The Steve Dangle Podcast - Hope in the Tunnel | March 27, 2018

Episode Date: March 28, 2018

On this episode, Dimitri Filipovic is HERE (00:00), what's up with the Canucks? (06:00), Detroit is bringing the band back (23:00), Toronto vs Boston vs Tampa (28:00), the Western Conference playoffs (43:00), Shea Weber played a quarter of a season with a broken foot (52:00), George Laraque said bad things (60:00), Brad Marchand is the best (1:14:00), the Golden Knights are still going (1:20:00), and the press conference; No trade lists and weird house things (1:44:00). Originally aired: March 27, 2018 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/jxMiDv5dCKU Merch: https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/fancydangleshirts Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Subscribe to us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/steve-dangle-podcast/id669828195?mt=2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Panago Pizza presents S.T.P. The Steve Dangle Podcast with your hosts, Steve Dangle and Adam Wilde. Alright, so here's what I think. I got an opinion. Before we bring on our first guest. Okay. The name of this show has to be the Phillip Podcast Fitch. That's what the name of the show has to be. See, the thing about that title is it sucks, and the easiest solution, I think, is this Steve Dangle PDO cast. I mean, that's kind of lame, though.

I think everybody's expecting that. What we need... A little bit, a lot of it clever. What we need is to bring on Dmitry Filipovich and get his opinion. Dmitry Filipovich, everybody! From the PDO cast. Dude, what's going on? Nothing.

I just clapped for myself there. No, no. We have a huge audience here, man. I think the Steve Dangle PDO cast is the better of the two. I don't think either are necessarily ideal. You know what? We're going to be talking here for a while, so we'll brainstorm. By the end of the show, we'll figure something out.

We'll put that one to the side. More important questions. Are you jam? Am I Jim? Jam. Am I jam? Yes. He won't understand that.

He didn't hear the last segment of the show. But I need to know if he's jam. We were discussing whether or not guacamole is jam. Jesse, comment? I don't think that's what we were discussing at all. Are tennis balls yellow or green? Yeah. So, Demetri, are you yellow or green?

Are we recording right now? Welcome to the show, man. I know. Yeah. Welcome to every show. I was not prepared for any of these questions. Well, we had a whole pre-show thing where you guys were like, this is what we're going to talk about, and then you just blindsided me like this.

Adam does that every show. Oh, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Sometimes you want to just throw people a little bit. So, yeah. So, yeah. What do you think?

Tennis balls, yellow or green? Um, green. Yes! Yes! I'm showing you a picture of tennis balls. Okay, but there's various shades of green on the screen. And, well, there's some yellow ones. What does Google say when you actually ask them the question?

What color is this? That one's yellowish. That's one Google image. Oh, let's just show our guests a variety of tennis balls of varying colors. A wet tennis ball is definitely green. Was that the question? Did you Google, Jesse, yellow tennis ball? Come on.

He probably did Google that. I would. Demetri, what should I Google? Tennis ball. That's fair. Wow. That's fair. That's a good one, too.

That's professional. I'm playing by the rules here, guys. I pulled up a Wimbledon Wilson tennis ball, and it's yellow. That's the real deal. Wow. Thank you. I think it's over. I think I won.

I'd actually like to report that tennis balls are yellow. Oh, sorry. Wait. my source just got back to me and in fact that is false and tennis balls are green i would like to challenge that let's go to uh toronto well we'll get to that in a second but first i gotta ask dimitri why is it a big deal to your followers that jean-francois berube the backup goalie for the chicago blackhawks is on waivers is he even backup he's i think he's he's does he exist how many games has he played that's that's the running joke so last year i was kind of calling into

question the fact that the islanders were carrying three goalies which teams rarely ever do right and berube was just in their press box all season and never made an appearance on the ice and then i had this whole running bit with my listeners can anyone prove that he actually exists this whole thing and so now whenever he does anything my mentions blow up with people alerting me and whoa so he exists at least in contract he was the islanders version of like you know with apologies to matt damon we couldn't get you on basically yeah no he barely ever existed didn't vegas get him somehow and then yes yeah they took him in the expansion draft from the islanders and then the blackhawks signed him to be like the third stringer which he's very good at he's got more jerseys than nhl games played

something like that hey at least he's making that nhl salary right he might not be not anymore yeah he's on a two-way yes oh is he i don't know if you have to be on waivers though as his agent i I should know the answer to this question. We don't know anything about him. That's the great thing about him. It's my favorite thing. But, I mean, if Chicago is sending him down, then who is playing net for them?

Is it Glass and… Anton Forsberg. Okay. And that's who they got? They got that from Columbus? Columbus. In the Saad Panarin trade. Okay.

And he was supposed to be one of Columbus' good prospects, was he not? Yeah, they had him and Corpus Allo, and then he sort of washed out of the AHL level and the Blackhawks took a gamble on him and it hasn't really paid off. Okay. He was the goalie Matthew sniped that OT winner on

earlier this season. Right. But you never know with goalies. Like five years from now, you could randomly resurface on Arizona and have a 925 save percentage. I mean, well, that would have been true until you said Arizona.

Anywhere. Anywhere else. I don't know where. It could be Curtis McElhinney and wait until you're 33. There we go. Be like the best backup. Right.

And Adam, Arizona embarrassed Tampa last night, so please give them some respect. You're right. Well, you know what? I'll be hearing from all their fan about it. Sarah Hall will tweet you as their representative. I know it's coming. Spicy.

Oh, come on. I like to tease them. They're there. They exist. We now go live to the angry mob outside. One person. No, that's mean. Okay, so I'm just going to run through, Dimitri, a few things.

Yes. But I think the first thing and the reason that Steve really wanted to have you on today Was the great city that you flew in from today? Yeah, it's one of the most beautiful places in the country if not the most beautiful fantastic climate great architecture fantastic lifestyle But not architecture Adam not necessarily the lot of exposed brick not a lot necessarily of hockey sense it seems Well entire city or just the management Because Toronto's winning, and I can't.

An Adam handshake is just a shank through the ribs. Absolutely. That's just all he does. A sharpened toothbrush. You said something, Dimitri, that struck Steve, and then when Steve passed it on to Jesse and I, it struck us. And this is a very telling statement, so can you drop it on us? I think, so yeah, I think what you're referring to is over the past three seasons,

the Canucks are the 30th ranked team in the league, and that's not counting Vegas, obviously. They haven't been in the league for the past three years, so they've been the worst. they've been worse than buffalo arizona and those two teams are sort of on the record trying to be bad yeah yeah and the canucks are on the record trying to make the playoffs during that time which strikes me as a bit of a problem um and i think the whole article kind of it stemmed around the fact that i was raising the question of why aren't people talking about this more and i think

it's kind of controlling the narrative a little bit what benning and lyndon have done in terms of given the record they've done a good job but no they've done a great job it was spinning everything into you know they want to rebuild the right way they point to other teams you can't bottom out fully because look how long the road is back to back to the top and I know I know and I mean look at Colorado

long road back to the top it was one season and the other thing is what they have working in their in sort of their defense is they're both quote unquote hockey guys trusted hockey men exactly and that buys them especially with some media members a long

leash to work through their mistakes and that's why you know you see someone like John Chayka in Arizona as soon as something goes wrong it's called in the question it's an indictment against analytics whereas whenever you sign Louis Erickson to a 36 million dollar deal

I'm sure it was a hockey decision and not analytics so actually maybe before we go deeper into the Canucks one thing that I've done a terrible job of explaining on this show is how people who are really heavy into analytics don't actually really trust John Chayka?

Can you explain that one? Yeah. Are you tapped into that? I don't know if it's necessarily a mistrust. I don't necessarily know John personally, so I don't want to comment on his character or his knowledge. I want you to personally assassinate him. Well, we've already assassinated his character.

Arizona. He's more of a he comes from more of a micro stats tracking background kind of like SportLogic. He has his own company, the StatLites, and they basically track all these micro events like zone exits zone entries loose puck recoveries everything in the neutral zone and so he bases a lot of his decisions off of that more so than

actually being a pure quote-unquote analytics guy uh sitting in his mom's basement looking at excel spreadsheets right like myself and a few others of course yeah um so that's why there's there's a bit of divide there but there's no question i mean just based on his age and sort of that background that he's more of a new school progressive type and people are just chomping at a bit to kind of call his expertise into question whenever anything goes wrong like it has this season in arizona for quite a bit are the canucks using and we'll get back to arizona because i definitely want to bring them up more but since we're on the canucks thing yep um are the canucks using any sort of analytics at all um i think they have a few members in their organization that are

collecting some of that stuff but i clearly based on the decision making it's it's obvious that it's not necessarily being considered when they're making their move so what's the biggest problem how long is this podcast it's long we got time get into the nitty gritty man that's I mean we I can't tell you how many shows we spent just talking about Brendan Leipzig this past

summer yeah so if and he's now a Canucks so get into whatever you want to get into and that was actually one of the smart acquisition one of the few things I agree with and see that's the problem the Canucks need to be doing more of that stuff sort of these low risk high reward moves acknowledging where they are and this ties back to that article where

it's there's been this delusion sort of that they're much better off than they are and this is going to be a quick rebuild and they're going to be back to their former glory very shortly and now we're going on three four years of them being the worst team in the league and you know brock had a great season before he got injured elias petterson has all these amazing youtube videos playing in sweden and that's all that's exciting but for a team that's been as bad as they have for the past couple years there's not nearly enough to show for it and that's sort of the crux of my argument it's sort of everything's been done in half measures as opposed to just acknowledging the reality of the situation just blowing it up would eric good branson and the

extension that he signed right before or is it right after the trade deadline would that kind of play into that half measure absolutely and just let's trace back this trade tree i know steve you love doing i love it so they trade ryan kessler because he doesn't fit you know they're going to acknowledge this rebuild so they trade ryan kessler for nick bonino and a first round pick which becomes jerry mccann all right that's great i like jerry mccann cool they trade jared mccann and other picks for eric branson okay that's kind of weird but all right whatever they get a firsthand glimpse of eric branson and that fact that he's what a fifth or sixth defenseman at best that angel level and instead of trading him and we saw what the market was

like at the deadline this year i mean they could have gotten at least a couple of picks i heard that a second and a fourth were available maybe even from a team in the city that we're recording in right now uh instead they're they're like you know what we need to keep this guy in vancouver and we're gonna pay him rather than just trading him and then if they don't want him so bad just sign him this summer and have the best of both worlds but it just that's the thing like jim benning gets propped up as being um sort of like a master scout and an evaluator come the draft and he's nailed quite a few draft picks but the problem is like there isn't this but he's not a g he as a gm you're not a scout you're a gm yeah so he doesn't understand like the tactician side of

the job where it's like you sort of have to juggle all these different things and have a broader picture of what you want your organization to look like three four years from now and it's been a lot of this sort of tunnel vision just one thing at a time and i don't think you can build a team successfully like that in 2018 fair enough well okay so is there anything that you've seen that leads you to believe uh the canucks will be either taking a different tact or or is there like hope in the tunnel like other than the young players that like is there any sort of are they going to be bad again next year hope in the tunnel is that a that's not a thing but it is now light at the end of the tunnel is what i meant i think i saw hope found an episode

well they just signed to a three-year extension so i don't think there's a lot of hope in the tunnel um shoot yeah it's not it's it's pretty bleak and honestly i mean you guys you guys probably experienced this um here in toronto with leafs fans when things weren't going very well just a little bit yeah there's this there's this delusion and there's it's like living in vancouver um and i'm not a fan of the canucks anymore i consider myself more of an objective journalist and i try to cover the league as a whole but like i can't help but hear how people are talking about it locally totally and it just seems like everyone's stuck in that like everything is fine um the deans are still here everything is fine um cartoon where like the dog where it's just like

there's fire all around him it's like no this is great erica branson here for uh for a couple more years yeah no this is this is excellent and i don't it's just not getting better and that's uh it's surprising that more people aren't kind of up in arms about it people are very content because they trust jim benning as a as a noted hockey man so well this summer you have 15 million dollars coming off the books with henrik daniel and yosi so there's a lot of money for you to do some things if you want to. Yossi. Yossi Jokin.

Oh. Yossi Jokin. I was like, what? You're talking about exactly the kind of player they could use. My goodness. So there's $15 free dollars. That's alarming. That's $15 million that are going to be used probably.

Are you taking it the wrong way? It's going to be reinvested in the Sedins, though, I think. Because isn't the thing that they're going to bring them back? I mean, if it's like a one-year deal, I'm perfectly okay with it. Because this team isn't going anywhere. Totally. And, you know, in Vancouver, whether it's been Linden or Bure, Naslund, it's all these former greats have ended their careers on different teams.

It's always weird seeing them in different uniforms. Seeing Matt Sundin in a Canucks uniform. Oh, gross. Which is, it's funny that Leafs fans look at that and go, ugh, but, like, he didn't start his career with the Leafs. Yeah, I guess, yeah. It just made it easier because the Nordiques, I think the Nordiques no longer existed,

so it was kind of like it was a little different, you know what I mean? Very interesting. Because you wouldn't see, like, Sundin as an Av, right? Not too many trade trees are like, and then the team stopped existing. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. Being in Vancouver and listening to how people talk, one of the most interesting stories, and Elliott Friedman would hate us bringing this up,

but was him talking about, and not just him, but many people talking about the Canucks feeding to the media that they were upset about the way that the trade deadline was being handled and how they were being treated, which it sounds like from you they're being treated with kid gloves. Oh, I think they're being pampered. a large segment of the population um in vancouver it seems to be content with where the direction is headed with the team and obviously there's a vocal sort of minority i'd say online message

boards that are freaking out about it and kind of calling some of the stuff into question but yeah i don't know where elliot necessarily got that from he wasn't necessarily reporting that as much as it was his actual opinion right that right fans were a bit too harsh on right well i don't know that he was even saying that i think he was just saying that it had affected I don't have the exact quote in front of me but it was something along the lines of it had permeated management and that it was casting a shadow

on them and that it was affecting decision making. I believe that was how it was put. Now he is not the only one to say that and they did leak to other media outlets from what we understand that they were upset with the way they were being talked about so you know I don't think

this doesn't just come from one person so I wouldn't want to pin it all on Elliot but it seemed to caused this like mini or mini explosion in vancouver in terms of you know i i didn't even know i didn't even know where the arguments were coming from it seemed like people were having different arguments and different conversations with each other um and and is it is that something that's that this management team does i like i said i don't know where this is coming from because when i tell you that they've been the worst team in the league the past three years like how are you supposed to talk about the situation it seems pretty bad like oh they've been worse than teams

who are actively bad so it's not ideal um i i think that happens in every market right especially canadian markets um like i'm sure in montreal right now that's happening definitely and that's why you get paid the money you do as a gm as assistant gm as a vp whatever to make the difficult decisions and tune that out and hopefully as you as you get better um and the team gets better people will kind of become warmer with the situation but yeah right now i mean i think people should be very upset with what's going on so we sort of talked about how like if you had asked me who's been the worst team over the last three years i i never would have guessed the canucks i would have assumed bottom half for sure but i never would have said the worst but worse than

buffalo there's just no way yeah especially with the uh the mckay year yeah there's just no way so what has gone wrong a and what do they need is the answer everything yeah the second question is a lot easier just they need everything um yeah when you're the worst team in the league you can use a bit of everything um the worst thing that happened was them making the playoffs the first year under jim benning um because as you remember or maybe you know but mike gillis's last year was the infamous john tortorella year which worked out horribly and the canucks missed the playoffs and then jim benning inherited that team and the core was still mostly in place and it seemed like they were gonna go in a different direction with a new gm especially a draft guy and they were

gonna rebuild and do this thing properly and then they made the playoffs that year and i think they sort of tricked themselves into thinking they were further ahead in the development than they were and then they threw a bunch of money at lou erickson and tied up their books and all this stuff and god does that sound familiar you know they trade for eric branson they trade for uh brandon sutter and give him a massive contract and i forgot about that he does have a big deal doesn't he yeah and then nick bonino is winning stanley cups in pittsburgh obviously they also have crosby and malkin right other guys i've heard of but uh nick bonino as well yeah and so it was just that kind of set them back and then now they're still not really acknowledging the reality

of the situation and that's it's it's tough to get better when you don't acknowledge that you have a problem to begin with so what are the bright spots you mentioned better and better better obviously i mean there was a legitimate discussion for him as the calder when he was scoring a goal every single game um and then obviously now barzal is running away with it but i'd say besser um petterson other than that it's not ideal i mean you know do they have any good like is the prospect what's the prospect pool looking like other than those two they have a goalie prospect in thatcher demko who's playing utica right now in the hl they're hoping that he's going to come up and sort of be the next kind of corey schneider um but other than that

like it's not ideal because they you know they passed on matthew kachuk for example to take ole ulevi and he's still playing overseas so we don't have anything to show for that yet um obviously going back to benning's first year they had a chance in nikolai ehlers and william neilander and they took jake vertanen instead who is a borderline replacement level nhl player at this point and that's obviously a problem and steve you and i actually i that was the drafted we uh we did a video in your in your bed yeah it was in my bed i was gonna say i was gonna say it's not what it sounds like but that literally happened we were in your bed recording a video yeah talking about uh the draft and recapping it but what i remember is actually we did um

i want to say it was for like low tide or something we did a mock draft we did and uh with with my pick i picked jake for tannin and everyone lit me up but i was like ah whatever he can score he's a big body i don't know the leafs probably like that whatever that'll be great yeah and then when the canucks picked him i'm like jumping up and down yeah yeah i remember that uh sorry i mean i was really i like william milander obviously but i i was big on nikolai ehlers at the time and i remember the pushback was well he played with jonathan druen in halifax you know how much of that is who he was playing with and how much of that actual talent now we're seeing in winnipeg that you know he'd instantly be the canucks most enticing sort of developmental piece and a reason

for people to come to games so yeah it's not so anyways how does a draft guy take the 10 more positive things yeah all right here i guess here last thing before we get to the coyotes you so you wrote that thing yeah how'd that go did you read the comments no okay good that's smart you've been around the block a few times um they're mostly people being like what are you talking about yeah the canucks aren't that bad and then some of them were like well yeah the canucks are obviously bad you don't need to write about it you don't need to be mean it's like but if you have the numbers to prove it how can people disagree with it what do you mean what am i talking about read it yeah does that ever piss you off when you put like several charts uh 1500

words whatever and people are just like i don't understand most of the people don't read articles though to be fair so you just have to accept that right yeah i've been told not to read the comments sometimes it's just it's too juicy sometimes it's fun yeah yeah you got to take it right the thing is with you is at least told not to have potato chips every day but i get lit up for my opinion from time to time as as everybody does but the thing about your opinion is it's actually backed up by math and so like i find that fascinating that like there's no there's no way around the fact that the canucks record uh or total points gained over the last three years is the lowest yeah there's no way around that and yet people can still find a way

to disagree and i find that fascinating it's amazing it's not it's not even like analytics It's like literally wins and losses Yeah Not advantage It was like point percentage Was it? It is point, yeah How many points

How many of the possible points In the past three years Have they accumulated And no one has accumulated Jesse, you look like The shifty-eyed dog From either Family Guy or The Simpsons

And that usually means You have something to say But I can't tell Now you're just staring At me silently So it's weird Yeah, yeah I think you made it weird

You did make it weird I think you made it weird I feel awkward about it I just wanted my friend To say something I thought you had something to say. Sorry. No, nothing. Coyotes. Did you actually have something

that you wanted to talk about? No, that was a joke. Oh, okay. Yeah, it was so straight-faced, I actually thought, I'm like, he wants to get into the Coyotes, okay? I mean, they've been really good lately. You mentioned the whooping they put on the lightning. Is Bo Horvat worth $5 million? Ooh, good question.

For the next, till 2023, $5.5 million selection. The thing is, is he's exceeded my expectations i thought he was more like a defensive checking center when he was coming out and he really improved his draft uh his skating sort of like john taveras did after his draft class um but he's i don't think he's a building block i think i think he's like if you

have a really good team and you have two of those two or three of those guys already in place and you have him as like your third line center then all of a sudden you're cooking but if you're gonna have bull horvat as your number one center i don't think you're gonna be winning very many hockey is it a little bit like and maybe i'm selling them short but when the leafs were just like well naz you're our number one center now i think i think it actually is like that like if you put him in the right role and give him a position to succeed i think bull horad would do great but when you're asking him to do everything and be the number one guy that's just it's a lot you're dooming him like it's gonna start um a couple another another kind of uh

statement along the lines of a team that i think is along the lines of the canucks here if i could spit this out is that uh ken holland said he thinks he'll be back which we hear that jeff blaschel will also be back in detroit next season and holland will potentially be back without a contract which i don't understand yeah he's gonna keep coming to work he's just opening opening himself up to seattle i think i think that's what's gonna happen but ken you don't work here anymore no no i'm still here it's funny because five years ago ken ken holland was seen as the genius general manager of the NHL. And now, it's

unbelievable the change that's happened, especially in the last two years. Is that a management group that needs to go? I'm putting that question out to you both. Is that a change that needs to happen, or are they just in a downspout and they're trying to get rid of some of the old contracts, and it is what it is?

See, it's going to be tough for Detroit. I think they're probably in the worst position of any of these sort of bottom feeder rebuilding teams, because at least with the Canucks or the Coyotes or the Sabres, for the most part i mean you mentioned the canucks of 15 million dollars coming off the books like in theory if they really were so desperate to be like a borderline playoff team you could use some of that money and get better with the red wings like they have so much money

tied up they're guys like jonathan erickson and luke lindenning and all these like basically what happened was um ken holland rewarded all the players he really liked and had good friendships with to like five six-year deals and you can really get into trouble when you do that with fourth liners and third pairing defensemen and so now i mean i know luke lindenning was like rumored to be i mean he's a babcock guy and i feel like the leafs really dodged the ball there although we'll see maybe this summer um they revisit that but that's one of those things where it's like oh you can find those guys the ahl level all the time or via trade they're always available in the bargain bin so when you lock them up you're just exposing yourself to so much

unnecessary risk and that's what we're seeing with detroit now where even if they wanted to get better in a hurry i just don't think like they physically can't accomplish that they're gonna have to ride this out which is so strange because one of the proposed things i heard for the way the red wings are gonna get out of this is well they're gonna be really active in free agency this summer i'm like so the cap just doesn't matter then like it doesn't matter of the players they have signed that make more than 1.4 million dollars how many of them are free agents at the end of this year i have it up i have it up so i can't answer this well and they got rid of tatar um two one but the best is like name some of the names of the guys who are under

contract like 2021 under contract through next year include uh franz nielsen henrik zetterberg uh nyquist darren helm defense yeah this is till 20 most of those guys are 2021 way into the Cronwall yep, Erickson Trevor Daly Kaiser Kaiser. Yeah, so I did not understand the Trevor Daly signing I didn't understand it for him. I didn't understand it for them. I got my cup I'll take my money. He's making three 3.1 good for him Yeah, this isn't this is a mess and I yeah like you look at Zetterberg assigned. He's 37 now so even if he retires so they're gonna they're gonna get into cap trouble with that as well because he's already made it clear i think that he's planning to go play in sweden oh because

he's got one of those backdiving contracts where like he's making like one million dollars yeah over the final couple years just retire and get out of here he's but then the league is going to punish the red wings for that so they're basically going to have a sunk cost on their books and not even have henrik zetterberg in their lineup and then you have to ship that off to the coyotes again yeah which they did last time yeah that's hilarious that's the thing that to accomplish that, they're going to have to give up a draft capital and they're a team that desperately needs more picks.

Wow. So just like an endless cycle. So like when, when, when, when you look at the trade deadline, same thing with good Branson, Mike green is like the,

it's like a perfect parallel to two teams that are in, in nowhere. And then Mike green doesn't get moved. And like, I don't care if you don't get your price. Yeah. If you don't get your price, fine.

This is a guy that will not be here next year. If your team is intelligent about things, Mike green's a good defenseman for what he does. and at his age, but you're not bringing him back to the Detroit Red Wings. Well, to be fair, I know he was injured at the time and then after the deadline, he had surgery and he's out for season, so I'm not sure.

Maybe teams kind of balked at giving up anything because he couldn't pass a physical or something. That's fair. A little bit like Parenteau in the year where the Leafs finished last year. But to be fair, I find it hard. They could have got a fourth or fifth rounder probably. I feel like it was one of those things

where they just tried to save pace. It's like, oh, we're not going to get anything of value, so we're just going to keep Mike Green just because it's not worth our time. At least they got multiple picks for Thomas Attar so that's something whereas the Canucks turned Eric Goodbranson and Thomas Vanek into literally not. You see

Okunin's expiring contract I guess. I don't know how that's all they got but you know what okay so I'm sitting here and I'm like all we're doing is ripping on all the bad teams Well sometimes what's interesting about teams is why they're bad. How did they get there? Well and as Leafs fans we're obsessed with it. I'm like

hey this all sounds very familiar We spent the first three years of the show dissecting how the Leafs got there, how bad they were, and why they were there. What I want to know about is some of the best teams in the league, and everyone was going gaga over, oh my god, I want the Preds to play the Jets in the first round so bad. But everyone for months now has been just glowing about the Bruins. What makes them so good, I guess, outside of the monster line? Because that much is obvious. Well, that has a lot to do with it, obviously.

I think some of their younger guys like Jake DeBrusque and Danton Heinen have stepped up and given them some secondary scoring, which they didn't have in years past. But, you know, come postseason, we often hear how you need the star players to really accomplish anything because those are the guys that are ultimately going to win the games for you. I think sometimes that can be overblown a bit, but in cases like this, if the Bruins can basically for like 25 of the 60 minutes

just have Bergeron, Marchand, Chara, and McAvoy out there, like the ice is just going to be slanted in the direction they're going in horribly the entire time. So when you have that kind of luxury, you really just need the other guys to just not completely drown when they're out there and they've shown they're capable of that. And Rask has kind of come back into form. He's not necessarily a Vesna candidate,

but at least he's not a liability anymore. And you sort of put all that together and it's a very intriguing team. I think they've been, it's been them in the Preds is the two best teams in the league for the past like 30 plus games or so. Do you think the Bruins are better than the Tampa Bay Lightning, skill-wise? Are they a deeper team? It's different.

I think there's no right answer there. I think the Lightning can potentially be scarier just because, as we've seen, they can just score four goals in a matter of a couple minutes, and you just don't know what happened, and all of a sudden the game's just over, the series is over, and you don't know what hit you, right? The Bruins are going to be much more methodical, and they're going to wear you down, and they're just going to control possession the entire time and kind of suck the life out of you.

So it's sort of pick your poison. I don't think either is an ideal matchup for the Leafs in round one, which I assume is why you're asking. No, I'm actually asking because I think they're going to meet in round two. So it's kind of like, it's not, it's not, listen, it's not because I don't think the Leafs are a strong team, but I think they're in tough against either team. And it sucks that they have to play them.

I think it's, it's, it sucks. It's unfair, but you know, they're, it's almost as though it's so funny for that, for the teams that finished second and third in that division, the road to the Stanley cup gets easier in rounds two and three get through the first round so where are you guys at with this because i know that it's been a big talking point um sort of the playoff structure and the seating and if we could potentially go to a one verse 16 matchup something like that or even if we get back my back to conferences or obviously there's like the european one swedish elite league where you pick your own opponent which i i think that's

amazing i kind of prefer that that would be just being in the media the stories are just insane right like imagine someone picking you first and then you lose or they lose and then there's the ultimate like bulletin board material i mean oh they want to play us all right and who wants to pick i would love to know is it the coach captain gm captain would be a hell of a pick silent vote oh my god can you imagine that yeah and then you know uh you know a third of the locker room doesn't get the team that they wanted to play and all of a sudden like it's you're right it is they're coming back in the locker room just side eyeing them i told you not to play i freaking Told you not to play him.

How would Lou Lamorello manage that? We don't have to play anyone in the first round. We can send this one out. Yeah, we get a buy. He'd make it happen. They have a big champagne party like no one even won a game. Since we're on it, what, you know, and it looks like it's going to be Boston. Yeah.

It'd be pretty hard for it not to be Boston. No, no, no. If Boston wins their next two games, they're ahead of Tampa. Yeah, they have a couple games in hand. Because they have two games, they have eight games left, and they're two games back. So if they win, they just win two games. Tampa, my wife's pool has Vasilevsky as her goalie. And I can tell you, they have been bad.

So then, okay, based on what you've seen, what's a better matchup for the Toronto Maple Leafs? I think the Lightning are honestly a better matchup. And the reason I say that is because, especially if Boston has home ice advantage in that series, which it looks like they will, they can just, in those three or four home games they play, it's just going to be bergeron against matthews every second he's on the ice unbelievable and

you know i know cadre's been awesome this season and the leafs have some other weapons but we've sort of seen what happens when matthews isn't in the lineup and that's that would be the equivalent if he had to face bergeron the entire time would that cancel bergeron out though too because he's so i don't think so i think the bruins would win that matchup not as as decidedly as they're winning other matchups but it would still be in their favor and then it's kind of a wash the rest of the way, and I think ultimately that's in favor of the Bruins. What about the depth at forward? Are the Leafs,

in terms of they have finally figured out their fourth line, although with Andres Janssen coming out and Komarov coming back in. Unfortunately, some nights their fourth line looks like their best. I don't know if that's a recipe for success, but it has been good. You've got JVR. He is

a power play specialist. We understand that. You've got Kadri and Marleau and Marner. you know okay fine for their first line is better than our first line right fine yep what about the second and third no for sure the leafs would have an advantage there i think it's ultimately it's how much would you trust those guys to basically win that series for you whereas against the lightning i feel like especially a five on five they could control those matchups a little bit better um obviously lightning's power play would be something the leafs would have to deal with

but as you mentioned vasilevsky and he's admitted this himself this is his first year being the number one goalie and he's really struggled of late and it looks like he's really kind of wearing down under the pressure of the workload so if he doesn't get it back come postseason all of a sudden that's a liability for them and i think that might make the lightning an easier matchup but man it could be really interesting no one no one cut that soundbite and play it back after round one the best part is they play each other next how about this no matter what it's going to be a great series it should just be like a three-way round robin they all just keep playing each other i'd be down for that i think it's interesting the funny thing so when you said

the lightning all logic you know i thought about it i'm like yeah absolutely you'd probably rather play the lightning but then i'm like well the leafs won their season series against the bruins but the the strange thing about that is in two of the games that they won at least matthews wasn't even in the lineup right and i think in both are better without matthews i mean that's the only exactly i think in both those games bergeron might not have been in the lineup either right at least one of them he wasn't yeah so i don't have a proper like i mean those are the two biggest factors right so i don't have a real good there's also playoff march and two oh for crying out regular season march and it's pretty damn good too so like i just don't have a proper grip on how

a toronto boston series would go i know there's leafs fans probably screaming right now like the leafs dominated them in the matchup last year when when both matthews and bergeron play but i think different different circumstances different teams and honestly i think those regular season matchups can be a bit overblown like you can see sort of see how the chess pieces fit, but ultimately the playoffs aren't entirely ever going to happen. Sens used to dominate the Leafs going back 15 years or whatever.

Oh my god, just make it to the second round, man. They haven't been there since 2004. In the Eastern Conference, who's your sleeper pick? Who's the team that no one's talking about that you're like, don't ignore these guys? Do you want me to go through the teams

that are on? So obviously in the Atlantic, Tampa, Boston, Toronto. Metropolitan is Washington, Pittsburgh, Columbus, and the wild cards right now. And we'll include Florida in this, too, because they're a point out. Philly, New Jersey, Florida.

I think Columbus is the most intriguing teams of those you mentioned. Obviously, I'm not counting the Penguins as a dark horse. No. I think of the teams of the Panthers, the Flyers. I think even I'd include the Capitals because I'm not very high on them this year.

The Blue Jackets are really interesting. They've been playing very well lately. I think they have the best goalie in the world, and sergey bobrovsky um artemi panarin has been a legitimate superstar this season for them that top pairing of worensky and seth jones you can make the argument is one of the best if not the best pairings in the league so all of a sudden you know you look at all that there's a lot to like unfortunately they have a lot of demons with the penguins and it looks like they're headed for a first first round uh match up with the penguins with the penguins and that's like the one that's

the one where i would i think no matter who the penguins play this is my role i'm picking the Penguins. Because I don't want to be the schmuck that picks against Sidney Crosby and Evgeny Malkin. If they lose, I'll be like, alright, that's fine. But the past two years, I've been like, you know what? I like other teams better. They're not quite as good at 5-on-5. They have two of the best four players in the world.

It's just different. So something that has been creeping into my mind as of late. So the final wildcard spot is the Devils. I think the Panthers actually control their own destiny there. Yeah, they do. The Panthers have been so hot for so long.

And Tampa's been falling off. First of all, all Florida first round would be really cool. But second of all, what are the odds the Panthers pull it off against the Lightning? And all of a sudden this, oh, Leafs are going to play the winner of, you know, Tampa Boston. Sorry, if they do win the first round, they're going to play one of Tampa or Boston anyway. What are the odds Tampa's not there? Or Boston's not there potentially? I mean, I would still pick the Lightning in that series, for example.

but I think they definitely have a puncher's chance. Are we allowed to swear on this? Yeah. Yes. I just want to make sure I'm on the right. Yeah, sure. No, with the Panthers, basically they realized that their depth was complete shit.

And instead of rolling four lines, they basically just cut it down during this past 15, 20 games, and they're just playing Barkov and Trojic's lines like 22 minutes each. Barkov's so good. And they're basically just like, we're going to just ride these top two lines and see how far they take us.

Now both those guys are under 25, um they seem to be handling it very well we'll see if they wear down here in the final couple weeks of the season but they seem to be holding up so well so far and so basically you know they're looking good whenever those two guys are on the ice and they're always on the ice these days so that bodes well for the panthers they have good goaltending um rhymer no the luandros had a legendary season for his age yeah so it's wide open the east is the east is super wide open whereas in the west i think it's like two teams have very clearly divided themselves in the east like there's like five teams it's gonna be a free-for-all and two teams pulling ahead in the

west and they'll face off in the second round i love the format um it's yeah it's pretty bad but i don't i don't fault them for trying it it was worth a shot but it's not working get rid of it well here's the reason why i asked if you guys like this format because we haven't talked about this but there is the argument that you know you want to see the best teams play as early as possible because they're going to be healthy and yeah we always see in the come the postseason there's this attrition where everyone's going to lose their best players. Eventually guys are playing injured and definitely less than a hundred percent.

And the series isn't necessarily as good as it possibly could have been. Whereas maybe in a first or second round matchup, there's going to be firing on all the cylinders, completely healthy. And all of a sudden that's the best possible hockey. Now it's not satisfying that come the Western conference final, for example, you know,

whoever wins that is going to be playing someone who's inferior, but. And it's, you know, from a, from a, just a purely television ratings perspective, It's really not good for the NHL to have Boston,

Toronto or Tampa go out in the first round, but one of them will. And then probably one of them will go out in the second round too. And Tampa's ratings are, are from what I understand becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. They're becoming one of the better markets rating wise, like, you know,

Buffalo and Pittsburgh and Boston and those markets, New York. Yeah. Probably great if they played the Panthers then. Yeah. Or it'd be amazing. It would be great for the Panthers. Yeah.

But what's, what's interesting about this format to me and what's interesting about this conference is no one's talking about the capitals yeah and i don't i don't know what they are they are still a hundred point team for sure they are not the loaded the loaded up uh megazord team that we saw last year when they went out and just got all the extra pieces uh but are they a team that should be taken seriously now because the pressure's off i kind of like this story that's emerging where it's like for the past four years it's been this is the capitals year and there's a lot of like statistical evidence to support that take yeah and then they lose in the second half

they're penguins and then this is the year where it's like no they're not that good and they're just running through the eastern conference and win the cup and that'd be so nhl it's the one year we're finally off their scent the capitals come through i mean they still have the star players uh ovechkin i think this happens with star players we were sometimes kind of taken for granted when they've been so good for so long but like ovechkin just what he's done in terms of just the percentage of goals he's scoring for the capitals i believe he's leading the league again this year yeah he's gonna score 50 goals and we've done this dance a couple times where it's like oh you know it looks like he's past his prime he's on the decline and then he comes back with a 50

goal season um they don't have the depth they've had in the past few years and once again they're probably gonna have to play the penguins in round two so those are the two big arguments against the capitals i'd say so i guess my big beef with this playoff format is it was meant to rightfully and it should have worked out better boost rivalries i think the only one rivalries yeah yeah the only one that's boosted is pittsburgh washington and it sucked because it's been one way um like the fact that pittsburgh hasn't played have they played philly since the format changed i don't know if they have i think the last time they played was that crazy series where the flyers actually won where it was like eight seven was every game and that was the best

outrageous that that was i think that's the last time they played in the playoffs though and then i think the format switched the next year and they haven't played yeah and that's like my favorite rivalry in hockey and it hasn't happened. Well, isn't it funny though when you try to manufacture these because I think, I remember it was about,

what was it, 10 or 15 years ago they moved to where you were playing your division guys. I think it was division, it was six times or eight times a season.

You were playing them all the time. And now I think it's down to five or six. And they did that on purpose and it didn't work. And I feel like it's like teams, I remember last year the Canucks and Leafs

hated each other. And we were looking forward to the next game because they hated each other. They played like twice a year. Thank you, Nazem Qadri. Man, like, Rogers should just send flowers to Qadri's house because he managed to piss off every Western Canadian team

in the first meeting, and then they go on to the second, and it's like the event of the season. But I think we've got to maybe get away from this whole city-to-city rivalry because there is a perceived rivalry between Toronto-Montreal and Ottawa-Toronto, and probably Montreal-Ottawa as well. But what's happened is that none of those teams have been good at the same time. it's usually the rivalry like the Leafs used to have

a huge rivalry with the Islanders when the Islanders were good and the Leafs were not great all it takes is one playoff series yes but that's the point is that you can't manufacture this stuff I don't think right yeah I agree I think it has to happen organically and if it just takes one playoff series

then technically like rivalries don't really exist because all you need is the one series so it's like we should see we should keep seeing different combinations and see what sticks yeah I hate to pause I absolutely cannot hold us. No, okay, you gotta go big. Go big.

We have such a good rhythm going. All right, so let's switch to the Western Conference. I hope you had a good pee. I did. I feel like I can start the show now. Seamless. Jeez. So, the sleeper team, the team that no one's talking about,

because we know, you know, Nashville and Winnipeg, they're getting a lot of play, but you've got Nashville, Winnipeg, Minnesota in the Central, and then in the Pacific, you've got Vegas, obviously a story, San Jose, Anaheim. and then in wildcard uh we'll say los angeles colorado and i can't ignore the st louis blues who are a point out and control their destiny because they've got a game in hand and two game game in hand on colorado two games in hand on la yeah like we all predicted st louis traded another

good player and all of a sudden they're playing really great they're like the blues and doug armstrong are like the bizarro jim benning and vancouver canucks where it's like they're actually good but they're rebuilding they're acquiring first round picks trading their good players still winning games it's like what what is happening it's amazing it's amazing the western conference wild card picture is so bizarre because i swear two weeks ago it was like six teams deep and calgary's officially out yeah well what happened was two teams that were right in it like teams i thought would maybe make it at least one of them both dallas and calgary completely fell the hell they did and i don't understand and it was dallas's trip through here i believe wasn't

it it was ottawa toronto uh well they lost to the leafs right yeah they wanted they wanted a bad swing through that was the beginning of the end for them because they was at that game that was a good game it was back and forth yeah it was great it was well it's trash hockey but yeah it was fun well that's the thing that's been my one complaint about the stars this season i don't know how much you guys have caught of them but that was like the one rare instance where they were that fought in 2014-15 version of the stars it sort of swept the hockey world by storm this year it's been sort of

Hitchcock hockey and it's like they were actually really good at the start of the year but it was these boring 2-1 games slow paced and they've really fallen off Ben Bishop got injured and Kari Letton let one in well he was really bad Kari Letton

so they're out now the Flames don't even have their first or second round pick this year they're out are they the first When was the last time I guess it's the first time Since they changed the lottery format They're the first team

To potentially have given up a lottery pick Yeah it's pretty rare Like since The lottery picks were like the top five right Since the Kessel train Was that a lottery though Was that a lottery though Or did it just fall for the last place team

I honestly don't remember Anyway no Because the Islanders got two shots That's crazy And if they get one of those lands on first overall I imagine it'll be a lot easier to convince John Tavares to resign How about first and second? It could potentially be first and second

Even second and third Who cares? One of them, third It would be pretty amazing If it's Calgary's pick Islanders luck, it'll be 14-15 Yeah, somehow But with With the conference

What's the team of the ones I've mentioned I'll name them again nashville winnipeg minnesota vegas san jose anaheim la colorado st louis what's the team that you're like man don't again don't sleep on these guys well other than the top two teams which you already mentioned um that's a tough that's a tough one i don't really know what to make of any of those uh california teams like san jose yeah san jose has been really good since the trade deadline acquiring evander kane they're gonna get joel thornton back um the ducks i mean their season just been so bizarre it's weird big derrick grant was their number one center for a

big chunk of the season are they the best worst team or the worst i think they're actually good if they're healthy but they rely on john gibson a lot now he's been up to the task so far but randy carlisle hockey yeah no there's there's a lot you're quick there's a lot of they're getting out shot 40 to 25 winning and it's like oh well they figured out the formula here clearly um that's i mean the leaves do it too yeah and then when they out your teams they lose so that damn course see like what of the three california teams yeah you've got uh la which actually is tied for anaheim but i think their season no no anaheim's got a game in hand so they're ahead but of those three teams and they're pretty close in the standings who's the best one ellie could still

miss ellie could still miss easily flip like flip a coin i don't know anaheim could still miss guys like easily that's crazy that st louis could steal one of those spots i love it i i think it's great You know, what I want to know about, like, forget the California teams. What I have such a hard time envisioning is Vegas winning a playoff series. And they're one of the top seeds. But I had a hard time envisioning them winning a single game. Yeah. Or, you know, not finishing last.

And I just, I'm looking at the standings right now on the screen. I see them in first, and I still don't believe it. Okay, well, let's go through the matchups, the potential matchups as of today. if the playoffs started today completely so vegas versus colorado who's winning that series so i don't know if you guys caught this they played a home and home over the weekend and it was they were the two of the best games i've watched all year really i'm all in on this match okay both teams makes no sense they should not be nearly this good obviously both great stories the two biggest surprises in the league probably they both just play so fast and i think a lot of that

masks talent deficiencies where they just don't give you a chance to sort of rest up and load up on their players so they just keep coming at you in waves it's like as soon as you get the puck in your defensive zone everyone is just flying in transition and they're just like it's it's a track me more than a hockey game and it's made i hope the playoffs don't really like water it down and both teams slow down trying to win quote-unquote playoff hockey but if they play the way they play those two games i am all in on that series and that's vegas would probably i mean they'd be favorite obviously they have home ice i think that's a series they could win it's it's got to be the single most unlikely playoff

series coming into a season ever. It's an expansion team facing off against a team that finished last. How? And every expansion team from now on will be based against what Las Vegas did. And that's what's crazy. Realistic, I think. Really. Vegas, LA.

So I was going to say if they draw LA or Anaheim, I like them in both those series as well because I think they just have too much speed and they're just going to skate laps around those two teams. Where is it? st louis is interesting they're sort of similar to la and they want to play that physical brand of hockey but they do have guys who can get up and down the ice as well so i think that might be a tougher matchup um and then san jose is sort of like that as well but at worst it's going to

be a coin flip which is you know crazy other than and if we get nashville versus winnipeg in round two that means vegas could conceivably get a pretty easy path to the western conference final which can you imagine the league would love that oh yeah i mean some of these home games i i want to go cover that western conference final that seems pretty fun out there oh come on everybody does so i mean people barely survived last year so i don't know how we'll do with vegas so vegas has this really interesting way that they're going to prevent any fans from trying to capitalize on foreigners coming in and take and buying the seats right okay because obviously vegas is a is a town where people go to party yep uh so they want their fans to hang on to

And here's what they say they have. So Vegas Golden Knights full season ticket members will automatically be enrolled in King in the King or sorry, in the Knights Vow. What did I say? Kings Knights Vow, which provides the most significant price savings off a single game ticket price. As part of the Knights Vow program, members will receive tickets electronically, electronically versus sorry, via flash seats shortly after the date and times of the first home playoff games are set. Resale through StubHub The Golden Knights exclusive authorized secondary partner Will not be available under this option So you get an enormous discount But you cannot resell

Full season ticket members may elect to opt out of their Knights Vow In order to have the opportunity to sell their tickets Through the Golden Knights exclusive authorized secondary partner StubHub I guess that's the exact wording that they have to use However their savings off a single game ticket Under this option Will not be as significant as those who are enrolled

In option 1 above So basically, they're giving you a huge discount not to have you sell. And I think that's really interesting. For a town like that, I mean, Ottawa should probably look at something like that. Don't you think? Ottawa should just look at getting asses in seats. I think it's a little different. Build a new stadium.

I see where you're going. Yeah, new stadium. Oh, get out of there. They've done millions of dollars in that place. Sorry. I think a couple years ago, the Predators did something similar when they were playing the Blackhawks. I think they, like, blacked it out so that if you were from the state of Illinois, like, you couldn't buy tickets or something like that. That's funny.

Yeah, so. Yeah, it makes sense. It's interesting. So Shea Weber came up today, and Shea Weber's foot specifically came up today. And what's interesting about it is he broke it on the first game of the season, blocking a shot. That's what's interesting about his foot. It's broken. It's broken.

But he played 27 games? 26. Yeah. 26. and it's it was injured enough that it screwed up his tendons and that was the issue and that's why they had to shut him down and he can't even put weight on his foot still and i went back and forth with this today because i sent it to you uh in order to go on a rant like typical habs what the hell were they thinking you know breaks his foot in the first game why did they let him play

through it there's such idiots and what changed my mind about it is someone just sent me a picture of shea weber and his face and i was like i wouldn't want to tell that face you're done for the season but that's sort of your job in all seriousness yeah but look at him he's scary what is what's a broken foot take to heal six weeks max well it depends on the severity of the break i suppose they thought it was only a fracture okay so it was hard for them to to pinpoint was that what it was i think what i read was the mri didn't reveal anything too serious so they just tried to go through it and i guess the boot of the skate kind of protects you from injuring it further but the issue was the tendons right what's incredible to me you know the habs after the

season they've had uh just like with carrie price being injured a couple years ago they're going well gosh if we didn't have these injuries we'd probably be better and weber was on pace with a broken foot for 19 goals and 50 points wow a lot so can you even blame them for thinking that I mean, I can. Here's a list of why. But they would be better with a healthy Shea Weber, which they didn't have at all. Is that enough to take them out of the basement in the playoffs, though?

I don't think so. Maybe not. It's enough to make them better. Sure. The problem is Carey Price's contract kicks in this summer. And it's the last year that they have Max Pacioretty on probably the league's best non-ELC value deal, I'd say. Definitely one of the best.

So they're going to have to start paying for some of those, get the guys and um are you gonna get another career best from brendan gallagher and right yeah it's not great that's that's a great way to describe it in montreal is that it's not a great situation it's it's i mean they got tons of cap in a lot of canadian markets i mean good thing winnipeg's having this season they are because uh bosses sports that would not be very happy with what's going on right now i mean other than the leafs like it's like you look what's going on know like senators oilers flames canucks yeah well what i love is you know i i get these comments i suppose you don't says you know why what's with all the leafs coverage and it's like well a people

read it b they're good yeah and they're there's seven teams five are bad yeah i mean what do you want i don't know yeah um also four first round uh second round picks from montreal who is not too that's good that's yeah right that's awesome there i mean i'm trying to think of a team in the league that has done everything wrong like we can find good things about every team and that's their good thing is it enough to propel them into relevancy you know into the into contention at some point in the near future what montreal seems to need and what with the leafs needed until matthews came along was a number one center and i mean they obviously they got the gold and i know that's what everybody needs but they don't have anything close to it yeah they don't

like do they have a number two and do they have a good like don't know and that's that's the problem it seems right like right down the middle you just gouch gouch yeah that they'd never give him a shot um you know and i know that there's the whole taveras to montreal thing you know that that whole thing happening there's taveras to toronto's taveras everywhere he probably resigns in new york but um what's the team what do you what do they even do like what can you do well we talk about Colorado and Vegas as being like two of the most sort of uplifting, surprising stories in the positive direction are the Canadians the year

they had the most disappointing. I think Calgary has got to be more disappointed. I expected Montreal to be bad. Yeah. Because with Calgary, there was optimism. Whereas with Montreal, like heading in,

we're like, this is not clever, right? You're doing right. And then it ended up going really bad. It was also in a playoff spot like four weeks ago. That's true. And then they've gone off.

and they gave up their first and second to trade for Hamannik who hasn't really helped them the reason why I brought that up is just because I feel like this Habs team has really invested a lot in this group of players like signing Carl Alsner this summer obviously the Weber trade like it's like a lot of stuff where it's like

we're trying to win right now so when you that's your goal and you don't accomplish that I feel like that's pretty disappointing it is it is weird like watching an NHL team realize they've whiffed. You know what I mean?

Like in real time, you're just watching it on a day-by-day basis. The Habs were at the craps table and they said, let it ride on made-up centers. And it came up snake eyes and they're just like, ooh. Should they have gone after Duchesne? They should have

done anything. That was the strangest thing about their season is they had all the space and everyone's like, when's the hammer gonna drop when's bergevin gonna be crazy and he didn't do anything you you had a tweet i think it was earlier in the season bergevin has this amazing record yeah the best and worst trades ever yeah i'm trying to remember his good ones i know he's had some i just forgot i mean he's made like he's made some under the radar sneaky good ones like getting like stealing jeff

petrie from edmonton for nothing essentially that's right like he's done like some stuff like that where it's like oh like this guy's actually pretty smart like he's on top of it and then he Obviously, I think his biggest trades have been his most egregious ones, which is the problem. Boy, does he go for it. Do you want to talk about the Oilers at all? Oh, yeah. I was hoping that we got to get to play the Oilers.

Part of the reason I wanted to talk about the Canucks so much. When I was saying the most disappointing teams, I was hoping you guys would be like, no, it's the Oilers. I guess they've been disappointing for so long. The Canucks so much. Well, yeah, they've been disappointing for so long. But we talk about the Oilers all the time. Yeah.

And, you know, we started to get tweets from people like, man, why don't you pick on someone else? And I'm like, okay, fine. Fine, but I guess, you know, we'll talk to a smart guy about the Oilers. They could be in the playoffs next year, right? Yeah, it's crazy that they're not in the playoffs this year. They have the best player in the world. They have the best player in the world making under a million dollars.

Is it the... Potentially winning the second straight scoring title. Is it the fact the goaltender's down, or was down? Yep. It couldn't be Andre Sequeira. It could not be. Just him. That's what I keep saying, yeah.

But they have, what is it, the league worst power play, historically bad? Penalty kill. Penalty kill, sorry. It's just like terrible penalty kill. I don't know if it still is having checked on that. It got a little better. Yeah? Yeah, yeah.

Because how could it not? It was at 50% or something, wasn't it? It's still historically bad. When you're historically bad, it's not the basement of historic. Right. So if they were just mediocre, that's a huge improvement. Yep. And they can be.

But what's it going to take for Edmonton to become a dominant team again? Remember, Vegas had them as the odds-on favorite for the Cup this year. Yeah, here's a crazy idea. Stop trading away your best players. That would be my first recommendation. I cannot wait for Oscar Clef, man. We have fun to be in Toronto.

I'm so excited. Oh, my God. Or Nuge. Or Nuge. Maybe Nuge. Maybe Nuge. Does that mean, do you hang on to a guy like Ryan Nuge and Hopkins?

Well, I certainly wouldn't trust Peter Shirelli to be the one trading him. I mean, he hasn't shown anything in his track record to suggest that he would win that trade. I think there's an argument to be made that the Oilers could be better off trading Ryan Eugene Hopkins even in a one-for-one for a certain type of player. I just don't think there's any reason to have faith

that they're going to get that player that's going to make them better. I feel like it's going to be one of those, and then it's going to be a smear job when he leaves. You're going to find out that he was partying too much and all this stuff which seems to happen with every guy. It's just like, it's a repeat. That brings us, I guess, perfectly into what happened. That's why I'm broadcasting professional right there.

Just throws us right at it. There we go. There was an interview with George Lorac on a station in Quebec City with a radio guy named Radio Ego, and this was all in French-Canadian. French-Canadian, not French. Well, if you ask anybody from France, it's different. Yeah. But yeah, in French.

And so I had it translated. And so the host goes on a bit of a – I don't want to read the whole thing because it's literally a paragraph long how he gets to his question. about Peter Shirely and about the Hall-Larsen trade a couple years ago. And it is almost like they kind of knew that they were going in this direction, so he tried to weave a narrative.

But there's a lot of English translations that change the sentencing. So I'll skip right to George LaRock's part. Well, and I guess the context is, you know, well, how come this radio station in Montreal is talking about this, you know, Edmonton, New Jersey trade? and i guess it's because hall was offered to the habs allegedly for pk which how that would have been an insane deal and how weird is it that they were both traded on the same day and not for each

other yeah after all this in horrible unrelated oh yeah would you have done weber for larson yes yeah like i still i still love the uh i think it was scott wheeler tweeted after the hall trade He goes, wow, this is the biggest trade of, like, the last decade. Boom! That lasted for, like, 15 minutes. Tops. Unbelievable. But, yeah, sorry, Adam.

So they ask, why didn't he go for that? So here's what George LaRock said. And this is, again, a translation. The thing is, people don't know, and I'm going to tell it, but when the Oilers traded Taylor Hall, Taylor Hall had off-ice problems, and he went to rehab that summer and when he went to rehab the information was spread through the nhl so when the oilers tried to trade him uh it the value on him was lower because of it

so again i'm going to stumble through this because it's again it's a french to english translation so well i mean geez don't be subtle george so he continues the the literally the announcer goes oh okay and then george continues he says uh oh okay and it's a little like the cassian situation when you trade a dude and the whole nhl knows about the rehab situation of course his value drops and taylor hall had to change the script because there are uh things that i can't say on the air but he really had absolutely no choices but to leave edmonton when you go somewhere else what can you say on the air george and you are the first round pick like taylor hall it's like for cassian when they sent him off to edmonton and they said

why wasn't he like that in Montreal? When you have a second opportunity, you take it. Kassian did. Taylor Hall did. Today, Taylor Hall is how he should have been playing in Edmonton. He had bad friends. Unfortunately, it didn't happen in Edmonton. Let's agree on that. The dude, even with his off-ice problems, was making 50 or 60 points a year easily without trying. But with discipline and grabbing the second opportunity, this dude is now a point per game. This is Taylor Hall. This is why he was drafted in the first round. And when you look at the whole situation, it's just normal.

Yes, it's easy to say that trade for Larson was a steal. On the other side, if he were to continue to act the way he did in Edmonton, he would not have this opportunity. We could also be saying Larson was a steal. This is when the Oilers traded him, don't forget. There are blah, blah, blah. So I'm going to skip forward just a little bit. um he says then i'm going to bring you two years back remember when this started when suban got injured and finished and didn't finish sorry and finished as in finished the season didn't finish

the year we started talking about a potential trade between suban and it was suban for taylor hall and when the larson for hall trade was done many uh many people were arguing uh look we could have had taylor hall the big picture is mark bergevin didn't go after him because he was scared he would fall back into his old habits that put him into rehab and uh and so then the radio host goes well he goes on to talk about a sebastian ajo chris tanev and first round pick that could have been for suban that apparently was a table deal that uh that vancouver offered uh but yeah i know and it's funny how they've gotten well because they hadn't acquired him yet which is the weirdest thing so they are you sure it was sebastian that's what it says in the that's

what they said there were sebastian oh so did you was your is your source a hockey agent no the uh the translator says i think sebastian ajo would have been a mistake okay he's like there were sebastian ajo chris tan of in a first round pick so it probably wasn't sebastian ajo so that's maybe separate deals um anyway i guess they said no to that and um it was going to be i guess those three guys for taylor hall darnell nurse in their first round pick um anyway long story short They go and they talk about a little bit about the nightlife in Edmonton and Montreal and how they were a little bit concerned. The host talks a little bit about it's, you know, the the nightlife in Montreal being a little bit more lively than it is in Edmonton. Yeah.

Which I mean, OK, fine. But it's pretty hard to compare Montreal's nightlife to anybody else's nightlife. Right. And it is interesting that later on, George LaRock tweeted that tweeted this out in French and in English that Taylor Hall had not been to rehab and that he had had a bad source. Well, this is what I'm struggling with. I'm on his Twitter right now, and I'm trying to find it, and I can't. It seems like he deleted that. And the apology, if I didn't know any better, maybe I missed it.

It's still, you can still read it, and I know that because former Leaf draft pick Dale Mitchell, if you remember him, former third-round pick, I want to say 2007, called out George LaRock, and then they sort of got into it. It is one of the worst apologies I've ever seen. because he if you saw all his responses to the people still calling him out he was still yelling and screaming at them yeah yeah and somebody said oh who are you my dad was one of the responses one of the people said sorry one of the tweets rightly said you know you could have wrecked a guy's reputation on this and he said well it's well clearly it's not true so it won't wreck his

reputation well beyond that beyond all of that whether or not it is true whether or not taylor hall went to rehab and i'm i guess he didn't yeah the fact that the nhl policy is you don't talk about that on the first time the first go around when you're in rehab it's silent it's under the radar you don't say that right the fact that somebody's out there outing people or outing people on a rumor and not even knowing for sure himself is a little bit mystifying yeah i'm a little surprised that a former nhl would come out and say that it just and especially on bad information but i guess this tweet has been deleted i think he deleted the apology his apology has been deleted yeah that's how you know you had a bad apology he apologized for the

apology uh i haven't seen it maybe maybe in french and i don't know yet no he's tweeting about like football he's been defending his apology to people who are replying to the now deleted tweet and uh one one user wrote a stephen davis said i can accept that you're sorry but spreading gossip about someone is never the right thing to do and then george wrote because like many people that get information my source confirmed to me it was true and verified but all the same you don't say it so that's that's a personal matter what dale mitchell said was of course this is 100 false in so many levels the irony of a former enforcer uh would go publicly or sorry would publicly disclose any player going to rehab is disgusting we asked for players and people to seek help

if they need it but george will be the first guy to publicly announce it for his own motives and then george said you don't even know how this happened to say that neither did you know where how and what was said well george speaking the what was said was on the air man yeah and then you apologize for it like he's not sorry i guess is the big takeaway from all this it was a conversation in french radio where i was defending the oilers and it was badly translated listen to that podcast and you would see that wasn't as bad as this all sounds oh well actually i've got the direct translation here and it is as bad as it sounds i just read it to you he no so i think so it is interesting hearing the full big quote there because the second half of it i could have

swore he was going to bat for taylor hall yeah after outing him yeah for going to rehab which apparently didn't happen well and and if and and then he's trying to justify why the suban hall trade didn't happen it's because mark bergevin didn't want to take a chance and again those are his words not mine on taylor hall um it's it's interesting that any of this came up it's weird it's a weird conversation to be having and i'm trying to figure out what the what the direction exactly what it was so you said the host had this big roundabout way of getting to the topic and then george awkwardly goes into it that's because before that segment or before that show that day he goes you ready for me to serve up a big juicy george sirloin i got something for the

show today guess what and the host goes all right i'm ready and he sets it up and george attempts to knock it down and hits a gutter ball right that's that's what happened so like i don't think this was an off-the-cuff conversation the way it was set up it certainly doesn't seem that way it was an accident that the words came out the way they did and if there's one thing we we know about Quebec City Radio specifically is that it's highly sensationalized. Well, Quebec... I don't know about sensationalized as much as they just don't give a shit.

They don't give a shit about your feelings? Or family or anything? From people that I know in Quebec Radio, Quebec City is known for its sensationalized coverage. That's just what they're known for. It's different than Montreal. Montreal's a little bit tamer. Where was Mario Tremblay?

What's that? That was Montreal. I'm pretty sure that was Montreal. I mean, it's not like Toronto's saintly. anything or any other canadian market or any other hockey market but like how do you how do you go on the errands okay first off i think it should be noted it's just completely inappropriate on george's part too even if it was true like it's not his story to tell first and foremost second of all he like made the point there about how it was affecting his play and he was having 50 60 point seasons in edmonton which is patently false i mean he had like an 80 point season in 70 games

at some point there and he was clearly their best player just dragging along an empty husk of an organization with him so here's an interesting thing he said the announcer to set this whole interview up said this specifically I went on HockeyDB looked at the stats

and everything happens I arrived at the New Jersey Devils page arrived at the New Jersey Devil page their best scorer you have Taylor Hall at 81 points it's the best season of his career the second best scorer by like one point stop the second best score is nico he's sure their first choice in last year's draft he's 48 points

the first has uh anyway blah blah he goes you know taylor hall carries the team on his shoulders himself and we're questioning the competence of peter shirelli because it's him who did the taylor hall adam larson trade two years ago it's become one of the steals in in modern history and that's when george goes well well actually little nugget that you there's no way you knew i had like so now allegedly let's for a minute let's go to a fantasy world where what he said the first time is true and similarly and i just saw it in the twitterverse a lot of people were going well you know tyler sagan had his issues in boston too and we saw that though well wait we saw we saw that clip with well does he fit in our culture so all the subtext in the world is there and you can kind

of extrapolate you are just making it up but the subtext is right so let's say let's say in our fantasy world all that stuff about seg and is bad and it's true and all that stuff about hall is bad and it's true both players are near 100 point players they're like 90 point players so in both situations for the first and second overall picks in 2010 there's a superstar there in both situations there's a superstar there and in both situations

you weren't able to bring it out of them so it's still an indictment on you no matter how it's sliced but now it sounds like it's not even freaking true well and even if Taylor Hall had had 50 or 60 point seasons it'd still be leading the Devils in scoring

and no but look at the teams he was playing on in Edmonton. Yeah. Like, that's impressive. He played on in New Jersey last year. Yeah. Yeah.

He got injured. Look where they were. Yeah. Not good. It's just, the whole thing just strikes me as odd. And the,

the setup's weird. The translation's weird. The apology's weird. I am curious to see, I'm curious as to the motivation. That's where it goes back. I still don't get the motivation. I'm going to hit it

out of the park with the motivation. And he didn't. I mean, I'd love to think they had a pre-show meeting. they sit down before they start recording and the radio host is like, alright George, we're going to talk

about the color of tennis balls jam and guacamole and podcast title names and George is like, alright, I'm ready and then he starts and he's like, actually here's this bombshell, out of nowhere I have to ask you guys

does Brad Marchand get a pass for being terrible because he's so good what do you mean? You mean as a person? No, as an on-ice player. No, he might be a great guy.

I've heard he is a great guy. It seems like he is. Because, like, look at... But God, I hate him on the ice. If he did, and I want to read Marcus Johansson's comments about him in a little bit, because I think they're actually really great. But I want you to keep this in mind. If you look at that hit that he threw, if that was Patrick Coletta, if that was Matt Cook, that's a 10-game suspension no problem. John Scott

and John Scott's not I don't think John Scott was dirty he was he had a couple hits okay he had a couple so here's what

John had said about it and he said what did you think of the hit and he said it was stupid there's nothing else to say about it there's no point in doing that there was no hockey player

play there whatsoever it's sad to see the guys are still out there trying to hurt other guys it's sad it's stupid I'm hoping it doesn't come to him

come to him ending someone else's career before it's enough it's not why we play the game there are obvious situations where you try to hit someone to make a hockey play And it goes wrong.

Then there are plays like this, which has nothing to do with hockey. It's sad to see. I guess I'm unfortunate to be on the receiving end of that. And then they follow this up, and this is where I'll finish it. He was suspended for five games. You'd think that was enough. He goes, no, not really, considering it was the ninth time he's been suspended or fined. Ninth.

Seriously? He's not even 30 yet. Like I said, you hope that it doesn't come to him ending someone's career before it's enough. That's all I can say. I'm trying to put that behind me and get back to feeling normal again. That's all I can do. Now, remember, this was his second concussion in three months. And, you know, the Devils were pretty securely in a playoff spot for a big chunk of the season.

They're still in one, but they don't control their own destiny. They missed the playoffs by one point or maybe even a tie break. You could argue Brad Marchand cost the Devils the playoffs. See, is he smart or dirty? No, he's dirty. He is dirty. I mean, like, he could have scored 40 goals last year. It's not clever what he's doing.

Like, he got caught. Yeah. You know, he bring the guy. In game 80 last year, he speared somebody in the nuts and got suspended and didn't get his 40th goal. Who did he spear in the nuts? I don't remember who it was. Jake Dodgion. No, Jake Dodgion deserved it.

Well, Jake Dodgion's an ass, too. I think Adam just answered your question. I mean, it is Jake Dodgion. I don't necessarily feel bad for him. But at what point? so I was ripping Marshan for the Dachshund spear and I saw that a family member of Dachshunds

like favorited my tweet and I felt like being take your favorite back don't ever come near me or my son Austin ever again yeah at what point do we kind of say okay Brad maybe not end

someone's career it's up to the Bruins to smack him around well or is it up to the NHL this is the ninth time I think it's up to Zidane O'Chara retiring. Like, there's just so many times over the last few years where you've seen Marchand do something, and then there's just this giraffe behind him,

this fist-wielding giraffe, who will beat the shit out of you. And it happened again this season. There was a great picture of basically Marchand on stilts. And, you know, that whole thing about, you know, oh, when enforcers are out there, you know, you play like you're a little bit taller. I think there's some hyperbole to that,

but when your enforcer is Zdeno freaking Chara, yeah. I think it's absolutely true. And when he's, here's what makes Chara different than most enforcers. He's out on the ice with you. He's out on the ice with your superstars. And can play with you. He's one of them. Yeah.

That's a Norris winning, Stanley Cup winning player. Yep. So I'm curious to see what happens to Brad Marchand's career after Zdeno Chara retires. He might get beat up He's such a good player And I understand the distraction But at what point do we start

Saying okay equal is equal here He's still doing shitty things Like two or three years ago What Steve said it's a part of hockey I think it's just a part of the game Where you have enforcers and you have tough guys And they can bully you And it's a part of the game

And he's going to take advantage of that As long as he can So Patrice O'Neill comedian we i know we talk about him every so often he had this bit um called the punk test and he recalled a time in his childhood where this stranger joined in a game of pickup basketball and he was doing all this stuff to mess with him throughout the game he's stepping on his foot and giving him a hard push and then basically what that guy was doing was feeling up patrice to see if he would do anything he called it the punk test see if he's a punk and after the basketball game

and decides, you know what, I'm going to rob you. And so he robs him. I wrote about how the Bruins do that to every team in the league in 2012. No. I did it in 2011. It was the beginning of the 2011-12 season after the Bruins had won the cup and they had a crazy winning streak. They did it to the Canucks in the final.

Yep. Yeah, wow, yeah. Because they did whatever they wanted to their opponent and nobody did anything because why would they? It's the Bruins. They got friggin' Chahara. They got McQuaid. They had Thornton at the time.

Lucic. Lucic. Oh, my God. I forgot about the biggest one. I forgot about the biggest one. And it's all these years later. Most of those players are gone, and it's still happening. Lucic, who was never going to go back to Vancouver because of how he was treated by his hometown fans.

But, you know, I bet Benning could convince him. That could be what turns the whole franchise around. I think they're wanting Milan Lucic and his whatever contract until the end of time. Imagine you have $10 million for the next three years wrapped up in Goodbranson and Lucic. Not hard to imagine. Everybody's playing harder or tougher, right? That's some big boy hockey right there. That is definitely some big boy hockey.

It's just, it's incredible to me that, what is this, six, seven years later, I could easily write the same thing. And listen, if he were a Leaf, I would be like his biggest fan. I couldn't get behind somebody spearing someone in the nuts I can't justify that There was some stuff that Tucker and Domi did When they were When Domi ran Niedermeyer And Tucker had a bad hit

On somebody once At that point you're like okay I'm a human being That's stupid But Brad Marchand Playoff Marchand is the best It's the best it's fun to watch There's a difference between The 2013 series

Against the Leafs there's a difference between he was really good at just ever so daintily touching your skate blade with his stick and knocking you off balance there's a difference between like sly rat stuff and giving someone a john jones elbow in the freaking temple yeah which is what he did to johansson he just came down on him like that but then when it's game seven of the stanley cup final who do you want centering your line yeah rod marshall and again i don't remember who it was it might have been Chara, JVR is down on the ice. So is the other

player. And they literally elbow dropped him. Like Macho Man Randy Savage elbow dropped him. And it wasn't a call because it's game seven and you've got to basically murder someone in game seven. But I guess my objection, Jesse, is

that wasn't game seven that that happened in. It was just a random regular season game like 55 games in. You've got to play every game like it's game seven. Maybe that's why he's so good. Exactly. Don't tell him to only bring it out when the playoffs start. He said last year when the Jets didn't make the playoffs,

every year I aim to win the Stanley Cup. Every year. Yeah. And it was like, okay, man, but you missed the playoffs this year. Like, come on. They're doing great this year. You bring up a good point, though. He's got to play every game like that.

Like, I've scolded Nazem Kadri for seeing the red mist one too many times. But, I mean, maybe that's part of what makes him great. Yeah, you need it to kind of fire yourself up. Yeah. Back-to-back 30-goal seasons, right? Okay. Just thought I wanted to get your thoughts on that. what was your final topic

because I wanted to go back to something from before but I just forgot I forgot to ask about Vegas where did you have them going into the season because I don't think anyone had them anywhere like even near halfway through the league

and why have they been so good I had them exactly where they are right now just don't go back and read any of the articles take my word for it um no listen i like everyone else thought that they were really going to struggle this year i wasn't even a huge fan of the way they handled the draft to be honest i thought they could have squeezed out much more value than they did oh yeah i feel like he was pretty pretty soft on his counterpart gms i feel like he really could have uh gotten more out of

them and everything's coming to place i mean william carlson scored his 40th goal yes last night i mean obviously getting gift wrapped to top top line guys from florida helps but you know they got a couple good guys from minnesota as well and yeah it's great it's gonna be unfortunate for seattle because they're gonna get compared to this season that they're how great would florida be with one of riley smith or jonathan marsh so in the playoffs and they could have kept either yeah like they they would have lost one but at least run for their money leafs maybe maybe in the wild card picture again i don't want to be i want to be thinking about that um the other one that's been coming up recently is how bad do you think william carlson's

contract is going to be is he ever going to do this again oh definitely not no no he's shooting what is it 25 percent around there yeah 20 23 something again no yeah he's never done this at any level before um if he shoots 15 next year which is still high yeah it's going to be a huge drop off right like i think he can still be productive if in the same role next season if he plays with marcia so and and riley smith on that top line and top power play he'll score 20 25 even up to 30 goals but just so great no it's great but you don't want to you don't want to pay him for the season you had right now thinking that's what you're getting especially when i just said it's very reliant on the role like i don't think he's all of a sudden gonna be on his own

line next season and be doing this yeah like it's very reliant on who he's playing with and that's you don't want to pay guys for that, especially when you can replace them with other guys for cheaper prices for, for, uh, I mean, your, your show is called the PDO cast.

What is Vegas's PDO? Are they a lucky team or are they a good team? They've been slightly fortunate, but it's honestly not even that high. I mean, early in the season, it was quite, it was quite high.

Now it's normalized quite a bit. And yeah, they seem like they're for real. Like I've next year, if they come back with the same team, I'm not going to project them being this successful. I think they're kind of catching teams off guard a little bit. And that's why I'm skeptical in the post season when teams have a chance to

sort of sit down and game plan for them on a game to game basis and slow it down a little bit um they might struggle a bit more but it's a great story um and yeah i guess just enjoy i guess enjoy the ride we always try to sort of um jump too far ahead dissect this stuff or what does this mean for next season and the year beyond and i understand why we do it but sometimes you can just like take something for what it is and that's what's happening here my favorite vegas news of recent uh that's come out is when they had the gm meetings and they said that vegas won't be a part of the seattle expansion draft they're not gonna make them lose a player when seattle comes in i had to take a second to pull it up because i had to make sure it was actually a thing i read

but it was in uh chris johnson's report from the gm meetings yeah i assume you read this too well they did just write a check for 500 million dollars because so so did seattle because when Seattle paid for their expansion fee, Vegas isn't going to get a cut of that money. The GMs are like, all right, so you don't have to lose a player. So that's how it's settling right now. Who knows if it's going to change come 2020 when they have the draft?

I suppose. But right now, Vegas is all in the clear. That is amazing. I guess, why don't they get the money? Yeah, that's weird too. I don't understand. They're only paying it to the 30 teams, I guess. I don't know. Maybe the 30 owners were like, nah, you haven't been here long enough. You're not getting money already. We work for this.

I can understand that. You're an owner. and you've been an owner for five years or 10 years or 15 years, 20 years, and this one team comes in and all of a sudden the league's making more money than it ever has before and they're going to share in that? I don't think so. It was a part of the deal, it says here, that Bill

Foley struck when he got his franchise that he wouldn't be able to get any of the money from the next franchise. Pre them being amazing. Yes. I bet they feel differently. Yeah. Wow. What team, and this is a question for

everybody in the room okay western or eastern conference what team is going to do is going to react stupidly to missing the playoffs gonna make a stupid move this summer because they missed the playoffs and they overreact to them to that sometimes sometimes you just leave your team alone and you're better like i look at i look at edmonton i look at calgary and i think just leave it like maybe calgary improves their goaltending a little bit or gets an you know a backup for Mike Smith. But, I mean, are they a better team than they've shown? Sure. Absolutely, right?

Travis Hamanick plays like Travis Hamanick again. You know, Chicago's missing the playoffs for the first time in the century, I think. Like, it's just crazy. They already had their stupid offseason. They're done now. I think they got it out of their system. Or that Brandon saw Artemi for an R-in trade. Oh, wow. So bad.

They let four games from Pecorino just ruin them. I'm going to say the Islanders. Because Garth Snow Has been, it's very quiet Too quiet And I just, I want to see the Kablooey

Especially if Tavares doesn't re-sign What's the Kablooey going to be Then again, maybe he does re-sign And they get the first and second overall pick But I'll say the Islanders Okay Because that's my answer to everything apparently That's alright

I'd say the Oilers seem like a logical pick Just based on the gentleman And trade Nugent-Hopkins or something, yeah. Oh, my God. I mean, would you count the Senators trading Carlson as overreacting? Or do you think it's a fair reaction to the year they've had? Depends on what they get. I think it's just their situation.

Is it even a reaction if they're trading him? I feel like that's like them just acting and going, we can't do this. Right, right, right. Right? We can't resign this guy. But obviously, if the season had unfolded differently, they wouldn't be acting like that. True. Good point.

Yeah, so I wouldn't count them in that. Right. But if they, let's say they sold low on Duchesne. Yeah. Then I'd be like, okay, that's an overreaction. Yeah, I'll go with the Oilers then. It's always a good bet to bet against. Or, I guess, bet on Shirely to make you look good.

I was thinking... I don't want to be cruel. I was thinking, at what point do the Buffalo Sabres just get fed up and just start just moving everybody? Maybe it's this offseason. I would hope they do. Robin Leonard. Yeah.

I bet they move. I think they're sick of him. They could get a king's ransom for a guy like Ryan O'Reilly, who wins 60% of his face-offs, but he makes $7.5 million. A lot of money The one thing I'll buy into Is at some point

You need to hold on to people Is Buffalo's problem Like a lack of They just haven't picked anybody recently Don't they have cap issues? How? What's the Ocposo deal? Ocposo signed through 2023

At $6 million Then he's 29 Palmanville's 5.6 through 2019 and he's 35 uh ristalainen 5.4 through 2022 begosian 27 5.1 through 2020 scandela four million dollars and he's 28 through 2020 that's a lot of money like the biggest contract they have coming off the books is josh george's and then on forward they've got jacob josephson uh jordan nolan and benoit pouliot and none of those guys are making much more than a million What do you think of Middlestat?

Oh, I think he'd be awesome So there's a potential piece Here's the thing, I look at their top two contracts and I think you should probably move those guys By the time your team is built up and ready to go those guys are past their prime Ryan O'Reilly is 27

He is going into his winner's prime To me, if you're Montreal and you have four second round draft picks I would be leveraging all four of them and maybe a first But $7.5 million, that's so much. They've got the cap room. At some point, though, I just feel like you need to have a decent hockey team.

Don't you? Come on. They didn't rebuild properly, though. Yeah. So here's, they're in the worst position possible where they tried to rebuild and failed. So do you double down and do it again? Again? Dimitri?

Yeah. What do you do? He's a different guy. Armchair GM this. What do you do? Fix the Buffalo Sabres. Go. Spreadsheet here.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think you're on the right track there with trading Ryan O'Reilly, assuming you can get an interesting package back. I wouldn't trade him just for the sake of trading him, because I still think he's a valuable player for them. But, I mean, we sort of see what they are like with Ryan O'Reilly. They're making $7.5 million, so can it get much worse than this right now? Like, they're the worst team in the league this season.

um yeah they gotta do something i mean middle stats gonna be very exciting i think it'll help having another dynamic forward so it's not all on jack eichel's plate they're gonna have a high pick this year as well obviously if they get rasmus dallin i think that look changes quite a bit because they do need that stud defenseman i don't think mr lion and regardless of the contract they gave him is that guy um so it's not pretty man like i actually like their summer they had this year where i thought they brought in a bunch of nhl players which they didn't have They're going to be competent And now they're the 31st team in the league

There's just something on the water there I guess Well, I mean, Jack Eichel It did seem a bit weird When they were drafting Jack Eichel And then giving Matt Molson huge money Or they were bottoming out and giving Matt Molson And Brian Gianza huge money

I haven't checked on his numbers in a while But last I checked, he was doing really well In the minors, and I wondered if they'd give him a shot The Sabres Oh, I'm sorry, Matt Molson Oh, yeah, he was. I mean, I think he was a profile on Coach's Corner a couple weeks ago or something. Yeah.

Yeah. But, I mean, can they even afford to call him up? I don't know. 38 points in 41 games. Not bad. That's not right, man. I mean, he's clearly overqualified for the AHL level, right? Yeah, but he played 14 games for Buffalo Savers, and he had a record of 0-0-0-0.

Oh, nice. It's like Sam Mitchell. 0-0-0. So he didn't take any penalties. Same as us. Actually he got two penalty minutes Oh man Bye bye Lady Bing

So I'm going to say my team that overreacts To missing the playoffs this year is Calgary Because not only did they miss the playoffs They get Travis Hammond And they don't have that pick And if the Islanders get that pick It doesn't matter what the Islanders get with their pick The Calgary pick is going to be interesting

Because as soon as that Calgary pick enters the top five People are going to go And what's interesting about Calgary is apparently they've got some young defensemen like uh shillington yeah uh who's coming up and is pretty good yeah rasmus einerson yeah so they're they it's not like they don't have some young guys coming in and if you look at a guy like like from to me and i get this from elliot friedman 30 31 thoughts the rangers have said we're totally willing to trade one of our first round picks so if you're calgary do you not go what about tj brody hey that's interesting right

So now you're cutting into your team, though. So he was, I remember he was like the golden boy for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially when he came up, he was underpaid. But he was playing with Mark Giordano quite a bit. And I think Giordano's the type of defenseman that makes everyone he plays would look better.

He's had a rough go of it. I don't know if he's been healthy or not. But, yeah, it clearly hasn't worked with him at Hammonick. And he seems like he'd be, I mean, sort of that profiles is that kind of puck-moving, slick-skating defenseman. So teams would be all over that. I don't know why the Rangers, I saw that report as well. But why, why would they do that?

Especially after that letter, they write about how they're turning over the car keys to the future. And if I was, cause Eric Francis was talking about TJ Brody specifically, and I guess he's got a bit of the Jake Gardner syndrome where he does amazing things and he does things. You go, what the fuck, what's going on? Um, and with, if I'm the Rangers, I want Shillington.

That's the guy I want, you know, for a first round pick. And I'm not saying TJ Brody for first one for one. That's not what I'm proposing here. But if you are the New York Rangers and you are rebuilding, You could turn T.J. Brody into something else, too. Yeah, for sure. You could flip him. Because that's a defenseman in need, or a defenseman you'd like.

Give Calgary whatever first-round pick they want, not yours. They have Tampa's, right? It's Tampa's? The Rangers? Yeah. The Rangers have Tampa's on their own. I think so. I think the Rangers have Tampa's this year, and then they have Tampa's second round or

next year, but it becomes a first if they win the Cup or something like this. Or make the final or whatever. No, in each. That's not bad. Good deal for them. I pulled it up here. The Rangers have three first-round picks. Wow.

There's Boston's and Tampa's. Oh, right, because of Rick Nash. What a deadline. God, they won the deadline. It was actually, no, yeah, I still think the Rangers won the deadline, yeah. Which is why it's a little bit weird that they're going to give one up.

Next year's first-round pick. Well, they got a second-round pick from Tampa for 2019, and that can become a first if Tampa wins the Cup in this year or next year. What a deal that will be if they win the Cup. that's a pretty good deal right now yeah i think tampa's gonna be okay with that if they oh yeah oh it was like the the pronger pick yeah where like uh i think the ducks ended up giving the oilers jordan eberly yeah it was a conditional pick if you make the final but it's

like who cares yeah you made it well and what's interesting too is that the tampa pick if they won the cup would be a first or second round pick yet last year the 31st right yeah so it's okay but like you know in terms of cow i feel like calgary new york are like the perfect match for each other right now and new york could get a lot better quicker than we think they just need to get faster like you said right but yeah but see this is the thing it kind of ties it back full circle till we started tomo jim benning and the canucks and the rebuild and i think what the rangers are doing right now is what teams that aren't good should pursue doing like last year they sort of saw the writing on the wall they cashed in they traded derrick stephan for seventh overall and

anthony d'angelo they get leah sanderson with that pick who looks he's gonna be a really promising young player he's gonna have a little cameo here at the end of the season for them so they had two first rounders last year now they have three coming up they could have another two and possibly more if they make trades next year in the years to come that's how you you need to accrue just mass talent like that because the draft is a crapshoot so you're just basically getting lottery tickets i think trade talk is so much more fun now than it was maybe two years ago because so many more teams are like oh you only live once and they're just doing these crazy deals right uh you know let's really commit to a rebuild so you got that class of teams like the leafs the rangers the

rangers pulling out that crazy stepan deal the bergevin just once a year dropping just a nuke on the entire league um i i think i think it's just more fun like there's there's more possibilities out there well and if you look at the rangers you know with the exception of like david day arne who's leaving uh or you would assume is because he's um ufa you've got nimesnikov who you got to resign kevin hayes and ryan spooner those are going to be tough deals especially well they're not going to be crazy but you've got matt zuccarello who's 30 and he makes four and a half and he's got one year left on that deal so that's one of those deals that they talk about like that's the high value mark right if you can trade a guy like that he's got a year left

with a team that wants to load up maybe you call tampa again next year um but other than that Zabina Jad, 24, Kreider, 26, Spooner, 26, Hayes, 25, Nemestikov, 25, Fast, Jesper Fast, 26. This is not an old team. With the exception of Shattenkirk and Mark Stahl, those are the only guys even close to 30, but they're not very deep on defense. They need help.

I mean, they could turn it around next year easily. And the elephant in the room is they still have Henrik Lundqvist, who's still really good, And you sort of want to take advantage of that while you still have them. So you don't want to completely rebuild it. Because he's kind of too good at this point still for you to bottom out. Because he's just going to steal you too many games. Totally.

But you can't tell him to just stop playing well. Yeah. Well, maybe that's why they're open to it. Maybe they know that. Yeah. And maybe they need it. Well, they've got NHL caliber goalie Andre Pavlik as well back there. Let's not forget.

I'm cheering for Georgiev. Alexander Georgiev. Noted Steve Dangle fan. Alexander Georgiev. Is he? Is that a thing? Yeah, didn't I talk about that on the podcast? No, I have no idea what you're talking about.

No. Okay, so myself and Andrei Osichenko. I thought I did. No, I've never heard of it. I could have swore I did. Anyway, myself and Andrei Osichenko, we used to have this show talking about just the NHL and KHL called Joining the Rush. And there's a Russian social media site.

It's basically the Russian Facebook called VK.com. And this kid, I think he was like 15 years old, started a fan page for Joining the Rush. That kid plays for the Rangers now It's Alexander Georgiev According to Andre I haven't confirmed this I would love to meet the guy and be like Is this you?

Imagine if he's just like No I don't know who you are Get the hell out of here That's cool But yeah I think that's super cool Guy likes you

That's cool Yeah So I'm a fan of his forever Did he do that and then also watch your LFRs? Oh, I have no idea I have no idea I assume so because they're great You should, like, ask him.

I know. I only recently found out this information. I'm kind of doing a thing right now, Jesse. What might I be doing? Don't do this to me. Don't do this to me. I don't know. Do you have, like, do you do anything ever?

Where's the camera? I'm writing a book. I just had to say that one more time. Dimitri, if you are, if you're the Rangers and you got three first round picks, what's the smarter move? trade trade pick for player like a tj brody package again i don't want any flames fans coming at me going that's not worth it um or do you trade down like what the leafs did with to get uh was it travis dermot and uh i forget who else they got with that pick

they got they got like three or four players yeah they did a couple trade downs is it smarter to do that uh and get a bunch of seconds because you probably can get two seconds for every first that you have so maybe you call montreal and go hey do you want to first in the draft um or do you just hang on to them draft and go because you got three first round picks you might as well take them i mean it's not the most satisfying answer but i it's too early to tell because i haven't really done a lot of draft prep but also it kind of depends on how the draft's going like you sort of reach these tiers in every draft where it's like there's a big drop off and then it's like well we can probably get a similar player 20 picks later so let's get another extra pick if we can

here and move down if you're not in love with anyone and i think that's what the leafs did even though I didn't love when they did it at the time because I feel like they passed up on Travis Konechny to do so. They did end Alex Dabrinkat. Oh, but Dermot looks awesome, obviously. It was Travis Konechny, and then I think with it the Leafs got, I want to say Dermot, Bracco,

Jerkels, and I want to say in a roundabout way they got... Yeah, they got awesome value for it, for sure. Yeah, and like, I mean, what could the Leafs use right now? Travis Konechny or Travis Dermot? I mean... Someone named Travis.

Yeah, I know, someone named John, as I was saying that, I was like, whoa, wait a sec. And, I mean, Konechny's an amazing player, but, you know, maybe he's putting up the numbers he is because the Flyers afford him the opportunity to, and Dermott is in the lineup because the Leafs' defense kind of sucks. So, I don't know, maybe it ended up being perfect. He also scratched and clawed his way in, too, right? It was like they're doing everything they can not to bring him up, and he just played his way in? I think it was, hey, you want me or Borgman?

Let's go. Right. Let's go. I don't think he was supposed to make the Leafs this year. Who? Dermott. Like, they sort of talked about it like it was always the plan. I don't think it was.

Not from what I've heard. What I've heard the plan was at least next year, and they wanted to, you know, get him playing a lot of power play, get him playing a lot of penalty kill. And he's, like, dipped his toe in the penalty killing pool here in the NHL. But he's going to be a real key piece. If you're the Leafs GM. Trey Travis Herman

you're Lou Dubas what is that's your new name Lou Dubas do you re-sign any of JVR Bozak or Komarov or make that a priority no on all three I think obviously depends on the price I think JVR's

term is going to be a bit too rich for my blood especially with his scoring binge he's been on he's sort of priced himself out of staying in Toronto I feel like which I mean he's an awesome player very productive I think he could probably play in a more expanded role although i'm always intrigued by this idea of these guys who don't play much of 515 but just absolutely kill it on the power play um and there's a lot of value in that but yeah if he's gonna get four or five years from someone and

someone will be willing to pay him that maybe six or seven i think it's one of those things where you just got to think ahead and you're gonna have to pay all these guys down the road and you just acknowledge it might be a bit of a hit in the short term but it's the type of critical decision making you have to make okay uh let's do the press conference I checked up on the Oilers to see if they were still on a historically terrible pace

the record for the single season home futility on the penalty kill is the 1977-1978 Washington Capitals who had a 66.7% home penalty kill. Holy crap.

On January 24th, the Oilers had a penalty kill at home of 54.2%. It's just so impossibly bad. Today, they have a home penalty kill of 63%. Woo! So, there's still three percentage points in the lowest ever in the history of the NHL. How many games they got left? I don't even know

Will they take enough penalties to negate it? They've played 38 home games So they got Oh my god They can still the record Oh that's going to be close That's going to be very close

I mean the season's a failure no matter what because they didn't make the playoffs May as well set a record I wonder if they look at it like a victory like no let's at least seal it without breaking the record but they would I think basically

have to take they would A have to take a bunch of penalties and B kill them all yeah two things I don't think they can do counterpoint since it is a lost season and I think that's sort of one of those I mean it's obviously a horrible stat but I don't think it's necessarily something where I think next year they're going to be historically bad as well no one a penalty

kill that's something very random maybe you point to that be like hey we're gonna be better next year there's no way we're gonna be historically bad again yeah i like we hope yeah this year uh you know it's different than maybe you know 2013 when we're arguing about you know listen you understand this is never going to happen again right or you understand this is a one-off right i think everyone sort of understands like guys william carlson is probably not going to score 40 again guys the oilers penalty kill is not going to be 63 percent at home again like you know that right everyone seems to be a little bit more open that's true

anything else no no well it's not really me it's jesse that's supposed to be asking questions but he's fixing a camera right now so were we recording that whole conversation yeah oh we got did you not you didn't think we were i had no idea what was going on i thought we were just chatting

well that's the whole point right it's supposed to be like that that's right perfect so jesse next question that is not a sturdy camera you're a this is one of our uh most upvoted questions ever had gotten 19 upvotes we rarely reached that peak izzy underscore brinker wants to know if you were in the nhl and had to create your own eight team no trade list who would be on it well i think we've had a similar question let's go this way adam 18 no trade um a lot of players have

like it changes every year right and a lot of players have kind of like i think the leafs were previously on a lot of players no trade list and they're slowly coming off because why the hell wouldn't you want to be on the list none of this is answering the question well so what i was getting to is it would be based on whoever sucks the most so well okay i don't want to go to arizona i don't want to go to edmonton i don't want to go to vancouver although ah i get to live in vancouver that's what i'm saying that's what i'm saying brooksie see i i'm i'm i'm way too uh like vain and superficial for this i would definitely pick the best places to live and then i don't care i don't want to win i just want to live a comfortable life um but i will i will

say like for example i would hate hate to live in winnipeg no offense to people who live in winnipeg but we saw this year paul stasny waved his no trade clause which seemed unthinkable in years past so i think and there's such a fun team with all these young exciting players so i think we're going to see in years to come they might even start signing free agents like people are going to want to play with that type of talent with that said i would not want to live in winnipeg I think Arizona's great. I've never been. Adam liked it.

It's beautiful. It's good. Phoenix is great. Sedona's different than Phoenix and Scottsdale and every other place that the Coyotes play. But, I mean, God, Scottsdale's beautiful. It's beautiful. North Scottsdale in one of those villas. Yeah, you can golf every day.

Yeah, it's awesome. I'm there. And a lot of time to golf when you're not playing in a playoff. I'll tell you this. I would have a hard time. I would have a hard time with Montreal. and the reason I say that is because of the taxes

if you go to Montreal, you are losing half of your salary instantaneously and tax is gone that should be on our Steve Dangle podcast bingo board, Adam talking about Quebec taxes I wouldn't want to go to that I want to be in places where I could keep the majority of the money that I make

such a fun city to live in though oh it is for all the wrong reasons though if it was me and I could play in the NHL I wouldn't give a shit where just let me play in the NHL I'd be so sick

Buffalo for sure we're crossing that Buffalo Detroit I don't live in Detroit but I'm so close to home Detroit's cool though now Detroit's not what it was

man it's like it's coming back in a really funky cool way they're like leading edge on micro farming and like a whole

but there's really cool stuff going on in Detroit plus you can buy like an entire apartment building and make it your own for like 500 grand

it's insane it's great That it's coming back I'll take it off my list Once it's come back Once it's come back Yeah I'll be a late adopter

Yeah Maybe Maybe Detroit Columbus I mean they're not gonna be able To give me a very good deal Because they can't afford me Because

It's true Because you're just too expensive Columbus You know what I wouldn't want to do San Jose Why San Jose Everything closes

At like 8 o'clock at night There's no nightlife in San Jose Are you like Super specific answers man Well You're asking me I know That's the question

Listen I've already said I'm not frustrated with your answer I'm frustrated with my lack of knowledge How do I answer that? Oh, you know, good point I got nothing for that St. Louis

Are you living in St. Louis? I don't know much about St. Louis The city of St. Louis No, nothing about it So that's why, again I'm boring, I would just go with the teams that stink oh so it'd be a one of those lists that changes every year here's the list oh yeah here's the list right now the bottom eight teams buffalo arizona vancouver ottawa detroit montreal chicago

new york rangers and new york islanders so you would still be cool with going to edmonton or carolina um or st louis like like for example i know of a player who previously had toronto on their you know i would never go there i don't know if it was necessarily a no trade list but They were just like, no, I'll never go to Toronto. I would love to sign with Detroit, though. And because of what's happened the last two years, it's completely switched. Oh, I won't go to the Red Wings. Oh, I would love to play for the Leafs.

Right. Not that any player could play for the Red Wings if they really wanted to because they can't. They have no money. They literally cannot afford it. But who likes losing? Nobody. I don't want to play for a team that I am fairly certain is going to lose.

What's so interesting about the no trade list, though, is you have to submit it, I think, before the season, right? So you base that on No Vegas Never under any circumstances I don't think too many players had that on their list But when you waive that no trade clause You've waived it from what I understand

For the entirety of the deal I think if you accept the trade If you accept the trade somewhere Let's say you had a no trade clause And you waive it to go somewhere I think then that team is able to trade you wherever We'll answer this Did FNUF have to waive to get traded to L.A.?

But he did have to waive. Because he had to waive it to get traded from here. Okay, so I'm wrong. I'm wrong. Maybe you could renegotiate. I'm sure you could probably renegotiate. I don't know. There might not be necessarily one tried and true rule.

Not sure. Anyway. Interesting. Final question. Tough to call out eight cities and be like, no, F you. I don't want to play there. Like, man, it's the NHL. I mean, there's a reason people live everywhere.

I mean, there are no genuinely small towns in the NHL. You can find a great reason to live anywhere. I don't want to play in a city that loses. What a diplomatic answer. Except Edmonton. Except Edmonton. Edmoney's fun. Oh, man.

Their nightlife? I've heard it's amazing. White Avenue, man. You will never forget it. It's the best. Edmoney's fun. The new Dubai, as I was told it's called. They kept calling it Edmoney, the new Dubai, which I think might be a slight exaggeration.

But no, I don't want to go there because they lose all the time. You know, if it's like last year. But wouldn't you want to play with me, David? Wouldn't you want to play with me, David? Oh, yeah, I would. Oh, he'd make me rich. You think you're good enough to play with me, David? Probably, yeah.

I mean, Tyratty said his dad could play with him today. Are you left or right? I shoot right-handed, so I suppose I'd be on the right wing. All right. I mean, I'd probably be a right-handed defenseman. So, like, I mean, I'm primo. But knowing how Steve plays, there's going to be no defense. Oh, puck rushing.

Puck rushing defenseman. That doesn't go with their style? What are you saying? Oh, I would just get McDavid the Buck. Next question. Munesplash wants to know. Sweet name.

What is the weirdest thing you've seen in someone else's home? Without calling them out. No, first and last name. Well, it's funny. If it's a weird thing you've seen in their home and they hear this,

they're going to know it's them anyway. Oh, yeah, that's fine. No, I went into someone's bathroom. It's not unique. I went into someone's bathroom and I'm facing ahead of me

and I'm looking down into their bathtub and they're sitting there in several inches of water. It was just a watermelon. And I didn't ask about it and I never got an explanation and it was just sitting there in their bathtub in several inches of water. A watermelon.

I would love to have an answer for that. That seems like something you ask about. I can't believe you didn't ask that question. No. Why? I don't know why. It wasn't out in the open. It's a regret of mine. I should have asked. But I didn't ask. uh can you ask them today sure i'd like to know i want to know too i've uh i'm always fascinated

by what people collect you know people always have there's people with collections so like my grandparents had this teaspoon collection and like and it and it would literally it was like the whole wall it's like the whole thing they just had and that was like an old british thing too which is just if there's space on the wall cover it up can't be space on the wall yeah Who does that? Steve. The weirdest thing, though, I've ever seen is, like, beyond collections and stuff like that, is, like, someone's pet.

I walked in and someone had a python. Oh, God. In, like, a heat lamp. And I was like, this is... Were you in Florida? No, I was not in Florida. And it was... That is a pre-warning kind of pet.

Yeah. Like, it's just one of those things where you're like, wow, like, you live with a killer. That's crazy. Yeah, I don't get that. I don't get that. I have... I feel the same way about cats. Me too.

Well, they're killers too, right? They don't like you. I don't trust them. You shouldn't. I don't trust them. You should never trust a cat. It's so creepy. It's just, you never hear a dog owner go,

oh, yeah, they attack me from time to time, but it's fine. All cat owners are like, oh, yeah, they scratch the shit out of me. They actually hate me. Yeah, but look, I'm petting them right now. Yeah, you're petting them at the moment, But how do you trust them to Not like just mess your Like you always see them

Like scratches on their hand and their arm And their neck Otherwise lovely experience If you pet a dog It will never get tired of you petting it If a dog attacks you they make you give it away Yeah Cats just do it

But cats you'll pet a cat for like Two or three and then they'll be like Okay that's enough Okay now I'm going to attack you Like it's don't effing touch me at all I don't know why I censored myself there Don't fucking touch me man And then they'll come up to you and be like scratch my ears

Okay that's enough thank you fuck off And I find that yeah Cats I don't understand And they let cats just out of the house To roam the neighborhood And then they just come back That's not good And they poo in your house

They poo everywhere That's always the thing you ever walk by cat litter When they fresh cat poo I go I walk by someone's house I'm like why does it smell like poo in here Oh they have a cat There's a very good friend of ours who listens to this podcast Who is very much a cat person And I'm sure I'm going to get the full diatribe

Listen I'm not saying not to own a cat You should probably not own a cat I have oh I'll never own a cat What we're saying is don't spay and neuter your cats Is what we're saying I just don't I don't get the cat appeal Also if you What is the

I guess if you don't spay or neuter them What does the cat smell there is a smell you could if you're what is that you ever looked into uh i've been in apartments where it's all i could smell well it's absolutely you've told me stories about who that is and i have you guys um when you're looking for apartments or you know if you're if you've bought a condo or you bought a house or whatever i've looked at condos to buy and gone and walked in and said nope i'm out because it'll cost so much just to clean it i remember i rented an apartment with uh my ex in calgary and it took us months to get that stuff out of the carpet we had

somebody before us the tenant before you probably just stopped noticing it too well she had to go out to the store because i'm so allergic to cats too and get like a cat uh like a a white powder that you put into the carpet to dampen the dander like to get it to stop affecting you and your sinuses and all that stuff it was crazy you're such a honey let's try it out kind of guy i would have been like nope like we wouldn't have been in there longer than 60 seconds we'd be going all right bye yeah yeah i'm allergic to cats this smells like cats gone well that was easy uh do we have any more no we're good all right okay dimitri thank you so much for coming on man anytime guys it's just a shame that now you got to fly back yeah it's true i flew here just for

the podcast for the show what are you in town for um i'm doing the puck talks on thursday night at the rivoli which i am no longer doing unfortunately yeah so everyone else should come and check it out it'll be a great time um even more of a reason now yes exactly no i agreed to do it because i always agree to do puck talks and it was just like yeah i'll do it and then i realized i'm like oh i have a book due and i'm very not done yeah and i probably like i've every email i've gotten hey can you do this can you do that i've been like don't talk to me till next week everybody have this is my first time out of the house it's actually really nice so yeah but have fun it's such a good lineup too yeah who you on with uh justin bourne chris johnson oh fuck those guys

oh i love those guys so you three and there's another one i know they're working on but i don't know if they've yeah i'm not sure who else is gonna be but it's gonna be a good cast so come out for that and um be doing the usual i'll be doing my own podcast some articles what Yeah What are you working on article wise Or do you not want to spill the beans I don't usually put too much planning into it I usually like the day of

You guys do the exact same I mean stuff changes you never know Get in the mindset and just do it Why the Leafs should re-sign JVR for 7 years And 8 million dollars One thing I've been seeing with that Which is so annoying Everyone's like if we didn't sign Marlo we could sign JVR

I was gonna Okay I got a whole rant about that That we need to save for the next episode but that is categorically false we have all somewhere to talk about that oh my god

I hate that how can the Leafs reacquire Brendan Leipzig truly hey Dimitri thanks so much for coming on if you want to check out

his podcast it's the Hockeypedia Ocast also brought to you by Sportsnet correct? yes alright what's your Twitter handle?

dimphillipowich go follow me there and guys thanks for having me thanks for coming on the Philip Podcast follow the guys on Twitter at Steve underscore

Dangle, at Adam W-Y-L-D-E and at Jesse Blake. The Steve Dangle Podcast. Brought to you by Panago Pizza. Order at Panago.com and stuff your face with deliciousness.