said tonight

you know, he's obviously if you met ron mclean for and you talked to him for five minutes you'd know that this guy is racked with guilt and feels awful and sounded sorry looked sorry was in front of a camera yeah and on microphone and not making excuses he told you what happened and said i'm gonna i'm gonna be better uh and that i respect but uh boy and i'm sure management knows that this is probably the lesser of evils but it's still not a great look right now and it's a shame it's a real shame because it brings down everybody else who works their butts off and everybody else who feels, like you said so eloquently, Sean, othered.

That is such a really... That's at the forefront. Yeah, that is the most important part. So anyway, you know, I don't think there's much more to say on that, but we'll move forward here. So let's... You're having fun for a show. Yeah, sorry, Sean.

It's a heavy show for you to be on. But I'm glad you were here. I really am. I'm glad you were here because it you put words in such a way you're such a great storyteller

and you say things in a way that we could just never never approach and I'm so glad you were here because your understanding of it is so much deeper

than any of us could have really offered I mean that do you guys ever like talk about light subjects though oh yeah because if you want

to have me back for like one of those yeah you ever heard about Steve's kayak I'd love to like hang out maybe one day and talk about like

fun things yeah yeah well you know what Nick Robertson stole my kayak We'll do a quick press conference here and then we'll wrap it up. Unfortunately, heavier show, but that's just what happened. Shout out to the Sens for scoring two goals in four seconds.

That was cool. Shout out to the Flames that look like the Leafs West or the Leafs look like the Flames East. Both high-powered offenses who just cannot get it together. Although, the Flames seem to be turning around just a little bit faster than the Leafs are. They played the Blues last night, lost in overtime. I don't know.

I think they might be back on track. and Robbie Favre, man. Oh my god. What a crazy, he gets traded for the Stanley Cup champions. How do you make that trade knowing A, you're giving away a former first round pick and B, the guy on the other end of the phone is Steve

Eisenman. Are you nuts? Are you nuts making that trade? Hilarious that it already looks bad. Yeah. Hilarious and totally predictable. If Steve Eisenman calls you. Hang up the phone. Hang up the phone. First of all, you know what he did

with Tampa Bay second of all he's on Detroit so you know he has nothing to give you he has nothing of value to give you he took

wasn't Delarose a Montreal Canadiens player for a bit and then sort of like a cast off he's a good GM with a bad team hang up the phone

what are you doing that's usually more like what the show's like gotcha okay yeah yeah no no I get it now okay we haven't even talked

about the Oilers yet which is weird I know what do we want to talk about with the Oilers oh we don't it's just we usually find a way

I always creep into the show I don't think there's anything Ron McLean by the way Has also tweeted out His apologies as well So you can check those out Oh on his Twitter That he has

And can use Yes Let's do the press conference This is good timing Someone on our Reddit said Any good book ideas Sean Could you recommend a book

Hey are you Is it out in audiobook I don't know This is my first one I don't know how Any of this stuff works I just I wrote it And then I hit send

and then it's like that was it it's on the shelves and stuff okay all show long I've been like does Sean have an audio book

where he is reading the book nobody wants to hear this voice for anything longer why not is he going to give voice no we want to hear you sing it Sean well I mean

wait till you see how many listens and views the show gets you might change your mind it's uh yeah before the lights go out McClellan and Stewart division of Penguin Random House

available to find bookstores near you I drew all of the pictures myself whoa so all of the pictures were drawn by myself what yeah

by his own hand By my own hand. There are no pictures in the book. Jesse, what else we got? We got an interesting question after our earlier discussion. Someone was wondering after the Giroux slap shot. Oh. They were saying if Chara took a slapper, hit the goalie in the mask,

someone got injured, would the NHL scrap the shootout? What do you guys think? If there was a shootout injury. Yeah. Like Chara takes a clapper, injures the goalie, think they would scrap the shootout. If it was Boston against Montreal, like, you'd have Chara do it at one end and then, like, Shea Weber. Like, could you imagine being Tuka Rask and Shea Weber comes on the –

You might make a call to your agent saying, like, tell my wife I love her. Like that, you know it's coming. That's a really interesting question. I had an idea in the LFR today because this is now the second straight game where the Leafs have played Philly. It's gone to overtime and Philly took a penalty in the final 10 seconds of overtime. Now, it didn't matter in the first one because the Leafs took a penalty as well. But in this one, I've seen it suggested, well, then they should be penalized and you take away their first shooter. I think that's a bit extreme.

Here's what I think should happen. Overtime continues. Overtime continues for the duration of the power play. If they score, overtime's obviously over. If they don't score, play continues until there's a whistle, then it's the shooter. Why can't you go to ten minutes of three-on-three rather than five? Because there's absolutely a way. And then because you think of the time that you, you know, there's no scrape anymore.

They bring out the shovels. But like if you're worried about your time window on TV, like that five minutes, the shootout's got to be five minutes, maybe just a hair. How about an 11-round shootout? So why don't we go 10 minutes, three on three, somebody's going to score. I got to tell you, I think that everybody thinks and looks at that with rose-colored glasses, and I respect and appreciate that. But I think the second you make that period longer, they're going to start playing defensively.

They're going to start playing like Babcock's going to be out there line matching and starting guys that don't need to be, and they are. I don't think you can. It's three on three. There's too much space. Tell someone in the 80s about the neutral zone trap, and they'll be like, you can't do it. Tell someone when it was 15 goals a game.

I'm telling you, I feel like the time limit matters. I really do. How about this? No offsides in overtime. Yes. Love that. Now we're talking. It's already barely hockey.

Take away the offsides. Straight up pond hockey. Three on three, no offsides, ten minutes. I'll meet you in the middle. And take out penalties. There's no penalties. Either. Mascots. How about two pucks? Big heads.

All of it. Just make it all legal. Carlton grabs a stick. The commissioner should be Sean Ramjaxxing. With EA Sports. Carlton v. Gritty, who wins last night. Oh, man. Gritty

But Carlton would shut it down And then It gets to overtime It's a finesse game Carlton wins Carlton wins Did you see him do a backflip? I'd watch that overtime

I think I think we just solved it right here That Jesse's idea And Yeah Seven minutes Seven minutes Seven minutes mascot hockey

Yeah Boom Boom No offsides Any more? Yeah What did you guys make of Bettman's comments

About the Olympics? Oh In 20 He said To be fair he said Okay so what he said was They are tremendously disruptive to the NHL schedule, which, for those keeping track, did not bother him when there was a lockout and a strike.

How far do you want to go down this rabbit hole there, Gary? Like, the All-Star game is pretty disruptive. Do you want to go there? Sean. How about sending teams to freaking Sweden, like, in November? Is that not disruptive? Sean, you've written a book on outreach in hockey. Yes.

Do you think the NHL needs to be at the Olympics to grow the game? Yes. yet yeah do you think that this is why i asked do you really think that gary betman and the leadership group there are equipped lawyers are they equipped enough to grow this game now he's been the head for 25 years unchallenged at a certain point though and they say they say on average most executives lose their effectiveness at about year five so that's what you see no i'm not kidding there's studies done on this no i'm laughing and he's at your 20th number right is Is there a point at which Gary's just doing this for Gary's ego and being difficult because he can over a little bit of money that doesn't matter, that's inconsequential to the NHL?

I was just down in South Bend, Indiana with the family watching the University of Notre Dame beat Virginia Tech in football. And we stayed at a hotel in South Bend. Did you meet Rudy? No. No, I didn't. But we did watch the movie as a family the other night. Well, as we watch it every night. And the NHL existed solely on the scroll at the bottom of ESPN.

There was not an NHL highlight anywhere. And there's like 15 ESPN channels. There's the shouting channel. There's the yelling channel. There's the yelling and shouting channel. And then they have college. And then they have the sports center. Right.

And then they have the yelling sports center. Right. And then the yelling college. Yes, the yelling college. And Keith Olbermann somehow is on all of them. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Back for his fifth go-round.

Keith Olbermann again. Anyway, sorry. And there's no hockey. But, you know, there are signs that hockey is growing in certain parts of the United States. University of Illinois, I think, is icing its first collegiate team because, again, Chicago Blackhawks, the echo boom of their dynasty. Dallas has certain growth. You know, some of these teams, especially in the Southern California, have invested heavily in arenas themselves. And that's sort of caught on. I mean, Nick Robertson is kind of an echo product of that. So there are targets that he can point to for growth. It's not growing in Canada. And more than that, it's stagnant as the population continues to grow in Canada.

Now, I only have a Bachelor of Applied Arts from Ryerson, and my accounting isn't too good. But if the population of the country continues to go up and the growth stays like this, eventually you're going to lose more and more Canadians. That's an issue, and that is not something I don't think Gary Bettman is beholden to because he's beholden to the owners, the vast majority of whom are based in the United States. So, yeah, from a grassroots level, hockey needs to be at the Olympics because, I mean, we all know what the highest watched Canadian sports telecast of all time was. It was 2010 and something like 16.5 million Canadians tuned in to watch Sidney Crosby score in Vancouver. And the number is probably low. Right? Yeah.

That might be a conservative estimate. So that's like half plus the population. And Steve was on the ground there. That was the night you almost got arrested, I think. One of them, yes. Yes, one of them. So, yeah, I mean, so 2022 is in China. The time zone is an issue.

Who knows when it comes back through here again on a winter schedule? And that is a problem. Like the NHL, they can't make money off the Olympics. And not only that, you're loaning your labor away for free on the hope that it does foster growth in these different markets, right? Like, you know, you're loaning away Conor McDavid, and he could come back with a torn ACL. John Tavares. and you get 14 what do you get back you get nothing you lose one of your most dynamic players and also if that player is supposed to go deep in the playoffs they're going to be exhausted

because they just spent three weeks of the most intense hockey that they've probably ever played the best hockey the hockey everybody in the world wants to watch but it doesn't do anything for your product so as a fan as a canadian i would love to see it at the olympics grudgingly i also see the nhl side wow grudging i but in the long i want to underscore bold italicized quotation marks grudgingly but in the long term is the nhl side going to win them new markets and more money because i feel like the nhl's view is short-sighted yeah it makes sense for now you grudgingly see their side and whatever okay fine but sometimes you got to have lost leaders there's a reason that they price milk and bread lower than the market value or about the market value and that's

to get you in the grocery store. Sometimes you've got to do the things to get you in the grocery store. How do you know this shit? And it's not games in... I don't know. It's not a game in Sweden. It's a tournament that means something.

It's not the World Cup with some of Europe and young guys. It's an actual World Cup. Yeah, because that's not on primetime in NBC and across the world. Yeah. Your World Cup tournament is not being... I'm not being a contrarian here,

but you still see more Team North America jerseys than almost anything. I agree. Not to be a contrarian. It's true. One, those were pretty awesome jerseys, and two, that was a pretty awesome team. It was amazing. And they made it all the way to the gold medal.

Oh, wait, that was the one team no one gave a shit about. Yeah, Team Some of Europe versus Canada. Team Some of Europe. Some of Europe is beautiful at this time of year. Absolutely. I hear Slovenia looks great. I'm not actually kidding. There was one Some of Europe jersey, and it was the one guy who kept wearing a Slovakia jersey in the stands.

I was like, some Swedes came, Finns came, the North American team really brought attention to the tournament. No one gave a shit about the Sum of Europe team. No. And it was a boring championship game. It's like Marion Gabrick and Anzac Kupretar. No, the championship game was good. It was just that it was two games.

And the first game, it went to overtime, right? Yes, it was two games. But they won it in a, it was overtime, correct? Or it was third period goal. I don't know. Marchand scored, I want to say shorthanded, in like the final minute. Yeah, the final minute. I'm confident in saying you're the only person within six postal codes of where we're sitting who would remember that.

You're probably right. But, I mean, like hockey faces more structural issues in terms of growth. And a lot of it is what we've talked about. It's a very exclusive sport. That's the bigger challenge. If you want to talk about growth of the game, the NHL has to find a way to make it more accessible. and how do you make a game accessible when you need a multi-million dollar building

with a frozen sheet of water on the floor? Like that's not going to happen everywhere. That sounds ridiculous when you phrase it that way. Right, that's their challenge and the thing that the NHL, like the ghost of Christmas future here for the NHL is like Canada's always fueled whatever it is they are in the US.

Like it's been on the money spent here in Canada. What happens if that starts to go away? Then what do you do? Well, and there's, what is it? 70%? 80% of the players are from here? Like, you're talking seven years from now, I think the Sportsnet mega-deal is done, more or less. Is that still seven years?

It's something like that, yeah. It's like seven years away. They might be halfway at the end of this season. I think that's what it is, yeah. So, like, are they going to get $5.2 billion again, knowing the media landscape as we know? Well, maybe, maybe not. Who knows, right? But what if they don't?

What if they only got $5.2 billion 12 years after getting $5.2 billion? And it's not just hockey. There have been stories for years about the rights bubble bursting for all sports. That's common. So what happens if that happens? And then what we're talking about with stagnant participation rates, registration rates in Canada also sort of coming in online at the same time. What if those two combine to really hit the NHL where it hurts? Because if you lose the avidity here in Canada, what do you got?

What do you got? like i'm not like 7.7 million canadians watch the toronto raptors win the win the nba championship um that's a lot there will be aftershock of that 20 years from now we're gonna see all the kids come up who watched it or 15 years from now who watched it who were like i was a kawaii you know kyle lowry so here's something that somebody asked me who mentioned it to me we were at the parade and i'm pretty sure we were both sober but i it wasn't the parade sorry it was the night of So I took the long walk back to get, so everybody was, after the game, after that, you know, it took 30 minutes to figure out if the Raptors won at the end because of all the fouls and

the calls and the reviews. Everybody's walking back and they're like, so the parade tomorrow could be like, your next week could be two or three million people. I mean, yeah, that sounds right. So say the Leafs win in five years. They win the cup in five years. I'm sorry, but say, would it be as big? Would the parade be as big?

That's a good question, yeah. Because the Jurassic Park is more representative of where we live than Maple Leaf Square. I've said that I think the parade will be as many people, but it'll just last longer. Like, you'll just see someone set up a tent at, like, friggin' Front and John, just because, I don't know, I never thought this moment would ever happen. Based on all evidence, I don't think it actually will be bigger. I mean, we'll never know, right? Yeah. Shut up!

Yes, we will! We will know, and it'll seem like there'll be more people because I'll be running around in circles, running around with a big sign that says, Sean was wrong. How dare you? No, you're right. You're right, man.

Also, we literally can't fit more people than we did. Well, there's that, too. Hopefully the best practices will have carried over. But, like, so the whole concept of before the lights go out, like 15 years ago would that have been possible no i would have been laughed out of every ring because like of course hockey is the biggest thing but like i've been really lucky one i've i've had the chance to talk about the project in a lot of different places but i'm able to talk about the project in a lot of different places like it's a it's a it's a book about canada's

frayed tether with hockey i think like when we were kids think about wouldn't even have been a consideration i feel like you could change a few words and it could easily be a book about the lock man you know what i mean it's yeah it's cumbersome but uh you know what it's the number one thing and i remember your old shitty cassette player and all of a sudden it's not a thing anymore you know what the nhl feels like to me and i've had a lot of experience with this in you know being in radio for 12 years and seeing it change i got into radio right before the the crash in 08 so i was on the air at the end of 2007 you know when i was 19 and saw this industry change And I saw the way that my friends were listening to music and I knew the way I was listening to music and how that was changing and how the record companies were like, no, it's not going to happen.

Now you always need us. And they got absolutely like media got slaughtered. Media was traditionally recession proof as a business. Media gets slaughtered. And the record companies, which is less publicized, also did, too, because it was a super good time to be halfway through media school. Right. and and i feel like the nh the nhl feels to me the way um the way record companies and metallica reacted to napster it's like it's like they are they're so not they're so unaware of this

undercurrent now they could be aware of it but they're so unaware of what to do about it and instead of instead of going okay here's a plan where we can incorporate this they're going to fight it every step of the way that's how this feels to me here's an interesting i mean interesting to me in my twisted brain so we're sitting here it's 2019 um 15 years from now i'm not going to do the math on what that year is 15 years from now uh what does the landscape look like here so you have hockey which is becoming increasingly niche the grassroots the pyramid here in canada which is the the breadbasket is shrinking like there's no there's no denying or debating that And then you have football, which is by far the biggest sport in North America.

But at the grassroots level, it's crumbling. Like it's wasting away. There was a story in The Times last fall about New Jersey, high school football in New Jersey, which is not quite Texas but was big. Those powerhouses can't field full teams anymore because parents aren't letting their kids play football. Why? Because of the increasing links between brain-wasting diseases, conditions, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and football. So, you know, there is a great piece that Grantland did a couple of years ago about what would the death of football look like? And this was one of the first waves of parents aren't going to let their kids play.

Then there's going to be legal issues that, you know, Pop Warner coaches and officials are going to get sued because 12-year-olds are showing signs of CTE because you can, you know, in a couple of years be diagnosed with it while you're still living because the tests right now have to be done postmortem. So in 15 years, what might the sporting landscape be here? Like, what might be, you know, the dominant sporting story in Canada be? Are we going to be sitting here talking about the Leafs? Or will we be, will this podcast transform into a Raptors TFC? What the hell are we going to do? Or will we all be sitting, well, you guys all be sitting around here talking for two hours about, you know, the Call of Duty showcase down at Massey Hall because they're packing it and they're charging $200 a head to go and watch. Yeah.

I'm going to be watching the Stanley Cup final between the Toronto How-To Hockeys and the Columbus Nashers. We are in a moment here, I think, where a lot of the dominant sports leagues are, without maybe acknowledging it as much as they should or being aggressive as they should, at the risk of really, really losing a precipitous amount of their market share if they don't address structural issues. The NFL is much different, and I would argue much more troubling than the NHL. The NHL does have CTE concerns, but it's... The NFL is inherent. It's like, it's almost like you play a real game. You need to change the fundamental way of the game. Maybe it'll be flag football.

Yeah. And again, I don't say that dismissively. I mean, maybe it'll just be flag football, and that can be fun to watch too. But like hockey has its own structural issues at its most fundamental levels that have to be addressed or it will become a niche sport. That is my position. well Sean there was a really fun show

yeah Sean I want you to know that when you come back is there anything else depressing that yeah I don't want to be

sitting here it got dark at 430 today that's pretty depressing I don't want to be sitting somewhere 20 years from now turning on the TV and someone saying

20 years ago Sean Fitzgerald wrote a book about this and now we're sitting here and oh we should have listened to him you know

I don't want a copy of his book For God's sake Seriously buy a copy of the book They can be kindling Buy ten Keep yourself warm this winter I'm sitting here

And listening to you talk And just going I'm legitimately listening To an expert Not at all Yes I 100% am And I'm not even necessarily Like talking

About like hockey You know maybe you can Take over for certain segments On certain channels I'm talking about You're an expert Through your research On what

Hockey is becoming In this country it's just because i mean it comes from like it's not an indictment it's just like it's like steve i love you man but your life's really going off the rails you've got to pull yourself together you're going to be in trouble like that's what it is for concerned friend right yeah like we're concerned love we're in the hockey bubble right now with our our kids and it's great and the problem is is that a lot of people can't get in the bubble with us because of all the barriers That's a really badly mixed metaphor.

But, like, it's such a great thing, and there's so many issues that aren't being addressed as aggressively as they should be. Like, you know, hockey isn't for everyone. As much as we like to say it is, it isn't. And you can't blame any one person or any one group. Minor hockey association executives or volunteers, we're trying their very best. But, you know, some of their expertise, like, they're not marketing experts. They're not outreach experts. Maybe they don't have ties to communities.

Like, they need help. And we have to find a way, you know, as Canadians invested in hockey, to try and find solutions. Wow. Well, listen, pick up the book one more time before the lights go out by Sean Fitzgerald. A season inside a game on the brink. Sean, the next time you pop by, assuming there's no other dark cloud hanging over the show, we can't wait to have a little bit more fun with you because, man, Friday night, Shinny was a blast and I was like, great, this show's going to be awesome. And you said it got dark at 4.30 today.

I think it got dark at about 8 o'clock last night on Hockey Night in Canada, and it's hung over the rest of the day. So we apologize for the severity of the show, but I am glad that you were here because you spoke so well on it. So thank you so much for coming in, man, and making time for us. Thanks for having me. The Steve Dangle Podcast. Follow the guys on Twitter at Steve underscore Dangle,

at Adam W-Y-L-D-E, and at jesse blake brought to you by panago pizza order at panago.com and stuff your face with deliciousness connection complete