The Steve Dangle Podcast - Fehr and Loathing in Toronto | April 18, 2022

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, the Leafs beat the Sens and the Islanders over the weekend (00:00), the NHLPA releases the independent report done on the NHLPA's handling of Kyle Beach and Brad Aldrich (18:00), The Athletic releases a sprawling piece on Eugene Melnyk and the Ottawa Senators. Read it here: https://theathletic.com/3243198/2022/04/14/eugene-melnyk-ottawa-senators/ (1:02:00), and an official passes the puck directly to the Bruins (1:27:00). Originally aired: April 18, 2022 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/cPfz-scEoU4 Visit https://sdpn.ca for merch and more. We've joined The Athletic and you can too! Hit the link to subscribe: https://theathletic.com/sdp Visit this episode's sponsors: Get 20% off + free shipping with the code DANGLE at manscaped.com. That’s 20% off + free shipping with the code DANGLE at manscaped.com. It’s time to get wet and clean with your new MANSCAPED™ Shower Routine." https://MagicSpoon.com/SDP https://smith.ai/ CODE: SDP https://stathead.com/ CODE: SDP Follow us on Twitter:@Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram:@SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hey this show is brought to you by manscaped promo code dangle free shipping 20 off is there anything else to say no i decided not to cut you off this time thank you appreciate that yeah how does it feel but you know what you cut off your hair on your balls okay because that wasn't going where i thought it was going hey adam what have you done to cedric recently listen said he needed it what i am snip snap angle keyword manscape.com and it again is 20% off and free shipping to be fair to said when i adopted him they'd already done that surgery because you know when you adopt a dog a rescue dog they always give them to you um spayed and neutered yeah because because obviously you there are too many dogs in the world as much as we love

them all there's too many stray dogs and uh we gotta do something about that there it is no there is too many dogs there aren't enough dogs too many stray dogs um too many dogs without a home so i i got to i got to work this morning and i checked my mailbox for the first time in a month why what um yeah because i get like mail not not email just like an actual mail physical mail yeah yeah same thing mail area and uh it's not even a box but anyway um i got this letter i don't know if you saw the tweet so somebody who is a big time listener of this show yeah wanted to tell me not only and i tweeted some of this not only that um i'm selfish because i chose only to have one child but also uh that uh only children are not well adjusted which i was like

andrew andrew berkshire rightly pointed out but he andrew brightly pointed out he's like that's a double burn for you and everly and and uh and then they told somehow this letter related to the will smith uh chris rock slap uh yeah that makes sense and a couple other things so i just thought i just thought if your monday was going rough just know that at 5 30 this morning that's what i was reading and i thought it was hysterically funny and i tweeted it people were like don't listen to them i'm like i wouldn't like i i'm okay it'll be all right you a letter like an actual physical letter did they did they write it it's the california person did they write it did they write it or type it and and they also they always have a different um they always have

a different return address and it's under a different name but it's all fake right you can fake a return easy uh like one time it was a scout for the los angeles dodgers uh or the kings it was the kings yeah and another time like it was somebody else's thing and i looked up the address and you know obviously to the point where i contacted ben scrivens and i was like who is this oh did you yeah because he was with the kings and it obviously is not a person with the kings it was just it's just a wacky person being wacky please stop so anyway i thought it was i thought that we're not the only ones we're not the only it's a bunch of people in hockey really yeah just please stop with your powerpoint presentations yeah and that's the thing there's like you stop there's

like okay so there's like a picture of us on this and there's like arrows pointing to our faces and it like thumbs up thumbs down okay yeah and occasionally it'll have like a sticky note attached to because they forgot to make notes on the notes that they were making so they made separate notes after they printed out full color ink nice printer paper like the thick stuff not even the cheap shit that you get at work i've you know please stop committed to the bit um anyway listen today's show is going to be uh wow mainly two things mainly the nhlpa and mainly uh um eugene melvin um obviously there are other things like um boston uh we have confirmation that boston uh hasn't in with the referees we'll get to that later in the show but i would like to say this

it's a joke if you're good at if you're good at hockey your name must be connor yeah you cannot be good at hockey and be named anything else because connor bedard just became the first player his age to score 50 goals in this age man what a special talent first overall pick next year yes man oh man yeah so uh future coyote connor bedard is going to be uh you don't know that yeah well um i think uh i think it's pretty clear he's he's got 100 and sorry he finished with 100 points on the season just 12 behind uh rst baines uh in red deer who had 112 and but you may remember connor retard is quite young and so you think next year barring injury he's going to be the guy and i just think it's really exciting to watch a talent like that

does his name have to be connor though because then here's what's going to happen for the next 20 years while he's in the nhl now if i say connor in context of the nhl you know who i'm talking about connor to connor to connor you know what i mean yeah but if connor bedard gets in now we got to specify which connor we're talking about and see like if i say mcdavid it seems like well that's his surname right so it's a little less personal if i say connor that really brings it in close you know what i mean personalizes it but now if i say connor there's dual connors and that's a problem it's connor versus connor for the heart we're only a few years away no it'll be austin versus yeah you're right versus connor well so things will stay the same yeah yeah

three things uh i want to check i got now on wednesday i'm going to check and see where conor bedard is in uh my franchise mode sim oh because yeah i want to see how ea is projected and what his career stats are so i'm going to check that on wednesday uh during our live stream Two, he's from North Van, so you know he's cool because everyone from North Van is awesome. And three, 42 penalty minutes. You can't draft him. What a goon.

What a goon. 42 penalty minutes in the WHL at 16? Fucking goon. What a goon. Sounds like a dick. Stop gooning it up. Wayne Simmons light. That's what they call Conor Bedard.

Well, Wayne Simmons heavy, perhaps. Based on a tweet that I had from last night, people reacted very normally to. Of the weights you've been running. So let's talk about it. So the Islanders were eliminated. Everybody was like super happy about it. To be honest with you, as a Leaf fan, I want better for us.

If we're going to eliminate the Islanders, I at least want it to be in a season where they didn't not play at home for three months. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, it's not fair what happened to the Islanders. They're clearly a good team. The back half of their season was perfectly fine. They would have made the playoffs.

Probably. Like, Sorokin. Sorokin was very good. But the fight between Wayne Simmons and Ross Johnson, who was a Toronto Maple Leaf organizational member for like three seconds, wasn't he? No, I think you're thinking of Justin Johnson. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought Ross Johnson was like the hired goon that they had under Lou Amarillo.

Put some respect on his name. He matched his career high at six points this season. Damn, that's great. Good for Ross. He's freaking huge, though. Yeah, so tell me why Wayne Simmons is not a heavyweight. well because he's we talk about him like he's a heavyweight and people were very confused about that term and i don't know why uh because he will fight the toughest guys in the nhl wayne will all

of them yes he will he'll fight the toughest guys in the nhl because he does not care but he's not a heavyweight at all he's 180 pounds he is eight pounds heavier than mitch month that's that's what he's listed as he's lighter than alex kerfoot he's lighter than call it black he's a thin dude and i've really noticed it when the maple leaf instagram they'll post uh sometimes the guys working out yes and you'll see like him next to willie and willie's like he's thailander for a reason you know william thailander's a thing and you see wayne next to him like oh it's kind of like a relatively like average built guy but then he puts shin pads on and you don't see it right and uh he gave up 52 pounds to ross johnston and that's like a relatively that's run-of-the-mill

for him like we could go through his career nhl fight card he's always the smaller guy in a fight almost always at least in terms of weight and the way the way i compared it is he's like a welterweight in UFC before weight cut taking on a light heavyweight before weight cut. So it's like I said is Glover Teixeira taking on Kamaru Usman because

everybody knows that. Yeah. Well, that's why I pointed at you. God damn it. Man, Glover Teixeira is my favorite. Yeah. Listen, I'm only here to represent the people like myself that don't watch UFC regularly. Glover Teixeira could play second base for the Texas Rangers. Definitely could.

damn he could that's a great baseball yeah his parents are wrong they got onto the wrong wrong sport idiot yeah way to go his name is glover there's glove in his name stupid no put it on his head okay do you know john jones adam i do know who john jones it's like mitch marner fighting john okay that's a big bit of a difference yeah there you go listen whenever you guys talk about t uh tfc ufc i'm happy to i'm happy to sit here and go i have no idea what's happening here because there's a portion of our audience who has no idea what's happening here as well and people who love it totally people who love it we've had requests for mma podcasts yeah and perhaps i shouldn't have even made the comparison because i didn't

think i needed to explain it further than ross johnston weighs 52 pounds more than wayne simmons so there might be a little bit of a weight difference yeah you know what's wild is he got a misconduct for yeah you he got a misconduct for beacon at patrick maroon who weighs even more weighs even more he's 238 ross johnson's 232 like this dude is tough to the point of insanity and your main point was that he does it all the time yes like all the time like you said when you go through his fight resume it's all these guys who are 50 pounds bigger than him who are who uh who are hot you're a what am i trying to say who are taller than him i don't know what you were trying to say but i'm necessarily taller i enjoyed it he's like he's six three he's is he really yeah

yeah so he's he's a tall guy but he's uh he's given up crazy weight every time they're and the people i i had people in the mentions like well the weight doesn't matter oh okay it matters a Oh, it matters a lot. I mean, tell me you've never fought someone without telling me you've never fought someone. Like, that is, like, even on the ice, on your knife shoes, it matters a ton. If weight didn't matter, why would you hire big guys in the NHL? Zidane O'Chara notably always gets his ass kicked. Oh, that's just because he's tall, though.

Yeah, guys, wake up. Bullshit. i was just trying to make an innocent point and people got a galaxy how many of these people did you talk about this in real life with none okay so you argued with a bunch of people on the internet about a weight difference in fighting see people keep telling me to just not read anything which i'm like you know this is my gig though right like you i can't just ignore it but you're not living by your own rule which is when in doubt don't tweet that was the very large mistake i made And it wasn't even to do with Wayne.

I know. Yeah. Listen. Hey. Whatever they won. The Toronto Maple Leafs, obviously, good game last night against the Islanders. Sort of just, you know, another game. No math.

Without Austin. Yeah, great without Austin. Mitch Marner matches a career-high 94 points. Here's my question. And I want to put this. I want to see how the rest. I want to see how the Philly game goes. Because if he scores again in Philly, I think this is a prop bet we need to put on Sports Interaction.

Okay? Will Mitch pass to Austin? Will Mitch score 40 goals? What's he at? 34? 34. He's played 67 games. If he'd played a full season, I think he would get there.

But since there is... They played 76 games? Yes. So he's got six games to do it. Six games to score six goals. Can he get six goals in the next six games? He has done that this season. I think that's a bet you try to take.

Oh, boy. I think that's a bet you try to take. Not good odds. Not good odds, but let's see how Philly goes on Friday and let's see maybe what... How many games in between now and then? I believe it's just Philly, isn't it?

No, they have Philly and then they have a game Thursday and a game Saturday, Sunday. It's like a packed schedule. Oh, mama. For my birthday last week, Natalie got me tickets to the last game. Oh, against Boston.

Against Boston, but I don't know if that means that the Stars will not be playing because it'll be the last game and who's gonna be playing it's not quite the nba but like um expect matthews to play i don't know 18 15 minutes yeah but if he tweaked his like like okay but let's say matthews what's he at goals wise now 65 uh still 58 58 excuse me uh why did i say 65 um i have dreams i have dreams if he is still fighting for that 60 goals he's gonna play he's gotta pull an ovechkin he's gotta score a hat trick in his in his second last game but he's also so that it's his last game right and then they scratch him okay fair enough yeah i would sit matthews like

entirely if if anything's wrong with him sit him out who cares matthews is 58 we you can hit 60 next year you know it's this playoff run is so important hope you guys like uh top power play featuring joey anderson and carl doll that'll be fun uh yeah hey listen get those guys some time and you know what get them in games like that are kind of fun too because it's like i don't even know how these guys play because they've been sitting for so long, so it'll be interesting. You know who looks like they could use an NHL contract? Rich Kloon.

Just sign him. Call him up. Him and Curtis Douglas. Let's all have a very peaceful affair. Who's playing goal? Dickie Kloon versus Trent Frederick. Also Rich Kloon. Who cares? That would be fun. I don't think anyone wants to open that door.

Before we get to the serious stuff, in all honesty, have you guys ever met Rich Kloon? oh yeah yeah great guy do you remember when he walked it was were you there he was yeah at uh kiss yeah because his his aunt is one of the heads at at roger sports immediately yeah and uh uh so she brought him in kind of toured the new studios when they were built and uh i remember shaking his hand and my hand disappeared in his hand yeah uh no he's an olympic power lifter who happens to play hockey yes yeah like his chest could swallow you like it's just huge he's huge and i said you know really looking forward to the marley season this year or whatever and he said well i'm trying

to make the leafs and i was like okay i said the dumbest thing i've ever said in my life he could have killed me right there no but that's the attitude they all have to have of course and he's a captain for a reason he the captain of your ahl team has to want to not be on the ahl team it's a very interesting dynamic bizarre isn't it yeah and yet the captains usually the captains on the ahl teams are the guys that are staying there like that who's the captain captain the growlers and they put him in all the advertising oh crap i don't remember but he's seems like a great but you got to think that that guy's like i want not nothing against newfoundland but my goal is to get to the ahl i want to say he's a former nhl player yeah i i know who you're talking about

james melendi no well yeah wasn't the guy i was thinking of anyway they've they've had former nhlers on the team it's uh you got it you got to want the call up you got to if you're not on an nhl contract you got to want the contract there are success stories justin hall was in the freaking echl sure was crazy he played his 200th game last night that's pretty amazing it is pretty especially considering what almost happened to his career what he almost got babcocked he did get babcocked the dude played 11 games in a season where he was perfectly healthy and i remember our season preview show for whatever season it was where he broke out i think it was 1920 and i just remember we were talking about like what the leafs decor is going to be

and we kept putting justin hall in there and i was like guys stop stop he's we need nhl players he's an nhl practicer yeah he did not play last year yeah you can't put him in the lineup friend of the show frank corrado who uh also had that Yeah, which was not fair. I'm glad those days are over, to be honest with you. Yes, me too. Stop holding players hostage. Okay, so let's talk about the serious stuff here.

A lot of reading over the weekend. Yeah, a lot of reading. So we'll start with the NHLPA and Dawn Fear. And you have to understand here that if you're going to release bad news, um the best time to do it is friday afternoon what a crock of shit the best best time to do it especially in a league that that really i find the nhl does take friday friday nights off even though teams play games the media takes friday nights off because saturday is a big night and then sunday's a bit more of a chill night as well right and then everything gets good back on

monday but as far as information flow friday afternoon things kind of just die um and uh except for our podcast, which strangely do very well on Fridays. Sure. The Dawn Fear NHLPA drop, apparently this was a outside report that was done by another group of lawyers that basically investigated if there was anything more that the NHLPA should do, could do, could have done better, needs to do better in the future, as it pertains to a situation like Kyle Beach.

You have a player who's not quite yet an NHL-er, and Kyle Beach was a black ace, and I don't know what the distinction is in the playoffs if you're quote-unquote an NHL-er at that point. I believe the problem was he had not played an NHL game yet, so he was not part of the NHLPA. Of the PA, yeah. As soon as you play the game, then you're a member of the PA. And that doesn't count preseason, by the way. Right. So how does the NHLPA handle a situation like this in the future?

Now, they said they were going to drop it, I don't know, 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon. No, they said they were going to, Pierre Lebrun originally reported it was going to be Friday morning. Friday morning, and then due to a power outage, because... Which apparently there were, because of wind storms. It wasn't untrue. Right, the idea that you can't release a document to the internet in this day and age, like you don't have a battery power, you don't have LTE. my dog ate my scandal yeah it seemed a bit like that so they waited so again it was supposed to come out friday morning came out friday afternoon like 4 30 and it talks about

and it was out friday because a vote took place on thursday amongst all the members of the nhlpa they decided we're gonna we're gonna the executive we're going to release this we're gonna we're gonna vote to see if we want to release this report that's just been cleaned up and uh they all voted yes let's let's release it and they said let's do it within 24 hours and the next day happened to be good friday a day when canada is not working and the united states is definitely not working they're definitely not working reporters on around it's a long weekend a lot of people are going to travel they're traveling to cottages they're traveling to see family they're they come on it was conveniently time now we're not stupid now we know that that as a as a preamble

to this uh the nhlpa and the agents met last week frege talked about it on on 32 thoughts and don fear i'm not sure if you know this or not he skipped the question period between the nhlpa and the agents because basically they do these day-long presentations and don fear uh then comes up at the end of it and the way the day traditionally goes is agents have questions for don and they ask and so what happens is don gets up towards the end of the day and walks out and starts talking to the media the media being i believe uh elliot freeman and frank saravalli who are waiting outside uh and somebody from the pa comes up and says oh don won't be able to answer answer your questions he's unfortunately been tied up the media the media tied him up when

we what we understand from fridge now is that don came right up to them please repeat that okay please repeat that because it bears repeating so so again from from what i under am to understand about the situation day long you're expecting to talk to the commissioner of the day long meetings between the pa is the first meeting in two years between the nhl agents and the nhl pa they all got into a conference in toronto down the street from here and every year there's rule changes there's structural changes to the cba that both sides agree on don fear and and his team it's their job to update the agents on it so that they know right and at the end of this if an agent has a question for don and there's like 150 agents or something like that they're all there then they

raise their hand they ask the question so don gets up and leaves midway through the afternoon right towards where question period supposed to happen uh at least this is how we understand it somebody from his office comes up to the podium and goes uh uh is this thing on um anyway mr fear will not be answering questions today this is the one opportunity the agents have to talk to him in front of like a public forum and have an open discussion otherwise it's one-on-one and he they said well he's been he's been basically taken by the media now like you know they're they're talking to but what we understand from elliot and from what he said and for what was kind of put out there is that he approached frank and elliot and started talking if i didn't know any better i

would say donald fear was a coward is that how you feel and elliot said that he felt used and he was entirely used in that situation as a cloak for fear not to talk so donald fear sat there all day did not take any questions and when it was time for him to take questions he approached the media and used the media first of all let's say elliot and frank lassoed him like red dead redemption too and they brought him in and they abducted him and forced him to answer questions that is inadequate if i was an agent i would say fine i'll sit here i'll sit for you i what what are they recording a podcast how many questions are they asking him a scrum doesn't take that long i am gonna sit here and you're gonna answer my goddamn questions what kind of a union is this

if our leader won't answer the union's questions forget finding a replacement for donald fear because he's still in charge no he isn't no one is in charge of the nhlpa donald fear is a tradition like a turkey he's he's just sitting there doing nothing which was the whole problem in the first place with this kyle beach situation he did nothing so for over a decade donald fear has done nothing he is there when there is something to negotiate and then he's fucking gone he's a ghost in the wind coward so and we haven't even got to the report yet right sorry i keep forgetting so uh so in this situation obviously the the the frustrating part i think is there's a couple of things and i think the major question that the agents wanted to ask is what's the succession

plan don fear is is 70 74 years old and i don't think it's an unfair question to ask at this point it's not ageism it's don it it is time for somebody else to take over i mean you at least negotiate five years at least name someone and the latest thing is that they're going to talk about it this summer so well that wasn't and last week that wasn't even this is something that's emerged in the last like 48 hours ish is that this summer they're gonna talk about the succession plan for donald fear yeah because they released that shitty report and they're like oh fuck no one bought it right so so we get into the report itself a couple things i want to highlight um so obviously when you read the report it's 20 pages long the last three or four pages are just

a bibliography so it's actually not that long of a read and a lot of it is stuff that you know they go into what why are we here jenner and block what's that who's kyle beach who's dr shaw who are you know who are kyle beach's agents because there's two agents mentioned here right yeah and uh and i'll read this the core disputes at least as far as contact with the nhlpa is concerned are the sharply conflicting accounts provided by fear and gurney about their conversation with each other and dr shaw and beach regarding theirs so there's two conflicts don fear and mr gurney who was uh kyle beach's agent and then there's dr shaw and kyle beach and in both cases both kyle beach and his agent said we spoke to the nhlpa we expected to hear back and we never

heard anything again right whereas the nhlpa's position has always been um can't really remember can't recall the conversation um and not totally sure if this is one of our things that we needed or that we should have been handling anyway now it's very clear that the player perspective on this in the current nhl climate is that the nhlpa absolutely needs to respond to things like this because duh human beings right now um uh if you're an nhl player i want you to think about it like this i want you to think about it like you're an nhl player so last week you find out or two weeks ago i guess you're you find out that the agents meeting in the nhl uh the nhlpa meeting happens and you find out that the head of your players association through your agent

would not stick around to answer questions. First off, even if I don't read a book, if I can't, if I don't give a shit about labor relations, if I don't give a shit about any of this stuff, if I am a part of a union and I find out the union head is running away from my agent's questions to them, that's a red flag for me, right? That's a big deal. That's my hope.

Yeah. My hope is it's a red flag and not, you know what? the playoffs are around the corner i don't need this shit because that attitude is what got us here in the first place right right so um so here's what here's what we have here regarding gurney and fear gurney told us in substance that he called fear and then gurney again kyle beach agent at the time called fear in late december 2010 after beach told him that he had heard that aldridge brad aldridge had been hired as a video coach by usa hockey in connection with the tournament that was held in late december early january 2011 gurney said that although he

had never met fear he called him because he believed that his recently appointed nhlpa executive director which he still retains fear would likely uh know the appropriate person at usa hockey to contact to warn them about aldridge's behavior gurney told us uh this is the investigators told us that he recalled describing aldridge as a pedophile or a sexual predator in his call with fear but did not provide fear with any details of what allegedly transpired between aldridge and beach fear denied having any recollection of the call a position that he has consistently maintained both in public statements and of interviews with him in our interviews with fear who is an experienced lawyer they made note of that repeatedly he made the same

point that if gurney had either described aldridge as a pedophile or a sexual predator or requested him to contact USA Hockey, he would have remembered it. Fear is adamant that the incident uh, uh, fear is adamant that had the incident been so reported to him, he could not and would not have taken or agreed to take

any further action without being provided with more details regarding the alleged incident including, uh, whether Beach had reported or was prepared to report the incident. So that's interesting because if you're a victim of a crime like this, um, a lot of times people like, you

got to say something you got to say something and victims oftentimes don't want to speak up and there's a myriad of reasons why embarrassment being chief among them right the same reason why people like how did kyle beach is 210 pounds brad aldridge is five six how could this happen this happens we know that this happens so so so fear says listen i don't remember this phone call but even if i did remember this phone call i still wouldn't have been able to do anything about it because he hadn't reported anything. So I'm exonerated two times. That's what it looks like to me. After an exhaustive review of the entirety of Fears' emails during the same time period failed to reveal any reference to his call with Gurney, much less any discussion of the

alleged incident between Beach and Aldrich, a significant omission, and I've underlined this in my notes. This is important. A significant omission given Fears' documented practice of immediately following up with other matters of much less significance so to put that into layman's terms don't fear is a lawyer when a lawyer takes a phone call they have got to register what they what was discussed on that phone call because what can happen is somebody could say hey you had a phone call in december or january of 2011 or 2012 uh and it was 14 minutes long which by the we'll get to what were the contents of that phone call and they went through every email donald fear has ever sent at the nhl as the nhl executive head right they went through every tens of thousands

of emails 10 years of emails they went through all of them to find one reference and they did not find a single shred of evidence that he mentioned it but what they did find was a propensity to be extraordinarily detailed to to to if it's the tiniest little thing don fear writes it down follows up on it so their position is well he keeps very detailed notes and because he did not have any notes on this it didn't happen that's not necessary that's that's fear's position that's not the uh reports that's not the reports position and let me just say i know you want to jump in let me just follow that up with this copies of the nhlpa's phone records and some of fear's personal cell phone records from the time in question were found in storage

and upon review revealed a 14 minute call from fear to resnick within hours of the email being sent fear and resnick were separately shown all the records and neither at any recollection of the call resnick is another agent another agent involved yes ultimately uh this is where the this is where the uh kind of report sort of i didn't want to get too too in depth because i think you should read it but obviously i wanted you to come away with sort of the idea what's happening here ultimately the failure to act on beach's reports stems from a failure of communication all parties involved managed to walk away from these interaction under some misapprehension gurney and beach walked away agent and player walked away from their respective conversations believing that someone

possibly fear or somebody else at the nhlpa or dr shaw uh had agreed to take responsibility for contacting USA Hockey. Dr. Shaw thought that the others, either the union or Beach's agent, would address Beach's concerns with USA Hockey and that he was bound to keep what Beach told him confidential. Resnick believed he was sharing

a concern about a coach who was odd, bullying, and inappropriate, but not a sexual abuser, and Fear and Gurney's differing accounts of how the call went are difficult to reconcile because they are fundamentally incompatible. However, given fears years of experience and training as a lawyer his failure to recall the conversation

or take any further action strongly suggests that at a minimum he did not leave the call with the understanding that he had agreed either personally or on behalf of the nhlpa to contact usa hockey and in in a lawyer's sense you have to look at it like we can't make any assumptions here so at very least he walked away not understanding the situation so as a dumb layman who's not a lawyer can you explain to my little brain um how to interpret that because i'm interpreting that as donald fear essentially has immunity here because oh yeah he's fine so so here it is you know usually what a fucking disgrace usually your best defense is i don't know that's usually well that's what he did say he's repeated that every time so if if you're a practicing lawyer

all you have to do is say i don't know and you can get away with fucking anything um no but i think it's the idea is so what they're saying is listen donald fear trained lawyer yeah labor relations mlbpa head of the nhlpa okay this guy this guy are headed up both of those unions this guy knows exactly what it is to be a lawyer in this union you gotta you gotta keep track of your calls you gotta keep all these records you gotta make sure that everything's professional above board but in this one instance he is this 14 minute phone call he can't recollect and somebody's saying this is what i told don don fear don fear is like i have no recollection of that i'd be curious to know if it was common practice for him to keep records of conversations

pertaining to players who are not in the nhlpa which kyle beach was not i well they're saying that every call the the assumption that i got what i inferred from the document is that everything he did he documented which is what you should do yeah and so their their parents so their conclusion they said our conclusion is further supported by the absence of any evidence that fear either memorialized the conversation or discussed it with anyone else affiliated with the nhlpa including his brother steven who is outside counsel to the nhlpa this departure is completely at odds with fear's documented practice of routinely and promptly tasking others to follow up on matters of much less significance so they're saying this 14 minute phone call that he can't

recall is completely out of character for how he normally conducts business based on the tens of thousands of emails they went through according to who according to the third party investigator you just you just quoted his brother no no i didn't quote his brother uh well they they talked to his brother who was an outside counsel um and they they asked him like did did don fear talk to you about this and he said no which i mean oh great yeah thanks so so um a lot of i think in the report it also states that like nobody remembers hearing about this nobody can remember hearing about this which means he probably didn't talk to anyone about it if you if he was told or whatever at very least here i do think it's odd like if you do if you do everything the same way

professionally if you there's a system in place right and then just this one time you didn't it's suspicious for me the conclusion of the report is that it's very hard to believe donald fear's recollection of the situation like that's that's all i came to the conclusion that most likely his tale of the story is untrue in my eyes and that he has all of the records and the resources to back up his claim that i don't remember because he's meticulous in these things And he's organized his life in a way that if he wants to erase this and pretend it didn't happen or not have memory of it, he can do that. But I think it's very hard to believe that he did not have this conversation and that he was not told by, I believe it's Resnick who called him. Resnick, yeah.

Resnick called him and told him that Aldrich is a pedophile because Resnick said that he used those words in the phone call. And it's hard for me to believe that that phone call didn't happen. That's the conclusion I drew from the report. I think it's clear the phone call happened. what's unclear and what we could never in a content no no according to according to fear the phone call might have not happened well no they've got the records though they say it's 14 minutes 14 minute call he doesn't he can't recall it he doesn't recall it so there's so much happened though we know the call happened and we know what happened and that he should have reported it to

usa hockey we know all those things unless he bought them or something he's he set it up so that he can just escape from this and that's a shame so the voted to release the contents of this report what they did not vote to release was the recommendations that cousin and o'connor or cousin o'connor the law firm they made recommendations based on the report sure they would not release those recommendations i can see why i can see why too you you want to hear my theory as to why please who's involved here kyle beach goes to his agents his agent calls donald fear and speaks to dr shaw um and i think kyle spoke to dr shaw as well yeah neither of them uh can fucking remember anything or well we'll get to dr shaw in a minute but donald fear

goes i don't recall and it dies it dies that's not even a fucking organization that's nothing that's your infrastructure that's your hr that's how you handle things if it goes from player to agent to boss and dies you have no infrastructure what jenner and block found with the chicago blackhawks is they violated their own hr policy that's a big reason that they were found to be in the wrong they had a written down these are the rules for how the Chicago Blackhawks are run they did not follow those rules and it led to x y and z and people lost their jobs the NHLPA doesn't have shit they don't have an infrastructure so what I'm willing to bet the recommendations from Cousin O'Connor are is hey why don't you act like anything why don't you act like an actual

players union why don't you act like an organization why don't you act like you're trying to run uh any sort of thing containing human beings why don't you act like adults i'm willing to bet that was one of the recommendations because if the system is set up so that the dude at the top can do whatever he wants which includes nothing which i think is often the case but but that's just my theory doesn't it look like the blackhawks wanted nothing to do with this the nhlpa it looks like we know the blackhawks wanted nothing to do with it because what did you find out about uh what did you find out about the new revelation with kyle beach well so there was another report and i'm trying to find it but there was a there

was an agent sorry not an agent there was a reporter who covered the rockford ice hogs at the time of um at the time kyle beach was there and looking back holy fuck what a time to cover the ice hogs given what we know about them uh akima lou is still waiting for any sort of recognition um on you know what happened with him and everything but basically he read through the jenner and block report and i'm trying to find it right now but he read through the jenner block report and uh basically it jogged his memory for the timeline the houghton county police where brad aldrich was arrested contacted the chicago blackhawks and basically gave him the heads up hey a former employee of yours was just caught doing this and they've been arrested and

we wanted to let you know the timeline is not 100 clear but within the week of that phone call either before or after and that's that's the contentious part and it's vital to the story the the timeline is very suspicious that kyle beach was then lent to hv71 a team in sweden he had a fantastic off season he worked hard he was in beast mode and was then here we're going to lend you to hv 71 while brad aldrich was in the news right because remember a big thing with kyle beach's story is he did not know brad aldrich was arrested until i think it was 2019 that's correct when when i think it was john doe to when that story came out yes which and that happened in 2013 so in 2013 the houghton county police make an arrest they inform the chicago

blackhawks and at some point very close to that time the blackhawks loan kyle beach to hv 71 in sweden he never hears anything and like a month and a half later something like that he comes back he joins the blackhawks organization is a healthy scratch plays his first game of the season scores a hat trick i believe he played the next game scored another goal and then was traded to the new york rangers for brandon machinter i think it was so he was out of sight out of mind comes back and gone fuck i hope he got so much money i hope he got so much goddamn money and i hope that's why bill wurtz blew his top um at that uh little fit that he had we're not gonna talk about the past we're not gonna talk about the past yeah super stoked that you're uh one of the executive owners

of the league that i friggin cheer for and have hitched my wagon to you absolute disgrace of a human being so here it is sorry from chris it's from chris block that whole thing was just because you were looking looking for the report but also he believes it yeah yeah a little side yeah chris here you got it i sent it to the both of you so it's from the third man in dot com uh written by chris block who used to cover the uh rockford ice hogs okay and he cited page 64 and 65 of the general block report can we include that in the in the link descriptions yeah here you want me to read the excerpt that he cited from the general yeah no i'm just saying can we include it so people care who want to want to read it sure in september 2013 the director of human resources

of the chicago blackhawks that's me adding that was contacted by the houghton michigan police department a detective stated that the police were investigating aldrich because aldrich was suspected in a criminal sexual assault so i made a mistake i said he was arrested it's they were investigating. The director of human resources recalled the detective telling her the police heard there were hangups with males affiliated with the Blackhawks. The director of human resources recalled telling the Houghton detective that Aldrich had resigned, but she could not provide more details over the phone. The director of human resources further recalled that she told the detective that if served with a subpoena, she would cooperate. The director of human resources

stated that she did not recall hearing from the detective again in october 2013 aldrich was arrested and charged in houghton michigan with third and fourth degree criminal sexual conduct involving a minor in december 2013 aldrich pled guilty to fourth degree criminal sexual conduct involving a minor in 2014 aldrich was sentenced to serve nine months in jail and five years of probation by the way he only served seven that's a little note at the end from seven months that is yeah some um yeah so so you know steve mentioned you know he thought that he knew you know what was in the uh what was in the recommendations um i think part of the reason you don't release the recommendations is a it makes the pa look bad b it makes fear look bad which is bad for

the pa versus gary betton forget you know the players might be against donald fear but they also need to not have their pa head look like shit in front of the nhl who they're going to be you know negotiating within four to five years you just you got to have a show of strength um as terrible as that sounds but i'm just saying politically they can't do that i think third though the reason i the real reason should be that you don't want to tell people at this point what the um what the what the mechanism would be if this something like this ever happens again and i think rick west had actually said it best he's like listen it's it's it's going to happen it is going to happen we don't want it to happen we want to reduce occurrences of it

happening but it will happen again of course so the next time it happens what's the protocol right and if you reveal the protocol it can put potential victims at risk number one now number two i do think that wherever this ends up going the pa will have to tell its players hey if you're ever sexually assaulted here's what you do and tell the agents hey here if your client ever claims this and says this happened to them, here's what you do. So that will eventually get out. But I think the other thing is that if their recommendations don't fit with where leadership at the PA wants to go

and they've released them, then the public's going to ask why. And so if you don't release this, the public can't hold you accountable. And frankly, I would be curious to know how many of the NHL players playing currently get to know exactly what that report says too. Is it just the executive? Or is it everybody? Was it emailed to everybody?

Was it emailed to everybody? Because if it was, and you guys know this, the NHL, the walls talk. We would know like in 12 hours. It would be a report on Sportsnet. We know that. So I'm just, I think there's a lot of nefarious reasons why this isn't coming out.

But I don't think they want to be held to account. And I think if you're looking for proof of them not wanting to be held to account, look at what Donald Feer pulled a week and a half ago at the agents meeting. And how wasn't everyone screaming bloody murder about that? Oh, I think they might have been. I just don't think they were screaming bloody murder to the public. I'm skeptical because Rick Westhead tweeted, hearing of divide among NHL players over report on NHLPA executive Donald Feer. Some say Feer exonerated. others angry over his i have no recollection responses will be interesting to watch whether

fair 73 he's wrong he's 74 is allowed to influence influence search for his successor as he plots an exit so i said what i responded was i read this as some nhl players have no critical thinking skills but others do and you responded very maturely with uh with your next tweet that's hitting him hard that's hitting him hard dude okay tell me if this is are you gonna read the poop yep okay tell me if you think this is a good comparison or not NHL player one this is a bucket of ice cream because the label on the bucket says ice cream player two if you open the bucket you'll see this is a bucket of shit player one the label says ice cream player two yes it does but if you open the bucket you'll see it's full of shit it's very good so the report yeah oh yeah no you just

you didn't know you didn't know here's what if you read the fucking thing it's sorry there's more questions than answers in that one so here's here's what here's my prediction they're talking about this quote-unquote succession plan like hey we're gonna bring somebody in and over the course of three years they're gonna take over dawn fear would be 77 if if the succession plan is done properly you want somebody as the deputy head for like three years um i don't think donald fear has got that long guys you know i think donald fear will be gone probably by the beginning of next season now you could say well that's unfair betman didn't go yep i would agree with that betman was extended bet betman was extended he signed his extension we found out uh roughly uh

roughly around the time of the investigation december no no no not around the time it was right as the results were given the conclusion the conclusion the investigation they the next meaning the gms had they signed him to not gms owners had they signed into a five-year extension that was not publicly reported yeah but that is out there now yeah while we were all uh being like oh i wonder if this is the end of gary bettman the uh the nhl's owners extended them half a decade yeah and leagues going going places and i don't think anybody disagrees with you about donald's because it's not even the pressure from the beach situation that's ousting him right now.

It's everything else, you know? It's his run the last couple of years, and I think everybody's just kind of tired of it, and this is kind of the final push, you know? So I don't think he lasts to the end of 2022. No, I don't think so either. I think, yeah, they talk about succession plan. I'm saying there's going to be an immediate,

I feel like there has to be an immediate move here. And, you know, frankly, you know, what do you know about Don Fear? My impression of what, and despite, Steve, you're going to roll your eyes at me here, but I thought that what Keith Olbermann talked about with Marvin Miller on the Agent Provocateur podcast when he was on, Marvin Miller being the MLB PA head who got them free agency, who got that union really going. i i i sort of long for the days of pa heads nhlpa heads uh it sounds like a schoolyard insult pa head um i long for the days when they were outspoken when they were rah rah rah union and you know here's the other thing is that i i um i know that in the nba star players are involved with the union i know that in the nhl star players could give a hoot about the union oh it doesn't it doesn't mean that they're not appreciating that it's there but chris paul was like the head of

head of the like one of the heads at the end at the nba for like year and chris paul is fabulously wealthy never has to work again still plays and an extremely talented player who could have just focused on the game but what did he do what did lebron do they all show up they're all rah rah rah owner and what we're not rah rah rah owner they're all rah rah rah union and to be honest with you from what i've heard from what we've seen you know like here's here's what i do you want to hear a funny story so i read because we were getting ready for the ken dryden interview the reason i keep referencing the steve monador book that he wrote is because i read it and he talks about this is separate but it makes sense he talks about in the last

lockout like the almost full year lockout in 2012 steve montador being one of the guys the media media was talking to about like well you know he was on a they were at an nhlpa event at a golf course and you know steve was he said ken describes him in the interview as well-spoken clear-headed and this is a guy with concussion issues well-spoken clear-headed complimentary of both side's goal to go and negotiate a new deal right that's what he was saying and i my first thought was and this is no disrespect to steve montador or his memory or the role he had in the league but why is steve montador you know talking to the media on behalf of a league that contains sydney crosby and alexander ovechkin and and and and why is steve montador guy who some mostly

played defense sometimes played forward did he yeah he did sometimes play forward i knew he played scored a big goal in that calgary run of the finals i remember that why is steve montador the guy that's making that conversation and there are other people like it and i think i'm not again i'm not trying to denigrate a fourth liner or a third pair defenseman but who do you think the owners are going to listen to right they're going to listen to um uh roman polak i don't know if roman polak's involved in the union i know matt hunwick was with the leafs you're you're asking why isn't that sydney crosby why isn't that conor mcdavid the big stars in the game because they will actually have some influence they have they

have some power within their star power because they are what drives the uh revenue for the league is the players without the players you have no league so why aren't these guys taking a stance for their own peers amongst these executives and standing up for something. Why aren't they the ones heading up these positions? Who's going to talk to Daryl Cates, who is a part of the NHL executive, by the way, the top eight owners in the league?

Who's going to talk to Daryl Cates and get through to him better than Connor McDavid? You don't have a team without Connor. That's your business. Who's going to talk to, let's say, Bell Rogers and Larry Tannenbaum better than Austin Matthews and Mitch Martin? who's going to chat with james dolan wild man that he is who's going to talk to him

who would who would talk to the chicago blackhawks ownership if it wasn't kane and tase but here's the problem is that a lot of the time those players don't want to upset that relationship because they're close with the owners i remember when in 2020 when it was at the height of the black lives matter incidents and um the nba was getting ready to not play their games when the entire sports world was stopping um one of the the stories out of that when milwaukee was the first team to decide not to play one of the biggest stories out of that is that yannis didn't want to play that yannis was the deciding factor on the team amongst amongst the guys in the locker room that he's like we're not doing this here that's the biggest name in the sport that's the

biggest name on your team he made that decision for the rest of the guys and they listened because it's the honest and he's talking he's the mvp goes on to win the nba championship next year like in the nhl we need those guys to step up to these positions to make some change because that's who people are going to listen to and remember i talked about there was an nhl uh player who was very active in the union in the 2012 locked uh lockout and he pissed enough people off that he was essentially blacklisted and it basically ended his nhl career who am i talking about i don't remember the name of course you don't because it's chris campoli i remember him now he's a blackhawk wasn't he uh briefly like all due respect to chris campoli right come on come on

yeah now cj he was just to add on to that one of the things i'm sorry he never played in the nhl again after 2011 2012 not once there you go so they the so he got them their deal he helped get the players their deal and then some union yeah great union damn never played another fucking game sorry great union guys great job right way to protect one of your own i don't think you know how this works adam who did who did you and alan have on to talk about the 93 lockout the one that happened at the end of the season glenn healy glenn healy when you guys had it was the 91 lockout i think by the way 91 yeah sorry i had three years no no it's all no when yeah what doesn't matter early 90s go sorry that lockout what pushed it over what got the nhlpa their rights to all of

their all of their likenesses was the big stars joining in the lockout it was gretzky and lemieux saying we are doing this together we can make way more money on our own because they could because they could sell their own rights personally for as much money as they wanted and they came in and they said uh we're doing this as a union when healy got wayne to join in the lockout like that's what that's what pushed it over like that's what did it it was wayne gretzky's likeness that they were holding hostage gretzky was the first player to make a million dollars and he continued to make more and more and rather than sit back and be fat and happy with that fact he fought to get his fellow players more money that's how this is supposed to work that's not how this works today

the nhl salaries when you look at it through history and if they start going down in the in the middle of it in the last like uh what is like 40 years ish and then because there was the period when um there was guys in the 80s who made more than the top players in the mid i want to say late 90s there's some skew there because of the wha like bobby hall i think was the first professional hockey player to make a million dollars wayne gretzky was the first nhl player if i have that correct um but well you know what put it to a screeching halt was the 0405 lockout where the teams like the leafs and the red wings and the flyers had a payroll of like 70 80 million dollars and then all of a sudden the roof of the salary cap was i think 42 yeah the first year of

the lockout yeah 40s yeah yeah so that that put it to a screeching halt glenn healy is someone who Chris Johnston in the Toronto Star today mentioned as a potential successor to Donald Feer. He's the head of the Alumni Association. Can I tell you my own pet theory? Chris Pronger's Twitter showed up at a very peculiar time.

Yeah, but Chris Pronger and Jeremy Roenick and all those stars were like, don't forget what happened in the 2004 lockout. Don't forget that Chris Pronger and Jeremy Roenick and all those guys turned on Bob Goodenow and basically said, we're ending the strike.

We need to make our money now. The vets sold out every player that came after them in that lockout. So if you're an NHLPA voter, you cannot have somebody that sold you out as a player now be the head of your union. I'm not saying it's going to work. I'm saying I think he wants it. He's throwing his hat in the ring. Yeah.

I'm saying I think he wants it, and he's been an outspoken guy. Glenn Healy's been an outspoken guy. Except for when his money was on the line. and your tweets like look at Pronger and Roenick and their contracts at that time

why do you think that they did that why do you think that after a year out they're like holy shit I lost a year's salary I'll never get that back

his tweets about how much NHL players make in actual money aren't that's not what we need here Chris Pronger also Chris we fucking did it

you should have just tweeted our podcast I did it with Alan with Frank Zecca that's not your resume here Chris when I read that thread

I'm like oh he wants to replace Donald Feer like no kidding it just it was it was fairly naked to me adam do you know any outspoken agents by the way i think alan wants to remain an outspoken agent i think if you're right you're the head of a if you're the head of a union pain in the ass well yeah like okay first off you make less money i think probably number two you you have to deal with a lot more bureaucracy and number three um at like alan has said it on the show he's like a he likes that he was somebody

asked him if he'd ever been offered like a team job and he said that he had but he said the reason he didn't take it was because he he's a player guy not a team guy he couldn't imagine trading a player right yeah yeah not because like he thinks you're a bad person if you do it it's just no no it's just not him and he didn't want to do it and he gave that response after laughing for 10 minutes at the guy on the phone who offered him the job yeah yeah um all right now the other thing we need to talk about is eugene melnick um uh the katie strang piece that that came out about eugene melnick now you can see this in the athletic please read this dan robson we're gonna take some highlights i'm not gonna give you the whole thing because again some of these stories are so

good that you need to read them you know what i mean um but here's the thing and we talked about when eugene melnick died um as a broadcaster as a person you always want to be respectful of somebody that passed away but there is a decidedly mixed and i would say more negative than positive reaction when you discuss eugene melnick with anybody but mostly senators fans let's talk about the people that matter the senators fans and rightfully so like he kicked it off and and i didn't know this katie strang said that they they threw a two million dollar party for season ticket holders and had the eagles perform the eagles who are the most expensive band on planet earth to get a ticket to the eagles it's like three hundred dollars and it's not just katie strang it's it's

ian mandez dan rod sorry and katie yeah so it's all three of them together i i was sorry katie's just been on the show three people work okay we don't often cite articles written by three officers you know what fuck the other two just katie uh sorry and i love you buddy um not me so so i didn't know this but that they had thrown off that party and and there was a lot of goodwill and obviously you know bio veil the company that he was the head director of obviously you know was doing quite well but then they talk about there's like a turn um in and around i think it was 2004 2005 something like that company has to pay out a bunch of money because of uh to not continue some litigation eugene's marriage breaks up um and apparently and i gotta be honest with

you having dealt face to face with an alcoholic in in my life personally um these are these are that these are behaviors i personally recognize uh and this is and this is this is me projecting i don't know that i don't know that eugene melnick was but there sure are a lot of stories about his problem drinking can i it's heavily implied i've got the one oh go ahead yeah which one do you want do you want it do you want the the one where he arrived on his golf stream uh and yelled at people at the airport i or uh do you want the one where he's hanging at the bar with employees i think the The 2007 Stanley Cup final, because you mentioned the turn and where things kind of strayed from that 2003 concert to where it started turning. I think the 2007 Stanley Cup run is kind of like that's the peak and then it comes down the rest of the way.

Big Valley. So it says by at least 2007, a glimpse of him acting erratically or smelling like hard liquor would prompt a collective effort by those around him to keep him away from television cameras. or the senator's locker room after the senator's run to the stanley cup final in 2007 ended with a 6-2 loss to the anaheim ducks in game five melnick stood in the middle of the visitor's dressing room and delivered a speech to the dejected players that went on several wild tangents at one point he declared that he was once a goalie and pretended to make stick saves in front of the players melnick that's a wild visual melnick who to many in the room appeared intoxicated also had a hard time identifying Ottawa

players outside of stars like Alfredson and Spezza and Healy it was beyond embarrassing says one person who was in the room he also told his people to tell the Ducks to shut the fuck up and turn the music down because he was talking and they just won the cup he mocked

Patrice Bergeron with a golf swing after the Senators eliminated the Bruins and I think it was 2014 which wild wild first of all living every leap fans stream like that no i'm i'm joking like that that is it's it's one thing to do that to any player as an owner um but people took particular offense to the fact it was patrice bergeron who i don't

i i mean one of the classiest players in the nhl so here's another classy player daniel alfredson when daniel alfredson team captain franchise icon sign and this is direct quote signed as a free agent with detroit in july he accused the senators of failing to follow through on the promise to sign him to a contract contract extension on two occasions melnick was outraged by alfredson's departure and referred to him as a prick and an asshole to members of the executive staff as they mulled over ideas for how to handle the public messaging of his departure the owner lumped him in with danny heatley who famously demanded a trade out of ottawa four years before that now uh you know he accused uh he is a very complicated relationship with a

ukrainian man eugene's obviously background is ukrainian and he had some charitable efforts there and uh this ukrainian person was also this man was he referred to eugene as like a father but then they didn't speak for a few years and like eugene would accuse him of stealing coffee pods from his mansion in barbados yes um there was also there there was also a strange story years ago about a reporter no yeah oh no sorry am i allowed to say it no yeah yeah go ahead no i was pointing at my phone oh i brought it up okay oh okay you gotta hear but there were several stories with reporters so you might be talking about it well the one that you told on the show this is one of the first sort of scandals that we sort of dealt with on the show this is pre jesse was that there

was this reporter who kept reporting hey the senators aren't actually that good and there's some problems here with this team and the way it's constructed that's it and the then they started to get harassing things from a an ip that was based in the ukraine so the story there is travis yost who now writes for tsn but then wrote for hockey buzz he was uh he's he's a really smart guy i don't know exactly what his background is but enough that he understood the shit he was reading and writing um he wrote at length about the senator's finances and you know some things to do with eugene mellick's divorce one day all his work is wiped from the internet his work on hockey buzz and i believe his twitter account now he eventually got it back uh the articles were

like cachet and whatever and he was able to recover the information i believe you can still read them and he did a little sleuthing of his own because he's smarter than the average bear and he was able to tray uh trace this like like he said not just to an ip address in ukraine but to an ip address uh that was associated with a charity that eugene melnick is associated with so uh it was mitch brulee uh on uh on twitter said maybe not connected at all but melnick took that ukrainian guy uh under his wing around the same time travis yost got hacked and wiped off the internet for a little while have never forgotten that wild moment in sense history to which yost responds oh it was connected by the way i'll help them finish that part of the story

oh i can't wait to hear because i remember that that's nine years ago by the way it's a long time quite some time pretty wild um the charity by the way is help us help the children it's uh it supports orphans in the ukraine and and the gentleman that uh melnick supported was an orphan in a foster care in this system and he brought him to barbados and he gave him like the island to run like the parts of the three acre estate that he owned that melnick owned like he ran that for him and it was it was the the story illustrates just the dichotomy of melnick because he'd do these incredible things. He saved the team in Ottawa.

He's helping this child who's in foster care and giving him a home. And then when he tries to move to Canada and try to get permanent citizenship, he accuses him of stealing $12,000. And then now they didn't have a relationship in the end. Well, but supposedly towards the end, they reconnected.

And then at the very end, he's sending him money to flee the Ukraine. Because of the invasion. right it happened right months ago but then he can't get a flight out of the ukraine because of course not so he has to drive to holland and then you create and then and and he can't get a hold of eugene and then finally gets a hold of him and eugene said well you should have called me you really blew your last chance so you're gonna stay there or in holland anyway right so he's like like not your brain like literally brain not functioning properly yeah and and like you're

not saying that as an insult you're talking about he was battling disease like illness whatever the illness was and medication and everything else but that's not a rational reasonable response to something and that's what you saw you saw a guy who came in they they spent to the cap they had uh really robust budgets i can't remember the senators ever being referred to as a franchise that couldn't bring in stars until well 2010 because they had loaded loaded with stars you know this is a this is a team with huge huge payroll and frankly some of the best young players in the nhl always they had great scouting staff they always drafted well now this this is part of part and parcel of what you deal with when you deal with somebody that deals with

substance abuse it's a swing and swings and mood um and sometimes then they don't remember what they said the next day and now occasion also it said so so this particular one uh i'm gonna read the quote was from an email are you the one responsible for this fucking gay campaign have you lost your fucking mind you need to take that shit down immediately this is friday evening february 8th 2019 a team executive receives a phone call sorry it's not an email phone call from nasal or from melnick's nasal screaming reverberation on the other phone phone line that's how they describe it he was incensed at a marketing campaign with the slogan love is love which you guys remember yes um and it included images still images of same-sex couples embracing

and kissing and been used to promote uh an upcoming senator's game on the hockey is for everyone night the campaign was designed to celebrate diversity and inclusion and connect with members of the ottawa community previously left out of the organization's outreach efforts and then he said uh melnick sneered at the images and and derided the campaign we are the laughing stock of the nhl right now and he lumped it in with uh previous marketing efforts involving pet rescue missions as in he didn't think the pet rescue missions or the love is love campaign uh were needed or were helped promote or helped outreach or whatever and they're not just homophobic but they're unhinged statements right and he also like you know would email people in

the middle of the night they had a code word for when he was in the office he had to work with coldplay on very loudly so the eagle has landed they would call him the eagle that that uh picture that they painted in the article was wild to me because they would hear Coldplay music in the halls and basically be like oh fuck he's here and I'm just imagining you're going about your day and then all of a sudden you hear

and you're just like oh fuck Eugene's here the wildest thing to me is you hear the dulcet tones of Coldplay and you know your day's about to be off it shocks me that anything got done over there oh man that's great they were able to run the sends

And and that this all of this was known, I guess, in hockey circles is kind of what I'm I'm deducing from this. A lot of people who were commenting on the story of media people, they kind of understood what was going on behind the scenes in Ottawa. And it's crazy to me that it was just it was being run like this for so long because this wasn't this wasn't a quick thing that happened the last couple of years. He's been on this tirade for at least half a decade, probably a little bit more than that, probably a full decade. if you go back to, like, 2007. It just shocks me that the Ottawa Senators have been running this organization. And there was...

Well, think about what Brian Murray had to go through. You know, really, the most successful GM they've ever had. Yeah. Well, and, like, he was sort of known as the Eugene Whisperer, right? Like, he would keep them basically at bay. And there was some criticism when it came to the timing of the article. Some people saying this should have been released

a long time ago i agree because we knew these stories but also um the ottawa senators themselves uh when approached for a statement said that uh the release of this after his death was opportunistic and inappropriate so are you are you getting a response to that uh no so a lot of the the response to hey why did this come out after he died most people who were uh willing to voice their stories for the for the piece said that they weren't willing to talk while he was alive because there were stark incidences like in that uh love is love campaign where people were fired later on for what they previously did because melnick held a grudge against everybody who crossed him yeah so a lot of these stories we don't have them if eugene is still here because

those people wouldn't have jobs right and you know what i mean i i understand uh the opportunistic nature um of of like what what i understand what the senators are doing pr wise is what i'm trying to say the reality is that eugene melnick sued everybody he did he like they say in the article he had a litigious nature right so uh one of the first things katie strength said so literally yeah i think that they were probably concerned that first off there wasn't anybody really working there so there's like a pool of like five people who can talk about this and if they were coming on the record and they were talking about they'd be worried about getting sued and this guy took 10 years to resolve his relationship with his ex-wife they were in litigation for 10 years guys

so do you think that he wouldn't go to the wall and one of these ex-executives or somebody that worked for him if he would do it with his ex-wife man he would do it against anybody i understand them not coming out and listen i understand the the melnick family probably wanting to honor his memory and i saw the eugene melnick patches on the on the senators on saturday but to be honest with you guys um yes he he he helped keep the team in ottawa um but he should have not been an owner a long time ago and this is a person that again we're talking about a guy who called a female staffer the c word after she didn't email him back at like midnight on a friday right you know this is the type of this that is abuse guys that's abuse and so as long as gary

Bettman continues to allow owners like that and Gary Bettman does have the power believe it or not with that NHL executive to basically force a sale they do have that power if they want to and they want you out you're out and I think because it's

a privilege to be an NHL owner that's how they look at it who is the GM in the Ducks who had to step down this year oh god Bob Murray Bob Murray I mean he stepped down because of accusations that were far more ambiguous than the very specific stories told in that article you know what i mean but i guess he's not an owner yeah yeah what would it take to get rid

of an nhl owner well it wouldn't that's this is the thing and i think here's the thing gary probably had a good little handle on eugene the problem is that gary didn't have a handle on how eugene treated people and as long as owners like this are allowed to exist in the nhl it damages the brand they talk about an outside in this article they talk about a basically another company came in and said what's the senator's brand in the community and they said first off eugene's brand is bigger now than the senator's brand it's it and it's extraordinarily negative that's what they said in 2017 they they did an internal report amongst employees and the company said they had never seen so much despair amongst employees in any organization that they've ever

had to do a review of so so my question is if if gary bettman really wants to make the nhl look good why do you keep an owner like this because i'm sure gary's relationship with eugene was fine i'm sure there was you think gary didn't know i mean like tom and sell me he comes in and and and he's the tom and sell me who used to run the leafs and raptors goes to ottawa to run the senators and you think after eight months being there tom and sell me resigns because he's like i can't handle this shit do you not if you're gary bettman do you not call tom and sell me and say Hey, Tom, what happened? Are you kidding me?

He knew. You control who works where. Gary chooses who's on the air. Yeah. Gary makes recommendations to broadcasting networks. I kid you not. This is a true story. He makes recommendations to broadcasting networks who's on the air.

He makes recommendations to teams on who their next GM should be. And I'm not telling you shit that's not already out there. That's out there. You telling me he didn't know? oh i think he knew but his relationship with eugene was fine and that's all he cares about and that the things that control the nhl gary and he had a little handle on eugene eugene was never gonna make any decisions that affect the national hockey league he just let him run his little team and he knew what was happening by the way and no let me clarify something in no way am i claiming

that any that gary betman's like i'm i'm choosing every talent that's on the air he's not no but he makes recommendations you bet your ass he does i know he does uh also i i i think you're totally wrong adam because why how yeah well there's a reason you're on the internet not in the air no but also um you know betman couldn't have known about anything uh any of these things because he is a lawyer by trade there you go he didn't know he didn't know he's a lawyer by trade right he would have written it down there it is stupid that sounds so fucking dumb anyway it's it's a fascinating article definitely worth your time you definitely need to check it out and you know what like i know leafs and sense fans are not big fans of each other um but i i have to say as

a leaf fan growing up in the ashes of the harold ballard era um it's it's the the the damage done to the toronto maple leaf brand um stayed with us for decades and has continued to this day there's a reason the leafs didn't even like didn't come close to winning a cup in the 70s and 80s and that was because we had our own eugene melnick and he was cheap and shitty he was a shitty man he was a terrible man who occasionally did nice things for people to keep his name looking nice like you know there was a toronto family whose house burned down and he he built them another house man that's super nice but but all the other ballard one day terrible shit he did to people i was talking about ballard one day and someone who knew him was just like what a fun man and i was

like what because i had never heard anything like that and like you're gonna listen people are complicated you're right yes i'm sure a guy who's that wild and erratic is kind of fun if you're on the right side of it well the guy that the guy that that eugene melnick was like super close with from the ukraine like eugene cut off contact with this guy accused him of stealing fucking coffee pods like are you kidding me and then save his life and then help save his life and then this man who eugene treated essentially like shit for a while says at the end of the article he was like a father to me and you know eric carlson saying the time is nigh for a change and then melnick sends him flowers and uh daniel alfredson is in some ways to use a leaf comparison they're dave

keon yeah you know what i mean that that in in terms of things that need to be done with the ottawa senators um that aren't on the ice repairing that fence uh enormous i mean you probably should look at getting a new arena but in in terms of uh not something that'll cost a billion dollars or so repairing that fence should be priority one yeah yeah i think i understand the criticism of people being like oh it's the family is grieving it's a it's not appropriate to release the article but i think the athletic did the right thing and getting this information out there because when somebody dies you you you take a you take a look at how they live their lives and i think this we needed an actual portrayal of eugene melnick and this is what we get here

in this piece and it would be we it would be a disservice if we didn't have this and we just went about our business with the team just in the in their new uh second second act you know i see four options release it while he's sick can't do that release it shortly after he's died release it long after he's died don't release it well also i i think that again you couldn't have released it while he was sick because nobody was going to talk yeah they don't have the peace if he's here and there's that and so i think i think the the other thing too if this this is really telling one of the vendors who who worked with the senators to supply them whatever got an invoice from 2019 that they've been fighting to get paid they got it paid immediately upon like

once he was gone they paid the senators paid all their outstanding invoices so it a lot of times it seems like he was just fucking around to fuck around and that doesn't seem like a rational thing to do and you wonder what drinking and pills and and everything else be they paid be they pills that you get on you know you know from the supermarket uh pharmacy or pills that you get on the street i don't know it was but it's just not this is this is somebody who was not thinking straight right because it was a kidney transplant i believe is that liver liver liver transplant sorry um and when he's going through his divorce that you were talking about adam he they use an email that he sent to his ex-wife to illustrate what he was going through with the medication

that he was taking for that treatment because uh he he sends her an email it's it's unhinged it's aggressive and then he emails back and he's like don't use this i don't know what's happening to me when they have me on all of this stuff oh man you know he emails that back to her and they have that in the piece and he was on a lot of medication for all of uh his the illnesses that he had you know so who knows what he was actually thinking and how much of that he was like cognizant for and maybe maybe this legacy is a lot different had these issues not arisen yeah maybe he was a really great guy and made and clearly was a smart business person so um you You know, there's a lot of stories with billionaires where you're like, how did you make all this?

Like, what happened? Right. So, I mean, at some point. Right place, right time. There was a, well, could be that at some point. A lot of the time, there was a lot of that. Or it could be at some point there was a plan and then eventually there wasn't.