The Steve Dangle Podcast - Change | May 13, 2023

Episode Date: May 13, 2023

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, 00:00 Toronto is eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs 1:43:00 The rest of the post-season 1:53:00 Ryan Reynolds pulls out of the Ottawa Senators sale 1:57:00 Shaving Steve live on the show Recorded: May 13, 2023 Visit https://sdpn.ca for merch and more. Any opinion expressed is not advice, a promise or suggestion that increases the chance of winning. Gambling can be addictive, please play responsibly. To learn more, visit: https://help.sportsinteraction.com/hc/en-us/articles/216779528-Responsible-Gaming-Self-Limitation-Self-Exclusion Or if you have concerns about a gambling problem, call ConnexOntario 1-866-531-2600. Ontario Only. Must be 19+ or older to play. Visit this episode's sponsors: https://sportsinteraction.com/sdpn Follow us on Twitter:@Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram:@SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Steve Dangle Podcast, powered by Sports Interaction. Wanna bet? Backhanding. Woo! S-D-P-P. The Steve Dangle Podcast, with your hosts, Steve Dangle, Adam Wilde, and Jesse Blake. So here's the question, and the question will not be answered this episode. It will not be answered this week.

I actually think it's going to take six or seven weeks to get a clearer picture of what it's going to be. The question is, gentlemen, is the we can and we will era over? Yes. The we can and we will era. Yes. Can you sign John Tavares but also sign Matthews, Marner, and Nylander? We can and we will. It's a very famous quote, if you're a Leafs fan, from the 32 Thoughts.

And I think it was the 31 Thoughts podcast probably back then. Very famous quote from Dubas to Elliott Friedman and Jeff Merrick. By the way, I know they're like a big deal and stuff, but it'd be nice if Dubas made time for us once in a while. The Leafs don't do podcasts except for when they do. Except for when they do, yeah. So, you know, that's the question, right? I think we've got a game to break down.

and i think we have a bit of an era to look back on and this is where this this podcast is going to be complicated what a what an an era that's right and and again i don't know that there's any answers and i don't really know if there's even really good predictions to be offered to be honest but i do think that you should know really selling the show that it well i mean i think that i think that the questions are what everybody wants to know this morning when you wake up like my my wife looked at me this morning she's like i she's like it took me about 10 minutes this morning to realize that they are in fact out of it you know because the thing is and i'll say this uh it's so much fun covering the playoffs it's so much fun doing these shows

i'm sad it's now i know what i'm missing yeah and i'm sad it's over yeah it's i thought i i thought i knew what i was missing every year they got eliminated in the first round and now i got a taste of um what's beyond and uh you liked it man no wonder people like to win the cup it's weird oh man i'm just on just how well like everything was doing like selfishly from a business standpoint you know what i mean like just printing views and every video's a hit and uh no but i'm glad they lost okay okay adam do you want me to play uh we can and we will yeah can you all right let me see if this is the right video can you keep all four of them tavaris nylander marner and matthews does the salary structure allow you to do that we can and and we will so that's the quote and

then of course the interview uh i mean god if jeff and elliot are not pumping the shit out of that interview this morning and putting it on their twitter i don't know 2018 2018 i would be telling them like if i was if i was their boss i'd be like you guys re-release that episode and give me some thoughts um you know so so that that's the question that the first thing we need to do though is we need to go through the game last night um you know is that the first thing yeah that is the first thing we're gonna do it's what we're gonna do and i know you did it on the lfr which i watched this morning i jesse jesse what did steve say off the top of the lfr that made you laugh yeah i walked in because adam was watching it uh this morning and then i said you

know steve started the lfr and he's like i don't know what to say and then he proceeded to talk for 45 minutes it was it was over 40 that's a guy who has nothing to say who can talk for nearly an hour couldn't know couldn't possibly know but you know what i thought it was i thought it was really well executed um and you know what was interesting is steve spends way less time on the game in his lfr than we will on this because we're going to spend a lot more time you know kind of breaking it down first period you know the leafs get started and there's a good chance uh scoring chance for mitch martyr right off the start and what did i ask you guys uh sorry not what did i ask you what answer did you give me last episode when i said if there's going to be

a game six if we're sitting here saturday morning and the leafs have won game five what will have happened do you remember your answer to that i think it was the core four did their job and right off the bat seeing mitch marner in there looking dangerous is great now the leafs take a penalty at uh 18 23 which is less than two minutes in uh it's jake mccabe with the high stick uh looked as though one of the banter that he high sticked was was bleeding but thankfully they didn't call that bleed either you can read the ref's lips and he's basically going ah that's nothing like um is it red or is it not red ref no you need to bleed a certain amount that's completely subjective to the official which is sub-professional i'm i'm a i'm a listen i'm an

anti-ref guy uh but i uh i have to say anti-ref is as in like anti how they're calling the games right now uh people if i would no i don't hate them as people there's no one in charge no they're well and and the thing is is that the rule is pretty clear if you're bleeding it's four minutes and i am a leaf fan and i'm telling you that should have been four minutes no but the ref said he was bleeding inside of his mouth and it was just from like you got hit there where it's not really by the stick to the face on his teeth yeah but it was inside of his mouth and it was just kind of like a bruise so not for all these people have driver's licenses they're on the road with you they're a danger to us all no i think it's the it's the policies man it's the policies up top

also i think it was a slightly uh makeup call for michael bunting which should have also been like legitimately these refs do makeup calls yeah we know that it's on tape from some snarky asshole on twitter oh my god if there is an egregious call that goes against one team they will find a way to balance it out for the other team and i think in this situation they kind of did right by the michael bunton call in the previous game not a league it's a joke so uh with basically the florida florida power play looks good wall uh is tested right off the top makes great saves but with five seconds to go it just sneaks under his arm off of an ekblad shot and it's already won nothing and you know guys like jake mccabe were the guys that they helped

or they wanted to bring in to help not just solidify their defense but also make them a lot tougher and penalties like that are are ones that refs are going to call even in the playoffs every time they have to call them until they don't i went from ecstatic about that deal to maybe they move them at the draft in a week i don't know i don't know about that i think he did tough series i think he was good against tampa yeah i like jake mccabe yeah i like jake mccabe a lot he was poor in this series okay fair enough but i still like him there's a lot of people who were poor that it mattered more that they were poor that's very fair that's very fair adam but you're right it wasn't and you know what mr dependable tj brody wasn't great either i think it's possible to have

a bad series and you don't need to be shipped out of town a bad series one singular and not you know for the better part of a decade well uh leafs go on the power play ekblad goes off Good chances. Florida kills the power play. Leafs get a second power play. Radko Gudis, who could have been called for about four things on this one play, where he gets the second penalty for Florida. I forget what he even was.

Interference against TJ Brooks. Well, there you go. He loses his mind on the way to the box. Florida kills that power play. And what I wrote down here, and this is a problem that the Leafs have had for years, but it really again reared its head in this series is they are looking for the perfect shot and what they do is they overpass their opportunity and what i mean by that is it's like well what if we just had one more pass i might have a better look at the net

and at almost every goal with the exception of the william nylander bounce goals both of them uh he had that one bounce goal in game three he had that crazy rush later in this game every single goal that the leaf scored in this series was like through traffic on a deflection every single goal versus tampa they got all these guys who are so good at rebounding and like they went out and acquired more they've emphasized playoff style goals for years and then they refuse to put themselves in a position to get them and they keep it's it's the you cannot look for perfect open looks in the playoffs you just they're not going to get them it's funny You're playing good teams now.

It's crazy how Austin Matthews' off-the-rush snapshot kind of gets eliminated in the playoffs. Isn't it crazy? Yeah. Think about how many times in the regular season we see Austin Matthews come down the left side of the ice and snap one before the goalie even knows what happens. And that rarely happened in the last seven years in the playoffs.

It's really hard to pull that type of shot off unless you've got a friend in front of the net holding the defender's stick. But it's really, really hard to pull that sort of thing off. Is the friend's name Radko Kuz? It is. So then, okay, and then we get another Florida goal. This one comes off after a McCabe rush that almost leads to something. And what happens is the puck goes back the other way,

as often happens with rush chances. And if it's not bouncing, Timothy Lilligren is able to grab that puck, corral it, and then flip it back into the neutral zone. But it was fucking bouncing. And he didn't do, he took a swing at it rather than kind of taking it down with his stick. What you do with a bouncing puck, right, is you try to graciously put it towards the ground and flatten it out. Now, you have to do that in a split second in the NHL, and I understand that that's hard, but that's also the job. That's the job.

That's the job. I don't know. If it's too hard for you, don't play in the NHL. So he mishandles it in the neutral zone. Anthony Duclair gets it, gets it over to Carter Verhage, who shoots. Joseph Wall has a piece of it. And he, man, he was great in that first period. And honestly, yeah, Wall was great.

And he had to go right across the net completely. And he still almost got it, but it did go in. He was so much better than can be reasonably expected of a rookie goalie. I think he hit 40 saves. Joseph Wall was unbelievable. Yeah, his save total. Unbelievable. they had 43 shots so yeah 40 saves yeah um he held them in that game like i wish joseph wall

was in there from the start just seeing how he played we said it after game two yeah it was like yo he sammy is clearly injured he's losing his posts he can't get up i mean put him in and unfortunately it had it took like a literally a series ending injury to get a look at joseph yeah joseph wall should have had game three and it's unfortunate that he wasn't in there earlier because he's the best goalie in the organization right now for a dude who never grew up playing hockey i shouldn't be right this often i i think we grossly overthink this sport play the healthy player it's not that hard with the with the goal we're talking about there the verhage goal and and uh from their own end to the blue line pass it it's countless the number of times they did

that the florida uh to the leafs and that's just kind of how they play hockey these these crazy breakout passes where they just flip it out over the zone there's always somebody at the blue line waiting to receive the pass and they did it in such an expert way and they're always quick to the puck and it's such an easy way to beat the leafs you know they kind of just discovered hey somebody gets to the other side of the blue line we'll send the outlet pass and then we just need to score so it's never about like sustained pressure with the florida panthers because they can just leave the zone send this pass down you get the puck to verhage he scores because Lillard can't handle it.

Let me reinforce that point. Yeah, go ahead. Sportsnet and Sportlogic put up this graphic. You know what, Jesse? I'm going to send it over to you. Okay. I'm going to send it over to you because I feel like you need to see it.

All right. Okay? Is it going to make me look smarter like an idiot? No, you're going to look real fucking smart because this is exactly what you just said, but in numbers. And the only two stats that matter on this, by the way,

are the bottom two stats. Well, the goals matter. That's the top stat. But there are five stats listed. Goal shots, slot shots, cycle chances, and ozone possession. Cycle chances and ozone possession are the only two stats, if you're a Leaf fan, that matter in this graphic. This is courtesy of SportsNet and SportsLogic.

Cycle chances, Leafs 5, Panthers 1. Ozone possession, Leafs 315, Panthers 41 seconds. Oh my goodness. That's in the first period, 41 seconds of ozone possession. And they have two goals. they don't need it they don't need it at all that is the the absolute like i've never seen opportunistic like i've seen with the florida panthers holy smokes i saw someone sarcastically look at the numbers for last night and go oh well yeah you certainly have to blow it up

and it just reminded me i'm not a big the office guy but it just reminded me of that episode where michael scott and dwight shroot are in the car together and michael scott is following his nav system and dwight's like there's a body of water right there and mike's like yeah but the nav says this and he drives right into the fucking lake like i yeah i agree all those things are good things down to nothing yeah because of the way the panthers play they don't need the cycle chances to score goals yeah i sam bennett's too quick to the puck like from the moment game one happened i'm like okay this conversation is going to be insufferable because the panthers do not play a style of hockey where they win these

numbers. They simply win games. And most teams do have numbers that match the results. The Panthers do not. And they will not. That's just not how they play. Scott Wheeler reading the room. And he did read

the room. He said, I know nobody wants to hear it. That's reading the room. Bless you, Scott. But shot attempts were 20-6 for the Leafs that period. Scoring chances 7-2. So the Panthers scored on both chances that they had uh for the leafs on five on five and uh and scott said the panthers expected goals fours was in the first period was 0.24 what now so that doesn't really line up you

said shot attempts were 20 to 6 uh sorry shot attempts were 20 to 6 and scoring chances were 7 to so for the leafs five shots here that we have stats after 20 are 14 to 12 attempts though six so they have 12 shots on goal how could they have six shots oh at even strength even strength sorry yeah yeah five on five that was that was the part it was the first time i'm sorry i didn't read it properly but yes that was that's he does specify it's five on five that period in five on and the the panthers had a 0.24 expected goals for now somebody who's a very smart fan named vincent hannah i want to shout out vincent he wrote this obviously they are playing much better than the results indicate this round.

However, the time for moral victories passed long ago. They need to find a way to string together wins in the playoffs, regardless of whether they control the play or not. And Scott Wheeler said,

yes, this is level-headed. And that is sort of how you have to look at it after the first period. I just wrote, boy, this is frustrating. Like, it's just, you're sitting there

watching a team that's objectively playing better and playing their own game. The Leafs did play their game in this particular game. Um, uh, but you know, I, I look at that and I go 40 minutes. That seems like a long enough time to get this done, but Holy shit. That's a really tight timeline to turn around a two, nothing deficit.

You know, the, the Panthers are a team that relies on opportunities. The Leafs are a team that rely on miracles. Like historically they rely on miracles. They were down to nothing on home ice. They needed to come back. They did. They lost in game six against the Montreal Canadians. they needed to erase a two nothing deficit they did they lost in game five of that very same

series they needed to erase a three nothing deficit they did they lost against tampa they needed to erase a four one deficit they did they won they need a goal in the final minute of game three they did they won how many times like you're just relying on the grace of god basically we keep talking about attention to detail and full effort and avoiding the brain fart they're the the the kings of flatulence these guys all they have are brain farts uh they outshot the habs 12 to 2 and and yes it's all relevant yes what happened two years ago is relevant to the conversation because we're talking about doomsday scenarios once we finish with this game dermot spinning around like a fucking top for no good reason while the leafs are out shooting the

habs 12 to 2 it erases everything it erases all the good work you did well carrie price stood on his head and so did bob and so did corpus allo vasilevsky vasilevsky and so did rass can we fucking grow up here. The Leafs lose hockey games. End of story. That's it. That's all. Fix it. Second period?

Sure. Go for it. Hey, Leafs scored. About 12 minutes in. Sorry, 12 minutes left. 8 minutes in. Lafferty gets it to Riley. Riley shoots it into traffic. It looked as though, well, Yarncroke and Kampf were in front. I thought Kampf tipped it. I guess he didn't. And Riley gets credited with the goal.

Noted stats legend And Sam Lafferty and David Kampf. Joseph Wall makes a pretty good save. Glove save on Kachuk. He's looked confident. Nothing was getting to us. Yeah, he was great. How long until Joseph Wall is the best goalie the Leafs have?

He is the best goalie the Leafs have. Who's better than him right now? If Sammy's 100%, which he hasn't been for at least a month. Joseph Wall looked better than Sammy looked at any point. Let's save this because I do want to have that conversation. No, it's good. I do want to have that conversation. Good conversation to have.

Yeah. Leafs have solid pressure. Leafs score again. But. Not in a way that I thought, oh, this one. Did they? Morgan Rielly seems to get a goal on another great Morgan Rielly drive, which he's been so good at this series.

So good at. And sorry, so good at these playoffs. Maybe not as much this series. Puck is in the net. It is under Bob's ankle. he went from overpaid to indispensable in two like that's what the playoffs do though aren't they isn't that what the playoffs are for oh yeah we find out who the real players are elevated he was the best player for the least the entire playoff yeah jesse how many goals did morgan riley have

in the regular i think it was i forgot to look i think it was two and then he had four in the playoffs i'll triple check it's crazy so morgan riley seems to score here let me let me just read the numbers it was during the regular season morgan riley had four and during the playoffs he had four in 65 games yeah and then in 11 he had four eight that's 12 points 12 points in 11 games from the back end and you win five games if you hand it out leaves cons mice like morgan riley gets it easily not even close um so then uh so morgan riley seems to score puck seems to be in the net under bob's ankle uh but they can't conclusively say it's over the line because we don't have var technology in the nhl uh no angle and and i'm sorry i'm sorry to say this as a leaf

fan every single screenshot you've been sent is wipe your ass is bobrofsky after the whistle goes like like i know it's in the net you know it's in the net jesse knows it's in the net the panthers know it's in the net but if you cannot conclusively prove it while play is happening continuation rule or not then it is not a goal and if if the same thing happened to the leafs you'd be like wow too bad suck it like honestly do i think it was in the net absolutely it was in the net let's just call it what it is it was in the net it was in the net but if you can't prove it i don't know but they made the right call you cannot call that a goal and if you are the leafs and this is the problem and i hate to quote mike babcock but i will leave no doubt why why are we in this position in the

first place which is something we can get to later in the game if your season comes down to leaving it in the hands of the nhl are you fucking crazy you're fucked don't do that you know that that's not good leave no doubt make it five to two don't make it two to one two nothing and then two to one and oh man oh our whole series hinges on this don't go down three oh ask oilers fans uh about leaving it in the hands of the nhl alex petrangelo might end their season tomorrow i know a man i was watching that game afterwards i could not believe the sequence when it went from two one to four two in like three minutes i couldn't believe it couldn't fucking believe it yeah vegas holy shit um the nurse it's absolutely ridiculous that

people are sending around the the photo of the puck after play with bobrovsky getting up well that that was the most egregious part of that whole review is them going back to the film of bobrovsky getting up when the play is over like if the puck is in the net when the play is over That's not evidence that the puck was in the net. But also, there's one going around of the dead-on angle. And, guys, we know angles and geometry. Can we stop? I also want to ask this.

Don't give people hope that is baseless. Is it possible for the NHL to have an angle from any other angle other than, like, if I was looking at that, And I'm like, if they had TV cameras on the other side of the ice or just cameras that aren't for TV, they probably could have seen that. But they've only got the angle from the side. No, no. They have the one from down. Do they? That was the one that was, like, blown up.

The one where you can see it coming, like, on. From the other side? Yeah. It's not from the other side, but it's, like, from where the blue line is. You know, it was pretty, like, down there. Okay. But why do we only have one camera in the net? Two.

There are two. Oh, right. There's two. but the funny thing was is the one that's lower that's supposed to manage the goal line uh most of the time because it's up too high you can only see the goalie's ass yeah like you can't like it doesn't show you anything and i'm like here's here's the camera that you should fucking have are you ready here's the fucking camera you have why is there not a camera at the base of the net yeah why no because because then even in the bob situation him from the you can't you wouldn't

be able to see through him oh i understand that but if you got it so if the net is here right and my hand is the base of the net have the camera here so you can combine that with other angles oh i could see under bob's ass you're you're thinking you're going completely in the wrong direction to find solutions for this well the solution to this is there is currently a chip in the puck the chip in the puck provides information to the nhl and to all the teams about stats that are happening during the game there's also a chip in the back of every player's jersey not a lot of people know this they they wear a fucking chip and there's also one in the pocket if you cut open an nhl puck you'll find technology in there that technology is capable

of syncing with the red line because we've seen it in numerous pro sports tennis like tennis who does it regularly and within milliseconds they have the uh access to it with you've seen it in the world cup just activate the fucking chip technology that you already have sync it with the red uh the goal line so we already know if it's in or not so there was a very forward nh yep there was an interesting conversation last night i saw between rachel dory who has worked for two nhl teams and scouting the refs who are just brilliant and i love them um rachel argued listen this technology exists scouting the refs uh said yes but they're not satisfied with the accuracy of it and then rachel said something cryptic about basically she knows something that

we don't know which i assume is true she worked for two nhl teams but i mean at the end of the day we don't have the technology and i don't think the league if there's chips in the puck anyway would withhold the technology just because wait they're not why aren't they why don't they just get the better technology it's probably my assumption is it's just not developed yet no literally no but it is it is developed like a strike zone in baseball has existed for enough time now that we know you can you can accurately get a thing that's going a hundred miles per hour in baseball you can track it into this little box you can track a puck to see if it crossed the line is there something about a puck that makes it more difficult to do than a baseball no no there

no there's there's no way you know what steve i i honestly guys i think it comes down to this they haven't had a group uh circle jerk uh with all the guys who make all the decisions and brought it to the table and the nhl players can barely decide on whether or not their players are worth protecting well so what we can talk about that we are going to talk about that but i i uh i actually think that that this is that the technology exists it's probably just like we're kind of cheap and we don't want to and we think our system works and we would every here's the thing every time the nhl makes a change they're admitting that their previous policy didn't work well enough and so that in a lot of organizations stymies change because um because you're basically

saying hey you know the strategy we've had for 10 years well we told you it was going to work but it didn't the nhl and we and we copped to that nobody wants to take that responsibility tennis baseball soccer and there you are last again it's again it's a bummer second thought to most sports fans you can't tell me a soccer ball and a tennis ball and a baseball are any different than a hockey puck figure it out like if you can't do it right now to figure it out it's been enough time and by the way if you're listening to this conversation and you hate it and you think we're insufferable the chip technology would prevent this conversation yeah it would have been well goddamn it wasn't in shit that sucks well hopefully they get another

one and that's not the reason the leafs lost it is not um it is not and this is the thing right uh the leafs let themselves go down to oh and you can say well the panthers were opportunistic well that's hockey uh you you look at the and we're by the way we're in the second period like i i A lot of Flames fans were reaching out and going, hey, man, I feel you. Only we were in the Stanley Cup final in 2004. And I think it was, was it Corey Stillman that had it robbed? Or who had the? Oh, no.

Fucking. Craig Conroy? No. He had the game winner in every series Calgary won. Oh, my God. Well, we could. I forget his name. But I don't want other fan bases to think that the Leafs were robbed.

Oh, they weren't. They weren't at all. like don't feel bad don't feel bad for us in this situation there's other reasons you can feel bad for the least fan i'm looking at not this goal don't worry this goal isn't that martin gelina yeah man he was great he was this isn't the time to feel bad no it isn't this morgan riley goal it wasn't a goal um dom decision on penalties in the uh in the series this is by the way at the second intermission he said this is the least sorry second least penalized series in the analytics era wow so probably in the last 10 years don't worry guys it's all in your heads

um and then the official explanation on the review from the nhl is as follows are you ready uh no goal toronto the referee deemed the play dead prior to the puck crossing the florida line the call was made in accordance with rule 78.5 which states apparent goal shall be disallowed when referee deems the play has been stopped even if it had not been physically uh sorry even if he had not physically had the opportunity to stop play by blowing the whistle so essentially what they're saying is they because the the question in the intermission and i think it's a good one is well he didn't blow the whistle so if he doesn't blow the whistle is the play not still going so that's another thing like we that is not the first time it's happened where

the ref didn't know what was happening and thus didn't blow the whistle so then how do you deem then when the play was dead like oh this is what i meant to like how do you how do you deem it i don't know now they do they do like have that and it'll be like the play has stopped in this reasonable moment i don't know what the exact wording is but that is something that's kind of in the robo yeah like yeah there was a moment where the puck clearly visibly crossed the line but guys we all know the play was dead exactly and that reasonable moment that kind of on the ice the situation the play nobody's really playing anymore that can be deemed that hey the whistle should have gone there so we can't rule it a goal anymore it's incredibly rinky-dink that we have those

scenarios um but certainly at the end of the day we know the play was dead okay so leaf start uh the third period with some good pressure some really good chances they were great in the third yeah um eight minutes into the period i wrote uh they haven't been able to finish but they're looking really good uh then verhege almost immediately afterwards as as i write this down you think you you see why leaf fans believe that they're cursed right uh verhege almost has a breakaway but justin hall hauling ass in what is probably his last game as a leaf there's been hauling ass oh we're hauling his face like on a truck it was hauling ass just him and just his face and a butt um donkey no that's there you go um he keeps carrying a donkey

He keeps Verhege to the side and pressures him, and it allows Wohl to stay up on his feet. He didn't have to go down to make the save. Stayed up on his feet, and both of them together angle off Verhege. And I thought that was a really good defensive play. I'm like, man, I wish the Leafs did that more. Leafs goal. William Nylander, who has, of the core four,

been the most productive this playoffs, probably in the last three playoffs, and frankly, their best player under pressure. He's perfect. Most consistent playoff performer since entering the league. His attitude, I think, which is for some reason still rubs people the wrong way. I don't get it. But his attitude in the playoffs is perfect for Toronto hockey

because he just does not get wrapped up in it. Is this a conversation for after we break down the game? Yes. Sorry, we'll get into it. You're right. I got a lot to say about my victory lap I need to do about my favorite player, Willie Neal. Willie showed some real heart and soul on that.

scored that goal against Bobrovsky he catches Bobrovsky at the perfect moment Bobrovsky's decided that he's going to go down to cover the post I know but like Bobrovsky's the unsolvable one we can get shots past Montour it's fucking Bobrovsky

that's the problem and he goes down to cover the post and as he's midway down the puck sails over his shoulder there's nothing Bob can do he can't lift his shoulder back up as he's going down and that was Nylander creating what jesse a just a clear shot off the rush yeah thing that we said was impossible for matthews to generate william neilander has done it fairly consistently throughout the playoffs

matthews marner the way the way he skates in the offensive zone in like a free way is it's so it's so mesmerizing to watch because no other leaf kind of has that freedom he's one of my favorite players to watch skate yeah when when he starts pulling those fucking crossovers you're dead you're dead there's so few players in the league who can manage that once he starts that in stride because dead with with mitch like we see a lot of that during the regular season that we don't see it as much in the playoffs and with willie you see it all the time and that's something special he had some shifty moments mitch um he had his games it's just not consistent enough it's not enough and they should have separated him and matthews long ago uh that will be a conversation

we'll have after um eight seconds to go i want to show you something is it mark stall it's mark stall on mitch marner now we can only show you the screen grab of this i thought it was bunting uh i thought it was on mitch marner it could be wrong doesn't matter um eight seconds to go uh one of the most egregious elbows i've ever seen and i'm telling you this because uh i've seen a lot of egregious elbows watched a lot of gordy how highlights but even gordy would have got a call on this and gordy would have looked at that and been like yo man that's dirty mark stall on mitch marner the puck is nowhere near him like so here's the freeze frame is right there the puck is with the other florida panther that you can see on that screen all mitch is doing

or Michael Bunting or whoever it is. It is Mitch. I thought it was Mitch. All Mitch is doing is doing a swing into the offensive zone and Mark Stahl goes, you know what? Eat this. And he has to. Adam, we've been watching hockey for decades.

Nine seconds left in a playoff game. No, it's never going to happen. But it's just, it's relevant to the game. No, it's relevant to the game. And it's not like anti-leafs. And it's not like, woe is us. it's they wasn't called because it was us um it's uh like it's the playoffs i'll keep saying it like i watch too many sports like too many different sports this isn't a league it's just not um that

that's allowed that's fine oh that's hockey cool that's a rinky-dink bullshit thing i don't understand hockey fans contempt of sporting like in order for something to be a sport there's rules and you're not allowed to break them and when you break them there's punishment and that's just not a thing in hockey like i just don't understand the contempt hockey fans have for the spirit of sports well a lot of hockey fans only watch hockey i think that's part of it um and why is that allowed i don't know it's hulk is hockey man's game and you don't have an argument you fucking imbecile why is that allowed well my question is not that anymore my question is why have the leafs never taken advantage of it i think it's on the leafs fucking thank you 2013 we have the

same complaint i don't remember as much of it in 2017 in 18 2019 same bitching and moaning and we're we're responsible for the bitching and moaning too i was up there bitching and moaning i am the bitch and the moan i'm yeah but i'm tired of doing the bitching and the moaning dubois mean to us in the bubble and oh charotte and edmondson get away with everything yep and maroon is buried they're so mean and bennett i want him arrested fuck we're always on the whining end of this and we're right by the way every single time we're right man i love being right and eliminated uh just start playing the game that the way that they play in the playoffs it's listen it's a league uh run by psychos built by psychos

designed for psychos go get some psychos you have to um that's what it is well and that's we'll get to that i'm disappointed in luke shen i thought there would have been a moment in this series where luke shen like takes a run at bennett or gudas because i thought that's what luke shen was one of their most effective defensemen yeah so taking him off is a bad idea i didn't expect him to come in there and just kind of be a steady back-end defenseman you know i thought i thought luke shen would have played a meaner game and he would have just like when sam bennett's sitting on jake mccabe punching him in the face i expected hey next game i don't know maybe he gets punched back sam bennett yeah oh oh man where does he play florida yeah yeah but like where in their lineup

uh very high up in it yeah second line right top six yeah top six and uh the guy who was nominated for the heart um matthew chuck where does he play uh he's a tough nut which one is the first line yeah yeah yeah florida second line probably the first and the guy who scored the first and last goal of this series nick cousins where did he play during this series uh middle middle lineup yeah yeah yeah the top top yeah yeah he was on that line yeah all three of those guys yeah and uh it's been a tough line yeah and we know gudas is a tough nut but like uh aaron Eckblad was all around it and he was roughing guys up all series where does he play for Florida the first pairing first pairing and he was healthy how about that best players on your team

grow a fucking backbone Simmons Lafferty uh you know any third pair defenseman you go out and you get all these grunts and it's fine and it's good for your team and it helps if your top guys are not about that life the rest of the team will not be about that life it does Tavares have a career fight in Toronto I don't I don't want him fighting maybe that's part of the problem Matthews who is literally cleaning up when Stamkos mauled him and that's his only career fight and I don't want him fighting with his surgically repaired wrists Marner's like a buck 70 soaking wet if we've establish that the rules that the nhl has written down do not matter and that the rule book is just irrelevant why don't the leafs take care of uh why don't they take advantage of that and do their

own this is my thing and for something like the matthew nye's incident which we've all just kind of forgotten about zero retribution for that if they're the rules don't matter that the first time they touched sam bennett is they shook his hand yeah they're not we're not done the game yet but Yes, it's written cussing our rookie. If there's no rules, why not take advantage of the no rules and get retribution for a guy like Matthew Nyes? The Leafs are designed to be exactly what they are, a great regular season team that is not built for playoff hockey.

Well, and I think there's something to that. The Florida Panthers were a great regular season team last year. This year they were bad and then good and then bad and then really, wow, okay, surprisingly good, but, you know, still kind of soft according to Keith Kachuk. going into the playoffs and um and frankly he played them like a fiddle a sure did it was perfect good on him did it when he was coming through toronto too when he knew it would get the most media exposure and then they ended their season right brilliance from keith kachuk so

brilliance what what good teams do uh like it seems the florida panthers have done they're a perfect example of a team that went into last offseason sorry last postseason too soft they won their first round and tampa wrecked them in the second round but boy does it seem a they took advantage of uh uh kachuk wanting out of calgary boy did they win that one big trade big trade boy did they they get that one they got lucky if i could go back in time marner for kachuk i would i yeah that should have been the move yeah absolutely yeah kachuk doesn't want to be in canada though he did not want to be in canada It was, it was, he will not accept a trade to a Canadian team is what he said.

Right. And it was because of the COVID lockdowns. A lot of the American guys don't want to be stuck in Canada when they can't see their family for a year. So. Would have been nice. Would have been great. I'm with you, Jess.

And here are my third period thoughts. And you guys can tell me what you think. So it's tied 2-2. We're going in overtime. It can go either way. Again, Leafs leaving it to chance. $11 million guys need to score is the first thing I wrote. They have their chances.

It's, it's not an option. it's not an option it's a must if if i tell you and i wrote this down before the game ended if i told you before the series that matthews and marner would combine for one goal in the first five games how do you think you would feel the series was going i can't believe it went five you wouldn't even need to watch the game leaves and leaves out in three that's like if lebron James if LeBron James is is like even in this era in his older era if LeBron James is under 15 points a game I don't think the Lakers are winning anything no if Steph Curry is not hitting 30 points a game if he's hitting 15 uh the Golden State Warriors who did go down last night uh

they're not winning any games they're not winning any games so if Matthews and Marner and you're like well what about the rest of the team no no no guys they are the team the team's built around them patriots win despite brady being shit didn't happen it's just not a headline and so so uh willie scored tavaris looked dangerous marner looked better these last two games um really good high event hockey in the third extremely entertaining i think we can all agree on that let's get to overtime yeah also fucking entertaining fucking entertaining how did that make it out of the first five minutes i don't know i don't know and i'm like man is this gonna be is this going to be the triple overtime game we haven't gotten in 20 years that's what i kind of

thought uh it didn't go that way though and i wrote down this when it's happened i said someone fucking scores an ot who fucking cares and it turned out to be nick cousins but i want to show you this play uh i want to show you this play too okay are we gonna talk about gudas we're talking about gudas tripping yarn croak and then screaming in in wall space holding this not even tripping holding the stick holding the stick i got i got you the replay and it's a you'll have to freeze frame it but it's again playoff hockey it did lead directly to a goal though and that's one of those you can't miss this penalties it really is like like listen tj brody got a you can't not call that penalty in in in the in overtime he whacked it over the glass at first i thought it was bark

of uh the alternate angle showed it was clearly brody you have to call you have to call that There are certain things you have to call, although the refs are showing us that you can get high-sticked in the face late in the game in these playoffs. No call. You can woodshot Leon Dreisaitl, best player in the league right now, right across the wrist one game. That's still such a joke. If that's one game. I know. Why don't you just send out a guy to go hack people in the face?

Just go get a bunch of guys suspended. Send out a line of guys to do that. It's because of who Petro is. watch colasar is gonna get more than petro i that that colasar hit was oh it was bad fucking brutal two minutes so so uh radko gudas does what radko gudas does this is what's made him effective he's a bastard to play against um and he gets in the fucking way all the time and this is what he does with yarn croak yarn croak could have absolutely stopped nick cousins on that yarn croaks a solid defensive player that's why they got him uh and racco gutis is standing

directly in front of wall when that puck goes in and it's a goal and the series is over and you almost just can't believe it not because i frankly i was i i didn't find out about the gutis thing till later it happened such a flash for me but you do look at this and go god damn it right it's a god damn it sort of play you don't want to complain about the officials and You don't want to say it's the reason that they lost. The officials are not the reason they lost. They are not the reason they lost. The officials played this the way the officials play this every year.

I'm so sick of this. Leaf fans, you got to hold this team to a higher standard. Take, if you know what the rules are, and at this point, you've been to the playoffs seven years in a row. You know the rules. You know how they work. When Morgan Rielly thought the goal went and he celebrated anyway. Why?

We learned that lesson against Tampa. you celebrate no matter fucking what you convince everybody that it's a goal and you make it happen that's playoff teams know how to do that you know what the refs are not going to call so start taking advantage of it why like i've i've been asked like hey don't say they lost because of the rest and i i mean it's not they didn't lose entirely because of the rest why am i not allowed to point out that that goal would not have been a shot if a panthers player wasn't holding a defending player stick this is why no one watches this goddamn league we do we've hitched our our well because we love it horse to this rickety bullshit wagon and the people listening to this

like you're listening to a hockey podcast that's niche you're hardcore hockey fans the vast majority of people don't fucking care and it's stuff like this that's why i know but why can't we point out that extraordinarily relevant event it is a relevant event that's why i pointed it out but to sit here and bitch about it i'm sorry i have no sympathy for the team for this they put themselves in a position where play like that or play like the replay with their and listen they oh did they outplay the panthers in the first two games yeah sure but in game three they they pitched a fucking dud and they put themselves in this position and then they allowed two goals in the first period of an elimination game it's just not a

league it's no no steve this is the way it is so play by the rule the rules don't have to be fair life isn't fair we all know we all play the game of life it's not fucking fair we got to play by the rules though don't we or we got to play within the rules and i think the leafs have never ever done that and i think nick kiprios made a really really good point um a couple games ago and he said do not ask this team to be what it is not and this is where we go to the off season and i think nick is bang on the money we go to the off season discussions and i'm gonna just i'm gonna throw throw some questions that you don't answer any of them yet last thing on this play i wish the nhl did have better rules i wish there i wish i'm with you i wish not even better rules in terms

of like because that's an illegal play i wish there were contingencies that other sports have so like that's a genie wish there are a lot of simple things that the national hockey league could do to prevent situations like this like in uh football every um scoring play is automatically reviewed you don't need to challenge it if there's something simple like every overtime goal is reviewable and like any penalty in all aspects any any penalty within the scope of the goal like anything that result that leads to a result here in that ot goal is kind of reviewable like that could be a contingency i'm just throwing that out there that's in place if you have an eye in the sky ref that's something that a lot of hockey fans alan walsh in particular has been

clamoring for very recently and i am the sky ref who can point out things that happen in the play and say hey you missed this on the ice that is a penalty if there is even accountability the nba has a two minute report so you know like hey my team got screwed on the last play here that should have been called a foul they they will publish that they will say the ref missed a call this should have been a penalty these other sports have contingencies they have rules in place to where we're not sitting here just being upset at the sport we love i wish the national hockey league had those sorts of things so we didn't have to be just bitching and moaning as you guys said about these same things and i'm sick of single time but i'm sick of bitching and moaning about

it i'm sick of guys we're waiting on the league to change the league's not going to change so play the play the game that the league has set out for you it's it they don't they don't it's squid game they don't like you know what this is inconvenient we should change the rules for all the players the guy who's been in charge I don't know if that's the same thing it's exactly the same don't question it's not great the guy who's been in charge

since 1993 I'm really done with this conversation after this got a half decade extension after one of the biggest scandals in the league's history so if you want change

you won't get it I'm not asking for change I'm just asking for a simple change. You're asking for change, and you're not going to get it. You're asking for simple change, and you will not get it. We'll see. Maybe one day. I can keep dreaming.

Well, I think it eventually happens. As Aerosmith once said, dream on. That's right. Eventually it happens, guys, but let's move on from that. I really hate this conversation because I think it takes the onus off the Leafs organization, and I think that that is where it needs to be. This organization is very process-driven. They've created extremely successful regular season teams.

nobody's denying that uh and everybody's happy about that we're thrilled for that they've set records and points they've set records and goals it's incredible that's fantastic about it it makes it worse okay but let me finish my point i know what you're saying and i want to hear it but i'm setting you up out of fuck your point i think that when we have the discussion about the referees and the way the refereeing changes from regular season to playoffs, it takes the onus. It allows people to look at expected goals or cycle chances or offensive zone possession and go, well, there's the story. They got jobbed by a goalie. And I have to be honest with you guys. I just don't believe that. And I'll tell you why. Here's the 11 and a half million dollar

Elephant in the room. Austin Matthews did not score against the Florida Panthers. And I know that Austin Matthews is the guy we can never criticize. We're fucking hard on Mitch, fucking hard on Willie. Tavares has been watched for three years for some reason, even though he's been a point-of-game player ever since. That crazy knee to the head from Corey Perry, which was accidental. Austin Matthews, I don't care what kind of injuries there are.

I don't care what is happening. Top line minutes. The guy is the best player in this franchise's history. If he does not score, they don't win. End of story, guys. How many series did the Edmonton Oilers win without Wayne Gretzky scoring a goal? How many series did the Detroit Red Wings win without Steve Iserman, Brendan Shanahan, et cetera, et cetera, scoring goals?

Or the Blackhawks with Kane and Taze? or the LA Kings with Jeff Carter and whoever else they had. They had their band of merry men. The Pittsburgh Penguins. How many series has Sidney Crosby not scored it? And this is what it comes down to, Adam. It doesn't need to be about the individual player. It doesn't need to be about Austin Matthews or Mitch Marner or Tavares.

It's the combination does not work. They can't and they won't. matthews on july 1st will be eligible for a raise and he'll get it he'll get a bigger piece of the pie you think their chances of winning when he gets that bigger piece is gonna go up if they keep the rest of the guys around him they can't do it they can't do it with this group it doesn't need to be that he's a bad player no he's not he's a great player but if teams are able to zero in on this guy and lay a beating on this guy and neutralize this guy year after year and it's like whack-a-mole you could point to years where he was stellar rest of the guys were quiet Mitch

Marner has a great game next game the rest of the guys are quiet Tavares has a Herculean game rest of the guys are quiet willie's been the most consistent one by far and riley's been pretty good too the combo of these three dudes making over 10 million dollars does not work we have enough proof of concept that we can say definitively it does not work we've seen four years of it the The best they've done is five wins out of 16. It's done, it's over, it's finished. One of them's gone. Let me throw a stat at you.

And this is from producer Drew. Marner's playoff totals in games five through seven is in his career. He's played eight game fives. He's had four assists total. He's played six game sixes, one goal, one assist total. And he's played four game sevens, two assists total. and and and it's not that's not to single out mitch marner and go he's a bad hockey player we

all know he's fantastic but i gotta ask the question if your best players are not able to find ice does it not tell you as a general manager that you are not setting them up for success now i know that they have to find success no matter what because they're paid that way but let's be honest here. The reality of the situation is you've got Matthews, who's a big boy, but not overly physical and isn't going to get into fights. He's got, you know, broken wrists and reconstructed this, whatever. You got Marner, who is still six feet tall, but because NHL players are huge, he looks tinier out there. And Michael Bunting or Callie Arncroke, who are both mid-sized players who play, you know, gritty games, but they don't drive any play. They don't crush any bodies.

Michael Bunting talks a lot, but I don't think anyone's intimidated by Michael Bunting. At a certain point, and I want to go full caveman on this one. At a certain point, do we not look at this and go, we need to get somebody on this team, on the first line, who can skate with these guys and terrorize anybody that goes near them? No. Your top guys need to be the guys who terrorize. Kucherov terrorizes people. Is a crazy person. Yeah, he is.

You're right. uh look at the avalanche from last year nathan mckinnon is nuts oh he's got he's got those eyes yeah he's got the he's got eyes that suggest he used to pick wings off flies for fun when he was bored in school uh gabriel landis cog will fuck your day up uh go through all the cup champs ryan o'reilly a few years ago along with the rest of that blues team will fuck your day up The Boston Bruins need, I say, more. The Washington Capitals, Ovechkin will run through your chest. Who won in 2017?

Sidney Crosby's tough as nails, too. Yes, and like— And so is it. Malkin's a psycho. Like, he's crazy. He's out of his mind. You just got to have an element of fuck you to your game that this team does not possess. you can't teach it it's over okay so um these guys might win cups somewhere else

but they're gonna have to go to a team that has those players yeah they can't do it together the combination doesn't work i agreed and i i wouldn't be surprised if any of them win a cup elsewhere uh by the way the toronto maple leaf season ends with seven consecutive games in which they scored only two goals. You tell me offense isn't a problem. This is Luke Fox. It's the driest offensive stretch the Leafs have had in 13 years.

And by the way, five of those 13 years, the Leafs didn't make the playoffs. Like that is, guys, at the end of the day, I mean that if the Leafs are an offense driven team and they have,

they have been, you're not scoring in the playoffs. We know that they're not. And don't show me the Tampa stats because they're skewed because of game two. where they had seven goals. The reality of the situation is this is just not working.

And so the question now is, obviously, like I said, does the GM stay? Does the coach stay? And is the core four, we can and we will experiment over? And yes, we include Riley in that, but everybody calls him the core four, so I'm just throwing it out there. We're going to know the answer to these questions, guys,

in the next eight weeks. It's impossible to know now, But what I will say is this, is that the Leafs are probably going to be one of the stories of the next eight weeks. They always are. But, like, in real terms, this is going to be quite traumatic. We have rumors of infighting at the top between Dubas and Shanahan. And we've had those for 18 months or more. Like, not just not getting along.

Did you see them in the same box once this playoffs? Yes. Yeah, game five. Or was it four? There's multiple games, yeah. It was rare. shanney was shanney was very front and center before yeah wasn't on camera a lot this playoffs uh i thought that was interesting uh right uh front and center um when they forced game seven

against the bruins i think it was 2018 fuck you back his fucking piece of shit you could read his lips clear his day and you know he's invested you know he's invested but shanahan and steve pointed this out in his video that his first move is as uh president of this team in 2014 when he was brought in by Tim Laiwiki, who's now building arenas with his brother, with Jeff Bezos. Channy,

his first move was to re-sign Randy Carlisle. He's been here so long. His main free agency goal that year was to get David Bolin locked up to a five-year contract and the Panthers were the ones that said, we'll pay you more.

And he went to the Panthers and he stunk. And they got hurt. yeah you got her uh this has been a very long run for brandon shanahan kyle dubas has been rightly the face of criticism for people that don't believe in this experiment that they're pulling for a long time but who put him there on this is from wikipedia on april 11th 2014 shanahan was officially announced as the leafs president and alternate governor our podcast has been or had been around for less than a year and in two weeks we'll celebrate our 10-year anniversary they've won one playoff round

how does he keep his job well and and and so like i actually think i'll be honest with you i think kyle dubas has done the best job that he possibly can in attempting to make this era work I think that the additions of Achari and O'Reilly were fantastic I think the value you get on Jake McCabe's contract like give Jake McCabe a full preseason with this team to understand

the system to understand why they always do that stupid fucking back pass possession bullshit that drives me fucking crazy all the time and allows the other team to get set up so they can't make an off that's you know what drives me fucking nuts about that is it gives the other team a chance to stand at their fucking blue

line and go all right we'll wait for you whenever you want to come we'll wait for you they try to get them because they don't have a what they don't have a what what do they have they they try to get them stationary and they try to cut through them like butter i don't know what you're trying to say they don't have a fucking four check no if the leafs dump and chase they're not gonna hurt you no they're gonna go yeah so if they had a scary four check you could you could do what what you're just talking about there get them stationary or you could do something else and you could play that situation based on the parameters on the ice the factors on the ice but if you only have one option it's pretty easy

to stop it so so here's what you're never going to be able to answer today but in the next eight weeks we'll know we're going to know if one of these guys gets pk suband and i'm talking about remember my mark bergevin's like we're not trading pk but we are listening to offers oh i was like given a tv job no no we're gonna i'm sure one of them could but i i i think with with with the leafs well they're available let's let's say dubas sticks around okay because we don't know there's been a lot of rumors about pittsburgh and about him and keep going i think dubas stays i i would love to give dubas the opportunity to rebuild the sides of the core you know i would like to see you know how many people just kick their phone

I know right but a lot of people also celebrate it I think Dubas is a very good general manager and I think that he recognizes all of the things that we're saying I think he sees that we've had seven years of process it's time to

he builds the things that we're saying I don't think Dubas is so stubborn that he wouldn't move around the pieces on the chessboard so when Kerfoot and Hall get extended we're gonna revisit this conversation yeah okay okay if that if that actually comes to fruition like that'll be fucking wild and then he probably should be fired at that moment but um the the leafs have four forwards all right one two three four five six seven seven forwards

signed through next season the rest of the roster is up in the air um and you mentioned pk subban adam and i think that's so it parallels something uh that's gonna that might happen here and that's mitch's no trade no trade clause pk suban was traded immediately before his no move clause kicked in and mitch marner unfortunately has one that'll kick in on july 1st this year he is ripe to be the piece that is moved to relief this cap situation of the top three players being paid over 10 million dollars we have proof here that it doesn't work mitch marner right now is the easiest deal to move because you can one get value back for him because somebody's gonna want this player because he is one of the top players in the league and two the cap relief that you're

gonna get by moving out 10.903 000 million dollars yeah you gotta get your fucking junior i know steve hates that 93 we'll play with a fucking uh student as our goalie while our starting goalie who's been great this season plays injured as a result that way to get your junior number in there austin in there too that 10 million dollars that do this can move out plus whatever he gets back in the deal can make this an entirely new team if there aren't there are that's a giant fix but it's a it's not so many steps that we think it is and i would like to see dubas i trust dubas in that if he's if he's the one who sees that these moves need to be made i would trust him to make those moves

i don't think there's room to feel bad for anyone who gets fired or traded i don't i agree with you I don't think they ended up firing Dubas and Shanahan and they traded Mitch and Austin and Willie. You wouldn't feel bad for any of them because the results are what they are. You know who I feel bad for? Leaf fans. That's why I feel bad for them. Yeah, yeah. For us.

No, anyone gets fired who's been there this entire time. I'm like, yeah, what did you expect? And like Dubas, like it's not just players and personnel and everything. He treats people really well. Forward thinking. he forward thinking really uh helped um with their uh sports science sports science department thank you their analytics department he helped establish a lot of things like i don't know maybe maybe he is i know no one wants to give him a promotion but maybe he's better designed for

president and they bring in another guy to be the gm yeah well i think there has to be that could be positive. Bring in your Bobby Webster. Let him be Masai. It can't be... No problem with that? It can't be, though, that they continue to do the same stuff, right? Kyle Dubas had a vision in 2016 or

17, sorry, 2018 when he took over. 18 he was GM, 14 he was AG. And there were pieces of that vision that Lou was for and there was pieces that Lou were against and it took him a while to drop Zaitsev and move on from Babcock and all the other things that they needed to do to get things better. uh at a certain point you you have to also recognize that kyle dubas is learning too

uh he's still like not even 40 and i do think he's a smart enough person to learn but is he that's a very good point well i get it listen no listen i understand that but is he able to depart from one of the major things that he was against when he came into this league like you know the Leafs the whole selling point originally and people forget this is that get the good young players get them in the system and if you need to get tougher you can trade some of the other young players don't draft tough players like the Leafs used to do these are draft tough players in the first round because they're fucking morons and waste the entirety of their prime yes so what you do now is you say okay well we don't have uh we don't have the the tough guys that we need

but as steve mentioned and i think this is really important when the tough got going uh in boston it was bergeron and it was marchand their best players getting tough pasta plays with some fuck you absolutely uh mcavoy so is kyle dubas so process driven and we'll find out this offseason that even after all of this he'll still keep the core four together is he that process driven that it's like nope we just didn't have the puck go our way look at all the advanced stats because that is what this management group has done in the past although they've been changing the nick felino trade was a big big trade he first off came in and played pretty well and then he got the back injury and then he stunk but going after nick felino and giving up a first and two fourths

for him was a big change that was not a player that the least would ever have gone after before it was they needed like i know the move to make that year was taylor hall um hall i think would have made them more of what they were and i'm not sure i'm not sure it would have made the difference everyone thinks it would have so we're still like that doesn't solve any of the problems and getting nick felino didn't wouldn't have solved like if he was healthy didn't solve any of the problems the problem was uh had him you outlined like matthews didn't score and the top guys didn't play tough enough to score but but this is my but my point got hurt but they don't delay the game my point though guys is that we're slowly seeing a change in how this

management group looks at this roster because what they've done is they've tried to bring it in they've tried to bring the toughness in the grit the experience thornton simmons uh felino ryan o'reilly nulachari marlo yeah they brought all these guys in okay so that didn't work so everything have tried everything else they bolstered the defense the goaltending is actually better now than i think it's ever been honestly he's better than freddie in the fucking postseason and i know he's in the third round canes fans good luck uh and if he wins the stanley cup good for him but man he wasn't stanley cup in toronto i can tell you that this group is learning very slowly and annoyingly that you need that toughness up front and you need it on the first and second

line and i wonder if this is the year that they finally go okay all right we tried this we've we've learned this we've tried to bite around the edges we've tried to add here and do this and what we don't we clearly do not have it they got screwed by the cap not going up because of covid boohoo and uh life life's hard and uh they didn't adapt i think they are changing though i just to say that ryan o'reilly and nola chari coming in i think is an adaptation i think no i'm not talking about in that regard okay uh the we can do the core four because the cap is going to go up and then monkey wrench in the plan and it doesn't go up and they kept it together that's on kyle well i'm with jesse i think keeping him around is certainly probably better

because he's built this program i think he has a role in this organization um but just don't expect people to be thrilled if you extend them as gm yeah i think they can that's fine they could probably eat that it might end up being the right solution is whatever like whatever you guys are saying like bringing in more pieces like that's we've tried that we've tried that a million times it's about moving out the bodies now and getting new people in there like that's if if his plan moving forward if i'm talking to dubas about his extension like okay what's your plan to fix this if his plan is bringing in the nick felinos and all that stuff then no you're not getting a job anymore but if his plan is hey we're gonna move the big contracts and get in new people to rebuild

this whole team and still try and win because there's no drafting here like the leafs are weird we're well past tearing it all down and redrafting you have two talented players in the top where you can move them to other nhl teams no you gotta trade more picks to get rid of murray who you brought in so reasons word is he's gonna be robita island and ltir so oh that they're probably not listen you can make an argument for that body i think that that's that's not an nhl ready body anymore yeah that's that's the rumor so yeah shenanigans everyone else is doing it i think i think that's a pretty good solution steve the leafs started that and then stopped doing it and i don't know why like tampa does it every year um no he's gonna hang out with jake muzzin so

cap friendly tweeted this uh leafs players uh seasons away from ufa status matthews neilander brody giordano with one tavaris marner mccabe two and then some additional contest context Tavares has a full no-move clause. Full no-move clause starting July 1st for both Marner and Matthews. Full no-trade clause turning into a 10-team no-trade on July 1st for TJ Brody. 10-team no-trade starting July 1st for Nylander. 7-team no-trade for McCabe. Matthews, Marner, and Nylander don't have trade protection until July 1st.

And now who handles all this? Well, and this is why I think continuation is the best way to go if you're the Leafs. Because they, man, they got to make these decisions lickety-fucking-split. Like, these are decisions that need to be made. I mean, they have until July 1st, but do they? The draft is June 19th, 20th, something like that? No, the 24th through the 26th. I should know that because we're going to be down there.

It's like last week of June. It's not the 24th, and I know that because that's Leo's birthday party. It's that week. Yeah, it's that week. like oh we can't go 24 so that's uh it's like that 27 28 29 yeah whatever it is right yeah last week of june yeah this is very simple um do you say guys if the one question i do want to answer it and and we're gonna have cj on next week as well after the leafs locker clean out so we'll have some more sort of insight on some of those questions but would you say that this year showed

progression yeah we learned more do you feel like the team took a step forward and remember success isn't linear just because they got to the second round doesn't mean they're guaranteed a second round next year yeah so you're not saying so what you're saying without saying it is it's not enough you need more than one win in the second round and one win at home in the entire playoffs you guys know i had a nightmare of a drive in here because it's toronto and it's just unfathomable um and there were times where i was like well you know we've made progress here and it didn't make me feel better because i still wasn't there but i wasn't close to being there either and it was taking a really long time to get there

um one thing i always keep back of my mind is like i would trust dubas to try and retool this offseason major parts of the roster but you can always fire him next year like i'm not i'm not afraid of hey dubas i think you i think dubas has earned the chance to move the big contract i agree if i'm dubas but because remember this comes down to his decision too you give me a one-year deal no no they're giving him a three to live in a family to raise no no no no that's not what he said that oh you're saying extend them and then fire them yeah you can do that that's a thing that daryl sutter is sitting at home getting paid mlsc has too much money if this is let's say you trade you traded mitch yeah you only brought back morgan and brody and the rest of the decor is

completely different and they lose they they failed to make the playoffs you know you could fire dubious with two years left on his deal i would say pay it out can i can i just throw out there that apparently mlse's board um changed their view on that stuff when babcock got fired with how many years remaining a lot five years yeah uh but but it'll boohoo you own a fucking sports team exactly i don't like this okay you don't want to do it but you're in a situation where your hand is forced he failed again the team didn't make the playoffs fire him let him sit at home and collect his paycheck or go sign with pittsburgh yeah write it off season or whatever yeah and then they pay part of the contracts whatever this is also in sports you can always

fire them next game so i give i think he earned the opportunity to trade these big pieces sign some guys and then we'll see how it goes next playoff i think he worked himself into a position where i mean it's it's clever the way it's all designed um he's put himself in a position where mlsc is handcuffed and he has to be the guy to make these decisions yeah it's clever i i uh if the leafs do move on from dubas i sincerely hope that the guy coming in even if dubas is is is promoted to president or whatever i hope it's eric tolsky eric tolsky if you don't know is the guy who is behind all the great shit that don waddell does and i want to read you this because this is fucking crazy the original trade for tony d'angelo oh the flyers got tony d'angelo and carolina's

seventh pick which they used to select alexis gendron uh good luck to alexis uh the carolina hurricanes acquired the 2022 fourth round pick from philly which turned into simon forsmark the 2024 second round pick a 2020 third round pick uh which is conditional sorry 2023 third round pick that is conditional the conditions are carolina will receive the lowest of the philadelphia florida or new york ranger third round pick in the 2023 draft the result of this because florida is advancing and going to play carolina is that carolina will receive florida's 2023 pick and now they're about to tear each other apart in the third round yeah hilarious Flyers Nation just posted Chuck Fletcher went to Harvard.

Man, they're so mad at him. George Peros went to Yale. The thing is, you know how certain teams fire a general manager and they've got time and they interview candidates? The Leafs don't have time to interview candidates. If you're going to make a change, you have to make it. I'm sure if the Leafs are trying to sign Dubas right now, they're having the conversation today.

I don't think we're going to be any less busy than if the Leafs had stayed in the playoffs. it's it's gonna be crazy it's gonna be a wild five weeks um andrew ray croft said this uh fuck off no no no he actually did i i know he's been a bit he's a bit bitter about being a former leaf but he said carolina hurricanes versus florida panthers is east in the eastern conference final is a disaster uh if you were hoping for a higher salary cap in the nhl now a lot of people are upset about this tweet because they're like wait a second carolina fans pack the stadium and people from Sunrise are like,

I've been once in the past 10 years and the reality of the situation is it has nothing to do with the fans showing up at the game. It has everything to do with corporate sponsorships. And TV. And TV rights. And, you know, unfortunately, you could pack 20,000 people in the game,

but if you can't get 20,000 people to watch, that is a significant issue. Vegas, Dallas. And they will get 20,000 people to watch. Vegas, Dallas, Carolina, Florida. Uncle. It's rough. fuck a duck that's awful but if edmonton gets through and vegas is a market on the rise that's

good for canada and no one else like in the states that's worse but we need we need a canadian team in man we need them in the top four oh well i'm not even sure that's the better outcome for the league uh probably not brendan shanahan uh is going to be a question mark over the next few weeks and i did bring this up before but i think it's important that we talk about it again The Shanahan era has marked a complete turnaround in so many things, in going to the games, in Leafs visibility in the community. The Leafs used to be a very much, oh, we don't get involved in anything in the community.

You come to us. The Leafs actually now go to community events, do things. The in-game is so much better. I think that I know Dubas deserves credit, but the sports science and all that shit is Shanahan too. I mean, he brought Dubas in to do it. And the team, which could not even win in the regular season, now regularly does. So you got to give him credit there.

But I wonder too, with those two purportedly not getting along, how long is this tenable? How long? And if you're MLSC board management, so you're part of Rogers, you're part of Bell, or you're part of Larry Tannenbaum and his family, how long are you going to allow two people at the top of this corporation because that's what it is to actively undermine each other i think shanahan's out of bullets and uh either he endorses dubas to get extended or he loses his job and i think that's the way it should be looked at honestly um he's the guy who chose dubas over mark hunter he's the guy who chose dubas over lou lamorello and if you don't think this is the guy

for the job you've been here a decade you can leave now if you continue to think this is the guy for the job we might just let you stay but it's your last bullet dubis is his last bullet no matter what and the thing is apparently they're not getting along does he want to spend his last it's two or none like it's either they both stay or neither of them stay like that's i think that's it yeah like there's i i i don't see a justifiable scenario where you get rid of dubis and keep shanahan i don't see it i think there's a justifiable scenario where you get rid of shanahan and keep dubas it's not great but there's no justification for getting rid of dubas and keeping shanahan none also i want to give a big shout out to the florida panthers team

this team never got down once from game after game one in this series i was like oh fuck man and i i did say it in between and a few people did i think you guys did too if you watched any that Boston series you knew the Leafs were in for a handful but this team whenever the Leafs score never got down and in fact several times they came back and scored within the first few first minutes after the Leafs scored smiling and laughing the whole time just chewing on their mouth guard this team is not to be underestimated if they go to the finals this year I will not be surprised Carolina's been unbelievable by the way shout out to Kane's fans you got into this the third round it's so happy for you they're kind of a good matchup for Florida too are they

you think the the panthers are about to play their third straight team that lives and dies by having the puck they're gonna smash them you think so no no no no i got the hurricane i didn't say they were gonna win i didn't say they were gonna win but they are gonna make their lives fucking hell i didn't say they were gonna win who's your pick i haven't made one yet okay we're not making that video right now all right oh you're making a video oh yeah we're making videos Yeah, yeah, of course we are. We always do that. Yeah, you're right.

Just don't know you. Idiot. That's like I just got here. Okay, so. Welcome to the team, Adam. So let me ask you this. Okay, this is the way too early management projection. All right?

And this can change this week. But as of this morning, the day after the game, when you've not had enough time to sleep about it, you don't have enough information, how do you think the management structure looks in the next eight weeks once we know for sure? When we know that story for sure, how do you think it looks?

They keep both. jesse what do you think yeah agreed i agree too and people are not gonna like it can we can i play with you guys i'm gonna read a roster name you tell me on opening day 2023 2024 nhl season will they be a toronto maple leaf let's go all right i'll do it from uh the forward group on actually the four group is most interesting so i'll start with the defense and work my way from the bottom of their cap hits up eric gustafson no adam you're playing as well i don't i don't think so i don't think so marcus giordano yes well yes he's under contract yeah he will and he's he's solid that's fine connor timmons yes adam yeah i mean if dubas is there he'll be there he's going

to be uh maybe a marlin but yeah luke shen yes i hope so ufa so he'll need a new contract i'll say yes timothy lilligren no yes he will be there he has signed 1.4 million dollars through next season yes jake mccabe yes yes two million dollars for the next two years after this one justin hall UFA no no he's done TJ Brody five mil yes yes one more year Morgan Riley yes of course 7.5 till forever Matt Murray no 4.6 uh Robita Island does that count so he's on the team I think that counts as no no that counts oh okay okay I don't know Robita I think it counts as no and yes either way we believe the same thing Ilya Samsonov yes yes RFA yep he will be signed Joseph Wall yes absolutely uh how about these ones nick robertson will he be on the least roster the marley's

roster will you tell me they're gonna trade him uh i don't think they can trade him i don't i think he needs to play a healthy season and i think he's gonna play with the marley's who are a good team and that's a great place for him to shine but this is we're getting down to how old is nick robertson 21 22 21 years old he's very young yeah so we're getting down to kind of put up or shut up yours though let's be honest yeah you saw you very rarely do you find michael buntings and i want nick robertson to be just like his brother i'm not rooting against him but we are going to start to need a full healthy year which is unfair but we still need to see it and we need to see a guy progress i get why his his development has been destroyed injuries covet

all that shit sorry they're not going to delay the league to wait for you i changed my mind his East days. Bobby McMahon. Yeah, why not? He'll probably be a Marley. Is he a UFA? No. He signed one more year

less than 800 grand. Seven, 62. East days, he'll be a Marley. Victor Mete, RFA. No. No. Adam, what do you got? No.

You didn't answer for Bobby. Oh, Bobby. Bobby, you said Marley. Marley. Marley. Sorry. Jake Muzzin. I mean, LTIR.

oh yeah robbie island yeah all right ford's zach aston reese you want it gone wayne simmons ufa retired maybe hired matthew nyes obviously stays full-time first line winger potentially ufa michael bunting gone i said gone too sam lafferty 1.1 for one more year he'll be back he'll be back i think he'll be back yeah ufa nola chari oh you're you're resigning him you're signing please stay sign him ufa david conf i think you can survive comp going if o'reilly stays but if you can keep comp at the price you got him which is like a million bucks 1.5 Like, I mean, if you can re-sign him for that, if he takes that, you give it to him. Steve.

Gone. Wow. Ryan O'Reilly, UFA. Gone. I think he's staying. I hope so. Three more years at 2.1, Callie Yarncroft. Staying.

Stays. UFA, Alexander Kerfoot. Gone. Stays. Are you serious? I think they extended him. No. he's gone he stinks he stinks smaller cap and they even admitted it in the press conference like

like keith came out and said he didn't say yeah but he said it without saying he's not going to come out and say his player stunk but he's like he didn't rise to the expectations we expect for him yeah man he hasn't been good for a while and it's like i wish him the best but no no he he can't he couldn't perform in the regular season on your in your top six you were disappointed with his performance so what did you do you rewarded him by continuing to put him in the top six i called it he's gone deadline how did you make all those acquisitions and you still had kerfoot in your top six we'll find another job you could have stopped it you still have kerfoot 6.9 million dollars for one more year william nylander you're listening to

offers to see what you can get and believe me i fucking hate saying that because i love willie but i will say this for another player as well willie's gonna stay but they are quietly going to say hmm maybe so your prediction for opening day he will be there i think the leafs might get an offer they can't refuse but i'm gonna say stay 10.9 million dollars for two more years 10.893. What? 893. 10.893.

Oh, I know. Yeah, it went up because they had to adjust his cap hit for some stupid reason. What are you guys talking about? I'm reading Cap Friendly. I know, but his original cap hit. Yeah, that's not what it is right now. Okay, but Jesse, you know what we're talking about. That's not what it is.

Let me read Cap Friendly. Thank you. 10.93 million dollars. Gone. Mitch Marner. they are listening to offers on mitch marner and william nylander they are listening to offers they are making offers carolina sorry her like columbus is a huge fan of mitchell marner they've wanted him for years that's where yarmo could get silly and yarmo and and kyle have done business

together that i know that sounds odd but uh and i know they got johnny goudreau but i just doesn't that just feel like something where it's like they were the team that was supposedly willing to go to $14 million for Mitch Marder when he was in RFA. I think they're listening to him. I think he's here. Gone. You think he's gone? Your prediction is opening day.

Gone. Gone. $11 million for two more years. John Tavares. Impossible to move. Stays. Not impossible to move, but you can't

don't move him and get better immediately uh because you're not going to get anything back you're probably going to eat some cap so it's like i mean what team needs an 11 million dollar center um that badly uh i mean tavaris remember guys he was a hero a week ago he put them into the second round he's been a point of game player um i i think that he's staying uh i just don't think that you're gonna if you put him up and he somehow accepts a trade which i don't think he would uh i i think that i think that there's a question that i have jesse that you haven't asked is john tavara's captain next year and i think that's relevant i not because he's a bad captain but if you look at the at even san jose with joe thornton um he was stripped of the captaincy

marlo was stripped of the captaincy if by some miracle he agrees to a trade you'll have to hold on to him until after July 1st when he gets his seven million dollar signing bonus then he plays next season for nine hundred and ten thousand dollars but even then he has two more years left after this season with another signing bonus of seven million dollars each July 1st yeah I don't think there's a lot of teams that want to play that i also think the guy gives you a point of game he's a heck of a second line center um i to me he's not the issue it's too much agreed but it's not the issue so every team has a contract that's too much if the contract that's too much still gives you a point of game

i'm okay with that i can live with that so opening day he's there stays all right last one this is a two-parter let me finish the two parts uh 11.64250 austin matthews will he be on the roster opening day and then will he be on the roster post trade deadline i do not think it's a foregone conclusion he remains a leaf this year this coming yeah i think it's a foregone conclusion he's gonna make he if they got through to the third round and he had scored a few even a couple goals in this series heroic ones we're talking about matthews um adam at 15 million bucks what was the first hour of the show i i agreed i'm just but hold on let me finish you didn't i know that but let me finish this because

i think that by not doing that he's burned a bit of money i don't think absolutely the fuck not i think he has i absolutely think he has and i think he also understands that if he goes anywhere else you go to new york you go to la uh you might be able to get a car dealership uh to uh to throw you a few hundred grand for an endorsement but you are not getting the rbcs and the gambling companies and everything else that he endorses not only does austin matthews make that kind of money in toronto but he's making guys do you think that it's cheap to get him on set wayne gretzky 20 years ago for three days of work for ford got paid half a million dollars it's 20 years ago what do you think players charge today what do you think mcdavid's charging what do you think

matthews is charging in canada big money he's staying but he is not going to make 15 what this is a 14 million dollar a year player what justification is there for him to make more than nathan mckinnon there isn't but that contract was signed previous that's why you consider trading him i don't think that's that's that's not that's steve i love you man but that's not logical this is a guy who scored 60 goals and that's a contract that's a contract that was signed in a frozen cap era we're gonna see the cap go up we think oh well then keep them all the latest reports that they wouldn't budge on the splits

so that it's not going up that much okay well it's going up I think this is like that's what the update always fucking is when are we going to stop falling for this the doomsday scenario is it's either Mitch or Austin

I this team cannot continue with both can't and and so here's the question then becomes if it's if it's Mitch versus Austin, if you were to go that direction, logically, it can't be Austin. It can't.

It's a center. It's a 60 goal centerman. You can put players with Austin that open up ice for him in the playoffs. But you haven't done that. You haven't done that. You've put a bunch of mid-sized guys with him. He shouldn't be the scariest person on his line.

You know, producer Drew keeps saying it. and I think that the name brand recognition makes sense. This player is not going to be available, but a Tom Wilson type, I don't know where you find it. That's not my fucking job. If Tom Wilson's riding shotgun with Austin Matthews and Mitch Marner, nobody's touching.

Yeah. And build it into your cap plans that, you know, you're going to miss some guys for at least six games worth of suspensions throughout the year yeah and be okay with that be okay with that build it into your plans um it's the cost of business we need nut jobs well and maybe you do have the conversation with matthews especially this offseason when you're talking about that extension to say listen we know and you know that we are very well connected nhl team in terms of corporate services we can hook you up

internally with any endorsement that you want from Canadian tire to pizza pizza to whatever else right you can do anything that you want and if you get endorsements you won't have the 30 percent hold back that they that the league has on top of your taxes with the escrow or whatever it is you have to if you're Kyle Dubas have to convince these players to take a little bit less and I know that that's something. Listen, I hate it because I'm pro-labor. Labor should get paid what labor is worth. Matthews and Marner and McDavid and McKinnon and your favorite hockey players in the world are all underpaid because of the salary cap system. And it's why I hate it. These guys deserve to be making way more money. Their value and their contributions are worth way more than the league

than the league has to pay. But that's the rules. Them's the rules. So work within it. And you have to say to Austin listen there's a captaincy on the table there's a legacy on the table with one of the top teams in the league take a couple million less and let us build a winner around you Adam darling I just want to give you a hug you have to do it you have to no no this is what Kyle this is Kyle Dubas's legacy he has to do this he must do this yeah you got to sit down with with Matthew's agent you got to say listen man I know that he's worth this but if we do this it's going to be more of the same adam he didn't take a five-year discount to or he didn't take a five-year contract to get a discount on his next deal corporate sponsorships you can sell them on

that you can get them turned around on that adam he's going to get those anyway my sweet summer child he's going to get those anyway then we got a problem then we got a problem like rand randon's deal i'm a little less wrong than you thought oh i don't think you're wrong i think you're i think i'm coming at it from a this is it's it's not even they have to do this though they have to do this this is where gms and presidents and who has to do it kyle dubas and brendan shanahan if they're here well it sounds like matthew's in his camp have the leverage fuck you pay me they're fucked unless they decide to trade them and i doubt that they will but somebody and i and i just went and told you that jesse you asked us

Who's going to still be here? I just went and told you that. I think they're all going to be back because chances are they're not going to. They're going to get 75 cents on the dollar for everybody except for Nylander. And Nylander is the one you want to keep. But he's the one who's the best on there. He's the one you don't want to trade. He's the only one you're going to get equal value for because he is the best value contract.

So remind me why all the management is staying again. That's a good question. We're losing our minds here. and why we're twisting ourselves into knots if you don't change you won't get change they're gonna have to do some really uncomfortable shit what is that i don't know this matthews discount shit oh yeah just like hyman just like hyman did guys the fairy tale scenarios we gotta stop i also think you're adults uh with uh representation and uh he's got all the leverage listen i hate to be this guy because i'm actually cheering for

this team when's mcdavid up adam i'm asking the question why are you rolling your eyes Conor McDavid is signed for three more years after this. He's not up until 2026. 12.5, by the way. What does that have to do with anything? 12.5, by the way. Yeah. What does that have to do with anything?

Well, if Matthews is so dead set on going back to Arizona or going to New York or going to LA, why can't I start the rumor that Conor McDavid probably wants to come home eventually? In 2026. I'm ready. Listen, I've waited this long. Why can't I wait longer?

All right. I don't think. That'd be like the 70-year anniversary of the Leafs' last Stanley Cup. I'm ready for it. Bring Conor home. Adam are you saving sea turtles because you're grasping at straws

oh I just brought that up to piss people off I think there's no here's the thing man there's no easy decision there but one thing that each whoever the next management group is whether it's the current or the next they're going to have to be decisive and they're going to have to be quick and they're going to have to make a lot of choices

in a very short window this is 8 weeks now and they'll get set up for the next season and there is by the way not really many uh free agents out there that you're like dying over yeah frank suravali had michael bunting listed as the number one free free agent crop this year sucks it's not like you trade one of the big guys and you just get all capsized and you go sign someone fun like no you need to make deals here could you could it lend itself to the leafs because trades have to happen yeah yeah because they can't make any signings

any good ones so it's like maybe it's like hey we do have assets we could move maybe it's maybe it's and every team knows that every team knows it's a thin a thin crop on on free agency whoever gets bunding is going to overpay that's you unrestricted free agency and good for mike that's awesome for him but i'm looking at this and i'm thinking like okay so it's a trader's off season the least need to trade that's hey that's a legitimate positive outlook and if dubas is the gm he makes good trades generally generally he's pretty good trades i mean everybody looks at the tyson berry nazem kadri trade that's the only trade that they forced themselves to make or nazem kadri forced them to make uh that they didn't win i think

they've done really well they've done pretty well felito's another one where you go fuck i wish you could have that back but really who could who can predict a back injury i mean yeah that one's tough And I always talk about that, but let's not relive the past. So we can't answer any of these questions now. But what we can say is this is going to be real interesting over the next few weeks. We are going to be covering this team along with all the other teams still in the playoffs for the next, well, until mid-July. And there's going to be a lot of news around the Toronto Maple Leafs. So if you're a Leafs fan, buckle up.

The fun just began. And I want to do a big shout out again to Canes fans. Congrats on getting through. That was great. New Jersey had a great year, but Carolina, the experience wins out. Without Tevo Taravainen, without Sebastian Ajo, who could have predicted? Carolina is going to easily handle Florida. It's not even close.

We've learned nothing. I am ready for a 2006. You have learned nothing about the Carolina Hurricanes. You know nothing, Steve Dangle. That's a Game of Thrones reference. I know. It's been all over my TikTok. My TikTok is determined to show me that entire show out of order.

Why don't you just watch it? Just simply watch it. This summer. Fucking make that your show. He's going to have Matthew's goals to watch, but none from the playoffs. Watch Game of Thrones this summer. We can talk about it on the show or something. No, I got a thing to write.

Oh, yeah? Screenplay. So if Edmonton gets through against Vegas and it didn't look great last night, it could be a Canes-Oilers final eventually here, Which would be neat. That's a recap. Where are you jumping to? Well, we got to get on to the next series.

Yeah, but you went to the Stanley Cup final. Yeah, I'm going to the Stanley Cup final because I think Edmonton wins whoever. I think they beat Dallas and I think they beat Seattle. I think the winner of the, to me, the winner of the Vegas Edmonton series is the team that should go to the Stanley Cup final. No excuse. Oh, you're saying some stuff. I am. I am.

Man, Dallas hasn't looked great against Seattle. They've been good. But, like, come on. Yeah, look at Dallas and look at Seattle. This shouldn't be close. All right. Yeah, but Seattle's there. And we've been underestimating them the whole time.

Also, Vegas is leading the series. And it's getting Petro back because the department player safety is rigged. And I told you. And they look so good. I said, whoever gets out of that series is the one that should go to the finals. No excuses for either team. They are the better teams, guys. You started with Edmonds and Carolina.

I said, wouldn't it be cool? come on guys that's all I said wouldn't that be neat no it wouldn't fuck it because it's not the Leafs so no

so Dallas and Seattle play tonight at 7 o'clock Dallas can wrap up this series but it'll be very interesting to see if Seattle has 40 different guys score again maybe

I also think that if Dallas is going to win it's going to be Rupe that makes it happen man that's an early con my favorite that dude is so unreal and also not french remember when i said he was french did you

say he was french oh i don't remember if i said was it here on the show or on dang it's or both but i for some reason got it in my head that he's french and i got a bunch of tweets from finnish listeners like did you just say he was born in france and i don't know where i got that from i was determined and i was sure of it he's finished sorry that player is on an eight-year 67.6 million dollar contract signed in november uh 2022 so just a few months ago uh or will be coming up now i want to talk about edmonton vegas last night because it looked good for edmonton until it didn't yeah but that's the oilers isn't it right that's they live by the sword they die by the sword there how is it though in three minutes you go from two one to four two because

they're a team that thrives and dies in chaos oh which is a less less popular guy fieri show i also want to throw this at you look at the look at who's scoring for both teams connor mcdavid jack eichel zach hyman mark stone riley smith gets his first his first really yeah his first of the playoffs nicholas hagg and then conor mcdavid again i of those guys i think you can probably say that riley smith and nicholas hagg are the least closest to their core even though riley smith's been a part of vegas forever and is technically a part of the core but he's not like petrangelo or jack eichel the stars are scoring in that series nick hagg getting the game-winning goal with darnell nurse serving a suspension for instigating a fight that they

both willingly took part in sucks has caught us up what do you guys did we we didn't we never actually got the chance to break down that suspension thing uh nurse getting the same as petro is a fucking joke oh yeah it's a fucking joke i'm so surprised the leaf the league didn't rescind uh uh the nurses thing like why they have done it and even if you don't rescind it there's no justification for petro attempting to injure the league's leading goal scorer that's what he did it was intentional he tried to break his wrist um there's no justification for that getting the same punishment as darnell nurse and i'm not sure like when colasar inevitably gets two games for the hit from behind a nickel there's no justification for those two things not being

treated the same i mean colasar should be suspended that was a brutal hit but the reason that it won't be treated the same is that colasar is not as valuable to his team as petrangelo's that's again you're simply not a league worth taking seriously i also don't think he gets two games no well because i think it's a one gamer he served a five minute as well yeah also in terms of like the on ice stuff um edmonton needs to figure out how to play five on five like they are eating everybody in the world alive on the power play they were three for four last night that's where all their goals came from and they can't do anything remotely good five on five who do you start game six uh i would go with jack campbell oh boy they should have gone to

jack campbell a long time ago they keep going back to stuart skinner it's not working um bruce cassidy did something interesting too during the game like his hand was forced because they were down he paired up mark stone and jack eichel on the same line it's i think it was uh eichel marcia so and stone which is just deadly and it led directly to a goal all right-handed shots as well and it's something directly out of edmonton's playbook where they were like okay we have to pair up mcdavid and eichel uh at five on five and it hasn't really worked for them but on vegas's side like just time in time out we underrate them and the stars there that can score and the fact that he's doing that now and they're just they're controlling play versus edmonton when they're

all even strength it's it's scary you know and and their goaltending situation with broswa out and then aiden hill coming in and not missing a beat like where did aiden hill come from to be this type of goalie that can just stand in a playoff game and be decent san jose he's he's been fantastic in relief and um they're gonna get petro back and it's gonna be really difficult for edmonton to get back in the series but every single time edmonton is down they come out like gangbusters immediately in the first period so i'm interested to see game six is games it's gonna be crazy and it might be five nothing edmonton with like two minutes uh done in the first period or vegas could just close it out i don't know it feels like a seven gamer doesn't it it does yeah

it's they're so close they're so tight it's a really really fun series to watch cassidy getting gassed and then immediately going to the final four with vegas would be quite something and then seeing his ex-team go on the first round after winning the president's trophy it would be quite something i wonder if uh bruce cassidy will have don sweeney over for drinks at his living room oh and then the fire him man after he gets fired i don't know um yeah it's it's a it's it's kind of crazy to watch bruce cassidy too because he's like like i don't know how you're not smiling every day like a pig and shit already you know like i know they haven't made it even to the third round yet but come on you're up 3-2 on the greatest two players in the world i think life's

gotta be pretty good pretty good pretty good um okay and then of course uh so we're gonna find out oh go ahead one question um does uh ken holland deserve to be fired if they lose here no he's made them better this year yeah but you got the two best players in the world and you can't get second round you got mcdave it should be a cheat code in every respect of the game echo was such a good move though it was fantastic what about the rest of the roster if you were considering it that echo move was killer and and i think here's the here's where you can you can shit on ken hall and all you want that jack campbell teal is a disaster yep yeah but you can get out from disaster deals and the oilers aren't going to be drafting high anytime soon

so if you got to throw a first round to pick in maybe they got to do that they try you have got to get rid of that contract does the gm have to have done a bad job to get fired no well look at all the canadian gms that stuck around for 10 years well like do you what if you just like bergman didn't even get fired he resigned exactly what if you just get a new thought process in there like you don't have to say ken holland was bad so we're firing him you go he did this he did that he did that it's time for a new look at this i don't know how you how you justify it though But look at how well Zach Hyman's fit in here. I mean, God, they make Cody Ceci work.

They've found the time that they need to find for Evan Bouchard. They have some, I don't know why, like their strikes against them are guys like Vinny Desjardins, who they are convinced is an NHL player, and I don't see what they see. Darnell Nurse making $9 million is a bad contract. Crazy fucking contract. Terrible deal. You're absolutely right. Evander Kane, though.

That's a great deal. Man. Yeah. And listen, there were some personal issues there. And they said it won't be a problem, and it hasn't been a problem. We haven't heard a peep. So it kind of is a similar situation with the Leafs where you're saying a bunch of good stuff, but the results aren't there. If they don't make it to the third round, which they still could.

It's very different. Yeah, man. They went to the Final Four last year. They're, well, two games shy of it now. They still have a shot at the thing. Yeah, that conversation to me is a lot muddier. I just look at Conor McDavid and Leon Dreisaitl and I say, how don't you have a Stanley Cup yet?

Well, yes, and I think all of Edmonton is wondering that. But I do feel like he has made them better. He has made them better. They could still be better. If they lose in the second round. They got swept last year by Colorado. Do they want Matt Murray? Maybe we give them Matt Murray.

Oh, my God. Campbell-Murray tandem. Let's go. Well, you know. Morazic's is the third. You know you'll be able to – well, if they brought Morazic in, you'd have like an all-LTIR all-star team. Who's going first overall next year?

I bet it's someone. I do think Ken Holland's keeping his jobs. Now, something else that came up is Ryan Reynolds bid with the Senators, not moving forward with the Remington Group. Apparently, they were at odds with the league over the LaBreton Flats Arena. And I think the league wants to – Although I haven't seen a lot of details. That's the rumor that's been floating around.

So what Bruce Garriock reported is that they wanted an exclusive bidding window for their proposal. So they wanted, hey, we get to submit our bid and the Sens either get to accept it or don't. And they wanted an exclusive deal. They were going to go in the billion dollar area. And then the league and the people who are managing the estate said, no, you don't get that. We're going to accept all the bids. And then they, kind of like a petulant child, said, no, we're taking our money and running. I think it's a bit of a play.

I don't know if they're out-out. They say they're out, but I don't know if they're out-out. Like, they may come back into the fold once the bidding resumes. But that's the reason they don't want—they pulled out. They announced that they were going to pull out. So it's interesting with real estate bidding wars because it's a lot like trade bidding wars. When Mike Greer was trying to trade Eric Carlson, and I still think he, if he doesn't trade him at this draft, I think he's really fucked this up. He had bidders, multiple.

And it came down to how much salary were they going to retain? And they said they wouldn't do over 20%. And all the teams said, I'm sorry, it's got to be 30% or more. And you can see why they would say that. I get it. But what happens is one bidder pulls out, and then all of a sudden the price drops enormously. And I wonder if the Remington Group, which tried to pull a power move, and they were, from all accounts, the ones driving the price north of a billion dollars. Because this franchise should sell its actual values probably in the 820s, 830s.

And yes, I get when you put something up for auction, you're going to pay a little bit more, and there's no salary cap in the real estate world, so who cares? But I look at this, and I go, the NHL's got to be careful here. you need to re-engage the Remington group because they are going to be they're the most public group besides Snoop Dogg's group and even then they're still the most public group and you need public players

looking like they're interested because that's going to drum up more people to go in what if Remington drops off dropping off makes other companies go man should we be paying this much for a team in Ottawa that that that

not nothing against the team in Ottawa but should we be paying a bill when we know it's about $850,000 in actual value? That's why I think it was a play. But the NHL, I think, has got to be careful. But the NHL also did the right thing by not giving them their explosive window. They do. I thought that was such a – it's not a ridiculous ask.

It's kind of a bully move ask, but you've done nothing to kind of deserve that. We get you have Ryan Reynolds and you want to build – the Remington Group is a real estate company. That's what they do. they're getting this for the real estate play as well as having the team like you'd probably be great owners but you don't get an exclusive window just because you have ryan reynolds and everything so the nhl did the right move and their response is to say we're pulling out and yeah i think it's a play but we'll see having them in like you said adam is a good thing because the more bidders you

have the more it's going to cost so we'll see if they can re-engage them we'll see i think it's going to be fascinating if if the nhl does not re-engage these guys i think that price drops below a billion dollars based on nothing other than this is my guess their rumored bid was supposed to be in that neighborhood so yeah maybe somebody else can get a little cheaper now steve you okay a little tired you're sad eh oh i'm so tired are you tired do you want to wrap it up i didn't wake up sad like no just uh no i went to bed at 2 30 set my alarm for 7 30 i'm tired yeah do you want to wrap it up because we're going to be back monday there's going to be more leafs and more playoffs and more every senators all it's all going to keep going i was just hoping my

my pals could help me with something my arms really tired is this from carrying carrying the the the load yeah the burden of the leafs and like i just i need you i need your help with some stuff oh you want you want to shave your beard do the thing i want to do the thing he He wants to do I think he's been waiting to do the thing all right. We talked about okay, okay This is a manscaped beard trimmer and Steve wanted it shaved on the on the show if they lose And we're gonna do it now. Do you want someone else to do this or are you gonna do this? You want me to do it? I will not listen man

That we're gonna put a garbage bag over you can hear it by the way manscaped who uh you know we advertise with every single week we use that promo code dangle and you too can have this sweet beard trimmer and you're going to get to see it in person now yes okay and also use yeah promo code dangle you get 20 off free shipping and get the uh the performance package 4.0 is what you're looking for it does the down there spots the nose the ears and the beard and i think that's kind of the nose and the ears at my All of a sudden to become a factor like I had some nose hairs before but all of a sudden I'm getting frickin ear Willows and it's ridiculous. So I stopped having boogers show up in my videos and that's because I use the

Nose hair thing Bring mine over here. So I'm least echoing in the back. I'll need mics. All right. Here we go. All right, Adam is shaving Steve's beard for everybody listening. I hear the sounds of of the Manscaped beard trimmer. Wow, this beard's really great. I don't have a beard, but it's actually excellent. Look at this, come on. Oh yeah.

It grew in really thick this year. It did, yeah. There's so many grays. You also look, I'm gonna leave your mustache till the end. I wanna see Steve with a mustache. Sure. Oh yeah, do a handlebar. Oh, I should've.

Like an old baseball catcher. You know what, I'll give you a nice little goatee as well. I can't even do a handlebar. Can you do the, oh, Adam, do the Facebook guy beard. beard the one around the thing oh you know i've already cut him a little bit there but i think we can make it work do the do the one where you really love canada flags do the uh we need some oakley sunglasses for that jesse yeah we'll get some oakley's when you're posting f trudeau memes how does this feel adam it actually is your debut as a barber stand i can understand why

barbers like to do it what would philippe say your barber uh philippe who is one of my best friends and uh is uh my hairstylist uh philippe what would he say about the job so you're blocking the action he would say that no he would say that he would say that uh steve look up for me okay i want this is gonna be a bit of captain jack sparrow all right let's have a look at steve right now before i shave the rest of it off let's get it oh yeah what do we think i actually don't mind it oh i look hot you could probably turn that into a colonel sanders don't you think maybe like if jesse if he grew out besides i look like every go to camera one go to camera one i look like every bad boyfriend in a late okay go your camera three or four which one's yours your

four go to four but i like it i actually kind of that's a good look for you no no it's not no it's not what are you talking about now i'm gonna get the rest of this shave the middle of the beard it's not a good look there what about that did you get the flavor saver too i just want to get your your uh yeah i did get the flavor saver i want to get your mustache as well yeah look at that look at that sexy you're gonna have to shave his eyebrows mustache shave his eyebrows shave his eyebrows oh my god there's so much hair his wife will kill me i like the mustache get them isn't the mustache maddie's even saying isn't the mustache cool do

you keep the mustache no i like it can you keep it for at least bring it home can you bring your mustache home and i'll be like honey i'm home and she will not tolerate she won't like that no okay okay and then shave it what's wrong with you i think i like this i know what you're right you're right i can't look at how good i'll go home with this yeah you have to go i want to the reaction and by the way film the reaction kiss it exactly there you go all right eyebrows we do a great show so listen we got a lot to cover cj will be on the show either monday or wednesday next week we don't know yet but it let's just put it this way it's not worth having them on until after locker clean out right we want to see what the end of season we want to see what you're

right i got to talk into the mic thank you jesse uh we want to see what the end of season press conferences are going to be like we want to know how the player interviews are going to go i would imagine those start either tomorrow or or monday um and and i i think we need cj to get a sense of where this team is going where they're at now i also just like this outside of all the leaf stuff that's happening i would just like to hear from cj for a little bit about what it's like covering the playoffs this year yeah because this is one of the first times where like last year we were back and then this year we're like back back you know no covid none of that stuff and this leaf's atmosphere was such a different year than any other year because they actually won something

so i just want to hear from cj any stories he has from the road what it was like being the locker room he wrote that amazing story about them winning round one i want to hear more details from that and like this loss you know what the environment in the press box was and all that stuff cj's so great with those stories i think we should uh spend some time asking about those things so i i can't help but look over at myself in the monitor i love it i'm getting a little bit of scandal of all vibes yeah oh you totally look like tom yeah i'm as skinny and fit as well do you know that tom sandoval shaves his forehead because he doesn't like those little hairs you know those little hairs that every human being has

just all over their skin like the little white hairs he shaves his from Vanderpump he shaves his forehead and his whole face it's ridiculous I've never seen anything like it he shaves his face yeah literally

every time I watch that show I'm like LA is very different man just a different world alright so we'll wrap it up there and then we'll be back Monday back to our normal schedule next week monday wednesday friday if you're an oilers fan good luck i'm rooting for you i don't know if steven and jesse are but i can tell you for sure i want a canadian team in the finals i want to see

mcdavid win a cup that's not the way it works i can root for them i don't i don't just root for canada i root for my team okay well i'm rooting for us right ah fuck you i'm rooting for you fuck you rest of canada we live in toronto and we're the center of the universe i don't i live There you go Anyway we'll wrap it up there Thanks so much for listening It's gonna be an eventful week This is just the start man

Why what happened What are you gonna do The rest of the weekend guys Golf You going golfing I'm trying to I'm trying to do the same thing As the Leafs

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