The Steve Dangle Podcast - Burke's Law | December 2, 2020

Episode Date: December 3, 2020

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, Brian Burke joins the show to talk about playing in the Toronto media market (00:00), building a "Brian Burke team" and do the Leafs have enough to win? (15:50), Montreal's offseason (21:15), working as a player agent (31:00), will we have an NHL 2021 season? (36:00), and working against Lou and the difficulty of the draft (47:00). Get his book, Burke's Law: A Life in Hockey everywhere now! Then Steve, Adam, & Jesse talk about reading books vs listening to audiobooks (1:01:45), the Paul Brothers vs Evander Kane (1:17:00), and the press conference: Adam's fridge corner, Bettman, & Reverse Retro (1:35:00). Originally aired: December 2, 2020 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/7tOlMBAT3Ds 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

and welcoming to the show the esteemed brian burke we're so thrilled to finally have you on mr burke uh it's um you know you're looking at three guys that uh grew up you know watching you build those great Canucks teams and obviously uh general president and GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs as well so it's it's a pleasure to have you on uh the the the book title is Burke's Law a Life in Hockey and uh we've got I mean we got to talk about the book we also have a ton of things in the NHL happening right now uh around Estelle May but first Brian uh just just want to say thank you so much for making time for us today because it's really great to have you on well I appreciate you're having me on thank you so uh i gotta say that one of the uh one of the first things that

sort of struck me um about uh about this is we actually had ken reed from sportsnet on earlier this week and he said or sorry last week and i said uh you know you have any suggestions and this was on the actual show and he said well have your questions ready because his answers can be kind of short um and uh and i wondered you know when you're when you're doing these interviews now as a person in the media rather than on the other side has it changed um at all your your views on um on hockey you know and how it's covered and you get into the book a little bit about radio hosts in Vancouver and certain things that you did you had your own radio show being on this side of it for as long as you have been now does it I don't want to say does it generate

sympathy because I don't think the media is going to get that but how has it changed your perspective well it hasn't changed very much my my view going in was that if i can say something fairly i'm going to say it i'm going to say what i think regardless but if i can say it in a more fair manner or a more even-tempered manner and not be mean-spirited i'm going to do that also if i'm not sure about something i don't use it so my rules are i want to treat the people in sports the way i wanted to be treated get it right uh don't be mean-spirited if you don't have to be sometimes you have to say like even a dear friend of yours makes a bad trade you gotta say it's a bad trade i don't get it and so and i always follow up with the people and say look i'm never going to

apologize for anything i say but uh you know like you watch a draft pick go south and you say look they blew this draft pick there's nothing there's no way to sugarcoat it so but i've tried to be fair i've tried to be honest tried to be ethical and i think i've done a lot for two years and at the end of the day if people don't like it that's too bad we've we've talked a lot about uh you know in making generalizations about the media coverage of of certain markets and you've gotten to uh manage in i think three uh canadian markets what were your what were the flavors i guess of the vancouver market the toronto market and the calgary market and how did they differ well calgary and edmonton um they've got a really hard-working group that covers both teams

and they all want the team to do well the coverage is generally positive and supportive um calgary's uh vancouver's different they've got a fringe there that's uh like it's 80 percent normal and the other 20 percent are like on serious drugs i mean it's crazy and they've got this lunatic fringe that covers the team like it's very different than when i work there and social media of course when i started social media didn't exist and it's really bad in in vancouver uh toronto it's just the size of the market like i think the the people you know like okay so a game in calgary we do a hockey night game in calgary on a saturday night there's maybe 50 people in the room afterwards and toronto after a hockey night game there's 100 so when the team's

not playing well the volume of negativity is what gets you here it's not that the people are mean spirit there's a couple of complete idiots like steve simmons but by and large the people that cover the team are conscientious hard-working people they want to get it right when you play well they say that when you don't they say that but uh it's the volume here and so when the team is losing and a hundred different author writers pick up a rock and then you know 10 throw it at me 10 throw it at Dion 10 throw it at Phil Kessel 10 throw it at Randy or Ron Wilson Randy Carlisle whatever so it's just the volume that defeats you here is it is it one of those things when we hear about this all the time and I I wanted to confirm it from a a guy who's been there because we've

we've debated this time and time and time again it comes up on social media all the time is it really a factor is this media thing really a factor in players coming here in toronto that is uh versus other markets like is that really is it that intense is it that much more is it that much extra for these players and you know how do you address those concerns when you're trying to sell a market or sell this market for for a player well it is it's a very real factor there are players that will not play here like they'll tell me anywhere but toronto like i've had players say that to me when i was in calgary i remember talking to one of my players and he said i'd go anywhere i love playing in canada i'd go anywhere but toronto he said i don't need that much noise

and that much grief and you look at you guys have been in the dressing room at the air canada center when i was scotia bank arena i mean the reason the dressing room is that big it's for the media it's not for the players we would rather have a small room where players to make eye contact and speak conversationally not holler across a big big dressing room like that we'd rather have a small room but the room was big for the media and yeah i've had players we would when we traded for a player like mike commissaire mike commissaire if we signed it didn't work out here he did not handle this market well we he played montreal so we're like well he knows what it's like surely he'll be able to adjust and he didn't he never adjusted to the marketplace francois

Beauchemin was a stud for me in Anaheim came here had trouble went back to Anaheim was a stud again so it's a very real thing and we would talk about it can this player play here you know like any Canadian market can this player play in Calgary can this player play in Vancouver it's very different than playing in Anaheim or playing in LA and so we would talk about it and yes it's a real factor and yes players refuse to come here for just that reason and then so how do you as you know Leafs president and GM how do you how do you sell the place because one thing I keep saying is like Ilya Mikheyev has a soup deal and he's not getting that in most other markets in this league any other probably so how do you sell it well what I used to tell my players is

when you retire you will look back on the time you spent playing in Canada as your favorite time because people loved you and loved the team and loved the players. And you'll look back on it and say it was special. But we give a modified no-trade clause to a player, and we usually give him eight or ten teams that he can elect not to be traded to. Even the Canadian kids have all seven Canadian teams on the list. Breaks my heart because of the taxes. They want nothing to do with playing in Canada because of the tax differential.

so it's it's going to be people ask me how come no one canadian team has won since 1993 that's why now someone's going to do it someone's going to figure it out not making excuses but i tell players like in anaheim i think we had two guys had a card deal two players scott and chris pronger i think or maybe jiggy had one you know in toronto every player has a car deal so you make two appearances at a car dealership you drive a car for free it's a great setup so You get a nice foreign car or a nice Saab or something, and you make two appearances. Well, in Anaheim, only two players had car deals,

and here every single player has a car deal. Like you said, McCabe's got a soup deal. So that's what you sell them on. There's a guy here for everything. It's funny. Players don't live in the real world. Like you say to a player, if I said to Morgan Riley, I need a new stereo system installed in my house, they've got a guy.

The Leafs have a guy. there's a stereo guy that'll come and do your house and do it and you'll get a real good deal on it too they've got a car guy they've got a meat guy you want to buy meat they've got a meat guy stuff like this that you get in canada you want a suit you want an armani suit they don't pay five thousand dollars for an armani suit even though i would have to they pay three and the guy comes to your house and fits you right so they have there are perks to being a toronto maple leaf that you don't get anywhere else and it's a great city so that's what i would sell do you think it's inherent in nhl players to shy away from the bigger markets because we see in

other sports like the nba and the mlb the top stars want to go to new york want to go to la but it seems like in the nhl the guys don't want to go to toronto well i think it's a it's tax driven more than anything like we gave an example on hockey night in canada where uh a local agent here joe resnick and i worked out a model of a player making five million dollars so not a star just a good player on the Toronto Maple Leafs versus what he'd make in Vegas. So that same player making five million U.S. took home half a million dollars more in Las Vegas after tax income. He saved half a million U.S. every year as a five million dollar player. So that's why a lot of guys don't want anything to do with Canada because the tax differential.

Fair enough. Wow. I mean, yeah. And I mean, it seems to be like Montreal's really struggled with that because in Quebec, the taxes are particularly high. So there seems to be issues with that. But, you know, Brian, when you when you think back about like, you know, your time and in Toronto, obviously, we want to talk about Vancouver. We want to talk about Calgary. We want to talk about the Whalers. I got it's funny. It seems to be as though it was one year of your career, if I remember correctly. But the Whalers portion of your book, to me, is one of the most fascinating. And so I'd like to get to that in a second. But when you look back on your time in Toronto does it feel a little like unfinished business does it feel like we got the team and

obviously the team made the playoffs um but you know you talk about the specifics around uh you know your departure does it feel to you like you were on the right track and if you'd given been given a couple more years um you know or been able to finish your contract frankly this would have been a completely different narrative for you yeah I I told them I don't like GMs who stand up to the podium the first day and say it's going to take five years to fix this team because they're basically asking the public to give them five years and i never want to make i wanted to fix it in two years if i could but in the interview process i did tell ownership i said we're talking five years here guys this is not i can't fix this quickly we got all these players with no trade no

moves you got all this money tied up it's going to take five years and five years i got fired and that team made the playoffs so basically untouched team made the playoffs so yeah at the time i felt unfinished business i thought i had that last short season after the lockout based on a conversation i had with vandeer muhammad from from rogers he said look if we miss the playoffs this year we're gonna have to get rid of you so i thought okay that means i have the season right 48 game season and i didn't but um i i have no bitterness about it like look this is the team got sold so I have an easy crutch I can come on this podcast and say the team got sold they got rid of me whenever the team gets sold they bring in their own people which is true

but if we'd have been in first place when the team got sold they would have had to keep me so I didn't win enough games and I can't stand how people aren't accountable anymore I got fired because I didn't win enough games now I thought unfinished business yeah I would like to have that season with the team and and made the playoffs finally and and enjoyed that but uh didn't happen and look this hockey's been great to me i'm not gonna bitch about it it's been it's educated my family i've put four kids through u.s university debt free with the nhl's help i've traveled the globe i'm educating two more young daughters here like hockey's been so good to me if i complain about hockey ever you guys throw something heavy at me

i've seen you around the office man i'm not throwing anything at you i would i would never do that here i do want to ask one thing so that team did make the playoffs i don't know if you caught how it went they came very close to making the second round yeah was there a moment though while they were in the playoffs or you know ahead of the playoffs whatever it may be where you sent a message to someone at mlse and said listen they win the cup this year i'm getting a damn ring right no i don't i don't think i ever i mean i left on pretty good turn like larry tannenbaum was the guy that fired me right it was larry tannenbaum dale lastman and tom and sell me

i think larry tannenbaum is one of the finest people i've ever met i'm still on very good terms with him i admire him i respect him and i'm grateful i got to run the toronto maple leafs that's no small thing. Like I remember my first day, Tim Hunter was changing to get into his coaching stuff and I was changing to work out. And I, the trainer had given me a bag with workout stuff in it. So I'm putting on a t-shirt that says Toronto Maple Leafs and I hesitated and Tim Hunter saw me do it. And he said, yeah, it's different. It's not the Vancouver Canucks. It's not the Anaheim Ducks.

It's the Toronto Maple Leafs. And I used to tell our players this. I said, if we go to some remote village and sit on a stone wall in South America, the first thing that's going to walk into the village is going to be Boston Celtics, New York Yankees, Manchester United, Dallas Cowboys, Toronto Maple Leafs. It's a global brand. I remember the year after we won the cup, we opened the season in London, England. We played the Kings. and I was I sat out and watched the people come in I sat out by one of the doors and there's

probably 4,000 sweaters in the arena like I was shocked in London England probably 4,000 people wore NHL sweaters into the building half of them were Toronto Maple Leafs sweaters I remember when they played the game in the big house Gary Bettman called me because unemployment was like 29 percent in in Detroit and Gary Bettman called me and said can you sell 40,000 tickets to that game I said I need 48 hours to sell 40 000 tickets then he called me back he said can you sell 60 000 tickets i said well i'm gonna need need 72 hours then like we had ticket requests from 32 countries for that outdoor game it's like the toronto maple leafs it's a global brand so i'm grateful i didn't have the success i'd like but i'm grateful to say i was the general manager of the toronto maple

it's no small thing so no no hostility no bitterness um no bitterness in my coverage in the team either i'm i have six season tickets if no one does better than i do if the leafs win right we're a rights holder i'm a season ticket holder i want them to win i don't think they're going about it the right way and i've got to be honest about that but i like the people about it like sandy i like kyle they're nice people they're good guys i don't think they have the right vision for building a team and and what i love about that is you're unabashedly unapologetic about it you you've you've always said this is the way and you go into it in the book about Brian Burke teams what do they look like and what your top six and your bottom six look like and if you're from

Toronto if you're from Vancouver for from Calgary and I guess parts of Massachusetts as well you sort of get a sense of you you know what a Brian Burke team looks like and if you look at that Anaheim team you mentioned in the book it's it's the perfect sort of archetype when you see what the Leafs did this offseason Brian um you know Wayne Simmons uh Joe Thornton Zach Bogosian three big names that and you know Wayne and Zach are a little bit more on the physical side than I would say Joe Thornton is at this career what do you think about the changes that they've made the adjustments that they've made uh and what it says about maybe the changing philosophies in the Leafs front office well first off I like a lot of the moves they've made I like Zach Pagosi a lot

he's a big body guy gives them some grit I love Wayne Simmons but I just I'm taken aback by the slight of hand here this this is a magician talking saying we added Wayne Simmons you didn't you replaced Kyle Clifford they didn't get tougher they took one really tough guy out of the lineup and put one back they didn't add any net toughness they replaced Kyle Clifford and it drives me nuts when people say they added Wayne Simmons really you took Kyle Clifford out who I would argue is a tougher player than Wayne Simmons and then you bring in Wayne Simmons I love Wayne Simmons I I think Wayne Simmons is going to be a GM in our league someday. I think he's a good guy, good leader, quality addition.

I like T.J. Brody, had him in Calgary, quality guy, wonderful person. Left shot D, can play the right side. That was a good pickup. They've made some positive changes. They've still got $40 million tied up in four forwards. You cannot have a competitive team if you've got $40 million tied up in four forwards. They need to move Nylander and get a defenseman. and I'm not going to come off that position until they do because right now they're not good enough

to win like so I put the teams down on paper and I put them next to one another this is how I so I say okay are the Leafs as good as the Boston Bruins right now I don't think so so I say okay that's one team that they can't beat in my opinion but they're closer than they were can they beat tampa nope can they beat washington nope not for me and that's how i do it and so to me do i think they're a playoff team yes i like watching them play they're fun to watch play shelvin keeps a good coach like they've got magic up front but they're not built for playoff success and it's not just brian burke teams look at the final four this year the frozen four look at the finals there were 100 hits in two of the games in the finals over 100 hits this team is not built to sustain

that kind of grind and so i think they're gonna have trouble but do i like the moves they made this year yes they've gotten better uh go ahead steve sorry sorry i can i can already see the comment section and people's brains are currently melting out of their ears right now at the mention of trading William Nylander if it is a money issue and I mean I see it too I think it'd be stupid not to if it is a money issue and you are able to trade Nylander you'll still have 33 million dollars tied up in three guys if would would trading Nylander even alleviate the issue or do you need to in your opinion get rid of one of the 11 million dollar guys well I think they've got full no trade no moves and I don't think anyone would take that kind of money the only

the only contract that's movable of those three for me would be if I were another GM would be Austin Matthews like the guy's a legitimate superstar when they signed John Tavares and again and Steve you know this I hate people who change the narrative as they go along I call things out in real time and I stay with that position I supported signing John Tavares but I pointed out at the time I love him as a player I love him as a leader but I said this contract is not going to age well and it's not it's going to cause cap problems now they're going to have to give matthews more neilander more marner more and they did and it's created this it was the first it's like a snake trying to eat a pig that's too big right you can't swallow it all

now they they got they they got these four contracts the only one that's readily movable that you want to move would be neilander i don't care about the comment section i don't I figured that Nylander had a good year last year. He's a good player. I have no problem with him. His dad played for me. It's not a personal thing. I just, it doesn't, it doesn't compute. Like that's the one contract. And now he's cash under cap. So he's a $7 million cap. He's only 5 million cash. That's a movable contract. So to me, that's the guy that should move.

And they do need a defenseman for sure. TJ Brody is a good addition, but they still need a D and I think their goaltending is good enough. I'm one of the few that really supports Freddie. I think he's good enough. But they're not – just put their team – forget you cheer for the Leafs. Put their team on paper and put it next to Boston, next to Tampa, next to Washington, and you'll see that they're not ready. And Montreal has passed Toronto, in my mind,

in terms of playoff readiness this year. Ooh, wow. I thought we were having Brian Burkhan, not Eric Engels. Oh, my goodness. He was saying that too. Geez. Brian, I was going to ask you about that, Cause like who do you think wins the all Canadian division in the regular

season? And then I was going to follow that up with who goes the furthest in the playoffs. Montreal to me is going to, the answer to both questions will be Montreal. I think what they've done is I don't think you'll ever see a $10 million goaltender again. I think in the new world,

the split the between the backup and the starter is going to be different, but they've got a capable backup. They've got too much money tied up at the goaltender position, but it's just for a year or two and they can platoon their goalies. Now, Carrie price can go into the playoffs rested and he's an exceptional player. He's a special player, but they've never gotten to see him at his best because he plays too much.

Now they don't have to do that. They added Edmondson to their defense core, which was already good. They added to fully that trouble scoring off the wall, but they added to fully and Anderson. Like, I think they're a really deep, complete team.

And I think they're, They've gone right past the Toronto Maple Leafs in terms of playoff readiness for me. If you're a GM, though, I mean, it was a big stroke for Marc Bergevin when he acquired Josh Anderson for Max Domi. Obviously, it seemed like there wasn't a fit for Max under Claude Julien, so that move you could see coming. But Josh Anderson did have a pretty devastating injury last year and had a goal, and they've signed him to a seven-year contract.

As a general manager, in your general manager brain, is that is that something where you go i got to take the risk now because now's the time well i think josh anderson he scored 27 goals two years ago then he slipped to one last year with an injury um to me i think the seven-year thing is the player really wanted term and i think you go to your owner and say look we're probably going to buy out the last two years of that so here's the annual value of this contract with two years bought out so it's really a five-year deal and you add it factor in another half a million a year i think that's what probably happened but to me it's like a seven-year deal there's a good chance you're buying off the

last year or two of that great deal anyway and that's the way you pitch it to your owner i don't want to hear about the the whining about buyouts in five years five years from now i'm telling you we're going to buy this guy out and we're have some dead money wow but you got to go for it well Carey Price is young. I really like, I think Mark Bergeron has done a really good job. I think the defining moment was that they made the playoffs and their two young centers stepped up.

So the cock in the Emmy and Suzuki both said we can play and play a regular role as a number one and number two center. And we're ready now. And I think that was a revelation to everybody, including Mark Bergeron saying, wow, they are much farther along than we thought. Suzuki is a better player than we thought.

Kotkaniemi's a better player than we thought. Good for them. And I like Toffoli. They had trouble scoring off the wall. The only winger that scored any goals was Gallagher. Now they got some secondary scoring with Anderson and Toffoli. I like what they've done. One follow-up on the Leafs and their playoff abilities.

Have you seen over your career that it's possible to teach the young guys like Matthews and Hyman to play tougher? Have you seen 22-year-olds grow into that role where they can take 100 hits in a playoff game it's very rare i i think i'm convinced you can go to a playground and watch kindergartners and pick out the tough kids you know like when i was a kid i'd fight at the drive of the hat and that was something i you know i didn't grow into that um there are rare exceptions one guy we've used as an example in our scouting meetings over the years is blake wheeler so blake wheeler his draft year was soft skill he was a big guy but he played soft

really highly skilled really desirable player but soft skill not not fight and now he's got fight so the odd player mixes it in figures it out learns how to play with fight but in general no if you got a guy who's soft skill when he turns pro he's probably going to be soft skill till the end of his career um brian i do want to hit on some other things outside of the leafs is you know we're we're a leaf centric podcast but like we still have uh other people that want to things. And we could ask you about the leaves for the next 40, you know, 40 days. There's just there's endless. So quickly, I want to say there's a couple of things in this book that I think are very, very interesting from a philosophical perspective. The first one is managing up.

And one of the things you talk about when you took over in Hartford was you had an owner that seemed to be all over the place. And if I'm mischaracterizing, I apologize. But it seemed to be that the ownership situation, and obviously we all know how it turned out, was a bit chaotic for you when you are in a position like that you have a dream job you've got you finally got this you're an nhl general manager but you are dealing with an owner that is difficult um and a and a and a team that is is is struggling financially and a little bit on the ice as well how do you manage up and i'm looking for this more from like you know everybody i think can manage or could could benefit from a little bit of life advice that way because

it's something people face well I would say looking back writing the book the one thing that I did not do well in my career was manage up that's why I have an NHL record even though I never played in the NHL I've been a GM of five teams no one else has ever done that that's a record nobody wants because it means you keep getting canned right so I keep getting huffed I didn't manage up well at all and and like in Vancouver I had a hundred point team the year i got fired in vancouver 100 point team playoffs the whole bit like we had we had a great team was building was full i still got fired now doug armstrong who's a much more rational guy than i am he survives all these different things because he's much calmer than i am and so i

think managing up is a skill that fortunately i didn't do very well and so to me the my favorite owners for the Samuelis obviously won a cup there but they knew what they didn't know and that's critical for an owner an owner has to know what he or she doesn't know and they can't interfere on the stuff that they don't know anything about and the Samuelis left me alone and I tried in my interview every single interview I went I told the owner I said there's only two hands on the steering wheel and they're both mine and if I look down and there's another hand on the steering wheel we're gonna have a big problem so it's not like i didn't try to get the lines of authority and and approval and all those things set in the i told them right in the outset you gotta leave me alone

if you hire me i told them all so they all knew in the and they in the interview the very first first five minutes of the interview if you hire me i need autonomy and then it didn't work out that way like in hartford richard gordon was the owner he's actually a really good guy he's a nice man i still he came to my son's funeral um but he he's not suited he his temperament is not suited to owning a pro team too impatient too uh too meddlesome uh john mccall was the same way he lost a lot of interest in the team when i first went there he was really interested in the team then he met his second wife fell in love and she's a neat lady but he lost interest in the team and Now I'm dealing with his right-hand man.

I'm not even – I never even talk to the owner, Harvey. I talk to his right-hand man, and everything is filtered and flavored by what he sees. So that's one thing that I say to GMs. And Harrison had told me when I was a rookie GM, he said, get the lines of authority straight, who you report to, how often. And some owners, they want to meet once a month. Some owners want to meet once a week.

But whatever they want, you've got to make that work for them. so it's it's it's funny to me that in the first five minutes of a job interview that's how you know you've made it in the first five minutes of a job interview you can tell your not even future boss prospective boss listen leave me alone do you think do you think there's a lot of owners uh in the nhl or even just people in life who think they want a brian burke to work for them but don't actually have any idea what it's like i i think my experience has been that all these people that own teams were very successful in their field and then many of them they buy a team and they immediately forget everything that made them successful

in that other field so if you're like jerry jacobs so what what are the boston what's his core business he runs arenas he runs concessions and arenas and national parks like i think they have yosemite national park delaware north is the vendor so if you get an ice cream and yosemite national park you're buying it from jerry jacobs um tom gilardi owns the dallas stars he's in the hotel and restaurant business uh the bugulas own the buffalo savers they're in the natural gas business so these people amass this fortune and then buy a team and a lot of it's a vanity purchase for a lot of owners right you're just a rich guy until you own a pro team now you're a rich guy that owns a pro team and now you're in the paper now you're jerry jones right your people know who

you are you're not just a rich guy you're a rich guy with a team and that's why a lot of these people buy the teams and it's if they want to be involved and i used to say to them look you can ride in the front seat and when we have a parade when we win you'll be in the first car i'll be in the last car i want you to enjoy owning this team i want you to have the profile that comes with it but god damn it when we're running the team day to day i've got to make all those calls and i and i said to them in the interview i said look if that doesn't sit well with you i will help you hire a gm that doesn't need that much autonomy i will help you i'll sit here right now and go through your list and tell you who you could hire that would be better suited than me so i don't

feel i ever left any doubt when they hired me of how it was supposed to work and then when it turned out it wasn't quite that way it was like i think i'm kind of like saying hey i told you so i warned you yeah absolutely that's you just have a higher stakes life than me man like i don't remember i never went through my phone at the toronto zoo and went listen if you don't want hire me my buddy adam will do it he'll do a great job it's just it's an amazing life man brian i you know there's a there's first i want to ask you one more thing about the book because you guys have got to you got to pick up the book but uh and then i want to ask you about the current nhl situation so quickly on your time as a player agent one of the things that really stood out to

me was the fact that you would say to players much the same as you said to owners you want to work with me it's my rules and that meant sometimes how they spent their money and specifically there's an antidote in there about cars and i wondered if you could kind of impart some of the rationale behind that because you said to guys you can spend this much on a car that is it otherwise i'm not your agent yeah they had to agree it was a system it was a way of life if you wanted me to represent you you had to save money you had to you couldn't splurge on things like car like a rookie like the story in the book is peter taglianetti was a rookie signed with winnipeg and he was a really good college player great guy peter taglianetti wonderful human being

and he went to a sob dealership and the limit was 14 000 that year and it went up every year so like my first start doing was 12 000 so you're not going to come if you're a rookie you're not going to drive in in a mercedes-benz the older players hate that just be a rookie fit in and you had to save money you had to save so much per paycheck it was a kind of way of life a discipline like you're not going to retire broke you're going to retire with money in the bank so peter taglin he called me from a dealership in rhode island and he said i got the guy down to 14.4 but he won't go down to 14 i said put him on the phone so i said to the car dealer i said one of two things is going to happen in the next 30 seconds you're selling that car for 14 000 or he's walking

out and he got the car for 14 000 so i remember i remember when i wanted to meet with brett hall and i talked to him for about a half an hour and he said i'm i'm content he said i'm i want you to represent me you seem like a really good guy so i'm not there yet brett i'm not sure that you're going to listen to me so let's keep talking and then you know he bought in and wonderful guy one Brett Hollis, a great guy. I really enjoyed working with him. You know, it's so the situation now and you've got a great legal background. I don't think a lot of people know this.

And I don't know even if you mentioned it in the book, but you finished quite high in Harvard Law, from what I understand. Top 10 in your class. Is that true? No, not a chance. Not a chance. OK, then my information from the source is wrong. But I barely got out of there. OK, fair enough.

Adam, he tried. He called up the prof. He said, one thing is going to happen in the next 30 seconds. Either you're going to raise my marks or I'm going to do mediocre. It didn't work that time. My oldest daughter went to MIT. She got her MBA from MIT, from the Sloan School. Wow.

And she was worrying about, you know, this is a girl who never had anything but A's in her life. And she's at Sloan School, the top 5% of students in the world, right? And one of her professors said, do you know what they give the last place student? at MIT do you know what they give that student and she said no he said a diploma so listen I read where Barack Obama was law review at Harvard my daughters asked me were you law review at Harvard I said no I walked right by it every day though that's as close as I got no I I was a I struggled in graduate school it was going from a small Catholic school like Providence which I loved and I knew everybody to a really intense academic environment like that

especially taking a year off and playing pro hockey where i really didn't do anything academically for a year i struggled with law school well i i i uh i apologize for getting that information wrong but i do want you to apply the legal knowledge that you have which is still harvard law uh to um to what's happening right now with the nhl there's a stalemate if the if the season were to start january 1st the players who are playing in canada would need to be here today to quarantine and get ready uh for training camp and that sort of thing which would happen very soon um the owners signed a deal with the players four months ago and are now at least publicly the public perception is they're going back on it and saying no we need you to defer

uh and you know i mean it looks like the players could have in escrow and defer deferred payments over 25 percent of their their salary um do you think that the owners are right to do this do they have a legal basis to do this and are we going to see a season in early 2021 well let's go to your first question they clearly have the right to terminate the season if they don't like the terms okay that's in the memorandum of understanding um they have a force majeure clause anyway uh act of god uh they have grounds to cancel the season and not play no question about it this is not a classic collective bargaining situation at all they have a deal the issue is the deal the owners made in march to get the players back they underestimated how

much it cost to do the bubbles it cost 75 million dollars they thought it would be like 35 or 40 the owner's losses are significant much more than we're anticipated we all you remember when we when we locked down i remember guys were saying well be it would be out about a month locked us down for a month right everyone talked about a month well now we're still not returned to play fans aren't allowed in or socially distanced fans like the economic base of the nhl has been destroyed and the players are going to have to live live with that fact whether they say well we made a deal in March if that deal no longer applies and it doesn't by the way like I'm a season ticket holder with the Leafs so I got a survey from them about two weeks ago if we play fewer

than 80 games are you okay if we have a 60 game season are you okay with 30 games instead of 40 I said yes they said okay if we do socially distance you might only get 15 are you okay with that i said yes i want you to come back and play they said okay out of that 15 five will be upper in the upper bowl even though i have goals five of the games i said yes we got to get back to play i get it it's not going to be exactly what i wanted or wanted but if you play with no fans like right now the television revenue in in basketball and football is a huge percentage of revenues it's only about half we're still gate driven like as an industry we're still gate driven live ticket sales count for about half of our revenues that's all gone now and so you're

talking about fewer than 80 games you're talking about sponsorship deals slashed like if you're a sponsor and you buy a rink board at scotia bank arena you expect 41 home games national television full building and everyone sees your rink board so it's brian burke's sub sandwich shop right everyone sees it now i get 30 games and socially distanced fans well i ain't paying the same freight for that i'm cutting that rate so that goes away the sweet revenue is gone the live tickets are gone and my advice to players is it's like the billy preston song nothing from nothing leaves nothing you better get back and play and you better figure out a way this is not a classic collective bargaining situation they have a deal they get 50 of the revenue and the owners get 50

of the revenue so if there's no revenue guess what the players are going to have to eat a big pay cut i said 40 back in april and i'm going to be pretty close to right on that and i don't believe this deferred money is ever going to show up again i think they're taking a pay cut and then deferred money is going to go by the boards and they got to get back and play um with with that in mind what do you think the likelihood because you've dealt directly with the players association and i realize you know bob good now and and and you know people since you know there it's notoriously a testy relationship between the nhl and the nhlpa as a collective bargaining often is what do you think the chances of that are brian i'm getting i'm getting more

nervous i'm getting scared now i thought a week ago that they would make a deal within a week and they seem to be digging in and the league does have the right under the memorandum of understanding the league has the right to not play so i had a gm tell me last week i sat across from him And he said, if we play, we're going to lose $60 million. And if we don't play, we lose 15. So the players better figure this out. I think we need to play. And everyone says Canada will be fine.

And I do believe that. I do believe we'll get a vaccine. The sports will come back. Everyone will be fine. Not so south of the border. I worry about some of those markets, whether they're going to rebound from this quickly, if at all. We've got to get back and play. and the players have to realize there are 50 50 partners in a business that is in the sewer right

now that's the that's the hard part to absorb though i mean it's it's tough right you think about it and these are guys that are are in some cases well off um you know they still make pretty good you make pretty good money even to be a uh you know uh the lowest amount of you know salary in the nhl i is it is it a perspective issue brian or what would you say is the main thing holding them up is it is it that they don't is it a dislike for gary is it like what do you think is the thing that's saying why why don't they see it in this particular light i guess and i i take no joy in saying this you know like like i if you're a five million dollar player and you're only going to make two and a half million dollars that's okay you're making two and a half but

that's a big pay cut yes and that's in your life you're figuring out your retirement and your kids and university and that two and a half million going away is not a small factor and if you're entry-level player making 980 000 and now you're going to make half that i get that it's tough but i what my advice is you had better take whatever this the worst case scenario is and if they can borrow against the new, the U the U S TV deal is up after the season. And there's a lot of thinking that there'll be a big number out there and they can borrow against that. So if you can do that, if that comes in and you can repay some of these wages, like I'm all in favor of deferral instead of lost wages. I'm all in favor of that. I just don't see the math

working. I don't think we're going to get anywhere near revenues to pay the deferred money back. I don't think there's going to be i think it's a bleak landscape for this season i think we'll be lucky to make any money at all at the gate have to save the broadcast money we have to play if that goes away if the season goes away then we're in a hole that i don't think the players want to look at the math that are coming back if we don't play fair enough wow let's say we don't let's say we don't play i think about a pair of brothers like jack and quinn hughes right obviously big hockey family they both made the nhl you know both extremely talented everything this would be the third work stoppage of their lifetime i believe is

you ever get the sense that being a hockey fan for someone who's not as hardcore as maybe one of the hughes brothers is too much work it's too much work figuring out the cap talking about the business side because often the conversation is about figuring out why there's no games being played adam yeah figuring out why the thing that i love the thing that you know i i want i want to go to one game every christmas that's what i ask for or ask for a jersey and now this is the third time of my 20 years on the planet that they're not going to be playing is it too hard of work to be an nhl fan well for first off you go back i i think the key is was was the fight necessary like in other words like i was involved i was on the front line and that fight was essential for

the for the sport to grow and survive and so gary has had two lengthy work stoppages including a lost season but we got to a sustainable business model and we're in that model now this to me this deferral or this issue is not collective bargaining they're 50 50 partners it's a player's refusal to say we're going to eat all these losses we want the owners to eat some of them we want the owners to eat more than their 50 we want to defer money not lose it and so to me this is going to take some real hard logic on a player's mind to say okay we have access to the books we know that the numbers are real so the nhl pa gets to audit i think it's seven teams every year they pick seven teams and they do a complete audit on their books so when i work for

a team the league would constantly threaten us don't you cheat don't lie don't don't misplace don't hide one penny because if it comes up in the audit we will find the hell out of you and so we you know here's the books so they they know the the figures are accurate they know the damage to the business they have to figure out how they absorb 50 cents of the dollar on that so to me steve i know what you're saying the fatigue because you should have you should pick a side so if you drive by stelco and down in hamilton and you see guys on a picket line you should have a reaction in your gut you should say why don't those greedy bastards get back to work or you should say why don't they pay those guys a fair wage but in in collective bargaining

in pro sports there's no white hat no one sympathizes with millionaire players walking on a picket line like they go okay joe thornton's you know making 16 million dollars a year whoever you know austin matthews 14 million dollars a year no one feels sorry for austin matthews walking on a picket line but they don't feel sorry for maple leaf sports and entertainment either there's no white hat in a labor dispute so i worry about fans fatigue but i think i can say from having been part of two of those wars they were necessary we were losing so much money we had to fix it well and there's a great part we will get into it in the book about what life was like in the nhl and in those conference call meetings before gary bettman showed up uh brian uh you you

describe it as the wild west and people yelling and screaming and all that sort of thing and gary getting to the effect that gary bettman has had on the nhl uh whether people like it or not and you mentioned the booing um has been pretty significant um now i there's one guy who i think is probably second to gary and his effect on the game of the last 30 years and he seems like the type of guy that could stare down a freight train and win uh and that's lula amorello and he was your coach providence um and he is a guy who when he was in toronto was one of the most fascinating sports figures we've ever ever seen the master of interviews where he can give you a whole paragraph quote and say nothing at all and he seems to be able to find holes in the cba every single time

it happens to the um to the edge of his team lou amorella teams don't uh don't not do well what do you think and i know you you describe him as a bit of an enigma brian but what do you think about like what would you say is the thing you've learned from lou amorella that stuck with you the most well i think the number one thing is is lou he wants a way of life like when i played for him it was not just about the hour and a half that we were on the ice together at practice or the game it was a way of life dressing a certain way uh going to class everyone graduated at providence college every guy that i played with graduated on time and lou lou would keep a guy out like we had a defenseman who was eligible under the NCAA rules but wouldn't have

graduated and Lou sat him out a semester a guy was an important player on our team everyone graduated so it was a way of life but there's an intensity about him a perfectionist type of thing where we were expected to act a certain way you go to class you have good manners you're not rude to people you don't bully anybody it was a way of life and the hockey players were very popular problems like people respected the players because we respected the school um i think it's a way of life when you play for lou i was the green kid when i went there back in 1973 and when i walked out of there four years later i was a man and that's because of lou and and have you ever had to negotiate directly with him like on opposite sides of trade um and what what is that like

what's that experience like did you win well did you win yeah i made a couple deals with lou but He really skimmed me on one deal. I traded a non-playoff second round pick for Vadim Sharifianov, the sheriff. I remember him. I remember him. And people are going like, who? Exactly. And I called Lou and complained afterwards.

I said, you screwed me on that deal. And he goes, that was your deal. You called me. So that's your deal. You called me and said, would you do this? He said, you can only complain if I come to you with the deal. but you are dealing to shut your mouth now my first my first big trade was i created uh bobby holeek to lou for uh sean burke and eric weinrich and sean burke was our team mvp and

eric weinrich was like our second best defenseman behind zarly zalavsky and uh it was a really good trade for us and bobby got them into the playoffs got new jersey into the playoffs so that trade i made with Lou was great for both of us and I also Pat made a deal with him my first summer in Vancouver Pat traded him Patrick Sundstrom for Kirk McLean and Greg Adams great trade for both teams Sundstrom was really instrumental in there again they made the playoffs and uh and Sundstrom was a big part of that and um I remember I got a call that summer summer of 1987 I got a call from patrick sunstrom's next door neighbor and sonny had gone back to sweden and didn't make any provision for anyone to cut his grass so his lawn was like a foot high and it was over overrun with

rats and mice and this this guy's calling me saying that i got mice all over my house you got to do something so hire a landscaping company to come and cut the lawn four times like cut it down to six inches then down to four inches then down to three inches and i sent sonny to bill he wasn't happy i bet he wasn't and uh i'm sorry go ahead well i do i do have a follow-up on the on the sheriff janov trade because i look at the so it was actually the canucks get vadim uh sheriff janov and a 2003rd and you guys selected 10 uh tim branham the devils get a 2000 second rounder and a 2003rd rounder um and the devils you know didn't get anyone who they used with those two picks so I gotta imagine that means there's someone who you wish you had picked with that

39th pick in 2000 who was it I'd have to look but yes anytime you I think we Steve I want four drafts in Vancouver in a row without drafting a player who played for me four bad four bad drafts where i went over over four four drafts in a row and it's just it's just the luck of the draw and then you know like we we draft ryan kessler who turns into a star we got him i think at 20 he turns into a star like you don't think people look back and say why didn't we take ryan kessler so it's like it's like that i moved up in the draft twice and struck gold with the twins and with prior but i've had some horrible drafts and i've made some terrible trades like people always ask me what's the worst trade you made i said how much time do we have like like i've made

a bunch of terrible trades but some of them are on my wall great trades too i made a bunch of great trades too right yeah yeah um brian another guy that uh that i'd like to ask you about is uh is the late great pat quinn who was a legend in vancouver and a legend here um pat was a hell of a defenseman tough and scary um and the understanding was that he was could sometimes i guess be like that as a manager but most of the time uh was to by all accounts one of the best people that anybody knew in the sport can you can you tell anybody who maybe doesn't know about him because it's been a while um and we've got a younger audience uh what what pat quinn brought to the game what he taught you what he did for vancouver and what he did for toronto as well

well with pat i i think he was larger than life here's this big tough irishman um and he was tough he played tough he was tough but he the the word pat used all the time was fairness he talked about fairness all the time he wanted you to feel you were being treated fairly as a player as a coach as an employee and he's the best listener i ever saw packet sit and smoke that cigar and listen to a player talk for an hour i remember trevor london when i went and talked to one time and he said afterwards it really cleared his head and i said what did pat say he said you know what come to think of it he didn't say much he just listened but pat was really really big on fairness a very bright guy had a lot of grief uh everything about pat quinn was good

He had good intentions, honorable, you know, devout father and husband. Just like I was so lucky to be in his orbit for five years and working as his right-hand man for five years. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. Yeah, he seems every once in a while, like, you know, especially the Leafs teams from the – started, like, I guess, the 98 season to the 2004 season when he was the GM coach.

every once in a while you know when when that anniversary comes up of his unfortunate passing there's people people are still you still see Darcy Tucker you still see Ty Domi posting about how much they love Pat Quinn um so it's a fascinating one I gotta ask you too speaking of drafts Morgan Reilly your indelible mark and I know that you were excited at the time you said you would have selected him first overall there was a lot of people that doubted you at the time you said no I I know with this guy what did you know that other teams didn't know about Morgan Riley well his draft year he hardly played he blew out his knee so he didn't play until like he played like 11 games at the end of the year but this is a kid when the team came back

from road trips they'd get back to Moose Jaw at three in the morning and he'd be there on his crutches to say hello to welcome him back home like this is kind of kid he is he's an unbelievable kid and we had him ranked number one so that year he only played those half a dozen games or so 15 games at the end of the year we had like triple coverage at the we had like five or six scouts at those games whereas normally you'd have two or three and every team did so there's you know there's 90 100 scouts in the building watching his last 10 games i had the video guy cut out every one of his shifts I watched every shift he played that year twice watched it once then came back and watched it again his skating ability and his hockey IQ or we had him rated number one

and I took him and I said we had you rated number one and people say oh you probably said it to everyone I said no I didn't say that to Nazem Kadri we didn't have Nazem Kadri number one we had him at seven or wherever we took him so I know people say oh probably just said that to saying that morgan riley's a friend of mine he's turned into a great player but we we're a little doubt about him at all like we had him number one and fortunately five team or four teams screwed up and took someone else and we got him yeah it's just it's strange because i thought you really wanted neil yakupov there brian oh yeah yeah worst worst interview i've ever had what happened well first off he was angry that he was there like he's like why why am i talking to

you guys you're picking fifth why am i even here i'm not going to be there at five so i i hated him right out of the gate and he was just surly and snarly and i thought john lully who was one of our amateur scouts i thought john lully and he were going to get in a fistfight wow yeah he's just a jerk just a terrible interview wow wow so it went well that's that's really surprising for an 18 year old to walk into in a situation like that i remember thomas maddock who's a great kid thomas maddock came in and we were picking i don't know where he picked that year 10th or 11th and he was clearly bored clearly thinking to himself why am i doing this interview there's no way i'll be there at 10 or 11 and i barked at him i said listen young man you should look

my record i've been known to move up and get guys that i like so start paying attention and to his credit he did he sat up with attention and started paying attention and put more into the interview i really liked him by the end of it but first five minutes he was like what am i doing here i'm like wake up kid wow wow brian you touched on this briefly before but we have this debate on the podcast all the time it's just how much of the draft is luck because you go into it with the strategy and all these scouts they scout all these guys and then you go to the draft and a future hall of famer gets drafted in the third round so how much of that is really just luck well over time i'm abraham wincoln said funny thing about luck is the harder i work the more

luck i seem to have so over time i think you need luck like to win the cup so we won the stanley cup we beat Vancouver four games to one but two of those games were double overtime and a third game was overtime we came that close to losing that round and that's and I think that team could beat every team that's won the cup since and so that was a great team and we came that close to being eliminated in the second round with Vancouver so you need some luck but over time if you're if you're skilled at what you do over time your record as a drafter or a trader will will show up and you'll say well this guy had some good drafts had some bad drafts but you know and people will remember me they'll so drafted chris pronger second overall drafted the twins they'll be the

drafts that they remember not the ones where i didn't i took five guys that never played yeah what am i one of my favorite quotes comes from someone who currently works for an nhl team and it is um the best team in hockey rarely wins the stanley cup first of all i want to know what you think of that quote second of all i want to know do you think the 2007 ducks were the best team you ever managed or was it a different one well first off i i don't agree with that i think the very often it is the best team that wins the cup uh there is a an endurance part of it that's really critical like Dallas last year just couldn't stay in there with Tampa uh Como got hurt Hintz got hurt and a lot of it is you got to be durable especially those last couple rounds

it's a war um the best the best team I ever had I think you I think my guys would argue in Vancouver in uh like 2003 that group with the the twins and the West Coast Express line that they could beating that anaheim team but unless you have playoff success you can't brag and that's why i will never tell you that the anaheim ducks are one of the great teams ever because great teams repeat we never repeat it so to me i i think that team could beat every team that's won the cup since but we didn't repeat so it will never be remembered as one of the great teams the great teams do it more than once and we didn't we just had too much cap trouble the next year tamer retired scotty retired then they both came back and we were scrambling and but uh i think that team and

that's just brian burke's view because this will sound arrogant and be like oh brian burke people don't like me anyway they'll be like he's saying his team was the best team ever i'm not what i'm saying is i think that team could have beaten every team that's won since 07 and our players believe that too like i had this conversation with chris prong or tame with solani scott Dietermeyer they believe that too so it's not just my view on life well your view on life is why the book's worth reading and uh it's been uh you know Brian I I know that you were well past the time that you graciously allowed us to take uh I so I I out of respect for you I want to wrap but I don't I don't want to kick you off there either uh we love having you um and the book is

incredible pick it up uh today any any hockey fan is going to love this it's Brian Burke's Burke's Law, A Life in Hockey with Stephen Brunt. Brian, thank you so much for your time. We hope this isn't the last time. We hope that you come back because especially when it comes to what's going on in the NHL right now, very few people have been on both sides the way you have. Fascinating to get your opinion on it.

Thank you. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on, guys. So, that was very good. Wow, was it? Yeah, we got to have him on again. There's so much. yeah there's just even like his Leafs tenure alone and then I was like god we there was so

much Canuck stuff we didn't even really get to talk about the Sedins he mentioned Nazem Kadri didn't get Calgary at all like we didn't get Calgary I wanted to talk about uh the Nazem Kadri thing with Brian Murray we're on camera who's the kid you want Nazem well we're gonna take him like just what a what a life what a life this is why i felt stupid writing my book like brian burke is twice my age and he's lived 20 times the amount of life but that is you can just write several books then yes dude you'll have a part two don't get so down on yourself may or may not have uh and by the way the team's the team is well i bet you are uh i bet the team is still ruling and ruining your life so the the title doesn't need to change like i think you're

okay this team is still ruining my life that's right um you know my love for them i think still there irrationally sorry i think i can predict um uh i think i can predict what the reaction to some of the comments that he had or is going to be but that's what you get when you talk to brian burke honestly and honestly it's how he feels it's the same thing with ken reed last week and so i think if you've got an opinion on anything you got to be open to people challenging it so i hope that you at least keep an open mind about it it's a different way of looking at the game great stories and honestly the book is phenomenal and i'm not just saying that because brian was on i read it a month ago who narrates it the brian reads it he reads it himself yeah oh well now i'm getting

the audiobook for sure yeah now you gotta have him you gotta have him do it i was thinking if brunt did it i would i would really like that as well but there's something about reading a biography a biography in the voice of the person who wrote it no that's that's absolutely fantastic and like ken said it's a slog it's not fun so it's it's amazing that he did that i have a question um yeah it's uh sort of on what we're talking about but uh i think it's a contentious debate okay adam you listen to a lot of audiobooks i do are you allowed to say that you read a book when you listen to the audio version i think you can what should you say the point is well i just say i i read it just because for ease um but yeah i listened to all

the books that i read and i think what the key out of any book is you're supposed to learn something It's some sort of information retention, uh, some sort of point of view change. Um, and you know, you're, if you're in like in university and you're studying it and you need to know for an exam, well, yeah, maybe listening to the book is good for you, but you probably need a hard copy of it as well. So you can go back and quote things directly and that sort of thing. But if you're listening for just the pleasure of reading or the pleasure of hearing stories, then I don't see a difference.

um and and so you know because i'm not in academia my whole job is entertainment um i want to pull highlights from stories like brian's and and bring it up on the show and you know and just sitting down uh for the last couple days and going what what points we want to hit there are so many stories from the book that i wanted to pull from i'm glad we got the agent story and i thought that was really cool um you know i'm glad i i think that anybody that um that struggles a little bit with reading as well. Like I do that, not that I can't read, I can obviously read, but it's one of those where it takes me a lot longer than the average person to get through the same amount of material. And that became very obvious to me when I was in grade nine, grade 10, when the

reading starts to pile up. And I'm a, I'm a kid that read all the Harry Potter books, read all the books, loved, you know, all the, all the stuff that we had to do, loved reading, don't have time, flat out do not have time to sit down and read anymore. So this is the way I can consume it. and uh i absolutely think you can and anybody that says you can't i think that's a narrow mind uh but believe what you want i don't care do you think you bother me i'm not gonna get hung up on that do you think the act of reading though is important to reading like sitting down and looking at the words on a piece of paper well and that's what we do every day like i mean if we're talking about think about think about what it takes to prep this show so when i have when

I'm sitting down to prep this show. And we all kind of prep in different ways. Steve's job is as a reactor. That's what we call it behind the scenes. Steve knows this stuff inside out because he lives and breathes it. Jesse, you and I have to dedicate study hours to this because our main job is not in sports. And so, you know, if our main job was in sports, we would still have to study as much. But Steve sort of just pulls things out of the air, whereas I have to write things down and have details so you know if i'm going through an article from chris johnston or james myrtle any of the other eric angles any of the guys that we've had on this show um you know you have to sit down and you have to read it and highlight the things that you think are important that you

wanted to bring up and discuss um there was a an interview that um that uh the athletic did with the new gm uh armstrong i forget his first name though in in phoenix uh sorry in arizona um that was what's that i don't know i don't know he's the guy's nuts like i i and i had it all prepped out and ready to go about like how he was living and i was like you we got to run through this this is crazy uh it's one of the craziest interviews i've ever read and you know that's not available in audiobook form i had to read it uh but we didn't get to it and then you know they drafted who they drafted and that became the story rather than this guy's bananas because he's you know like He's living in a hotel room across from the arena.

And like, it's just a whole, it was a very interesting story onto its own that we just never got to do. So yeah, I think it's very important to sit down and read. And I do every day. It's just doesn't happen to be like literature. When I want to listen to a book or when I want to absorb a book,

whether that's a Jane Austen book or a Brian Bookberg, a Brian Burke book, say that five times fast, it's going to have to be an audio book. I'm a single dad. My kid's not even in daycare yet. um so i'm rushing around all the time there's no way like when would i sit down and read what like when is that going to happen i've listened to the harry potter series like seven or eight times i don't think i'd be through the order of the phoenix yet

if i had to sit down and read it right i just i don't i think it's it's consuming information i do think reading is important but um it's the most important it's just i feel like just the harry potter books are a good example because do you feel like right now you missed out on some of the experience of consuming harry potter the fact that you didn't sit down and look at the words on a page and use your imagination in that way no no there's there's only a handful of things like for example uh i listened to the jim dale audiobooks there's i forget the other guy but because of his accent i literally did not know certain characters names um because of like okay the phoenix who adam who's the phoenix who's who's the uh the bird what's the name of the bird

dumbledore's bird fox i thought the bird was named forks because he said folks right and i'm like right so forks is why is the bird named forks i don't know why is the guy named dumbledore i guess they all have weird names all right you could say the same thing when you read the book because i could not it took until i saw the first movie before i knew how hermione was pronounced i never heard seen that name before but i read it uh but i just i brought it to my parents they didn't they'd never heard of it you know you couldn't google that back in the day and so it was when i was grade six reading the first one which i had the sorcerer stone not the philosopher stone i think it's the british version or something um the debate and i

don't remember the the the thing was is like so you don't sometimes you don't know it that way either so yeah i think if in a in a harry potter context yeah you probably can do the audiobook and do it. If you're reading an overview of a historical event, I'm sure that an audio book would give you a good overview, which is why as a fan of history, I like to read those types of books or listen to those types of books. But if I was going to be a history professor, I'm not going to, I probably could listen to some audio books, but I'm probably going to sit down and like, you know, citation and firsthand accounts and all the things that you need to do. and only reading can give you.

So does that make sense? Yeah, I think it's an interesting conversation just with the ways that the different ways we're going to be able to consume media like as we progress through our lives. Like you would never thought like, hey, I listened to this two hour podcast on curling and now I learned all this stuff about curling, you know,

or I listened two hours a week about hockey. And then back in 10 years ago, just like, you know, I read an article in the newspaper. So it's just funny to hear how- From Damien Cox. the only two writers the globe and mail the globe and mail has a feature if you're a subscriber and if you go to an article online you can click on it and it will dictate the entire article to and it's okay i could sit there still for 10 or 15 minutes and read the whole thing or there was

an article one day i listened to in this room while i hung stuff up on the wall so i'm multitasking i'm consuming information i'm adding to my room like i don't understand what i understand the conversation of do you see the merits of this versus that but i feel like a lot of book nerds basically go oh you listen to it and like it's just it's just them huffing their own farts and we get it you read you don't want to take away from people who enjoy like that's also an activity no that's okay for an activity but don't don't denigrate my way of consuming the same thing right which is i'm not i'm not taking readings for fucking losers like you know they are different experiences but they're different experiences sure 100 and if somebody

wants to say that their experience of reading is different from their audiobook so they say that you you guys performed a different activity i respect that i respect you nerd let me ask you this let me put the question on you does an author actually need to physically write their book and i'm talking about physically write their book no because what do you mean the reason i ask is that one of the uh one of the early 21st centuries uh sorry 20th centuries uh 21st centuries 21st 20th 20th century we're in the 21st century so yeah 20th century one of the one of the great authors of the 20th century, Winston Churchill never sat down and wrote his own shit. He would walk around his office. He would dictate just to, he had two secretaries and he would dictate to

them and they would write. He never ever that that included, obviously he had volumes of books that he wrote. He wrote history books. He wrote his memoirs on the, on the, on, uh, uh, on a world war two. He wrote his memoirs or sorry, he wrote about the, the history of the English speaking People, which is one of the things he's known for, and many other works, plus gargantuan-sized speeches, because that was the style at the time. Let's talk for four hours today, one person in parliament, and he would never sit down and write that. It was him walking around the room pacing, and his secretary sometimes had a really hard time understanding him because he would mumble under his breath and expect you to pick it up. So my question is, is he still an author because

he dictated it and never typed it out and never wrote it down yeah i think uh a lot of authors today even do that it's um like they there's like somebody they say like tom cruise is going to write a book he just he hires a writer and he just dictates these stories to the writer and they write them down right so i think i don't i don't think it's the same conversation in the same way oh i just flipped the question it's not the same yeah tom i i know you're one of the richest people in the world and we have this method of writing a book that it will make it so much easier if you no i have to sit there and do this myself and i need to go i need to type up this entire paragraph and then read it and then hate it and then delete it and start over again and i don't know

no he's tom cruise he doesn't have to do that let the experts write let the writers write you tell the story because you have the story let the writers write it yeah i don't have a problem with that yeah if you're not a good writer i have no problem with you just telling someone your story and them writing it down or be super arrogant and insist on doing the whole thing like i did just no well i know how to do this by never doing it you're literally a writer yeah that's what you do like i if i wrote a book i don't think i would uh i think i would have to write it with someone because i wouldn't know where to start i like it never get done well that that's hard and i'll talk about that in a second but i like that ken is is reluctant to

call himself an author and he's written like six or seven books and here's me with one i'm like i am an author i have written a book sorry sorry let me correct myself i've written a best-selling book i have an author i'm a best-selling author and ken's all bashful about it poor ken oh sorry on the on the note of where the hell do you start um adam this is great great tip for when you're an author so i what i wrote what i did so steve i took a marker board and i literally bullet pointed my whole life i i i went i wrote down before i bullet pointed i wrote down a list of the most important stories that i can think of most important stories most important events and then the first day i actually had to sit down and write it i was like what's the first story that comes to

mind and it was uh if you've read the book it was the story from when i cried at the zoo one day because uh basically someone went wait you've never played hockey how the hell do you think you're ever going to play in hockey and i told that story recently so i wrote that story down start to finish and by the end of it i'm like and there is a chapter so now i have to basically i it's it's like writing down uh writing down it's like completing a puzzle so like i had this and everyone completes puzzles differently so at the beginning of covid my wife and i did this enormous uh african savannah and she does puzzles by getting the entire border she she does she does the uh she gets all the border pieces because they're easier to find

and then she tries to figure out which ones go together blah blah the way i do puzzles and the way i did my book is i went these pieces are a giraffe these pieces are an elephant these pieces are but we worked really well together because she did the border and i filled it in yin yang it's great i like that i like that um do we gotta so evander kane and and jake paul no i want to talk about this so first off is this shit for real are they actually going to fight and because i can't imagine that evander kane can do that because of the fact that probably you know assuming there's a season um around the time he wants to fight which is early september that's training camp and he's gonna go to a boxing ring and then show up at training camp no so there's

there's two things there one uh in the collective bargaining agreement evander kane unless he wants to be in breach of contract would have to ask the san jose sharks for permission to get into a punch in the face contest uh with someone who has two punch in the face wins which they will absolutely not allow but but if i'm evander kane and uh triller is like hey we're gonna pay you 25 million dollars to go fight logan paul i'm like fuck my hockey career give me a 25 million dollar check i'm gonna whatever my contract you know jesse's on to something this could be a brilliant introduction to a far more lucrative lucrative career here's the problem jesse he's not gonna get that kind of money roy jones jr got three evander kane's not getting shit

i think honestly this sucks to say but jake paul's bigger than roy jones jr uh in terms of draw right bigger in terms of worth more money watch roy jones versus mike tyson no for the boxing get out of here you wanted to stop that no 50 plus year olds get no one watched the people didn't watch that over the week on saturday it did numbers yeah on paper i'm not gonna lie so i watched a video and while i was doing something else like i had it on and then this flurry of commentary came on and i was what the hell so i watched a video it auto played to an illegal stream oh i was just like what and it was right before the jake paul nate robinson fight oh it was the lucky it was the biggest stroke of luck

i was like okay well i i wasn't planning on watching it i was just gonna follow along on twitter but i guess i'll watch it well i just think i think you know jake paul is you can hate him and i don't blame you uh the guy right you're right the guy it's 1.2 million pay-per-view vies at 49 each one's not too bad and how much of that was jake paul siri what's 1.2 million times 50 60 million dollars thank you sir 60 million dollars plus advertising yeah kind of that you know yeah you got a higher snoop dog plus if the world's back open you sell tickets yep yeah you know that's that's good you could turn that into 100 million dollar event that's 100 million dollar after the saturday night easy you know so where this all comes from by the way

So, basically, Jake Paul beats Nate Robinson in a boxing match. We can talk about that. And then Evander Kane is one of several professional athletes to say, oh, I'd beat his ass. I'd beat him up. Logan Paul gets – well, and then he said something sexist, talking to Ryan Reeves and Robin Leonard. But there was – I can't even remember what he said.

It wasn't nice. anyway they're they're um then logan paul was on a podcast and he sees that evander kane called out jake paul do you want me to play it sure absolutely he's with his mom isn't he i was wondering who that was i don't know who it is i think i think it's his mom really do a podcast with his mom i think so i would if i was with that dude i gotta be honest i don't follow them because i can't like i i just can't i don't all right here's the audio Okay. Evander Kane?

San Jose Sharks? Now, what is that exactly? Some sort of fish, an aquatic animal who lives in San Jose? Yo, Jake Paul, I'd wreck ya. Yo, Jake Paul, I'd wreck ya. Easy to beat up guys with no experience and much smaller. What the f*** do you do? I think he's sure.

Put him on the list. I'll do it. Does Jake Paul versus Evander Kane, is that a headline fight? How many buys does that get? How many people? Not that. No, right? I don't know who Evander Kane is.

No, exactly. so there's your answer or does he just or does he just do it because he'll get another fantastic knockout no no no is he an active yes and it's okay so when is he gonna train boxing we'll go through it again that's what i'm saying it's not gonna happen a million down this time so this quarter million he's dropping it well that's just on betting right yeah yeah or whatever so you're there's your answer right there beyond beyond the fact that evander kane would probably be in breach of contract although he could say fuck my contract like jesse said you beyond the fact that he would be in breach of contract why on earth nate robinson is a far bigger name in

retirement than evander kane is in the prime of his career he is uh so there's no reason for that um the only almost slam i hate i hate like he's he's a household he's a big name yeah i hate to say this i hate to say this but like why would a youtuber waste their time on an nhl yeah exactly well and logan paul i think was making a terrible joke when he's like with the san jose sharks what is that i do genuinely believe that that person who lives in california does not know what the san jose sharks are i do genuinely believe that when i went to california i was like i was looking for hockey stuff i was looking for like a classic ducks hat and there was i went to a hat store and you could get every hat in the entire world and there was like one little corner

there was like sharks ducks kings and that was it that was it like and you really had to look for they don't care they don't care so there's that um do we want to make sure they're talking about who would win adam your internet's really uh spotty right now yeah oh sorry i couldn't tell if you said something you're calculating okay no i i sort of have have said something uh i i think it just speaks to what brian burke was saying which is you better play this season because that would be bad if you don't like you're just barely tenuously hanging on to some of those american markets maybe not in la but um you gotta you gotta play um so i guess you know do we want to talk about who would win i i don't i don't know if i know enough about boxing or care

to be honest like i don't i don't know if i can passionately talk about this subject if you guys have a passion i don't think i can passionately talk about it or is yours no no okay it's a celebrity boxing match do you remember when we were kids and they used to run celebrity boxing on, like, Friday nights? That was insane. That was crazy. Except for older. Like, that's it.

Yeah. It is an old format. Yeah, some of the matches that they had were absolutely outrageous. But I do find it very funny that Jake Paul, who did knock out a former professional athlete, everyone's like, oh, man, this guy's a real deal.

He has not fought someone with a professional fight before. yeah he has listen he's not the real probably beat uri he's a better boxer than uri but that doesn't mean he's good that doesn't it barely means he's a professional boxer he's always not boxing champ right now i'll give him that like sure that's a good way of putting it i don't even know the first person he beat by the way you want to see something fun the other youtuber 55 year Mike Tyson and Jake Paul there you go there's a fight I'd watch probably I'd watch that I'd watch the hell out of that I'd watch all eight seconds of it for sure I think Mike would win

it might be less on technique alone I think he'd win probably on punches alone dude Jake could block him and still get wrecked but yeah it's it's what it what it is what the whole conversation around this especially jake paul or logan paul it doesn't matter versus evander kane and just seeing people talk about it a lot of people have never been in a fight before and just looking at how they talk about it thank god you haven't because you have no idea you have absolutely no idea evander kane is a professional athlete and he's been in hockey fights before that's what it's not the same as a boxing match you nutcase it's nowhere near if it was a fitness competition nate robinson would have killed jake paul would have killed him evander kane would kill him um

if it was a hockey fight evander kane would kill him of course he would but it's a boxing match and it's completely different it takes more than being a tough nut it takes more uh than being in great shape that so many people have a really in-depth opinion on this who have never been in a fight and thank god because you'd die this is what we've all been waiting for

one year of training you guys are both only doing boxing training who wins Adam Wilde or Steve Dangle well I got a shitty back Adam's got a shitty jaw oh he's got the back

yeah yeah bad back bad jaw um i think one i think steve wins the press conference for sure uh he's gonna when we do the weigh-in steve's gonna steve's gonna win that one he's better at john than i am for sure well we do the way and steve's gonna lose because he'll go over right so already i'm giving up a bunch of my purse to adam so um that's tough jesse would have to stand in the middle with his token hand between both of us as we went nose to nose uh it's a big hand better than bigger than uh uh that looked like a gigantic spider jesse that was a big hand it looked like you held up something you bought at a baseball game yeah that's a big what's this there's something in the

i got that it's a good one um the no i think i think you win that i don't know man i think it's a toss-up like it depends on if steve's backs out i i for sure win oh you will but i think steve's got more power than i do and i don't have a whole lot of technique so what does that leave me with no you have a year of training though i know but relative if we're both training at the same rate our relative skill will probably increase the same uh i don't unless you work harder unless i work harder i don't know i don't know i feel like steve wins this one i'm not gonna lie i'm gonna give it to steve uh okay i'd also be worried about my fake teeth in a fight between in a fight between adam and i who wins uh the cringe subreddit that's true good point good point

yes no matter who wins it's them everyone loses everyone yeah man people were making fun of mike tyson and roy jones junior we would get killed oh my god yeah oh my god it's if you've ever just looked up random street fight on youtube oh don't look don't give me that look like you've never been on world star shut up if the vast majority of people have no idea what they're doing and it looks sad you're always like i would get into you all imagine you would get into a fight like freaking goku and you're it's it's just no one knows how to throw a punch it's all these overhand punches it's oh god watching the average person fight is sad how much money would we have to raise for charity for you guys to do like a boxing match for like i'll just tell you

i won't i just tell you that i would rather raise money other any other way i will not step into a ring i will not uh i i wouldn't take the risk it just wouldn't be worth it for i need my brain so i can't i can't no we put we put those like helm the helmets on you and stuff you can still get a concussion yeah yeah no not interested i'm not into intentional concussions anymore they're just not that exciting so that's great adam five million dollars i would do i would do road hockey or something like that but i won't i won't do uh you do that anyways yeah yeah i know i just want to sorry steve i won't fight you there's there's this um i forget what it's called but they're it's basically boxing matches for charity um and i want to say it's people get

together from different agencies throughout toronto or the greater toronto area and usually every year someone from sportsnet almost always behind the scenes gets into a boxing match for charity and every time i see them around the office i'm just like i'm just in awe i'm just like god you're so much braver than me like you're so much the the nads it takes to go yeah i'm gonna get into a fistfight with a person i've never met uh in front of people in front of and it's gonna be streamed and it's gonna be in front of all my co-worker you what if you get knocked out in front of all your co-workers and for the rest of your professional career they've seen you get knocked out in person you can't tell me that doesn't affect your life i think it does

agency wars agency wars yeah yeah there used to be a one an agency idol as well uh where media and so they go and they'd sing and i remember it was it was offered to uh when i was an intern it was offered to uh any of us on the show if we wanted to do it and all of us were like hell no like not a chance because idol was huge at the time and like and you know everybody wanted to pretend that they could sing i was like you know you just got to know your lane that's not my lane man anyone like i i still remember we we had mo at idol at our high school and still to this day i remember performances from it that was half my life ago yep and and i just like admire the strength that it took to do that and like i was in theater but like i feel like it takes so much

more bravery to sing and it does because you can miss very easily and everybody knows it do you remember Khalil's performance yeah he was great of course you do because it was one of the most magical moments that I experienced in high school there was this kid who was he was like if Jesse decided to just be a nerd like if Jesse had never found baseball like he he was he was like six foot four like he was he was really tall he was like six foot four in grade six he was very tall yeah and he just never spoke and he gets on stage and he's holding the mic like this and he's doing um um what was it just friends by music soul child yeah i think so i think that that sounds right i hosted the show shows how good out in memory i was the host yeah

dude i've been hosting shit since forever it's like it's wild but that song starts with this long beatbox intro and he's literally sitting there holding the mic in both hands standing completely still and the whole crowd is that everyone in the entire 1100 kid school is muttering and they're laughing and they're like oh my god this kid's gonna get goofed on and he just starts belting it out and the whole the entire auditorium goes nuts yeah just like it just brought the house down it was that was a decade and a half ago and i remember it like i'm sitting there yeah boy this all came from write a book versus evander kane i'm gonna have to steve i'm gonna have to uh if i ever did write a book i'd have to like sit down with you because

i can't remember half the shit i've seen so any of the things mutually that we have done together i'd be like i gotta go i gotta defer to steve on this because i don't you jog things and i'm like oh i remember that now but i have that it's like it's like that brain file folder i'm not able to just pick things out when people jog my memory then i can remember it but i don't just pull it out it's weird i don't know i i drive sl absolutely insane because like she asked me to do something and i'll go to do it and if something distracts me on the way it doesn't get done there's a letter she i was like oh uh but i also gotta bring in the recycling bins and i never mailed the letter but i remember khalil's performance at moat idol in 2004 or whatever it was like it was yesterday

yeah if you ever write a book just we're gonna have to ask your boy it'll be it'll be the two of you consulting with me on it because i'm gonna have to jesse remember shit that i that we've done because jesse and i worked together what is it seven years now jesse yeah about that so yeah i mean on this show you've been on six years so we had been working together a year before you'd even gone on this show so i think it was 2014 2014 so that's gonna be seven years in february years of fab yeah wow fuck that's crazy um you know just and you know we're really both were relatively young but i think jesse would remember a lot more about the things we've done than i would i just don't remember them um should we do the press conference because i know you

solicited jesse uh we got about 10 minutes left let's we got 10 minutes you guys all right just grab a drink and i'll be right back oh better be patrone all right steve adam's gone let's uh let's do a separate podcast what should we talk about by the way do you guys want to see something funny you don't know do you want to see what a bachelor's fridge looks like yeah oh no is this for the show very sad yeah okay if i unplug my mic is it gonna go through the computer what i think if i unplug my mic is gonna go through the computer i gotta show yeah if you change your zoom so you'll hit the little thing you know set select microphone just do a macbook pro microphone you know what fuck it i'll just carry it all right you guys you want to see

something really funny we're going to adam on house tour welcome to my house i just saw your toilet yeah if you want to see my toilet i can take you in so i have this is my kitchen it's not very big but there it is um and then here's my fridge okay you ready oh i'm so depressed so there's some almond milk there's got a lot of bubbly i got some bubbly please don't tell people how i live so can you describe it for the people listening yeah okay so on the shelf on the top shelf i have one egg this this carton has one egg in it um you can't do shit with one egg Look, there's one Just one egg, okay

That's the top shelf where you keep the eggs One egg Then you've got another container full of chicken fingers here Sid Sixero would be proud Can you show the chicken fingers? How old are they? They are at least Five days old Oh, bro, throw those out

They're fine, there's nothing wrong with them I know, how much you make Go get other food Oh my god, yeah, they're good Is it Longos or Metro? uh metro metro uh actually no they're lavlas lavlas uh thing i've got a couple hummuses left a couple hummai what do you eat with it um well my the broccoli and cauliflower oh okay and then how old is the broccoli and cauliflower uh oh four days four days and that's

also from lavlas yeah yeah yeah from the salad bar i went two days in a row and then i've got some chicken in there that probably needs to be thrown out because i never cooked it some rice in there that i never finished and then i've got a whole thing of beer beer that you don't drink my fridge that i do not drink because i'm not a huge drinker so it just sits there and then i've got condiments oh and um this is how you live this is well i also have a i have everly's food as well but i have to grocery shop i don't uh she's with my mom today so i have to grocery shop but that is how uh that is how we do it the single world uh pretty crazy are you depressed yeah a little bit really the chicken

fingers uh i wasn't oh there's nothing wrong with the chicken fingers they're fine what what's the problem i don't understand salmonella is the problem no no salmonella is before no you're right yeah they're cooked ah you're fine anyway we gotta get jim wood get back on i just looked at that i just looked at that and thought wow that's depressing looking so i thought i'd show you what my fridge looks like right now oftentimes it's fuller than that but not all the time um i don't feel better jesse do you uh have some questions for us i i think so after that i don't know how we recover but yeah here's my first question why why so are you okay do you need a hug zay the k 1996

writes is gary betman's time coming to an end what do you guys think absolutely not no you the amount you're associating how much you like gary betman with how good of a job he does and you have it reversed the amount that you hate gary bettman is a barometer for how good of a job he does yeah if you hate him he's doing great because his job is remember brian burke talked about you know no one's no one cares about millionaires versus billionaires he is on the side of the billionaires gary bettman makes more money per year than all but like what two dozen players in the nhl and it's for this very reason it's probably less than two dozen how many players in the nhl make more than eight mil not many not many and half of them

are on the leaves yep not many true um he he does he does the owner's bidding so therefore he does a good job and as for as for what berkey was talking about earlier it sure is bleak isn't it it sure is bleak because i everything i've read involves me going the players are absolutely in the right and what berkey said and i'm paraphrasing is tough shit and he's right i figured he'd have a uh an interesting take on that whether you agree with it or not i mean he is right they do need to play because here's the thing you either get 50 of your salary or you get zero percent of your salary yeah so it's sort of a tough position to be in yeah and we're not like we're not talking about like the morality of it walmart employees unionizing we're we are talking about nhl players

absolutely yeah also he mentioned stelco shout out stelco i have a cousin who works there oh that's stelco that was very random reference by perky because i was like oh my ears part sparked up you know i was like i know somebody works there next question last question from chad wheel should chad put the maple leafs reverse retro jersey on his christmas list yeah yeah why not if you like if you want it if you want it like listen we go way too extreme with how we talk about jerseys man we go way too extreme um you know i i wasn't a huge fan of the reverse retro jersey and you know what as someone who has a large social media presence maybe i should have shut the hell up because then i see i log on and i see nasher with his columbus blue

jackets one and i'm like maybe if i was nice i would have got one too right um but i just i wasn't feeling it but like i also had a one of the leafs pajama jerseys i made a chair out of it afterwards i'm sitting in it right now um you know it's still for the team that i love um and if you're a hardcore fan of the leafs or any team and you like it do you like it yeah just like it do you like it i don't know i i it's like it's jesse and i've been in this debate a million times about like can you get your own name on the back of a jersey fuck man if i'm paying i'll i'll put whatever the i'll put fuck you on the back of it i paid for this um probably like honestly i wouldn't be allowed into the arena but the reality is if you pay for it you want it you do what you

want um and i'm not i'm not kidding there was a dude who i would frequently see at marley's games who had a jersey a marley's jersey with the number 69 and i'm pretty sure the nameplate was goofball and i have one that's a jerkshire 69 you have a jerk yeah because why not which does he i hope he does yeah no uh i auctioned that off last year all right i wonder who's got it now where is that fabled the sisterhood of the traveling pants jersey we made like 200 bucks off that thing that's amazing that's amazing one of my favorite that was one of the best things ever except for wearing it for a week um so listen uh guys thanks so much for listening do we have a guest lined up for next week are we have anyone cover not officially but i'm working on it okay so

steve's working on this week you can't say don't say don't don't over don't commit us no listen do you or do you not want me to say who's on our show not a week it's not fair to them because if they don't make it then we're fair to me make me feel stupid that's just my baseline i know jesse knows he can get under your skin in like three seconds so that's why he's needling you but the real winner of adam versus me in a box jesse jesse yeah yeah just anyway uh i think uh anyway we're excited for that um exciting things in the pipeline i certainly hope that there's going to be a season and hopefully next week we'll be on talking about it so until then we'll see you next wednesday have a great week and by the way shout

it to everybody that had us featured in their spotify rap report uh we see you i'm reposting every single one of them on instagram because thank you it's flipping amazing some people as high as like 13 or 14 days of their last year listening to this show that's crazy and i people are like it's like you listen to 106 episodes i'm like we only produced like i don't think we we normally produce about 92 a year and i don't even think we came close to that this year it must be in the 70s or something some people legitimately in march were like well in this for the long haul and they like started in 2013 and made their way up it was fun when steve sent us his spotify wrapped and it was at like 10 000 hours of the steve dangle podcast like

you really love yourself steve yeah i actually no that wasn't mine god damn it it's just he didn't do that it's just like his his top five are steve dangle book steve dangle book steve dangle book steve dangle youtube channel yeah and what and what pretty great over here anyways anyway guys so what what what do you want to say i gotta i gotta go to the bathroom okay get the hell out of here i love you we'll see you wednesday the steve dangle podcast follow the guys on twitter at steve underscore dangle at Adam W-Y-L-D-E and at Jesse Blake.

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