The Steve Dangle Podcast - Friday | July 2, 2021

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins signs an eight-year deal with the Edmonton Oilers (00:00), Duncan Keith wants to be traded to the North West (18:00), previewing game 3 of Montreal vs Tampa Bay (31:00), an update on the Jack Eichel injury saga (43:00), Kings acquire Viktor Arvidsson from Predators for draft picks (50:00), where does Seth Jones land? (59:00), and Adam and Steve solve a riddle (1:08:00). Originally aired: July 2, 2021 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/dXxJ1FcHFMI 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: https://www.betterhelp.com/sdp https://ca.manscaped.com/ https://betmgm.com/dangle 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

with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake steve wearing our brand new dangle navy snapback today he's our model our very sexy model and i have to say steve um it must be nice to wear a hat that fits your head i can't imagine it's yes so if you're worried about getting one of our dangle navy hats because you're worried it's it's not gonna be big enough well it fits me fits me i i actually specifically i think i asked jesse i'm like can we get ones that are big enough for my head and he's like we can get ones that are that they offer the biggest size the manufacturer makes so if you're if you're a big-headed person you're wondering hey they've got their own clothes i'm sure they could find one to fit adam's head

no yeah try that one lucis setting that's second lucis actually this is what is it is it velcro or is it actual snapback no it's an actual snapback can you see okay so yeah we'll try it but usually with those snapbacks i'm on like the last clasp maybe yeah and i'm still getting a headache so a headache from a snapback jesus oh yeah i get headaches from hats yeah just paint it on just shave your head and paint it on honestly i for sure should so um i am broadcasting from a cottage today so hallelujah and apparently it is actually friday so that's tgi tgiw boys thank god it's Wednesday we didn't get into because in my in my hurry last episode uh we missed one of the biggest pieces of news and this does happen from time to time uh Ryan Nugent

Hopkins re-signing with the Edmonton Oilers and you know you know obviously there were people like what the hell why didn't you talk about it you're right that's my fault but it did give me the opportunity to kind of dive a little bit deeper on this one and Oilers Nation did a killer breakdown about uh about what this contract means so you know they you see the top line on it eight years 41 million dollars you think that's pretty good you know he's taken he's making less money he was making six before now it's 5.125 but i don't know if you guys have had the chance to actually kind of look deeper on this um he gave up money yes but he also is pretty much locked in for the next eight years no matter where he plays so he did get obviously a no trade but beyond that this

contract is essentially bio-proof and you know i mean it'll be 36 38 when this is done yeah you don't you don't want to hear that term they're oilers fans because the last time i heard that it was david clarkson so yeah so here's here's what how it kind of breaks down according to pierre lebrun so the first year this coming five million dollar salary that escalates to 5.25 the next year and then 6.25 in 23 24 and 24 25 and then 25 26 it's a four million dollar salary with a two million dollar signing bonus 26 27 2.25 million dollar salary with a 2.5 million dollar signing bonus and 27 28 that's that's we're already talking about near 2030 here um 22.5 million dollar salary 1.25 million dollar signing bonus we're going to come back to the

signing bonuses in a second and a 3.75 million dollar salary to end it in 28 29 damn crazy damn crazy that's the equivalent of the start of the david clarkson contract up until last season's end that's eight years right like that's that's a long long time i so i i am incapable of looking at the toronto maple leafs rationally because i'm a fan of them but one one thing i think i've discovered throughout this playoff run with sports net is i think i can look at other teams rationally because i have no dog in the fight and i don't care um oilers fans are like their heads are on fire right now they're running around and just bashing into walls because of this eight-year contract that yeah ryan nugent hopkins is good and i'd say he took a haircut in terms of cap hit

but like that's going to be a nightmare by the end of it um and also the duncan keith stuff which i guess we'll get into later we will um oilers fans i'm here to tell you i actually i don't hate either move it obviously with keith it depends on a wide variety of factors but with nugent hopkins uh you know how dave notice famously said i'm not worried about years five six and seven with uh in this case the oiler shouldn't be no well you're maximizing connor mcdavid and leon dry sidles prime that's what every one of your moves should be about no every one of your moves should be about winning yeah no those they go hand in hand you're maximizing conor mcgavid and leon dry sidle um does that and now like will ryan newton hopkins be at least a 5.125

five million dollar player for the next three years yeah i'd put faith in that i think he had a down year a little bit of a down year he'll be totally fine um the longer this deal goes the tougher it'll get and that's what the no move clause is for so he can choose where he's traded to let's come on guys like the no move clause means i get to pick that's what it means it almost never means no yeah give me a list of three teams basically yeah and oh well then we're not going to get any value well you you're trying to trade him so he doesn't have any anyway right the whole reason if he had any value you'd want to keep him like we've seen this movie a thousand times so by the time um nuge's contract is in the back half you'll have bigger fish to

fry anyway yeah it seems it's a good contract for the first three years and a bad contract for the last five years that's that's the way i look at it it's more than half yeah and i feel like if it's five to three then it's a bad deal should it not be looked at it that way it depends if they win the cup then it's then every deal is a great deal then everything you have ever done is a great thing if you win the stanley cup yes and the the deal itself is actually uh one of the rarest deals in the post lockout era because since the lockout uh 50 contracts of this length have been signed i think it's either seven or eight years there's been 50 contracts out of this length and it is the second lowest aav out of all 50 of those deals no way yeah so the only deal that's lower

it was mike matheson's uh bizarre deal who got traded by the way which was eight years and 4.9 million nuge comes in at number 49 on the length on the aav of eight year deals so is is that a good thing or a bad thing i don't know i guess it's it's value on an eight-year contract but if you're handing out this amount of term to a guy who's kind of in the middling because that's we always we said this for like years that's where you mess up uh your salary cap is in these middle middling deals so if you're handing out this many years to a guy who's in the middle of your salary cap he's not going to live up to it by the end of it he's 28 already and he's going to be signed through what is that 2026 2029 2029 sorry even further so i don't know and like ken holland has

a history of this he gave uh just an album abdicator seven years and uh 4.25 you guys remember that yeah and the leafs almost took that stupid contract on because babs liked them so much right and so the last season in the nhl was uh the lockout year the pandemic year played 49 games had zero goals three assists that October Detroit buys him out he hasn't played in the NHL since and now they're paying his deal till uh they're paying the buyout and there's a cap hit against it till 2026 so what I don't know Ken Holland has a history of this yeah so I'm trying to see the sunny side here well okay so let me there's a lot of sunny side for Nuge because you know on the open market what's he worth seven million you think that's probably fair he's such a confusing

player because like kerfoot makes 3.5 as a winger who can play center you know what i mean but like nuge is such a higher stakes virgin uh version of that yes like seven million as a center on the on the free agent market yeah absolutely but he's only doing that like half the time in edmonton right right and i guess if you're paying that he's paying playing center all the time but i think that i think in this particular case what's interesting about this deal other than you know the fact that, uh, um, you know, the, the first, I think he's okay for the first four years and I'll tell you why in just a second, but in the first four years, 22.75 million is paid out of the $41 million turn. So more than a half in the first, uh, in the first four. And I know that

sounds just about halfway. However, what's interesting about the last three or sorry, the last three of the four years is they all include signing bonuses and, uh, Oilers nation rightly pointed out that 26 27 and 27 28 both have the potential to be lockout years in the nhl so he essentially is guaranteeing himself a 2 million a 2.5 million and 1.5 million signing bonus so he doesn't lose that money because you would lose it you just lose it it's gone and i think you know at that point in his career there's no way he's going to be able to recoup that if you lose that at 23 you're probably going to be okay because you can make that back up the next contract that you sign although i mean there's an argument to be made that you have a

limited amount of time that's the amount of time you get you lose money it's gone so i i think in this case it's a little bit of lockout assurance for him i also think if you're paying out a good chunk of that early it does make the contract as much as it seems not tradable you can't buy it out but you can trade it um and i think the uh the other thing that we're forgetting here is that we're in the first year of the supposed three-year lockdown on the salary cap going up now they're they were telling us before the season started that the cap was going to stay flat for three years. I can't imagine that what they said publicly before the deals with TNT and ESPN were signed echoes exactly how they would feel today. And that's because if you look at where we were when

the season started, you know, America had just finished one of the most vicious presidential races we've ever seen. Nobody, nobody was vaccinated. Like we're talking January here, right? Nobody's vaccinated. We're not sure how long it's going to take for, you know, the borders to open up. You know, now here we are six months later, it's a completely different story with two pretty, pretty fantastic television rights deals. And you got to think growth in the game. You know, you're part of ESPN now, you're part of TNT, both major sports networks. And sometimes if you've got the product and you don't have the platform, it really makes a difference when you get the platform, you got to go where the people are. It's like, I remember I was working

for a company, um, years ago and their whole focus outside of being on the radio was having a video go viral, but they were bound and determined that they were not going to use YouTube. They said, we're not going to put our videos on YouTube. We can't give them away for free like that. So they invested something like a quarter of a million dollars in this company called bright Cove. And, and they were like, we want you to go viral, but on bright Cove. and my sworn enemy so we were like this is where I'm not sure how we're going to go viral and on this is like 2011 and I think you know it's a bit of a weird example but I think the NHL probably is looking at the salary cap going up I would think sooner maybe next year it stays the

same which it will but I would five I never believed it for for a moment yeah I don't think it's going to be five I think it's going to be after next season if you see it go up a million or two, the higher that cap goes up, the less you're going to worry about a Ryan Nugent Hopkins cap. And I think that you're going to see a pretty big growth in the game in the next three to four years. And I think you're going to see alongside of that, a big growth in what teams are able to spend. I mean, like, listen, you still got Tampa spending a hundred million dollars in real salary this year, right? So it's possible. And I just think if you look at long-term, this deal doesn't stings so hard to me. If we look at it from our term right now, $81.5 million. If he's 38 and

making $3.75 million, yeah, that's a bit concerning. Oh, it's horrible. What's the percentage of cap? So $3.75 million or 5.125 against the cap, that is somewhere akin to 7% or 8% of the cap right now, right? If a few years from now, it's 2% of the cap, do you really care? And he's a good guy and he's one of the most popular Oilers ever this is the same defense we made for the Matthews and Marner contracts okay fine and that's not good Oilers fans hate that on principle because it's comparable to Toronto I know I know I'm just saying do you not think guys that there's gonna like global pandemic thing happen you're not supposed to say global pandemic by the way you're supposed to say pandemic because pandemic doesn't mean global

pandemic aside okay loser it's going up right yeah it's i uh listen if you're a gm fine if you're a fan stop worrying about where this team's going to be five six seven eight years from now like yeah for for the next few years listen you had a dog shit playoff series against the jets but i don't know how you can't look at this regular season and not view it as a step forward uh for this team connor mcdavid is truly on another level leon dry settles right there with um i your defense did take steps um you know you gotta go uh darnell nurse finished i think top 10 in norris voting um there are reasons to be happy if you're an oilers fan there are other questions for sure but i don't think i don't think you should be worrying about nuge right now you should

if you're if you're ken holland and all of the uh owners there and the edmonton alum who also run the team you're trying to win the stanley cup within the next like or at least make a run at it within the next three to four years so mcdavid's happy and dry cell is happy and the fan base is happy this is like a necessary window here where you're trying to win the cup so you hand out this contract and you pay extra on the years because you have to and then you worry about that probably when the next guy comes through and he's now in charge of the team you know and like this is just your window you go for you hand out the deal it's the same thing with the mitch and the matthews and the neilander thing they have such a window here that they need to win that hey in seven years

we'll worry about that in seven years yeah yeah i the other thing i do want to quickly mention guys just in case they can't trade them and they want to try to buy them out for the last two years of the deal this is how it looks and it's not pretty uh they'd owe money for four years so in years one and two edmonton would have 3.6 and 2.4 million against the cap then a subsequent 1.0 million for the following two if the oilers want to buy out the final three years they would owe him money for six years in years one two and three a cap hit again of one or 3.5 million 3.8 million at 2.3 million and then the final three would be 944k so so you better you're gonna have to trade him you can't buy him right right yeah or you keep him and he's great buy

buyouts so rarely make sense when the one of the worst buyouts in the league like possibly league history considering we're talking about the salary cap here is the preds with kyle turris like bro you couldn't have held on to him for what was it one or two more years they're paying him two million next year and the next year and the next year and the next year and the next year and the next year six years of two million dollars a dead cap he had three million or he it's a six million dollar a year deal for three more years oh figure it out like surely there's a better option than that i like the nba's buyout coach i don't know the diesels of how it works i don't know the nba salary cap that much but every year after the trade deadline there's like

a little buyout window where you can buy out guys and you get big name players who are just on bad teams and teams just buy them out for no reason and then all of a sudden they're free agents in the middle of the season and it's funny because you get like DeMarcus Cousins and Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan just joining these playoff contenders for no reason other than they just got

released from their teams or or Jeremy Lynn Lynn sanity that's right but you know the thing with that Jesse is what does that do that's fun to the league adds fun to the league after the trade deadline it's not a shit tired like okay now we've got three weeks or four weeks to the playoffs and everybody's going to

limp there you got these b and c level stars that used to be a level stars joining mega teams and people go well it's only the big market teams that get to sign them that's not true in the nba actually it and you you see that time and time and time again and i think teams with a chance to win that's where the yes the x stars go it's whoever's gonna look like they're gonna be content for a championship it's fine the excitement level with that is great too like it's amazing it is great but unfortunately the nba is not the nhl and the cap is there to literally protect nhl general managers from themselves so i'll be so loaded up by the time the trade deadline passed anyway no one be able to sign anyone yeah like if we're talking about things that would make the league

more fun we're not speaking gary bettman's language here he's he's there to run a business he's there to run a business and it is what it is man well at least he's got josh richards am i right yes no salary cap on that um i just want to shout out to david staples of the edmonton journal who did a lot of that great research on nuja's contract oh he did oh nice okay well i'm shouting out oilers nation who i got it from so um i i do want to get into uh montreal shout out adam wild who i heard it from oh sorry before we get into montreal duncan keith um there's a couple of things so first off what was weird steve is we found out today uh uh it that basically the chicago blackhawks were shopping him but to two teams right so elliot freeman initially

breaks it with well it could be a team in the pacific northwest or western canada and so all of us good you know we got out our maps and we said okay there's one nhl team in the pacific northwest and they haven't played yet and then there's the canucks the oilers the flames and then there was a bit of an argument as to whether or not the winnipeg jets are included the things people the things people take from comments is so ridiculous you know there's one mention of western canada and then winnipeg jumps up they're like us too yeah we're west toronto it's it used to be western conference it's west of newfoundland you know it could be the weird thing was steve that apparently vancouver didn't know yeah so rick dollywell uh reporting that supposedly

vancouver didn't know so i guess they weren't offered a spot in the sweepstakes he also reported that he's heard seattle is out so the oilers are the front runner here and archaeology guy one of my favorite oilers follows is again just running around head on fire just the sky is falling everything is awful now i can support the idea of a duncan keith trade like i can support the idea of acquiring him well so the canucks the what i saw there because everyone's like dude look at look at his his numbers from this past season he's 37 he's got a high cap hit he's washed and the reason he wants to play in western canada is because his family and his son lives in penticton bc so the penticton v's yes yes thank you pierre yes you're welcome hey do you need to

know junior a crap i got it do you need to know teams that may or may not exist anymore because the last time i worked in junior was 2009 i'm your guy um so with vancouver i looked at that and there were so many games this year you know leafs canucks where i looked at quinn hughes and and you see all the talent and i'm like god this kid's drowning like this kid he he's struggling to stay afloat he's been given such a burden so early in his career and he's being expected to be so many things that he's not and then i looked at the potential for a duncan keith trade and knowing his limitations at how old he is and you know all those miles on his body and the cap it and everything i was like okay let's put all of that aside what a guy to learn from so we start

there there's the basis for why a trade makes sense what a guy to learn from okay so how do we get around all the other shit well he's gonna have a reduced role and also we can dump another contract in the deal we can be like uh tyler myers for example because if you're looking for bad contract versus bad contract vancouver's a great partner there hey we we hey what do you need you need a bad contract up front you need a bad contract on d we got we got a variety of bad contracts come on down to jim's bad contract emporium we got everything you could ever ask for well and duncan keith makes a lot of sense for the canucks because they're not afraid of term that's for sure like there is that and not afraid of backdiving deals or term or anything like that

or or hey if i retire it's going to cost you money even though i play for another team now and he's especially appealing um because most the vast majority of the money in his contract is paid then the conversation turns to the Oilers and I go oh no okay that makes less sense I just I I'm not I'm very curious to see how that works I saw Caleb Jones name mentioned and like I just I don't support I don't support it if the Oilers have to give up anything to do it if that makes any sense and I'm curious as to why any team would like what is it like even okay no i know edmonton's got it sorry vancouver's got a shed salary but i'm curious is is tyler myers that useless that he wouldn't play i that's that's the question you're gonna have to ask

chicago because uh they never picked up the phone well yeah that's true i'm just curious as to like i'm curious as to a bit maybe and maybe chicago just didn't see on anything on edmonton they want a pair sorry vancouver i'm curious about because nate schmidt's name has been thrown out there again and I'm really confused as to why I think he had a bad year in Vancouver but it wasn't a great team season for the Canucks anyway most of the way I wonder if and this is just me spitballing here but like okay so you get maybe you get Tyler Myers for um uh for Duncan Keith if you're the Blackhawks like I wonder about that and go okay well that just puts us right back where we started We're trying to trade Duncan Keith because we want to get rid of the cap hit, right?

Why would either of these teams – so there's two teams, Seattle and Edmondson, essentially. So why would they help Chicago? Everybody helps the Blackhawks. Why? Why, if you're Ken Holland or you're sitting in Seattle, why are you like, hey, Keith wants to come here and we don't really want him. Why are we going to go out and get him? like you probably you can go spend that 5.5 on your salary cap in a different way i wonder if they think he's got the pedigree right like well he's been to the cup final and it's like well

yeah but can he make it through 82 games and for 5.5 i what we're forgetting is the blackhawks might retain on more deals than anybody else like they either have a team retained for them or they're the ones who retain can they retain on keith like what's the so he's at 5.5 cap hit uh i think he's just under that so do you take 37 year old donkey keith on your team for 2.25 it's 5.538462 because he's one of those forever contracts does anybody want to divide that in two what's 50 of that jesse help i got it well you know like just over 2.2 2.3 whatever it is yeah and you take duncan keith like i mean listen what are you paying for okay 2.7 i don't know why that feels high but um does what i mean is like not not high in terms of

the the number you've given me but it just feels high for duncan keith that's close to 3 million for duncan keith like look at what edmonton did play last year if you're willing to play chris russell at 2 million what what's wrong with the little duncan keith at 2.7 well you gotta get good at some point this is this is the big issue uh that they're having but they have you know similar i guess to quinn hughes uh darnell nurse he's 26 now but like who's ever really been there you know what i mean and ethan bear is young um chris russell is not young but he's also oscar cleft mom may never play again there's there's a huge question mark there um they're probably gonna graduate evan bouchard that's a bit of a guess um philip broberg there's

some potential there uh caleb jones they may move on from like they do have some young guys who could use like at least a half decent mentor yeah right um and i mean he knows how to be a very good defenseman in the national hockey league there's something there but if if you know they there's rumors about them buying out chris um chris neal uh james neal um there were rumors i saw miko koskinen was trending and that's a you know that's a potentially soft buyout if the blackhawks want to go straight there like they acquire him 4.5 buy him out immediately or in the old is caught koskinen or neil koskinen i think you know doesn't koskinen was he got a year left on that deal a year left at 4.5 so if you're blackhawk you don't care about next year

yeah let him play for you so maybe you just hold on to him there's a deal to be made that he was trending is so funny to me yeah it's dude it happens there were people who remember how many people tried to explain to us how great that deal was coffee oh yeah cole caulfield trended almost every day of this past season and he hadn't played a game mitch marner was trending this morning yeah i believe it what did what do you do now it was still nothing well it's like everyone's just angry angry and it's and and i'll i'll actually i found the tweet that i think is the reason behind it but we'll get to that later i think i think it it does duncan keith makes sense in that sense steve but at 2.7 million dollars i wonder if and i don't think ken holland's the guy to do this and

i don't think stan bowman's the guy to do this but if you were to get creative and run that through a team that had extra cap space so let's say you can do what the leafs did with felino and you trade him somewhere else and then and so it's retained the double retain so if you get so what does that put keith at now you're at 1.35 million or something like that you get him for what is it three more years at 1.35 million tell me that hurts you it doesn't only two years i was just shoot now i was shitting on gary batman earlier like do we all understand now why they put an eight-year cap on contracts yes to prevent this silly shit there hasn't been one of these deals that we haven't run into problems with right and the di pietro deal um oh i mean yeah but here's

the problem with that steve is that from the worker's side if you're a pro worker's side limiting your contractual value because billionaires can't get their head on straight is a troubling development yes but i'm i'm running the league so i as the as the commissioner of the league i am naturally anti-worker right okay yeah so oh wait did you just accuse me oh thank you that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me gary bettman i put that on my resume when i got hired here i the first thing i i i put it bigger than my name on the cover letter can you believe that they made me put a cover letter i'm applying to be the commissioner oh i suppose it is 1993 um so anyway that was a weird little sketch that we we went down there's uh it's impossible for me

to have a proper opinion on anybody acquiring Duncan Keith um without knowing who's coming the other way if they give up a future if the Oilers give up a future to get it done that's ridiculous that's stupid I think I think to get it done and to get anything back for Duncan keith it would make sense to bring a third team in and i think and i think if you're the oilers you go okay chicago you go find them and you go sort out whatever it is is going to do it and and then we'll give you something we'll give you a third round pick we'll give you we'll give you something at you know if we can get them for 1.25 or 1.35 i take duncan keith any day because he's your six seven defenseman especially because the trade is being so limited like you

can only go to two teams or three teams in this little area like it sounds like the smart thing to do to get another team just involved in the transaction just to make it easier on everybody and the real money in that is nothing like call the senators call the coyotes like what's duncan keith actually owed this year because seattle could still be involved in the deal yeah all of that is fake money that's just like what is he owed what's his real what's his real salary is a cap if seattle doesn't think they can make a good enough team they should be the third team in every trade this summer well i think that they think they can just acquire every fifth round pick so i'm looking at duncan keith's real salary here uh 2020 21 22 is what we're looking at right

2.1 and 1.5 that ain't much no it's you're talking about you're talking about a um league min player like in terms of like what another team would have to take on yeah so yeah i would even you know what who else would might be in a dark horse for that is columbus i think that they i mean arizona needs to recoup assets so maybe they should consider it but columbus to me they're retooling and i think yeah because arizona got fined every draft pick they ever had but with with columbus they seem to be in that retooling mode i know they got to move seth jones we're going to talk about that a little bit later in the show if we have time but the to me columbus makes a lot of sense in these sorts of moves because it costs them very little and they might

be able to get assets out that they really want because it seems like it's a bit of a new beginning in columbus and maybe a couple years of pain now i gotta move us on guys to montreal real quick okay rapid fast so someone tweeted me this isn't chicago trying to change the subject is it no they still have to run a hockey team and we're not gonna let them change the subject no no exactly no no i don't i don't think i don't think that's what this is at all no um okay so moving on forgotten montreal tampa um i i don't know to me guys it seems like that's the game that Montreal should have won oh uh it's the it's the game they deserve to win uh but here's the here's the big takeaway for me if I go look through all the stats and I watch the watch

the footage and I watch the game in six again this morning Montreal gave away the puck six times the entire game and three of them led to goals oh the the second and third oh the the okay so the the the end of the second period was that was bad that was a really because they just went and went to sleep it can't happen it it's uh and it was two veteran defensemen uh making two mistakes that can't happen uh edmondson i guess had a brain fart maybe he was fooled by either kucherov or palat going around or something like that at least on that one you get fooled charotte there are five seconds left in that period like bro like there there are there were so many tampas have a few plays shoot it just shoot it down tampa's had a few plays in this

series where they've been inches from the blue line and but they want to maintain possession sort of sort of like the leafs leafs have done this too they've been inches from the blue line just get it out literally just get it out and they fail and then here comes montreal like a swarm and it's in their zone for another 10 15 20 30 seconds you know what i mean so those those little mistakes uh will happen but charotte i i bro there's five seconds left surely surely there's a better option than it looked like a lazy stick check yeah yeah and you know what's interesting too i've been watching you you say you you know you can watch tampa we said this about the islanders in tampa you watch tampa you watch the islanders you can learn something about

hockey yes even when montreal was out shooting them like 30 to 16 or whatever that ridiculous number was in the second period there were little things that tampa was doing you could tell they hunt right even when they're not on their game they're hunting and they have a way of getting into your zone this is when they were at their sloppiest their worst and i think it was the coleman goudreau line that had it was like a ping ping ping across the blue line and deep into the montreal zone and it's i i shouldn't marked down the time so you could go back and watch it and It's just an – they all knew where each other was going to be. There was three forwards in the same area, and they didn't fuck it up.

They just went deep in the zone and in. And I think what's fascinating about the Tampa Bay Lightning is even at their worst, their worst days are better executed than most teams' best days. The Leafs could not hold a candle to this team. Not a chance. Like, the Leafs can't even get the puck past the team's blue line. They couldn't do it against Montreal.

all sorry go ahead two things with what you said there adam the the shots so the shots were i think it ended 41 to 23 the shot like almost nearly double the amount from montreal but the expected goals tampa 2.1 montreal 1.8 wow so i do have a i have a bone to pick with that okay and then i got something else go ahead okay okay because i saw a very interesting debate between two montreal all gentlemen who i know and love uh mark dumont and andrew berkshire so there was a um it was either a breakaway or a two-on-one or partial something something i think it was gallagher coming down on vasilevsky and vasilevsky pokes it it was a stick check just outside the blue paint that's not a scoring chance yeah i agree the oh i totally disagree so so that was a that was a

conversation between mark because mark is like well yeah but he came close to scoring and berkshire is like yes but there was no shot on goal it was it was it was very interesting the the back and forth because i agree if there's no shot on goal i don't know how you register it but everyone in the building everyone watching it went oh and to me any instance where you go oh shit like to me anything that looks to me any of those that's a scoring chance man like he had a breakaway and and something vasilevsky did that can't be quantified in a defensive metric right like he's not a defenseman so something vasilevsky did even though it's not a save prevented that scoring chance to me that's where the eye test and the numbers kind of converge and i look at that i say

the numbers aren't lying here and the numbers are truthful because Tampa Bay's defense, Vasilevsky in this case, stopped the puck at a point where it didn't become a shot on goal. They stopped the play before it became a chance at a shot for Montreal.

So that's where I'm like, the numbers are correct here. You're absolutely right about it. And the thing, Jesse, to that point is Montreal has been, sorry, Tampa has been well documented after two seasons ago where they blew it against Columbus. It was well documented the changes they made in their defensive structure in order to push shots to

the outside or make them low danger shots they do that time and time and time again so you can get a lot of shots but then you know andre vasilevsky is pretty good if you can see it and pretty good even on a rebound the biggest well there were none that was the thing and what i noticed with vasilevsky is uh he's he's a sponge he's kirby like the the puck just gets absorbed into him into his equipment, into his logo. It was actually quite Carey Price-esque, the way he didn't have to flip out or fly all over the place. It was a lot of cookie-cutter saves.

I also want to bring up one quick stat on this too, Jesse. Do you have your second point to get to here? Yeah, off the top you mentioned the turnovers. So you said three turnovers, three goals. In the series, it's been six turnovers, eight goals for Tampa. There's been six total turnovers that have led directly to six of their eight goals. So Montreal's their total possessions, they've turned the there has turned the puck over 16.6% of its total possessions against Tampa on even strength.

So that number is an improvement over their play over the first three rounds. So this is why Montreal should look at this. And if you're a Montreal fan, I'm sorry, you have no hope in the rest of the series because the turnover wow the turnovers are leading directly to the result of the goals your turnover ratio has improved from 16 from 17 to 16 you are better against tampa in not turning over the puck than you were against vegas winnipeg and toronto you're doing better and you're losing and the turnovers because tampa is so deadly that this little percentage change is still having such a huge effect on their goal score it's unbelievable yeah they got no hope here and and be to that

point the the mark stone special and i love this stat because giveaways are different than takeaways so the giveaways tampa gave away the puck more but the takeaways were i think it was like nine to three tampa and and that's the you know lift the stick take the puck away because here's the thing when you have a takeaway it's not directly a giveaway you know what i'm saying okay no i understand that you can give the puck away without it being a takeaway and so the the takeaways for tampa are exceedingly high as well in this series and that's but that's that's the thing of it goes back to the hunting thing there is you know three seconds left and blake coleman's diving for a puck how many teams are going to do that you know what i mean their maximum effort the coleman dive the

gadreau seeing five seconds on the clock and going this is great um we're not just playing kucherov's on everyone's tail underrated um workhorse player andre palat andre is uh not as advertised at all that that guy is a worker b he's a premium worker b and yanni gourd like tampa doesn't know how to give less than a thousand percent i know it would be pretty tough to do but if you're giving if you're giving me the option of spending what is it five or six million on Zach Hyman and his rebuilt knee or Blake Coleman I'm spending it on Blake Coleman yeah and he's a UFA this year so I'm interested well I'm I'm his number one fan I'm gonna bring him back Tampa's gonna bring him back at eight million eight years and fit it under and it's

gonna be fine yep and there's gonna be some sort of shenaniganery but uh and good for them sound bitter astute i mean like i um i mean and is there better value in the league at 1.8 million per season than blake coleman is that that's what he makes yeah it's just crazy i remember when he was on the first line in new jersey like he led the league i remember this just strictly from fantasy hockey he's always a great fantasy pickup because he leads the league in hits every year he was on the first line so he'd always play these minutes it was awesome and then yeah he went to tampa and wins the stanley cop and it's unbelievable all they gave up for him was a first round pick and at least the third diving goal of his career by the way

if if if you type in blake coleman one-handed he he did like a one-handed wrist shot with the devils he had a diving goal in last year's playoffs against the bruins that was the one where um Zach Bogosian randomly decided I'm Eric Carlson now and he took the puck and flew into the zone dangled around everybody and he he he dove and gave it to Blake Coleman who also dove and then that's that's why during the stream I went he did it again I can't believe it it's the third time this friggin guy unbelievable yeah he's he's a heck of a player I I love watch I I love watching that Goudreau Coleman line. It's just – and I hate to bring it back to the Leafs,

but it's everything the Leafs don't have. Well, and – Everything. Another thing I said on the stream, I go, can you – do you remember there was a time where we thought Tampa gave up too much for these two? Yeah. Well, I mean, to be fair –

They're two wins away from two cups. I don't think anybody complained about the Blake Coleman deal, but the Barclay Goudreau was like – That was weird. That's a lot for Barclay. But again, remember I mentioned last episode when the Pats would grab players and you'd be like, what? Why? And they'd just turn them into stars in the Pats system.

It seems like that's what Tampa's got going on. They're able to pull guys in, and obviously Goudreau they paid a lot for. But he's not the Barclay Goudreau that was in San Jose, is he? I think he's much better than that now. Well, he certainly plays on a better team. And Tampa does such a good job of acquiring big-name, seemingly rental guys and then keeping them. Pat Maroon.

Ryan McDonough. Yeah. Blake Goodrow. Blake Coleman. Sergachev. He wasn't a rental, but that was a... I mean, you're trading. Oh, they shouldn't have been able to keep him this past season.

No. The fact that they've kept him on the team all this time when he was a young, great player and he didn't have to slip and fall to another team. And here's the thing. When do you trade a third overall pick and come out on top? like like did the jets not just do that this offseason they traded a second overall second

yeah but like and so did columbus set montreal trading galchenyuk like when do you ever come out on top it's rare trading a third overall guy and you get a better defenseman back that's cool like i mean it's a great maneuvering they're they're really good i can't wait for them to lose someone we've never heard of to Seattle. Yeah. For nothing. Five career games played. Griswold just stares down Ron Francis and goes,

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And now I do have to move us on because, again, we're a bit shorter today. The Jack Eichel saga looks like it's coming to an end a little bit here. And I got a bit of a theory on this, but I'm going to read you what was written in the Associated Press. So obviously, you know that he's got a herniated disc in his neck. Jack wants the surgery. The Sabres do not want him to get it. They think they can rehab it out. And depending upon who you talk to, I've talked to a couple like back and neck specialists about this. They'll tell you that, listen, rehab in the longterm is way better because surgery can cut your career shorter. And they'll say that with any injury, but sometimes it depends on

the severity of it. Herniated with a herniated disc. The only way to fix it sometimes is to have surgery. So, um, the agent texted and said this to, uh, an associated press reporter named Peter Fish. We are communicating with the team and are heading towards a resolution. That's as much as we know. But it means that there's been progress. And I wonder if the progress of this on both sides is, hey, listen, we can't get a deal done until we resolve the medical issue, until we get some sort of confirmation. And I want you to think about this as you're the acquiring team. So you're the Rangers, you're Philadelphia, Rangers of philadelphia who seem to be in on every big name player this offseason maybe even colorado vegas

has called we know that with you know and and rightfully so they need a top line center this is a guy that's going to come in and take 12.3 percent of your cap that's a huge number 10 million sounds big 12.3 percent of your cap you better make sure he's playing or you know exactly how long it's going to be before he plays and i think the injury status of jack eichel affects his value on the open market because Buffalo is probably looking at this going, well, we're not you guys aren't making fair deals to us. And they're saying he's injured and you haven't come to a resolution and we don't know what we're getting. So how are you going to expect me to give up 10 percent or 12 percent of my cap for a guy that is a big, fat fucking question mark? I just don't.

So I feel like Jack wants to move on. The Sabres want to move on. They probably like, OK, it's in our best interest to figure this out because he's not moving until then. I think we're either like three days away from a jack eichel trade or three months yeah interesting like it's it's uh i with seattle so close the expansion draft so close like there's a there's a deadline here man like we got shit to plan and if you're one of the teams uh vying for jack eichel i'm screaming at the sabers every day on the phone saying you know listen i'm gonna have to be out at some point um like maybe maybe the move for the sabers here is handle this medically and just tell everybody listen we're still gonna get something done it's gonna have to wait if i'm one of the other 31 gms

i don't trade for eichel until i see him on the ice again i think this is probably like a november move like hey you get all your medical stuff done with buffalo and then we'll trade for you well and then if that if that's the case jesse he might not play till january or february why would you trade for him in that case it's a good question especially because acquiring teams want to be competitors for the playoffs sabers are in an incredibly tough spot yeah yeah i mean waiting might be the best plan of attack but who's to say jack eichel is ever going to suit up for you again like you they may not we don't know that i'm not saying that he wouldn't but do we know for sure that jack like and and really what kind of jack eichel are you going to get let's say he gets out

on the ice and he's not motivated not that jack eichel would be that type of player but we saw what happened with you saw what happened with pierre-luc dubois and i'm not saying that he's going to go out there and and and just you know go for a leisure skate and do nothing but he might he's not going to be 100 in hard in it jack eichel so if if you're buffalo do you hurry up a deal because you're afraid he'll never be Jack Eichel again, or if you're another team, do not trade for him because you don't think he's going to be good again. I'm curious about what the market is.

If it's three teams, they all seem to be of the same opinion that, yeah, we're not going to... I bet Kevin Adams has got three guys offering similar packages and he wants one more piece to pull the trigger, and none of those teams will offer it because of this medical issue. It seems like it is, right? like it's three or four teams new york always has been in on this vegas is now apparently in uh philadelphia is in on everybody colorado might be i don't know we'll see kings now kings now i

guess i guess um kopitar and eichel up the center would be pretty scary by the way yeah not bad eh um sabers fans have been through so so much and i think the sabers have to be delicate with their feelings because uh you think i'm annoyed with the leafs i mean sabers fans have no reason to be happy with the sabers at all so what could be psychologically for the for the fan base good for them you get the eichel deal out of the way there's a week or two for you know you let fans be upset um you you let the you let the pain happen hopefully it dissipates a little and then you know what you get to do draft first overall yeah draft first overall you get everyone fired up and excited about that you take this kid you and you go look at this freaking kid

this is the new guy this is plus all the stuff we got for jack whatever that is this is the buffalo sabers are the team of the future like like to me that's that's the move that's that's the move psychologically but i don't know how you get max value for a guy with a hurt neck what was the edmonton uh tweet when they traded um taylor hall and they signed milan lucic and the and they were like the one of the writers in edmonton's like well if you look at the taylor hall deal like they were able to get milan lucic on it as well then it's a pretty solid move It was, which is way bad now, Taylor Hall for Pooley RV and, and Luchich and it's not good. Anyway, I mean, maybe Buffalo's looking at it that way. I don't know. I don't know. It's, it's, it's curious to me. Cause we were saying, you know, last round we were hearing they were days away from an Eichel deal. I think the medical thing has to be the thing holding it up. Otherwise it's a can't miss trade. You, you, you do what you can to get it. explain this

explain the Victor Arvidsson trade to me like I'm four years old so here's what by the way here's what happened the Predators have traded him to the LA Kings for draft picks a second and a third of this year

I think it's one no so it's a second this year a third next so and they both belong to LA so So here's what teams did Vegas time around is they went to a team with all the leverage and they said, let's make a deal.

And the team with all the leverage who gets to take someone anyway said, okay. And they got to set the market. They had the upper hand in everything. Absolutely everything. Hey, you don't want us to take this guy. well it's going to cost Jonathan Marcheseau and Riley Smith you don't want us to take this guy it's going to cost Marc-Andre Fleury and a second you don't you don't want to trade or you don't want us to take this guy it's going to cost this it's going to cost that so the strategy this time

around or at least with Nashville appears to be take the team with all the leverage out of the equation right take Seattle out of the equation instead of convincing Seattle hey don't take this player and we're going to give you x y and z you go to a team like the kings who don't have nearly as much leverage like no one no one this summer is going to go hey la you get a free player from nashville right so automatically they have less leverage you go hey let's just make a deal let's just make a straight up deal we got victor arvidsson and they decided they'll get more out of the kings than they would out of seattle so people i saw in nashville were talking about the preds are going to try to do the four and four thing so i was looking at who i would protect

so there's roman yosi who i have to and i'm happy to yeah there's ryan ellis happy to do it erica branson is a ufa we don't need to worry about him matthias ekholm is not a ufa until next year i think in the next couple weeks we could actually see a matthias ekholm trade uh because because if you trade him then you could potentially do seven and three which allows you to protect 10 players instead of eight right so we go further down mark boreatsky okay do you have to no seattle might take him maybe maybe uh yeah dante fabbro you protect him You took him with a top 20 pick in 2016, but he's 23 now. He's almost like a higher stakes Travis Dermott for them.

So that to me is where that list ends. But up front, it's a very interesting conversation. And I don't know if I want to protect seven guys because there's no no move clauses there. There's Duchesne. I'm not going to lie. I think I'd leave him exposed. He makes $8 million, which for his performance is far too much.

There's Ryan Johansson. Wouldn't protect him. I would leave him exposed. $8 million. Far too much. Philip Forsberg. Would protect. Would protect.

But there's another guy with only one year left. David Poyle might be a very busy bee this summer. Michael Granlund. UFA. So don't have to worry about it. So I'm going to click Forsberg. He's the first guy I'm clicking. Colton Sissons.

Might as well Luke Cunning Might as well Rocco Grimaldi Why are you Might as well-ing These guys Like I'm saying

Like for protecting I'm on the Cap-friendly website Yeah No but why Like should we be Protecting those guys Oh Jesse

This is part of The conversation right Like so They have a They have a ton Of either UFAs or RFAs This year

Okay Plus a bunch of guys Expiring next year The Preds have a Ridiculous amount Of flexibility and they probably could take on a forward or two from a team

that needs to move on like the Arvidsson thing. So you dare Seattle to take Johansson or Duchesne and get those contracts off your books I don't dare them. They're not going to do it They're not going to do it I leave them exposed to protect more valuable players

Boy, if I'm Seattle I don't hate picking up Duchesne even though it's 8 million bucks Your cap is free you know a lot of teams for that for that nashville deal though from like he wanted to be in nashville yeah you're now you're looking at no matter what decision you make whether it's on defense uh with the four and four or the seven and three you're not losing anyone of too much significance and because you have all these guys with a year left like i think we might have been

too hard on david poyle um not rebuilding this year because they ended up making the playoffs anyway and they have like if they want to go hard rebuild right now after at least seeing what they have left in the tank if they want to go hard rebuild right now they're in a great spot they absolutely can so and in net they have uc sorrows who's an rfa they'll protect him and pecorine who's a ufa they will not so i i think they were just doing this so they didn't lose a guy like arvidsson or someone someone higher in the in the depth track like they would they would have protected arvidsson but what about a guy like cali yarn croak right who's pretty good low cap hit i i think they're just getting the most they can and they're about to hit hard rebuild

does it mean steve that they're able to then you know because seattle's got all the cards right if you're trying to dump salary do they get to be the team that's a little bit more on par like the kings were for them do they get to be what the kings were to them for another team can you say that one more time well okay so you said you go to seattle seattle set the table they got all the the cards in their favor let's say you're a team and you're like you're um just to name one vancouver you're in cap trouble and and if nashville is in the retool slash rebuild stage you go to them and say i need to get rid of this contract seattle's costing me this what will you charge right i think i don't think other teams can do that i think other teams can do that once

okay you know what i mean and this this was the king's bullet right so i'm looking at them they're interesting too i there are going to be some big names exposed i think for example anze kopitar well heavens to betsy of course you protect him dustin brown no i don't think you do did they protect him the last time i don't think so i don't know and now they got arvidson they got ayah follow they got kempe i'd probably leave brendan lemieux exposed they got it's there's there's gonna be a lot of deals teams are gonna now the race is on over the next week and a half or so to get a deal like that like the arvidsson deal done with someone who you know doesn't completely have all the cards

in their favor but i i think a lot of big contracts like think of all the guys you saw on waivers this year and teams left them on waivers because they knew they weren't gonna get taken or they were hoping they would get taken right now you have an opportunity there's this magical team with no cap it literally none there's this magical team coming in you're gonna leave guys exposed the preds i would leave both joe hansen and dushane exposed if i was them yep i can see that it's and and like you know the the we we talked about like newton hopkins and the right and you know what's what what is buffalo going to do with the uh cap space they get from trading eichel well both those markets have trouble attracting free agents nashville they

don't have that problem you lose one of those two wonderful you bring in another guy yeah or you don't lose those two maybe yo can you imagine eichel johansson duchesne that's a lot of money if you were to if you're kevin adams would you not take it like i mean i don't know if maddie shane's got a no trade but if if he doesn't like let's say they called you and they said okay we want to we want to flip guys here you don't hate maddie shane at eight million do you to build some one of a team around with some young guys i think you need somebody younger yeah maybe you do maybe you do they just need good players they need players they literally need players They just need good players.

But if I'm Nashville, the main benefit here is at least I get something for Victor Arvidsson, and now I can protect more guys. Yeah. It certainly makes it easier to protect 4D if you want to, and I think they do. Moving on here, Jonathan Tays. I mean, sorry, quickly on Seth Jones, guys. I know he was linked to the Leafs by one source today, but I don't think so.

From everything we've heard, no interest in Seth Jones there. However, we could be wrong. Maybe tomorrow they pick up the phone and they get a deal done. The team supposedly in on Seth Jones are the Avs, the Hawks, the Kings, and the Flyers. And we're talking about a lot going one way for a player that may not sign an extension with you. So here's my question. I don't care about what the package may be because we could speculate to death and we really don't have the time. Does the team that gets Seth Jones have him extended by the time they trade for him?

That's my question. And this is just you guys, hypothetically, do you think that any of the abs Hawks flyers or Kings are willing to take the Kawhi Leonard risk and go, let's sell them on this. And, and, you know, it's not hard to sell, uh, to sell a player on LA. It's not hard to sell a player on Chicago, uh, or Colorado or Philadelphia for that matter, because they're all good organizations. But do you give up assets for a guy that you know is going to walk in free agency, or at least look, go through the teams. abs yes hawks no flyers no and uh lastly of course the kings no if you're the abs you do it yeah yeah here's here's the thing with the kawaii leonard risk the raptors were already good i don't know why sorry why do why do the abs need seth jones uh i think the answer is they don't okay

because that like with kale mccarr there i just thought they need one i think they need to get larger and nastier um the conversation on seth jones has changed aggressively from the bubble because he was this minute eating monster who just destroyed the leafs and everyone was singing his praises and now all of analytics hockey twitter is like this guy is a bum so i don't