The Steve Dangle Podcast - In the Cards | July 16, 2026

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, 00:00 Steve is in the 2026 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions trading card set 25:00 Red Wings remove Steve Yzerman as GM 1:04:00 George McPhee speaks no truths 1:14:00 The 2026 NHL schedule 1:25:00 The NHL 27 trailer 1:36:00 The Leafs and Penguins make new hires 1:45:00 Shane Wright and the Canucks 1:53:00 Trevor Zegras extends in Philly Visit this episode's sponsors: 🌎 Get an exclusive 15% discount on Saily data plans! Use code DANGLE at checkout. Download Saily app or go to https://saily.com/dangle Watch all episodes of The Steve Dangle Podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEidkgWpSiHVkYT7HrIzLPXlY Watch clips of The Steve Dangle podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEieOJuIrqWyZPWSIJtVMCbLz Buy SDP merch https://sdpnshop.ca/ Visit https://sdpn.ca/schedule to see when our next live stream airs! Check out https://sdpn.ca/events to see The Steve Dangle Podcast live! Watch hockey with us! Live on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEifCTX0vkKEaGg9otrW4Zl2k Subscribe to the sdpn YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sdpn?sub_confirmation=1Join Subscribe to SDP VIP!: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0a0z05HiddEn7k6OGnDprg/join Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/thestevedanglepodcast Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sdpvip/subscribe - Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/MtTmw9rrz7 For general inquiries email: [e-mail] Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. S-D-P-P. The Steve Dangle Podcast with your hosts, Steve Dangle, Adam Wild, and Jesse Blake. Let's go! All right, very quick promo off the top. World Cup Sunday, I'm streaming it.

And there's a prize to be given away, too. Adam, for the audience, what is that? Oh, actually, I can't even call it that. The big soccer match on Sunday. I don't think Infantino's listening. Well, he is. The World Cup is on Sunday. But separately from that,

I will be streaming a massive tournament championship game that happens to be soccer. Separately. Was that 3 o'clock? three o'clock three o'clock on sunday this happens to be a three yeah so on the sdp on youtube channel go to youtube.com sdpn if you're not already subscribed hit subscribe and then during that stream adam will be giving away a canada world cup jersey yeah we got a canada soccer tourney jersey uh that's what's the what it is what the jersey is uh you can win that so make

sure you're watching and you'll be able to enter the contest if you're watching and you might be to win it by the end of it and sadly it's not it's not coming home i was chirping for who canada no for for england i was chirping steve's wife who's scottish and her belief is anyone but england she got her wish yesterday um i i gotta say jude bellingham had a great tournament but uh don't go poking the messy bear dude what is wrong with you what are you doing it's just not a good idea that's that's like doing that to crosby like hey sid you're washed he comes down the ice he made yeah yeah oh oh and a guy the chin disappearing face the and he's just you know he's emptying the tank yeah his last world cup of course is crosby flopping against philly gonna be a part of his

legacy okay that's so that actually that's for insider j money you're welcome that changes nothing about his legacy flyers fans already thought that's what he was that's there a good yeah yeah now when sydney does do his goodbye right don't you think it's a trip up the stairs well yeah that's got to make the montage well there's that but i also think like wouldn't it it's only fair i think that flyers fans boo him out of respect like if you hear him that's going to be super lame yeah that's not philadelphia no you you you've had this brand since the beginning you you run that right right through to the end you cannot cheer sydney you can't flip it now no you must boo him when he retires when he retires and then ultimately becomes an executive with the

penguins uh i hope his first draft where he gets to announce their first pick is in philly oh oh i like that it needs to be that way yeah that would be come on it'd be pretty and it'd be great booing it'd be wonderful oh appointment viewing booing yeah except he won't be there because gary won't allow anybody there anymore and everything's decentralized that's right we can't have your moment steve no fun to be had at the nhl draft forgot about that sorry i've never had fun in my whole life thanks said gary um anyway uh lots to talk about but i want to start with something fun because there are news and notes and things to talk about but let's talk about the most important thing which is buying the dip all right if anybody's into crypto

hey are you no well no i'm not into crypto but some people are they always tell you when the price goes down that's when you buy yeah buy the dip bro now steve you went through a whirlwind this weekend because your cards from upper deck came out and we were looking at what they were going for on ebay like what the packs were going for the obviously when you buy a hockey card pack and i'm not obviously very familiar with buying too many of these um they can be quite expensive they could be like 200 bucks oh they could be more than that like um there's a a brand called the cup it's from upper deck it's hundreds of dollars per box i don't even know how many hundreds guess how many cards are in the box well i would think like a hundred it's like six

oh oh wow yeah oh wow yeah okay is it even a box is it not just a packing oh no it's a box okay all right but what is in it like you're guaranteed to get like game worn jersey stuff in the cards autograph stuff it's for collectors so you're buying you're buying it with the idea that this is actually still liquid worth money you can resell yes okay yeah you're just it's i i think it's just a different form of betting well it is honestly yeah yeah but you get something i guess tangible even if you lose sure or whatever but goodwin champions this is a fun little item that upper deck puts out and a year or so ago they asked me to be in it and i was like well that's silly and i maybe didn't take it as seriously as i should have because we took photos for the photo

shoot that they asked us to do jesse took the pictures in the studio and had i known how prestigious these cards were i wouldn't have posed like this that's so embarrassing i'm 20 pounds heavier i have no beard i look like a slug this is terrible and now i look like that forever so what's going on with these cards i think jesse you could probably explain a little bit better the price fluctuation because initially goodwin champion so it's mostly athletes but there's also like bill nye the science guys in it david blaine there's a bunch of actors actresses it's hundreds of people hundreds of people like competitive eaters surfers bull riders um it's just neat stuff you can get cards with uh ash from mount saint helens nice whoa right so

it was originally 150 bucks a box and then something happened yeah so this is their goodwin champions is kind of like the silly box where it's yeah celebrities plus athletes so it's more pop culture based which is perfect for us a very cool idea but yeah it feels like they made a steve dango podcast uh a hockey card a vip set uh collector set you know it's really cool so what happened is the lead up to this upper deck announced that there would be a special program associated with this year's goodwin champions and that is michael jordan cards so uh hayden you can bring this up here whoa they announced that last week or i think it was last week week before that the 2026 goodwin champions is packed with incredible michael jordan content keep an eye

out on for rare patch cards in the good day i don't want to say that gaudy gaudy yeah sport royalty memorabilia insert hard signed autographs in goodwin art framed and that's so 90s autographs and the iconic splash of color insert now featuring a stunning 3D lenticolor variate. And of course, Michael Jordan isn't the only legendary person. So the fact that we're getting hand-signed Michael Jordan cards, which are incredibly rare, into these boxes spike the prices of the boxes, obviously. but also you can get redemption cards for packs of uh well i think it's 1987 fleer uh basketball cards yes which contain his rookie card so if you if we scroll up here you'll see

sounds like jesse was getting to that oh good no no that's good setup for that here's the punchline originally these boxes the hobby box version which is 15 packs in this box and five cards per pack so you're getting a lot of cards in here 75 cards yeah and you can get different variations where you can just buy one of the packs where it's uh five cards and you paid 14 for that whatever but these the hobby box ones are the ones that contain the good stuff so these is what you usually want they retail for 199 and then they announce this buy back buy back program where upper deck is celebrating their relationship with michael jordan inside random boxes of the 2026 goodwin champions you can find a redemption card for an incredibly rare sealed signed and

slabbed 86 87 fleer basketball pack number to 23 among these one ultra lucky collector will find a redemption card for the loan pack featuring a hand signed rookie pack inscription by Michael Jordan himself. So you can get a pack and then potentially in that pack is the ultimate rare Michael Jordan card that you can see there. I love that. So that was the big reveal coming up with the Michael Jordan celebration upper deck partnership. So you could crack that open and like keep the wrapper and just pray to God that there's a rookie in it. Exactly. And then so I mentioned they're 199 when it's like hey the michael jordan uh buyback thing hasn't been announced yet it gets announced and they over they more than double in price where they were

going for like four and five ninety nine we saw them go for as high as 650 yeah i just want to let you guys know so just just so everybody understands and hey my camera's a little out of focus we'll have to figure fix that out at some point um the the uh i was at the cottage or i was driving up to the cottage to my wife's family cottage and i looked down at my phone which was on do not disturb and there are a hundred text messages between steve jesse justin and drew talking about this and and then it continued all weekend long as you guys sort of yeah because we're like okay we we're going to get a bunch of these so we can open them on stream and just have them and try and find steve but now that this michael jordan thing is happening

we need to figure out how to get our hands on them before they actually uh sell out or if they jump too high in price where it's a little unreasonable so we're going and searching we see the ones that are like 599 650 and all that and then we find a couple hobby shops that still have them at regular price so we buy up a bunch of them on the friday night we ordered them from yeah it was a quebec hobby shop um they had 10 in stock i believe it said on the website and in local shops where they just got to ship them out from each location they have a bunch of rival cards in ajax if you're interested so we bought them we bought up a whole set of these at uh at retail value for 199 so we're gonna are we gonna do an opening okay we should we should

actually here's what i'm thinking we do we do an opening now we do an opening later in the show and like we just do we do successive openings as as the because the summer you know summer content is summer content right we're going to be thin on news so we could do this a couple of times every episode right can't we sure yeah yeah like why not and so we find them now there's 15 packs in each box and we have three boxes sitting in front of us right now i brought in one for each of us so yeah there's a lot of packs in here we should take our time yeah that's what i'm thinking yeah can i show off some examples yeah okay so this is a signed quincy isaiah card um do you know him i couldn't figure out who he was uh but he's wearing sunglasses and jesse goes no this is

the guy who plays magic johnson in showtime winning time winning adam you've seen winning time i have seen winning time so he's like that's magic johnson yeah i loved winning time yeah but i couldn't but he's wearing sunglasses second season they just wrapped it up super quick and i was like oh my why are you canceling this show yeah by the way you should read that book by the way you want to read a good book this summer winning time winning time lakers dynasty put it on audiobook do your chores it's one of the most unbelievable sports books i've ever read continue this is a basketball player named darius garland uh this has an autograph um oh my god this is one of my favorites this is a number to 149 so there's only 149 of these this is a pink confetti

variant of bill nye the science guy bill bill bill bill bill bill bill um this is what a base card looks like and like they're not everyone who's in it is alive this is a george washington carver card ah yeah well i uh good for him wow there's a guy on tiktok i love whose parodies of these cards and opening them oh and he makes up guys that are in the car is that the guy who did saddam hussein rookie card no thank you again for getting to the punchline i can't ever get anything out here i was gonna i was gonna say he did one that was really funny he's like mousseline hey jesse why did the chicken cross the road the other side of the street you think it's funny it's funny because it's a misdirect you see so but instead of a misdirect

it's exactly what you thought which is what makes it funny i opened up one of the boxes this is what it looks like really cool they've done a fantastic job with this shout out upper deck um steven this is really cool that you're in it like this is a yeah this is a lifetime oh my god amazing well do you think jesse blake of the jesse blake sports report will one day be in it uh i sincerely hope so and a good video yesterday so without giving away too much specifics because like i don't know what i'm allowed to say yeah um there's a bunch of stuff i did for them like provided them and they didn't use it so it's either not gonna get used it might be in the trash or there's no but there's other sets of uh it could be in the trash that's true it could be it should be um but

there's other sets of goodwin champions ah and so the guys at the store were saying well maybe it just goes into the other so we'll do we're gonna do one opening now one opening later and one of these i'm just gonna tell you that one of these is thicker than the other oh so it could be a memorabilia card or it could be a decoy card because they know that people feel them and weigh them ah it's a they put a so this is where the michael jordan rookie is yes by the way if i get that who does it belong i get to keep that right no stpn owns oh for god's sake all right fine oh is this the three of us share this expense yeah this is damn it this is from all of all of a sudden i care about uh what are you talking about i've never cared about okay since i was a kid so i got

tom char who's a skateboarder tom char i got ben with her base card he's a boxer okay i got a uh glossy black variant of cameron brink w nba player okay i got oh a numbered card of oh i think i know who this person is adam you definitely would number to 299 this is pyotr ilyich tchaikovsky oh of course you know who's that jaykowski is one of the great composers yes yes yes i've heard of that and uh john crimer who is a bull rider by the way can i tell you a funny story about my family no mike jesse what do you have my grandfather was a uh a piano prodigy uh and he was very poor in drumheller alberta in the in the depression but he learned to play piano on like a an out of tune piano that they had in the house dirt floors by the way and

became like this concert pianist at a very young age and he uh my mom could tell what kind of mood he was in on a saturday morning based on what composer he was playing that morning so if he was playing i think it was rock monanoff it meant they did a lot of chores that day that weird and i forget what the happy one was but the the one where it's like okay there's things to be done it was rock mononov and that's how he got into the isn't the groove isn't that crazy yeah anyway that's that's yeah autism's brand new well i think we all suspect it's one of those things now he was brilliant but there were some there's some things sorry i just one of those tiktoks autism's brand new never used to exist also these are the decorative spoons you

don't touch the decorative spoon right all right now i guess i can go next you go yeah so i got milana vantrue she is in project hail mary and this is us oh i got her actor i got i got a special card badlands chugs who is a competitive eater he owns the world record for fastest two liter thing a pop drank oh i've seen the guy who belches like a lion this is this guy that's that guy so this has a special code that i can enter at upper deck oh what i haven't seen one of those yeah so what does that what does that do i have no idea should we enter the special code i can scratch some some thing on the back and it gives me a code i don't know what i'm gonna what it's gonna do can we can we do that i do uh yeah let's uh let me do the other ones and while adam opens

let me figure this out upper deck bounty.com dude i saw dozens and dozens of cards get or packs of cards get open yesterday not a single one of those was pulled okay so that's really maybe he should stop touching it adam you might know her bianca bianca boost boost amante she's in uh she's at one yeah she's f1 academy driver for mclaren oh there you go she's the women's team driver for mclaren yeah uh she's a very good driver and well obviously she's driving from i would hope so yeah but also got it awful i think she also if i'm not mistaken jesse i think she like shit talked max for stopping or something in a social media post if i if i remember correctly she's my new favorite anyway very funny and i got morgan chile uh basketball player oh

all-american during high school she had played for oh she helped yukon with a national title in 2014 so she's in five yeah she's still in the ncaa okay that's sick all right there you go adam what do you got all right so first one you guys are gonna love i think hockey fans are gonna love because it's a hockey person but it ain't steve i'm pretty sure this person is the only other hockey even associated person yes goodwin champion well i know he knows yeah it sounds like jessica campbell jessica campbell former assistant coach of the seattle kraken so i knew she was where is she now what is she doing now uh she left the kraken i don't think she's taking a new job okay i knew she was getting a card because uh they at some point during the process accidentally sent

me an email meant for her oh and i they're like ah hockey person hockey jessica steve what's the difference and i went oh well i guess she's getting one that's cool all right uh my next one is an investor named nolan bushnell who i do not really know uh bushnell created the first video game to find commercial success in 1972 and then founded the pioneering video, a pioneering video game company. I'm assuming that's Atari. Went on to start a chain of children's pizza

restaurants. I guess they don't want to say which. What? They didn't get the rights to the pizza? I guess they didn't want to promote it for him. What did he do? He did Atari. Yep. And then he did Chuck E. Cheese. Ooh. So that, the same guy created Atari and Chuck E. Cheese.

That's not bad. That's a pretty good career. My next one is a curler i think he's american colin huffman but here's the thing when it's glossy like this what does that mean uh it's just an insert is are there numbers on the back oh it says 82 on the top no no no so right around the middle you would see if it was numbered that means there's only x amount of them oh if it says 299 there's 299 okay blah blah blah blah oh i got a uh surfing brazilian surfing champion but it's funny funnily enough his name is italo italo but he's not italo no he's not brazilo brazilo uh italo ferreira uh and yeah he is a dominant surfer yay and it's sparkly

and there is 151 of 199 is the number on this hey there you go so that's numbered that's rare so that's rare very cool all right all right and then last one uh maurizio rufi from mma um he's from brazil uh and i guess fights and i don't know anything about you uh ufc i never have so right never been into that i don't know yeah anyway but good for good for him so the i've done the code on the back of my thing it's to collect all of the splash of color cards so hayden you can bring this up here so if you go to the bounty site if you collect all of these the splash of color cards here you get a deontay wilder splash of color auto i think oh accomplishment for the uh the the 47 people who get all of these cards so that's what the code is can have them that's

crazy do you know how many like boxes of cards you would have to buy i know somebody's gonna do it you know somebody's gonna do it yeah but like every time i opened a pack i was just like oh freddie prince jr's in this and me that's cool man it's very silly uh so those are those are available right now and by the way buy the dip that's always the thing i love the fact that we were like so we were looking at not only the card packs but we were looking at what the steve dangle cards were going for on youtube and it was not a lot 40 bucks oh was there a 40 there were a couple of them all right all right you said youtube ebay i'm on ebay yeah i don't know why i said uh by the way i i was just recently introduced to card breaking on ebay i have never heard of

this but people do live streams on ebay obviously and they open these card packs and people like bid on cards that haven't been opened yet i don't even know how it really works but seems interesting i did it once uh klutz and chara and kitchener basically like you get dibs on like the way they did it was like uh you draft the teams so like i got like detroit and dallas so you got any card that associated with detroit yes okay yeah and you pay for that is that i think you have to buy in yeah okay that's the way it works interesting yeah people apparently are really into that i had of course i had no idea completely oblivious to it there were these two guys who i think were sabers fans who they opened me and oh steve dangle got a card

oh and then they're like oh i don't know schtick's kind of old but like wow but then they started talking about like half a dozen of like their favorite moments of mine i'm like i guess i'm not that bad sometimes life throws your curveballs and you don't have time to get to them and that's where task rabbit comes in and i think you should check this out because here's the deal one of the things one of the weird quirks about my condo building is that they use my floor to repel down and clean all the windows but they never clean my windows oh and their way around on that is like well it's a patio window you can do that yourself and i'm like well hang on a second what if i don't want to i don't have the stuff because you gotta have that scraper thing and the and the washer

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TaskRabbit.ca, code DANGLE. Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. register today at pmcfwalk.ca all right so we've talked about steve's hockey cards we've talked about the big soccer tournament let's talk about the actual big big news in the last 24 hours which is the banishment of steven eiserman now man this is a very interesting thing because you got to remember it was july 15th when steve eiserman was let go chris illich uh who is now the I guess the head of the family that owns not only Little Caesars, but the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers basically said it's time for a change. And I'll get to that statement in

a second. But I think there's a couple of things that stand out about this beyond the fact that it's hey, it's Steve Eisenman and he's not running the Red Wings, which is part of the reason we thought he was able to run the Red Wings this long without any success. And what's crazy about this is he will end his tenure in detroit without having seen a playoff game and that that to me like imagine he's coming over from tampa in 2019 or 2020 whatever the hell it was that's just right before april 2019 there you go took the role and and the lightning like immediately won the cup the next year and if i had said to you steve eiserman's teams will not see a stanley cup playoff game i'd have been laughed out of the room but it's oh my god it's kind of nuts that

a guy who was such a big part of building that tampa team was not able to replicate that success or even get close to it in detroit um and the fact that he hung on this long is sort of shocking oh well hung on this long it'd be shocking if he wasn't steve eisenman no no hung on this long this year and i should i should say that because again july 15th is a very weird date to make a managerial change and my question is why uh i think they were probably getting daily updates on the larkin situation and there were updates right cj had one recently where uh his three team list is now four he's willing to go to dallas so here's four teams who have like pretty much nothing to offer you right um and detroit decided the situation was untenable and you know

part of me wonders if dylan larkin who has a terrible relationship with steve husman it's like a not well kept secret in hockey um part of me wonders if part of his motivation for the trade request is yeah well if they trade me they trade me and that's great but if they don't trade me at least i get steve fired right because now like i've talked to people who are on uh who have differing opinions on this like does this mean that a trade happens sooner rather than later or does this decrease the likelihood of a trade i'm kind of on the side of it decreases the likelihood i'm with you on that jesse to answer your question about like why the timing here i think it's because the larkin situation is the straw that broke the camel's back yeah where i

don't think Chris Illich entered this offseason after the Red Wings missed the playoffs thinking that Eisenman's gonna get fired on July 15th I think when the Larkin stuff unfolds he realizes oh are the guy who's in charge of this thing has made the situation untenable for the captain because of their personal relationship and all of this stuff now with all of the missing the playoffs and the bad team he's put together is what needs me to make a change here so I think that's why because they weren't expecting this, but then the Larkin stuff changed everything. And the way that he's being ushered out

has allowed them to do this this late in the offseason because he's not just getting fired in that, hey, somebody else has got to come in and fix everything. He's going to be a part of the process of hiring the new guy. So it's not a complete just, hey, we're now, we have an empty space here. He's at least helping through this process. So it's okay that he got to run the draft and everything

because he's going to remain in his role until they hire somebody else. This doesn't seem like something that was planned, like you said, though, like at the draft, if you were to give Chris Illich truth serum, he'd be like, well, Steve Eiserman is going to be the GM next year. Right. I you know, can I can I propose a theory to because I don't think you're wrong, Jess. But do you think the Illich family looked at because to me, the right time to do this would be April 15th when they were out of the playoffs and move him up and switch it up and find somebody else. Because then you can plot the new course of direction of the franchise. I look at what's happened since April 15th. And the most notable additions the Detroit Red Wings made this summer are Danil Tarasov from Florida as their backup goalie, who I'm sure you do not remember even signed there.

But he signed for one year, two million. And Victor Arvidsson, who came off an injury-plagued year in L.A., injury-plagued year and not good in Edmonton, very good year in Boston. Very good. but is now making at 35 5 million bucks a year for the next two years he's the exact kind of guy that eisenman's signed for like a number of years in detroit he's the next jt com for here's a guy and like most of the guys this is the they're all good problem yeah like they're not bad guys he doesn't sign bums or anything it's just okay does this really i think the justin hall deal is regrettable for him yeah oh it's not he's made good deals he's made bad but like a lot of them

are just sort of oh okay like they're just not needle movers yeah i think we might underrate like just looking at the situation how impactful it is that his captain doesn't like his boss well and that that because if all these moves happen and larkin doesn't come public with all of this that he's probably still running the team you're probably right i just i look at that and i go jess like i mean i don't blame them for the timing of this when you look at how little they've done and i don't know what their draft grades were apparently wasn't excellent but i don't who knows right i don't care about yeah yeah it's like well it's i'm happy the leafs got an a plus but like i don't care about that unless it's the leafs and it's positive yeah yeah if it's

positive and we needed it yeah that's great for us but draft grades should be uh handed out four years uh afterwards yeah that's when your draft grade actually comes out well and i think it would be very interesting if it's like here's what we thought the draft was and here's what it ends up being that's now there's a compelling article the athlete oh yeah welcome um the uh i will read you a little bit of the statement um but it's not that it's nothing like revealing steve's lifetime of contributions to the red wings uh has meant more to the franchise than words can truly express and i have the highest level of respect for his continued commitment to the organization said chris ellich uh we are thankful for steve's hard work and dedication as a general manager and

grateful knowing steve will remain where he belongs here in the red wings family so for those who don't know steve will continue serving the organization as a senior advisor to the governor and ceo chris illich so he'll maintain that relationship and then eiserman says i'm sincerely grateful the organization's giving me incredible opportunities blah blah blah anything you would expect from a pr statement we don't need to get into it the one line i think you should read is the clearly one clearly that's where i'm headed yeah so this is the one that i you know i love clearly we're just stepping all over jesse no i was moving on you weren't about to read that I was about to read that.

Clearly, we are not where the fans expect to be as the organization. I'm looking forward to bringing in new leadership to build the championship caliber organization HockeyTown deserves. Here's my question, though. That line is great. How do you get there if you have the same guy advising you? Like Jesse, you mentioned he's going to be the guy that helps choose the next guy. That would worry me. yeah i think i think they're they're playing nice here is what the illich family is doing they don't

want to just say steve eisenman is fired which he is he's being fired here and he's being ushered off into a nicer role but you can't off to the side but you can't do that can't fire the detroit red wings can't fire steve yeah even when they fire him they can't fire him so he's gonna have some some sort of role in the hiring the next guy but do i believe like he's gonna be the main guy picking the next guy now if the next five years for the leafs go shit they're not firing matt sundin he's stepping down or he's mutually parting what is it but yeah you think the avalanche are gonna fire joe sakic one day no that you can't there are certain people you just can't and that's that's the risk detroit ran and usually it goes well yeah you still need them to show up to all

the alumni stuff is bad his name's still in the rafters you still need him around but so you don't want to fire him but he's fired so drilling down on the dylan larkin stuff i mean they don't like each other no okay um my question then is you know the red wings apparently initially if they were going to have a succession plan would have wanted to promote from within so a guy like chris draper's name comes up i wonder if they look at outside the organization um just for some new blood but again i don't know how involved eiserman is in that and of course he's going to advocate for his guys um so i don't i don't really know how this all looks but with larkin himself it's clear that they're not going to get what they want for this guy and trading this guy is going to put set them

back years he's 29 years old he's a valuable player he is their number one center i've seen some debate about whether he is actually a number one center and i know that one of the teams involved it that he would accept a trade to doesn't view him as that which is why they were not willing to pay the exorbitant price regardless of that um they need him they need him i'll throw it out there that his cap hit is so good i don't care what you view him as yeah that's part of it he makes under nine mil for five more years pay yeah pay and here's the problem four teams that's why they're not paying i think he's a red wing i if i'm detroit like listen i listen you don't like steve we've he's gone not you he's yeah stevie why you you're staying yeah you're

five years you're giving you're you've given a shit options we fired the guy you like least you're saying yeah that's what's happening here yeah if the situation evolves and the season doesn't start well then we can maybe talk about a trade but you're also giving us a list of more than four bloody teams yeah maybe you revisit it at trade deadline because Detroit's an eighth in the Atlantic or something but yeah I think at beginning of the year Larkin's on the ice for the Red Wings he should be yeah and it should be a good moment for the team and the fan base and I'm just not sure yeah like even the Wierenski stuff like he was able to walk that back in like 48 hours that everything's kind of fine now I think Dylan Larkin I want to trade oh no I don't

yeah and like they had fun with it yeah the will smith stuff or the men in black stuff um it's messy man maybe you still keep the sea off of him like i probably wouldn't give that back to him i probably not let him be captain when he comes back but i think he's on the ice for them i think he's still captain i do think it's very interesting that you notice that yeah That he, on the NHL captain's page, wasn't listed. Yeah. But if you haven't formally announced that you've stripped your captain, like, that's a big deal.

Yeah. Right? Like, surely he hasn't actually been stripped. Right. Yeah, the Red Wings haven't done anything to strip him publicly. Right. Not that I'm aware of. So they still have the option to leave it on him.

Yeah. Oh, an intern did it. An intern made a mistake. Just always blame it on the intern. Yeah. Yeah. yeah okay so let's say he stays okay because i think he stays now um what's how okay how do they pr handle this one he requested the trade and we know and everybody knows that he and eiserman

really got into loggerheads over the the 2023 contract negotiation they still don't like each other um and it got personal is what happened it got personal okay um you're never going to admit that publicly you're never gonna be like well actually our gm really pissed off our captain and number one center um so we're he's back though because we got rid of the gm because that makes it look like the the captain runs the team the coach runs or is that the the tail's wagging the dog you can't have that can't have that so if you're the pr person and there is a come to jesus as silly as the rowinsky stuff was i actually do believe that he got cold feet i think zach Kerensky got, he was like, he saw all the social media posts.

He saw all the speculation on his name coming up on the podcasts and going, and went, uh, you know what? I don't, I don't know if I like this kind of heat. I'm going to just shut this down. This is going to look dumb, but Hey, it's Columbus. No one cares. Right. Detroit's a, they don't.

All Columbus fans care about is if he's staying. Oh, he's staying. I don't give a shit about the reason. Right. Just like us with Kawhi. I don't care how that trade happens. I just want it to happen. Do not care.

Don't give a shit. Don't care. Don't care. Right. Yeah. That's that's how I feel as a Raptors fan. So and so I'm not trying to shoot at Columbus fans. I'm just trying to say, you know, so Detroit fans are cross.

They're a little angry about how things have gone. And him coming back is not going to be that hard of a sell to them. However, how do you publicly manage that? That is going to be a question. First day in camp, it's going to be like when Stephen Stamkos walked in and said, I didn't get a call from Julian Breezewa all summer. there is going to be because he wanted to stay that's right Larkin wanted to go and Red Wings fans shit posted him for like two weeks so yeah how are we gonna what are we gonna do here to we can thread this needle just how okay here's the unspoken part that a lot of Red Wings fans are

they'll admit it out loud but they're muttering it under their breath if this is what got Steve Eisenman fired then it's worth it yeah it's steve they love stevie but it was time and they love winning more it was probably time a couple years ago and if this is what got stevie fired they're okay with it i think it's not nice we don't like saying that it's not nice but ultimately this is what now they can heal now they can start the healing process trading dylan larkin would not have started the healing process interesting it would not have he their general manager had to go he's had to go for years ah and now he's gone so whether you so whether you keep dylan larkin or not you've

started step one hooray that's good now i don't know if there's a way to pr your way around it This is Detroit. This is Hockey Town. These are smart hockey fans. There are two groups, major groups, that have work to do. Number one, ownership has to find a good management team that surrounds this team, fills this team to the brim with talent that helps them win.

And Dylan Larkin's end of the bargain is the best PR of all, be good at hockey. yeah score goals don't collapse in march score goals you could get booed thunderously they show you on the screen during the national anthem yep and they boo you like you're a dictator if you score a hat trick that night they're all throwing the hat yeah yeah you might have inscribed traitor piece of shit on it before they threw it but if you perform for them if you perform for your team all is forgiven maybe not all but it enough enough there's no you're not gonna post a cute uh like edit on twitter and have red wings fans feel good about

it just perform just perform that's it and here's the unfortunate part you can't do that in july yeah yeah you can't start making it up to us if i'm the red wings if i'm red wings fans until the end of september so what you can do between now and then is make the team better and not unlike how adam you're defending leo carlson for taking the offer sheet yeah and saying it's so obvious like you can't blame him for doing that do you think red wings fan fans will sit there and say you can't blame larkin for wanting out after eiserman could only deliver him zero playoff games in his tenure as gm and larkin's only been in one playoffs and that was his first year of his career and he's been through just bad red wings bad coaches you

think bad red wings fans on day one or game one of the season was that they'd be like yeah he probably should have wanted out but they did know all that when they were shit there's gonna be a lot of deleted reddit posts i think so yeah but you're angry maybe you think about it a little and you say yeah i would have wanted out of this situation too well i mean and that's what we all said right we were saying like who can blame this guy for for this is steve eiserman's fault there were there was blame to go around it was uh he was awful in march horrible and i think he was coming off an injury right all right yeah but you still got nhl yep yeah yeah it's not fair it's not nice it's not the fair or nicely and he wasn't the only one like the stars just didn't come to

perform totally like you could say the same thing about um um like aj uh um aaron port's line had the had the warensky and marchenko stuff like they disappeared down the stretch too and that's another team that looked like they were having a good season yep missed the playoffs um year after year after year after like you don't even fluke in nope like not once while you don't fluke in the atlantic steve no you don't i mean you can in uh whatever division edmonton's in pacific specific uh they can feel they can fluke into anything like people are like i think dom decision had uh nashville is the most improved team this offseason and i'm like yeah they could fluke into the playoffs it's a western conference it's weak as hell central oh yeah central but i

mean you know what i mean sorry ducks were almost won the division right do you know what i'm saying and i love the ducks but that team should not have been close to winning the i don't know if nashville is the most improved but they're certainly the most fidgety yeah they're they're odd they did a lot detroit though let's okay eiserman's out but that so that's on eiserman for like not putting enough talent on the team the team failing in marches because their players aren't good enough yes and that's his job to put good players on the ice so like i think it all comes back to him this is why i'm like okay at the end of the day eiserman trading larkin does not fix the root of the problem firing eisenman does whether you trade larkett or not and you are

trying to win right if i'm detroit because yes here's the other option no you're the only team in the atlantic who didn't get better this offseason you didn't get better you didn't not yet love victor arvidsson i actually really like him i think he's a great player it's two months uh no you didn't get better you got 20 million dollars you forgot the keegan colasar deal yep that was a thing i like him i like him too how many wins above replacement does keegan colasar totally i'm just mentioning yeah keegan colasar is a vibes guy though we love him i'm not trying to hate on him i'm just saying he's not like an impact player in that way i think he's guy who helps you in the playoffs he's not guy who gets you there yes so i'm looking at the i'm

looking at their cap sheet and yes they were a good team most of last year and then the olympics hit injuries all that stuff it just didn't work out they could make the playoffs no question but toronto maple leaf's most active team in free agency and trades this year most active team there's no doubt about it they are uh tampa got better added john carlson assuming that everybody's healthy we'll see about victor headman lost radish uh lost radish way down but i mean if you have a healthy headman and a john carlson lost paul trap radish and paul are the the straw that stirs the drink they are the lynchpins those are the guys kucherov obviously no i think now stop stop it so tampa's better nope florida gets brady kachuk and they get rad kogu to spend all those zero

points in the playoffs and all their well it doesn't matter though because brady went he even admits he went to florida so they here wait no i like this bit yeah all their players were hurt last year which means they're gonna get hurt again so they're terrible okay terrible all right they're missing bob they don't have bob don't have bob that's that was the whole championship two years in a row you know what you're not wrong all right give me the next one why are they awful boston trash has boston got that much better i don't think so lost victor yeah um lost victor huge loss trash i mean there's a mitten bust yeah what is boston done jj peter must be looking to make a peterka adam awful here bleep this oh yeah peterka's a bleep

us for alan oh no no we can't say that yo they also got yvonne yvonne re-signed which is an alan client uh it sounds like trash trash yeah all right next um okay uh who else is in the atlantic trash montreal canadians okay sabers garbage no they're good what the the saber canadian canadians are good i won't say the red the blue canadian my team i wouldn't damn it off makes basically the same cap hit as travis egress for twice the amount of years yeah yeah all of them should fire their agent so what the fuck is going on in montreal so what else we got boston remember had a hundred points this year it's a hundred pieces of garbage i would argue that ottawa is not better also garbage but i would say that if their d if their goaltending actually

stands up this year they'll be just fine because analytically they were phenomenal last year adam it's the butterfly era it's the butterfly era yeah what does that mean it's not stand up anymore stop it that is their job yeah so they are the of the teams that improved this offseason they are eighth among eight in the atlantic in the atlantic which is the only thing that should matter to them yeah if you're projecting the standings right now i think majority nhl fans out there have detroit in a so why wouldn't you why wouldn't you just look at a quick retool You've got guys that are coming off the books, and I'm saying a quick retool. I'm not talking about a rebuild.

I'm talking about, okay, fine. Larkin's going to stay. Great. We got to do a quick retool with this new guy. We got $20 million in cap space. DeBrin Cat's got a year left. Kopp's got a year left. Appleton's got a year left.

Justin Falk's got a year left. Who are those guys, except you don't want to trade DeBrin Cat, but can we trade those guys this year, get some draft capital back? Yes, you gave up a first round pick plus for Falk, and you wanted that extra year. do you move on from him you've got a bunch of good guys coming up from the minors make room for them can i get younger get faster it might be the most logical way to go about this thing can i say something unpopular yeah if i didn't know any better i'd say this was a team in the middle of a rebuild it looks like it yeah that's what it looks like um they have

some young pieces that you're excited about sure um that are getting a little old the some some of them are entering prime and some of them are really young you know finney and sandeem palika and right um and then old guys who are easily movable that's a team in the middle of a rebuild isn't it yeah that's what they look like and what i think is the market and efficiency and nobody's going to want to hear this in detroit is a seller in the eastern conference who in the conference is trying to lose who's trying to lose pittsburgh made rust and raquel available and then they were good at hockey so then they kept them uh now they they lost anthony mantha who just signed in new jersey um and he had a great year and he apparently told them i want three years

and they said we'll do two max and then all the chairs filled up in free agency and he got a two year deal uh with new jersey for the barrett hayton contract essentially um philadelphia is trying very hard to get better plus a full season of porter martone i'm curious about that full season of just everyone getting older the capitals got way better kairu tuck is a just on that i mean listen i have some questions about lilligrid but kairu and tuck alone and ovi still not being sure whatever you could argue that not having that spot reserved for ovi in the lineup might actually make them better he knew he was coming back uh columbus blue jackets uh i think the islanders kind of disappointed too like yeah matias michelli okay um but i think new jersey will be better i

think the injuries really derailed them full season of braden shen for the islanders yeah they didn't have him yeah okay that's fair um but he's like 35 he's braden shen yeah he lost andrews lee as well so uh new jersey i think is going to be very good new york is trying to be good even though they're not the new york islanders are trying to be good i'm not sure Columbus is the same but like it's clear that there are five great teams in or five very good teams uh in the metro including the Stanley Cup champion so the reason Detroit's got to be focused on the Atlantic is because it's no guarantee that those wild card spots will be open to Atlantic teams this year right and I just feel like that will the fact that nobody's trying to lose raises

the prices on teams that are trying to sell to teams that desperately need to buy it's so funny like there was only one visible seller last year and they ended up making the playoffs like who knows maybe that's detroit the jets are not trying to sell the preds are clearly not trying to sell st louis has told everybody we're not selling chicago cannot sell what are they going to sell uh vancouver would sell vancouver what and i think calgary maybe what are you selling the other bluster is no we're not like okay but you are though but who though well they've already done coleman they've already i know but that's what i'm asking oh like who do they have who's left right yeah no that's about cracking are trying to buy clearly yes they are san jose is

trying to buy la did buy got older um the ducks are now going to need defensemen i don't know how they're going to do that uh oilers and golden knights are trying to get back to where they were stars and while they're not selling utah is not selling there are no sellers so if you're detroit and you got a right shot defenseman who makes six and a half million dollars with a partial no trade clause well that's a pretty valuable piece in justin fogg you need to leverage that andrew copp is a uh a guy that's deal is up at the end of the season uh mason appleton you know valuable winger with some speed on the right side lower in your lineup these are guys you can move these guys and i think you got to resign you got to get to bring cat to stay but that's that's where

i think this needs to go does are they are they ready for that here's the thing your captain wants out and he's a player with some clout in this league he's a captain he's on team usa that's horrible pr for your team internally like not in the dressing well yes in the dressing room but among all the players in the league who the hell wants to sign to detroit well i think we saw that in july 1st nobody with all that arvidson with all that going on right it's nothing against the market it's nothing against like the history of the team and the fan base uh they don't win an abundance of games and the gm and captain hate each other that sounds awful i don't want to be a part of that yep eisenman's gone as soon as they put the pen in someone else's hand and go okay

you're the guy who signs people i i kind of wonder if free agents at this point in the summer are going to be like you know what i don't have a dance partner right now they've sort of figured out their nonsense a little bit here like now there are some players that there are some mantha would have been nice although red wings have already opened that door and closed it i forgot that yeah um like okay i know bunting's not a move a needle mover but he's good i don't think they need more mid wingers this they're good on the mid winger i have terrible news it's july 16th and you didn't this is why i'm proposing a quick sell and then snap retool right i think it makes the most sense but signing guys i'm saying makes it easier for you to make those trades oh

okay sure yeah yeah because there's teams that still want to make trades right now dying apparently the Leafs are just dying to move players you mentioned Seattle okay what do I got to do to get chain right yeah there you go his preferred destination is Vancouver damn that's too bad chain right so here's Detroit for you

figure it out would you sell Alex to bring that I mean you could the UFA but then 28 your core of Larkin Raymond to bring cat cider sort of takes a and then I guess you could include so good

edmondson and sanding pelican that too um you know there's like uh there's like a core there do you want to really move a guy like that's the guy to me i'm like you can't replace that how do you you move that guy you'll be like chicago where do i find the goals here's what you build around who's detroit's best player and i know my answer or insider it's incredibly easy answer yeah build around him and lucas raymond who's he playing with going forward who's his supporting cast on the second pair and then who are we um you know we have a guy in waiting on the third pair and some other steady guy also did they have to re-sign ben charotte yes because he plays with oh i guess yeah and he plays it he'll agree to play in detroit for the love of god

so i anyway i think you're seeing why eisenman got fired it's not great man it's not this is here we are again in the summer and we're not much has changed honestly really not much has changed other than the guy who put all this shit together is gone after trading an unprotected first for justin falk so you don't have that next year golly no it was this year's first it was this year's first yeah yeah they got their next three oh okay they got their next year first no and they were just lucky that uh that pick didn't win one of the lotteries yeah san luis picked what like 15 or something from that pick right still horrible yeah like oh well you didn't make it i i think the other thing is if you look at

detroit's drafting record some of it's a little spotty like some of it's good some of it's good but it's not what it used to be with mark leach out there uh i'd be calling him to come back home come home mark so this you know not to make everything about the leafs but like you just fired your head executive and there's a ton of candidates that are all of a sudden available the leafs basically act their acts their analytics staff hailey wickenheiser's out there uh brandon pridham just got scooped up um daryl metcalf is out there derrick clancy was another guy brad trae living is very much available uh evan gold uh left the boston bruins yep you have internal candidates like chris draper and then who is the other player i forget uh oh uh horkoff

sean horkoff yeah i don't know sundine takes his job in toronto does lidstrom get the bug to like take on something more are you worried you left one name out of there who brendan shanahan oh my What if Brendan Shanahan is the next GM of the Detroit Rebels? I'll tell you this. And head of hockey operations. I don't think Iserman's going to advocate for that. Why not? I don't think that a lot of the Detroit teammates like Brendan Shanahan.

What if that's something Chris Illich wants? Then I guess it happens. But if you're having Steve Iserman bring in the next guy, I don't think he's going to advocate for Shanahan. I don't think it's entirely up to Steve Iserman. I don't think it should be. I agree with you. Are we worried, by the way?

having a conversation yesterday with someone and i've had a number of similar conversations like this one it was time for brandon shanahan to have his hockey decision making um duties taken away from him in toronto it was it got bad all the stuff around hockey though i think last year the Leafs sorely missed him yes the organization missed a person in that role with that presence and what he did from the business side and the hockey operation side yeah so this this is the problem like if there was anyone in that role would it have gone better yeah probably it was literally just Brad for living several gusts of wind Keith Pelley that obviously didn't work and was a disaster like if i'm willing to say if shanahan were to step in in detroit i don't

think it would be a disaster based on his time in i think i think he can do a fantastic job there people are forgetting what he walked into yeah right he built the team with the longest playoff streak going in the nhl up until last year like there's a reason they've been they were so consistent in the regular season and last year was such a disaster because they weren't that team anymore that's brendan shanahan's doing he was too stubborn and egos got in the way and that's what ultimately wrecked his iteration of the Leafs but if he were to go to Detroit I could see good things for them and like you learn from all of your experiences so he's going to take everything that happened with Dubas there at the end of it and take that to Detroit and learn from that

and it feels like you think he's going to learn because Brendan Shanahan Adam might have a point in the in the hierarchy in Detroit there's Chris Illich above him and just there's a little bit more winning done at least more recently than the Leafs uh I know it's it's been a while for them with the playoff streak but at least they have the history of the winning there and there's probably a hierarchy there where you can keep Brendan Shanahan under control in year eight if he's there for that long where it doesn't get to the bad points of where it got with Dubas you know I don't know I think he can be a very successful head of hockey operations for the Red Wings i like that i like that and i do like the retool i don't even know if it's a retail it's kind of

like a half rebuild here i don't think it'd be a year and then all of a sudden they're good i think it'd be like a three four year thing where they're resetting and they can actually be good in three years helen saint james who's one of the best reporters in detroit uh who covers the red wing said on overdrive yesterday that she doesn't think larkin can walk this back if larkin can't walk this back then i think you have to rebuild or you have to retool and it's going to be a two and a half year process if he can walk this back i think you can have this done in 18 months if you do it right we're competitive and you've got 8.2 million dollars just in goaltender salary leaving after this season john gibson and tarasov and they forgot they got that kid in the minors they

traded casa so they could get this kid some more time trey augustine i think it's trey augustine yeah so like they're excited about him 2026 is the year of the elephant in the room that you don't need to address you ever notice that hey so are we just gonna no no we're moving on we're moving on like uh time is linear it is going to march forward they're going to drop the puck and you're gonna get over it or you're not and i'm sure that is a legitimate option if they start winning people get over it yeah and if you don't win here's a great thing move on from them at volvo safety is not a feature it's our purpose rigorous crash testing decades of learning from real accidents innovations that

help prevent accidents before they happen and help protect you when they occur going above and beyond industry standards a vision of zero collisions volvo's legacy revolves around you because safety is about helping to keep you and everyone around you safe for life learn more at volvocars.ca safety now have you seen the clip from 97.1 the ticket in detroit sure can we play that clip i we play the audio i think we can yeah yeah because there's no music in it um i've got it here in the prep sheet this is why local radio is important i love a good sports talk show i do radio callers are so important because oh what do they contribute to the show oh i don't know just the most viral moment this radio station has had and god knows how long someone hello

okay go ahead a few years back on tnt where they were interviewing eiserman in between periods and He basically said without saying, you know, he smokes a nice one, you know, every once in a while to relax. Do you think maybe he was on the devil's lettuce a little too much? He was a little too passive, perhaps. What? You think that they're high? You think that was a factor? No.

What? Do we think that Steve Eisenman struggled because he's a pothead? Is that what you just asked us? No. No, I don't. and did he admit that i have no idea i feel like if he admitted that are you on the devil's lettuce are you the pothead what all right well there's that no tim is now that's great i don't know if you had this experience but when i did morning radio for a very brief time uh on

sportsnet radio people are calling in at like six in the morning and i'm like oh like is this guy just groggy from waking up no he's drunk and has not gone to bed from the night before yeah yeah oh yeah yeah i mean that was calgary calgary was like that especially during stampede people also work different hours like yeah that's their evening yeah i think that's an afternoon show but for what it's not the guys i spoke to uh the devil's lettuce guy is just what a brilliant failed because he's a pilot and you know those guys first off shut it down but you know the guy who called in was like i'm not convinced i still think he is a pothead because this is also the era they didn't say no despite evidence i will double down on my wrong opinion what the caller

there is getting confused about is it's a running joke on spitting chiclets that steve eiserman is a pothead because he once poked fun at kirby dock for being for smoking weed i think like when he was drafted or something like that oh so then spitting chiclets always makes fun of eiserman calling him a pothead and i think that's probably where he got oh my god and all that oh my gosh yeah that is a runaround um okay uh let's talk a little bit about george mcphee who was on uh cam and strick um and i want to run this clip because i think it's i think it's illustrative of the vegas golden knights and you know a lot of people were like after this like you know i respect how honest he was there but i do think there's a part of this that perhaps oh missing

fellas get robbed holy shit well let's just play the oh my god have some pride in yourself as a human being oh how honest he was fuck my life they asked holy what happened to you oh my god just to set this up oh my god they they asked him about obviously being fine the second round pick is your back okay he seems so distraught our votes count the same fuck my life well it's a different country all right this is about the being fined the second round pick because of go ahead uh we were wrong and uh on on a on a couple of matters there and uh torts was wrong in not doing it and

he deserved a fine and we deserved something I thought the second round pick was too high and we've appealed it and we've had our conversations since but that's the decision that was made and it shouldn't have happened

you know we just won a series everybody's happy and Torch decided to blow off the press conference and unfortunately kelly and i didn't know about it until you know kelly was on the bus and we're on the way back to the hotel when he heard about it and then i heard about it the next morning on tv so um anyway that shouldn't have happened and uh and we paid a price for it so

a lot of people listen to that and go i don't understand what your problem is steve dangle they've got triggered why'd you get so triggered woke boy soy boy yeah because like beta beta steve they lie as easily as they breathe um where's the lie i don't believe you that you heard it the next day yeah we won a series yes and you immediately went to sleep yep i don't believe you um and also when the fine of the money and the draft pick were announced were they like we are finding the vegas golden knights for this incident and nothing else well he did say some we were wrong on this and some other things okay we were wrong on this and some other things yeah it's using the truth it's the fine print you're throwing torts under the bus for something

that torts was objectively wrong for you are right for saying that but it is using the truth to lie by glossing over the other shit that you did that the nhl didn't like and you skirted the rules over and over and over again and how do you like them apples and and this goes back years this is something i don't know if people the average person's not going to know this and i don't expect you to vegas has gotten into trouble with the nhl many many many times threatened many many many times about their handling of the media and it's a collectively bargained part of this and it's also part of growing the sport is allowing the media in having them question you notice the cap keeps going up well i i told you at the time i thought it was real interesting that they carded

marner out there you know with his with his very expensive rolex and his is uh uh it was like a silk shirt i was like damn mitch uh but i guess that's what 12 million a year buys you man like of course good for you and he was like there and gone right and torts wouldn't talk to the media and stuff this is the team having a history and this is john having history and the team were fined and so was john and he's pretty simple and he's not okay he got them to the cup final yeah got them to game six yep of the cup final and he was a hero and he's not there anymore so fuck them that is the Vegas Golden Knights way well I don't think they're very happy with John I'll be honest like I do think that that probably cost him whatever potential job he

might have had because apparently he was not happy about being let go after what he did cool like he was virtually undefeated like regular season in playoffs I know he didn't win the cup final so obviously not undefeated but I don't I don't I mean can you be can you be happy with the way he coached in the cup final the way he stuck to carter hart like glue when carter hart was clearly sinking admit that i don't understand and you've tanked aiden hill's value now vegas if you noticed they still have not traded aiden hill and they need to did akira schmidt vanish did aiden hill vanish dude did either no no but here's the thing okay you don't trust aiden hill okay great good you have another guy who gave you adequate service what use them then

no you're gonna stick with the historically bad guy all right well it's your funeral and then it was which is weird because no one can explain why vegas is good i don't think they could explain why they lost they can't explain why they've been fined uh the money they can't explain why uh They've been, or no, they can't explain the money because it's all John's fault and he's not with us anymore. And that's how they operate. They can't explain the fine. They can't explain why they lost. The egos are insane.

And I'm going to get told rent free and leave it alone. Well, they lost. Rent free for what? You lost. this guy went on the i need to restore my image podcast yep and said these things and i'm criticizing them for their imperfect truths and i'm not gonna lose a moment of sleep about it you don't think he went to bed and then woke up the next morning and then watched tv and that's where he found out about it no no because that's what he says his leadership is ass i know george

mcphee isn't like young but i'm sure he has a phone and would have heard about it long before he went to bed and then watched tv the next day that's such a strange thing guys guys guys what you have to understand is i'm a horrible boss what you didn't know that your head coach didn't do his obligated media appearance until you watch tv this is the quote you watch tv the next day i don't believe that i know he's no listen that we won the game and i immediately to unwind watch caleb heron uh clips for an hour and a half before going to sleep and then the next no you didn't i didn't check anything i didn't check my phone my computer i just turned on the tv and suddenly there was a report about torts and that's how i found out cool i believe you just i completely

believe you yep i'm a person who exists let's move on with a voting record and a driver's license and a job and probably kids and i just believe you because you said it i don't know if we need to take away people's rights i didn't say you did i just said it's shocking and concerning and terrifying i don't believe you just believe that well i think i think also they want to believe that yeah but it's bullshit if you all know it's bullshit and let me tell you a story let me tell you a story and here's what i think under any obligation to tell the truth no the thing you are under an obligation as a human being to hear a silly thing that someone says and be like perhaps not

funny people aren't though steve no whatever they want no yeah sorry you're under no obligation to be clever or intelligent yeah holy shit let me tell you a story here's what i think happened okay one time while working at sports net i uh someone said something on a platform and they shouldn't have done it and i was like hey so what was that night like like i got to ask the person who was in charge of handling that problem i go what was that night like and they said oh i saw it they were watching it on their laptop and they saw it and what they did was they went and they closed their laptop and they shut off all their devices and they went to bed because they're like i knew if i if anyone above me or below me thought i was awake that

was going to be the rest of my night yeah if i feigned that i was asleep i could then handle it i could have a good night's sleep and handle it in the morning sometimes like in all honesty it's better to deal with things in the morning it is it's better yes yeah yes that i think that i don't know if that person made the worst decision in the world if george mcphee said that that's what he did i'd be like you know what hell yeah yeah i get it george mcphee shouldn't be out here just telling fibs about yeah saw it on cnn last the next no it's tv or whatever you know but if he just doesn't say that it's okay yeah if he just went to bed and was like okay i'll deal with in the morning yeah the vegas gold knights incredible hockey team well-run hockey team alarmingly

tumultuous relationship with the truth well they rarely meet no if they were to meet at a crossroads i i doubt they'd recognize they're barely pen pal yeah exactly but you're not under oath at an nhl podium you can literally say whatever you want cam and strict podcast or whatever podcast you want you're not under oath just lie all you want when's their home opener i think that's we're get into that we're gonna that next just raise the banner they're playing like nothing matt just say you won the cup they're playing the blackhawks on the 29th of september great enough people will believe you if you just tell them you won the cup i'm sure just raise it i'm actually sure that that would work if they walked around saying we got cheated people would start repeating that you

know what fuck yeah it's invalid i can't believe i'm here for this uh the national hockey league that really happened announced today which is actually yesterday the 26 27 regular season expanded to 84 games with the addition of two more division games per team will open Tuesday, September 29th, which we knew with a opening night triple header in the US and a double header on Sportsnet

in Canada. Now, the first matchup I think we're in for. We already mentioned it. It'll be the Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes in that coveted 5 p.m. Eastern start time, which everybody loves. It's a good match, though. Man, if you're in the West, it's fucking awesome because you start hockey at 2

o'clock in the afternoon which is sick like i love that i i've heard mixed reviews from out west as an easterner it just sounds like a dream yeah it sounds incredible i guess if you're working it's not a dream but you know i still think that's cool i've loved the world cup because it's on all the time but i don't think most people's regular lives adhere to that where it's like i could just turn on sports all the time right so i don't know i don't know how it works um At the same time, 7 p.m. that night on Sportsnet, the Canadians take on the Leafs in an original six contest at Scotiabank Arena. That'd be Gavin McKenna's potential opening night game. Yes.

Action continues. ESPN, 8 p.m. Rangers, Bruins, another original six matchup from the TD Garden, from the Toronto Dominion Garden. worth reminding everybody that the TD Garden is named after Toronto Dominion Bank so it is actually our arena now thank you we own it soon to be Rogers Dominion

we need to what we do need to do is like own we need to own the hockey a little better in Boston I think is our problem at 10pm on Sportsnet the Vancouver Canucks clash with Pacific Division foes in Edmonton and lose at Rogers Place that's what

it says in the PR release uh and then uh lastly 10 30 you knew it had to happen the chicago blackhawks had to do it to him no connor bedard and taking on the vegas definitely telling the truth golden knights um at t-mobile arena now uh the next night will be panthers flyer or sorry panthers penguins flyers which would be great and then king's avalanche i think the best matchup in this is the panthers hurricanes because that's who we all i think think will be in the eastern conference final this year the panthers are gonna head into that game trying to make a point like that you only won because we weren't there is what i think they're gonna absolutely nhl hit it out of the

park with the opening the first game of the season that's amazing game yeah yeah yeah hurricanes panthers is perfect like you can't ask for a better storyline than that i don't think i like canadians leafs uh rangers bruins okay uh chicago blackhawks listen i know chicago is a major market we don't we don't need to see the blackhawks play opening night anymore no we don't need to see them play in an outdoor game how about the blackhawks get good and you put another key market like buffalo in there and i know buffalo is a lot smaller but their tv ratings are always massive what about the new york islanders uh also also a growing market what about like this is my thing i don't think i don't think we need to see chicago anymore until chicago decides we'd like to be good

again you highlight markets you highlight teams you highlight stars and here's the i think you should for opening night be highlighting at least two of those yeah right um you're not doing that with the blackhawks you would be if bedard was playing if bedard was playing and i assume this was already set in stone before he got hurt and now you're just screwed and boba watch bobyram take on that is legitimately going to be the marketing because it has to be those teams also have no history and they don't have a compelling story against each other i think the carolina florida thing is so good yes because there's a million storylines out of that and chicago vegas means nothing to me no like it's completely irrelevant you know what would have been cool

like buffalo vegas at least you're throwing the jack eichel thing back in there and then you're throwing the buffalo was so unexpectedly good last year they had a chance to make the stanley cup final if they kept rolling they could beat montreal or whatever maybe that could have been a match-up and vegas is obviously coming off of that at least there's stuff there it's been a long this is stupid jesse i you know the la kings i can't help but notice are playing the abs the next day the abs are going to steamroll them it would have been way more fun to see the kings in the vegas game um i think if you have la vegas play because then it's oh i thought you're going i thought abs vegas would have been bad as vegas would have been sick because then it's like oh

they swept us let's go get our revenge on opening night right and the nfl is great with that redoing the playoff matchups on like the first week of the season like i think colorado vegas is that's a home run if that's your late game on opening night they fuck this up no here's here's the mistake you're making is the first two weeks of the season are complete anarchy oh they're crazy yeah and you have bottom feeders who have won five straight and you have cup contenders who have not scored a goal yet and like it's just all over the place in terms of results i vancouver's going to shut out edmonton three nothing like it's that's how it works in the first week it's complete anarchy chaos i think um i think the toronto montreal game is just it's that's just

tradition um dude it's always that's always what terrible defense high scoring fun yeah that'll be a fun one yeah um i like i like the natch too i just feel like yeah they started here's the thing too the rangers like i know it's a major market you want to get them in but they suck could you please can we not could we have them play someone else if you got the rangers in there the bruins are going to kick their ass no it's the first week uh you're right it's a band of jet hat trick yeah noel abba four point game somehow yeah you're probably right yeah probably right okay all right all right fine yeah you didn't think you were getting a noel abba reference today did you got one didn't you got one um the do we have anything else on that schedule does anyone

care uh chicago is the home opener for three separate teams so they'll be oh and three in those games awesome so is florida apparently according to hayden so is florida the home opener for three different teams yeah yeah hold on uh florida also with uh they are anaheim they are also uh carolina obviously and minnesota and minnesota doesn't get a home opener until october yeah oh no i noticed noticing that's weird i don't know why they're not that's a well i guess it's just a schedule it is what it is wait what minnesota is not getting a home opener until october 10th which is fully 10 11 days no no let's say the third florida isn't that's no no no this so this is the team's home opener oh so florida's not getting one until october 10th

yeah that yes yes oh that's a long time so they're gonna start the season on a road trip yeah it's not minnesota so yeah minnesota's home open is against boston florida's is against minnesota got la's against florida florida's is the 10th that's how the numbers florida is just going to be a traveling caravan of ass whoopings i don't think they're going to acknowledge the puck exists until halloween they're just gonna beat everyone the fuck up well i can't wait for their first inevitable preseason game because there's only been a few i think they'll i think Who are they playing? I need to know.

Well, it's going to be Tampa. Why do you dress in anyone for? Well, because you probably want those guys to go fist first into it, right? And get them all kicked out. I guess. Yeah. Brady, Matthew, you're not playing long tonight. That's what I think would happen.

Barkov, no need. Yeah. Apparently, the Leafs are doing for the preseason. I have heard. I haven't confirmed this, that they're just going to do two split squads. No. Yeah, that's what they're doing. That's not her.

That was announced. Oh, was it? Okay. So it's four games, but they're going to be split squads. Yeah. so every year like i mean there's the preseason is too long but every year there's like some guy who gets off to a crazy start yep and in the preseason and you're like oh they have like a chance to make the team or like a chance to crack the top six i just don't think that's humanly

possible how like how do you even have enough people in the organization with eyes on you especially if it's split squad yeah you only play on two days yeah you better be the best practicer oh there it is okay yeah september 19th september 23 so they play two games on each of the days on the 19th and the 23rd one against montreal in montreal and then one against montreal in toronto and then one against ottawa in ottawa and then one against ottawa in toronto there's a six day gap yeah i'll just be streaming the uh i'll just because i think we got to stream preseason this year because of McKenna uh whatever game he's playing and that's the one we'll stream I think I want I want to see with that one I'm gonna watch it but I don't know about stream you

know how you're not supposed to take too much away from the preseason uh I think this year take everything from the preseason really like yeah where okay so like let's let's take Gavin McKenna who he plays with in the second preseason game let's say yep well and that's who he's playing with usually the players you send on the road are the players that are not going to make the lineup yeah or on the fringe sorry fellas like you're not sending austin matthews to montreal or ottawa you're going austin you're gonna play the both games at home you don't have to leave you can sleep in your own bed probably that's an interesting look at it yeah if they have so little games then that's just who they're running on opening night yeah also you don't fucking need

that many games there's such a waste it was so boring no they figured it out we're just cut it back to these two split squad days like it's fun what was the record nine i want to say the leafs played nine preseason yeah last year was seven or eight what are we doing yeah let me put it to you this way if jim hiller isn't coaching the team those players aren't making it right in a split squad jim hiller will be behind the bench of the one that makes it i think no he's gonna go through and watch oh like even if he does like he's not hearing what you're saying on the bench better look at luke hames and game action yeah you know like i think he will figure this out and sorry fellas um this episode is brought to you by accenture when your advertising operations fall

out of sync everything else follows spotify and accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales using automation analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business the result less time spent on operations more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most learn more at accenture.com slash spotify hear that it's your money calling it wants a promotion elevate your savings with the scotia high interest savings account always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest conditions apply visit scotiabank.com slash hisa to learn more scotia bank you're richer than you think let's talk a little bit about uh the nhl 27 trailer that

was released today okay i don't know if you guys want to play it yeah let's do it let's play it because there's something compelling in this that people are excited about and that bobble has already popped and i will tell you what it is after okay oh by the way the graphics look really good to me now i'm a guy that doesn't play it anymore but check it out real world arena atmospheres Wow. 32 authentic team identities. A revamped broadcast package. And the launch of the highly anticipated online connected franchise experience.

Welcome to NHL 27. I'm Darren Pang. Here alongside John Bucciagrasse. And John, this is one heck of a year for us to be jumping into this play-by-play booth. No question, Darren. We've called a lot of games from the 32 rinks around the league. And it's true what they say. No two arenas and no two teams are alike.

For a closer look at what's coming in N.A.T. Hey, here's a generic ass line. And no two teams are alike. Bell 27. Let's bring in Mike Englehart from the Dev team for a breakdown. You know, from the moment you walk in on game day, you're going to see the differences. From pregame presentation to the biggest moments on ice, every arena is authentic to the city and the team that plays in it.

Team-specific landmarks and light shows, well they give each rink that identity players are looking for. Crowds and arenas react dynamically to shifts in momentum and those goal songs when they go off, well they're going to remind you exactly what rink you're in. Until they got Chelsea Dagger. On the ice, rebuilt team playbooks give each team an identity based on how they attack, defend, break out and adjust to pressure.

Let's take a look at Carolina first, who uses a balanced forecheck to clog up exit lanes and force the defense to make decisions faster. Or Los Angeles, who likes to apply heavier net front pressure, creating screens, tips, and rebound chances for the forwards to capitalize on. A shared online competitive experience has been one of the community's biggest requests for a long time. Connected Franchise is here. create a league with your crew customize the rules manage your roster make the trades and settle those rivalries no matter how you want to play connected franchise is built to make hold on did that say i saw that did you see that yeah dangle doctor one of the guys and for anybody listening in the connected uh franchise

graphic one of the gm's name is dangle hashtag doctor and uh san jose they are controlling san jose which is kind of funny oh i think that's an easter egg for you i'm taking it as that no we know rammer so you can play with the last name dangle play by play because i was like can we can i please have that and he's like yeah sure we'll put it in next year i don't know i think that's fun yeah i like it you want to play connected franchise is built to make the league your own as we continue building with the community sign up for our community play test and help shape the future of the moment this is nhl 27 live your team all right all right now i'm gonna pop your bubble because everybody is excited about that gm connected thing right

start a league so it could be like me we could actually turn this into a series me steve and jesse pick a team and we go throughout and sometimes you're going to play each other sometimes you're going to play the cpu and you're going to propose trades you can do all that like that is a sick online feature we love that the issue is that you need 32 people are you oh there's no option for less uh according to the jurors who's a big twitch streamer apparently you can't trade or play against cpu teams in nhl 27 gm connected so basically you got to do 32 users or don't bother okay so that's not oh wow that's a non-option yeah it's not a thing yeah for most people now i hope play i would love to play a season with you guys i think that would be a riot

i hope they're just wrong well um that's uh it's been widely reported i hope they're wrong too i mean that's not a thing unfortunately you put a lot of effort into something no one's gonna use well i i don't know how hard it would be to include cpu in that too it can't be that hard i mean this is why you announced these things in july so you can switch it up so you can be like so do you like this boo all right so we're not going to do that anymore

the connected franchise description says up to 32 controlled teams yeah I think that guy might just be wrong he's not the only one saying it but that wouldn't make it out of the idea room yeah it says so create a league with friends manage your roster

and compete head-to-head across a full online season with up to 32 controlled teams flexible settings schedules and commission or tools. I have enough faith in the people who make video games.

I hope they did it. That someone would be like, well, that's stupid. 32 or nothing. That's not that'd be a non-starter. No.

Yeah. You'd never get through a season. No, there's actually a piece online and they and it says create new league and it says advances

you to pre-league state where you'll invite other users to fill in the available teams. Teams without a human user cannot be controlled,

traded with or played against. No, but can you still make your league? Yeah, but you can't play against the teams. No, but it's not what he's saying in that, oh, you have 32, you can't play at all. It sounds like you can make your league. You can play, but you can only play each other

and then the league takes care of itself. Yeah, which sounds fine. That's fine. Yeah, but what if you're... So I'd only play like four or five games then. Because if I'm... Like, say it's me and Jesse and we got a 32-team league. We're only going to be able to play each other.

and everything else it sounds like we need more info on this because what is what you've characterized there where it's like oh you're gonna need 32 people or not doesn't seem like that's the case it seems like there will be if there are five people or three people that there is a way to play that i don't know what else is entails that but it sounds like you can play with less than 32 people the options appear to be something that is neat and cool and something that is patentedly ridiculous now can you blame the nhl community for thinking it might be the latter no no can you blame me for thinking it's probably the one no because i think it's probably the latter no and i i'm rooting for them i want them to have a good game it's a good trailer

it's hard to make a bad one but like it made me um it made me nostalgic for the way i used to play nhl um like i used to play uh the gm mode and i used to play seasons and when he mentioned game day i'm like well it's not game day is it like you hop online and you play a bunch of but no it used to be i used to be on the bus going home and i'd be like okay we're playing the stars tonight this is gonna be big hop on my pc and friggin we're taking on the stars now big four three ot victory the good thing is like they've even got like little tidbits in the trailer they got the johnny gaudreau number in the rafters they got the robo ducks for the uh the ducks intro like everything they have completely rebuilt the arena the vegas uh one was really cool yeah it was and

they and they say that the audience is going to react to momentum shifts in the game which is cool um love all that want all that i hope what we know about gm connected is not true the the thing that really stood out to me and i thought it was really cool is if they've really dialed in the way teams play that would be incredible yeah and if it's because so in madden you'll sign a head coach in your franchise mode and you'll use his playbook i hope they do it like that and it's not just like the kings play this way i hope you'd be like oh we got whatever x coach and then that like jim hiller will have a play style for the leafs and if he is on a different team then jim hiller's style would go with that coach with that team sorry so i hope

that's the way they do it like in a football kind of madden way it's that seemed really cool where they're like oh the kings play this style and the hurricanes because the hurricanes play a specific way of hockey and if they do that in the game that's kind of awesome it's gonna be good for puck knowers and i think it's gonna be good for um people who think they're really really smart hockey have you ever gotten this have you ever played eshl drop-in is the greatest idea that's ruined by people um but have you ever gotten that's not how people play in real life all the time yeah okay well we're not doing that are we it's a video game it's a video game you grow i can hear you on the microphone you're a grown man yeah are you joking yeah fuck off but now you get

to show me how big your puck brain is by adjusting your systems and oh yeah the um i don't think people go down the middle of the ice doing the michigan and then do a michigan with a backflip into the top corner i've never seen someone skate 175 feet in one direction backward with a puck I don't think that happens a lot in real life, and maybe we're not playing real-life hockey here. Yeah, relax. Calm down. There's the one diving move where you bat it out of midair

while diving headfirst like Superman. I don't think I see that a whole lot in the NHL, but this game, I see it like four times a game. So maybe it's a little different. Okay, there are torts. Okay, there are torts. Come on. Relax.

That can't be your expectation for a game like this. No. Like at all. No. like so yeah at least just lean into the video game nissa i had i just yeah i had to uh i had to throw that out there uh we'll see no i think i think ea you should have your guard up every time something is announced and we get information about something like if anybody is a fan of the ncaa football video games they just had a terrible pr nightmare with the release of that game what

happened where they took away some parts of the um i'll just call it franchise mode where you're building your college throughout the years and trying to turn this program into a great program they turned um a portion of where you can like speed through it so you can actually get through some seasons into a thing you can buy through microtransactions oh my instead of just like earning that skill and making it making it go and then there was it was a disaster for like first week or two of the release of the video game and then they had to take it away so now it's no longer under the microtransaction area of the game and now it's back to normal how it was the years prior i don't they're like we listen to the community i was like you should have fucking not done that

in the first place i mean you could have asked the community beforehand they would have told you what you meant to say is we discovered we can't get away with this that was it like it's it's george mcphee telling you i slept and i uh i watched tv the next day and i discovered this no you tried to get away with this and you couldn't do it because people were too upset yep and then they had to backtrack it so i understand adam all of the skepticism online about this thing that seems cool and people are like i don't trust it right because you can't i don't think you can yeah uh okay so last couple of things here leafs hire a player personnel person and this is worth mentioning because uh they've hired a man named jeremiah crow sounds like a old-timey like uh

halloween sort of character from american midwest jeremiah crow definitely a character in red dead redemption too uh a legendary bounty yes for sure director of player personnel i believe this guy was one of the pro scouts for the buffalo sabers head of pro scouting head uh well so i i saw a head of scouting for the buffalo sabers and what i was unsure of is whether or not it was amateur or pro well i don't know that they had how many amateur scouts they had but i i maybe it was both i don't know it could have been both the way buffalo cut things down the last few years it's such a fascinating team to pilfer from well because what are you getting he was director of professional scouting from 22 to 26 that's what pro means that he was from 20 to 22 director of scouting before

that 17 to 20 pro scout and uh his only nhl experience is with the sabers i will i will say this i i like pilfering from that team um because their professional scouting is actually pretty good thank you very much i'm trying to think of the like the trades they've made amateur scouting they've done a really good job they've drafted really well uh like i don't know i mean alex tuck was a professional scouted yes guy so was peyton krebs yeah who just resigned yeah beck malenstein yeah has been good for them i don't know if you need a pro scout to tell you connor hellebuck's good when he inevitably ends up uh but you know i think there's not i think i mean i definitely think too like you know jason zucker and stuff those seem like kevin adam guys

um uh this is a problem you never know you never know but i listen buffalo's put together a good team if we can pick a guy who's good and bring him over from a good team then i'll take it great right yeah do we need to look at all the parts individually if the team is good okay like he was part of a good team yeah okay it's sort of like people like judd bracket well who did he actually draft i'm like i don't know but like uh minnesota's pretty good uh so uh and he ran the leafs draft so okay their answer is unless you're told directly like you don't really know yeah now on the brandon pridham thing uh i want to talk about him loves this guy uh brandon hired by the pittsburgh penguins um and it was reported in toronto that uh brandon pridham's

contract with the pittsburgh penguins was accidentally sent to all 32 nhl teams i could confirm for you that that is true um it was an accidental clerical error so that is true but i was told that so the way it was presented in toronto i didn't really like because it was sort of sneered because what people were surprised at is well he doesn't make very much uh now how it works in the nhl with executive salaries and coaches we all know this uh you get fired team has to still pay you out and if the next team is you know what gary usually steps in and does especially with head coaches is okay well this team that fired head coach there's one more year left on his deal firing team is going to pay 75 to 80 the next team is going to pay 25 and then

the you're following when the contract with the old team expires now the new team's on the hook for the new thing um so people were sort of it was presented as like in a sneering way at pridham like oh he doesn't make any money and i making him look like a jabroni yeah and so there are two things that are different about this that you know a few follow-up questions would have been good first thing is he's not taking on a full-time executive role with the penguins he's a consultant he is staying in the toronto area and remember that he has got his kid is just launching his pro career just got drafted jack yeah so jack pridham is like a high-end prospect i think the plays for Kitchener does he not he did and he was traded to the lightning I believe he's a Blackhawks

draft pick traded to the lightning there you go uh and he won the championship with the Rangers had 90 points in uh 65 games this is a third overall excuse me third round pick from uh from 2024 now traded to the lightning as you said okay so that's number one number two I believe he's got a year or two left with the Leafs. So he is getting paid whatever he was being paid. Right. And getting paid a little extra to consult for the Penguins as the Leafs let him go.

He didn't need the money from this job because the Leafs are paying him a fortune. Still what he was making, right? Yes. Okay. So this is a raise. Right. So what was sent around was only part of his salary. Just his raise. Right. It's the money now he's

making on top of what he's already getting from the Leafs for the next two seasons. Like a true capologist, he's doing less and making more. Yeah. His official title is Hockey Operations Consultant, and the Penguins said his primary responsibilities will include overseeing player contract negotiations, salary cap management, and planning to ensure compliance with the collective bargaining agreement and scheduling. So he's just kind of like a part-time guy. Exactly. and the way that this was presented was that oh well it was again presented in a sneering way and

then people assumed well the leafs did this to fuck them which is unbelievably untrue it's i don't know how you jump to that conclusion like what uh but no they didn't do that uh it was a clerical era error and it had nothing to do with the leafs the leafs were not involved my guess the place you're gonna see him next year is scotia bank arena probably well apparently this guy he hasn't missed a leaf game in like eight years and so uh and and had the opportunity to leave with dubas in 2023 didn't leave because he wanted to finish the job here this guy is from ontario is a leaf fan wanted to be here didn't want to leave and so i think now he's launching his kid's career because his kid is still here um and then he you know is going to take a couple

years and then figure out what he's going to do next but it seems like at the very least kyle dubas really values what he brings as he should and kyle dubas say the line bart loves his guys so i just wanted to clear that up because i got some dms from more actually surprising amount of dms for people going i can't believe believe the leaf would do this to him and the least are not involved and also the way it was presented was objectively wrong and so i just want to clear that up for because if we're we're listen we're doing a hot a podcast on hockey if we're not doing it for the hardcore fans who care about this stuff who are we then doing it for right so i think it's yes you might say well adam it's just an exact it gives a shit um people listen to the

show they care very often including this morning uh we sometimes go over the topics and i'm like does anyone care yes and the answer is usually yes always yes now a couple of other things that i want to get to congrats to cole perfetti got paid by the uh winnipeg jets six million five years not bad a little a little lot yeah but yeah but i don't i i don't know i look at the number i look at his numbers and i say okay he better get a little better now if you were to ask jets fans they would say that ain't his fault that's just the way we treat young guys they treated nick ehlers like that his entire time there right so i don't know maybe maybe there's a little a little b jess i don't know thoughts what do you mean that's how they treat guys they don't give the

young guys enough time uh to like on the ice right so with more opportunity he's probably gonna live up to that number and surpass it yeah i can see that and maybe maybe the first two years he's not worth the contract but then the last four he is because the cap has gone up that much totally that's also yeah six million dollars isn't six million dollars yesterday i guess that's totally fair so just a thought uh the ducks have it looks like triggered an out clause in their victory plus so victory plus is a streaming site that has um just dallas and ducks local games but now they just have dallas i believe dallas owns a piece of victory plus so you i think because the ducks are now good the rights would now be more in demand and therefore they're like yeah i'm not gonna do

the victory plus thing anymore interesting um uh we did mention payton crabs there's one thing about shane right i want to talk about okay so shane right um is a guy that uh apparently well Obviously, he wants out of Seattle, right? It's time to move on. And Vancouver seems like the place, and it's right across the water, and hey, you don't have to move that far or whatever. Perfect candidate. So I have to, it's, so the province is a big newspaper in Vancouver.

Yes. This is written by somebody named Ben Kuzma, and it basically says, Canucks, why Shane Wright intrigues as a potential reclamation project, and you can see why. 100%. he's a he's a he's a great setup man young uh young centerman you know fourth overall pick uh maybe ends up being more effective on the wing who knows who knows but hey how about trying them well the canucks can afford to try them exactly what got me and what went a little bit viral so they you know ben gets into like uh the center is often remembered for what appeared to be a

death stare glare at the montreal canadians table in 2022 after that he was a consensus top rated pick, but he dropped to fourth and was selected by the Kraken. It overshadowed what he accomplished on the ice, especially on the international stage. I like the death stare. I thought it was sick. The Canadians stunned pundits by reaching for Slovakian right winger Juraj Slavkoski,

which proved to be a prudent pick, and he stuck for 30 goals this season. Wright denied the death stare analogy but admitted the draft snub put a chip on his shoulder. Here's the quote that gets me. It's still there, as in the

the chip on his shoulder and that's significant because he is an alpha male who is assertive and confident okay and you're probably going does he expand on the alpha male comment no the canucks are attempting to solve their riddles in the middle puzzle by uh by and get a motivated player at the right trade price who could be a key piece it's this this sentence stood out the chip is still there and it's significant because he is an alpha male who is assertive and confident followed by no proof that he's an alpha male. I

don't know that he's not. It's a really weird throw in. Yeah. I'm just pumping the tire the guy's tires because he's coming to Vancouver and that's you know, that's great. It just seems like an odd line and I wanted to point it out and it's the summer and I can do that. You know, okay.

You ever been an alpha male? Do you know what that? I guess not. Okay. I think i think there's there's like a malcolm x quote that's something along the lines of uh you know cursing uh is people i'm paraphrasing people who curse do it because they don't have the words to express themselves right right and i say that as someone with a potty mouth um way too many people go that guy's an alpha or i'm an alpha i'm just say they're competitive that's that's what you mean right is what is he a leader is he the leader of the kraken is he the best kraken player is he

the strongest kraken player is he a player the kraken look to to do x is he a player that the kraken look to to do y perhaps zed i didn't say z because i'm an alpha male and this is canada what do you mean by that just use the word that you mean like people it's this catch-all word for i think this man is impressive or manual or manly manly or do you see how many different things it can mean but he's an alpha male and assertive steve you could have just said assertive also show your work what do you mean i that's what i proved that he's assertive i was waiting for a i bet you didn't know story yeah that backed it up but i didn't see anything this has less to do with ben kuzma and more to do with no one using that word correctly how we talk about this in

culture like i don't know what this means it's nebulous it's completely nebulous it's lost it's say a word enough times and it's lost alpha should be such a like that word should have so much emphasis so much importance and it means nothing well if you were to say nathan mckinnon was an alpha male yeah then you could point to several different stories where you'd be like by the way the alpha male thing is from it's weird internet corners but it is also like a wolf pack analogy and it's also wrong it's also wrong wolves do not act like right the way that the internet acts like wolves do but also if you told me nathan mckinnon was an alpha male you wouldn't need to explain to me why i know we all know you know right what do you mean he's a elite athlete

who's competitive thank you yeah well what are you what are you talking about i don't this and again it's not ben it's the way people just bastardize this word when i hear it used not ironically in a sentence i immediately am like i don't need to read the rest of this well look out for alpha male shane wright coming to a hockey arena near you yucky jesse tell us about what you what about shane's alpha tendencies um on shane wright's game like it's such a disappointment where it's been so far he's still only 22 yep but like last season i think you argue he took a step back from where he was in the previous year almost like half the points he had still like i thought a lot of people going into that draft where you the amount

he was talked up and then where he fell like i thought there'd be more to show at this point of his career and it's a bit of a disappointment but there's still so much time for him to get that back but we're gonna run out of that time eventually kind of a rest of development too like he was with the team and they healthy scratched him a bunch because they were working on stuff and then they got the exception to send him to the ahl yeah for that brief time in that winter and at first how many coaches he had three too many uh lane lambert friggin buddy who was in pittsburgh forget his name and then their original and then i think uh what's it uh oh hackstall and who was the guy before hackstall i think hackstall was the first he was the first

it's also like a microcosm of how the franchise has gone since its inception in seattle where it's a lot of spinning in the wind a crazy right i mean right that's kind of mirrored a lot of that Wouldn't you even say the same for Matty Beneers, who we all were like, after his first year, like, oh, hey, here he comes. Yeah, there's a little bit of that too. Also, when do we have a conversation about the 2022 draft? Well, we've had it.

Second overall pick's moved. Fourth overall pick, it sounds like, is going to get moved. Sixth overall pick has moved. Frigging ninth overall pick has moved. Eleventh overall pick has moved. Fourteenth overall pick has moved. A lot of these guys have moved. In a normal league, that's the way it should be.

like in other leagues, that happens all the time. That's not how it works here. I know, but I think it does actually now because the cap's going up. It's different. Yeah.

I don't think that you're going to see this clutching of picks and while he's our guy and even though it's time to move off and we won't because we drafted him and we don't want to be wrong. Right.

But a lot of these guys have moved because it hasn't worked out. Yeah. Though. Yeah. But it's also the 2020 draft post-COVID. If you look at the top five guys

in terms of games played, none of those guys have moved. well yeah yeah so like but like the actual good ones are like sticking around right right so it's just a matter of the guys picked wrong kind of because it's slavkovsky cooley minchikov shane wright lane hudson oh and marco casper is there the fact shane wright is still fourth in that category is actually impressive that's sorting the 2022 draft by games played so yeah no it's an interesting draft like there's a lot of questions out of that everyone was just so objectively wrong about

this. This is why I push back on draft grades the day after. Well, the 2022 draft specifically on every post call. Brutal. We know so little about drafting. Even the guys who are paid professionally for their entire lives to select these young children

get it wrong so many times. Yeah. If your hit rates like 20%, you're a stud. You're a genius. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I wanted to get the I want to get the alpha mail comment in there um the uh we have some send stuff that we can hold on to uh but that sort of thing we can get that next week no zegras yeah we didn't have a zebra segment it's a lot of money it is a lot of money i think it's expected people were like oh it's too high i'm like

he's signing this in a much different environment than ivan demidoff right first off he's a center second he's more established in the league third he's not worked out to be the maybe the player that everybody thought he might be in anaheim when he was on the cover of the video game but like that kind of makes sense to me so here's i i my brain was going all over the place because i'm like he is not a nine million dollar player what the hell are we talking about and then i'm like he makes about half of what leo carlson makes and their production is roughly the same yeah i don't expect it to stay that way if you're doing the unfair no nuanced i i don't understand what nuance is where you're like well he makes half a million less than kucherov then okay it's

not even really worth having the conversation with you trevor's egress signed a deal that will halfway through it be completely worth it because that's what second line centers will be making like when did kucherov sign that deal five years five years ago six yeah like what are we doing i think it was pre just a few days pre-marner like it was it's like whatever it was it's not the same what are we doing yeah i think it's a big assumption on the trajectory of his career because there's still proof that he can be a high-end goal scorer, which he hasn't been, if that's your expectation of Trevor Zegers, or a facilitator where he's a really good playmaker.

I don't think he's established in that direction yet. He's 25, and you kind of know what players are at that point. Next year needs to be a next-level year for him. That's exactly what I'm saying, yeah. What he was in Philly last year wasn't a breakout season. it was a return to form because he was good in anaheim was bad in anaheim and he's returned to form and if all he ever becomes is a high 60 point player for them i don't think that's a great outcome for the flyers he's he's got to become better and i think he wants to be better

than the flyers want him to be better yeah it was 67 points 26 goals 41 assists which is good Oh, so he's exactly Leo Carlson. That's six, seven points. Excuse me. But I don't think that's what you want him to be at for his career because that $9 million doesn't look good then. I also don't think they could score goals this year. Like, he was their entire offense.

Mitchkoff showed up to camp. What was it? Was it out of shape, Flyers fans? I don't know. Rick Talkett didn't say it enough. No, it hasn't been discussed. But, like, if he has, let's say he has a Matt Bay Mitchkoff that can put 30 goals in who we think he can be.

maybe that 67 is that six seven turns into an eight seven well and it's also good to lock him up to four years because he's an alpha male can we do next we do our NHL's top alpha males no I think

what this becomes is every time someone signs I refer to them as an alpha male okay I think when you look at the way his play style is too like he's not somebody's gonna play on your penalty

kill at all it doesn't do that for the Flyers you feel on the power play like heavy power play minutes and everything but i think he needs to become more useful in his career because you can't just dismiss all of those ducks years where it got really dark and everyone's like okay what's going on with zegras the five point something million dollar contract that he signed everyone's like that's too high for him now that his production is at the level it was and there's a reason they moved off of him so i think you're asking for him with this contract

step into it because you're not quite there yet but there's a there's a new here life for you here in philly yeah there's there's an element of the trevor zegras conversation and it will potentially tie into the leafs like oh well you know his coach and they didn't get along okay but like do your job yeah it's life and you make lots of money do your job one thing like i'll always this is one why he's one of my favorite players william nylander um might not get along with craig brube and laugh in his face but willie's gonna show up and score goals good on account of that's his job that's his job and he does his job he does when the playoffs roll around he's the one putting up the points for the team to play off he's an alpha male and assertive whether you like

and he's assertive damn it he's assertive don't you whether you like how much time he spends at sugo with his dogs or whatever and how much he's gonna give the middle finger to the camera at least he shows up and scores goals some of these other guys are doing this shit and they're not i gotta say that was real sigma behavior though can we open the pack yeah let's go for that all right all right i already opened my all right well let's go oh yeah you opened two yeah i didn't get anything impressive you can share it while i open mine yeah just share it uh what did i get because now it's mixed in with some of the ones that jesse gave me oh yeah so they have funny inserts um they have one called hilarious hometowns

So this is welcome to who, who West Virginia and they have young guns. No, I didn't get a young guns, which is a upper decks rookie card. I wanted one. This is Griffin Colapinto, who is a surfer. It is a rookie cart. Also an F1 driver. Yes. Oh, Adam.

Oh, please explain this. So this is a base card. This is Mary Curie. Mary Curie. Okay. So Mary Curie. Oh, I know. Mary Curie is a scientist, right?

What did she discover? It's not insulin, is it? It is not. That was a Canadian guy. Oh, okay. I forget. I think it was Banting. What is Curie?

Yesterday I said, isn't this the lady who wrote Frankenstein? Nope. And someone said that is Mary Shelley. Polonium and radium. Curie won the 1903 Nobel Prize for physics and the 1911 Nobel Prize for chemistry. Damn. Two-timer. Damn.

She promoted the use of radiation in medicine and served as a director through Radium Institute in Paris. Ooh, that's that's fucking amazing, by the way. Yeah, I just yeah, I'm the guy, you know, like radiation is used in a lot of things. I'm the one that created that. And I'm a woman 125 years ago. And I won the Nobel Peace Prize. That's insane.

And an alpha male who's an alpha male who's extremely assertive. Speaking of alpha male who's assertive, Richard Hatch, the winner of Survivor season one. yes that's so fun i kind of love that actually these cards are awesome no that's great yeah that's actually legit and okay that's an old one uh lj henriquez who is a snowboarder oh cool yeah all right jesse i got um remote locations uh tristan do kun ha oh in saint helen i got a location got a fucking trading card buddy that's where they held napoleon what that's awesome in yeah see is goodwin champions adams brand how many is that his box how many people live there uh so in that no you can't stop answer now it's i believe it's like

10 or 15 000 people 238 is that it oh wow yeah the the one inhabited island features a 2000 meter active volcano and is home to just 238 villagers. It is the world's most remote inhabited island. There you go. You can only get there. It's a British protectorate or British colony, just like the Falklands.

Insane that you just know this off. No, no, no. I've actually watched YouTube videos on this. It's so crazy. I love this. I love this shit. And yeah, the only way, and I actually follow a few TikTokers that do TikToks from there. And it's sick because they're like, here's our weekly boat pretty cool now it's got a trading card yeah yeah okay uh the i got a fake insert to make it

heavy which is fun and then i got two really cool actual tennis players that are not just like unknown celebrities um pete sanfras what did you look at me for steve dangle unknown celebrity pete sanfras and andre agassi or either of them numbered and then uh you can check and then i also I got Bella Hines, the basketball player, and John Krimber, bull rider. Did we both get John Krimber? Yes, we did. Yeah.

All right. I don't know what you got. I got Kennedy Smith, who is, I believe, a WNBA player. Maybe just NCAA. Okay. I also got the insert, Boo. Boo. Boo.

Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo.

Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo.

Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo.

Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. insert yeah no it's an insert uh they call it a decoy i'm gonna pronounce this wrong but this is an mma fighter asu um baleev oh yes is this the guy who's carrying the sheep oh not in that picture but yeah he has another one where he has a sheep oh really uh anyway he's from kazakhstan which

we you know nick andrew puff yes that's right ah yes i also got tv's richard hatch wow yeah um and hatch cards i got a young guns john land steiner from curling it looks like an american team a young guns curling card which i love that's incredible by the way can i just how young is this man do you really he's not so okay he's not young i'm so jealous of all these people getting young guns cards who are older than me i want one badlands chugs as a young guns that's funny steve you know what's unfortunate about your card what beardless it's so and now you're bearded guy and it looks it looks weird it looks like i'm looking back in time i i'm beardless and 20 pounds heavier like i'm real proud to be in these cards but i'm also like who

we wish i had different pictures yeah and you should see some of the pictures they used I didn't know what I was doing Adam who's your last one Darian Mensah from football unstoppable force on the football field in 2024 for throwing for 2,700 yards 22 touchdowns doesn't even say for who

I want to keep opening until we find me well we are next episode Steve Dangle podcast we will see you next Tuesday and also when's the VIPs tomorrow no it dropped on Wednesday night on Wednesday night there you go which is to say this morning yeah

No, it's Thursday today. Good correction. You are an alpha male who is assertive. Oh, fair. S-E-P. The Steve Dangle Podcast. Follow the guys on Twitter at Steve underscore Dangle, at Adam W-Y-L-D-E,

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