The Steve Dangle Podcast - Gone | May 17, 2023

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, Chris Johnston joins the show to talk about Kyle Dubas dropping a bomb during his press conference and who's staying and who's going from this Leafs roster (00:00), the Arizona Coyotes failed to get an arena built in Tempe (1:17:00), and the most interesting storyline remaining (1:51:00). Recorded: May 17, 2023 Visit https://sdpn.ca for merch and more. Any opinion expressed is not advice, a promise or suggestion that increases the chance of winning. Gambling can be addictive, please play responsibly. To learn more, visit: https://help.sportsinteraction.com/hc/en-us/articles/216779528-Responsible-Gaming-Self-Limitation-Self-Exclusion Or if you have concerns about a gambling problem, call ConnexOntario 1-866-531-2600. Ontario Only. Must be 19+ or older to play. Visit this episode's sponsors: https://shop.muskokabrewery.com/ USE CODE DANGLE FOR 20% OFF AND FREE SHIPPING AT MANSCAPED.COM https://nordvpn.com/dangle https://sportsinteraction.com/sdpn Follow us on Twitter:@Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram:@SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Steve Dangle Podcast, powered by Sports Interaction. Wanna bet? Backhanding. Woo! S-D-P-P. The Steve Dangle Podcast, with your hosts, Steve Dangle, Adam Wilde, and Jesse Blake. Let's go! And Chris Johnson is here!

Woo! It's a yearly tradition. Oh, that means the Leafs lost. Ah! You know what? one of these days there will have one and we'll be celebrating together we'll all be in here hung over and uh and uh it'll be great yeah the reason chris is here is because um sports interaction has some really great odds on the panthers and hurricanes and that's how you know here's my

question that's why chris is here yeah but top nhl goal scorer by the end of the playoffs guys who's it gonna be oh dry sidle dry sidle i don't know you could still you could bet on him yeah But the betting favorite goals, he leads by five. That's a good playoff. The betting favorite right now is Sam Reinhardt in Sports Interaction at a 275. That's at least in there. Or sorry, I guess the then the top Canadian NHL point scorer, Carter Verhage at 25. Swaggy.

Yeah. You think you think so? What's what's Pavelski at? Pavelski. Second in scoring. Second. And he missed a bunch of games. Yeah.

And he's going to have another four goal game. Well, we'll see. maybe they haven't posted those yet oh you know what i'm seeing here that's just for the series so that's it's a bit of a no no that's not true max domey and jamie benner in there yeah where's pavelski oh i have to reach out off the board do you say it's just canadians no it's top canadian goal scorer yeah sorry oh yeah that's why pavelski's not on it you idiot stupid head um anyway listen cj you're here and you're here for two reasons it was just going to be the one uh but we also found out about what happened in arizona last night with tempe uh so

we will talk about tempe at the in the back half of this show uh but obviously we got to start with the toronto maple leafs and we know you kind of had a little recap with julian yesterday on your show which is aptly named will kyle dubas walk away uh that's but what do you mean uh but what you said yesterday which was a day after the dubas press conference and i wanted when we get into that is it should be tuesday or wednesday uh and the leafs have to figure this out because the gm carousel is already happening and they got to get involved it's now wednesday it's 11 57 a.m where are we at we're hanging we're hanging just sitting here wondering like nothing that i can tell has changed and obviously i don't know what's going on with kyle dubas i don't think

honestly too many people do probably him and his wife and those that are closest to him but the leafs at this hour at this moment at this minute are still waiting to hear what he wants to do and based on what he said now nearly 48 hours ago 45 hours ago if we're going to be specific and because we are going minute by minute on on trying to figure out where the leafs are at it's hard to imagine how quickly like how quickly can he make this decision I think that when Monday started and the Maple Leafs were going to have their normal end of season media availability you know there had been meetings already with ownership that it's my understanding a lot of work had been done or some work had been done on an extension for Kyle Dubas and so at that point

in time I think everybody involved thought okay we'll do the end of season media avails and there'll be an answer here in the next 24 to 48 hours what kyle duva said at the podium in his time with the reporters i think changed a lot i mean that was like a bomb going off i don't think anybody behind the scenes saw that coming um i don't know if it was premeditated if it was just the emotions got the best of him i you know clearly kyle was under some stress i mean i don't think that we're reading too much into his words or his body language or what we saw at the podium to say that and i think it's changed everything and so I don't know how this is going to be resolved I don't know when we're going to hear from Brandon Shanahan and I will say this I don't know what Kyle's thinking

and really again he's the only one who can say for sure but I do know a lot of people around the situation and there's more and more thought that he might not be the GM of the Leafs moving into the next season how surreal was it to be there because I can tell you us watching it and texting was pretty surreal to watch it it was surreal i mean i didn't expect that you know that day is so scripted you know and this is like the old cynical journalist in me but i almost i kind of loathe that end of season locker clean out as we call it day because they've had two or three days typically after the end of their season obviously when you're having it in mid-may or early may your year ended before you wanted it to but there's a lot of time you know the leafs have

a lot of good pr people to work with everyone and i'm sure go over talking points and this and that so i find you very rarely learn much like you learn who's going to go to the world hockey championship sometimes you learn who was playing injured you know and some of the nature of those injuries and then it's a lot of platitudes and cliches and this and that and so usually you don't get emotion or you don't get surprises that was emotion and surprise and again i think it was at all levels the organization like i don't believe if the powers that be knew that kyle was going to be that honest or that those sorts of things were going to be said i'm not sure they would have had him at the podium quite honestly um because i don't i don't think that that was

the plan you know i mean as i say right that day is usually so scripted there's there's certain talking points and obviously there's a lot of messaging the organization it's an important day for the organization it's the first time for people in power to sit in front of the cameras to talk to the fans to say okay this this year wasn't good enough but next year will be and this is why and and instead you know we we saw someone who clearly like this organization is at a crossroads right this is everything is up in the air and that just that underlined it with like in bold highlighter whatever that that even kyle doesn't know if he wants to continue on or if he can continue on with what he's dealing with it at home you know what is the plan b it is now may

17th like in a perfect world drafts in five weeks in a perfect world you know who your gm is and that person and and hopefully it would be kyle dubas that's what the leafs want at this point and that he would already be starting to work behind the scenes on you know the matthews extension you know starting to talk to his colleagues about what trades might look like because he did also kick open the door on the possibility of moving players getting ready obviously final preparations for the draft making decisions on your restricted free agents because qualifying offers are due you know getting ready for july 1st itself i mean there's there's a this all happens in the next six to seven weeks like nhl business usually stops around july 5th more or less i know last year

the you know an outlier was the kachuk trade that happened in late july uh between calgary and florida but but for the most part the meaningful business will be done within like well within two months from now and so to not know who your gm is is is not ideal and i don't put that on anyone's feet i've been consistent with this so there's no hindsight involved i really think the leaf should have extended kyle dubas last summer you said that last summer i i mean i've written it it's it's in the toronto star it's at north star bets i mean i i think it was insane the whole time to this whole thing was a charade like like what were you going to learn this year that you didn't already know you either believed in him or you didn't i don't think even the fact they beat

tampa does that that make him a better gm is that what prompted them to offer the extension in the first place it seems like it yeah that indications are that but like so you're going to be five years into in a relationship with someone and it's going to be based on how the two weeks go you know the reason i'd keep him now frankly is he finally got up there and said everything's on the table like yeah like willing to learn well but they have to i mean i felt it so strongly this year just being around the team like they they just assume the play a lot of these players assume it's just going to work out eventually well you have to affect that change yourself like there's just something missing there they need they need a shock like to me

there is no option to bring back the big four i want it zero option i know we don't want to go into that you just yeah the fact that kyle dubas finally has said that publicly to me that's worthy of an extension right there because i i believe in his ability as a gm he gets a lot of business done there's a lot of GMs that sit up there on their media days and say it's hard to make trades and it's hard to do he's never yeah I mean I guess he said it but it's not like it but like he hasn't lived it right I mean look at the Leafs team in this year's playoffs it was basically half a roster overturned from the previous season and just based on their contractual situations right now it's going to be half a roster turnover again this summer and so I think he's done a marvelous job

of pivoting and trying to find new ways and I would still trust him with the Rubik's Cube but now we have a new dynamic like is he up to the job you know i think that there's a reason to question that after monday the the press conference changed very sharply uh and uh it was it was with your question but it also wasn't um because you asked him did you remember the exact question so he had mentioned in his opening remarks he just kind of quickly he said something along the lines of and I'm obviously paraphrasing that as for my own situation you know I've got a great relationship with the owners and Brendan Shanahan I'll talk to them later in the week most importantly I'm going to speak with my wife Shannon tonight and tomorrow we have a family decision to make

and kind of left it at that and so that was all he kind of said initially and it just struck me like okay that that's new and so i said something you know kyle with respect you know i respect that you this is a family and business aspect to this but do you still want to do the job yeah can i play it sure i think i think it might be helpful let's see how good my memory is yeah let's uh let's test it there's a moment where he kind of goes rogue is why i'm asking I'll just address it off the top um I've had a good long relationship here with with Brendan and the owners I'll speak to them in the coming days uh but probably more importantly uh speak uh to my wife Shannon and our family uh here in the tonight and and tomorrow and see where we're

at um as a family um and how we want to proceed um with everything uh this has been a you know and just in learning the past couple days been a very taxing year on them um and uh that's obviously very important to me so um we'll go through all that and and um make our decisions we'll all make our decisions and roll from there hey kyle recognizing what you said about there being a family and business aspect to your decision with your future i'm just wondering though do you still have it in you do you want to be here do you want to still run the maple leaf um what i would say to that is that um i think it it requires me to have a full family discussion chris so i can't my family is a hugely important part of what i do so for me to

commit to anything without you know having a fuller uh understanding of what this year took on them uh is probably unfair for me to answer where i'm at i wish i could give you more but we haven't been able to have those full discussions yet but it was very hard year on them and uh thus it's tough for me to what i would say is that i'm not gonna i i definitely don't have it in me to go anywhere else so it'll either be here or it'll be taking time to recalibrate reflect on the seasons here but you won't see me next week pop up elsewhere i don't i can't put them through that after this year it you see what i mean he started to answer your question answered it and then re-answered it differently you know what i mean like it's almost like he

went off script a little bit and i just i want to know what it was like for you in that moment because i get tunnel vision in press conferences well it was emotional you can you can hear it in his voice yeah you know i've seen some people commentate out there just speculate like that this was some sort of power play or something like i i don't see that at all you know i know kyle a little bit professionally of course you know i've dealt with him for years we're not friends or anything like that but like you can he's an authentic guy and i i see an authentic answer there it's clear he's wrestling with this decision and and when we step back you know what's hard and i've you know i've spoken to a lot of people around the nhl since this press conference

there's a lot of people out there that believe he that leafs can't bring him back after saying that why is that well i i'm not saying and i and i i'm not saying i necessarily agree but i i can start to hear the point the point that some have made to me essentially is now when we move forward let's say they bring them back just just for argument's sake there could be questions a like is he mentally can he handle the rigors of the job it's a damn hard job i don't think anyone would question that no matter what you think of his moves or anything else i don't think anyone would say like it's a great job it's a cool job but but nobody works harder than him in their organization i don't believe second is you know if things go wrong in the future if he comes back will people say well

maybe he's took his foot off the pedal a little bit you know we saw how hard it was on his family like maybe he can't do all the things that's required of him i just think it opens the door and some of those are narratives of course but narratives matter right that's why they script this frigging day if everyone just went up and said what they thought in the microphone all the time it would be absolute chaos yeah who would do that we kind of have you mentioned his contract situation before and how it played out last summer and i because larry tannenbaum went to the board and proposed that they give him an extension we kind of know this this is public information and rogers and bell kind of said no we'll play out the year and now this happens where they're kind

of surprised by Kyle Dubas going up there and saying all this and I wonder what their reaction to this would be and if that leads them to not necessarily rescind whatever contract was coming but have even more second thoughts about Kyle Dubas as general manager it's it's left them with more questions right I mean I don't think there's any question about that I believe that basically what we heard in that clip you just played is was new information to Kyle's bosses too and so I think that they're left asking like is is he up for it you know did this season crack him in some way is he just burnt out I mean I I don't have those answers but you we've all watched Kyle speak a lot that that was out of character right and I think on a human level we can be sympathetic

but on a professional pro sports is a gruesome business if you're not good enough anymore as a player it doesn't matter what you've done in the past you're gone right if if you don't if you're not performing up to your contract you can be bought out and working in the media next day and instead of playing on the ice and that would suck awful as it is to say if if you're in kyle's shoes even as great a job as and i've been a big supporter of his i've been consistent i think the leaf should have extended him i i would believe in him and i think he's ultimately going to be one of the best executives in the league if he isn't already over time whether he has to go somewhere else to do it or not but if you're not up to the task right now in toronto because this

is a big friggin task um they might have to move on without him i again i don't know how that's going to play out and this could be dated by the time you're hearing this because i think it there's a real pressure to get finality on this situation right away because there's a lot of other business to get done what's what's the deadline here well i thought it was tuesday and we're recording on so so how far down the road like how done is this extension like if you if there's probably always wiggle room like you know yeah so they've offered it to him he has it in hand they've worked on an extension i know that and he's he's he's reciprocated on that as far as i know yes but i mean look let's take his words he's got to have a family just

got like he doesn't even know if he wants to do an extension now based on those words based on his family i mean i don't know what i obviously i'm not privy to what's being discussed inside his house but you know the key part of that too if you guys heard in his opening remark and i missed it actually in real time but heard it when i listened back he said in the last few days he's learned how taxing this season was on his family and so you know what that tells me is that he's had certain conversations i don't know if that's his wife shannon or someone else close to him but he's had conversations basically since the season ended that maybe gave some new information or new light to his situation and so if it is that you know if i'm reading him taking him literally on

those comments you know he's got a big decision to make and and a lot's happened here right i mean he was supposed to game seven would have been last night right oh man i don't know man thanks actually you're right but i'm just saying like he you know it's not long from you know fighting to try to keep the season long doing everything you can with the team you lose you gotta you know he has to meet with ownership he's preparing for his locker meetings and and obviously um you know and then obviously he's having conversations with his family in which you know it sounds like something was brought up about whether or not he continues on or the or the the weight that they've had to bear and all this so i mean i it's fair to assume a lot's going on there and um i don't know i don't

know where we go from here but it they need some resolution quickly i do think that do you i think there are people asking this and based on what you've told me this seems like probably a question that we don't necessarily need to go to but what are the chances he pulls a paul marie says i don't know i don't know i don't know and then some other team comes along at six month and makes it so comfortable for him it's like well it's hard to say no to that you know i mean in the in the sense that he is a popular guy in nhl circles and among teams that are looking for general managers even teams that currently have them would probably in some cases drop them just to get a guy like this uh pay him the the three and a half four million dollars that a good gm in this league would make

um what what are the chances that that is a possibility well i think i think it's a huge possibility i will say that kyle dubas is going to work in the nhl again whether it's next season in toronto or somewhere else down the road he's young he's experienced he's smart he treats people well he's got a great reputation but he might need some time here i mean it might be that simple you know paul maurice was in a different spot paul was you know paul's on the back nine and he thought he was retiring essentially when he stepped away in winnipeg and you know i look across time here there's look in the last couple years like mark bergevin for all intents and purposes walked away from montreal he had a chance to sign an extension and didn't because he was burnt out

after 10 years there paul maurice after eight years in winnipeg chose to leave the winnipeg jets bench brad tree living has just walked away from the calgary flames job and is not allowed to talk to anybody until july 1st let's not go down i mean that's just we got to talk about that at fair enough dirty business and and we're we're also now seeing the possibility at least that kyle dubas is walking away i mean i know no one wants to hear this canadian market stuff but i i just think that it's the crucible in the job and and we've seen now a number of senior people walk away from great jobs and and kyle again i'm not presupposing the end here maybe he still stays he has a lot of reasons to say like that's the funny thing if it is his program well and everyone

one who works here is basically his hire or has been there since he's been there you know he's clearly in the fight with his guys right I mean whatever you think of him yelling at fans in Tampa or throwing a water bottle in anger like he's clearly in the battle with and he loves his players and he's got more of his players coming too right like we're going to get to a point next year where you're you're going to get Matthew Nyes in the Leafs lineup and maybe Nick Robertson and players now that have been drafted since Kyle was a general manager like it's becoming more and his team with each passing year and as much as this was a disappointing year the fact that you're willing to trade one of your superstars i mean what an opportunity for a gm well and i'm not

going to go there yet what an opportunity though like to reshape things to yeah like they're yeah this program still has lots of legs in it it obviously needs a pivot and that pivot comes with uncertainty and it's you know it's a bit of a risk or whatever you want to call it but like this is this is what you dream of in a way like you're trying to find an answer you're you're i mean it's it's a tortured reference that we've all made but like you're messiah jury trading for kawaii leonard that's what you hope for like you're making a massive franchise altering decision but it could it could be the key that unlocks the door and changes everything steve does kyle dubas extending increase the chances of sheldon keith staying or decrease it

I think I know the answer, but I'm not sure it's as certain as it was. If he leaves, I feel like the chances of Sheldon Keefe staying are like 5%. Okay. I mean, that's not – I just think the easiest thing to do if you're a new GM is to come in and be like, okay, this guy's had four playoff runs and won one series, and let's have a fresh voice. I think if Kyle Dubas stays, he gave some examples at his press conference of things he liked from the coaching staff,

even though the team didn't get the results. I feel like there's definitely a higher than 5% chance that Keefe is retained if Dubas stays. But, you know, too bad for Sheldon Keefe in a lot of ways. But my analysis of this isn't even necessarily that he is actually the problem. But I just think he's one of the easiest solutions available to them. He's got one year left on his contract. So, you know, typically we've seen some head coaches, including Lindy Ruff, who coached into the second round in New Jersey, play out the final year of their deal. But generally, you'd be talking about extending him this summer or changing the coach.

And so, you know, it's hard to know where we're going to go until we know who's making that decision. But I think even if Dubas stays, he did leave open the door to making a change there. Same question, but for Brendan Shanahan. If Dubas stays, is Brendan likely to stay? If Dubas goes, does Brendan go? I don't have the same feel there, Jesse. I would say, again, it's May 17th. Like, does this board have a plan?

Did they have a plan B for Shanahan? Like, I don't see, who are you hiring if you get rid of Brendan Shanahan? well and the story is that that when um when they needed to get somebody to be the president either it was either larry or tim lywicky called gary betman and said who would you hire and gary said brandon shanahan and that's how they have brandon shanahan today that's that's the story to be fair that's how a lot of business gets done in the nhl which is why you sign up for nhl player safety i'm telling you george peros is going to be a gm in this league although that's i mean to be fair there's not a huge history of there's a lot of people that work at player safety that i know

that are maybe more junior roles that have wanted to make the jump and haven't been able to. Really? It's not necessarily the pipeline. I mean, look, it's hard to get these jobs. There's not many of these jobs. Right.

We actually happen to have a few GM openings right now, but typically there's not a lot of GM turnover. Well, look at Canada. I mean, we didn't have a GM change for more than almost a decade, like in any market. Now it's in stock. Yeah, now it's all in.

I want to ask you about- And questions about Ottawa, too. Yeah, well, I'm glad you talked about Shani there, Jesse, because the one thing I'll say about shanty this year is he's been the least public shanty we've ever seen and you don't see him in the press box with dubas a lot or sorry the press box the the box whatever they put him in uh you don't see him in front of the camera obviously he doesn't do a ton of interviews throughout the season anyway i don't think he's done one since last year's end of season right

and so as the president of the toronto maple leaves at this point you know we in all honesty we should have heard from him at locker cleanup we should have heard from him on monday uh the fact that it's now Wednesday and we haven't um whether or not it's reasonable to read into this I still am going to because there have been a lot of rumors about Shani and Dubas not getting along and I don't think that's not why they're in the box together but it does feel a little bit like uh Shani has let Dubas if this goes down he's going to be the face and I just wonder what your thoughts on that might be i know he was there i know he was in tampa i know he was in florida i know i don't know if he was in tampa okay so he was in florida though yes i'm not saying he wasn't

in tampa you just don't know i never saw him there so so you're not seeing him either and you're there yeah and and you know they won their first playoff series as an organization in 19 years in tampa like in there's a hallway outside the visiting room there where like larry tannenbaum was same same hallway where i saw scotty barnes after one of the games earlier series but like you know obviously that's a big moment for the organization it's a moment you'd expect i'm not saying that brendan would be front and center in the dressing room hugging all the players necessarily but you would normally expect after you know he's nine years into trying to do this here i would have thought he'd be there and again he might have been there and he just might have

somehow escaped my vision okay is there something to be read into there yeah because i don't think there's very many accidents with brendan honestly i think that he's very aware of you know like messaging self-image i think he's very good at managing his bosses which is his primary role right his primary role i believe is to to sort of be an insulation between the board and the hockey department um and so we would never see a lot of his work because we don't we're not very privy to what goes on at the board level of this organization although it's funny it's starting to now be a story again after 15 20 years not hearing about the board of mlse too much all of a sudden they seem to be factoring into things a little more is is it's not i don't think it's an

accident though i i don't know what's all there i don't i think that some of the not getting along stuff is a little overblown okay they're not as tight as they used to be though they used to be right well there's there's tension right i mean there's tension on everybody in the organization like they haven't got it done and it's it's fair to say any two people that work together i'm sure even you three as you're building your business here there are times where you don't have you're not all in lockstep agreement on the path forward or on a certain decision like i think that that same dynamic exists for a president a gm or gm and a head coach and but you know a lot changed this year like they used to watch in in a box on the hundred level it's like one of the main boxes

and you know you'd see brendan shanahan often in there you'd see lawrence gilman yep uh who was part of the front office obviously brandon pridham who's essentially kyle lou used to be in there right hand man and then you know kovat hits and everything goes to crap and i don't know where they watch from because they had a whole building for like two years don't get me started and you know now that but this year they came back and kyle was watching in the old suite that brian burke used to watch from and it's up high it's up in the press box level and then now he would have you know jason spezza who's come on to work with him and brandon prudham there primarily and all of a sudden lawrence gilman got a new title and was kind of whisked away

where you can't see him. And Brandon Shanahan, as far as I know, was never in that box on a Leafs game night at home. So I, you know, he, I know. So you're saying if Dubas signs this extension, they would be able to work together. That relationship is tenable for now. As far as I understand it, yes.

Okay. I don't think it's at a point where they, like, look, they, to be fair, like I was at practice a whole bunch these last few weeks. Like more than once they were standing together for an hour long practice talking watching what's going on like it's not like these guys don't speak um but there's you know i don't think they could either of them could deny that there's tension and uncertainty and you know i'm sure they've i don't think it's all kumbaya but i think it

rarely is in pro sports like that that might be something that we don't understand it's a different work environment than other places like i think that there's a lot of fu matches in in a lot of front offices over big decisions and at key moments and under pressure and stress and all those sorts of things. So I don't know how unusual it is, but yeah, you're right. There was a clear change.

Like we can't deny that. Oh, year to year. It was like, it was. And, and, and the thing is,

is that, and I, as I said, go back to my original point. I don't think that's an accident. Like I think that there's a conscious decision there. I can tell what year Kyle Dubas memes are from based on whether Shani's in the background or not.

Like when you see like Kyle Dubas gifts of him, because he's very animated in the box right and shan is not but you can tell what you're there from because you see shanahan kind of looming in the background a little bit like the grim reaper uh because he's very very you know quiet and and he's stand he's tall or whatever and there's freaking out about whatever play i i do think and i and i that's not a slight against shanahan by the way uh i do think though that that i wonder where his position is with the board because as people who i was talking to somebody yesterday about this as people who um work for other people we tend to look at things up okay we tend to look up at the our manager our manager's manager

and say the board right you're the head if you're shelvin keith you got dubas you got shanny and then you get the board at you know on top of you we never really look at things down we don't look at things from the board level how much do you know about the board level and how they view this and what the operations were this weekend because i've heard everything from there was nothing to it was chaos well it sounds like this year there was definite dissension in the board more than in the past and that rogers specifically uh their representation on the board was not on board with kyle initially staying on so i think that that is a dynamic that's been there so has bell changed their position then i'm not sure and i you know obviously i work at tsn oh yeah but i'm just

listen i work at virgin radio but i just let you know i don't know like yeah like even though i work there which is you know probably 28 rungs down from yeah the level of what we're talking about but i i don't have any insight from that um but i just want to put my affiliations on the table yeah it's fair not be aware um so i work at the zoo how's that the city of toronto animals are pretty chill city of toronto yeah metro you're you're a government worker yeah yeah civil servant unionized why are you in the sunshine list it's awesome i've never been to the zoo oh cj we gotta go to the zoo man to bring i'll give you the tour myself i love that oh i've actually never been to toronto oh my god we've been planning this

for years. We got to do it. We want a Steve Dangle zoo tour where you lead a zoo tour like on the old bus that used to do. Can we bring fans? We bring in fans. That's what we want to do. Let's make it happen. We want to sell out the zoo. That's where I honestly take my kid now. Can that event be licensed? I hope so. The zoo is licensed.

Don't you worry. That's where I take my kid when I want to just wear her out. If they're going to burn the batteries, take them to the zoo. And you only need to go to a couple exhibits. That's it. Waterpark's free. See? If you get the membership, you just show up at the waterpark, go home without spending it done cj um everybody wants to know about this part which is why i saved it for last

can i help you with that best-selling book if you want more zoo facts that's basically steve that go the zoo employee this zoo is ruining my life thank you for mentioning it was a bestseller like that chapter was a bad idea chapter chapters it was a chapter it was the entire half of the book it's called zoo story it's one chapter um all right now this place is a zoo always forever cj you know that that that everybody wants to know about this quote and it's why i saved it for last i wanted to get the board conversation and the coach conversation the gm conversation kyle dubas said if he stays and let's assume in this scenario he is that nothing is off the table in terms of moves the leafs could make this summer and he also followed that up with

a comment about what it takes to win not just in the conference but in the division he said that the western conference a little more free flow i'm not totally sure that's always the case but that was this year he also added on that he hasn't like done extensive work on that but it's his impression watching from afar right something along those lines and and the fact that it will take a specific type of team you got to get them into the playoffs but to win in the playoffs in the east uh even to get out of the atlantic division which the leafs have not done ever under kyle dubas um how do you begin if you're the leafs to approach that like i've heard you know if we're talking about the core four here and i don't want to necessarily hit that yet

how do you keep that tasty steak yeah i'm gonna get in the background how do you approach telling teams were open for business because i have we've heard stories and we talked about this years ago where one team sent out like a fax on to all the 30 nhl teams at the time and said this player is available to make an offer email i think and i'm just like what do you do all day yeah like it's just putting it out there so so how would they approach this and i know that they're not doing that yet well two things there's actually there's like a a list that circulate emails to like gms and assistant gms with that kind of info but then too much of the info was getting out so they created a whatsapp chat that only has like the 32 gms on it no so there is a there is a whatsapp

way what is it called i i i can't say but i have seen it like i've seen what goes in there and i've actually seen like literally the minute you're out as a gm they just boot you from the chat like you're it's like sorry but you're out now now is tree living still allowed to be in they're still under contract no way okay adam what's the story about the f1 chat and nikita mazapin oh i don't know that one do you know that oh he was kicked out like immediately the day the season ended there's a driver chat yeah there's a full driver this it seems like it's pretty common across sports there's across pro sports is there's these uh whatsapp chats where all the guys just chat and it's funny because i have like a cj show chat yeah and my whatsapp and i know but then

there's also like it's no different it's just it's a different level of business you're doing but the nhl gm chat yeah and so i mean they have that as a way to get the word out but also let's face it there's no there's no reason for kyle to enter that chat he just told the entire league nothing is off the table this is the first time the leafs have publicly invited you to phone them and say what would it take to get austin matthews or we would love to get austin matthews this is the sort of thing we could do mitch marner we've always loved him this is like he that's already happened now I don't know because we don't know if Kyle Dubas is still the GM if he's been flooded with calls if he's taking those calls but the Leafs have just said something

they've never been willing to do they've they've publicly said they're at least willing to think about it so and I don't think so here just quickly okay I've had a lot of people say to me the trade for them was they should have done Marner for Kachuk last summer was that on the table I thought Kachuk didn't want to be in Canada I don't think you want to be in Canada but but this is why I don't even want to explore it because the Leafs at that time were never thinking about trading they were never going to do that they weren't they weren't taking calls on mitch marner they weren't exploring that with anything like they were going forward so like it's it's it's i guess in hindsight yeah we should have traded this guy for that guy but that was never a conversation

now they're going to have those conversations no i'm not saying marner for kachuk but there's why not does florida like him i don't know it seems to me florida has built the team around guys like bennett and kachuk and radko gudas and they like the butchers they do as they call gudas down there in florida so you know i'm not saying that they don't have room for skill but i i just think that they yeah but now they're gonna have those conversations so that this is fascinating one more question before we talk about the names they don't have a lot of time to work whatever deals out they're gonna work out because again draft is in five weeks free agency in six weeks cj's off in six weeks in one day that's right if a deal that wasn't on your calendar if a deal does

get done with the core four involved and let's not mention any names yet because i have a question for that too and i'm going to ask jesse and steve the same will it get done by the draft free agency what do you suspect well i think it's before free agency it's all the same right the draft is a 28th 29th of june and free agents july 1st i guess i suppose is that like are they are they would they want to go hunting with a ton of cap space in free agency even though the crop's kind of thin this year or do they you know like that that's sort of what i'm because they'll have 14 million but they got a whole bunch of free agents the bigger issue is if you're trading a 10 or 11 million dollar player or even an 8 million dollar player 7 million dollar player it's hard to do it

after july 1st to other teams because the other teams have made free agent decisions so there's all kinds of reasons that say that june 30th is essentially the deadline for any of these deals for one of course matthews and marner pick up full new move clauses william elander gets a modified no trade clause as of july 1st it's just easier to trade any of those players before that happens you don't have to deal with their agents uh although we can get into it but there's reasons maybe you might have to a little bit but but in theory you can just trade them to anybody before that date and i do think by the time you get to july 1st and other teams start spending money even if you put a superstar in the market,

those trades become harder to make. I mean, the window is now. The window is six weeks, you know, from right now. To think about that, to explore those deals. You know, as I mentioned, the Kachuk one did happen in late June or July. So it's not impossible after July 1st, but I think it's way more likely to happen at the draft

or the day after, which is June 30th, but before July 1st comes. Okay, now I want to ask names, but do you want to do a sneak one in there before that? Well, I wanted to ask about- scared because you have cat friendly up well i wanted to ask about the possibility of after july 1st because mitch has a 725 signing bonus matthews has a 7 million dollar signing bonus or sorry 7.2 and neilander has a 3.5 is there any appetite in giving that unbelievable sum of money

and then trading a player because there's added value there well that's always been the secondary part of putting those signing bonuses in the contract the first being the players like getting all their money up front of course but the second has been and we've seen it even going back to like the matt martin days and and other trades the leafs have made andreas johnson i believe was another one where they've paid a signing bonus on july 1st and then that players you know actual money is just way less i mean you you would have in front of you i think after matthews is getting paid like he's he's paid like 800 grand after that signing bonus even less actually 7.25 750 and then next year 7.2 up front 7.75 after so but i'm just saying after

july 1st he only has that 7.75 remaining exactly now if you're trading off to matthews dramatic pause you you need you need to work with him and his agent because any team that's giving up whatever it would take to get him needs to know he wants to play there and we'll sign yep so for him even though that's that no trade clause no movement clause doesn't kick into july 1st i feel like if you're trading him you have to first go to him and get a list of the teams he'd be willing to negotiate an extension with because otherwise it's it's not a great trade if you're trading mitch marner you really can't do that because marner can't sign an extension anyway till july 1st 2024 now you might want to be kind to him uh my phone's blowing up i'm nervous uh

you might want to be kind to him let me check on it for you yeah and and trade him somewhere he wants to go because you like mitch and you know there there might still be ways to do that but you don't need to get the player's consent to the same degree but even with marner as you point out here you know a lot of the money has been paid up front in his contract so even though he carries that that pretty high cap hit a little south of 11 million uh the actual dollar is owed you you can do the math for me but it's it's way less it's a lot less yeah so like that that's a pretty like you're trading a selkie trophy finalist who is perennially at 98 points it seems like just shy of 100 and you know what the skill he does kills penalties still in the prime of his career under

contract for two more years and the money is low relative to what the cap it is um man like to me marner is the most valuable thing you could trade in a way i think awesome matthews of course at this point is a more accomplished player by just a few degrees but you know heart trophy winner and all that but you if you're trading matthews you have to trade him to one of three or four places where he wants to play and that team's signing him to like a 14 million dollar extension and those teams are hold on hold on you know what i find frustrating hosting a show with me no i love hosting a show with both of you i've loved it the entire time i love you guys i love you guys no i love you guys no i love that you know what i i find frustrating though is when i'm sitting on

the dock on a long weekend and i have to get up to get another beer and i look at i look at my can and i go why can't you be bigger that's not how that works you need to be bigger in muskoka you know what they call the phenomenon doc block exactly thank you adam adam stop lying for me what stop why am i lying how am i lying you call your butler to get you a new tread fair enough you don't have to get up from your dock you say jeeves get me a tread lightly the problem with is that he charges by the beer so every time he has to go get one that cost me at least twenty dollars i don't i think that's not how butler's work i don't know but not that i would know listen you would know exactly yeah we should listen to you butler man mine is like a pay as

you go butler okay so anyway long story short tread lightly from muskoka brewery it's locally brewed it's not owned by a gigantic conglomerate it's actually done by 200 people that live in muskoka a conglomerate like adam wild business that's right that's right it's also um it's available at the lcbo the beer store grocery stores great light beer to unwind with after your day at work or on your dock or your balcony during the long weekend which or your yacht or your yacht would be great on a yacht did you see bezos on his yacht oh my god can you guys wrap this so i can drink this all right muskoka brewery a and they've also got the extra large can which is what my whole point was in the beginning the can is are you ready 568 milliliters grab it this

long weekend. And remember, Muskoka Brewery is independently owned and operated in the heart of Muskoka, employing a team of over 120 people, a true Canadian crafted beer. And you can visit the tap room in Bracebridge off of Highway 11 at 118. Fresh beer on tap to go and tours available with live music

on weekends throughout the summer. Hey, how's that playoff beat? It's gone. You shaved it off of my face. What'd you use to shave it? Manscaped! That's right. And boy, look at look at how great they i mean the the stubble is coming back in but it's coming in so evenly even you jesse yeah yeah no i use the the beard trimmer that they got uh i love the little dial

where you just you flick it and that's the it changes the uh amount you're cutting off it's perfect i feel like a four today oh maybe 0.5 i got a meeting that is that is guys that is called the weed whacker 2.0 uh it's got uh better shape and a better motor uh than anybody else and it's really really good for things like not just that but there's also the ear you've got your ear and nose trimmer as well uh the uh beard preserver all a part of the performance package you can get with manscape so adam i'm talking about the beard hedger oh that's the beard one that's yeah yeah okay i'm talking about the weed whackers like you do the other oh okay when you said the weed whacker i'm like i don't think it is okay well listen the beard the beard hedger pro kit

this kit has bomb shampoo conditioner and oils you need to keep presentable or not presentable in steve's case uh and the trimmer you need when it's finally time to cut bummer get 20 off and free shipping with the promo code dangle that's right at manscape.com it's 20 off free shipping promo code dangle d-a-n-g-l-e manscape.com pick a winner hit the playoff push and use manscape to shave that bush okay so i'm gonna ask this question and we're gonna go down the table i'm gonna start with jesse i'm gonna go to steve i'm gonna give you my opinion don't take too long within anybody and then we're gonna get cj's expert opinion i wonder who adam posed that to rank in order of most likely to get moved matthews marner neil andrew taveras start at

at least likely go to most likely so the least likely to get moved of the core four in order to the most most likely should we start with the two dummies and that's what i'm saying yeah and you don't want any reasons you just want the numbers just just give me the numbers uh so and we're going least like least likely so one is john tavarez uh as most likely or least least like steve we're gonna go least to most and we're gonna start with you and jesse and then we're gonna go to me and then we're gonna ask the expert so are you starting with morgan riley no not morgan riley core four one is john tavarez two is william nylander

three is austin matthews four is mitch marner steve your opinion that jesse is stupid um tavaris least likely matthews second least likely nylander uh i should make most likely just to piss off jesse but i'm gonna say second most likely and marner most likely and i'm gonna say the exact same as you steve so cj give us your rank least likely to get moved to most likely to get moved sadly i agree with you too and i'd like to like take a different opinion but i think it goes tavaris least likely of course they can't move him without his consent and he won't consent we know that he said that he won't and i don't think they're going to strong arm him anymore than you know sometimes teams make it uncomfortable but I think he's here Matthew's next in terms of

least likely then Nylander and I think Marner of the core four is the most likely to be traded do you think any of the core four are open to it outside of Tavares which we already know the answer to it depends how you interpret open to it I think they're frustrated too and I are they losing belief I don't know if they're losing belief but they might be losing patience with the whole the whole thing i mean i i go back to mitch marner's quote before game four of the series of florida where kind of unprompted he you know just mentioned tuning out the noise like it still feels like he's blaming the media or the fans i think it's hard for him to play here it's not going out on a limb seven years lives here it's slash muskoka year round can't ever

escape this i i don't think he wants to be traded that's certainly not what i'm saying please don't radio me but you know if a trade came about you know it might be time it might be time steve you outlined all like the contract situation with mitch and austin after july 1st and i look at mitch's contract situation i say why wouldn't they he doesn't have any right for a trade until july 1st so i don't think it ever if they're gonna move mitch i don't think you get to the point where the no movement clause kicks in oh you're right and then he has to make that decision No, if you're going to trade Mitch Marner, it has to happen on June 30th or earlier, because then who cares what he thinks? He has no contractual right in this situation.

The Leafs can move him to anywhere. That's why I think there's a along with the points that CJ is making about it's probably it looks like he's the odd man out. Do you think that the Leafs could sell not moving one of the core for this summer to the fan base going into October? No, I mean, maybe they might try like they might have to. no no i mean this is an organization who for sure has shown their willingness to make trades i mean ryan o'reilly was a toronto maple leaf uh but i briefly very very briefly made it very clear that that was not going to be extended so he's not coming back no way why do you think that is is it just the the the organization the market whatever is it all of it i think he loved like we

saw the stuff with his grandma and his parents and like i think he loved the opportunity i don't think he appreciated everything about being here and and look there's there's been rumors since that trade happened that he's going back to st louis i'm not saying that's happening but like i'm not saying it's anything toronto did wrong i just think he always approached this kind of as the end of the season chance to win a cup chance to play on another team and then you know he's also i think he's gonna he's not giving out discounts on the next contract right he can still make some serious money as as he you know it's his right so then but he to me reading between the lines like he didn't even usually guys kind of say well i'd love to stay here but we'll have

to see how it works out he didn't even go that far so i just think he knows he's going to july 1st so then you know obviously we've got an austin matthews extension that can be signed july 1st we also have a william nylander extension that can be signed july 1st people forget that talk about austin all the time but williams got the best value contract on the team um instantly changes if he takes more right and and cj you said yesterday on your show that of the potential players of those three guys that they could trade matthews marner nylander nylander probably nets you the least because he's only got a year left um and he's another notch below yeah he's a he's a phenomenal talent but uh he's not there he's not yeah and he's older too older than those guys

of the three obviously austin probably gets you the most i think that's a pretty easy one to say for leaf fans and setting expectations if if marner is the guy that goes and i'm saying if i at no point have said you need to trade mitch marner you should trade mitch marner so i don't get radioed here but if marner goes are we talking about an equivalency package coming back and what i mean by that is a player who's perhaps younger and earlier on in their development curve are we talking about multiple players are we talking about prospects and picks are we talking about everybody's freaking out about well what if it's 75 cents on the dollar forgetting the other side which what if it's not um what what does this look like

what would the organization even be looking for what what's what are they adding to this core you need another star back i think and what kind of a star so like would it be more likely to look like the kachuk huberto deal or the eichel tuck deal well you'd rather eichel tuck of course um which also included other players and picks and things yeah uh but i don't think the picks and things and this prospect that maybe kind of sort of is could be something is what is valuable it's the prime piece back has to be something that you're really comfortable in and there's ways look it might be someone who objectively is a little worse than mitch marner maybe he's a little younger maybe he's a little cheaper maybe he just does something different that you feel is

missing in the organization but it's also still at a star quality if if they don't get at least a star back i don't even think you can think about it this is the beauty though i don't think they've ever had these conversations until maybe now it's like they they haven't really and as far as i know canvas the league to see what someone would pay for mitch marner and when kachuk went on the market last year i don't think a lot of people thought the day that that was happening he was going to end up in florida i never heard huberto's name or wieger's name until it happened friday night in july i was in europe i woke up in the morning i was like whoa i'm sure you were thrilled about that well i mean i didn't i was i was mentally not that worried about it but i was

I was like, holy shit, that's a big trade. I mean, look, you can only do so much. Sometimes you have to go to bed or go on vacation or do something. Well, Adam and I have told this story before, but we were baked the night Ryan O'Reilly got traded to the league. We were like, well, there's nothing we can do about that. Except enjoy it. We enjoyed it. Text a few people, go, yeah, it'll be up in the morning.

I'm sure I told you this way back, but that crazy day, the the june 29th with stamko signing and the suban trade i was taking a nap like i literally missed the whole thing and all yeah it was i remember i was in the afternoon like i like literally woke up but i was like holy crap yeah like i was negligent in my role as someone who's supposed to try to be getting this news it all happened in i think 30 minutes oh yeah and literally i'm not kidding i was napping the whole time like i had no idea incredible um and i don't even nap a lot i just think i was burnt out the end of the playoffs it's a long road adam and i were burnt out too yeah get this so marner is owed 16 million and a little bit more in actual

dollars even if you pay the signing bonus for the next two years so he's an eight million dollar player per year by actual salary which is valuable i mean obviously lots of teams have cap space concerns but there are some that are worried about the actual dollars that get transferred to his bank account of course every you know twice a month so i think i think he would be a pretty valuable piece but i mean who's to know people love mitch marner as they should yeah he does everything he plays among the most minutes in the league at his position selkie nominee was their mvp this year you know it's at massive points and i and i think if you're looking at his situation from afar you're probably going like let's get that guy out of toronto

and let him play yeah because like it's pretty clear i think we've all observed like if he can just be free and easy if he can just be living his life and not be in his head too much he's amazing easier said than done like there's there's not the number of people better than him is pretty small and so i i think that i think he stands to gain the most quite honestly if if leaf dealt him i i think it could just change his life and you know this place is a nut house it's a friggin nut house and we love it and we live here and we're part of the nuttiness oh i'm thrilled about it it's the middle of may and we're just here join the party we'll just we could just keep the cameras rolling for four hours we could just keep talking about everything and someone out there

would listen like that's the amazing thing like this is what i love about being around a team where people care but like it's it's a lot if you're playing here and if your family lives here and all that stuff so by all indications though it doesn't seem like he believes that if he left everything would be better and like you think about things like the all-star game coming up in toronto and how much he probably wants to be a part of that and be on the team and represent the city and the organization in in his hometown and i just don't think he believes like if i move to a different team it'd be better for me but from the outside looking in i think we would all make that decision for him right well if you're in it you can't think that way right yeah the minute you

like play for a team or work for a company and you start thinking oh i'd be better at that company like i just think once your mind goes somewhere else it's hard to put that genie back in the bottle so i get like he's all in on being a maple leaf as he said even he reiterated recently like this has been his whole lifelong dream like i i get that it would probably be crushing but it doesn't sometimes as we all know in our life like sometimes what you don't want is the best thing for you and so that there's a possibility that it's funny you bring up the all-star game so i was just in that arena called now fla live arena that arena in just the middle of nowhere kind of near the sawgrass mall in florida kodak blacks place yes the house that kodak built and uh but i was

in the fresh coverage room but i had a flashback because i was there obviously in the leafs are going down oh three and i was like last time i was in here it was like shanahan and marner up on a stage announcing the toronto all-star game and i'm like it's just so anyway so weird i don't know i don't know why my brain's going there what what what in your estimation does this team not have why isn't this worked what do they need to do whoever they move And I don't want to. Here's the thing, because inevitably what happens when when things get out is in comment sections on Twitter, all that sort of thing. This stuff comes out and it becomes like a dog pile on a certain player. So the reason I don't want that to happen on Mitch Marner, I don't want that had Marner or Matthews, Nylander, any of these guys.

But if you're the Leafs and if Dubas is extension assigned to remember in this alternate reality, he has signed the extension already. What do you believe they believe they don't have? oh man i i don't know what they think i'll just speak from what i think they don't score enough two goals in the last seven playoff games isn't that nuts how is that possible well it's it's a thing and it's been a thing as you well know that when it matters the most they don't score enough because you just iso the big guys and you know whose fault that is the fans obviously and the media yeah yeah exactly this is that this is what that shit pisses me off it's like oh it's hard to play here well i mean imagine playing another sport where people care they're playing european

like soccer over in europe yeah like just just tell me your baby without telling me your baby being lebron james right so they don't score enough when it matters and this is where i think i've got to where they have to change so and kyle kind of references kyle dubas in his press conference i think that they believed all they had to do was put the blinders on and just folk like any negative feedback any negative thing that came along in terms of a result like losing in a playoff series they believe they just had to push forward and eventually it was going to work and we've reached the point where that you can no longer say that like and i think that unfortunately a sort of a fallout from that mindset is that these players just believed

okay just keep doing what i'm doing and eventually it's going to work but they keep doing the same things and it's producing the same result and they don't even recognize like i didn't hear one guy just say I needed to be better or whatever. That's an interesting thing. Not a single person said we need to be better or I need to be better next year. I don't believe that they believe that. That's terrifying, Chris.

I think that they believe if we just keep doing it, eventually one year it's going to work. Okay, LeBron James would tell you after every season, whether he's won or not, that he needs to be better. They're going to luck their way to a championship? I don't mean luck. I think that they think that, okay, so... That's what they think.

But they think that, you know, to be fair, Auston Matthews had the most shots, the most scoring chances, everything, in that Florida series, but he didn't score. And John Tavares didn't score. And I think that Tavares had what? He had a breakaway for sure. Couple.

Close ones, yeah. He had chances. Really good chances. Austin rang a shot off the crossbar at the start of game three and a bunch of other chances. A chance in overtime in game five at the side of the net

and all kinds of other stuff in the middle. I think that they just believe in next year, they won't be snake bit in that situation. But here's the thing. At a certain point, they need different types of players. they need a different mix and i think what they need need more than anything they need to be a little less comfortable in that dressing room you know what's great about kyle dubas honestly

it's all true is he did create a situation where like everyone is valued where i think he's really created a modern workplace for pro sports and i think pro sports need to get there but maybe it just got a little too comfortable for some of those guys and comfortable how can make that a little bit more tangible for people that have never been in a dressing room well they're challenged by the coaching staff for sure like we've seen that like you know remember the problem was remember early in the year is a game after arizona and keith called out his big players and then the next day he walked it back because the big players had their feelings hurt right but he's definitely pushed d lander in particular of of those big players like i've heard him give critical

commentary in the media and push him and see it at practice and things like that but i just walks it back with him i just think that they've never they've never felt in danger of being traded they've never felt that like the results of this game could change everything for whatever reason like they it just feels you know like marner's answer after game five it's like he's like he thinks something's going to change like well we all have years on our contract you know like that's how he thinks it'll change when we want it to essentially right but i think that management now has to proactively go in and drop a little bomb in there and make it less comfortable introduce a new dynamic trade one of the star quality players for another star quality

player who everyone's not sure about you know you got to incorporate this person now into the mix and everyone's just a little less comfortable in a good way you know comfort is things need to be hard usually when you get to your best spot in life right like it can't if if it was comfortable it'd be boring and easy right i i find that you get the most out of yourself when you're a little bit uncomfortable and so i i just think it's gotten a little too comfortable there for the players and i think a lot of that is good like they've tried to protect them from the weight of the market they've tried to protect them from the pressure i think they need to get more guys in the dressing room that just want to chew through leather to win that and i'm not saying these

guys don't care i just don't know if they know they just don't have enough they got to change that mix right at the you can graft all the luke shens and nola charries and ryan o'reilly's like who all, I think, in various ways play great or well. And they've done that for a few years, Thornton, Foligno. Who else can we name? Wayne Simmons. But the whole thing is built on the guys making half of the salary cap at the end of the day.

Yes. Ultimately, they have changed the other $40 million, give or take, constantly. And some of it's been better than others, but they've constantly changed the other $40 million. But the $40 million at the center is designed that those guys will win you series. and they're never all hot at once how about one of them being hot when it matters yeah yeah like

i didn't see like look at they played pretty well in game four and five sheldon keith said they lost in the first three games none of them were hot in games one two or three exactly so like based on keith's words we should not care about how games four and five went right if that's when it was lost then what was the point of the rest of it well i mean i think he was talking in sort of hindsight like man if we had just won one of those fucking games where we had they were ahead in two of them if only we hadn't put ourselves in a position where only four teams in the over 100 year history of the nhl have come back from yeah no shit right here's the first one to praise nylander after the season by the way i just didn't want because he was great yeah here's the thing

they win game two in which they were up to nothing a game they kind of have to win yep it allows you to go and and have a crappy game three which they did yep because they rally in game four even if you lose game five and in the way they lost game five and you're going back to florida down three two you're still very much in that series yep like one game changes everything it's crazy i mean playoffs are crazy it's hard to win let's we have to acknowledge that i mean we're long into this podcast yes and it's small sample size but they're always on the wrong end of the small sample size right i mean i actually like analytics so this is don't take this the wrong way but everybody here likes analytics i'm tired of having to say prerequisite every conversation with fucking

i love no no it's not your fault i hate this no every time we have this conversation you know what i'm a big analytics believer fuck man have you been listening to the show for a decade we've always been big analytics believers but it's okay to say maybe the numbers aren't the whole story is it not yes like you can't always put your hat on the expected goals thank you thank you and i think expected goals i actually find it a helpful measurement it is it tells you who's getting the best chances from the best spots where you're most likely to score it's actually just common sense and there are plenty of games there are games periods uh game and several game stretches throughout these playoffs where guys like Matthews and Marner and

Nylander were at the not Nylander sorry Matthews Marner and sometimes Tavares were at the bottom of the expected goals chart and well here's here's further context Austin Matthews was about at the top from the leafs end of expected goals and had lots of chances I know for a fact that he was injured okay and I know that they're still working out his treatment plan and I don't think surgery he's totally off the table for him and so what that tells me is okay he's he's having expected goals that he's he's getting shots from spots that you would expect to score from but there's other reasons why he didn't score it's probably that he's not at 100 maybe his shot wasn't as dynamic as it would like to be maybe he wasn't moving in a way to be able to all the above so

like the number doesn't tell you everything you can't just be like he's unlucky no yeah it's not just a luck-based stat there is some luck in there in small samples i get it and when you when you get those numbers put out on twitter people kind of just take it as a catch-all like this is what happened and this is the number and this is the result and how could that be look how good they were i think i think it's a very small day but yeah yeah but it's a loud day it's a very loud day yeah it's like the contrarians that come out and be like wow the leafs lost 4-1 in that series but i'll tell you like they sure should have won yeah you can just i don't know if this is this is probably really melodramatic but as a fan like it's gonna take a while for me to forgive them

for game three like that effort the effort wasn't there everything felt on the line in that game coming off of Tampa you're like this is the series right here this is our entire seven years of this core is all in this game three because you can't go down 3-0 because people don't come back from 3-0 and then that fart and effort it felt so demoralizing as a fan even though I felt like hey they could probably come back from 3-0 I'm still like cross my fingers that it could happen but as a fan watching that game that was just heartbreaking i literally wrote an obit that night about their season and you were right well once every couple weeks but yeah yeah but like it was so obvious that they were dead then like yeah i couldn't they called it a must-win game they said

all the things ahead of time i think that that will go down as the this era's defining game i really do i think part of why we're sitting here under this cloud of like what is going to happen next is is because of how they lost to florida yeah they really believed in the front office like they believed if they kept at it if they added the right players if they did the right things that they were going to go on a long playoff run and then they win in tampa they come back in two of the games yeah they were maybe a bit lucky but they were plucky and they came back and they won three overtime games on the road and they had it going on and they drew florida florida boston got beat out the path is right there all the things we talked about i think they felt that

internally and then all of a sudden bam they're down three nothing their big players haven't scored in those three games the team has produced like no offense and florida and i say this with respect because florida might win the stanley cup but florida is mopping the floor with them and i think that caused it wasn't just that they lost it was how they fucking lost yes it was an domination earthquake in the front office i think i think that was like it shook everything and and they're still recovering from it and i think that that's that's a huge thing that you're just saying so like that's they're they're they're shell-shocked at the moment if if yes and i because they didn't look at it what what day is it that series started like two weeks ago i know two weeks

ago we're having this conversation it's like wow they they gutted out that win they beat the lightning out now the path is ahead of them they have home ice advantage at them yeah we should be doing our uh game seven recap like you said um yeah but i'm just saying like two weeks ago they were feeling good yeah and then within about six days the world was crashing down and you felt that as a fan too watching that game so if they lose the way you outlined uh a couple minutes ago uh they lose game one they hold on to the lead in game two they go into game three they have a stinker and they're heading into game six down three two but still very much in the series are we having any of these conversations today well maybe a little bit but i don't think it's quite as

damn right like they undid let's call it credit they won a playoff series but they undid the goodwill immediately of winning that playoff series by losing in five in a week and nearly being swept frank yeah in a week they they spent like that was uh people sent me uh more congrats the night the leafs made it through against tampa than like when my son was born then like when i got married like well you were working on that leaf series victory more than you're working on your son so he was asleep he was asleep the son took all of five minutes yeah yeah no kids are really easy jesse so more effort went into you You're birthing that series victory.

Hey, hey. Sorry, SL. Hey. Yeah, man. Like, they spent it so frigging fast. This fan base was euphoric. Adam, can I play the who's coming back game with CJ that you and Steve play? Do it.

This is a good time? Do it. Okay. This one's going to be so hard. Because I don't know who's choosing who's coming back. That's true. You know what? You were right on a wild percent of them.

and the ones that you were wrong on ended up being right later. Like Engvall, for example, you said going. He ended up going, albeit later. I feel the pressure because I think I've had a good percentage on this. Yeah. This could be the year I go like 30%. I might have to go back a grade or whatever. All right.

So this will be opening day. Are they a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs organization? Ilya Samsonov, RFA. He's here. matt murray 4.6 million dollars for one more year he is not a maple leaf ltir or gone he's not a maple leaf ufa eric gustafson not a maple leaf wow 800 grand for one more year mark giordano he's still here 1.1 million dollars for two more years connor timmons still here luke shen ufa Still here.

Lilligren, $1.4 million for one more year. Still here. McCabe, $2 million for two years. Still here. UFA, Justin Holl. He's no longer Maple Leaf. $5 million, one more year. TJ Brody.

Still here. 7.5, five more years. Morgan Rielly. Still here. Zach Aston Reese, UFA. He's gone. Wayne Simmons, UFA. He's gone.

nice still here michael bunting ufa he's gone 1.1 sam lafferty one one more year still here ufa nola chari oh 50 50 like i i think he's still here but i'm not i mean i shouldn't say i'm so confident with all the rest but 51 49 can you like i don't know someone made like graphics or emojis can i put like i think but like a little less confident are we or do we force cj to make a decision you do a lukewarm okay you do a yellow light if i have to i'm gonna say still here but i'm not you know he's got he's gonna have options but he wants to stay so like check mark x and line somebody better keep be keeping track of these two oh someone will all summer last year every time something happened it was coming up hey do you remember what you said do you remember

This is going to bring me great anxiety for the next four months. David Conf, UFA. He gone. UFA, Ryan O'Reilly. He gone. 2.1 for three more years, Callie Yarncroke. He's here. UFA, Alexander Kerfoot.

He's gone. 6.9 for one more year, William Nylander. He's here. 10.9 for two more years, Mitchell Marner. if i have to guess he's gone your phone buzzed the second he asked it wasn't about that though i know i was just like 11 million for two more years john tabaris he's here 11.6 for one more year austin matthews he's here there's a lot of roster spots though around if what i say is true There's a lot of players to be signed or traded for.

Are you going to ask about those guys? Yeah, we can do the LTIR guys. We got Jake Muzzin. I mean, his career is done, unfortunately, I believe. LTIR. I don't know if they're going to put him on LTIR or maybe trade his deal somewhere. But, I mean, he's not going to be on the lineup. Nick Robertson, $800,000 for one more year.

Still here. Bobby McMahon, $800,000 for one more year. Still here and in the NHL. Ooh. Victor Mete is an RFA. i have no opinion i'm just not i honestly i would be no i assume he's gone but maybe he stays around cheap and he's depth i'm not sure all right um and i want to ask about this player just because he's on the cap friendly page and i think a lot of people want to know because they have no idea

what's going on um what have you heard about rhodion amirov i haven't heard anything recently um but you know he's got a very serious health issue and i think we should be hoping for his quality of life more than him as a hockey player unfortunately yeah but i don't i haven't heard anything recently but you know he's got brain cancer so um you know my mom died from brain cancer i've seen firsthand anyone who followed gordon he's a tragically hip i mean he's a young young man and i think that bodes well in terms of the kind of treatments they can give him versus someone a little older and i know the last time i'd asked and again it's been months he was still hoping for himself to keep the light on to keep playing but um let's hope for his health

more than anything related to hockey yeah uh okay so um did you mention matt murray in there i did yeah okay off the top and you say he's gone you said not a maple leaf which i would file under the Marlies are not the Maple Leafs. Or is Robida Island not a Maple Leafs? Your term, by the way. The Growlers aren't the Maple Leafs. This is the hard part. I don't know who's making the call.

Oh, yeah. I think if it's the current administration, they'll find a way to Peter Morazek him. Okay. Question then. Kyle Dubas. Add that to the list. I'm not doing that. Still a Maple Leaf. I'm already ruining myself.

I'm not doing that. okay i i don't know like honestly i'm i'm really conflicted on it okay because i don't know the nature of what he's dealing with at home and so like i feel like it's difficult to speculate with that i mean look it's it's unfair probably to all those players that i'm speculating all that stuff three days after the season but with kyle and and what he said about his family i just i don't i honestly don't have any insight into what's going on there and so like normally i would say mlc board seems to want him back this is his team i think there is a path forward even though they're it's a frustrating end to another season but the x factor is i'm not sure what's going on

at home and so i it's i'm guessing on something that's probably pretty personal in nature for him okay okay well you guys are the bear actually forget that let's get rid of holland oats goal song yeah let's go fuck that song i don't i don't know they've somehow stuck to that year after year after year i hope they keep do you guys like it no because i nobody does no i thought it was cute for a little while and then i'm like it's not cute when it's associated with all of your worst memories right that's like seen at the end of the game though do you know what's frustrating what when somebody smashes your glasses that could be frustrating jesse almost smashed these glasses pretty bad there

uh no what's frustrating is knowing that a show or a movie has been released in another country and you may have friends in that country who are able to watch it but you can't that is frustrating yeah nord vpn what do they do they they allow you the ability to with over 5 000 server options no show is out of reach you can use the link nordvpn.com slash dangle and receive a huge discount on a two-year plan uh it's a two-year plan plus four free months it keeps your security encrypted we all love to binge but privacy is a big deal too threat protection they've doubled down on keeping you safe with their new threat protection feature it is risk-free so you get your money back within 30 days if you don't like it and definitely check out the link it's nordvpn.com

slash dangle for that deal and of course obviously um you know never get locked out of anything other countries have better shows than us i'm just gonna say like other streaming services they got the good stuff they do got the good show in this country i was when i was down in mexico like i was like three years ago i binged their tv on their some of their stuff it's so much better than canadian as streaming services and less expensive nord vpn check it out so with the leafs does anybody have any leafs related questions remaining for cj will the leafs be the second team in arizona betman's gonna move the leafs to arizona to save the franchise no and uh as i've said repeatedly for everyone awesome matthews also is not gonna go play there

either so on that because he might not have anywhere to play tempe uh residents of tempe voted no on the new arena uh next to phoenix sky harbor airport uh currently it's a dump so they chose like literally they chose a dump that caught on fire last year over the new redevelopment plan now well they chose not to give a bunch of taxpayer money well to have that dump become something that isn't not in those words i don't know if it's a whole lot no we've we've been again i'd rather it be a dump we've been against i i understand that and let me explain where we're going with this yes it's very funny well it's because and it's because of that i i i'm i'm in total agreement with you guys and it's because of that that you made the residents still

choose a dump over an arena because of these couple stipulations that uh xavier gutierrez and his group asked for and needed as a part of this as a part of the full redevelopment project So on City of Tempe Proposition 301, 302, and 303, the votes were 56% no on 301, 56% said no on 302, and 57% said no on 303. And here's what they actually look like, because I got to tell you what each of these propositions were about. Well, I'm sorry, not propositions. Here's what the phases would have looked like. arena would have gone in 16 000 seats 54 000 square feet of uh retail 1100 parking spaces 1500 square foot emergency response and public safety facility the second phase would have been

the practice facility and operations headquarters 68 000 uh square foot outdoor event plaza 50 000 square foot music venue 200 room boutique hotel 160 000 square feet of class a office space 80 000 square feet of retail and 195 multifamily units the third phase 177 000 square feet of class a office space 300 room conference sorry 300 room conference hotel up to 600 units of multi residential family uh and 39 000 square feet of retail and the fourth phase the last one 1200 multifamily units 143 000 square feet of retail this would have included it's a lot of numbers i know this would have included it looked like it was going to be beautiful i will say it did it did the renderings were amazing the agreement for property tax quote

relief for 30 years which reportedly amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 million dollars that does not get into the taxpayer money now when they make these estimates they are conservative about about them the idea that it would be 700 million dollars to me is farcical it's probably double yeah and that number actually went up because the original tax breaks projection was around 500 million and then now they're saying it would be about 700 million you guys know how they do this they're like let's let's let's minimize it and then afterwards once they sign a deal fuck them yeah you know it's the way 22 year old cj used to do his monthly budget there you go oh yeah yeah i'm not gonna go out to the bar this month or have any fast food or

you know i'm gonna keep it tight yeah and and you were accidentally 200 million dollars off yeah you know that's just how it works well and now i'm still digging my way out yeah speaking of 200 million dollars steve uh the public would have had to put 200 million dollars in infrastructure costs into this because sometimes you get the developer to pay for it but not in this case they didn't want to uh infrastructure costs including sewers and roads power lines things that the city would be bearing the widening of the wealth gap also drew criticism as some of the condos reportedly potentially had million dollar price tags now in toronto that's not crazy a million dollars it's still a fucking crazy number they have a lot of space in the

desert though that's right you know when we don't have a lot of land so things that you know it's it's supply and demand the average house price there would be like what 325 350 something like that not a million dollars like it is here um now this is this is where it gets sort of interesting and i want to run this news report for you we're not going to run the we can't run the video but we can run the audio and this is from a local news station in uh arizona news 12 arizona and this guy in the first i would say two minutes of it and that's all we need to hear perfectly sums up the arizona perspective because i think we've we're coming at this from that from from the side of well why don't they just simply do it it's a fucking dump it's like just

do it but this guy kind of sums up a little bit more about where the coyotes are and then i want to talk to cj about it because i wanted to set that story up properly there were so many details it's really important that we get this can we run the video or no i don't believe we can i don't think they're going to call us on it but let's just not for and just listen to him because he he speaks very well about it all right thanks now we turn to team 12 political insider bram resnick bram the results coming in about two hours ago reactions are still very fresh and in some cases raw this was billed as the greatest deal in arizona sports history so what happened to put it simply, they didn't read the room right. They totally misread the room in Tempe. This is a

different kind of election, an off-year election. You have a different kind of voter. The voter was older. These are folks who had voted in several elections before. So they knew the community. They were connected to the community. And the message sent by the coyotes clearly didn't resonate. Also, you have to ask whether any community right now would approve any kind of tax that in any way might fund a sports team. Those are on the outs. They are not popular at all. And whether I know there's a lot of people upset about this, the message sent by the no side suggesting this was a subsidy, the coyotes were going to get a tax subsidy from the city. Clearly the coyotes were going to get a big chunk, hundreds of millions of dollars in future tax

revenue to support the project. It just didn't go down well. It's just not the right audience for this kind of message. Yeah, Bram, so obviously, like you said, not the result that the Coyotes wanted. So what are the steps ahead for the team and really also just for the city of Tempe? City of Tempe, it's over. Four mayors, the current mayor,

the city council were repudiated in this election. They're not going to touch this again. The question for the Coyotes is you're playing in Mullet Arena, a college arena on the ASU campus that seats 5,000 people, was supposed to be a bridge to the new arena where everything was going to be just peachy. That's not happening. That's a bridge

to nowhere. If I'm the Coyotes right now, if I'm Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the NHL, I'm getting on the phone to Matt Ishbia, the new owner of the Phoenix Suns, and saying, hey, can we play in your arena? Because the idea of three arenas, three major league arenas in a community of this size was always it always never made any sense the ideal matchup would be to have the suns and the and the coyotes back where they were yeah before where the coyotes by the way had a lot of success they did problems with that arena right of some obstructed view seats but i'd call this beer right now because he could probably get this team in a bargain price if he wanted yeah the team that has no future so let's leave it at that um it's a it's a situation that

i think that we've never seen before one of the i always talk about this one of the first topics we had when we started this show in the very first episode um nearly 10 years ago nearly almost 10 years ago to the day literally two weeks shy of 10 years we talked about when are the coyote is going to get this situation sorted out we've now we're now a decade into this show and you bring in a guy like xavier gutierrez who is known for taking distressed real estate and turning it into profit and being able to flip it and revitalize they could not get this thing past clayton keller posted a sad emoji craig morgan said there's this is an existential question cj you've been on this since the beginning what is your sense of things i got

about six trips to phoenix in a short period of time covering those bankruptcy trials was that in 2010 yeah i think so i was at cbc jim balsley a long time ago i was young um young cj well unless that that matt ishbia that that is mentioned on on on the report there like that's the hail mary the i don't like you can never call anything the final Hail Mary, but I think right now we're focused on where the Coyotes are moving and when. Is that where we're at? Gary Bettman called it a...

I mean, he had a profile published in the Sports Business Journal earlier this week, and Alan Walsh, who loves Gary, tweeted. He's like, hey, he was trying to have a victory lap before the vote because they all thought that this was going to succeed. I'm okay with respect to Alan. No, disagree with him. That's fine. well there was optimism and hope this would get through my sense all along was they knew it was going to be close turns out it really wasn't that close it was pretty resounding no but i don't

think that they thought i can't tell you exactly what their plan b c and d is but i they they weren't like last night like holy shit i think that they're thinking now okay now we got to go down the next roads but i think that there there's been preparations being made including meetings with the owner of the Jazz. Sorry, I'm drawing a blank. His name is Ryan Smith in Salt Lake City. Obviously, there's been a lot of talk over the years with Houston, consistent meetings with Quebec City,

although I don't think Quebec's likely to get the team. But I think the NHL has other places that they could pivot to. And, you know, we all know at this point their priority would be to remain in Arizona. And I want to say this just from my mouth. I think Arizona could work with good ownership and the right building. We've seen that it can. Yeah.

But the problem is, I know you say they have bad ownership at this point in time, but they don't have a building. They need an owner who's willing to build that building if they can't convince a taxpayer there. So but the thing is, is that this was going to be the third sports arena in the area at a huge area, though. Yeah. But you got to you got to how many sports arenas are there in New York and Toronto?

There's there's two. And Toronto's bigger. you know i think you got to have i think you got to have a couple of these teams split these places don't you think so they were in american west arena africa american airline in the 90s yeah they were there and it worked they had uh it was right there 40 million dollars in losses per year at one point because of the lease agreement that they were in and that's what caused them to move out to glendale and build that new arena there the problem that's where the problem started because they wanted to build in scottsdale at that time and scottsdale said no

and scottsdale if i can tell you with certainty if they built a nice arena in scottsdale every single nhl writer would tell you like you got to go watch your team play there and every player when he got to free agency would want to live there and play their amazing spot in the world instead glendale gave you know came with a handout built the marina in a it really is in middle nowhere i've been there tons of times for games um it's a night it was a nice arena it is a nice arena honestly like if you just walk through the doors you're like wow this is nice Like there was nothing wrong with the arena. It's barely used.

Except for where it was built. That was the only problem. It didn't service the fan base. It was a nightmare to get to and from at the hours games would be played. Obviously when you have the choice of sitting in traffic or maybe just watching a game on TV, eventually you start watching a game on TV instead of going. And it was distant.

And, you know, and quite frankly, the organization stopped paying their bills in Glendale. I'm pretty sure Glendale is not a big city either. Like the Arizona Cardinals play in the stadium right next door. they have the super bowl there and all that but i'm pretty sure the taxpayers in glendale a relatively small city are still paying for the arena like i don't think that you know so they

they bolt on them and you know i don't live in maricopa county where the vote was this referendum was held in the last week or two but they don't want to put the bill for a new arena and that's their prerogative i don't i just don't see another option at this point yeah and the arena only worked this year because there was this this idea that they were going to build in tempe right it's like We go through the short-term pain for the payoff. Well, now there's no payoff. I honestly, I don't see the Coyotes playing games in Arizona next year. I just don't.

Yeah, the HBS situation is interesting because he just bought the Phoenix Suns like six months ago. You know, that deal went through. So it's either they leased the arena from him and then they have to retrofit it to improve all of the sight lines because that was a huge problem during the 90s where there were so many areas in the arena where you couldn't see the hockey game.

well and they but my understanding is they just upgraded it for 500 million already yeah so what are you gonna put another 50 100 million you're asking this guy who just spent billions of dollars on a basketball team and hundreds of million dollars on his arena to fit it for the basketball team to now spend more money and bring in this new tenant it doesn't seem like we do know that robert sarver was completely against the hockey team being there too like he was the biggest right he's not in the picture which is great right so that so maybe the other side of that is you go well if you want to if you want to do more yeah you're hoping your fingers crossed he buys the team from me well i'm just gonna say is xavier gutierrez gonna hang on to this team now

like does it make alex morello who owns the team sorry xavier you know works for them i think he's team president that's what i mean sorry i always get them i apologize you know the play for morello too there was all kinds of plays but you know i think they were gonna have a casino nearby that he would control at that spot i i don't know where he goes maybe maybe he wants to be the one to move it that's never i don't think that's been his focus i mean quite clearly they were they've worked a long time honestly i met with these guys uh times a flat circle at least a year and a half ago they came through toronto and i had a coffee with them and they showed me the plans for this arena district like the whole thing so this is before like they've they've been at this for a

long time they they wanted to be in arizona like i should be clear on that but now that they it appears that they're at the end of the road with this project and i don't think there's a lot of other places they can think about pivoting to you know maybe he looks at selling the team i'm not sure the machinations that have to happen but i love when you use that word well because there's a lot of machinations like this isn't as simple as oh yeah just move over here but we did see you know the atlanta thrashers when they moved to winnipeg the announcement was made may 31st so there is precedent to do it on a tight time frame and it's going to be an interesting couple weeks so um how long can they stay in a everybody calls mullet arena a 5 000 seat arena i was under

the impression that after the retrograde or the upgrade excuse me that they uh uh that they had to lower that to 3200 i think 5 000 is what it used to be 3200 i think is what it is for an nhl game now uh how long can they play in that arena without knowing what the future is i have a hard time seeing how they play there next year unless look at maybe there's a it was supposed to be like three to four years right but maybe there's a deal worked out with the sun's owner in the short term here and he and they're going to retrofit that arena maybe they can play there one more year while that happens like i i guess that's possible but if how long can they play there without a plan that something better is on the other side i i don't think they can even go

another year unless they have a plan that's tangible i mean it's such a first of all the players aren't happy like the nhlpa is not happy on behalf of the players that they represent the other owners aren't happy because it's just a total suck on what their profit could be revenues and i think again you stomach that pain if if there's something great on the other side well that's been the idea of great on the other side has been taken away by this referendum vote you'll keep in mind the city council and mayor supported it seven to nothing in november like if you were the coyotes and you're working there you're you're thinking that this is going to go in your favor now that the rug's been pulled out it just all signs to me point to relocation

now my question is why i i want to know what made them think this would work and why they had and i mean this vote um what made them think this would work and why they had such a difficult time motivating anybody to vote because i'm looking at the maricopa county uh numbers that uh were shared last night less than a third of potential voters turned out for this thing isn't that just normal in all votes nowadays not like that like look at our elections oh the no the ontario government was wildly bad and even that was better than this yeah this is like they have these referendums all the time in arizona like i do they okay oh yeah like that's part of okay if we go if you ask a follow-up question i'm not gonna be able to answer it no no but my

my general understanding of how it works there is that when there's big decisions from the city council it's it's normal course that it's put to a referendum of the people like far more than we're used to here great so but i'm guessing if you're always having these referendums about things you may or may not care about in your city town whatever i yeah it's not a lot of people but that was always the risk right yeah what are the actual numbers is it 30 000 people that voted uh the numbers are so it's 29,153 and it's a 16,000 seat arena they were voting on but at the end of the day you were you were down to the whims of 30,000 people it's a pretty small number of people exactly but less less than the amount of people it would have taken to fill the

building voted yes for this thing and it was mostly it was the young voters that they thought were going to show up didn't 12 something like 12 percent there was there was a tweet i saw from oh it was from bram resnick who we just saw who voted tempe turnout um by voters age 65 plus was 63 and made up 43 of all voters um that was one warning sign another 70 of ballots from voters in three of last uh three tempe elections and i'm trying to find i can't find the one that said uh youth voters were something around 12 like that's abysmal yeah but i'm telling you voting numbers in the whole world like they're down we're at we're at apathy levels everywhere on everything it's not great i mean we could go in a real existential conversation we got nothing

to do with the coyotes um can you bring in the edibles the whole business of pro sports is changing though i'll say that and a lot of these owners of course i mean you can get why if you're an owner you would like the the city slash the taxpayers to take most of the risk on building you a building and then you just extract as much capital out of the building as you can it's a good setup i just don't know how long that's going to work i mean look at like look at the broader world like nothing happens in a vacuum anymore like like inflation is going crazy in the world yep there's a lot of uncertainty out there in the u.s a lot of have and have not there's a lot of wealth gap there's a lot of you know there's an entire generation of people in

their 20s who were sold growing up that if you go to university you have a well-paying job you'll to buy a house and they're now looking at uh savings plans that are 30 years long to be able to put down a down payment we had a guidance counselor in the u.s we've had banks going to college yeah banks have failed in the u.s in the last like three months look what's going to happen next so the way these sports leagues are all built all of them is on this idea that every time there's a new rights deal for media rights or tv rights that the price goes up right that's that's that's the fundamental truth that's how the nba has grown the nfl right it's it's largely built on those media deals and but we're at a time where the media companies are not they're not they're not

profitable they're not profitable and that's why people are getting cut they can't monetize the audience to the degree they used to and here's the other problem technology is great for us right technology is not inflationary technology is deflationary the easier it gets to spread a message or to reproduce something the cheaper it gets the price of these tvs in this room are way cheaper than they would have been 20 years ago and by extension the cost of consuming nhl games or nba games it should be going down but the the market forces are making it go up and this is a it's like two speeding trains going at each other right now and that's pro sports like i actually don't know what's going to happen big picture in pro sports seriously because it's all built on

this going up like what's going to happen with the next canadian rights deal in the nhl but we see other leagues who know figuring it out the nfl just sold a single playoff game to streaming exclusive to peacock so nbc who has the nbc network said we're gonna buy this just for our streaming network network for peacock and it cost them 110 million dollars for that one game so the nfl has a way bigger audience than the nhl so but there are ways for these leagues to figure it out in the nfl with their giant audience with the biggest tv audience in the world is figuring it out well the nfl and the nba in particular have a global audience the nhl has not built that i mean there's there's obviously european countries the world hockey championships going on right now

where people in sweden finland like truly love the game of hockey and there's you can get a meaningful audience but there hasn't been like the nhl is falling behind there because that's that's where this goes down to now it's not just like what's your canadian audience like it should all be on a streaming service in some point in the near future and it should be available worldwide anyway yeah i don't know i'm on a tangent but it just i just i worry big picture about the whole thing yeah and this comes back to the nhl for 30 years diminishing their product and not growing the game internationally yeah i mean when's here's here's when was the last best of best tournament like we have to we need like dramatic change we need new leadership well or or yes or

some true intent to be bigger than what they've been. Would it be great if they were able to motivate young people to vote? The belief, well, okay. Speaking of which, speaking of which. I'd love to know how many young people voted in the last provincial election.

The belief is the coyote side spent less than a quarter million dollars to activate the vote, opting to bootstrap the campaign, while the opposition spent over $2 million, backed by high-power labor unions who would not have received

to guarantee that they would be the ones building the project so you know they spent an eighth of what the opposition did and expected to win this is politics and and their internal polls though told them they would win so this is an arrogant failure on and we know we know now that polls don't work we saw that with the trump election we know that those polls don't work we know that's out the window that was in 2016 i know that's why it's surprising always last on everything so so let me ask you this cj this is existential they they could have a a deal uh uh worked out with the phoenix sun owner it's mad madishiba or ishbia ishbia they could have that worked out now but if they do move and again this i can tell you they don't have that deal worked out i think they want

to have that conversation okay so i want to have that conversation so we don't know but it's not done like it's actually up in the air right now as of today i know this on good authority from multiple people involved the nhl is going to meet with coyote's ownership any minute now and they got to start working through what the alternate scenarios are one of them ishbia i think if it's relocation the most likely is hold on well let me run you through i want to get a 10 out of 10 give me a score out of 10 a market score out of 10 likelihood of these markets out of 10 these are the ones that have been thrown around recently. Houston.

Four out of 10. Kansas City. Four out of 10. Quebec City. Two out of 10. Atlanta. Zero out of 10. Whoa.

Atlanta needs to build a new rink, and I think they're going to be in line for a future expansion. But the whole thing is built around building a rink in a ritzy neighborhood outside of downtown. And by the way, don't base your takes on Atlanta hockey on what happened with the Thrashers, because there's a whole heck of a lot more that happened with the thrashers that which are reasons why the thrashers didn't work hockey can work in atlanta it just never got a great shot well i'm

gonna say the same thing if they leave the phoenix area it can still work i'm gonna say like under the right circumstances it could be amazing well we saw that scottsdale arena oh it would have got feels like the top five coolest places in north america yeah yeah yeah but like when that scottsdale thing fell through it was different leadership oh no it was the exact same fucking guys sorry um okay uh uh uh next one uh southern ontario that new hamilton arena that the oakview group is definitely not making for an nhl team for sure not they're just going to make it 20,000 seats have a nice surface and it'll be indoors for for the coyotes now low zero okay um what's your off the board pick because i have one more city well i think it's probably going to salt

lake city or something to do with the suns honestly i think so so salt lake city out of 10 what would you give it eight because the owner of the jazz tweeted today uh i didn't even know that yeah he tweeted today somebody somebody tweeted out uh reporter chris i am buying the team stanley cup playoffs always delivers please bring this to utah at wine ryan qualtrics and ryan smith is his name and he he just tweeted back and this is actually sorry this was a month ago he tweeted back in motion he the big rumors that came out this he met with the nhl board of governors yeah it was that he met with them and he was also talking about the ottawa sale so there's something there yeah the ottawa's staying in ottawa yeah oh of course of course so for now uh so there are

so many hockey fans there man and i feel bad for them yeah like oh yeah sorry this is not about fans no it has nothing this actually isn't a fan issue this is just like they never operated the business well no they didn't and that was the complaint all along they didn't they didn't have an arena that was worth going to and they didn't uh have a product worth seeing for a number of years as well and you combine the two the irony is look at their like i know draft picks they got a lot of draft picks like they have a chance to actually build this thing into something right now you you need a place for those players to play what happens if they end up building it in salt lake city like what a shame in a lot of ways like welcome to what it's like to be a quebec hockey

fan i guess right quebec city yeah your team wins a cup the year they leave shit should have kept them i guess and then they've had a chance to go through another generation and then win another cup yep like so now they're like a denver staple yep and remember there was a team in colorado that failed too oh yeah prior yep so it's like i i think it's smart business for the league to be in phoenix area yep but they just have never found a way to get it done and at a certain point here we are like we i think we're at that point honestly i was surprised by the vote i was yeah i i woke up i actually i went to bed early and i woke up and i made the mistake i was tweeting from bed yeah i made the mistake checking my phone

and I see a report of Chris and I'm like, well, this is sure to be hot fire. And I actually kind of forgot the vote was happening and holy shit. It's a real shame for Coyotes fans because if you've hung in this long, you are amongst the hardest of hardcore

fans in the entire NHL. In all the sports. In all the sports. I don't know how you do it. How on earth are you still here? Like Leaf fans complain about it. Holy shit. You should worship the ground you walk on. Can I say something that's unrelated but i just twigged my mom give it to us go for it the fans in florida were awesome in the second round yeah oh yeah like sunrise you mean yeah and i'd never been down there for a game

where there was any real buzz i've been there lots of regular season games over the years but i it it was awesome and even the local media coverage like seriously was busy like it was i remember i was in a matthew kachuk scrum in one of the practice days in florida and like it was hard to get a question in like you felt like it was like we were chasing down gary bettman during the lockout or something and everyone's like mr commissioner mr commissioner um like it was i'm just saying like because that market gets pooped on but like their team's winning and like it was it was legit there it was awesome the mathematical odds of what's happening in florida right now happening are ridiculous with the heat too you mean yeah the two eight seeds potentially going

into the final that's crazy that's crazy and we're four games away for each team that's awesome that's a great sports story i just wish it didn't happen at the expense of my favorite team you wish the least for playing florida in the conference final right now and uh yeah a little bit and also kyle lowry's with the heat good luck kyle i'm very happy for you did you see that there was one game at the end of the regular season florida carolina and had florida won like three of the playoff matchups would have been different anyway um i saw chris everything just performs on a razor's edge yes steve what did you just bring up there the heat yeah miami heat well i wanted to know um uh like you brought up something and i it triggered something in my memory and then i

just lost it immediately both teams in florida are the eight oh that's what i'm talking about yeah there has been conversations yet again despite betman saying uh a couple months ago i think it was at the gm meetings that there would be no changes to the playoff format is there going to be who's i haven't seen any okay oh okay so you haven't seen it i haven't heard any wind of anything changing and i haven't really seen a lot of talk now now that the players are speaking out about it the nhl feels no more compunction to change it up they're dying on this hill bud well they died in arizona last night yes but that was not related to the playoff format that's fair but they've died on hills before and been wrong cj is your rating of eight for salt lake city

higher than your rating for them staying in arizona somehow yes okay so you think it's more than likely that's what's going to happen yes but how quickly would that be announced because we know that well it has to happen quickly the thrashers one the thrashers to winnipeg one happened in like a couple days but it was may 31st they announced it today is may 17th okay I'm not saying that's the exact playbook. I'm not saying it can't be announced June 3rd, which is the first day of the Stanley Cup final. But I do think it has to be worked out here,

obviously, one way or another in the next couple weeks. And they can play in the Jazz's arena that's outfitted for hockey? As far as I know, yes, but don't take that to the bank. Okay, because they have a bid for the Olympics coming up as well, Salt Lake City. Right, and they already had the O2 Olympics.

And they already had the O2 ones. Who won the gold medal there? I don't know. Who did? there could be a 30 people in my parents living room it was amazing oh it's fucking awesome there could be another arena possibly that's just for hockey for this new team maybe i i quite honestly i went to bed last night and woke up and came here and i'm just speculating i haven't done all of my homework i just know that they're very high on the salt lake city possibility in a pinch

so that suggests to me that they can at least make it work if they have to i've never been to salt lake city i mean um we sent s a couple our basketball reporter we sent him a couple weeks ago for the all-star game in february if there was it wasn't much to do outside of that the core where everything was going on for all-star weekend he had lots of sodas because it's dry state right I just googled, are coyotes native to Utah? Can you still call them the coyotes in Salt Lake, right?

Well, they got the LA Lakers. According to Google, they can live almost anywhere. They've adapted to a wide range of habitats, and coyotes can be found throughout the United States and quite common in Utah. They have the jazz. They stole that from New Orleans, and they just moved the team and they didn't change the name.

I didn't know, yeah. Utah's not known for its jazz. No, it's not their team. But Kevin Weeks did just tweet out a picture of Salt Lake City. He's trolling a bit, though. Didn't he have another picture last night? Was it Houston or somewhere? Yeah, something like that. I'm surprised it wasn't in Salt Lake City.

I mean, sorry. I'm sure Kevin's hearing similar things to me, but I feel like he likes to stir it up on there. Absolutely. So, CJ, what to you is the most interesting story in hockey right now that no one's talking about? Oh, my God. STPM.

Who's going to play for the Stanley Cup, maybe? I mean, it feels like, is that it? I'm talking about behind the scenes. Not that I, see, I'm not of the opinion that the, you know, the Florida, Carolina, Dallas, Vegas matchups are bad. I think that's actually really good because it's great for the southern hockey markets and we want to see it grow. So I don't, I don't hate, I'm not hating on that at all.

So that part of it I'm excited about. I think it's going to be a great Stanley Cup final after these East and West finals are done. Outside of necessarily what's going on in the ice, is there anything that you're like, hey, keep an eye on? Hmm. If it doesn't get you in trouble, you don't have to answer that. No, it's not that.

It's just I've been so deep in the playoffs and the Leafs. Well, what's still being decided, right? Pittsburgh's looking for president and GM. I don't know how interesting that really is. I mean, big, big things ahead for that organization, but I think they're at the end of their road as a contender. Few places looking for head coach. I don't know.

I don't have a good answer for you. I'd love to give you just a tasty meatball. That's all right. Why isn't, I want your comment on this, why isn't Calgary allowing Bradtree Living, who is at the end of his contract and decided not to come back, why are they not allowing him to interview for jobs before July 1st? Because contractually, they have the right to stand in his way.

So, is Murray Edwards bitter? It's hard to read anything else into it than that. I mean, he walked away, right? Yeah, but we know that he didn't choose Sutter as the coach, so what's he supposed to do? Stay there? I mean, that whole thing is wild how that played out. They let him.

They promoted someone beneath Brad Treliving to president in Don Maloney when he left. Left in large part because he didn't think he could work with the coach any longer. And then Don Maloney fired the coach? I know. Like, it does, it almost asks, like, the sequence of events is almost asked backwards.

Almost. it's almost like you know and then they got this weird arena proposal you guys would love to read some of my chats oh i would sure to be i love you fly on the wall i got a lot uh i got a few different text strings with people who just constantly laugh at the way business gets done by broadly by nhl teams it's not just calgary or philadelphia or whatever like i mean it's also So Calgary is also a team that is banking on one political party to win an election so they can get a bunch of public funding to get their arena done.

After having a previous one fail. Yes. Because of themselves, by the way. They are the ones that failed that last deal. It worked in Edmonton, right? It went on and on and on and on for years, and then eventually they got that arena built. And it's a beautiful arena in downtown Edmonton

that, as far as I can tell, has not spurred on all this business around it. I just, Albertans are not the type that like their tax dollars going to frivolous shit like that. they don't none of us should be well none of us should be but i when i lived there i noticed it like they don't even a lot of times well they like they like not to be public health care why do i have to pay for that like that's that's literally sometimes the the mood out there so i'm shocked that a far-right party would even agree to this that's how desperate they are to win this

election but there's not a whole lot else going on in calgary like the flames are important so that's it's it's the sword that's hanging above them right like that's that's part of how this is oh baby in terms of the way the older i've gotten the more i've understood this stuff i'm like this is kind of dirty in terms of the way the league is run and the perception of the nhl what is it amongst non-nhl people do you have a good read on that on just how the league is perceived by like other people in sports is it really because steve likes to yell that's the worst run league in the world and it's a fake league that i'm serious i think what he calls it seriously it is but deeply do you do you have a perspective on that i don't i mean look at i'm so my whole life and career is

in this league and so what and i don't sit here and say everything they do is great like i'm not but i'm i may be part of the problem honestly like i'm almost too close no you definitely are i'm too close to the picture to see sometimes but i don't think that i think everyone just looks at them as just kind of like the cute younger brother like i you know i watched when i was in this i was in the states a fair bit the last month you know covering the playoffs like they get like moderate treatment on some of these you know the like the ESPN shows but like the you know they're they're not covering it it would be like if you asked me to speak about the National Lacrosse League like I'd be like oh there's this thing over here I don't really know what that is like that's kind

of how I think they're viewed that's how other all these the ESPNs of the world FS1 that's how they kind of look at the NHL it doesn't seem like they take it seriously it's not number four it's the big three and then everything's kind of below it what was it that Julian said about Mike Wilbon and tony kornheiser and on part of the interruption they're like they're like wow we really haven't been paying attention but here's our pick for the stanley cup yeah i mean that's the rights holder to be fair i haven't been paying attention to the nba like i'm aware of 100 are winning like but i don't yeah they are a multi-sport show whenever whenever there's an nhl star that shows an interest in football or baseball or uh basketball it's implied kind of like of yeah

of course they like those things but whenever someone from any of the other sports yeah like when brooks kapka was at the panthers game in march like i was like whoa what is this and every time someone who's an athlete in a different sport uh is at a hockey game or says that they like hockey it's with an air of isn't this silly isn't this silly that i'm here wow jj watt knows how to skate isn't it wild that he knows how to skate it's so niche that it's not even an option and it's wacky to even go to a game part of it is niche because it's a game played on ice though that's true that's true like i honestly i learned that the hard way as a kid like i was exposed to basketball and soccer and sports that you basically just have a ball and then of course a net yeah

and that's it and i think a lot of kids just don't get a chance to be exposed to hockey this is actually the argument for having teams in arizona and florida and carolina and everywhere We want the best athletes in all those places, at least some of them, to put skates on and become Auston Matthews. Auston Matthews, Matthew Nyes. Weren't the Kachuks raised there? Yeah, but they were raised by an NHL father.

They could have been raised on Mars. I'm just saying. And been exposed to the game. Their dad played in the NHL. And isn't Shane Doan's kid coming up through the ranks too? Right, but his dad played in the NHL. so like yeah yeah i'm presuming shane might have found his kid anywhere with skates yep it's more random families you know like austin's family has this history of like athletic you know they're

big his dad was a pitcher his grandfather was a notable basketball player like he was going to play a sport and be really good at it and probably lots of them he's a good golfer now and all this other stuff but you just want him not to be playing baseball like this is the all of hockey existing like way beyond when you and god when we're around is is predicated on young kids still playing the game and wanting to play the game and keeping the pipeline going 400 sticks oh man i mean everything everything yeah it felt like out of reach in the family i grew up like my parents i played hockey but i was never first of all i was never in danger of making the nhl so i'm not four goals what was it three three and 21 seconds three and 20 i mean at least i managed to do that

i made the coburg sports hall of fame let's go that's definitely not nothing but uh yeah i was not threatening but like the point is it fell out of reach back then and it's gotten even crazier and if you live in toronto i didn't live in toronto i mean it's a factory man but we also need the kids from other places yeah yeah and that's why we need best on best hockey we still need kids in like rural finland and in places like russia and hopefully at some point like asian kids like eventually coming playing the sport because they're coming to basketball right oh yeah basketball is insane though because like a guy can pick up a basketball who's athletic at 16 and be like made into an nba player like if you haven't skated by 16 it doesn't matter

how great your athlete you are you're never playing pascal siakam famously didn't play basketball until he was a teenager right so you why and he was a first round pick so that's an extra challenge that hockey has is you literally have to get kids at like five or six like if you're not skating by five or six the odds even doesn't matter what athletic gifts you have the act of skating is so unusual you have to develop muscles in a different way you have to learn to do things while skating like it's anyway as steve you've shown us yeah no i'm great now though are you no i can pivot though and i'm really proud that's you know what's an accomplishment it takes time well i'm not even making fun of you the difference between you and i is i just

got a chance to skate as a kid it took me like five years to be like oh okay this is fun in a way where i'm not completely useless right i haven't played hockey like in a long time i can skate but i haven't like played in pads and with a stick and everything you'd fly around me maybe not jesse i want to set up stpn like hockey nights like every friday or something we were on the rink and we all go and play somewhere in downtown you know it'd be good did i yeah i would have told this on my own show but i didn't tell it to you guys so you might not heard it around christmas time my family has always rented ice when we could and and like kids like my dad goes out on his skates to like you know my brothers get kids my sister has kids you know like it's

it's a wide skate and this year my my oldest niece now had a boyfriend a nice young man who came out with skating with us and like we got in a bit of a pickup game and i was trying to get around him and i went to lift the puck a little bit and i hit him dead in the ankle oh and i was like oh my god like what did i do welcome to the family kid i know you had across the wrist he was polite and nice but i'm sure he never wants to see me that's uh that's it's exactly like uh but in my mind i was like well i'll just like list lift it the puck above his stick and i got just caught him square in the ankle you got him though like the pickup football game and wedding crashers kohlberg hockey and crab cakes that's what we do

so even like that competitiveness comes out when you get a chance yeah um cj uh overdrive yesterday was talking about the leafs loss versus the oilers loss and then i'm gonna let you go because i know you gotta go this is a long one which one's worse oh i'm sorry i just got a text and i completely lost my train of thought leafs loss oilers loss which one's worse i don't know they both lost which would okay which one's worse for their organization that's definitely how both of them look at it yeah but i mean like they both thought they were going to win a stanley copper have a chance to and they're done sooner than they thought uh the leafs loss is

worse because they have bigger questions this offseason okay and i think that there's going to be bigger change in toronto than edmonton so i suppose that one's worse but like it's by degrees like at this point honestly it's it's get it done or don't fair enough okay well listen we'll wrap it up there cj's been gracious enough to give us two hours of his time cj thank you so much uh and you've got a brand new cj show coming out tomorrow with julian oh my god i gotta do it again just keep fucking podcasting man congrats no one was hired or fired while you were here yeah i did just get a text that invalidated some of what i said on on the show but i'm not gonna we'll just

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