The Steve Dangle Podcast - Devils in the Details | January 5, 2026

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

SEE DREW & STEW AT THE MANSION: https://www.bouncelife.com/events/69332743deddf4274efb8328 On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, 00:00 Steve's Fantasy Football Championship 08:00 Team Canada snubs 16:30 Team USA snubs 24:00 Team Sweden snubs 30:30 Team all snub 33:15 Frank Corrado to talk World Juniors and Leafs PP 1:04:00 Leafs injury updates 1:12:00 Opening surprise jerseys 1:15:00 Devils fans boo Luke Hughes 1:32:00 Logan Stanley and John Beecher are suspended 1:46:00 The Jets have lost 9 straight and are last in the NHL 1:59:00 Alexander Wennberg gets 6 million Visit this episode's sponsors: If you’re thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. Visit https://www.betterhelp.com/sdp today to get 10% off your first month. Watch all episodes of The Steve Dangle Podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEidkgWpSiHVkYT7HrIzLPXlY Watch clips of The Steve Dangle podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEieOJuIrqWyZPWSIJtVMCbLz Buy SDP merch https://sdpnshop.ca/ Check out https://sdpn.ca/events to see The Steve Dangle Podcast live! Watch hockey with us! Live on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEifCTX0vkKEaGg9otrW4Zl2k Subscribe to the sdpn YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sdpn?sub_confirmation=1Join Subscribe to SDP VIP!: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0a0z05HiddEn7k6OGnDprg/join Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/thestevedanglepodcast Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sdpvip/subscribe - Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/MtTmw9rrz7 For general inquiries email: [e-mail] Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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download that. TaskRabbit.ca. Code Dangle. Hello and welcome back from break. Owner McDavid trophy on the desk, and I'll be talking about that in a second. But first, I did want to mention this weekend, Kingston, Ontario, The Mansion Bar and Grill. By the way, The Mansion has always been so good to us. I want to shout out their owner, Dave Owens. 506 Princess Street, $15 a ticket. You can get the link in the description to buy right now.

Jesse will be there as well. I'm going to be there. Wild card weekend where the Steelers are for sure going to win, right, Jesse? I thought they were going to win last night, and Mike Tomlin, through whatever powers he has, pulled it out. It was awesome. Whatever voodoo he has going on there in Pittsburgh,

he got it done. How do you miss an extra point? Yeah, Chris Boswell. How do you miss a field goal from 30 yards out after that? You're trusting a rookie in a spot where, you know, nerves play a factor. Man, when that didn't go, I was like, that was right after Team Canada had lost.

So it made me feel a little bit. And let's go to the comments on his Instagram. Oh, dear. I have to consider the fact that Aaron Rodgers was right about inoculations. Now that he is going to the playoffs. Man. Was he right about being inoculated? Damn.

Damn. You know? Oh, my God. The question needs to be asked. That's got to be a narrative online already that the kicker was vaccinated and that's why he missed. Oh, no. Oh, my God. Oh, man.

The kicker, by the way, whose name I don't know. Tyler Luke. Yeah, there you go. Which I know him now. I have to point out. Oh, Steve Dangle. I have to point out. Fantasy football champion Steve Dangle this year.

So I had a great season, all season. And then in the championship game, all my guys really sucked. Yeah, because we were on the break. And I think we were in the quarters, maybe, when we started the break. And by the time we got to now back here, we were in the semis. Leave it up. You guys were playing in the finals for our Fantasy Football SDPN League Championship.

Completely ridiculous. Steve ran your show, Adam, in the championship game. He kicked my ass. And you know what it was that killed me? It was the fact that the Bills and the Eagles played each other. Jalen Hurts and James Cook are my two main guys. Puka Nakua had a bad week. Jalen Hurts and James Cook both had a bad week against each other.

And so Justin has 3D printed this trophy, by the way. i was watching that game and just every every catch i went no because i just needed that particular game to be low scoring right and it's something funny after he won what was it about the percentage of players you know what team they play for i don't know what team they play for i don't know their first names i just first name i just read credit you gotta give him credit i read the yahoo stuff and i'm like yeah i don't know that guy seems good look at the projections of how many points i guess yeah gonna project it to get more it's a combination of the the projections and then you realize the projections are just always wrong about because yeah who sucks yeah

yeah yep and and so you got to look at the percentage rostered the projected points and like weigh them against each other and also how they've done recently and just dumb luck i gotta ask the commissioner are we moving over to sleeper next year or are we staying with yahoo a sleeper would be a good place if everybody's cool with it uh mid early august is when i'll ask the question all right if every we get a consensus vote from the league's teams then we will move over to sleeper because i do like the sleeper app it's awesome will it be harder for me to luck into a championship no no it'll be the same way i think then it's fine that is a thing that happens where people who have too much knowledge about things overthink these decisions where it's

like if you know a lot about football you might be terrible at fantasy right and you like we we know that in hockey where it's like oh i know too much about hockey i'm bad at fantasy but the guy who's just like by the numbers oh this player does well i'm just put in the lineup regardless of what their name is yep and like there's a handful of guys where i'm like i know derrick henry's good like that and he throws up 45 points that gets you a championship yep i know derrick henry's good and uh dicker the kicker is a funny nickname so i'll get him that's and this is legit back-to-back years you've had good seasons because last year you won the president's trophy yeah and then no i finished a game shy oh game shy in the last week i just missed out on it and then you

lose in the playoffs but you had a good season and this year you actually win so steve dangle every credit to you steve well done can't play hockey fantasy for shit no but but is an amazing football fantasy guy i used to have video game hockey and i suck at that i want to say that producer drew did not even make the playoffs producer drew who hosts the football show on network did not make the playoffs that's that's rough and don't please do not hold back on him on that like he deserves it whatever it is you got tim haraney won the president's trophy this year he had a great season and so i came second in the regular season and second him had the top wide receiver in jsn and the top running back or second i don't know if we've finished before uh

bijan or mcafree but he had the top two players skill position players and then the first round hayden had the luckiest week of all time and tim scores 150 points and hayden puts up 151 tim would have won every matchup except his he got robbed he got robbed whatever tim get good yeah skill issue now the last thing i want to do before we get into like the meat and potatoes of the show is i want to mention the gigantic 97 before steve dangle it's not because connor mcdavid signed in toronto oh is there another trophy on this there is a gigantic substantial trophy from the ohl this is the connor mcdavid trophy and it's not like you know the stanley cup they've got the real one and the fake one this is the only one uh this is the connor mcdave lift it

up steve for everybody to see it's it's like at least 20 pounds there is an eastern and a western conference winner for the ohl top prospect of the top prospects game every single year connor mcdavid trophy and i just want to let you know that steve dangle podcast will be on site at miskin arena next tuesday and then of course at the pmc which is the peterborough memorial center uh for the actual game uh next week and steve is doing the in-game hosting so not only are we doing a show we're going to interview uh ohl uh head brian crawford uh but we're also doing a couple of shows down there so definitely come down and see us there's a u16 tournament obviously there's the ohl tournament uh so it's going to be really fun and we're very excited to be working with the

ohl and the pizza on this one it takes me back to my roots as the mississauga steelheads in arena host to really to really uh make it authentic they need to give me an envelope with 120 bill and 110 bill in it because that's what i made you made 30 bucks a game i made 30 bucks a game to drive from scarborough to mississauga so 30 bucks in gas it's yeah so i've worked for free worth it they fed me pizza though did you know that one day you'd be doing the top prospects well there you go no i did not see it's good practice now let's talk a little bit about uh what's happening on today's show because we have frank corrado coming on in about 15 minutes uh to talk about the leafs power play and why it's suddenly clicking and he's got

it actually broke down while we were gone mark savard was fired uh yeah the leafs grabbed 10 out of 12 points over the break that we had the world juniors that are still ongoing we the olympic roster announcements the jets fell to last place and have lost nine games in a row they're having a press conference today which we're going to try to talk about uh the oilers are looking increasingly shaky san jose is weirdly tied for the last wild card in the western conference there's so many other things we've missed trades we've missed suspensions of players we've missed non-suspensions of players teams shaking hands out of the games suspension doubled yesterday yeah yeah so can i give you my favorite one give it to us chris tanev came back and left due to injury

in the time that we stopped recording and came back and it looks like he's going to be gone forever yep uh cool i mean maybe like gone till the end of the season we're gonna get a jake mccabe update did you already say that one no we didn't oh well there you go i haven't gone leafs yet i actually want to start with the olympic rosters you guys are supposed to do a little bit of homework for me we uh yes okay so we have the rosters right we know what they are we know who's on them and i can pull them up if you want uh but the no the what i wanted to freestyle it is a guess remember what i wanted to ask you about is the uh the teams obviously oh that's the that's the world juniors yeah uh the teams and the players that they selected and specifically

three of them the teams that are most loaded with nhl talent top three are canada united states and week. I would put Finland in there without Sasha Barkov. There's probably not going to be a fit here for what we're talking about. What I want to talk about is snubs because we have, you know, I'm sure you saw ad nauseum the amount of, you know, takes and that sort of thing. And I think sometimes when you've got like a week to think about something, you think about it, you sleep on it. Everybody wants that instant reaction. But now here we are about a week later and we know what this team looks like for team canada if you were to say hey i'm a general manager which jesse used to be and i would have done it differently here's how i would have done it who's the one

snub from team canada that you think is maybe not egregious but somebody that you've been like i would have gone with this person instead um i don't know if it's so much i would have gone with this person instead but i was i was shocked they left sam bennett off shocked um he just won the con smith trophy right so jordan bennington is on this team because he's having a good season well no no you hey you can't keep jumping around you keep it to sam no no no that's i understand your point oh yeah i was gonna say okay he's on this team because he's having a good season no he's not no he was on the four nations team because he was having a good season no he's not no he's got pictures of doug armstrong well he was on the team okay that's a very important factor

um the bias of his own general manager which will come up later in conversations but there's proof of concept right of him winning in high leverage situations they trusted him and it looked shaky at first and lo and behold they were right sam bennett has been an incredible playoff performer outside of last season and then he won the con smith trophy and go back to the four nation faceoff final who tied the game yeah sam bennett yeah who was yes a healthy scratch at times during that tournament but um of all the guys they could have taken off because uh i know they wanted suzuki and i was surprised they took suzuki not against the pick but i was surprised they did well there's some tension between him and hockey canada yes yeah uh i guess they get

along now i was surprised that sam bennett was the casualty uh jesse uh who would you who do you think is more most egregious in terms of snubs who would you put in instead now i don't know if he'd even like if i'm doing the team strictly based on who's the best and who's playing the best and who fits the best as a team i'm not even sure if he'd make the roster but he might be a healthy scratch and i think he deserves to be there as a healthy scratch but i'm not sure he'd actually crack the forward group but he wasn't even in consideration for my least favorite thing that happens with these teams and that is the political game that these people who run these national teams always play with these players conor bedard was never allowed to be on this

team regardless of how good or bad his season was and his season was very good he was amongst the leaders in goal scoring when he went out for injury. And he had a fantastic year. And I get the people talk about his defensive deficiencies, but they have people for that. He's a great goal scorer. And Doug Armstrong said the quiet part out loud when he was asked about whether Bedard was considered for the team before he got injured. And he said, no, in short words, he said no, because uh badar didn't do enough so far this season but if we're looking at where he was in comparison to celebrini like they were right there and because badar decided to poo-poo the world championships last season and not go over and play with that squad and decide to get healthy

for this upcoming season because he wasn't happy with where his game was at ending last season team canada said you're on our no-fly list which sucks and that's bullshit and they do this with the damn kids at the world juniors all the time every kid who goes to the NCAA you're on the blacklist for team Canada and now they're doing it with these kids of the kids because Bedard still is a kid but these men at the professional level whereas you're not doing enough for team Canada so we're not even considering you I think that's disgusting that's why I'm calling it the biggest well that's why Suzuki was maybe not going to be on exactly Canada played it so much team Canada by the way is not held to that standard like their management hey if you come

to this tournament no one really cares about it people are gonna well you know they care about it in europe but over here you know we're we're snobs about the world championship frankly uh it's gonna help you it didn't help john tavaris uh and the the much more egregious one if we're gonna go with like the future of the program and you scratch our back or um i'll scratch yours and performing well seth jarvis he was what was all of last year about when he was not named to the roster it wasn't even a conversation like people weren't even bringing art or jarvis jarvis because oh yeah people weren't even talking about because they were just like nah he's done so it wasn't even like on all these projected lists but he a hundred percent has a case to be there yeah and

i'm not like would i have named him to the team personally probably not um if he ended up on the team because of injury like i'd have no problem with it like i i think at the bottom of the lineup like the margins are so small and it's like you're it's star out star in uh sort of thing but all the stuff he did for a case to be on this team did not apply no but if you snub team canada at any point and i think this applies to other programs too your persona non grata which isn't fair so that Bedard's my biggest snub because he wasn't even in consideration for strictly politics. And it's disgusting. And I think that's a really I think that's a great point, Jess.

Also, my fantasy team has just died on the died since he went down. And Leo Carlson's injured, too. So it just sucks. But, hey, I think that Islanders fans would be upset, especially after Matthew Schaefer dunked on the Leafs for me not to pick him. And I wanted him on the team, but I'm not going to I'm not going to go there for me. Might end up there anyway. Yeah, he might end up there anyway. For me, it's going to be in goal.

And if we're going to, as you said, leave Sam Bennett off the team or Seth Jarvis off the team because their start wasn't very good. Jordan Binnington pitched a shutout as soon as he was named to the team. So this is kind of hilarious. But there is one of these things

is not like the other going on with this. And I believe that one of Mackenzie Blackwood or Scott Wedgwood, and I would say Wedgwood because he's played more games, deserved a third spot. I don't even think Bennington should be starting. I don't know if he should be dressed.

Like, I think it's got to be Logan Thompson, Darcy Kemper. If he's there, he has to start. I know. And that's the part I don't like that. You know, it's like, that's nice that that happened eight months ago. But this is sports. Eight months is a long time. And I don't, I think it's more like, what have you done for me lately?

And I know that's not how they're going to operate. I know that. They, they're weirdly loyal to certain people. And you got to respect it. And I got to say, too, like if you look at the way this roster is constructed, it's like, well, half the Tampa Bay Lightning are here and we've left the Florida Panther off. That's an interesting rivalry situation. It reads interesting. Well, wait till we get to Team USA.

Yes, exactly. So we'll leave it there with Team Canada for now. Let's go to Team USA. And I want to know, snubs wise, who do you think you would take? Because obviously there's the big one, which people got on me before Christmas for saying, I don't think Jason Robertson is going to be on this team. Which one of you wants Robertson? Because I can do Fox.

One of us is doing Robertson. Jesse, I don't want Robertson. You take Robertson. I'll take Robertson? Yeah, you take Robertson. It's one of the least justifiable Olympic snubs in the history of NHL players going to the Olympics. What on God's green earth could he have possibly done?

it's absurd to me that the dallas stars have five six olympians and he's not one of them he's their best player he is the dallas stars best player this season certainly you can make arguments for miko or miro heiskanen or heiskanen oh yeah ranting in my bad yeah the point of hockey is to score goals he's the best on the team of scoring goals yeah i keep forgetting ranting and as a star yeah legitimately but if you include jt miller and vinny trocek who both have what are we doing and they're and garen called them glue guys and i saw somebody online going wow if you're called a glue guy you know you're not very good anymore it's it's moving the goalposts tell me how you're moving the goalposts because you're you're acknowledging like

if you're a you know you're allowed to be a star and a good guy too like you're allowed to be a star and someone who holds the team together i think they call those leaders yeah i don't know how stoked i am to have my eight million dollar captain referred to as a glue guy i know everyone has to take on a different role at the olympics like rick nash all of a sudden turns into i don't know some like kirk malpy hey kirk malpy retired we need someone to be kirk malpy how about the guy who won the rocket right like it's the olympics and everyone uh gets a little weird but the team usa had a lot of turnover from the four nation face-off and a lot of it was you know righting wrongs like tage thompson should have been on that team yes and he

led at the end of the season all american uh all american players in goal scoring yep with i think 44 kyle connor who was on the team but scratch for the final was tied for second with 41 and he's on this team so okay it's not like an anti-skill thing why the hell isn't jason robertson on this team i don't get that at all at all jesse i think cole caulfield is such a useful player and if like i would have him there over trocek and i think it's under he's gone under the radar in terms of like he can score as good as any of the wingers they have and his defensive abilities are now like up there with everybody else and i don't understand why he's not in consideration as well like he's not he was never like hey he's right there with getting in it's just kind of they have

their guys and they don't want to discuss anything further yep i think i think cole Caulfield's a huge snub from this team um I I'm gonna go with it's just confusing because they have new guys though they have new guys and neither of those players were able to work themselves into the conversation of new guys I don't get it but but I also think too they have a style that they want to play and that style is hard hard and heavy which makes it interesting to me and I'm going to give him a special mention but he's not my pick Matthew Nice who's had a great season as a power forward you want to if you want to go power forward on this team I find and interesting that he wasn't even more in the conversation but the guy i'm gonna pick sure is

not matthew nice he i can understand why he was left off if his start continued the way it was going i think he might have made the team but he did slow down for a bit i want to talk to you about a defenseman that has 28 points in 29 games on a bad new york team man adam fox guys he is back like i do i know he's had a couple of not great seasons and he did give away the pass that ultimately led to the goal in the four nations final whatever uh adam fox is still a phenomenal defenseman and has looked very very good this year and has scored a lot of points and i'm trying to understand how team usa feels like they're better without they got seth jones is what they say he's so i'm sorry he's got a bigger frame seth jones just won he just won

stanley cop yeah i'll take i'll take adam fox over seth jones on my me too so there was a there was a big argument online uh and the reason i'm jumping is because i wanted fox well you could no i know but like we had to do robertson like that that's still the craziest we could have done robertson three times yeah i think but um with with fox the argument was analytically he had an incredible four nation face-off however um if you look at the series of mistakes team usa made that led to the tournament winning goal it begins with fox he makes the mistake that tends to happen though with guys who have the puck they do make mistakes that's fair right but he makes the mistake matthews leaves his post mcdavid's wide open tournament's over right and i have a

hard time looking at the roster that they named and thinking anything other than they blame him for it and i think it was ryan mead uh who covers the rangers who made the great point like canada is being criticized because john cooper who's the coach of the lightning got to take all his guys everyone's pointed their ire uh at sorelli who's uh obviously not scored as much as the other guys but like tampa has way crazily won his minutes at five on five brayden point is a shell of himself this year yeah but he was already named but he was already named so that's that's the guy uh i look at but john cooper obviously has a lot of pull with canada team usa's coaching uh staff features mike sullivan it features david quinn uh who both

had this player uh or currently have this player and chris drury in management and that that amounted to nothing and they immediately the spin got out there that well you know they really advocated for him they really advocate yeah how hard well no advocated harder for trocek and miller yeah i don't believe any of that so you were able to get trocek and miller in there over caulfield and robertson but you weren't able to get fox in over anybody they don't like them i don't think they like him now chris jury doesn't like his own player the one that's not new the one weird little factor um with team usa and their decor and the turnover from the four nation face off is mcavoy wasn't there in the final and quinn hughes wasn't there at all and that could easily

be your top pair if you wanted it to be um well not anymore because uh faber and hughes are friggin teammates in Minnesota and, you know, couldn't help but notice that happened in an Olympic year. But that has a real possibility to poison the well there in New York. That's bad. So the last one I want to do is Team Sweden, because there were some notable snubs from that, too. And I don't know who wants to take this. I got my pick. But Jesse, Steve, who wants to go first here i can go all right go because this show secretly is a sharks podcast i know we never talk about it but this this show bleeds teal it does and william ecklund would be my snub i think he's a no offense to ex-leave pontus holmberg i would rather william ecklund on my team than

pontus holmberg if that if i'm required to take off somebody to put him there that's who i'm taken off of that is a great young forward that i think for the development of the future of the sweden program would be cool to have him there so that's my pick if i can comment just for a sec on holmberg like he's the leaf should have obviously kept him like he's doing really well in tampa it sucks that they let him walk it sucks more that they let him walk to a divisional rival um he's scoring more than he did last year and there were times where he was an offensive black hole but generally when he was on the ice good things happen the one concern i have is they seem to be taking him in this like shut down role and at no point none during his leafs tenure

and i would argue his tampa tenure i haven't seen the numbers has he shut down top competition uh in tampa i imagine that's sorelli's job um and here never what are you talking about so fascinated to see how sweden uses him he was a member of their olympic team four years ago he was and i think he benefited from that someone pointed out like he's the only returning member yeah which is crazy that's not yeah that's nuts former playoff mvp in the shl like all these things count but like i mean william ecklund like wait you listen to the names not a returning member from when they didn't have any tellers like oh so so from 2022 that's not as wow that's why it's funny i think it's kind of funny yeah i didn't i didn't at first get why it was wow

i was like wait there weren't nhlers so why is that i think it's wow that anybody is back yeah because it didn't have to be that way for sweden right you had to be available and then you had to get like real good and go to the nhl yeah um jesse uh so that was so your pick which ecklund ecklund okay steve your pick uh let me go with one that i mean every oilers fan is actually happy he got snubbed but whatever uh matthias hackholm yeah he changing of the guard it is a changing of the guard he's kind of old uh 35 or 36 which i mean old by professional you know here's a 37 year old calling him old but uh by pro hockey standards and definitely by olympic standards um i was surprised though that oliver eckman larson made it and philip

broberg like at home you would think would make it over at least one of those two like broberg is you know he's missed time he's hasn't exactly been on the greatest team at all times uh since he arrived on the st louis blues and oel is obviously having a really good season he gets a veteran bump so i guess i understand that but at home didn't get that at all so like that's the interesting thing about leaving at home off the team i think sweden did the right thing at the end of the day and that they didn't just say tie goes to the veteran even though somebody else might be playing better oel i didn't have on the roster because i thought like at home was the default is gonna be there yeah so i don't even know if it's a snub they might have just made

all of the correct decisions amongst defensemen the the energy in the oilers fan base uh the difference between at home and bouchard is hilarious because bouchard it's like uh like a friggin you're screaming holy hell like you were robbed how dare you it's a referendum on evan bouchard right and they have charts and like different bob stoppers doing half an hour segments on it like chris jericho with the list that rolls across the ring about why he should have been on team canada yeah yeah at home gets left off team sweden they're like oh no no that's good that's good no no no rest yeah no yeah because they want him for the run because they want him for the run and he hasn't exactly had the greatest uh health luck couple of last year notable people

obviously lenis olmark you know is a vesna trophy winner two years ago uh another guy who's not been healthy who i think if he was would be a shoo-in on this team is hampus lindholm i was surprised not to see him on it but the guy i'm gonna go with is simon evanson from detroit oh that's a good uh you know he's been phenomenal and you know we saw it when the leafs in detroit played before christmas uh but you you saw it you saw it really break out last year and this is a guy who was what is a fifth or sixth overall pick two crazy years ago 22 and he's he's on detroit's top pair every night he's playing top competition every night and where's detroit they've been mostly at the top of the atlantic it's been them all season all they fell off like a teeny tiny bit and their goal

has been just okay but the defense has been really strong and specifically a guy like simon evanson he's also freaking huge six foot six 220 he takes a lot of ice surface that like and i have nothing listen i like philip broberg a lot but i do think i would on my team i'm taking simon evanson over philip broberg at this point that's i that's probably a better one than ekholm because like ekholm and broberg are obviously completely different players boy evanson ticks so many boxes yeah i don't know how you don't bring i think it's interesting that they took both wild goaltenders gustafson and walsted like it's just the tandem like one's technically a backup yes but it's not really a backup at all so i think i don't think any other

team's gonna have a backup goalie in in terms of one of their starting goaltenders uh for the olympics that's interesting and the minnesota wild four swedish players on this team and then they'll be playing the usa which has three minnesota wild players so the olympics are just the wild yeah the well they're a good team team sweden is to the wild what uh the stars are to team finland yeah yeah yeah good point good point so those are some of the olympic rosters some notable snubs and that sort of thing but i think uh finland on down they you know pixar what they were and what we expected them to be um would you take team north america left off the rosters team ahead of any of the teams in the tournament oh that's a good like where do they rank so like a

team north america that's not under 23 like everybody so you get everybody who wasn't selected to usa or canada you get those players on your team all right shifley caulfield jason robertson seth jarvis um uh goaltenders mackenzie blackwood uh wedgwood dustin wolf adam fox yeah um adam fox yeah there's some good players on there i know i'm i'm well you could you could say jackson lacombe you could say wyatt johnson you could say joey decord you could say does john tovaris make the left over team oh i'm saying swedish guys oh yeah i think he does jt is on left over team morgan riley might be on the left over team no he's not bless him no he's not you don't think so no i do not that's a shocker evan bouchard oh yeah yeah yeah yeah chikrin's on that

shaper alex tuck oh shaper for sure wyatt johnston matthew nyes did we say conor bedard yes yep there you go yeah that's a damn good team i think i might take them they get ahead of finland oh no i don't know you have to think too that it would be the all fuck you team so they'd be really angry so they're playing mad the whole tournament i think they beat everyone and then you get to a top five of like canada usa finland sweden czechia and then it's a conversation right where who you put them i want you to place them some coin flip i think i put them in the top three just because the fuck you nature of it you think you guys screwed us so now we're going to come in to fuck up your country you're putting them

ahead of that sweden team i i'm not no no head of the usa team no okay might be might be stacked steve doesn't have them you don't have them top take it hey i have them as high as buddy playing defense come on number the highest i would put them as four yeah that's fair okay but i think the fuck you i want i want them in the top three i don't know who it's gonna be who's gonna follow good team no they're not well they're obviously not being canada they're obviously not being the states and sweden is too good yeah there's an argument for finland but i think it's disrespectful there's oh check you though fuck yeah it's a good team too it is a good team i'd like to see it this is a good team

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Code DANGLE. All right. Joining us for the first time in 2026 and our first guest appearance of 2026, Mr. Frank Corrado of TSN, who is in Minnesota for, obviously, the World Junior Championships. We've got the bronze medal and the gold medal game today. Frank, just before we get into the Leafs power play, because that's what we want to talk to you about. We want a Frank Corrado breakdown. I do want to ask, the tournament hockey-wise has seemed like it's been some of the best junior hockey

we've ever seen. What's been your sort of opinion on it? Yeah, you know, like yesterday... By the way, it's great to be back with you guys. Haven't seen you in a while. Thanks for having me on. Yesterday's games were wild. Like the Sweden-Finland game and the Canada-Czechia game,

that's junior hockey to a T, right? Like massive momentum swings, dramatic sequences in the game, late goals over time like goalies making huge saves breakdowns left right and center that's what like people who are junior hockey enthusiasts that's what they love about junior hockey and it's why they're drawn to the game and yesterday was a great example of that not the result that Canada wanted of course no but I mean if you were looking for I don't know six hours of entertaining television you got it if you were watching the world juniors yeah it was I felt bad in the

sweden finland game because that could have gone you know that's always like a national thing there right they're both countries stop and they i thought that game was even more heartbreaking than the canadian game because the fins had chances to oh definitely and the swedes had chances to end it and it's just the way that it went down i thought that game was more heartbreaking if you're looking at it from like a national perspective objective yeah yeah no i know which one hurt me more yeah the canadian yeah i don't think we need to get into one of those like well hockey canada's cooked like i feel like no there's an improvement there and and i thought no go ahead they took the best players right like they took the best players

they got the right coach at the right time they did everything they were supposed to do i have one like i don't think we need a hockey summit but i have one like overarching thought on all of this stuff and i think last or last night's game was a little bit of a microcosm i don't know how many people who listen to you guys have like young kids playing minor hockey but here's my grassroots thing okay as much as in Canada we were super skilled and we develop all these great hockey players skill was our edge everyone's kind of like everyone's getting their skilled we had an edge up here where we thought the game and we knew how to win the game at the end of it right and now I feel like at the grassroots level what we're doing is

we're hiring all these skills coaches and we're going on the ice with the pylons and the sticks and we're doing the obstacle courses. And what we're doing is we're training these young players to turn their brains off and just say, skate around

and show your edge work and show your hands. And we're losing a little bit of the essence of gamesmanship and how to win and how to manage things properly. So I think we're losing a little bit of an edge

with all these obstacle course skills coach type things that all these kids do from such a young age i don't hate that thought man like they they did they played with a lack of composure like down the stretch i mean two penalties that basically never happened in the final five minutes especially the hand on the puck was this is crazy you see that like once a season yeah yeah i think he was trying to i think he was trying to grab the opponent's stick and accidentally got the puck or just got carried away like it's it's unfortunate and i think we

also got to remember they're all young they're kids right like we can't bury these guys um they're all going to have great careers and like seeing them cry after the game was really tough i think like you're so you're going down the right path and that like when guys work on skills so much growing up it's just all about skill work and you're on the ice with a coach you forget that it's a team sport and you got to play with people to really get good at the game you can't just be working on your individual skills day in and day out and not be playing the actual game and i feel like we play to win the game we play to win the game right but what are your thoughts on the theory that none of this matters because canada can't actually take their best team because macklin

celebrini should be out there uh and so should matthew schaefer like i know i know i get it juniors it's not their best team and like you know no celebrini no schaefer no berkeley cat no ben kindle no sam dickinson i mean there's there's there's a big difference yeah for sure I get that and you like I don't know I don't know if we can use it too much as an excuse because think about how many rinks there are in Canada think about how many young players were developing like we should be able to to win this tournament without those players but you're right like it would make a massive difference if you could get those guys it's just they're supremely talented and they're just not available to you but I will say like of all the guys that were available to

them they they picked the best guys there's there's no one sitting at home doing the Phil Kessel tweet for you know all right now let's talk about uh what's happened over the break is obviously Mark Savard was let go December 23rd which is super convenient for everybody who works in hockey media love that um but since then the Leafs have been running a power play if I'm not mistaken in the 42 to 43 percent effectiveness uh which before it was like eight percent they've scored in like four of six games and and they've grabbed 10 of 12 points Frank and I thought rather and then going, hey, isn't it great that the Leafs are better? I wanted to know why.

Because Steve Sullivan comes up and they get a power play goal in his first period and then a second one and he starts kind of smirking on the bench like, I didn't do this. It's him and it's Milan. What has changed about the Toronto Maple Leafs power play? And we have some visuals, obviously, to bring up as well.

Yeah, no worry. I mean, so the first one, I'm like, that's kind of a broken play. That's just, I don't know, guys scoring a goal, right? And I think that leads to the smirk. But there's a couple things that they're doing different. So I know I sent you guys some of the stills. Jesse's going to play it.

So, Jesse, start with the first one. And hopefully I can see it on the screen. And we'll just kind of walk through it all. But there's been a few changes that they've made. This is, if we go back to the Dallas game, this was, I believe, the last game before Savard got fired. And this was, like, Toronto actually played well in this game. But they lost 5-1, which sounds crazy to say.

But so the first clip, this is an entry versus Dallas. And essentially what's happening here is the puck got kicked out to Max Domi. He's going to skate it down the wall and he's going to try and bump it back to Morgan Riley. So that's like one of the things that they were trying to do. Now, if we go to the second clip, this is a different entry that they tried to make. This is all this will all matter when you see the after pictures of what's happening. So clip two versus Dallas. Here's another entry.

And they try and make like a little pass at the blue line. so again like just trying to make a short little pass at the blue line small area pass we'll remember that when we get to the clips on how things have changed and then so if you look at the end zone setup this is clip three versus Dallas this is very typical of a lot of teams around the NHL where you have your defenseman at the top you have three players you know one two three essentially drawing a line right in the middle of the zone halfway through and then a player around the net it's your like one three one setup now my thought when Toronto was struggling with their power play was why not change this up like everyone knows this is what you're doing and

this is why so many teams have gone to the diamond formation on on their penalty kills so they can just shoot out and come back go out to the half wall come back go out to the point come back and they never really deviated from it again if we go to clip four here's another one so they're in that one three one and morgan riley takes a shot from the point but it's so harmless yeah like yeah there's there's a body it's a they're not getting anything off of this okay it's a morgan riley shot is what it is yeah like you know hey listen he's got a lot more points than i ever had I can't say anything, but as a power play, it's not overly threatening. Okay.

So then we go to clip five. This is now in the second period. They're doing the same thing. Point man, three across the top. This time there's no one in front and that's actually a shot. Like he takes a shot. Ottinger, like that's the easiest save he'll ever have to make. Okay.

So that's some of our Dallas stuff. Now, if I go to clip six in against Dallas, now you take some shots from the point, whatever you have to have, like a low attack as well. And so this is Matthew Nye's trying to make a low attack. The only problem is, if you look at clip six, Matthews is in the slot. There's two defensemen in his way. And then I don't know who that is on the back door. That might be Domi on the back door. There's another Dallas player. so like you have nothing going on the inside of the ice like matthew nize is by himself he might try like a rap job but again it's not threatening at all so we're good with that stuff on the dallas right like we know what they're doing at that point right now basically what you've summed up for us is it's pretty limp yeah it's yeah bad it's there's just it doesn't it doesn't feel threatening right okay okay so now if we go to the new jersey game the first thing remember when i told you guys about the entries and how the first one Domi wanted to like kind of skate it down the

wall and then bump it back and then they made that little play at the blue line this is what they're doing against New Jersey clip one as soon as they get inside the blue line cross ice pass like using the other side of the ice and the reason why they're doing that is because if you look what New Jersey's done and every team's gonna do this count the white jerseys where Tavares is on that side of the ice there's three right but if you look at the other side there's two blue jerseys and a white jersey so basically what you're saying is as soon as we get into the zone we're sending it the other way because that's how we'll get a clean possession okay that was one clip two this one's the same thing except it comes from the other way that's nick robertson

just entered the zone and his first thought was not can i get it back on my forehand to the wall let me spread it across the ice and get it to bobby mcmahon that's twice okay number three this is all in the first period number three i believe that's matthias michelli gets into the zone another one pass right across the ice same deal new jersey three guys on one side one guy on the other side so we're seeing something different here yes right like that is that is a conscious effort to say okay we are not entering like we're not entering on the side that the puck comes in we're making an effort to get it across the ice and for people that are that are listening you're basically as the puck carrier drawing two or three penalty killers to you as you

make your zone entry and then flipping it across to where you have yeah a man a more of a man advantage right yeah they're not they're not they're not trying to set up on the same side the puck comes in on which is what they were trying to do before they were like okay puck goes in on the left we're gonna bump it back to the point or we're gonna make a little you know dink pass at the blue line and then get it set up from there they're basically saying as soon as we get in the blue line it's got to spread right across okay so that was noticeable against New Jersey against Winnipeg is where I really see it all come together for them and they score so Jesse See, if we go to clip one versus Winnipeg,

this is late in the second period. This is the entry that leads to the goal. So right away, there's only eight seconds left in the period, but the Leafs get into the zone, and right away, the pass goes across the ice to Morgan Rielly. So we're seeing it again. This is absolutely a theme of what they're doing, and it's different than what they were doing before.

Now, because they did that, Morgan Rielly actually makes a really nice play to set up austin matthews but look at the front of the net there's nice and i don't know who that is is that michelle or domi domi nice and another blue guy how's that yeah yeah so anyways remember those dallas clips that we saw where there was no one in front and it wasn't threatening all of a sudden now it looks pretty threatening and like it's not your typical one three one setup anymore there's two leafs at the top there's essentially three leafs down two by the net one by the goal line Morgan Riley made the pass so there's a couple differences there a the entry

you know be the players in front and I guess three would be like the formation of the players that's clip two now if we go to clip three this is where I really see them make a big difference on their in-zone setup this was right off the face off okay this was actually before the goal was scored but this was they won the face-off clean and they go to this setup so remember what it looked like against Dallas with one player at the point Morgan Riley doesn't look like that right now there's Riley and neither Domi or Michele I can't remember but they're in a two at the top and three by the net setup so they've they've changed things so now if we go to clip four you can really see what that looks like because riley gets the puck and he says i'm gonna walk

it to the middle of the ice and look what's happening in front of the goalie there's two guys two blue jerseys two blue jerseys two white jerseys actually three white jerseys and another player sniffing at the side of the net so like that's kind of all i got for you guys but i think it's a pretty it's a pretty big all i have is like a 10 minute in-depth that was great that was fantastic frank wow that's so i guess my big takeaways are this on the entry they're spreading the ice right away like it's going east west as soon as it gets into the blue line and i hope i'm not not giving up state secrets here but anyone with like hockey eyes can figure it out the games doing the pre-scout yeah yeah and then and then they're not just stuck in on a one three one

setup they're willing to go two at the top three in front of the net create some kind of chaos in front and even if you run a low play in front you have like a little bit of a triangle you can create a little three on two so they've changed some things i think for me now like it's it's more it's more in attack mode like they're they're thinking about attacking more rather than just possessing the puck you ever you ever figure something out and get mad that you didn't figure it out sooner like that's that's kind of how i look at this and the conversation i've sort of been having like with the audience uh since this happened wasn't able to do it on the podcast because we've been off is like i know steve sullivan didn't flip the table his first day

with the Leafs and go here's how we're friggin doing it what like why wasn't any of this addressed before Savard eventually got gassed I don't know I don't hockey's such a hockey and coaching is such a weird thing right like you have ideas of what you think might work and you're like it's worked in the past or people have philosophies like so many guys stick to their guns and their philosophies what they believe i don't know like it's just sometimes it takes different eyes or more of a willingness to take a risk and try something different it's hard to explain really yeah um but yeah it looks different for sure now austin matthews obviously i was at that winnipeg game uh and i was very depressed and then very happy at the end of it but um austin

matthews gets his first hat trick in a long time i can't remember what it was and then his first back-to-back multi-goal games since February of 2024. Which is crazy because he's got 83 career multi-goal games. Yeah, so it's been a while. Frank, we're starting to see his shots per game

clip at where they should be. He should be at least, I would say, eight to nine shots a game. His average, though, last year fell in half and I think it was like four. And I think he's now

only approaching last year's average now. Do you think that there's some sort of austin matthews magically got healthy or is this new offensive system really working for a guy like him who the leafs need to score you know what like i think if he's if he's on the power play he'll probably get some different looks now well sorry if he's on the power play yes he's on the power play he will get sorry he will get some different looks on the power play now because he's not just stuck on the half wall in in that one three one so he'll get some different

looks at the net whether it's low or whether it's walking across the top whatever but um the biggest thing for matthews is when he was at his goal scoring best like at his peak he was able to like get some separation and and like get the shots off that he wanted to get off whereas so many times now like it feels like fly down the wing or you know take a shot stick in the way like doesn't get a lot of velocity on it I think for him it just always comes down to how can you work yourself away from the puck so that when you get it you're in a good spot or can you get away from someone when you have the puck on your stick and when he's not scoring at his usual rate he's typically not doing that but it feels like you know even that Islanders game is

a great example of you know the one where he he sort of gets away from the traffic and gets the one-timer yeah it's a great pass but like that's like goal scoring maneuvering to get yourself into a spot to get the the shot off so more of that and and i think listen i don't know like the health and the legs and all that stuff but if you're moving well or better you can get yourself to those spots easier i think that's that's important for him guys guys like the first player i think of is like you know how do you how do you forget that alexander ovechkin exists like how is he always open for for that one timer what you know you play defense in the nhl what are those goal scorers uh do that other people just don't or can't a lot of it is volume right like so many

times ovi would would be in his office and trust me i was never entrusted to like stop it um but i watched it and you just you would watch it and say there he is but you know it's going there how many times it would go there though right and and eventually something would happen that would break down the coverage where they would bump it to oshi a couple times in the bumper and you're like man okay i gotta pay attention to oshi here because you know he's gonna take a one-timer and then that would leave ovi open right and there's been so many of those types of scenarios over the years but i think to to adam's point right if you're that talented and that gifted of a shooter you play the volume game eventually it's going in for you like that's you

know that's just the way it is these these guys that have had career shooting percentages that are fairly high and i mean you just have to keep throwing stuff at the net it sounds simple but um i mean ovi's a great example of it you know he's there you know the puck's going there and it just keeps going there and eventually it it goes in because guys are too talented and you give them that many looks they're eventually going to score well okay and then and then i guess i want to talk about because you played with austin i want to talk about the monumental sort of part of this it's unfortunate it always happens in a losing game where a record is broken john tavaris uh scores his 500th in a losing game uh matthews gets 420 and 421 in a losing game

but it is a big deal right it is a big deal that he's passed matt sundin in 300 less games or whatever the number is um you know you grew up in toronto frank you played for the leafs you know what this means what where do you think that puts him in leafs history because i saw some stuff on the athletic this morning saying like listen his his reputation right now as a leaf is complicated because we haven't seen that stellar Doug Gilmore level run from him the way that, you know, we've seen it from guys like Connor McDavid and Alexander Ovechkin and other guys, Sidney Crosby, that have really won. Where do you, how do you look at Austin's legacy right now as it stands today?

I think it's such a fascinating question. And, you know, someone asked me the other day, like if you had to do the face of the franchise for all 32 NHL teams, could you come up with it? and it was pretty easy to come up with a lot of them there's a few that you maybe have to deliberate over but i found myself with toronto like not overthinking it or double thinking it but i grew up in the sundin era right and so for me sundin was was my hero and i appreciated so much about his game and there would have there would be a lot of kids that grew up in the

matthews era and this is what they know and and he's the face of the franchise but let let me ask you guys like Utah had to say who was the face of the franchise for the Leafs over whatever years that you've been watching this team or the history that you know who is it is it Sundin is it Gilmore is it Clark is it Sittler is it Matthews like I'll tell you my answer and I had a hard time with it I think my answer was Matt Sundin and that's crazy because Austin Matthews who I played with just broke his record for most goals in franchise history but you're right it is complicated because you know the the playoff I don't know the playoff shortcomings that you know Austin and Mitch and Willie and John have been associated with I don't know like even though they've you know made all

this history it's somewhat hard to I think Leafs fans would say this like it's somewhat hard to really attach your heart to it i don't know if you guys feel the same way you could even go back and say it's like george armstrong or johnny bauer like guys who won yeah yeah well i think sittler was sittler because there was it was him and salming and mcdonald and palmatier and that was it um you need like sunday never won no he just won a bit and gilmore gilmore didn't win here no he won but he didn't he won less than matts did yeah but i think i think we're we have to grade that on the curve though right yes we can't we can't just make it well if they're not original six guys they don't count like that you know that really sort of i think undercuts the

effort and energy and passion that sunday and gilmore matthews all those guys have put into this but what i'm saying is the bar here just isn't as high as in other places i think you're totally right steve yeah i think you're totally right like what what it was conference final twice once twice uh 99 in 2002 okay so two conference finals and that's the bar and these guys had nine cracks at it and we're still like you know we revere the guys that got to the conference final and which is crazy it's moments as well like sundine had at least one playoff overtime winner i don't remember if he had any others i know he had the one in ottawa matthews has won no one was in the building like and that i feel like that matters right i feel like that

matters man it was it was in the bubble it was a really frustrating game that everyone even though they came back and won like still kind of hated a little bit and it was a race the very next day when they got they lost the series and well and in all fairness right like the the story is not done on austin matthews here right like he's he's a leaf he's he's under contract he's still a leaf he's just shattered a very monumental record so um the the story's not over yet but yeah like i find that to be a very fascinating conversation look what he did um i think if if if you called it like early in his career that he was going to do it yeah I mean of course he was going to do it the guy's been an incredible goal scorer right from the second he walked into the league and

maybe even more impressively or more impressive is the fact that he's one of the best five on five scores that we've seen in in quite some time and I know it's been a little underwhelming like the last couple years but I don't know man what what we've kind of witnessed from Austin Matthews like a 69 goal season in this modern era is is remarkable it's it's wild so he he'll go down as one of the greatest goal scorers of all time um and he's you know he's going to continue doing it yeah no one no one since he stepped into the league is close yeah and you know right now you might go dry sidle dry sidles played like 50 more games than his 30 or 40 fewer goals like it's not close at at the same game level uh in his career uh that as matthews like same games played uh

ovechkin has five less less goals it's it's crazy 28 which is kind of crazy now frank you've been oh sorry go ahead go ahead no and just now that you brought up ovi remember there was that year 2010 2011 something like that ovi had like 32 goals and and the you know the the conversation started to pick up oh this might be it yeah right like the the one trick pony like everyone's catching up to it psych like you were not catching no yeah he kept scoring 50 goals he did that he did that he had a slow start in the 48 game lockout shortened season and he only had 32 goals it was a 48 game season the ovi example is perfect too because i brought it up a couple weeks ago where it's like

austin matthews is still young relative to where he can win a cup and accomplish everything because ovi and the caps missed the playoffs in the 2014 season and everybody has those conversations about like this is an all-time great who's never won anything he's a bust and all that and it takes another four years after that into his mid-30s to win that cup so there's still time for austin ovi hoisted the cup with a full head of gray hair yeah there's time the washington cup thing like i'm sure you guys have talked about this right because we always talk about ovi wanted at 32 right um but i think the thing that maybe gets lost in all that we look at the star player thing we also lose sight of the fact that like backstrom was there oh she was there you know john carlson

was there matt niskanen was brooks orpik there was carl alsner there like i'm starting to think like the supporting cast that was around those guys and i'm missing a bunch of you know i'm missing a bunch of guys kuznetsov was your other centerman tom wilson hope and goal right and he was great and i'm like and i'm like yeah i get it the star player finally won when he was 32 but go back and look at that roster and you're like ah that's a pretty legit roster that the 32 year old star had around him that eventually led to them winning a cup it goes back to the conversation at the beginning it's a team game yeah it's not on individuals in hockey it's truly a team game yeah so the solution is staple all the money to four guys

be really stubborn about it for half a decade and waste everyone's pride. I love it. I love it. Frank, you've been really, really generous with your time today. So I know you got games to do today and a whole bunch of stuff with TSN. Please say hi to everybody over there for us.

What I want to leave you with is a prediction that is completely unfair that we're going to stick on you and hold you to. I want to know, do the Toronto Maple Leafs make the playoffs this year? Yes or no? I don't want to disappoint your fans. I know a rabid fan base.

I would say like if you had to press me today, I would say no based on this fact or not fact, this opinion because it's not fact yet. All these teams keep winning games and the amount that you need to climb in the standings is difficult right now. I think that's the biggest thing that's going to get in their way is that, I don't know,

maybe maybe detroit's not that good of a team but they're good enough to keep winning like montreal's got seven guys injured and they just beat dallas you know like ottawa lost their goaltender and they just won two in a row against you know good teams so i mean that's the thing that's gonna hurt them is that in this and not to mention florida's picked it up of late like tampa's tampa buffalo's winning 10 in a row that's that's the the biggest thing right now is that the Leafs can pick up their game, and I have a lot of confidence that they will pick up their game,

but everyone's plucking points off one another, and all these teams seem to find ways to win, and I just don't know if you can leapfrog it as much as they would need to. There you go. Well, that's a reality I don't think anybody's willing to face yet. Happy New Year to you, too.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. No, no, I... Frank, the reason we love having you on is we always learn something, so thank you so much for joining us. We think you're awesome, and wish you the best of luck today in the games

and obviously going forward as well. Okay, appreciate you guys. We'll talk soon. Thanks. Hey, this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. And listen, it's the new year and you might be looking at some new things and going, I re-evaluated over the holidays

and I'd like to make some changes. Listen, you can't make changes anywhere else until you change what's going on between the years. I got a question. It can almost be more stressful because you're like, I'm supposed to be doing something different right now. Yes, Jesse.

what happens if you won a fantasy football championship over the last little bit and your ego got too big and you need a therapist to like talk you through it well i think it better help help you with better help could definitely help you with that over 30 000 credential therapists i don't know if anybody specializes in fantasy football per se ego uh but ego perhaps ego and id you know if we're getting if we're getting really deep you talk to a therapist about losing to a guy who doesn't even know who his players are.

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B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash SDP. All right. So, by the way, Frank, Just I want to say how much I love Frank Corrado. He's the best. Guys, was that good? Was that immaculate breakdown good?

It was amazing. So Anna Dua was at Maple Leafs practice, and she dropped all of the injury news that you need. First off, earlier this morning, you should know that William Nylander was put on IR retroactive. He has skated on his own, skated on his own today, but he's still day to day, which actually he's week to week. Day to day means less than a week. but anyway no they're just liars jake mccabe has a lower body injury he will likely be out a week but might be back possibly sooner that one i actually believe because i don't think that jake mccabe ever gets hurt i do not um the next game he plays i'll believe them brandon carlo

had an ankle infection after a blocked shot had to have foot surgery could be an option tomorrow good great jesus they need him chris tannev is being evaluated for surgery this week he's out long-term we've heard that's a groin injury um so that sucks a surgically repaired groin groin's going to take some time anthony stoller's has been skating still indefinite dakota joshua is back in toronto now remember he stayed in detroit after the game had a great game and then was um kidney yeah lacerated kidney this hockey's nuts so yeah listen a lot of injuries man a lot of injuries um I have a question. The Leafs are going to need defense

because Carlo might be back. McCabe is out. Myers, you know, Myers and Riley... Looks like he might play tomorrow. Well, Myers might play tomorrow, but Myers and Riley have struggled mightily. Like, Morgan Riley had a particularly bad game

against the Islanders, but I would argue he's been good offensively and bad defensively all season. The points are there, but what my concerns with Morgan Riley are now... Now is the same concerns I had in May when we were at sport check. And I was telling you guys, they got to sit down and talk to this guy and trade them.

It's the same concerns since he was drafted in 20. No, but I don't know that that's totally the case. I think at a certain point he did peak and I just don't think he's peak anymore. Right. And so Carlo, that deal was always expensive,

huge, huge, but that deal was always expensive. And for what he was as a player. And I feel like now, we're sort of having to pay the piper on that one because he's not a 72 point like you could forgive a lot of defensive issues when you're scoring 60 or 70 points a season right yeah not happening anymore and there's the defensive issues that are still there you know carlo coming back is

great myers handles the puck like it's a live grenade um i don't know what happened to his confidence this year but it is just not there i don't know what matt benning did in the previous game to be out of the lineup i thought he was good that was his leafs debut i didn't mention him once in the LFR video which is a perfect game for a third pair guy do Jesse and Steve do you look at the rumored to be uh terminated Igor Zamula uh who was traded from the Flyers to the Pens and did not report to Wilkes-Barre and uh is now going to be um available and with multiple teams interested you're looking for depth right you're looking for something you look you look but like uh they just called up Marshall Refai who I like and got injured in training camp and

at some point i think you're gonna have to try him uh i i i always unless it's going to be a significant improvement and you don't know that zamola is going to be that um i think you should go with your guy who you know better internal guy you signed refi to a three-year nhl contract and and not um not elc he got a multi-year extension despite basically not playing he He got more years on his deal than he has played games in the NHL. And I imagine they intend to play him. They had a good camp. He is up now.

It was called up. Yeah. So the Marshall refi thing is something I had an issue with last season with the Leafs where he played 63 games with the Marlies. But he spent so much time on the Leafs roster and he just be out there on morning skate with like the extras just skating around staying ready and they never played him. Didn't play a single game last season. And he was up with the team for so much time. Just use him. We love him.

Oh, we love him, though. We love him. Okay, we'll love him enough to play him. Yeah, so I hope that this time, now that he's up, they use him. Because if you're ever going to use him, it's right now where you have nobody on your roster. So, I don't know. Like, why sign him and do all this stuff and have him there just to not use him? Yeah.

He has Samula. I don't know. Or do you just go with what you said? like you said yeah go with what you have and i'm kind of like what are we even talking about here like is that what's gonna right the ship no but but will it stop the bleeding troy stetcher we were like what are we doing troy stetcher boy he's been there's a guy i'm like extend that man the the top two plus minuses on the team jake mccabe at plus i think it's 26 which is insane for a team that's like near last place in the east and troy stetcher plus 11 and 22 games i'm worried about

the team now that jake mccabe's gonna be out for a little bit because he seems to be such a big piece of glue to this entire operation and when he's not healthy they can't play hockey the only saving grace is um like if they get carlo back that's a right-handed shot and it pushes a guy like oel who has been playing his offside to the left and you can maybe survive because of that right because then you have riley oel and whoever you have in the lineup that night basically benoit refi oh boy it really drops off after those right it really drops off well myers is on the right so then you you would have i guess carlo stetcher it's either myers or benning right i the one thing you said there adam talking about morgan

as they need help on d right but i think we're all resigned to the fact that they're not buying right no and there's no situation where true living's like i'm gonna try and make this better by making a hockey move to sell assets to try and get better right which is why zamula is a conversation because this is an nhl player who's big and brad likes that and he's free yeah like like troy stesher was which made them better yes yeah yeah that's a uh it's an interesting place they find themselves in they've lost a lot of man games to injury i'm sure they're leading the league in man games and injury they're up there they have to be um and so okay uh yeah i guess you find out what else you have and marshall refi is a good place to start sure um he'd be

their 12th defenseman that they've used this year that that just kind of speaks to how crazy this has been the two d course two full d course yeah d course and neither particularly great but you know no but i do think offensively they're playing a lot better i'm you know what i'm i'm excited about i'm excited to see william nylander in the new offensive system me too guys are scoring again we did see a little bit if i remember correct what's really frustrating me and i know it's got to be frustrating for living and it's the nhl so life isn't perfect but um we haven't gotten to see stetcher with the full decor yeah as part of full decor because then you could trot out something like Tanev Carlos Stetcher friggin

McCabe OEL Riley that's that's pretty good man yeah but because of the Tanev news we know you're literally not going to see that unless you make the playoffs uh because the rumor is he'd be back by mid-April so you have to declare him out and then I don't know if you could that means you can bring him out in the play bring him in the playoffs which so the new rules I don't know I don't know either anyway long story short it's a uh you have to be cap compliant in the playoff so yes you could bring him back uh your lines that you dress have to be cap compliant anyway as long as he doesn't go on season ending injury and then he'd be done done because once you're on that list then you're you're on it you're petrangeloed right yeah so it's it's kind of fascinating to see where the

leaves are now there are other things going on there are other things that we should talk about do we want uh i'm going to give you guys a choice jesse brought in gifts for us uh i'm not sure what these do we want to get into those or should we get into more hockey news and save that uh we can do the gifts uh they're from our friends at fanatics something happened over the break you can pull up your box oh okay now all right they sent over these so you guys could celebrate the florida panthers in the boston oh my goodness drop the microphone we're okay gosh all right oh gosh i gotta hurry that out how are we doing it's fine we're good everybody's good Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Oh, what is this? The NHL Stadium Series is about big moments, fresh air, and the kind of energy that you only get when the game meets the open sky. This jersey was made to celebrate that feeling. The city, the team, and the fans. Thanks for being part of that moment. We can't wait to see how you make it yours.

And it is a Boston Bruins jersey. All right, guys. Well, I get my favorite as my noted favorite jersey for Tampa Bay Lightning. There it is. There it is. You know what? Better in person. Better in person.

Oh, look at him backtrack. Really? Look at him backtrack. Better in person. I'll give it that. Still not my favorite. It's not my favorite. So we had the Panthers and the New York Rangers.

I keep saying the wrong teams. The Panthers and Rangers play the game over the holiday break. uh they all arrived in ferraris i think it was i'll show you this yeah miami vice yeah the miami vice stuff so maddie you can play that video there of all the panthers uh that's sick arriving i thought this was so fun that's fun so we had those we rated those jerseys and then we had the lightning and bruins jerseys on the show we rated them and now we have them in person for the game that's going to take a place uh early feb i believe maddie is can you iso me for a sec that That should have been the jersey patch.

You're changing your mind? No, I'm not. This should have been the jersey patch. That should have been on the front of the jersey. But okay. Okay. All right. Well, I am glad to...

If the Leafs lose to the Lightning the next time they play, I'll wear it the whole show. And Steve, because you are a big fan of this team, you have Boston Bruins merch. That's so good. To go with the Panthers jersey I got, too. Thank you. You should put it on.

Yeah. It's going to be a great screen grab. No, it's jersey, Steve. Ray Bork asked me to put on a Bruins jersey, so you put it on. Ray Bork ain't here. Ray Bork ain't here. We're not Ray Bork, I guess, Jesse. How did we not put it on the Tampa jersey?

I said, if the Leafs lose to Tampa the next time they play, I'll wear it for a whole show. All right? Lightning fans, you got a deal there. I'm not dumb enough to make that promise. Well, I kind of know that they might. But I want to talk a little bit about what happened last night. New Jersey had a couple of own goals from a big name.

and the new I think Devils fans are pissed I think there's a few things going on here I think the booing would uh illustrate that my buddy yeah my buddy called Luke Hughes Thanasis Hughes and it's the most devastating inter-sports chirp I've heard in a long time because there's only one Thanasis right there sure is uh that's NBA champion you could say Brent Hughes but no one's gonna get the Brent Gretzky reference right um Luke Hughes was booed no less than nine times every time he touched the puck after two own goals and this I think speaks to a wider issue in New Jersey which is Devils fans are pissed that they missed out on Quinn Hughes yep they had the prime opportunity to get him I think the Devils were not ready because it was earlier than

they expected Quinn Hughes to be available so they booed his brother and Dougie Hamilton and Andre Pallott obviously didn't want to accept trades elsewhere they've been asked they won't wave and so i think the team the more look to me it's less about luke hughes and i this is an outsider's opinion less about luke hughes more about frustration with tom fitzgerald man i've been getting a ton of it in the dms oh yeah like doubles ton of it in the dms i've seen it all over the timeline that might be the hottest seat in the nhl right now just because he couldn't get the quinn hughes deal done and they stink and they stink and they're soft they stink and they're soft they used to be good and soft matthew nye is like saying to uh was it is it he sure nico

he sure saying like okay are we gonna go are we gonna go like what stop talking to me if you want to fight let's fight but here's the thing like certain it's a domino effect right things need to happen nize goes are we going or are we going he sure steps up the kid gets booed he sure steps up and his teammates are stepping up if this continues and the devil devil's fans i imagine are gonna keep the pressure on you either gotta win your way out of this or you have to decide as an ownership group if you want one of your top paid players getting booed every night yeah and you know not to make it about the leafs but this fan base would be getting killed if we behave this way and i'm not criticizing devil's fans for that they're allowed

to boo they should they're allowed if they want to i i just like to point out every time that leaf fans are not the only fan bases with freaking rabies we're the most sensitive about yeah so we gotta let it go well that's fair yeah and by we do you mean steven no i mean i mean leaf fans stop defending it if you want to boo the team boo the team you paid the money yeah it's every time but they booed the player which is what what the leafs did to marner on his way out which is there is a yeah i mean the game seven playoffs they booed marner every time he touched the i kind of feel like that's a more appropriate time you're getting killed 6-1 on home ice in a game that's going to end your season right this is regular season game in january you still have a realistic

shot at the playoffs uh the reason you're not in the playoffs is like pretty explainable jack hughes went down for a while he's back he's got the weird little mitten on um tom fitzgerald i think might get fired by the time he's going to the olympics with team usa can i say three things about luke hughes specifically it is on that issue it is in particular one nico he share wasn't scheduled to speak last night he came out just to defend and answer questions to the media to defend luke here's a leader that's a captain yes he's doing his job here yeah that was awesome david st louis st louis who writes for elite prospects had this tweet which i think illustrates kind of how devils fans are feeling about luke hughes you should read the charlie o'connor tweet

yeah i can read that one too what because david is responding to charlie he's responding you're just gonna ignore read the charlie one it's a crazy tweet yeah yeah maybe we're getting there okay read it in the wrong order go so david st louis had this tweet about luke huge which i think perfectly illustrates what uh the devil's fans are feeling about him he was quoting charlie o'connor who said you feel a bit bad piling on luke hughes on what is truly just a nightmare night for him but frankly we're kind of long past to a national conversation about whether he's actually a good nhl defenseman because he often looked like he doesn't often look like one uh his underlying numbers are bad so there you go thanks man cool maybe we were getting there

david said that has been the theme since his draft year luke hughes looks great when skating with the puck the tools are all there but the hockey sense was also always missing that couldn't be said or talked about for years despite being evident now his own favorite fan base is turning against him and lastly that's two of three here is luke hughes who was uh no no no no read the charlie o'connor tweet who was not pleased with his own performance last night this is what he had to say you control and you don't get rewarded i mean sag rating um i think the team played pretty good tonight and did a lot of good things do you feel like um the frustration from the fans was warranted or do you feel like you know that's just you know the environment right now i mean it

is what it is um that's part of part of sports obviously i uh made a couple mistakes today and i got to be better and um you know it is what it is this is a group that you know has has your back fully i mean how much does that mean to you just to see your teammates come out here and sort of say you know everyone makes mistakes in these games yeah i mean it's what it is um that's what the team team does and um you know we got a lot of great guys in this room and um you know we got a really good team just uh proud of you know how the guys played today um i just gotta be be better one of the things that jake was saying is you know he was that sort of asked is this a setback he said no it's just a loss it's just one loss and like that that's sort of the mentality we have

to have here going forward in the second half yeah um just gotta obviously learn from uh from our mistakes and then go day by day you know right back to work tomorrow when jake basically tries to pick you up what did that mean for you yeah i mean it's a team sport um you know jake's a great guy he's a big leader on our team and um he's a big reason why we've had success i'm ah i i gotta i'm i gotta say what i just want to say what luke hughes is experiencing here is a hockey very passionate hockey market of course but this is what happens when you go from making 900 grand to 9 million this is he's it matters he he made 925 last year he makes 9 million this year you are under a different spotlight it's the same thing that's happened with evan bouchard when

people lose their minds on evan you know it's not cute anymore when you're making 11 million or whatever he makes 10 10 and a half yeah it's it's the same thing uh martyr matthews kneelander went through here in Toronto uh it wasn't cute when when Nylander who held out rightly or wrongly held out came back and was absolutely shit that that first season now he missed training camp whatever but it wasn't good and it took him a while to recover from that it wasn't cute when Mitch Marner and Austin Matthews went to the playoffs with those big contracts and and Mitch more than Austin disappeared both disappeared but Mitch more than Austin the money matters the money matters play it fans play it pay attention to that and they don't have

quinn hughes if they have quinn hughes and luke plays like that i don't think there's any boots i think the one thing that devil's fans have to wear here is don't count your chickens before they hatch and i think a lot of devil's fans you you could have got a quinn hughes jersey and i think they were all expecting to get one and there was a mood shift when that deal to the wild happened there was a mood shift and it didn't help that the devils were bad around it um but they all thought they were getting this guy and they didn't get him do you also think and the devils have been soft for a few years now um it's bad do you also think that they're not playing their city's brand of hockey like i think one of the things that i think frustrates toronto

fans about the way that the Leafs at the previous specifically half decade played was there was not a lot of toughness up front and the Toronto Maple Leaf fans like toughness we like people we don't have to be the biggest guy in the room Doug Gilmore wasn't but you you you want your team to show some some spit some fire uh something where you're gonna grab somebody after you know after the goalie getting run like one of the biggest conversations we had early in the season was Mason Marchment literally lying on top of Anthony Stoller's and Brandon Carlo doing nothing about it and that's something that pisses Leaf fans off New Jersey the best New Jersey teams we saw with Scott Stevens and Danico and Eliash and Holik and all those guys that I can remember kicking our ass

what was his name uh Scott Niedermeyer Scott Niedermeyer best defenseman one of the best defensemen ever and probably still one of the most generated yeah yeah um those teams were tough as fucking nails man they were not the most talented no but they were they had talent yeah but no if you crossed their blue line there was a definite possibility you might die yes yes and i just feel like if i think what compounds not winning and i can experience this i say this as a toronto fan because we went through it is when you are not fighting back as well i always reference jesse and I in the Scotia bait box game three Boston Toronto two seasons ago where John Tavares is getting ragdolled and I said to Jesse I'm like I just wish once he would turn around and cold cock

a guy who cares if you take the penalty you're losing the game anyway just punch him in the teeth and when he brushes his teeth the next morning and they hurt he's good you know they know hey I can't probably do that to Tavares without covering my own face yeah you know I want that Like you look at Evgeny Malkin, psychotic, unbelievable player. You have to give him room. Nikita Kucherov, psychotic. You have to give him room. I don't see anybody like that.

When I eat tomorrow, I would like it to be painless. Yes. And I feel like. Is it worth it? So I feel like there's, you know, the fact that the team's underperforming and they're talented. The fact that they're kind of soft. The fact that Luke Hughes has graduated from 900 grand to 9 million. And they didn't get Quinn.

There's a lot of things here. the i don't know um what i was gonna say earlier i don't know luke hughes's voice really because i felt for him in that press conference yeah i haven't seen his interviews as much as i've seen his his two brothers they're all soft-spoken guys he sounds like he's on the verge of tears i don't maybe that's just how he sounds all the time i don't know um that's a situation that has to be fixed fast like the first thing i thought of is uh when brian burke fired ron wilson and you know it's the first time and only time really i can think of a gm justifying a decision they made based on um you know it wasn't oh yeah we had to make a change because we're not

performing well enough he's like no it was cruel and unusual torture to subject ron to that for another night at some point something's gonna have to give and what i think is very telling i haven't seen a single person bring up keith's name maybe i'm just not on the right corners of the internet i don't think it's him but with with quinn hughes not uh getting traded to the devils their cap situation was part of that i still think devils probably don't come up with a package as good as what minnesota did um maybe i guess we'll never know but i was listening to 32 thoughts today uh kovacevic is on ltir i guess they don't even have the cap space to bring them back that what a mess and it's unjustifiable yeah the reason that fitzgerald couldn't like put a package

together to get hughes is because he put himself in cap hell and they're up against it and they're they're in trouble of his own doing and that's the reason they couldn't maneuver anything to send a good package to vancouver at some point someone has to pay yeah and he's candidate numero uno the the the luke hughes thing about the money mattering i think is so important because that is the highest paid player on the team he's tied with dougie hamilton at nine million dollars and the context around which they are booing is there's it's the brother of the star center he's the highest paid player he just got all that money and you allow two goals there in a season that's already tumultuous uh for your team you're responsible for two goals going in i was allowed

and arguably scored right like so i get why devils fans were angry at this specific player because all of those things matter in contact i'm not chirping them i'm not chirping them but like This is getting ugly fast. It's year one. You're one of seven. Like, he just signed it in seven years. He's getting booed. And I want to just quickly look up the devil's contract situation here

because you look at Dougie Hamilton. He's got three more years. That's not, you know, it's not like that's expiring anytime soon. And Andre Pallott, I'm just looking up here. He's got two. And he's got a no move and a partial no trade. And so does Dougie Hamilton. it no move and a 10 team no trade for both of these guys and you know my question is Dougie

Hamilton has had a ton of injuries um is Dougie Hamilton a guy that they could trade at the deadline to uh another player or another team sure I think teams would want them but I don't know that they're going to want nine million two more years of Dougie Hamilton right now I want to see more proof of concept there and then Palat who's always been a wonderful playoff performer specifically which is why they got him um at six million bucks 34 years old another year left like i don't i don't know how you get that one there's only 10 teams you can trade them to they have chelosky sorry you got the puck pedia dennis chelosky yeah i thought that guy retired years ago well there you go that's oh good for him uh you know what there is hope for them and they need

to play dennis chelosky so they're gonna have to get creative and perhaps swap other bad money or or something like that they're gonna have to figure or they're gonna be retaining and i don't know even what the retention slots are uh right so what you're nothing they're screwed well you're gonna have to retain you're they're in a really bad way and you're like well they're gonna have to do this they're gonna have to do that well we already know they've tried if they've tried and failed there's all the more reason to make the decisions that have to be made very very interesting stuff so we'll monitor new jersey i feel like you you said steve hey we gotta we gotta you gotta fix this quickly i don't know that they can that's the scary part um and i

don't think sheldon keith is the problem there i think that's why devil's fans are not going after him i don't think he is i haven't even heard i think sheldon's a very good coach and i mean like listen lots of things have gone wrong beyond their control the hughes injury with all the mystique around it yeah whatever but like also timo meyer like missing time to deal with something yep that's his business yep um but the schedule is the schedule they don't stop the games steve by the way dennis chelowski played two playoff games for the devils last season get out of here there's hope for everyone six regular season games but he got into two playoff games yeah he's his first round pick in 2016 he played 33 games he scored three goals with the islanders

last year that's former i believe first round pick dennis chelosky uh deadline move wow he got into six games post deadline for the devils and then they played him two playoff games they needed him he played for the kraken get out of here no he didn't yeah dennis chelosky uh almost 200 games 171 so good for freaking him dennis chalowski hit 200 nhl career games once the devils finally clear space yes there you go uh now there were a couple of suspensions and a couple of non-suspensions we needed to talk about over the break i don't i don't love spending too much time on this because the answer is always the same which is steve is going to say george peros sucks a lot oh i thought you're gonna say resign he's a wage thief and yeah

resign a wage thief he doesn't do his job he's just a wage now do you guys think let's put our conspiracy theory hats on okay okay do you guys think that brad marchand was not suspended for the head hit on mike matheson because he had to play in the outdoor game the next day like blatantly nakedly yes disgracefully yes that was that was a money answer but jesse being voice of yeah no that was a money call like we want brad marchand in this outdoor game it's there's a lot of money in pr going into that we're not we're not suspending him that's ridiculous i think it's very obvious and transparent that that was the case yeah because you don't want to rob the florida fans of that also mike matheson fuck you and your brain cells i guess yes yeah mr uh did he miss a

game he missed a practice for sure yeah well and why was that oh i think it was the traumatic blow to the head yeah he did miss a game he did miss a game yeah so yeah brad got to do whatever he wanted the day before the outdoor game because he was knew he was going to play in that game veteran move veteran move you can hit anyone you want to whatever the fuck you want before an outdoor game we have two sucker punch um suspensions and one of them is john beecher who's having a really rough go in calgary he's just not a great season uh and got injured uh On the play that got him suspended. So he took a swing at Michael McCarron

while the refs were trying to break them up. That was a sucker punch. That seemed to me like pretty obvious one game. The fight's over and he clocked a guy. Yeah, not good. The interesting, the Logan Stanley one is interesting because Brady Kachuk was pretty obvious with the ref going, I did not want to fight him.

Brady Kachuk? Yeah, Brady Kachuk had the, he said, I wasn't looking. i wasn't looking did you see him afterwards yeah because he had a bandage on his hand do you want to just show the one for the audience sure sure here's beecher and mccarran yeah uh here he is so he's he's there in the scrum right here and the refs are in the middle there's two of them and he goes and he colds cocks him right there yeah like you can't do that there's the punch you see it there can't do that that's a game and the nhl uh was right to suspend him there yes i he did it to fire up the boys like look at the bench oh yeah they love it no that's one you take it's

important that it's it matters that this is right in front of the flames bench he's like you know what i'm doing this for the boys whack look out they're all jack and he drops them and they're all like yeah but nope sorry you're suspended yeah look at who is that is that weaker i can't I can't tell. Look at the faces. It's so grainy. The whole bench. Look at Nas.

Yeah, no, they're fired up. But like, yeah, no, that's a chicken. Oh, wait, Uyghur's on the ice, you idiot. No, he fired up the boys. But yeah, that's a full-on sucker punch. And if you're having a rough season, you want to fire up the boys. Yeah, whatever.

Like, whatever. But with the Brady Kachuk thing, I know Sens fans are like, oh, just because it's Brady Kachuk. Well, it matters who you are. and brady was saying to the ref just so i can explain it yeah he he got into it with logan stanley logan stanley is huge right he's six seven uh over 230 he's literally one of the biggest players in the league you'd have to be crazy to actually fight him but brady and him are getting

into it as they do brady's huge and logan punches him and brady's gloves are not off yeah and brady says to the ref hey i have a thing on my hand i absolutely am not he's full of shit uh wanting to fight he's completely so you think he's full of shit i'm interested so jesse let's run it through here so brady and logan uh brady basically pushes logan sort of into the bench and then kind of gets him in the face they pushed each other dick and they took turns now logan did take his helmet off oh you mean brady's yeah logan took brady's helmet off and then he sucker punches brady which is where i think the suspension comes in so they go there brady okay so here's the thing brady's right hand is messed up yeah cool you're grabbing me with your left and you're throwing

your patented little rabbit punches at me you're full of shit okay you didn't have your gloves off so you weren't gonna no but you were doing your little brady kachuk thing that your brother also does i wasn't looking you're never looking they don't fight i pointed this out less than a week before this happened with the leaf sends game because brady was connected with i don't remember who the leaf was but he's doing that thing where both i don't know how it's genetic but they will grab you they're not looking at you and they punch you oh veteran move savvy veteran is it a veteran move if we all know what's fucking happening like are the refs just this stupid still a veteran move like i i guess they're just this stupid then yeah so brady being like oh my

hand my hand well that's not the one you were hitting him with you're full of shit but you also can't do what logan stanley did stanley glove off punches him right in the face he's not looking either you're doing a lot okay okay here here let me let me drop some veteran savvy on you okay uh a six foot seven 230 pound man has you in his hands look all right jesse what do you think here can i play the department of player safety sure all right so we'll listen to this this is their explanation for what's going on our favorite voiceover man high-sticking history coming at the end who is this guy i wish we knew jim jim all right let's hear from saturday night in ottawa jets defenseman logan stanley was penalized for throwing a hard

ungloved punch to the face of Senators forward Brady Kachuk. As the video shows, Kachuk finishes a check on Stanley by the player's bench and the two become entangled, with Stanley grabbing onto Kachuk and causing his helmet to come off. As the two are tied up,

Kachuk continues to monitor the play and gives no indication he is prepared for the interaction to escalate to a fight. How far into the video are we? 35 seconds. Cool, you have no credibility and you're lying he said with a straight voice at this point show what's happening brady kachuk continues to monitor the play he's got the man ass up on the bench are you

fucking with us brady kachuk is pinning him to the sense bed and by the way logan stanley has fallen back so far that his left leg is par with kachuk's head yeah every day in every way it is not a professional hockey league that's shameful good lord anyway oh my god but logan stanley did still cock yeah okay that's a fine but you okay why not just say as you can see here brady kachuk is walking home with his groceries minding his own business like fuck off he's dumping the guy over the ropes royal rumble style and he's monitoring the play fuck off all right play it kachuk continues to monitor the play and gives no indication he is prepared for the interaction to escalate while kachuk remains focused on the play stanley sheds both

gloves and throws a hard bare-knuckle punch directly to the face of Kachuk. This is roughing. It is important to note that at no point in this altercation does Kachuk show any interest in participating in a fight. Kachuk's gloves remain on his hands

and he gives no indication that he is a willing or suspecting combatant as he continues to monitor the play down ice rather than focusing directly on Stanley. With no reason to suspect that Kachuk is ready or willing to fight. We have to back up. they how did they do it twice they did it twice in the same video in this instance where brady

kachuk almost called matthew has logan stanley pinned to the bench yeah the nhl is arguing that brady kachuk is monitoring the play down ice it's why that's a quote brady kachuk is taking a phone call with his accountant to work on his taxes. Are you fucking with us right now? I didn't know they're not. Every one of these videos that comes out I'm like, this is

the Ministry of Propaganda. What the fuck are we actually doing? He's monitoring the play down ice. Here he is. Show him monitoring the play. Down ice. There he is. Here's what would make these videos a million times better. He also doesn't have his helmet on. Yeah, because Logan Stanley

just took it off. He should immediately leave the ice. yeah no i think what he should do is goldberg spear a guy into his own bench while another player fucks with him apparently like who is that yeah so what would make these videos so much better is if they allowed me to edit and interrupt them because that's what this part at no point is brady kachuk show that he's a willing combatant in a fight yes but he is very much a willing participant in shithousery. Yes. Which is what he always fucking does. Yeah. Both

of them. Play it. Play more of these liars. Here we go. We're gonna get back. On his hands and he gives no indication that he is a willing or suspecting combatant as he continues to monitor the play down ice rather than focusing directly on Stanley.

With no reason to suspect that Kachuk is ready or willing to fight Stanley still drops his gloves and delivers a forceful, bare-fisted punch to Kachuk's face at a time when Kachuk is not poised to defend himself. Can't do that. To summarize, this is roughing. Stanley has been neither fined nor suspended previously

in his 242-game NHL career. There you go. Now, so he just fire blasts him in the face. Sens fans were mad, and they probably had good reason to be mad that um i believe the jets came away with the power play which is kind of nuts and part of me wonders if he's given five in the moment does he get a game i i'm not sure because to me what uh because essentially what they're saying with a game suspension to each is what stanley and beecher did is the same and i think the vast majority of hockey fans would disagree with that

i think like what beecher did is so very clearly chicken shit to me whereas stanley has reason to believe there's a paw coming directly at his face oh but his hand fuck your hand you're grabbing me i'll beat the shit out of you how about that maybe you should make different decisions since your health situation is different than it was the last time we played behave you're you have limitations because your hand behave differently you're not going to here's a little fist for you i get the suspension i get it i get the suspension i think i think they actually made the right decision i think they did too i think brady so if you're talking about the penalties he got a 10 minutes for misconduct logan stanley got two minutes for roughing and

two minutes for removing an opponent's helmet so it's four minutes to logan but 10 minutes to brady and i think logan stanley deserved that suspension in that instance yeah i mean it's a glove off punch to a guy who has both gloves on you can't do that yeah but i oh no i would never i can't uh yeah but i got no problem with any of that what that's how they play hockey that's the gamesmanship of the the kachuks it's like it's you hate it because it's them and they're rats but like that's also nothing that deserves a suspension right but i can if he wants to play chicken shit and that's his game and it works more power to the nhl though makes these decisions all the time where a player has no credibility because of who they are and their history

michael bunting absolutely no credibility with the league and no leeway nazem cadre no credibility with the league the department of player safety no leeway no nothing and that's earned it's very earned and you could go down the let do brendan gallagher like you don't have to just do leafs and former leafs right brady kachuk is given credibility by the league and deserves absolutely none i think in this instance that doesn't even matter because he got punched in the face when he wasn't fighting yeah you give these old guys you give these old guys who work for the league truth see them they'll be like uh yeah i'd have done it too all of them yeah yeah and you can't but they would have talk a guy you can't do it yeah i don't know i look at those two

incidences as like kind of similar in the way that the other similar yeah they're similar dudes punching guys in the face when it's not the moment to do it yeah well i'm on i'm on team brady you're the jets oh yeah you're the jets you're 32nd in this instance i'd be team brady you're 32nd in the league punch him in the face and he did and he did and he gets suspended yeah it seems it seems like everybody go your separate ways we're fair and he will not pay for the next several dinners well we'll see about that i i think it's uh it's sort of fascinating um the uh the way that that all played out mostly because i think the thing that bothers you is not that Logan Stanley got suspended. It's their

characterization of Brady Kachuk. It has nothing to do with Logan Stanley. Your whole issue is with that man personally. Brady Kachuk, pictured here serving soup to the homeless on Christmas Eve. What the fuck are we doing? Brady Kachuk petting dogs.

Brady Kachuk seen here rescuing dogs from a kill shelter, stuffing them into his van and driving away in the middle of the night. What are we talking about? thing labretton flats all by himself wow that's crazy how he's done that yeah it's it's a god it's fascinating it's fascinating now uh i want to talk a little bit about the winnipeg jets

because oh kevin shovel day off um did he get fired today or what he did not but he had his mid-season presser availability uh and they've lost nine straight and you know one of the things that I think has come to come to being an issue with Winnipeg Jets fans with the team is the fact that their drafting record isn't all that great. And when you already have a market that's tough to sign free agents in and the free agent pickup you made this year and Jonathan Tays has largely not worked out the way you'd hoped, you know, you start to look at other things and guys like Brad Lambert and Vinny Hainola, who are apparently now available via trade, but they won't play them. it sort of becomes so so it's sort of like well what okay so we're gonna sewer our own dudes

brad lambert might turn out vinnie heinola's waiver guy like what are you talking about like they're talking about him like he's the guy they just drafted no he's the guy you've poisoned basically over half of a decade yeah yep um uh he was asked by the way today uh what about the there are some concerns about the organization's ability to draft and develop since 2017. And he said, certainly it's a concerning thing when you've traded a bunch of draft picks or some of the draft picks you've made

haven't gotten to that level. Maybe not having some guys totally ready forced us to make some decisions in the summer that we did. Some of those things work. Some of the things are not working. Some are still a work in progress. I do think that we do have some players

that are ready to kick in the door. He's talking about Elias Salamonson. And, you know... where is he today well exactly 32nd in the league right so it's it's it's difficult um it's difficult really to to judge that but i do find that the jets have put themselves in a tough spot here because you did bring back jonathan tase on a very expensive contract for a guy that hasn't played in a couple years and is 37 and you continue a 30 a 37 year old at any point making 5.25 million dollars is a risk here's a guy who hasn't played since he was 35 and when he was 35

wasn't that great and hasn't been training with an NHL team this is not Gabriel Landeskog right right so you know I do kind of wonder about what they're going to do uh he did say you go into the season you have very high expectations your first job is to get in the playoffs to this point obviously it's been very disappointing we have not I think to a man top to bottom and it starts with me and we need to find a way to be better he's giving you GM quotes you know largely like true living had to give when the Leafs were really sputtering in November and he talked to the media what I find fascinating here is I don't know what their next move possibly could be you're sitting 30 second do you try to improve or do you just accept what you have and I don't even know if

they have their first pick this year um it's difficult because you just won the president's trophy yeah yeah is it wrong that I don't blame the Winnipeg Jets at all for the situation they are in you were the best team in the national hockey league last year they had a decent playoffs where they took a very good team to uh deep into the round like it was not a bad year for the jets and i wouldn't look at their team be like man they're gonna be last on january 5th no it'd be shocking you lost the reigning mvp for a little bit well it it ruined their season they were doing okay he's been back now and they haven't turned it around like i don't think that was just the thing that's gone wrong i think the entire depth of the team is what's gone wrong i think it sent

it started it downhill though sure but like i don't know if hellebuck's playing that whole time if they pick up that many more wins it's just they've completely dropped off from what they were last season but if you're the gm of the president's trophy winning team you can't make wholesale changes and change the roster completely coming into the season now that they've played out who they are now you have to make some moves but i don't blame him for what the team was in october And then once you are in October, you got to play it out a little because this was a very good team. You expect to turn around. And now that it hasn't, you got to pivot, move.

But up until this point, I don't know if Kevin Shevelday off deserves much blame. You know what's interesting about the Jets? They're old. They're quite old. Surprisingly, very old. Let me give you some names. Shifley, 32 in his prime, playing great. Velarde has been great since he got there.

Kyle Connors, 29 now. Nino Niederreiter is 33. I have follows 32. Nyquist is 36. Lowry's 32 Perfetti who damn anything they can not to play that guy he has eight points I know it's great 26 games Nemesnikov 33 Tay's 37 Pearson 33 and then on defense Pionk's 30 Morrissey's 30 Sandberg's 26 DeMello's 32 Luke Shen's 36 when he plays Colin Miller's 33 and then you got Logan Stanley and Hayden Fleury who are 27 and 29 these are not this is not a young team and so what I

think is going to have to happen here is the jets got to make a call it can't be like oh we'll give you brad lambert and vinnie heinola you're gonna have to sell can i can i make a point there about yeah so there was some noise about um he was sitting at 1099 games coming into toronto he has a chance to play game 1100 in toronto and people are like is 1100 a milestone yeah it's a big deal everything after a thousand yep every 100 games is definitely a milestone you're 32nd you have a chance to do something cool for a vet in toronto uh or like where it all started um and it's one thing if you do that if you make that decision and you win and it justifies the decision even though it didn't make everyone happy it justifies the decision you blew a 4-1 lead and

lost that's a tough ride tough ride man yeah it's it's gonna be is it getting close to is this a good opportunity for the jets to retool because they're not bad as jesse said they won the president's trophy last year i mean i think they're pretty good for a last place team yeah as far as like i do last year's last place teams i do authentically mean that yeah 100 i when i heard they were in last i was surprised because that's i don't think it's a bad hockey i got i got a thought okay and it's it's uh it's very toronto of me but but bear with me jets fans i think the problem is the coach i well i saw that game and i've you know you didn't look like a guy with a lot of answers no and i don't imagine that you know the winnipeg sports group

is pretty is pumped about you know paying out scott arneal and bringing somebody else in but kind of have heard through the grapevine that he's not the most popular character uh wherever he's gone and i you know there have been a few people that have publicly spoke out on it you know that might just be personal experience or whatever but i'm and again it's not crazy that that a head coach wouldn't be the most popular guy in the room plenty of head coaches are hated and still get great results um i think last year he had the heart and vesna trophy winner and show me a guy that doesn't do well when you've got a goalie heart vesna trophy winner it's hard to lose hard to lose when you've got the best it's the first one since carrie price

yeah like like this is and connor hellebuck is first ballot hall of famer the second he goes yeah i'm done yeah he's unbelievable and i just feel like maybe that was masking or wallpapering some shit and we kind of saw them sputter a bit in the first round barely got through st louis crazy comeback yeah crazy comeback but barely got through couldn't believe they pulled that off and you know st louis doesn't look like a particularly great team this year but the jets just look worse is there something to the fact that perhaps you know the leafs we were calling for we're having serious conversations about berube when we left off last time savard has left uh sullivan and lalonde have taken over offensive things and instant instantly things got

better instantly i'm not necessarily even saying it needs to be scott or neil but is there something a change there that can be made where you could get this team back to more than one line scoring so this is where as a gm you start to use your bullets well i think right now he's in the bullet evaluation stage which ones do i have he doesn't have much time though steve because january's compressed oh that's you got to put them in the i don't know how guns work i'm canadian but scott arneal there's a bullet the uh amateur scouting staff that's that seems to be a summer thing though wouldn't you think you would yeah because like there's really nothing you can do about that now that's spilt milk and can i illustrate how sure friggin bad it is so they

said since 2017 which is a pretty good cutoff because vaseline and was your first round pick that didn't work out so good he only played 70 games but yeah dylan sandberg and jonathan kovacevic who have both played over 200 nhl games those are good picks yeah okay you got two players out of a draft class that are 200 plus game nhl players that's generally considered a fine draft maybe not excellent but fine 2018 david gustafson's played 149 games but as a pretty marginal player he's got 20 career points nathan smith 14 games they were all for the coyotes uh declan chisel most of his games have been for the minnesota wild 2019 draft class it's just 53 games it's one guy and it's high nola um the next season it's one guy the 2020 draft and it's perfetti

who has gone backward so like what do you currently have to show for that draft class we're currently next to nothing 2021 13 games total nikita chiprakov uh and then 2022 i'll cut it off because then yeah too young crazy yeah second round you have elias solomonson who oh yeah well we might have this guy okay well when's he when's he showing up uh brad lambert who is apparently on the market he's only played 10 games number 14 who'd they pick 14th overall in 2022 i don't know rutger mcgrorty oh yeah well so they they have brandon jaeger then yes and where's it's a good question not on your team and that was a few years now I know he's younger yep a year younger by a year but like you made that choice yep Braden Yeager he's with the Manitoba

Moose you can call him up whenever you want 14 points in 30 games exactly not right I'm not saying he's a bust or whatever I'm just you're in a real bad spot and like there are some things you can do now there are some things you can do later and obviously firing your amateur scouting staff isn't necessarily going to help you now but you do have to acknowledge of all the organizational problems you have that's definitely one of them you stink at drafting time to make a change that's not an easy one because even if you do make a change you don't even know what the results are going to be for five years like yeah that's the thing you make a wholesale change there you just don't know optimistically three like yeah it's bad it's bad okay and you know shovel day off

before the jets got good for a little while here his reputation was he doesn't friggin do anything yes so this is this is a tough one this is a real tough one for winnipeg not to mention they have to deal with what every canadian seems to have to uh canadian team seems to have to deal with is no one wants a bloody player yeah yeah um last thing i want to i wanted to touch on um was the contract extension for alex wenberg which came in in three years 18 million uh total with san jose but it's a six million dollar per year he's got um he's been pretty good uh 17 goals and 44 assists on 118 games with the sharks been pretty good this season specifically it seems a bit high and people were quick to criticize but i did want to say you know this guy seems like you're a two three

centerman probably a three c on this team if everything works out well is that now what it costs when you get into 110 million 115 million 120 million is that what a two to a three c guy is going to cost you there's we've had this conversation before there's what you're worth league wide and there's what you're worth to us i think he's worth that to the sharks why uh they they they don't have a ton of players yeah for next season uh basically their whole decor is unsigned i expect them now that you're seeing this extension i'm like okay so what's next they're gonna sign this guy they're gonna extend this guy they're gonna extend this guy they have some decisions to make here but i remember the conversation with tyler bozak when he was on the

leafs is oh he's not worth that money yeah but he plays number one center for you yeah so you might not think he's that caliber of a player but at some point damn dude you pay me to play 20 minutes a night against really good competition yeah i should be paid for that and i think wenberg sort of falls into that conversation is it a good idea for most teams to pay alex wenberg what is it six six mil mil uh probably not no is it a good idea for the sharks yeah jess i i think this is actually right in line with what he should be making even maybe a little bit of a discount in in 2017 18 coming out of his ELC the Columbus Blue Jackets signed Wenberg to a 4.9 million dollar contract this season he was making five with the Sharks and then previously he was making 4.5 with the

Kraken and Rangers this is about what the teams around the league have valued Wenberg throughout his career and it hasn't really shifted it's like adjusting for inflation and now that the cap is a little up oh all of a sudden a McDouble at McDonald's is 50 cents more and this is what alex wenberg has cost throughout his career so the six million dollars is a sticker shock because you're like oh that's that guy but it's not a sticker shock when you take into consideration it's 2026 and the price of things are up and that is just alex wenberg like yeah you gotta pay attention to the things you say right like if every single contract extension makes you go whoa that means you you're it's not the league that's screwed up it's your expectations are just wrong

well he might have been a three and a half four million dollar player a year ago under that cap but it's not that cap anymore you have got up 20 so is his salary yeah when you do that it's like a way lower stakes version of your parents going oh just you know save up and go buy a house yeah stop buying coffee every morning yeah stop buying coffee every morning what are you talking you have a job as a barista they give you tips don't they go up and buy a house outside of elcs the sharks have two defensemen who are signed next year or love uh-huh and ryan ellis who is not ever going to play again oh shit well and or love only has the one year no no he's got two like he's got no no after this oh yeah yeah he's got the yeah he he's got a two-year deal but letty clingberg

mario ferraro liljegren also known as lilligren who vinnie day rna still gets bounced from the lineup for clingberg which is hilarious well clingberg's on ir now so i know so lilligren's going to be in there and shakir muka madulan i wonder if san jose's next move is to get mario ferraro locked up long term that was the first name i thought of that has to be right as soon as i saw the wenberg news i'm like it's got to be ferraro yeah well you're in a playoff spot right now yes you are trade them not unless they shouldn't sell this year they should not sell this year this is what i'm saying you need to go for it like unless you're getting value back right this is a perfect perfect stan pat year for the san jose sharks yeah don't add perfect

don't subtract just let the guys go for it try it and now if you slump heading into the trade deadline yeah you saw if you're in a playoff spot or within two points of a playoff spot come trade deadline holding on to your guys is almost the buy you can look at that as deviating from the plan they have some pretty good players coming up

I think they're okay if you're San Jose's general manager Mike Greer who walked past us in the hallway once when we were in San Jose I was like oh that's Mike Greer that was it Joe Thornton also walked by with his four kids

and that was the end of it uh jesse do you add at this deadline if somebody of consequence becomes available because i look at san jose's defense and i go they sure could use a major piece there like you know not another quinn hughes necessarily becomes available but do you add to that group to give them a boost not just this year but beyond somebody that's got a two or three year contract i would have went and got quinn use if that was possible like that's that's a player who's not available ever and they're available and your team is decent this year i would have done that if i was a shark yeah i'm going out and i'm doing i'm doing deals that make my team better now i don't think it's

just sell-off mode anymore for the sharks i think they really have something uh good there with with all the young guys and like celebrini has taken the step where he needs to be in the class of every top player in this league yes and when you have that it is your obligation to build good teams around him so they need to start now to build up and that makes that means making hockey trades from this point onwards this is this is wheel and deal and gm jesse blake i like it because you're like they should have gone out and got quinn hughes and i'm sitting here like who could be their brian boyle oh don't get quinn hughes who could be their brian boyle it's a good question it's a really really good question we'll leave it at that

for today there's plenty that we missed but you know coming back there was a lot of a lot of stuff we missed yes we'll be back wednesday though and i gotta stream tomorrow night florida toronto no big deal uh will matthew kachuk make his debut tomorrow oh could it possibly be and when he does he's gonna punch someone without looking at him guaranteed the steve dangle podcast follow the guys on twitter at steve underscore dangle at adam w y l d e and at jesse blake connection complete