The Steve Dangle Podcast - Lions | November 4, 2025

Starting point is 00:00:00 Sometimes life throws your curveballs and you don't have time to get to them and that's where TaskRabbit 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. 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 got to have that scraper thing and the washer thing.

Starting point is 00:00:28 The chemicals, you got to have the right chemicals. see what i'm saying that's why i used task rabbit and i employed a tasker here's the thing task rabbit connects you with taskers in your area for furniture assembly home repairs lawn maintenance mounting window cleaning all that stuff here's the deal 3.4 million pieces of furniture have been assembled 700 000 home repairs 1.5 million moves and counting go ahead and get ahead of your to-do list 15 off your first task at taskrabbit.ca or on the task rabbit app using the promo code dangle taskers across canada book up fast especially for same day tasks get 15 off your first task right now with the promo code dangle at taskrabbit.ca or the task rabbit app you should

Starting point is 00:01:10 download that taskrabbit.ca code dangle now you might notice a couple of subtle changes on the steve dangle podcast panel steve the the the the beer that was there since the playoffs has been cut down slightly with the exception of above your upper lip. Jesse, who always has a beard, is only sporting a little bit of stubble. And me, who really never has much of anything because it never looks good.

Starting point is 00:01:37 Listen, I'm growing the stubble out because today is the day we select our mustache for Movember, okay? And remember, Movember mustaches can be creative. They can have some stubble. They can have length. They can have twirls in them. You can do whatever you want,

Starting point is 00:01:52 but we're gonna we're gonna choose our mustaches based on hockey players okay do you want me to i'm not choosing a hockey player at all oh yeah we're sports people yeah okay sports so can i should i start with mine or yours go ahead all right mine is going to be former guest uh and uh a subject of a ken reed book mr dennis maruk the forgotten 60 goal guy i'm going for this this is why i'm growing up my beard quickly now so that way when i shave it into those beautiful chops it's a it's a great handlebar mustache for anybody listening you when you grow it's gonna look good right away when you grow handlebars it's actually unreal it looks good yeah my wife does not believe me but it's oh it's great yeah okay so what are you guys doing i can go next

Starting point is 00:02:33 steve by all me i was thinking walt frazier who has oh yeah jesse who has the uh new york Nick's great. He has the kind of the mutton chops that come down to the chin area. The chin is left blank. And then he has the mustache. Now, are they going to be attached? So his wall frasers don't attach. You don't have to have yours attached.

Starting point is 00:02:57 That's civil war general territory. So I was thinking of doing that. Also, Patrick Ewing had a very famous mustache as well. So I can do that really 90s mustache, which is kind of the slim one. So I'm debating one of those. I might do the haircut as well that Patrick Ewing had. i'm looking forward to you growing that in like four days yeah jesse you got it by friday you've got to do the mutton chop dude the walt frazier he has to right a million percent that is right

Starting point is 00:03:24 okay now steve dangle you're the final final guest what are you doing i have a fully intact mustache because i'm cheating i don't i don't know you started you started early that's yeah it takes too long for me to grow it i go through this every time i try november all right uh i am not doing uh an athlete uh i'm going with the only mustache that i can grow and that is snoopy's brother um i forget his name snoopy's brother he has a brother snoopy does have a brother he lives in arizona um i remember that about him spike name is spike spike um i know that he looks uh very sleepy all the time and he has a mustache that barely looks on purpose the hair is really long yeah so snoopy's brother spike actually has a mustache that is longer than one i can hope to

Starting point is 00:04:13 achieve but it is the closest thing i can he also looks like he had a bunch of edibles i mean i wasn't gonna say that jesse you have you been to sedona i went to sedona for my first honeymoon let me tell you there's some edibles being i've never is it legal some others no sedona is just a weird place. Donate to our campaign. Yeah. So instead of just being me this year, it's going to be all three of us. It's going to be an SDPN collective Movember challenge. We raised over seven grand thanks to you last year. We're hoping to raise more this year. By the way, that put us in like the top one percent of all people that raise for Movember. So we want to kick some ass this year with it. If you got a couple extra bucks to spare, obviously the page is in the link in the

Starting point is 00:04:55 description and we're really looking forward to it. And there might be a surprise fun interview towards the end of the month too that we are booking, but I'm not going to say yet. I believe our goal for this month is five grand. That's what we're shooting for. Five grand?

Starting point is 00:05:07 Yeah. Let's do it. Spaghetti. Woo! S. D. P. P.

Starting point is 00:05:14 The Steve Dangle Podcast with your hosts, Steve Dangle, Adam Wild, and Jesse Blake. Let's go! Sunday, November 23rd, Generals Kitchener Rangers

Starting point is 00:05:24 in Oshawa. Steve Dangle Podcast. Now you can pick up your tickets right now. the uh link is in the description of the audio and the video and obviously we're doing a live show after the event and it's a little sunday you get to stay out a little late on a sunday and have a little fun at bond street i miss it it's what what do you mean i miss shawleywood oh do you i do i do i love my time there it's good it's of course it it made you it was a city that

Starting point is 00:05:47 made you made me into a man uh we're very very excited to be hanging out with the oshawa generals again uh we're gonna do the live show afterwards of course and uh there's lots of great players to be looking out for. Obviously, there's a long-standing rivalry between Oshawa and Kitchener, who also went to the Memorial Cup final against each other in 1990. You know what, Kitchener?

Starting point is 00:06:12 That's what I have to say to them. Sorry to use such harsh words. Also this week, Easter Seals. Last couple of days here to get your donations. Rachel's Raiders

Starting point is 00:06:26 is doing a great job and and we're very excited and and we just want to say you know as we kind of wind this thing down how much we appreciate your support for this every single week or every single year because it is a yearly sdpn tradition that started as a steven angle tradition and it's become like a family event everybody looks forward to it um and it's just a uh it's just a a really incredible cause easter seals is amazing and obviously steve you can speak to that i'm really just uh grateful for everyone who tolerates me every year when for about a month or so i'm like give me money and then they finally do yeah uh it's a great charity uh helps out kids with physical disabilities my sister was one of them uh growing up um it's summer camp experiences

Starting point is 00:07:10 it's stuff like uh afo equipment wheelchairs are unbelievably expensive motorized wheelchairs are the price of a damn car um and easter seals helps you out with all that and these kids need your help there you go now uh i want to very quickly shout out well i wanted to i want to throw this to jesse blake because jesse you have a shout out about the yahoo fantasy app because you were really upset that people were going to have to pay a subscription fee for what i am just so happy that bullying works and we have bullied yahoo into returning our button so maddie i took a screenshot of my app uh this week yahoo returned the start for the rest of the week button to where it was on the app they no longer put it behind a paywall and that's because we caused some noise

Starting point is 00:08:03 here the hockey fantasy reddit was causing a bunch of noise and a whole bunch of people wrote into yahoo and were like we're leaving your app and all this stuff and the community of the hockey fantasy world got together said we are not happy with this and they changed it back guaranteed that's awesome guaranteed they made the same observation that i did which is oh no one's playing yeah yeah because that's like friends just i whooped my friend's ass because they weren't playing yeah they were not playing a lot of people just rely on that button to set the thing for the week and then as things go along you tweak it because the yahoo you still suck at your app and they'll be like oh i'm gonna bench conor mcdavid and put some other player in that

Starting point is 00:08:43 position the amount of times they auto bench leon dryside yeah i am going to fight somebody there's nothing in their system that says like this is a better player so it should be in the lineup even though that should be how it works so but a lot of people use that function first and then you go along your week and just swap in the players that you want to swap but then they took away that button everyone's like this is a headache now because like i don't have not everybody has the time to be on this all the time so we need buttons like this and thankfully they put it back yes the interesting thing too i think sleeper which you mentioned which is like an alternative to yahoo uh was all over this and they actually allow you mid-season to port your rosters over so if you

Starting point is 00:09:22 wanted to switch at any time no way you can just port your rosters and i think this is this is why competition is a good thing yeah because um yahoo rested on their laurels and some idiot in a board room was like how can we extract two dollars out of every player each month to make the next quarter sexier than the last and and then sleepers like you know what we'll do give you everything that you want i heard from a lot of people that said fan tracks if you want to move off of yahoo next year because what they tried to do this fall fan tracks is a great um fantasy app and they're actually a canadian company oh cool if you want to support a canadian company uh switch over to fan like that yeah and steve you said something that i think was really important uh when we

Starting point is 00:10:05 talked about this the first time no engineer made that decision nope no engineer said i'm gonna put this uh this behind the paywall and this is gonna be great for the app this was a money-making decision by a suit in a boardroom like you said adam yeah engineers love it when something they worked hard on is ruined by an idiot i love that it's awesome also worth mentioning i got a tweet either yesterday or the day before just to follow up on some vip content that went viral uh somebody was watching our show on their smart refrigerator after we talked about ads on on refrigerators because samsung has this whole thing internally where they want screens everywhere and they uh shout out carly isaac yes carly twitter that tweeted watching channel on my new fridge watching

Starting point is 00:10:50 the sdp channel on my new fridge and they scroll and there's us on their fridge because it's a smart fridge with like a screen on it i love that and there i love that steve how much do you hate this why what are you talking about listen i don't i hope it ran double the ads and it did it did run ads but here's the thing if she had been an sdp vip ad free member she'd have been able to watch on her fridge ad free that's right and and the thing is is that you don't want to be served ads to like unlock your refrigerator or whatever so also if you thought if you thought that was funny it's very funny fridge content if you thought that was funny what a pose get a better pose of me wait till you see uh what's gonna be on this week's vip oh i have got something

Starting point is 00:11:38 that is gonna make steve lose his mind oh i'll be sure to have an energy drink his mind don't you worry yeah no it's gonna be great so uh you if you think we're done with the ads on the refrigerators what if we one-upped it i like the comment on the fridge under the video barely beating Buffalo and Calgary isn't very convincing. Well, they're in the leaves. Shut up isn't very how about beating the second

Starting point is 00:12:03 overall team second in the league. Not a bad performance from the Blue Sabres. Am I right? Now during the live stream on your fridge and suck it. I was getting so many golly so many Blue Sabres things and I'm like, you

Starting point is 00:12:19 know, I uh i kind of find that funny let me just acknowledge i deserve it oh okay i deserve all of it because i called the red wings the red sabers yeah and then both teams were better than the leafs for a while and i'm like you know what just i'll take my lumps whatever we also need to just as fans realize that saying one thing about one team doesn't mean that the other team isn't all so bad yeah like it just because you say the red wings haven't made the playoffs doesn't mean the leafs haven't lost in a bunch of game sevens like we can we can have opinions about teams and that doesn't affect the team we cheer for this year this season in particular is shaking my

Starting point is 00:13:02 confidence a bit though like i was wrong on everything okay and and like adam and like adam has the ducks like isn't that nice that you have the ducks i'm not saying anything and you don't worry about the penguins because you have the ducks you don't need to wear who do i have you don't need to look up where the ducks are in the standings right now you don't need to look that up you shouldn't you don't need to look by the way it's only the end of october i was listening in the car when you talked about your devious plan i have no idea what you're talking about adam's gonna savor this listen elliot friedman only said that they might be pursuing a temi panarin i can't imagine i'm sure that's because of the rebuild i've never heard of that guy um i i uh i want

Starting point is 00:13:38 to talk about the leafs game last night because the first two periods were as depressing as it gets and so many takes including my own about oh me hey this is bad now everybody puts it back on the mitch marner thing and i i have said this from the start of the season when they started playing like this the leafs are too good for you to let them off the hook with an excuse no no no no no let me say it okay they're too good they're too good for you to let them off the hook like that oh like people are like well they're not they're just not as good anymore and that's true they are not as talented did you notice that it was shut up about marner until it went the way that they wanted it to go did you notice that i didn't know no shut the shut up about marner

Starting point is 00:14:20 that's enough about marner and the leafs get off to a tough start vegas is doing great and well guess my entire personality is is gonna be marner now now listen oh oh oh they won oh they won oh shove it up your nose well and listen it's not like they've been great no they haven't they've been objectively bad and i was gonna kill anybody on this fandom that say well they had the same record coming out of october yes they did uh but they looked a lot better last october than they did this one all of life is a comment section no one watches or reads anything my point though is always you know what we saw from the leaves in the third period yesterday was what i believe that they can be austin matthews they posted his post-game speech on their twitter after the game

Starting point is 00:15:07 and he said exactly that this team and i kept saying it in the in the chat this team is too good too talented to play this bad this is all down to motivation it's all between the ears and you know who said that last night craig berube it was one of the craziest switch flips i've ever seen the leaves do ever like brewing nailed it like okay you're down to nothing after one that's not ideal it's not good you're not happy about it you have 40 more minutes in your building score early in the second get back in the game or like put together some good you're not gonna you're not going to win every game and you're not going to play well every night but look like it for the love of god look like you're trying and berube saw what we all saw oh they're dogless

Starting point is 00:15:57 they have nothing they don't play for each other they don't play like they earn a paycheck they don't play like they like the sport like that's very true it's a listless sad group when they're playing like that which is why like i tweeted during the second period i was gonna go off like i was like what did all of you pay to be there like if you're at this game right now tweet me what you pay and like the average experience was like 150 and i were going through that too and he said to get just to be standing room is 85 plus a 15 ticket master because we can fee i would never i've paid for one leaf ticket this season i'm gonna go sometime in december because my son wants to go i would never pay to watch that product what they put

Starting point is 00:16:48 on in the first two periods no oh but you're a leaf fan yeah i got a tv i'm not i'm not going downtown i'm not paying for you know 75 for a popcorn and 400 for a nosebleed or whatever the hell it is for that 16 17 leafs i'll do that even last year's leafs i'll do that which wasn't the most glamorous product but they won you know what they've put on the ice a lot of nights i'm begging them for a back-to-back performance the game against philly was legitimately good mm-hmm and i don't i just don't know what that was and i i am heartened by two things they came back and they won and they have that in them and the coach isn't satisfied and the team isn't satisfied thank god jesse i i want to talk to you a little bit because for

Starting point is 00:17:50 anybody that doesn't know and there's a lot of leaf non-leaf fans that watch this show uh the leafs played some of the worst hockey we've ever seen them play in the first two periods and then came back and won the game they were down three to nothing and they scored four unanswered starting at the beginning of the fourth period the third shot 25 to eight i was just going to get to that sorry out out out chanced out out like shot attempts midway through the second period do you never miss anything 33 to 11 it's hard for me to contribute you never miss anything you just contributed no i didn't so jesse you're at the game you were there okay i've gotten uh a chance to go back to games because the blue jays are over yeah you can be a reporter again so reporter

Starting point is 00:18:30 jesse first two period podcast guy who they let sit in the press box tell me tell me what tell me what the press box was like first two periods versus the third it was it was done and over like everybody's preparing their stories of like wholesale changes what is wrong with this team where do they go from here this is a disaster year just it's this is the tipping point for that performance against pittsburgh this is one of the turning moments of this franchise entirely we were getting texts about like do they look at the coach do they look at the gm and i'm like oh my god are we there already that that's where it was at that end of that second period and i thought at the end of the game Craig Berube's post game and you mentioned some of those comments

Starting point is 00:19:18 there we can play it here because it was one of I don't know if I call it strange but the one of the more peculiar post games that he's ever given because it was completely unsatisfying for him as a total hockey game oh and he was just dumbfounded by his own team he he he says here I'll play it But like he says, I don't know why we didn't come out in the second period. We're down 2-0 and they didn't perform. So I can play. Hang on one sec. I just want to say one quick thing before you press play.

Starting point is 00:19:49 That is the most Sam the Eagle that Craig Berbate's ever looked. If his eyes were open, I'd be expecting him to speak like this. The whole thing is like two minutes and 30 seconds. Go, play it. I want to hear it. That's the entire thing. And I can play like the first question and answer and then like the last one because it's just dejection.

Starting point is 00:20:07 And I've never seen a coach like that after a win, you know? So here we go. What was your level of frustration? Yeah, it was good. Yeah, it was, well, I didn't think the first period was that bad, but I made a mistake on the first goal, second goal. You know, it's a bounce. But what upsets me is we come out in the second period

Starting point is 00:20:36 down to nothing you think we're gonna make a push and we didn't and they controlled the whole period with the puck so those pauses that he has there he's he's he's short-circuiting he's thinking is like how how do i say this that they just didn't show up when i wanted them to show up he's get he's getting to that second period and he finds like they down to nothing and he finds a way to just say it in the most pr nice way he can say it where the guy the pr guys don't have to have a conversation with them about like yelling at the team in front of the public so and he finally gets to those words and he lands on we're down to nothing and they don't come out not not to be dramatic or anything and again reminding everyone watching and listening they won this game but that

Starting point is 00:21:24 is how a coach speaks shortly before they're fired it is like he's i think craig brube is a good coach i'm not saying he should be fired or any of that but when a coach is fired it is often because they're out of answers and he's got nothing i got nothing anyone who watches this team has nothing and that's why i think we're grasping on to like easy storylines like the smarter one yes it's a joke what the so you're down to nothing in your own bar he gives i think the best answer at the end here so that was the first uh answer and the last one in between just like a minute of more i don't know what's going on and he finally says i think it's mental so i'll play that for you guys and to carlo laid it on the line there with a goalie out a couple blocks i

Starting point is 00:22:15 mean there's some good blocks by rd um they you know did a good job there how do you want the group to feel about this game coming off it what sort of emotion you always want to feel like and this happens throughout the season it's a good comeback win right like you know guys played in the third and did what they're capable of doing and came back and won a game and that's a good feeling but you know you have to we have to understand that you're going to get down in this league at times by a couple goals or whatever bounces whatever happens and it's the response that's needed to get back in the game now we got that response in the third i don't understand why we never got it right away in a second that's the frustrating part won't let it go you know

Starting point is 00:23:05 and that's all mental for me it's all mental for me and that's that's where it was over like there's no more questions to be had what else you say that was it he's he's going through it he's just he doesn't know it's just i know you have it in you and you showed me it in the third period where was it in the second i would love your heads in the fucking game i would love to know what button he pushed well stoller said after the game just that that he said some stuff and that we had to use our imagination yeah so uh the guys there the guys the reporters asking the questions they tried to get out of austin austin wouldn't say anything uh mcmahon wouldn't say anything he was talking to and then staller is finally like yeah chief came in he said some stuff but i'm gonna

Starting point is 00:23:47 leave that in the room or you can use your imagination that's fine what he said which is fine you know i don't need to i want to know word for word i would love to see video of that but like i assume he pushed that button in the fur at the first intermission down to nothing like you know what to do and get out there and win yeah and they could they didn't do it again what's wrong with you guys you don't want to latch on to the easiest possible thing but it literally seemed like they did not try and then they did that's all that's the beginning away from that game i don't they dominated pittsburgh the shots were only 12 to 12 in the third period so but when the leafs overwhelmed the front of their net there was

Starting point is 00:24:34 no answer when willie scored that backhand shot that from the front of the net like he's talking and he just wires a backhand in there. I'm like, this is an all-star game for you now. Where was this in the first two periods? A couple of their goals were rock stars doing rock star shit. Like, where's the rock star shit the whole game? I totally agree. Jake McCabe has so frequently been the only leaf with blood in his veins.

Starting point is 00:24:58 And that passed to Matthews to get the whole party started. That game is probably a four or five, nothing ass-kicking without that. yeah that was awesome and that's a finisher finishing thank god kneelander had the rock star backhand but that was born from hard work in front of the net yes third goal is a willie blast but it's the hard work of matthews that gets the party started and oel has been fucking great to start this season and then what's the fourth goal it's robertson working his bag off holy shit have i fallen in love with this player and mcmahon goes where goals are scored i know this is by the way that's his first point this was the ninth game he was going

Starting point is 00:25:44 to go pointless no goals no assists i mean he's lucky he wasn't scratched that game and he's like well we were talking about yesterday that was the narrative of us before the game is mcmahon hey maybe you can sit because you you go through these dry spells and then he shows up and he scores that goal and like willie on that first goal when they come back and he scores it he's doing the celly of the crowd he puts his hand up and it's it's rock star shit yes and and like even the matthews on the pk like oh that was awesome incredible the in the building those might have been the two biggest pops of the night yeah hockey were there's really smart hockey fans at scotia and lease fans like people recognize you trying hard and in that moment they saw

Starting point is 00:26:27 matthew's on the pk getting pops because they can see him trying and where's that this so this is where the lfr was gonna go is you know someone said when the leafs were having a bad game they're like the leafs fans are getting the team that they asked for and it bothered me and it it still bothers me but the team that leafs fans want is and have always wanted get out of your little online community you know it's talking to family members talking to friends talking to strangers at the bar and taking in the online discourse leaf fans want an intense badass team grinding team that never quits that's like what the blue jays were they yes they just kept coming and coming and coming the jays are the leafs it's like well they might show up tonight but i know

Starting point is 00:27:23 it'll be later they want four lines of darcy tucker yeah that's what everybody's out it's it's part of the reason that older generations of fans never really fell in love with this group never really because like they were skilled and flashy and our answers are power play like that was the ethos of this team and run by dubas which that's a knife in the heart for guys that are older than us frankly and you know but okay let's see the sport is evolving let's see how it works and no it doesn't work that way it still doesn't work that way in fact it's going backward i don't know if you've noticed the last uh two three stanley cup champions um they want a team that would the 2013 leafs were an affront to the sport they were horrible but

Starting point is 00:28:16 they beat the shit out of their opponent every night and that was what made them cool and they just happened to get saves and they capitalized on their chances their best line was their third line cadre loophole yes whoever the hell else was and they used it to propel them to the playoffs last night in one period they got the perfect form of this team because they didn't have to beat the crap out of their opponent in order to do that they just worked robertson is a small guy and sometimes he gets picked on because he's a small guy martin st louis is a small guy travis connect he's a small guy if you want to go you know back generations theron flurry was the smallest guy they never played like it you got to be a dog out there and that's what robertson

Starting point is 00:29:10 was i know the leafs are trying to make this team bigger but they don't play like it no they don't play like they have a physical advantage over anybody and then for 20 minutes maybe less they went you know what why don't we just kick the penguins ass like there's a lot of penguins fans this morning who i think are just going to blame this on jari and he was not the best maybe you'd like a safe i mean it's also a difficult game to navigate as a goalie because he got no he was basically not playing for the first two periods and then you're playing so you're just in a hurricane for four minutes right the d in front of him was awful doo-doo yeah they're they're i i stand by what i said about like dubas does a lot of things well he can make an exciting team

Starting point is 00:30:01 high-flying the rush and all that he cannot build a decoy no and and to that point when we talked about when we were complimenting the penguins last week and i still give them their compliments remember their special teams last night carried them uh they had the power play goal early Malkin made them look so stupid on that first one. Oh, my God. Tell him to move the stick. Hey, guys, I know nobody's attacking me. Everyone's just kind of standing around.

Starting point is 00:30:22 Can somebody just shift that stick over? Okay, thank you. I'm going to send this pass to the zone. What the fuck is that? And Kendo puts it in. That's humiliating. Are you kidding me? That's LeBron spinning the ball on his hand in front of Ibaka.

Starting point is 00:30:33 No, it's Krusty the Clown. He's spinning the ball on his finger. Malkin's standing there asking him to politely move the stick so i can send a pass oh my god you're a joke and you're getting murdered by a kid who should legitimately be in the whl right he can't drink in canada no are drinking not in ontario yeah he's really looking forward to the alberta trip yeah yeah no go out to quebec and maybe have one like i saw one on the craziest thing um so anyway sorry leaf fans i think they're smart hockey fans but at the end of the day we're generally simple creatures we want a team that cares

Starting point is 00:31:14 at least half as much as we do and for 20 minutes last night they did let's work on the full the full game let's work on that because if you play like that you will win more than you lose you will make the playoffs and once you get there you take your chances but all season long like what was that game 13 14 13 they have not played the way they were sold at all at all no no and you can tell it's getting to brew bay hey steve what are you eating there uh this is delicious and all i want to do is put in my mouth i don't know what it's called it's called the raptor ranch poutine chicken and bacon for a limited time stop talking can i eat please uh my favorite part of this is the real pieces of bacon it's a big like actual cuts of bacon oh my god and this is yo this is

Starting point is 00:32:12 legit this is bananas this is crazy um layered with canadian cheese curds and gravy topped with crispy pieces of 100 seasoned chicken drizzled with ranch sauce and topped with crispy hickory smoked bacon pieces which jesse was pointing out this is a new game day staple um and this is for raptors fans across the country we love this uh every raptor fan ranch poutine with chicken and bacon is made with crispy pieces of 100 canadian raised and seasoned chicken our world famous fries can't confirm the chicken is good yeah oh my god this is oh this is so like if you guys weren't here i'd eat this whole thing with my hands like we already know mcdonald's has the best french fries but they just made them better yeah that's so nuts i love cheese curds too yeah oh canadian

Starting point is 00:32:59 cheese curds you know and there's something about cheese curds they need to be they there's a there's an integrity they need to have yes right they can't just be melted nonsense no no this is these have integrity there's they're holding their shape so here's the deal um uh check it out uh at participating restaurants uh you should try to find one because oh my god these are the greatest these are so delicious what's it called again it is mcdonald's It's called McDonald's. It's a new restaurant you maybe have heard of. Raptor Ranch Poutine with chicken and bacon.

Starting point is 00:33:34 Check it out at participating stores now. Sometimes life throws your curveballs and you don't have time to get to them. And that's where TaskRabbit 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. And their way around on that is like, well, it's a patio window. You can do that yourself.

Starting point is 00:33:56 And I'm like, well, hang on a second. What if I don't want to? I don't have the stuff because you got to have that scraper thing and the washer thing. The chemicals. You got to have the right chemicals. See, that's what I'm saying. That's why I used TaskRabbit and I employed a tasker. Here's the thing.

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Starting point is 00:34:45 You should download that, TaskRabbit.ca, code DANGLE. Matthew's had that discussion, obviously, you know, or not discussion. he he you know the team belt presenting and all that and he said that's what the third period is what we are we're tenacious we're for checking we're this for this whatever um that's what we all want them to be but my question is um can you build on a period like we the we the pundits we the media people we the fans will sit back and we'll say okay it was cool to win like that but like i prefer not to win like that i prefer to win the other way sure uh and i'm sure the leafs feel the same way but when you're an athlete you have to do weird things and you have to be like that's

Starting point is 00:35:27 the period that's that was the moment it was like we didn't get tickets to you too so now we're gonna win 12 games in a row you gotta build on something so can they and what's interesting about today okay is there is wholesale changes in the lineup so you know what's you know what what would have happened in leaf's past is hey they came back so the lineup stays the same brube is not playing like that um nice matthews nylander is now officially aligned they that was the first time they looked the way they ought to they were dominant robertson tavaris mcmahon hell yeah like robertson's been a dog by the way five points in three games since he got elevated to the top six i think he belongs look at all the guys who are in the rotation to be in and out of

Starting point is 00:36:15 the lineup yeah you don't even bring his name up no but steve's been saying that like he can't play in the bottom six no he's not a bottom six either he's in a top six forward playing in a premium spot or he's out of the lineup and now he's found his top six spot so i think it's great not everyone can do it joshua wa macelli so macelli will draw back in after sitting for a game he got healthy he's still looking for his spot and scott lotten is looking like he's going to play tomorrow night with domi finally on the wing and steven lorenz back in the lineup now i want to say something I like what Berube's doing here. I'm sad to see Sammy Blay not in the lineup.

Starting point is 00:36:50 I know he'll cycle back in. He took a bad penalty. He did take a bad penalty, but I really liked him. I know he's not going to be the straw that stirs the drink. I get we're debating a fourth line winger, but I'm just, you know. Let me point something out, though. So Carlo's not there today. Mermis is with Riley, which I assume he won't be during game situations.

Starting point is 00:37:13 but if carlo can't go they have too many players on their team right now they have three extra forwards uh and an extra d you're only allowed three extra players um i kind of like the hunger games thing going on well the very easy solution and a lot of people won't like hearing this is cowan going down to the marley's and i know the answer keeps going back to well berube likes him he didn't last night he wasn't a major part of that third period no he wasn't i'd love to know what his ice time was i want we can look that up and like again it's not a shot at the kid like i think he's gonna have a very long great career great career but they have way too many guys even if you send him down for a month you can bring him back in december hell a couple days

Starting point is 00:38:05 even like it right now um i don't know that his roster spot is so secure that you can't send him down to the marlies for a little bit i wonder if carlos block shot at the end of the game hurt a little bit more he's not in practice it wasn't great yeah and he's there's the uh extra roster spot i'm just guessing and by it wasn't great i mean it might have been his most glorious moment as a leaf so far like holy i was you saw in the group chat i was livid last night it was like who is this person i cannot believe this person was a boston bruin holy shit and then last night you're like oh there he is 10 42 easton cowan played how much a total that what's that oh yeah that's total so that's low yeah how much in the third chest do we know in the third i can

Starting point is 00:38:55 bring it up okay yeah if you really want yeah i'm sorry it's sub 11 minutes it's just not a guy you have to have sammy blay played eight minutes okay well there you go and i think after that penalty you're not playing it much that's not great either that's not great either and and like oh god i'm really excited for lotten i really am i you know one thing they could do if they really wanted is reunite that line that did so well for them in the preseason which was lotten centering Lawrence and Cowan. They could do that. But if Carlo can't go,

Starting point is 00:39:27 they have a decision to make. I'm excited to see what Lawton brings to this lineup, too. You mentioned it yesterday. A little bit of scoring punch, a little bit of attitude. He is beloved in the dressing room, was from the moment he got there.

Starting point is 00:39:40 Great utility guy, like just has everything. So, you know, they paid a first round pick and a prospect for this guy. We, you know, obviously he's missed the first month with the foot injury.

Starting point is 00:39:49 um it's going to take i do want to temper people's expectations sure this guy's missed 14 or 15 games it's going to take some time for him to get back up to snuff so you're going to start to see people go a lot still sucks blah blah yeah i want to let's talk in let's talk in four weeks yeah and and on the goaltending and i think this is key quick note uh steve asked sorry do you want to answer the question uh in the third period eason cowan played one minute and 58 seconds yeah oh he has three shifts there that yeah yeah that's that's enough for the third so that's enough three shifts in the third 158 that's a non-option i mean if he's not there to generate offense what are we doing yep you know with the marlies like yeah he's 20 he's what the marlies are for he's

Starting point is 00:40:35 what the american hockey league is for developing that kind of player what um sorry and you want to go to the goal yeah i do i do it's okay though it's good to know what houston calum played i think it backs up steve's point now i want to talk about goaltending here because stallers um i was really surprised by the second ben kindle goal and not because it wasn't good i thought he was amazing all night what a what a power play blast 11th overall pick whl player last season like crazy he's 18 i can't both his parents are professional soccer players wow so he runs in the family i think his mom played on the canadian national team and then his dad was a vancouver whitecaps player yeah so that's really cool unreal family um so he he looked amazing last night but

Starting point is 00:41:17 the second goal that was this is the goal where it flew out of the air and he that was the second penguins goal that was his oh it was his first goal okay so there's a couple things about that goal that i didn't understand first off when they credited it to him the only thing the amazon broadcast only showed one angle so apparently the local pittsburgh broadcast actually had a bunch of different angles according to our chat so i didn't get a great look at because the leafs defenseman is blocking him i didn't get a great look at where he touched that puck because to me if he touched it and i'm not even sure he did it would have been with the high stick now beyond that if even if it went off his glove and in it's still not a goal right if it's off your glove and in it it is not

Starting point is 00:42:01 a goal uh it's off your body it's different it can i believe go off your glove but not if you go like yeah like yeah shove it in on the part that i didn't understand really so whatever he gets the goal i didn't understand how the because the shot was the reason it bounced up is that stolars had it in his left side glove it popped out of his glove went high and then went to the other side where kindle pushed his blocker back and spun him around and i'm curious as to how that's not goaltender interference the leafs it might be adam but you got to challenge it and the leafs are probably gun shy about that because they made a bad challenge a few games ago but that was not their video department that told them to do that that was berube angry and that was not their video

Starting point is 00:42:49 really yeah okay the video department it was pretty clear from the replays when they made that challenge which led to another penalty which led to another goal i forget which game it was it was embarrassing i forget that was the coaching staff going no challenge it anyway I'd love to know the power dynamic there because they obviously trust their video guys for offside as they should like with their robots like it's unreal their accuracy but goalie interference I mean take a take a take your take a guess who the hell knows if anything like I agree with you it did feel like old tenor interference did it not like that seemed textbook I don't know like that no but steve like like i i understand the confusion with the rule because i too am confused yeah but like if you were to write goaltender interference down and you show somebody that picture here's the flaw in the rule um they made it so that you can challenge every goal for offside and every goal for goalie interference and the system got abused badly and

Starting point is 00:43:55 that's why games took forever yeah then they implemented uh it's a penalty if you challenge and you're unsuccessful and i would like to see a world and this probably wouldn't work but there are some challenges that are just so clearly not frivolous you know what i mean yeah so i would love a world where the leafs can challenge that the refs can go you're wrong it's not goalie interference but we understand no penalty oh that's putting too much on the refs i know it's putting more like how many times have we seen a goal that's offside by a or not sorry it's on side by a millimeter i would love some leeway to be like yeah we get it we understand yeah that's close enough that it's valid and i would love don't hand that over to

Starting point is 00:44:54 the refs i know make people hate them more i know i just that's how you show bias you don't want to do that i know i just think it it sucks that like i it's a valid question i i feel like challenging that would it yeah i don't know do you know how the nhl did they did review the goal but not for that either they weren't looking at goaltender interference when they were reviewing it like good you know we talked about like how easy baseball is once you know the rules like i don't know hockey's hockey will be an awesome sport when it's done jesse i don't think it's goalie tell me why i'm interested um if you look at the play first of all the ruling on the play is um first it's touched by a leaf player with a high stick then ben kindle

Starting point is 00:45:35 touches it with a high stick but then the puck is actually shoved in by the leafs so that's what they reviewed and the ref comes out and they they'd say the play the puck was ruled by with the high stick but it was then touched by a leaf player good goal so the the high stick by kindle it's it's uh washed out you know at least touched it and you can see here the puck being shoved in there it's being forced in by the leg yeah whoever it doesn't really matter those are three leaf legs that are shoving the puck into the net and for me on this goalie interference thing so uh sorry from this angle you'll see here uh kindle coming in touching that puck and then stallers is just fighting around for but he's in the blue paint that's the part for me jesse that doesn't like

Starting point is 00:46:17 strollers can't get to that puck yeah but he's he's playing the puck like the puck is here he's allowed to play the puck yeah but like he's not in the blue paint here where he's playing the puck no right but that to me makes it worse because he doesn't have control of the puck when he goes to the blue paint so he touches it and stallers is out here i believe this should be kindle space with everybody here you can't tell him you can't tell kindle he's not allowed to enter this area here where he's not even touching stall but he doesn't have control of it and he is touching stallers there look at where staller's glove is and so but that's because stallers is outside of his crease and he's turning around so kindle's kindle's allowed to go for this puck that's here

Starting point is 00:46:56 okay he's allowed to go fetch a puck that's in the crease right he's he's not bullying over the goalie to get there he's just turning around and playing this puck here and it shoved in by we need John Bucci gross to go to Mr. Jackson, the rules guy. So, um, no, we need his giant screen. Dave Jackson from two years here from this angle. I don't know. I just feel like it's worth.

Starting point is 00:47:20 I feel like it's a legitimate challenge that no one should be punished for is on a clarification. But anyway, listen, the NFL has a replay assist, the thing they call. They just go to the replay and they're like, oh, yeah, that was actually fixed that call and they do that. So the NHL should have that system as well. did you notice that the shots were 5-4 and they would have been they would have been 6-4 after that so this just emphasizing Berube's point 2-0-6 left in the first emphasizing Berube's

Starting point is 00:47:48 point they got their asses kicked so bad after it was 2-0 Pittsburgh played like the team down two goals yep I agree with Berube that the first period wasn't like that bad no they're down 2-0 but like it's not death they didn't generate much but they didn't allow much which we saw plenty of games like that last year and they won a lot of them um we've been looking for like a rallying something this season and i thought in the moment it was going to be stallers calling out his team and they respond with their most baby shit performance of the season uh against the devils they just got killed and you know they put together some good ones they put together some bad ones ultimately it didn't seem like that game had any effect on them whatsoever and then

Starting point is 00:48:42 you're down to nothing heading into the second and barubi's like all right here they come and still nothing like that's got to be a terrifying moment for a coach which he's got to be thinking along the lines of what i'm what i was thinking like am i about to get fired like is this team quitting on me because we go over this every day we have a world-class video staff we sit through these i have a whiteboard morning skate we i like to think they respect me we won the division last year they will not do the things that i am telling them to do i'm i'm at a loss and that doesn't mean you're a bad coach but sometimes you just lose the room and they've been playing like a team that where the coaches lost the room entirely if they will not you could

Starting point is 00:49:32 tell them the like a like a foolproof i came up with a scientific method you'll win every single game if you just do exactly what i told you if they won't listen to you and do it then you okay well best of luck in your endeavors and you know what's going to happen from here on out the Leafs are going to go about 12 4 and 1 uh for the next uh little bit they're going to go on a nice run they're gonna sit oh second in the atlantic uh when we enter december and we head into january and we're gonna forget these moments and then everything's gonna be fine that's usually good that is how every season with this darn team plays out yep oh you know what that's frustrating please sign me up for it that is frustrating please sign me up for that what if we signed

Starting point is 00:50:17 you up for just a season that went well from the start yeah you know what spilt milk it's true it's so i mean people can't go back in time it's amazing like especially this season like you can look at the games two very different ways one it's early november and it doesn't really matter all that much oh it matters but two two points in the standings is a massive swing at this time of year and a lot of leaf fans who i know haven't been paying that much attention to them over the past month they're like wait they're third in the atlantic right now they were eighth uh like yesterday like two days you know or no in the atlantic there i think they were seventh yesterday when we record it yeah like they were in a three-way tie for last with

Starting point is 00:51:08 the sabers and panthers try to figure that out at all what do you take from that information a team that you expect to be there and the panthers and also you're by tiebreakers below the both of them so and now they're seven five and one or two or whatever it is i don't have to guess because you can uh just look this up so on november 2nd the toronto maple leaves were seventh in the atlantic when we sat there on september 2nd and looked at the standings now we go to september 3rd or november i keep saying september november 3rd they are third in the atlas let me spin this there are three points out of first that's oh my by the way they are montreal's first they are i believe there are four points out of first in the nhl if i'm not

Starting point is 00:51:52 mistaken i want to go to the league one what who's top no way yeah there are four points out of four points out of first 12th in the league though yeah yeah time for nine is not funny adam wilds anaheim ducks that's right yeah there's a lot of swings with one win well of course so yeah like That's why it's so... That's why every game matters. That's why people were posting like, oh, the Leafs are seventh in the division like last night.

Starting point is 00:52:14 I'm like, guys, come on. You're being insincere. Like, I... No, they're being funny, which is sometimes the same. Yeah, I suppose. And listen, I'm guilty of it too, but I'm like, okay, like I'm not...

Starting point is 00:52:25 23rd in the league there. Behind the Bruins. Start of business day on Monday. They moved up 11 spots. And then now you start a business day today. They're up there in 12th. So yeah, when anybody tells you... three and one two game winning streak uh when everyone tells you the first month doesn't matter

Starting point is 00:52:42 show them that yeah like it's so much easier to get out to a hot start and then play pretty good hockey than it is to play like shit and then play all-star hockey after them it really is we've been talking about the vegas golden knights being a wagon to start the year exact same amount of points as the least two less games to be fair but uh 15 points leafs got 15 holy high event too like you look at that they're tied with dallas who has 33 goals for 36 against leafs are 47 and 47 holy shit they've got to be one of the worst teams in the league goals against oh yeah they are oh my god by the way funnily enough william nylander uh leads the uh yeah toronto is top 10 worst or bottom 10 i guess is that william nylander now leads the league in um

Starting point is 00:53:32 coolness in coolness but also in points per game for minimum seven games according to james myrtle like hilarious hilarious it's just hilarious stuff so if you haven't been paying attention uh you've missed a lot so far yeah yeah it's a it's a it's been a wild wild wild start now we have to go to our ready set ford performance of the night ready set ford performance of the night brought to you by F-150. Go to ford.ca slash F-150 to build yours, whether it's for work or for family or for play or for all.

Starting point is 00:54:05 F-150 is for you. Now let's talk about our performance. I'm going to start. I know that's rude of me, but I must. I must talk about a warrior who is also on my fantasy team, so he makes him more important. But I benched him this week. Oh, Adam! He had a crazy night

Starting point is 00:54:21 last night. His name is Brock Besser. No. What? Brock! Brock! That's what you have to do. Brock Besser, two goals and an assist last night in a 5-4 OT win for the Vancouver Canucks who have not had the best start.

Starting point is 00:54:38 Brock had to leave the team for a family matter. He came back, took a puck off the leg, had to like, he was in brutal pain, and he's still coming in and producing. The man is a dog. He does not perform the easy way. No, he is always like, man, What limb is hanging on by a thread with Brock Besser today?

Starting point is 00:54:57 I don't know. Unbelievable performance last night against Nashville. I want to shout him out. Do you want to go or should I? I can go next. Okay. Because I got to shout out this goaltender here who is a 9-10 so far in this year. He's 6-1 in three.

Starting point is 00:55:11 He's got an assist. Okay. But last night, he tried to tack on a goal. Joey Decor in a 3-1 game against the Chicago Blackhawks tried once. and then twice to hit the empty net at the other end of the ice. And I want to just shout him out for going for it because we ask hockey players to be more fun. And here's Joey Decord twice shooting at the empty net,

Starting point is 00:55:37 trying to go for the goalie goal. We actually had two last year. I don't know if you guys remember. And Joey Decord's trying to be the first one this year. He has to be the best expansion pick that they made. Oh, yeah. You think so? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:48 I mean, they got a quality starting goalie out of it. And a fun guy who likes goalie goals. Well, can I just say that he also posted on his Twitter last night? So Bleacher Report had both times he shot it. Okay. And Joey Decord said, shoot or shoot. Oh, nice. There you go.

Starting point is 00:56:05 I love that. If you're a goaltender, shut up, Steven. All right, Steve. First career NHL goals are one of my favorite things in the entire world. They are adrenaline personified. Dalibor Dvorsky got his first one, just ripped it on the Blues power play. loved seeing that he's had sometimes european guys have a really difficult uh path to the nhl where you know if a guy plays with a bunch of teams in a bunch of leagues you would expect it

Starting point is 00:56:37 to be a difficult adjustment period for them pick 10th overall in 2023 when he was playing in sweden first of all when you're in sweden and you're a teenager you usually play in two or three leagues that one year anyway yeah then he goes to the sudbury wolves of the ohl played a cup of coffee with the st louis blues last year full season in the ahl he's already played six games in the ahl this year another three in the nhl now bang finally gets his first nhl goal and what a shot unreal great shot you always want that first one to not be like oh it bounced off a couple bodies and it went in you want it to be like i ripped it that's gonna be on a highlight reel and now i can send that puck to my parents great celebration yeah love it all right listen

Starting point is 00:57:17 and this is your ready, set, for performances of the night brought to you by the F-150. Go to ford.ca slash F-150 for more details. Hey, this show is brought to you by BetterHelp. And listen, we talked about, how are we feeling after game seven now with a few more days? We feeling better? Feeling, feeling.

Starting point is 00:57:38 Leafs come back win. Yeah. There's a finality. One way or the other, it's over. Okay. Okay. Now, I bring that up because yesterday we were all in line for therapy for BetterHelp after the Game 7 thing. So, you know, time heals some wounds. This is very anecdotal. Traffic yesterday was amazing.

Starting point is 00:57:57 Was it? Because I think a lot of people were like, Jay's lost. I'm taking the day off. Well, listen, as I said, time heals some wounds, but not all of them. And BetterHelp might be good for that. They've got 30,000 credentialed therapists. I had to check the number. It's 30,000. Serving over 5 million people worldwide. Wide range of specialties.

Starting point is 00:58:15 And here's the thing about therapy is that you got to have some sort of, you got to have some click moment with your therapist, right? You got to understand each other a little bit. Not everybody does. So you can easily switch therapists at any time with no cost. And by the way, what's great about BetterHelp therapy is it works on your timeframe. It's not a nine to five thing. It's whenever you have time because it's all online. Discover BetterHelp today. Visit betterhelp.com slash STP today to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash S-D-P. Hockey is coming to Jerry World.

Starting point is 00:58:48 The Dallas Stars will host the 2027 NHL Stadium Series at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on February 20th, 2027. So that will be just after the Super Bowl. And it will air on ABC and part of ESPN's Monday Night Countdown. And I think it's kind of cool

Starting point is 00:59:07 that the Dallas Stars are going to get a stadium game in a stadium this big. And even though anytime Gary Bettman's in front of cameras, it's painful because he's just not a charismatic guy. It's agony. I thought, I mean, Jerry Jones is the exact opposite and can carry it. And I'm just curious, Jesse, you know, knowing the Cowboys the way you do,

Starting point is 00:59:31 knowing Jerry Jones the way that you do following football, the way that you have, what do you think about this? Because it seems perfect. First and foremost, nightmare blunt rotation. Matty, throw it up. jerry jones gary betman and steven a smith met at uh centerfield at jerry world and we're chatting in front of the espn cameras nightmare i would rather die i i i can't imagine no cannot imagine the contents of that conversation no it's uh i don't care to i don't need to be involved with

Starting point is 01:00:07 that but this event uh they're showing some of the renderings of what it's going to look like at cowboy stadium it looks like it's going to be so darn cool i remember when they brought wrestlemania to uh jerry world i remember when they brought the nba all-star game there the cowboys and jerry jones always have a way of doing it the biggest doing it the best so i'm so excited for stars fans that are going to get to go to this sit there with a hundred thousand people watching a hockey game in that arena it's gonna be really cool and i imagine the visuals are gonna be spectacular i i want to say something and and this is so jerry jones went to the vince mcmahon school of promotion and i'm not talking about the vince mcmahon school of how to

Starting point is 01:00:52 handle your life personally um jerry's uh a little bit different than vince in that in that regard but he is brilliant at creating opportunities for what we can't differentiate on this show Was Vince a bad promoter? He was a great promoter. So is Jerry. That's the point I'm trying to make. Yes, yes, continue, continue. We're getting bogged down.

Starting point is 01:01:15 We're getting bogged down. What's going on? I didn't say anything. Listen, I think having Jerry Jones as a part of anything NHL is a good idea. It is so cool to see the biggest sports league in North America involved in this and the biggest owner in that league involved in this. Does he get a tax write-off for this? like this is charity yeah no that's literally what it is it's charity actually this doesn't

Starting point is 01:01:39 happen if he wants to get involved with this and the fact that the nhl is getting into bed with one of the best promoters in pro sports that we have is a very good thing because the lead up to this is going to be incredible you know there's gonna be so much noise about it they're gonna get featured on things like this like nfl broadcasts where you get all of the eyeballs on it so i think it's really good for growing the game hockey is very underratedly big in texas too they're gonna have no problem selling this thing it's gonna be awesome i think it lends itself to the texas sensibility tough and rugged it does just the ice part's a little weird it's so big that they have scandals around their minor hockey league uh system oh yes and the dallas stars are

Starting point is 01:02:19 very much involved in that i broke during the summer so we never got to really break it down but maybe on a future episode we revisit that story if there's news coming out about that because that needs to be put a spotlight on with the dirty business going down there in Texas hockey. I've been sent that video a lot and I've just been like there's been no update so I don't I didn't want to go back to a story from August September so we'll touch on that don't you worry

Starting point is 01:02:40 so I'm looking at I'm looking at this and I'm going okay so they're going to fit that many people into a stadium I love it which is crazy and it will be I think the third most attended NHL game of all time the big house has got to be one that's number one with the Leafs and Red Wings in 2014

Starting point is 01:02:56 you were at that were you not no i wasn't you didn't go to that no i was uh i was at a friend's cottage it was first time i ever skated on a pond oh yeah no that was that was great uh i went to the outdoor one against detroit when it was here in toronto at bemo field so i'm i i i love the fact that the nhl is doing this like listen we have been really hard on them in this show about the way they market this game about the fact that it was like no we need to market our logos not the players that are making the logos cool like stupid shit like that they seem to sort of finally be very slowly turning a corner so i have to give flowers where it's due my question is who's the perfect matchup

Starting point is 01:03:39 because that matters here we're like you know it's yeah i get it style stars and whatever they have not said who they're playing and so my question you guys is like well who would you want Colorado. Colorado. Two very different answers. No. Okay. No.

Starting point is 01:03:55 I kid. I got the Leafs. So give me why Colorado. Rantanen and their epic playoff matchup that they had. And they'll probably have more. Dude, such an easy sell. Everyone would get up for that. We know it would be a dynamite game.

Starting point is 01:04:11 I would go with that. Runner up answer that I don't think is as good, but it could work. The Oilers. oh the stars and oilers had so many playoff battles for so many years it's been it has been a very long time but connor mcdavid like yeah but the best player on the biggest stage yeah the connor factor is a huge thing and putting him on that kind of stage would be electric americans know connor mcdavid like he is somebody who's been marketed to american hockey fans heavily I think that'd be a good idea to put him on that stage.

Starting point is 01:04:47 I would play into the football side of it. I would go the Devils because Giants-Cowboys is one of the biggest rivalries they have in football. So you go with the team that plays out in New Jersey in the Giants, and then you get the hockey team that plays out in New Jersey in the Devils. So I was thinking about this too, and I have an odd choice, but it has less to do with the crest and the location and more to do with the person. Okay. And if Matthew Kachuk is still playing for the Panthers at that point, I thought about that, you know, he will have done the Olympics at that time. Right. Matthews, too, is also a good choice because he's from Arizona, which is next door. But I don't think the Leafs are a good choice. But I thought two southern teams that are perpetual winners. Right. They're always in the mix to win. You got American Olympians on a special specifically Matthew Kachuk, who I think is the most popular American hockey player right now. It's not even close. and um i i just felt like if if it were happening today i might be advocating for the panthers not just because they're defending cup champs but because kachuk would relish this this is that is what he loves is something like that you don't argue it you can argue and you could and then you

Starting point is 01:05:58 can argue you can also market it where hockey in the southern states is doing really well growing really quickly that's sort of like a you could even call it like a bowl like a bowl game like it's the you know the southern bowl like something like that you could you could you could build something around this because believe me jerry jones is going to build stuff around this like he's going to create it so i'm just i'm curious about that how the nhl is looking that are they looking at team are they looking at location are they looking at rivalries like colorado are they looking at personalities how do you mix that in how do you choose that because they will hand pick this they're not going to let the schedulers do it right no of course oh man it's crazy the

Starting point is 01:06:33 canucks are in town right yeah oh man that doesn't make any sense right here's the wild yeah here's columbus columbus are you so ready for veronkov yeah like who has been good yeah like i to me colorado is my number one pick but i like the justification you've thrown out for pretty much everyone uh yeah it should be a really really exciting game i am curious about though because there's that, you know, one of the most famous things about AT&T Stadium is the bright sun scorched sort of thing. Like they have the window set up

Starting point is 01:07:10 so the sun will be in your eyes when you're playing the Dallas Cowboys. I could not know less about this. So they have this humongous window that's to help them brighten the stadium. Now they could have done this a million different ways, Steve, but they did it so that the opposing team has the sun in their eyes

Starting point is 01:07:26 basically for an entire half, right? How is that allowed? well it's jerry jones baby uh so i i wonder too like does that affect the ice surface right because it's still texas i know it's february a giant magnifying glass maybe just i'm curious about how they're gonna get around interesting so anyway that was a that was a thought uh anything else to add on this one guys do you like is there anything else that stands out to you about this i i would love a reason to play that curtains uh clip from jerry jones but i can't quite find it um he has an unbelievable reason about uh talking about the curtains in in cowboy stadium and why they don't

Starting point is 01:08:04 why they don't put them up because they they can block out the sun there's curtains there they use them for like when wrestlemania is there they'll put up the curtains because they can't have the sun blaring in and he gives this incredible quote about how like we know a year out where the sun's gonna be we don't need to figure out the curtains what do you want me to do with the stadium tear it down and i it's it's an unbelievable audio so maybe i'll play that for you i love later in the show i love it what's more irritating a razor that pulls the hairs out of your neck or a razor that costs as much as razors do because they like what's more irritating to you because both suck i'm gonna go uh that's that's a fight to the death that's par okay all right here's the thing

Starting point is 01:08:44 with harry's you don't have to worry about that uh not only are they sharp and well made but also um they're actually very reasonably priced harry's just launched their brand new razor harry's plus it's 10 years in development their biggest launch in history if you're looking for an incredibly advanced shave but you also want to pay less than other premium brands harry's plus is for you and they've got the advanced pivoting system which kind of helps for the angles on your face right uh they've got refined blade technology for an even closer more comfortable shave so it's supposed to glide smoothly rather than go like pulling this out of your face uh and obviously they give you a barbershop quality shave as you've always known harry's to be with german

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Starting point is 01:10:14 Thank you so much. All your favorite NBA players are back in DraftKings Sportsbook, an official sports betting partner of the nhl is the place to bet on the nba stars this season new customers bet just five bucks and get three months of nba league pass plus score three hundred dollars if your bet wins paid in bonus bets jesse uh-huh what are we looking for for the nba season if you get that league pass turn on a san antonio spurs game just go watch wemby be a human on the court and do

Starting point is 01:10:43 things with his body that people who are seven foot i don't know maybe 11 he is now because he keeps growing uh do what he does on a basketball court it's unbelievable he's the story of the game every game whether it's domination or oh they actually sort of contained him we might never see a human like him play basketball at that tall and uh that tall and skilled level it's you gotta cherish what you got in wemby right now and he's never had to learn to jump let's be honest download the draft king sportsbook app and use the code sdpn that's code sdpn bet five bucks and get three months of league pass plus three hundred dollars in bonus bet if your bet wins In partnership with DraftKings, the crown is yours.

Starting point is 01:11:47 Responsible gaming resources. See DKNG.co slash audio. Limited time offer. Ryan Huska and AI. Can we talk about that? Yeah. So Ryan Huska, if you don't already know, head coach of the Calgary Flames.

Starting point is 01:12:03 The Calgary Flames are struggling to start the year, as many thought they might because they can't score. They have won some interesting games. They do have a stud goaltender. They have some great young players coming up. But this is a team in transition. this is a team that has a young head coach who's trying to keep the guys going after a tough october and he asked them about chat gbt i have not seen you haven't seen this uh because adam

Starting point is 01:12:29 happy birthday oh my god happy birthday i saw this story and i was like for my friend he knows me i'm not watching it that's like a christmas present right there you're frigging welcome that's beautiful yes let's play this clip let's go steve thinks this is from the calgary flames thing they released called the chase i believe is what it's called here it is well i went down a rabbit hole last night after watching this game here and i put in i put in well i went down a rabbit hole that's it that's that's the one i have from the eight seconds yeah that's him asking them now so what's your initial thought steve so i did see the quote okay oh my god like just that he used chat gpt i thought he was kidding like i thought he was

Starting point is 01:13:31 making it up to be funny and maybe like that's all we saw maybe he still was just trying to be funny i'm looking for solutions i haven't found any so i throw it into chat gpt now i'm left with the impression that he was serious listen why not just try it is which i don't think is the answer you expected me to say no punch it in and see what comes out and if it's dreck and drivel then you don't use it i'm guessing that's what came out probably i'm guessing what was at the other end of that that we didn't see was you can't find the solution on a computer yes i'm guessing that's what ryan huska said well and i thought i'm like you know most of these guys don't even have an email address

Starting point is 01:14:23 like uh like they don't names players no most nhl players don't have like a professional email address they might have a personal one so i'm like when he's like well you guys use chat dbt i'm like probably not blake.colman at flames.com yeah like i don't think that that's no thing um anyway i i think they tried to institute some sort of like professional email policy and they just found that none of the players were looking at them so yeah that was the eight second clip that was making the rounds on twitter here's the full version from flames tv where huska's talking about chat chat gpt periods of those games we've been better team minimum so i went down a rabbit hole last night after watching this game here.

Starting point is 01:15:04 And I put in, could you just chat GPT? I put in five games. Goals that we've scored, I give it a bunch of different things that go in there. People's career shooting percentage, the amount of shots they've taken in those five games, projected over the course of the year. That's where we end up.

Starting point is 01:15:25 Which leads to that on the year, 2.36 goals for during the year. our team in here love you all and i and i like so that's what he did with so he's serious as a heart attack oh god does he not have people for this uh no i'm sure his advanced stats people were like we could have told you that ryan yeah this makes me like depressed two goals a game is tough too but this makes me depressed for like how the flames are running their operations because don't they have like an analytic department that's running these things where like huska shouldn't be doing this at home but he went down a rabbit hole i don't i don't know

Starting point is 01:16:03 like there's ryan huska's background good enough to be making these calculations and trusting chat it's also i should have picked the flames to finish last in the league i i think you're also man i love hockey i love hockey so much i love it from the bottom of my heart very early in my career though um i'm 20 i'm sitting there and i'm talking about a goalie and someone who had been working in the sport for decades is like how'd you get that i'm like what their save percentage oh my god they're like yeah they're like how'd you get that i'm like well you you take their shots and saves and you divide there you go and they were looking

Starting point is 01:16:54 over my shot and they're like wow they had no idea how to calculate save percentage yeah i'm adam can attest to this give it to me awful at math yep me too horrible at math hockey does not involve like i was the kind of math student where grade nine hit they started introducing letters and i went oh shit i don't know how to do any of them i'm with you but before that i got all of it i got all of it and hockey is elementary school math he didn't need chat gpt for any of this shit i would never use chat gpt for this i would never use any kind of ai for this because and a lot of you watching and listening right now know this the ai generator or whatever for any sports question you have is dog shit it's very often wrong what are the odds that ryan huska

Starting point is 01:17:51 did that punched it in beep boop beep got up in front of the entire calgary flames dressing room and gave them wrong information i don't know i don't know somebody should check that the percent is alarmingly high that's a totally normal thing that happens when people try and put sports numbers in the chat gpt let's say it's 10 chance it's wrong there's no way their analytic staff has a 10 chance of screwing those numbers up that's so i saw it making the rounds and i'm like everyone's just they're latching on to a headline they're latching on to one of those instagram graphics and i'll look at the flames and we're just dog piling the flames oh my god he's so serious and he's using this as a rallying cry and the flames are in so much trouble and you know

Starting point is 01:18:42 what that means they're about to go about eight and three yep and we're gonna get clipped uh and it's gonna be shared on well clip the part where i said they were gonna be eight and three damn it plug that in the jet gpt how do we make steve look like an asshole oh my god that is um are we gonna get to the point where we don't know how to do anything oh listen every generation asked that you sound like your parents i know here's these kids with their calculators what happened to the advocate whatever happened i'm very annoyed as someone who is not old yet i'm not damn it but i can i know i'm gonna sound so old in very short time you could argue right now this is one of the things that like i'm hoping to be alive for another few decades i know i'm

Starting point is 01:19:34 going to sound like an old man on this topic for the rest of my life i will not change i will not adapt when it comes to this on ai i will not that's fair it's it's unreliable yeah it's nowhere near as reliable as a human but it worked for an nhl coach so why can't it work for you you know there is no evidence that it has worked for an nhl yeah i don't know if works is the right word i think it worked he used it it listen he definitely used it did it work for anything where that's up for debate i don't know that's up for debate was cadre sitting there next to him like i'm a stanley cup champion i could have signed anywhere i chose here also like flames editors who edit the chase together leave this one out of the clip leave this one on the cutting

Starting point is 01:20:25 room floor this one does not need to make the chase on flames tv but jesse jesse think about how many people are now talking about the chase because they left it in they're marketing geniuses but you need to recognize the chase might become must watch television you know what it reminds me of when the bruins uh posted that video of uh them trading tyler sagan because he didn't fit the culture and i was like so you put that out there on purpose huh like you saw that you heard him say that and you're like this is good yeah and you released it and you're the only reason that we know that they're actually that dumb yeah like there's that much guesswork going on in nhl offices and that's one of the best organizations yep somebody help all of us somebody might be

Starting point is 01:21:08 having their work reviewed a lot after this after they edit the chase together after each episode this was only the second episode this season of the chase somebody text the analytics department for the flames right yeah you watch that contact yeah we are about to get flame throwered with flames rumors over the next week oh yeah why extract from this oh because they're the noisiest damn team in the sport yeah they love to chat oh my god they love to chat oh my god they're we're we're about to get it's going to be an absolute fire hose and they love to chat gpt all right Now, shall we bring on our guest? Sure.

Starting point is 01:21:46 Shall we? Yeah, you should tee it up. That would be a great thing. I was going to. So listen, you've probably heard his name before, Rick Westhead. He is here promoting his new book, and we shall bring him on to the SDP right now. The book is called We Breed Lions by Rick Westhead, welcoming him back to the show. And this book is kind of the sub-headline here is Confronting Canada's Troubled Hockey Culture.

Starting point is 01:22:11 A thing I think that not a lot of people in this day and age really want to admit to. I mean, there was a time where we seemed like we were confronting it and it seems like that tide has receded. But Rick, obviously you wrote this book and it's more than just, you know, what happened with Hockey Canada this past spring, but so many other stories in this as well. And I know that you and Steve were hanging out at your book launch last night. I hear it went really, really well. So I guess...

Starting point is 01:22:37 Open bar. Open bar. Hey, we love that. um i want to start kind of i want to start really at the end which is the hockey canada trial and you know we've seen so much and heard so much about the trial um and it seems like to me at least a lot of people don't want to do this anymore they don't want to talk about it and there seems to be a backlash and upswell against even mentioning it oh i don't want to hear it blah blah blah and specifically against you i mean you think about kevin low uh who was

Starting point is 01:23:12 tweeting about you saying you got cut from teams and never got any ice time so that's why you're in which is even weirder yeah which is crazy uh we also know my poppy just fell off we also know that there was a guy who was approaching you at the trial uh and i wanted to kind of start there and talk about this because releasing this book at this time is you know there's a lot of people backing off subjects like this uh you're leaning in can we talk a little bit about that sure i mean first of all criticism on social media like when people when people are are posting things from anonymous accounts why would anyone give that even a second thought if you don't have the courage to put your name behind what you have to say then in my mind it's it's meaningless so i don't i really

Starting point is 01:23:58 don't worry about the stuff on social media and in fact i'm on those sites less than i've ever been before. And I've actually got more time to do what I do best, which is do reporting. In terms of blowback, like, you know, guys, we've been here before. We've been here with reporting on Sheldon Kennedy's case back in the 1990s, you know, when there were so many promises made that, you know, we have to confront this, we have to make changes so it never happens again. And then the news cycle moves on and people get tired of this because it's a tough subject to talk about. And guess what? We wind up right back where we are. One of the analogies I think is so interesting is in 2001, in the city of Boston, the Boston Globe did bombshell reporting on the

Starting point is 01:24:41 Catholic Church. And the Globe in 2001 reported about how the church in the city was moving priests around the city, protecting them after they'd been accused of sexually assaulting children. and the response from the church in that case that that that story actually turned into an academy award-winning film spotlight i saw that movie i loved it my favorite movie but at the time the response from the church was remarkable you had one of the most senior most priests in the city of boston calling for the wrath of god to come down on the media on the journalists who were reporting this you had people saying well why can't you focus on the good that the church does instead of focusing on these types of stories. One priest actually suggested that

Starting point is 01:25:25 the children, these victims, were actually the ones who were seducing the priests. So when you tell stories that are uncomfortable truths, it's nothing new for people to push back because this is hard to hear, right? Especially if it's something that you identify with so closely. Look at the number of Catholics in Boston in 2001. Look at the number of people who might consider hockey a religion in canada today yeah adam that was that was a great question but i'm a big fan of of both side isms so rick as someone who is trying to destroy hockey when will you finally be satisfied i i'm sorry it's really important to get both sides in there you know it is such an amazing game honestly i i love playing hockey i play two three times a week

Starting point is 01:26:10 I love coaching. Some of my best friends have come because of hockey. I remember when my younger son had cancer just during the pandemic, and our hockey community rallied around us. They were there for us. I remember one of Carter's teammates coming to our house. It was right after my son finished his second round of chemotherapy. And this kid shows up at my front door with a slurpee or something in a sandwich and it's end of February it's like 20 below it's snowy and he says I've got something for your for Carter and he was doing something online with sick kids and he wasn't feeling great and I said it's just not a good time and this boy Keaton said that's okay I'll wait and that kid stood on my front doorstep for 45 minutes waiting just so he could see my son

Starting point is 01:27:00 come to the door and hand him this gift to say hey man love you we're all thinking about you how beautiful is that so there are fantastic and wonderful people i don't only i don't only acknowledge that these people are in hockey i celebrate it and they're everywhere however two things can be true you can have a sport that's fantastic with people who are terrific in it and you can also have a sport which is protected and which has a culture where you know look at the the minor hockey look at how professionalized it's become now and then look at junior hockey where boys 14, 15, 16 are leaving their family homes and moving away, living with billeted families, playing with teammates who are as old as 20, some cases older. And it just seems to me

Starting point is 01:27:46 that that's a recipe for disaster based on the stories that I've heard. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that because you get to the fifth chapter and that's about minor hockey and the racket it's become and bribery and corruption and all that. Which I think would shock a lot of people by the way you're just glazing over the fact that there's bribery and corruption in minor hockey see this is the thing adam i i think there's a lot uh that rick says that people dispute and but this is one thing that it's it's item after item after item in that chapter that hockey people have told me over and over again for for years and years so i was just hoping you could talk about the subject matter from that chapter what do i say that people

Starting point is 01:28:27 dispute well the truth rick the the truth uh you're we've got the receipts right like one of the i think one of the powerful parts of this book is i i understood that if this was full of stories from the 1990s it would be too easily dismissed right people would say oh it used to be bad but it's it's better now it's it's it's fine and this you know i interviewed 58 men who played junior hockey in the last 10 years, right? And most of those are on the record. I sat at a coffee shop in Toronto having breakfast with the father and son and listened as the son told his dad, he'd never shared this before, that in 2019, when he was playing junior, he had to do the hot box. Now, for people who don't know what that is, it's a rite of passage where, you know, the first year

Starting point is 01:29:18 players on a road trip, typically early in the season, are called to the back of the team bus, they're told to strip they're told to jam together inside of a inside of the bathroom on the bus and some coins are thrown in sometimes and through vents and these make these players are all stuffed in together as close as you could be and they're told you can only get out if you come up with the right amount of change and again that story was from 2019 now even since i finished this book i've heard more stories i've been doing filming with players i'm working on a documentary kind up to complement this. And I've been talking to current major junior players about their experiences. And it may be true that things are getting better in a lot of markets, but there's

Starting point is 01:29:58 still issues out there based on what players are telling me. How quickly did this all come together? Because the London trial, it feels like it just happened. You know, we went all through that and you have this giant book already going, all these stories that currently just happened. So how did that process go about? It was pretty quick. I mean, I've thought about doing a second book for a couple of years after the, the first book I wrote was on, uh, on Joe Murphy and his story. And it came out during the pandemic. And, uh, I agreed to do this in the spring of 2024. So last year and, and the writing, I mean, it just, it was, it was every weekend. It was a lot of late nights. It was trying to track down players and talk to them whenever I could, I'd talk to players

Starting point is 01:30:38 in person. So I, you know, go and meet people where they were not just players, but like, you know, team owners, general managers, coaches, people close to teams. In cases of sexual assault victims, you know, there was a case where two players from the Quebec Major Junior League, there's so much focus on the Hockey Canada case in London, it's not the only case. There's two players, Nicholas Dague and Massimo Siciliano, who played with Victoriaville in the queue, and they're now serving three-year prison sentences for sexually assaulting a young woman in a hotel room following a team championship so i in that case i interviewed the the crown attorney at length and i also did multiple interviews with the the victim in that case

Starting point is 01:31:21 to talk to her about what that experience meant for her and how she navigated and how she's trying to to move forward now so there's again there's no shortage of of stories but this came together really really fast for sure and i think on the stories you illustrate there one of the through Lions is people just supporting people in hockey just because there are other people in hockey. It's just, hey, you're one of the guys I grew up with in hockey. So no matter what you do in your life, I'm going to be by your side because you're another hockey guy like I am. It's true. I'm glad you asked that. A few people have asked me, where did the title come from? We Breed Lions. And I asked all these players I talked to, tell me about your experience in junior. What does it mean to be

Starting point is 01:32:03 a junior hockey player in Canada. One of the more eloquent players, we did a number of interviews, but the way he put it, and I'm paraphrasing here, he said, when you play junior, you move away from your family home into a billet home. You instantly become an alpha male in the community where you're playing. You can get into bars anytime you want underage. You can talk to a girl anytime you want with ease. You can skip classes if you want without consequences. You quickly learn the rules of the jungle on the team you know rookies eat last after a team practice rookies shower last if there's a front seat in the car the veterans always get the front seat and if they don't like the rookie in the back they can jam the way all the seat all the way to the back and turn around

Starting point is 01:32:44 and smile and say i can do this because you're a rookie bitch civilians wouldn't understand it what an interesting word he said civilians wouldn't understand it he said you know we look around the room and we see 24 clones of ourselves and we know that we're better than everybody else we had this is our culture we breed lions and how do you tell a lion to stop being a lion and as soon as he said that i thought well this is a gift the title for there's a title yeah and and you know the number of times i read that quote specifically to other players and said can you identify with this does this sound familiar not one player told me no that doesn't make any sense almost all of them said that is so on the nose to get it so how do how do we know

Starting point is 01:33:25 and there will be there will be criticisms as there is with any sort of book of this nature and it goes back to the kevin lowe linkedin post which is one of the more bizarre linkedin posts i've ever read usually they're about business to business sales um i'm curious about how you um you know some people will suggest perhaps that this is a collection of just bad stories and this goes back to well rick hates hockey culture and blah blah blah right how do we get a lot of reviews from people who haven't read it how do we how do you illustrate that it's a systemic issue that it's not just oh rick cherry picked the worst stories and these are all bad and he made a book about it and he's trying to profit off of it sure

Starting point is 01:34:07 well i mean first of all i'm donating proceeds from this to organizations like the london abused women's center organizations that fight gender-based violence and other organizations like jumpstart that are helping to try to open pathways to sports for young people so this is about just trying to tell an uncomfortable truth right trying to affect a change that is my purpose with this um i suppose there will be some people who say oh he just found 58 stories of players who had an extra ground just 58 that's fine but you know one of the anecdotes in this story is about a lawsuit that was filed against the canadian hockey league and in response to this lawsuit filed by players who said that they'd been hurt,

Starting point is 01:34:50 that they were victims of maltreatment in the CHL. The CHL actually hired a panel of three people, including Sheldon Kennedy, to dig deeper into the culture of the game, to find out what is the state of junior hockey in Canada right now. So in connection to this, a market research firm called Leger in Montreal was hired.

Starting point is 01:35:09 And Leger, with specific instructions, they were not allowed to go back for more than four years asking people about their experiences. and they were not allowed to ask about sexual maltreatment. So that's the caveat on this survey. Nevertheless, more than 650 current and past players who played from 2016 to 2019, their parents, coaches, and team officials

Starting point is 01:35:30 were all connected with Leger. And according to that survey, I'm reading here from the book, 45% of players surveyed said they were aware of incidents of bullying or harassment in the CHL over the previous four years that had not been repeated in the media, reported in the media excuse me uh only three percent of players said they had informed team

Starting point is 01:35:51 officials or other authorities about incidents of hazing their survey also reported that 52 percent of families hockey parents believe that bullying exists in the chl compared to 32 percent of players and 25 percent of team coaches so i mean don't take my word for this like these players there are many of them like i was saying have put their names to their stories so this is you know this is for them to say, I'm just documenting it. But here is the truth. The truth is that the CHL did its own survey. And they found that almost half of the players they spoke to, just within that four year period, said that they were aware of things that had never been reported in the media that should not have happened. So I want to talk to you about about this. And this is something

Starting point is 01:36:36 that obviously, you know, I'm father of a six year old. And you know, what are the things that where we talk about right now and i'm actually looking at the toronto district school board is suing meta uh and snap inc and uh tiktok uh for the rewiring of kids brains right with the effect that social media is having on the classroom they are in litigation right now i'm curious about for you what you've seen in terms of the social media effect and has this metastasized a problem that has existed for years like does this make this bigger well i think it's like we talked about off the top like there's no accountability on social media right when you can create an account and uh you know post things that are hateful racist homophobic xenophobic without any

Starting point is 01:37:22 repercussions you're going to draw the worst of people and you're going to get the worst comments and so you know for me like and i'm used to this right it's part of the bargain i know i'm not i'm not in this to cover sports in the way that i did when i started my career i think for me personally this is more important it's important to hold organizations accountable it's important to give people a platform to who've been ignored or overlooked and it's important to try to make a difference to try to make this safer um you know i hope that in some modest way that the reporting in this book is going to pressure more organizations to take this more seriously for if you go on the or if you go on the website of any minor hockey organization across canada

Starting point is 01:38:08 right now. And I haven't actually fleshed this out. So I'm curious what you guys think. How many organizations on their website make it really easy for families who want to file a complaint about maltreatment or misconduct or hazing? How many organizations make it easy to do that? I, you know what, I don't have a kid that plays yet. So I don't know. But I would assume probably not many because that's not something you want billboarded on the front page of your website. right exactly but wouldn't you like if you have stuff going on in your organization why would you not want to root that out why would you not want to hold people accountable for things like that well yeah i mean yeah i guess the the answer is probably you run the show right like

Starting point is 01:38:51 some of these guys have more than one job and uh i guess they don't want to set up a snitch line for themselves you know what i mean so it's it speaks to the the power structure that that you talk about you know so often in this book i i got to imagine you're a difficult person to surprise um what surprised you uh over the course of making this i think just how candid people players were you know you know like one of the players i spoke to former players was a kid named ben ben fanjoy who played for ottawa in the ontario hockey league and at one point i asked him you know why did you agree to talk to me about this and he was so thoughtful with his answers and you know he came back with an answer to that question he just said

Starting point is 01:39:41 like you know unless we talk about this what's going to change and uh you know his story was was was powerful and you know another player in the western hockey league liam hughes his was powerful and lucas cullen in the western hockey league his story is dynamic and powerful and compelling um you know and even players who played tier two uh had something to say i remember talking to a player named wesley reese who signed with the london knights and then went and played junior a hockey in georgetown ontario and he talked about just how hard it was to keep himself balanced he's he's uh he's 16 years old he's the new kid you know on his first day in a new high school and he's dealing with like more than a hundred requests on instagram for people to add

Starting point is 01:40:28 him he's dealing with teenage girls sending him photos of themselves that they shouldn't be sending so that's that's a that can be a really hard balancing act for a teenager to to navigate and it also made me wonder like what kind of help are these guys getting like you know one of the questions i've had coming out of this trial in london where consent videos played such a pivotal role like i'm curious to know what you guys think what would the answer be steve if a junior hockey player went to their coach or their general manager today and said you know i've been thinking about this should i be making consent videos to protect myself after i hook up with a girl so the answer that i uh come up with is they'll probably say yes on account of i mean i've never heard of that

Starting point is 01:41:16 before like before this trial it seems like uh the sort of thing most normal people would agree uh if if a buddy of mine needed something like that i would have some questions uh to say the least but the one time i have heard of it and it ended up going to trial it would appear to have worked. The judge in that case, Justice Karasia, appeared to interpret that and many other things as indication of consent. So a GM or agent asked of that, I would imagine they would advise their clients, yes, you should be getting that sort of thing. That's interesting. I mean, there's tons of stories of celebrities being like, even if you want to even come to my party, you have to sign a waiver right like you can't uh that was the rumor about uh well i won't mention any names but a

Starting point is 01:42:09 notable canadian singer for a long long time was like you wanted to get it get into their house party you had to sign a waiver that said you know you were you were handing your phone in and to security and all that stuff i'm i'm curious rick from the hockey canada perspective because i mean this all this is where it all kind of starts right um i'm i'm curious about what they've done how this situation has changed the way that they approach this subject and if there's been any progress on that front well you know what we can say is that the reporting on this has led to change right like the the fact that hockey canada managed a slush fund that was uh funded with minor hockey registrations from canadians coast to coast to coast and was kept secret and was used

Starting point is 01:43:00 to pay off allegations of sexual misconduct, the exposure of that alone is in the public interest. Hockey Canada's board has been overturned. The organization has also introduced a new independent third-party reporting mechanism so that when there are complaints of maltreatment and misconduct, they're investigated by someone independently. So this is all progress, but there's still a long way to go. We talk even about that, they call it an ITP. That ITP typically deals with only issues involving national team level incidents. So not issues in the provinces would typically handle. And then even when there's a decision for a sanction, I reported on this just last week about a U14 team in Ontario, where the players were doing horrible things to each other

Starting point is 01:43:54 in a locker room and the coach, you know, the rules of Hockey Canada say that a coach has to be in the room, two adults have to be in the room at all times. And in this case, the coach, you know, wasn't according to this investigation. And the coach was suspended for six months for, you know, not being there in the room and for having contempt for this investigation process. Hockey Canada decided to keep that sanction like it does all sanctions secret and didn't tell the public. So the coach could turn around literally the next day and go and coach in the Clever League or coach in a different sport. The public's not the wiser. So at a time when other organizations in Canada, like Gymnastics Canada, Athletics Canada, the Ontario Volleyball Association,

Starting point is 01:44:36 these are organizations that are all introducing publicly, you know, searchable sanctions registries believing that parents should have the right to know if they're dropping off their children with somebody who's been suspended for a period of time for misconduct um hockey canada still has not got there and so there will still be more reporting in my mind that needs to be done on why that's the case and how they justify that and oh go ahead go ahead guys well i wanted to ask about uh because again i'm so chronically online and i pre-argue with everyone um you had an interaction with with a student in windsor who i think used to play in the whl and he asked you about you know well i wonder if you would report on false accusations and stuff like that what do

Starting point is 01:45:26 you remember about that interaction yeah i remember being down at the university of windsor uh to talk a little bit about this kind of reporting and you know this this former whl player who'd come to windsor uh following his girlfriend and went to school there you know we had a really good conversation about this. And I told him that when there are cases that end in acquittal, you know, the media has a responsibility to report on those. Well, you know, the, the big one everybody thinks about is Hockey Canada and obviously re-reported on, on the acquittal in that case. And we have on acquittals in other cases as well. These stories are all in the public interest. We live in a country that has the open court principle, right? And so we, we, we have open courts. The

Starting point is 01:46:09 media is allowed to come in and report on most of the things that happened there, except for those things that are covered by a publication ban. And it's our responsibility to do that. And so we do. I think the London trial is going to be maybe the headline that make people pick up the book, I think, because that's where they're going to learn about this. And then they're going to get all the other stories. But what can people expect from that and maybe insights about the trial in in the book well i i think i tried to give a little bit of a behind the scenes glimpse of what it was like to to sit in that courtroom for two months straight every day and listen to that evidence and and watch um watch the crown attorneys at work watch the back and forth

Starting point is 01:46:52 between the defense lawyers and you know the players families watch the players um just just take everything in you know the the details of it's it one of the big questions i still have on this case is there was two missed there was two mistrials in this case effectively right two juries dismissed and i still wonder and i will always wonder how would this case have wound up if it had been decided by a jury yeah well yeah yeah i mean that's going to be the forever question you know uh you could be forgiven for reading the details of the trial and how uh those two juries became or those two juries were basically dismissed. And you can't help but feel not only is this advantageous to the defense, but sure seems like they weren't sorry it happened

Starting point is 01:47:49 and did nothing to prevent it happening. I think the jury dismissals was clearly advantageous to the defense. You know, with this case, we respect the judgments of judges in Canada. And this case was yet another reminder of the very high bar that we have for obtaining a conviction in a sexual assault case. Beyond a reasonable doubt is an extremely high bar. What happened in that room, the NHL has already said its perspective on it, which is that the behavior in that room was wrong and unacceptable. So again, it's a reminder that our courts don't judge on morality they judge on the law and we respect that judgment um i want to end this with a note of hope because it's not um you know we talk about progress and you know obviously you

Starting point is 01:48:40 did the you did that award-winning documentary a couple years ago about gymnastics canada and they are now obviously publishing these these sanctions and that sort of thing hockey canada is still not there can you tell us a little bit about the peterborough peats and what they've done because certain teams are taking this and they are owning this and really digging in. And this is, I had never heard about this, but, and not really well publicized, but this is a sort of a brilliant tactic in order to explain this. I love what the Peterborough Peets have done in the last couple of years. One of the people I interviewed in this, listen, there are dark parts of this book, no question,

Starting point is 01:49:15 but this chapter on the future and, you know, a pathway to a better future, I think offers real hope and real optimism. And the Pete's brought in a man named Luke Ben Velson, who's Australian, can't skate, but they gave him sort of unfettered access to their players in the locker room whenever. And that's really important. Luke comes in as a, like he talks to players about consent. He talks to players about healthy masculinity and what that looks like. And the fact that he's there every day and was able, has been able to build up a trust with players, that's notable many junior teams if they do consent training at all the way they do it is have somebody come in in september they sit down with the players you know for an hour i can

Starting point is 01:50:03 imagine a scene where guys have got their hoodies up they've got the earbuds in you know leaning back you know waiting to hear this message about consent maybe they get shown that video about tea you know consent is like drinking a cup of tea you might change your mind and after an hour they're done and the players leave and the box is checked now how if you're asking a player hey this is somebody you can go to if something's happened uh if something or something you want to talk about you can go and trust them is a 16 year old or 17 year old boy going to trust someone who's come in once a year for an hour and you know who this is the person you can go to with your you know with any issues is is anyone going to are you going to build a trust in an hour with anyone what they've

Starting point is 01:50:47 done in Peterborough by giving Luke Benveltson the ability to have this access to the team is he's done the work. He's shown up repeatedly. He's built up a trust. And once you build up a trust, that's when people will start being vulnerable with you and honest with you. And I think that's the future. Another case, you know, you asked me about Peterborough, but I'll mention one more. In Hamilton, Ontario, 16 rep teams, 16 Hamilton Steel and Hamilton Huskies teams this year are involved with a program called Coaching Boys Into Men. And so this program is one where the coaches get trained in how to talk to their players about issues of healthy masculinity and consent. And I sat in on some of these sessions and I remember sitting watching this, you know, one coach in

Starting point is 01:51:33 particular, Jeff Toole, talk to these players who are 11 and 12 years old about these issues. And as he was having these very frank conversations with these boys, God, they look so young. I remember thinking where else in their life are they having a conversation like this many parents don't like this uh conversation even though they should be having it but many parents won't talk to their boys about this because it's so uncomfortable are they hearing about consent issues at school i don't think so so maybe just maybe there's this groundswell opportunity where hockey teams across our country all sports teams can be this place where kids are actually taught about the right way to act that's kind of the point isn't it uh

Starting point is 01:52:21 just because they breed lions doesn't mean they don't have to be gentlemen too um so we we breed lions uh it's a a brilliant book and it's you know what the subject matter is tough but that doesn't mean that it's without hope and that i think that's the key here right because everybody thinks rick that you're all doom and gloom and that you're the grim reaper coming at them and that sort of thing with things that they don't want to hear. There is progress here, slow though it is. And if we don't continue to stay on it, that progress will stall as it did after Sheldon Kennedy in the 90s, correct? Sure. Yeah. And listen, I'm definitely not the grim reaper for people who feel like they've been abandoned and thrown away and forgotten.

Starting point is 01:53:00 You know, these are important stories to tell. And, you know, like I said, I acknowledge that these are uncomfortable truths, but they have to be told because if not, you mentioned Sheldon Kennedy. There were so many promises of reform after Sheldon came out with this story in the late 1990s, right? So many people in hockey and in Canadian governments who said, we can never let this happen again. We have to make sure that it's fixed, right? Well, guess what? It got forgotten. People moved on. The reforms that were promised were abandoned. And we wound up with a system that is still frail and needs to be addressed and needs to be improved we do this listen we do this for our kids yeah right yeah who amongst us does not want hockey safer for

Starting point is 01:53:47 everybody who plays all of us all of us do and rick uh i just want to say this on a personal note you know we've had a relationship all of us with you dating back three four years now um and our respect for you is always at the height i i marvel at the fact that you can touch these issues go in head first in these issues and still are able to smile uh and have a good time and play hockey three four times a week and and that sort of thing because i don't think i can handle it and i think a lot of people uh would admit the same uh what you do is quite special and so i just wanted that acknowledged today uh here on this show we have so much respect for what you do thank you you know i i didn't choose this i didn't go looking for these

Starting point is 01:54:31 stories um after i reported on kyle beach's story extensively i i looked it up actually i did more than 40 stories on that issue back in 2021 and my inbox ever since then has not stopped like to this day like today with people coming to me with with stories that need to be told so you know i would love it if I was only doing stories on you know the Canadian men's national soccer team as we get ready for the world cup next year or you know fantastic people who work in in in hockey but the people who are coming to me with stories are saying we don't know where else to go what other sports media want to tackle this and I would love it if I had more competition in this space and there was more reporters like Katie Strang you know people who are committed to doing the work

Starting point is 01:55:25 you know this kind of work at the same time i acknowledge it's hard work it takes time and resources not a lot of media um can actually go down that road but man i wish there was more of us rick we do too we breed lions confronting canada's troubled hockey culture uh pick it up either in digital form uh you do have the audiobook as well thank god for people like me uh and it's really good uh and it is in your local bookstore so check it out the steve dangle podcast follow the guys on twitter at steve underscore dangle at adam w y l d e and at jesse blake connection

The Steve Dangle Podcast - Lions | November 4, 2025

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