The Steve Dangle Podcast - Maximum | March 19, 2025

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Grab a discount on Sharks & Barracuda tickets here: https://linktr.ee/sdpn On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, THE TRUTH, the 2026 All-Star game (09:00), the Leafs dominate the Flames (19:00), the Core 4 against all time Leafs (52:00), the GM meetings (1:05:00), will Ovi's 896 goal be called back? (1:10:00), the East playoff race (1:16:30), predicting Olympic rosters (1:28:00), and John Forslund of Prime Monday night hockey joins the show! (1:42:00). Visit this episode's sponsors: Go to https://zbiotics.com/DANGLE and use DANGLE at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics. Get 20% off + free shipping with the code DANGLE at https://ca.manscaped.com/dangle. That’s 20% off + free shipping with the code DANGLE at https://ca.manscaped.com/dangle. For the best your boys have ever looked, trust MANSCAPED. Subscribe to the sdpn YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sdpn?sub_confirmation=1 Join SDP VIP: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0a0z05HiddEn7k6OGnDprg/join Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/thestevedanglepodcast Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sdpvip/subscribe Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/MtTmw9rrz7 For general inquiries email: [e-mail] Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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download that taskrabbit.ca code dangle listen up cats it's it's spring cleanup season which means you got to clean up your yard and the one i'm talking about is on your face your face yard yeah and you could do that with manscaped you can't did you know that because you can clean up down there but you can also clean up here with the handyman rocket man special edition from manscaped it's sleek it's portable and it's built for the on-the-go freshness you're looking for and the perfect travel campaign or campaign companion uh especially if you want to go to like i don't know san jose jesse used it this morning he did look at let's get it legitimately used the handyman to trim around my beard this morning look at it's awesome those are sharp edges jesse

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I don't know about that. Well, no, you're not exactly like Jesse. You need to act fast. Use our code DANGLE to get 20% off and free shipping at manscaped.com. Again, it's DANGLE at manscaped.com. 20% off free shipping let's start the show the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake

hi san jose california we're going i don't where is that it's it's in san jose i don't get it oh i don't understand oh you're just saying the names well i just thought that you guys might want to, you know, we might want to talk about the fact that we're going to be there. And that we got itins to go through. Like, short for itinerary. Itins. Let's go through the itins.

I don't think that's catching on. So, listen, we're going to do shows. We're going to do watch-alongs. We're going to do games. Listen, the Leafs are going to be there on March 27th. We will be there for that. And if you want to come hang out, you will need a ticket to the San Jose game. We're following

three Canadian games out of four. That's kind of true. It's literally true. Wow. How literally true? The Leafs and Abbotsford twice. That's cool. No, I like that.

That's very, very cool. And the Rangers. What? So it's interesting, actually, because we're going to do a podcast on the Tuesday from Fireball Cove. Okay? We're going to have a couple Cuda players join us on that one. And then, of course, Wednesday, Barracuda watch party with us.

And then Thursday, a meet and greet with us. And then Friday, watch a Steve Dangle podcast live and a meet and greet with us. And then, of course, Saturday, post-game interview with us on SDP. Next Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturdays, if you are in the San Jose area, there are opportunities to hang out with us. And if you're not, come over anyway. The Barracuda Watch Party will be 6.30 to 9.30 at Tech CU Arena, Calder's Bar and Refuge. I hope that's fun. I hope that place is banging.

Of course it is. What? what of course it is you've never been the meet and greet with sdpn is at the sharks pregame that's the sap center in the fj room south entrance across from the team store that's six to seven and then uh watch a steven angle podcast live after sharks practice so we're at the sap center again the lower bowl one to three o'clock you can watch us do that day's podcast and then the meet and greet with sdp and us we'll be at the barracuda game so two different locations there that day uh that's the tech cu center again the 200 level 20 216 to 217 landing that's the area

of the arena we'll be at that's 630 to 715 and hey uh steve are you bringing any one of your children your many children so that sj sharky can eat them no okay that's a shame he'll have to just imagine okay can he eat jesse then uh we have sj sharky eat jesse's head because you know i think that'd be hilarious i love mascots so much if he skips breakfast jesse jesse can we can we dive deep on that what is that i don't know i i've always i've always had a little soft spot in my heart for mascots i've always wanted to be a mascot like for one day in my life just want to try out to be a mascot um my first love affair with mascots came at the rogers cup when i was a kid we all used to go every summer uh it's a tennis tournament they held here in toronto

and they had a mascot that had a giant tennis ball head and he was just a giant tennis ball he used to walk around I used to love him that's actually

kind of cool why did they get rid of him I don't know I've always just loved mascots they're the best thing ever loves mascots is my four year old

loves mascots he loves Deke with the Oshawa Generals loves Carlton does he like Duke with the Marlies he has not been acquainted with Duke yet

but Duke's a dog he does know Ace and he likes dogs I'm sure he'll get along famously with duke well i remember being at a marley's game and jesse was sitting beside me it was one of our marley's nights when we used to do that and i just hear this and it was jesse and then he was like dab on him dab and then he got duke to dab and it was good back when that was yeah that was cool dabbing was cool yeah so you had to be there nine years ago

if somebody out there from some sort of organization would let me wear their mascot costume for a day and let me be a mascot i would love that that's my dream so i will do that are Are there any mascots that are just like a tower or a giraffe? It's like Seattle is your mascot, the Space Needle. I could be a good Space Needle. Do you remember when Conan did all those shows way back in Toronto and they had like a Toronto, like they had the CN Tower mascot? Yeah. Yeah.

Conan did like five shows in Toronto. I do remember that. And they had a CN Tower that would run out on stage every single time. It was really funny. Really, really funny. Devils fans might enjoy that because if I'm not mistaken, one of the Leafs that Conan got on the ice with was Tom Fitzgerald, who's now the GM of the Devils. I think the way I like mascots is the same way I like dogs and that thing is just there

for happiness and good times. Like a mascot is just simply there to provide joy to the people. Like that's its role in society. And I look at dogs the same way. It's just like that dog just wants to be loved. It just wants to be happy. So I think that's where the soft spot for mascots come in my heart. I saw Carlton the other day.

He was in Union Station. You know what he was doing? Helping kids play with Lego. Amazing. Just having a great time with his St. Pat's apparel. Just having a lovely day. And everyone around him was having a lovelier day for it. Like, you don't see a mascot and get sad.

No. You see it and you're happy. That is true. Not true. Jesse, you grew up west of Toronto. Did you ever go to a Brampton Battalion game? That scary... Sarge.

Sarge, yeah, he was freaky, man. Sarge was horrible. Sarge was a terrifying man. Big old smile on him. No. What's the name of the Oilers mascot? I almost forgot his name. Oh, the cat that's going to...

Hunter. Hunter. Yeah, Hunter is not the most inviting mascot. Hey, okay, can you do me a favor? Can you Google San Jose Barracuda mascot? Sure, sure. i want to introduce you to frenzy his name is oh have you seen frenzy frenzy frenzy well no i don't think so i think they just oh as in i thought feeding frenzy no feeding frenzy

not not like frenzy like a bad social media app from 20 years ago uh it's it's honestly uh he's kind of terrifying he's got big old teeth look at him whoa can you describe it for the people listening so frenzy is a barracuda but barracuda normally i don't think their teeth normally hang out of their mouth like this but he kind of looks like a warthog mixed with a barracuda and he's got a fin on his head yeah like like if pumba was extremely dangerous and gray looking if i'm leo's age i might be spooked yeah he's frenzy frenzy's that's a tough one he also looks a little bit like he was run over what what do you mean because of the tire mark oh those are those are part barracuda have that oh yeah i understand no he'd run over you steve listen we're going to

his home you're gonna be swimming in his ocean real soon don't show this to him guys like what the he lives underwater don't show it to him if he sees it i'll know it was you yeah exactly it's true anyway we're very excited i also uh i didn't mention the maddie if you want to give me a second going to pull it back up we didn't finish our last event we'll have which is the post-game interview with sdpn at the calder's bar and refuge that's 30 minutes after the game ends so there you go that's presented by 99 brand you have a sponsor hey what's up 99 brand thank you uh okay listen uh i want to talk about this uh producer drew tweeted this out and no it's not a terrible food take shockingly uh uh it's uh scheduling and it kind of goes in line with what some of what gary

betman said this morning um and i'm going to talk just specifically about the scheduling part then we're going to talk about the leafs game on monday then we're going to talk about the rest of the gary betman press conference how happy are you adam i didn't even know betman had spoke until i got and you know what i don't even think he said anything that infuriating so i think i think this is going to be uh we're going to sail through this if we're ranking boring gm meetings this one might be at the top yeah like there was so no news we love a boring gm meeting i don't i want i want everything i want jeremy jacobs in there yelling at them what i want that's the owners me what i want as a fan really does fly in the face of what i want as a podcaster yeah

well a lot of the time here's what we got scheduling wise because of four nations Nine teams in the NHL will have seven games, excuse me, have seven games as of now left in March. Only three do it in 11 days. That's the Buffalo Sabres, seven games in 11 nights. The Maple Leafs, seven games in 11 nights. And the Kings, seven games in 11 nights. From March 19th to the 31st,

here are the amounts of games that all of these teams have to play. So the Ducks have to play five, Carolina six, Boston five, Buffalo, like I said, seven, Columbus five. uh i'm gonna roll through um what's the least amount the least amount is five and that's kraken sharks oilers jets and panthers capitals penguins blue jackets and i said boston and anaheim already so so it's not like an egregious well it's a lot it is two games is significant

in that amount of time but like seven and eleven is a lot i guess what i'm trying to get at is uh They better win. You all play 82. I don't know. From October to April, you all play 82 games. Remember when they went basically undefeated in November because they barely played? Yeah. You had your fun time.

Yeah. Figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. And was anyone like, oh, man, the only reason to leave, blah, all the rest? Yeah, no. Some people were like that. All right.

Great. Wow. They were like that? Well, bills come due. The bills come due. So, okay. So, yeah. You got to play the games.

But Gary Bettman has announced today that the 25-26 NHL season will begin October 7th, which is just like the Tuesday before Canadian Thanksgiving, for those wondering. Now, we have been pushing for at least an October 1st start for next year for a couple of reasons. One, we don't want the Stanley Cup awarded on the 28th of June. It's just weird. Like, enough. Can we just chill? I've had it.

Let's start, like, let's get it like a week earlier. One week makes all the difference, right? Because then you're going from Stanley Cup to, like, immediately players from that Stanley Cup team are getting traded to draft immediately to free agency immediately. Like, the guys who win the cup are still hung over, and then they're having to make free agency decisions. Are they trying to stay hot? Like, is that what it is? I think they're trying to keep the news cycle up. That's what I'm saying.

But here's my issue with February next year. We have the Olympics. Yeah. That's great. We also have an All-Star game. And the Olympics are longer than the four-nation face-off. Absolutely there. That's a full two weeks.

And we got the All-Star game before that. And I'm wondering, who is going to the All-Star game? And it's on Rhode Island. Hey, why doesn't the NHL bring back the Young Stars game? I don't know if that's what it used to be called. But the NBA has that. give it give the opportunity to a bunch of kids who will probably be interested can you sell tickets in the local market if sydney crosby's not showing up by the way he probably won't anyway

where is the ulster game it's brooklyn just yeah oh brooklyn sorry it's on no sorry it's not it's on the island i keep forgetting they're not they're not brooklyn anymore quite a few years no they're it's at ubs uh yeah ubs ubs arena uh islanders might have a couple young guys When does Cole Eisenman finish school? And who's the other one? Hey, you know what? Hey, Steve, you know what's cool about that idea? There's a CHL top prospects game a couple months earlier.

Yeah, but it ain't there. I don't think – I think the answer here is just don't do the fucking All-Star game. So Frank Cervalli tweeted that Bettman says the NHL is re-evaluating the 2026 All-Star game format in New York because they've raised the bar with what an All-Star weekend might look like as a result of success at Four Nations. for clarity everything remains on the table including potentially doing something entirely different so i think they're gonna land on we can't do a traditional all-star game at all because it doesn't make sense yeah and here's the cool thing is that's not that like that is not enough time to turn anything relevant around like you're not gonna do a nation's face-off

preceding the olympics you could do your all-rookie game but it means that all the stars aren't going to be there so how well does it sell uh what else could you do and all goalies could you start could you have all i think i think it'll be maybe just like an all uh skills competition like they'll do the skills night and then maybe it's like because they have the three on three thing they did last time in toronto maybe it's a three on three game as well uh the next day you know simple three on three game day before skills competition boom everybody go to the olympics but they don't include anybody who's going to the olympics so this is the thing so i was thinking about that And I'm like, there are going to be so many Canadians at this All-Star game because, you know, Finland is going to take all of their NHL players.

Sweden takes most of their NHL players. Oh, you mean players. There are not going to be a lot of like other nationalities here if they're getting ready for the Olympics. It's going to be mostly Canadian and American players, which isn't, I guess, bad. But it's like it's sort of like the kind of the B-level All-Star is what we can mostly hope for, which is fine, I guess, as a warm up. No, it's not. And the Islanders fans are getting screwed again. Well, yeah.

I mean, poor guys. But no, the bar's been raised. Like, thank you for acknowledging it. We're really going to go from Four Nation face-off back to the same bullshit we've been doing? Yeah. Hell no. And I love that.

I actually love that. Now, ask me what I would do instead. I don't know. Cancel it, I guess. I wouldn't have it. Like, I think on years where there's an Olympics or years where you want to host your World Cup, you don't do the All-Star game.

I agree. It doesn't really make sense. Like, I don't know why they got a shoehorn. Unless it is a hugely profitable event for the NHL, which I don't know that it is. It's an important event for sponsors. It's a very important event for locals. And New York's a big deal.

So I guess they really want to host it. But you didn't do one this year. Everything turned out fine. You lived. You can sacrifice it once every two out of four years, you know, because the olympics of world cup two out of four years you don't host it you'll be fine well you create international stars at the olympics and you get to reap the rewards of that once you return to playing games like that i i think the dumb thing about the last 11 years is the nhl has

wanted like direct money in hand benefit out of the olympics and that's just not how it works Here's what Wyshynski said, and by the way, he's backing you up. He's backing you up, Steven, on both points. He said, here, let me help. 2026 NHL All-Star Weekend, day one. Under 23 future stars, three on three All-Star game. You know, Steve, it sounds like the top prospects. Day two, nation-based NHL skills competition,

where all the players wear their national team jerseys, and it's a bon voyage to the Olympics. Thank you. Would you guys watch that? Hell yeah. Yeah? Jesse? It's my job, so I have to. yeah but would you be if you were okay would you watch it and be excited about it are you like i'm

excited to spend my time they're not gonna try oh it's the under 23s no no no it's the skills competition the next day i think jesse's talking about like oh kucherov definitely definitely gonna give it his all that was one asshole spoiling it the rest of that the rest of that skills to comp was actually pretty good yeah it was but it was one asshole i thought who's a winner and a really good player. And kind of an asshole on the ice. But an asshole. A lot of assholes win hockey games.

Yeah. It's kind of built into the sport. But he was being an asshole about it. I thought we all discovered after Four Nations that the All-Star format is played out. And we need something better. And I don't know why we're trying to go back to something when we discovered that it doesn't work anymore.

Yes. So let's just, let's do something. Let's do the better thing consistently every single time. If you want to have it on off years where you have nothing, go ahead host your all-star convention for your sponsors but on years where there's the olympics or you're hosting your world cup just do that yes you just buy back the all-star game from brooklyn be like here's some money yeah just give it to them the next following year like they have gary betman has ultimate power that's world cup year though isn't it no no the next year you want

to host an all-star game the islanders get it that's a 20 isn't give it to them then yeah isn't the format very obvious to anybody it's olympics all-star game world cup all-star game olympics world what what are we doing yeah what are why are we over complicating this well and it makes the all-star game matter a little bit more because it only comes around every yes it's special yeah how about that why are we over complicating this i don't understand uh now um i'm gonna leave the rest of Bettman's press conference there for now. Oh, you got it. We're going to come back to it because it's important.

But I mean, listen, this is by the time you've heard this, all this news will be out there. We're merely here to break it down. But I do want to talk a little bit about the Toronto Maple Leafs because they're the top of everyone's minds. Everyone across the entire NHL. You're hearing it more and more. People are saying.

I think we got to talk about the Toronto Maple Leafs winning this game on Monday. We were in there. We had a chat. And by the way, John Forslund from Amazon Prime Monday Night Hockey is going to join us later on in the show. We recorded an interview with him. I was flustered. You were flustered.

You had a little crush, didn't you? Yeah, I got a crush. I was flustered. By the way, this interview, of the things I've done in my career, this is one of the ones I'm proudest of. I think it was really, really fun. Maddie's shaking her head yes, so that means that she actually liked it too. it um but uh we got to go down there we got to record an episode we got to interview john and one of the other things we got to do was run into mark masters yeah masters nation and he did

say to us mark's such a smart guy mark he said he's like listen they don't win this game there's probably going to be some alarm bells oh he was going through potential leaf topics like freaking dr strange he he had everything if this and then this and then this and then this and he's looking throughout the lineup like that guy's dial he's brilliant he's dialed into what's going on but like yeah that that would have been a 10 alarm freaking fire if the leech lose the calgary a game that they ought to win they're on the road a long road trip you're at home you need the win very badly your lineup is deeper than theirs uh you're only gonna lose this game if you're playing your best if you get goalied to

oblivion. And by the way, I would say that the goalie for Calgary was their best player in the game despite only playing 40 minutes. And getting, yeah, friggin' pulled. It was him or Kadri. They're just not a deep team. They're not, and they can't score a lot, as Jesse

pointed out last week when we were fawning over Dustin Wolfe. Yeah, they're one player team. That's right. But you know what? It's an important player. It's a pretty important player. Pretty key position. I was laughing watching the amazon prime uh because they just show the warm-ups yeah and wolf is like taking shots on his own net going bar down and i'm like you know what you don't even need to like throw

someone on for the extra attacker no just have him go up to the offensive blue line and have him work the point uh you might even get you a goal i want to start with a player that that uh you've been hard on steve and i think in a lot of cases rightfully so this season and that you pointed out in your LFR was somebody that you're like, man, this is great. And Berube pointed this out too. He said, Max Domi's game has gone to another level.

Hell yes, it has. He's way more aggressive. He's being the player we want him to be and he's in people's faces. He's disrupting things. He's using his speed and he's a playmaker. The guy can pass the puck. Jesse and Steve, I want to talk to you.

Actually, Jesse, I want to talk to you about the Max Domi setup to Nick Robertson and what it was like in person Because that, if you guys remember, this is a pass from the corner where Max takes a really odd route because it's not an easy route to the puck, gets the puck, is able to saucer pass it over two sticks and right onto Nick Robertson's stick and bang, it's in the net. Yeah, like that's what we always talk about with Max's is passing. Like, and there's a guy who's, you described it well, behind the net and kudos to Nick Robertson for going to the right area. like that's what we're always asking out of our players like go to the net go to the go to the empty space in front of the net and he's able to find that hole in the middle of the calgary defense

and those three guys just standing around he slides in there and max finds him because max is always looking for the opportunity to set up his teammates and it was it was a great play and max was in a great spot where he was ahead of the final defender there if i'm remembering correctly to win that pocket to win that battle down the ice to get to the to get to that puck behind the net like he was in a great position initially on the breakout oel sent the puck down he got it and then he turns around he fires it and he he finds nick roberts in that empty space like that's what's special about max domey is the passing ability and i think on that play you see it right there first on the puck which is what i was begging for right uh he's first on the puck and like calgary

they seem so lackadaisical on the play but i think and like part of the reason robertson was left open is they see we all know Domi's passing that puck he goes there he takes his time and the flames are like yeah go ahead that's a turnover like they're looking at it like that's a that's a pending turnover and we want that because we would like the buck we'll advance it and try to do something with it but he's so good at it that he found his way through like Look at how many. Jesse's got the NHL edge thing up. The traffic that he has to pass this puck through.

Sauce as well. It had to go over sticks. I don't know who 94 and 10 are. 94 is Pakal. I forget who 10 is. But both of those guys, one of them is going to get it, right? Surely. Surely.

I mean, okay. Huberto. Oh, right. I changed my mind. Someone should have picked up Robertson. That's unacceptable. Yeah, no, that's probably Pakal. It's Nick Robertson really going to the right area, you know, sneaking in behind the defense and and nobody catching him on that play.

It's it's a beautiful, beautiful little play by everybody on the ice there. That's what I was talking about. Domi there where he's escaping early. You'll see him number 11 exiting and Calgary is going for their change. And Domi is like, I'm going to get on my horse. I'm going to beat the I'm going to get the puck down the ice. Oh, we all missed the pass and it's going all the way down. I'm going to win this battle.

And the hustle out of Domi lately, like if he can continue playing at this level, the Leafs might have something lower down the lineup, which we didn't think they would have based on his play from games from October through probably the beginning of March. Yeah, if we're being honest, but lately, very lately, he's playing really good. And that's a good sign because you want to get hot right before the playoff. And he was up the middle, which I think is important. He was playing great on the wing. And I'm like, well, yeah, that's where he's. pretty consistently looked great for this team uh then they went back to him up the middle i was just like oh craig is button mashing he is just trying stuff out there and this goal comes on the

it's awesome this goal comes on the on the max domey goal which opened it that's right on a slap shot yeah look at you well jesse remember jesse was sending through videos of max practicing his slap that's him working on it baby and baby he scored that's him working on it no like listen yeah i've been hard on him because expectations have been high like not every leaf fan loved the extension he got because they're like that's a lot of money for a guy who didn't really score last year um he's got big defensive deficiencies don't know if he can really play up the middle we all know the things that we like about him but i don't know three years is kind of a big commitment 3.75 i don't know i don't know um i was totally fine with it yeah because he was good

enough it's like dude that was a top line player in the playoffs didn't look at a place um and like this is what we signed up for this player who's gonna throw the occasional real nice hit on carter verhage gonna have the occasional fight and maybe even beat the beat the schmidt out of nate he's just nate now and uh set up sick plays like this one with robertson he's gonna chip in an occasional goal for god's sake maybe even hit double digits oh my goodness this is a good player yeah the game before this he was an assist away from a gordy how hat trick and then this game he's a fight away from a gordy how hat trick so like he's he's doing all the things that we want out of max domey and it's pretty cool four points in five games not bad for your depth and this was

something that we talked about monday they put together the mcmahon roberts and domey line all three of them scored yeah now it's key to remember here that these three can score goals but the issue is always can they also allow them and the answer is yes uh and uh and too many of them and that's why they were broken up however uh this was a great confidence game and we'll talk about austin and confidence as well basically everybody but but now i think the test is tonight against colorado how do you stand up against and listen calgary could be a playoff team but we all know there's a pretty big difference between calgary and colorado right and uh we played colorado week and a half ago and it was a high scoring game and it was too high scoring and not all that great for

the leafs uh when when they were letting in goals i think that they were a little discombobulated after the trade deadline i think they were a little tired i think there's all those factors playing with they still lost the game this line against a playoff team especially a dominant one And by the way, Colorado's completely remade themselves this year. What do you need to see from McMahon, Domi Robertson? Yeah. For this line to stick it out, not just here, but in the playoffs. I want to give a shout out to my friend Nick LaFlame on Twitter, who is basically, he goes,

this is the McMahon, Domi Robertson line on a random weekday against a mid team. And it's just a gif of LeBron and Dwayne Wade highlights. They were amazing. Because, dude, they cut those teams up. You can't get hemmed in. I don't want to see any of your deficiencies, basically. Like, if you aren't able to pull off the special things you did against Calgary, okay, I get it.

You know, I assume Makar and Taves aren't going to allow those sauce passes. I assume they're not going to allow Nick Robertson alone in front. I assume they're not going to allow that McMahon goal that I'm real glad for him that he scored it but that shouldn't have gone in right um you can't get hemmed in the the avalanche beat the leafs a couple saturdays ago because they completely overwhelmed the leafs when they needed offense there there's a few teams in the league that have uh i'm gonna call them first 40 deficiencies where they can find themselves down after 40 because either their goaltending is not sharp that night or the defense isn't sharp that night abs fans aren't going to want to hear this

but like there's a lot of similarities between them and the oilers at times but when they're cheating for offense yikes oh shit like you're in trouble so the leafs that line in particular but all of them can't get overwhelmed i look at that line and that's not the line i'm concerned with Because I actually like the idea of rolling four lines for depth. Lost in the narrative of that game, because all three of McMahon, Domi, and Robertson scored, is they were the fourth line. Oh, well, listed as the fourth line. No, they, by time on ice, they were the fourth line.

Lorenz played more than, I think Stephen Lorenz played more than Domi. I mean, the Leafs were up big, so maybe that makes sense. Lawton played a couple more minutes than either of those guys and so did Yarncroke right um I like the idea of rolling that depth because I would put that depth up against most teams in this league so there's an identity to both of these lines right one stops one scores yes yes it coming out of the deadline they throw out that fourth line of Holmberg camp from Lorenz I'm like this isn't anything this what is what do they do do they forecheck particularly good not really can they score no are they defensive kinda do they check not really they weren't anything right this you

know Lawton on the quote-unquote fourth line it's making a lot of people laugh like no it's a line with identity the the matchup I'm looking for the Leafs for a long time this season have played pretty good hockey and they've done it without a guy who scored 69 goals for them last year even when he's been in the lineup he hasn't been in the lineup uh like matthews his his two goal game against calgary was his i think the stat was it was his third multi-goal game of the season last season he had 19 yep yeah he had 19 but let's keep it to the depth for now well because because because okay sure we haven't even talked about we we you haven't even told us who is on that third line right it's it's so that's lot and yarn croak um lorenz lorenz thank you right

not used to him and that's why that's why i wanted to make sure we hit that because yes we have to go to austin that's sure that's a a fast hard-nosed four checking line and that's the only line that didn't really have anything fall for them um in that game against calgary but maybe that's all okay because that's not their identity well they just they you either need to exhaust your opponent or have nothing happen especially in a 6-2 game and with kampf holmberg lorenz you're guaranteed nothing will happen yeah right it's it's a guarantee that era of the leafs is over we're all right throw out the busy nothing line and like didn't they used to have a line of i think it was like engvall kerfoot uh mckay of it might have been probably this is busy nothing

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So, Jesse and Steve, this is my question, and this is why I wanted to hold off on Matthews. I wanted to get to this point. Sure, sure, sure. Because the McMahon-Domi-Robertson line, score, score, score, please don't get hemmed in. Are you comfortable, and I'm going to say this for Colorado tonight, but then I'll take it and I'll apply it to Texas. Tampa, I'll apply it to Ottawa, I'll apply it to Montreal, who are now in a playoff spot, and I'll apply it to Tampa and Florida. Can't forget about them.

Are you comfortable throwing Lorenz, Lawton, and Jarnkrok out against Nathan McKinnon's line? Yeah. I mean, that is... Because if they're going to be a shutdown line in the playoffs, and those guys, it's like what the third line was in Tampa with Coleman and Goudreau and... Or no, was it...

Who was it? It was Yanni Gord. Oh, Gord in the middle of Pullman and Goudreau, yeah. That was a crazy line. Shut him down. Jesse, thoughts? I don't think that's exactly what you're looking for that line to do with this team. Okay.

Because I think that's why you have the core four. I feel like those players exist on this team to go up against those big matchups. Eventually, you're going to get some sort of mismatch where you have to play against them. It's the NHL. like if that's why you got lawton because he's competent enough to be out there with any player in the league and everybody can be out there um but like you have austin matthews for a reason he should be on the ice when they and marner and mitch marner is the key to the whole thing the guy who plays in every facet of this game who's probably your best defensive uh forward on the

whole team like you have mitch marner you have austin matthews to go up against the nathan mckinnons of the world right and it's kind of interesting because colorado's got uh macar taves who are probably going to be out there at the same time as the mckinnon line so i want tanev mccabe um in the matthews line going out there against them all night and if you can neutralize that which marner and matthews are very capable of doing so is that d pair nice just has to not you know throw a pizza up the middle like he he did uh i think it was last game um or maybe it was florida i don't remember it doesn't matter red team i'll take the leafs bottom nine against almost any bottom nine in the league especially at home oh i don't know about that well dallas's

bottom nine might be bottom well okay almost any other team almost any other bottom nine no but like have a look at colorado's bottom nine you said any team in the league well this team the one they're playing tonight that's i think that's a little that's a different conversation i think the tavaris line the the the fun mcwee i don't know what you want fun mcwee line the uh the pew pew line and then uh the lot in line right yeah colorado's problem all season long has been depth yep like that no throw the big boys out against the big boys they did acquire a lot of depth over the course of the season they do have brock nelson they do have coiled they do have drury on their quote fourth that's so crazy they remade their entire center yeah we waited a whole

year to get a center they got three of them yeah like we can't just say that colorado has nothing anymore they know you're right no they're garbage you have put a few forwards but i understand what you're saying about yeah you got to trust you got to trust the uh the bottom forwards on the Leafs to go up against can I also say I freaking hate Ross Colton is always so good against the Leafs too he's just nightmare Stanley Cup winning goal scorer Ross Colton um okay so that that brings us to the top let's hey we've been talking about the bottom nine let's talk about the top three let's talk about confidence for goal scores and Matthews gets two and this time they're actually on the goalie it's not a goalie mishandling the puck and giving it to him yes it

is two goals and it's funny three goals in two games the power play goal that he scored the first one i had been yelling shoot like 40 times and you could tell and i think everybody else was you can tell that in different eras of matthew's career he would have shot earlier yes and it was it's it's been weighing on him but that time he was able to fire one absolutely it was beautiful right to the top of the net and score sometimes you need something anything to go in like mcmahon getting that goal like okay whatever it's a goal good for you yeah and i'm sure he feels good about it matthews i feel like had a great performance rewarded he didn't get anything in the first period but i was watching him like okay we haven't seen this version of him in a while

yep this is the best he's looked and like as an individual some some nights you know him and nize are clicking him and marner are clicking they're clicking as a trio whatever whatever he looked so so good and so so dialed individually and i i don't know what that is like maybe it's a determination maybe he's pissed off like craig berube said the team was but it wasn't just that he was finding the open areas because he has kind of been it's just it has it used to be last year anytime matthews got the puck you're like this is going in and you were very often right yeah yeah because he had that touch of death scoring those two goals against justin wolf who's one of the best goalies in the league that's got to feel good and like matthew's style goals and and it's

interesting because berube said before the game it weighs on everybody a player that uh he wants to help the team by putting the puck in the net he's doing a lot of good things we just have to stick with it uh it's just not going in as much this year but his overall game for me i go off of last game he did a great job against Barkov uh who's one of the best in the league uh and this is obviously before the Sens game but it's a and then after this game he says that's your leader right led the way led the way with effort effort competitiveness and just work I need to watch tonight's game and go holy shit Austin Matthews the way every time the Leafs play Colorado or anyone plays colorado i go holy shit nathan mckinnon like we have had this contentious

conversation i don't remember when i said it i just remember it was very unpopular is you look at matthews and you look at mckinnon and you realize there is a difference now it's stylistic mckinnon can't do some of the things matthews does matthews can't do some of things McKinnon does I need to see Matthews outperform Nathan McKinnon at home after a big performance when his team needs it they beat you last time I need Matthews to be the better player and you're gonna have the line matching to your advantage he's capable of it you have the line matching they're a deep team you're a deep team you you can do it you can do it if you belong in this conversation this has to happen on occasion jesse when you look at those goals going in was

there was there a sense of like i wondered if there was a reaction in the press box to it too because you were there yeah the they were cheering right yeah because they're i think that's why they don't give you the uh the media pass yeah we honestly we it was really hard for us like we were with the leaf who is us you and me adam wild we had a hard time together it was the two of us what act like you've been there we sat in the san jose leafs game here a couple weeks ago and for the you know the amazon prime night we were on and i definitely cheered in the press box and then caught myself and i can't you get wrapped up in it you caught yourself yeah adam i slapped you and then i caught myself yeah that's right sorry jesse shut up i gave him

one stop it right steve i'd like to see you in a moment where it's like they're on a four game losing streak nick robertson fumbles the puck oh then what are you gonna do san jose on a monday is a little different it's it's extremely extremely loud silence you feel it for me you feel yeah because the people people watch you watch the games on stream you know you stream every saturday and they see you i feel the eyes i feel the eyes if you're in that press box i don't know if you could hold it together you know who i was jealous of uh for that sharks game because we were sitting right underneath the sharks broadcast booth yeah and you like you know everyone in the press box is quiet press box and you hear like hey and i look up and he's not doing

play-by-play he's doing color commentary you look up and it's jason demers yeah and he's like fist pumping going here like i know they don't have a camera trained on him or whatever but uh he got to cheer after the game on monday with austin matthews and the way he performed that was the narrative that i think everybody was going into going into the post game and talking about it was okay the captain stepped up after all morning at morning skate we talked about how pissed off this team was and who's the leader on this team it's austin matthews now this season and he showed up and those two goals he had i think were really important just for the narrative one and for the ethos of the team to be like hey we got the performance out of the big guy he showed

up and he did his thing so i think it's really important that they got that performance out of him because you don't want that conversation to continue even if they won that same way six two against calgary but austin did nothing that game it's it's a little bit it'll be a little bit different because like we expect that kind of stuff out of willie because he's so consistent the whole way if you don't get that at jt you're like okay he's not gonna always perform at that level but austin you expected in the game where they're scoring a bunch of goals you expect this guy to get in on that action and he did and thank goodness he did and we're all thankful that he did does quote unquote stacking the lines actually make austin's life harder i think it does in what

way uh because the leafs are just straight up an easier team to play when they do it because they don't have there are a lot of nights where the bottom six i don't want to say my okay the first place my brain went was might as well be contest winners and i'm like steve that's not kind but what are they what are they defensive specialists are they are they defensive specialists or are they just guys who can't score you're talking there's a difference nights when robertson mcmahon and domey look like the early season version of themselves right yeah yes um but like not even them like whoever the fourth line has been this when it's comp and reeves yeah like this that um lawrence uh lawton and yarn croak that's the first time those three have ever played

together in their entire lives right um and i just look at that lineup and i'm like hmm it's actually kind of interesting because it's just their regular top nine for most of the season except the bottom six doesn't look useless they even though the the third line got three goals they were really the fourth line and they were used completely differently and then the fourth line was different and like you just have to prepare for the leafs so much uh differently like i think you head into a game like this if you're colorado and you're like you know if you're kale and you're Devon and you're like, all right, well, I know what my job is.

This isn't complicated. I don't think I'm ever going to stray off the idea that you have to give Marner and Matthews and Willie and JT separate lines and we'll probably pair up Tavares and Marner, but I think splitting them up is always going to be the best idea and they've never given it a long run

in this entire era that they've been on the team together, so we're never going to see it and it's just beating my head against a wall the more I say it. Since they started it. Since they started it, yeah. they wouldn't do it and now they will not stray from it saturday to monday was the another example

i was gonna say the greatest example of that but we've had that example a million times now so it's just another one to add to the list of they did it one game they didn't like it they went back to it and they have to play them together and i don't know how i don't know where you go with that conversation anymore because whoever the coach is whether it's babcock keith or brew bay matthews and marner are going to want to play together and they're going to get their way babcock was the only one who said no because remember it was nylander matthews yes for years and and hyman and then it was uh it was marner tavaris sick yeah sick well and then it was marner tavaris hyman yeah it used to be the top line is whatever line hyman is on yes it's

true it's true uh and it's that is still literally the case and he's on another team uh okay so a a little a little uh trivia see if you guys can get this guess this okay optional skate this morning craig brube said it's because of a busy schedule they play in new york tomorrow right so they got colorado new york um give me a quick post game tonight yeah i think so i think so three players got on the ice and did work so these are the three scratches oh dear okay one of them is the goalie so i'll only get because it's wool today yeah so stallers is one of them so i'm going to give you that who are the other two players that uh one i think will not surprise you one i think will surprise you that they're not playing camp camp is not playing again and people have

been calling for this guy to get back in the lineup so okay well i already know it's off the board jesse wait so am i guessing the person who got into the lineup or the person who got scratched person who got scratched and they're not in the lineup uh benoit well that was my So I worded that incorrectly. It is Myers that is out there and still scratched. You suck. Well, I thought I said it the right way, but I guess I got you both. You said it the right way.

So Myers is scratched. So yeah, Benoit is still in the lineup. And I wanted to ask about that last thing, and then we'll sort of wrap on the Leafs, because Myers not being in and OEL playing with Benoit has had some criticism. They look good against Calgary. Calgary's awful offensively.

But Benny does get in there and not let you do things. Sure. Why do you think Benoit is playing more than Myers at this point, guys? And do you think Myers OEL would be better? Doesn't mean OEL has his flip sides. So I'm listening to the audio book of Justin Bourne's audio book. I forget what it's called. um but it's i'm listening to it right now and i'm enjoying it very much it's justin born's

audiobook and he was talking about down and back on alcohol family and life and hockey there it is there you go it's an excellent book so far i'm a little over halfway through he talked about it could take a turn he talked yeah you know what it might be bad he might even it might end up being bad but so far yeah he talked about going to an nhl camp yep as an undrafted I want to say like 24 year old trying to impress and he said something along the lines of the established players or the the players who are looking to make the lineup have to prove that they can the established players have to prove that they can't that's the difference i myers hasn't established himself enough

that ben was and and ben was performances have not been poor enough for them to make that switch i still think like you know if the team is as tired as they keep saying they are um um hell give oel the rangers game off he's the old guy or give benny the give one of them the night off against the uh the rangers and have myers get in there as frustrating as oel has been at times and as frustrating as benoit has been at times myers hasn't exactly taken the bull by the horns so i'm not overly bullish on that i'm still sticking to my conspiracy theory yanni hockenpah is going to play in these playoffs jesse what do you think about what steve just said i wonder if oel is really comfy on the right side he's a left i don't know but no he's not

you don't think so because i think i think he looks decent out there when he's playing on his opposite hand he can do it he can do it for sure but i still think the best way for any defenseman to do it is to have a righty on the right lefty on the left is at the offensive blue line it makes a big difference so but is the talent discrepancy between Myers and Benoit enough to shift OEL back over because right now they feel like having Benoit out there is more worth having OEL on his correct side see I'd rather stylistically I think Myers is closer to OEL than Benoit Benoit like in terms of talent who's the more talented player uh Myers he's more talented than Benoit Ben wasn't out there for his talent he's he's out there for his effort and grit and his f you and yeah and

he'll do those things so by having Myers out there you're just repeating the same skills and you don't really need that yeah like I guess you're you're just sort of changing the identity of the third pair like you could go with oh yeah Myers and be like all right you're a puck moving third pair that is also they want that kind of big no i don't think they do like i don't think they're good enough on the defensive end and that's not really what you want it's of all the things with this roster just on paper that i'm dissatisfied with coming out of the trade deadline probably most dissatisfied with that that and i'm still not totally sold on holmberg being on the second friggin line but that is way more easily rectified than uh this patch already exists

patch already does exist and he'll probably come back for game so much to tell them yeah while he's injured so yeah well they're gonna have are they gonna have him play game one of the playoffs after not playing for like two months i think he'll be fine if that's the way they want to go patch already is a vet enough that i think he's in a position where he could hop in and get one of the players an option he needs to watch the the leafs uh uh like first round suspension curse though because he throws big hits oh and easily and caudry and kyle clifford would like a word like kyle clifford got suspended for a game or two for a very normal hit for and it was a five minute major in the first period it was essentially a three game suspension yeah not that

kyle clifford at like listen i like kyle clifford the person didn't add a ton to the lineup but i will say uh that was really really like the nhl watches the leafs that way they really do it was the longest suspension in the NHL of those playoffs until Evander Kane broke Nazem Kadri's thumb. Yeah. Yeah. Now, quick couple of things. Leafs PR tweeted this out with an assist on Austin

Matthews power play goal at 1541 of the second period. William Nylander with 598 career points has passed Frank Mohavlij, one of the greatest Leafs of all time for sole possession of ninth in Maple Leafs all time points. We're getting to the point here where these three guys,

Marner, Matthews, Nylander, are doing in one era what it took the Leafs seven or eight eras to string together as an organization the lack of star talent in Maple Leafs history is painful and when they are here they don't last here right no there are several guys that

did Sittler Sundin that sort of thing but guys like Gilmore five years right but even Sittler had a dissatisfying end to his Leaf tenure yes Sundin had a dissatisfying end to his Leaf tenure like can we what the Leafs lack in their history is a happily ever after

well and what i want to say on that is if these two guys or these three guys win something yeah if they win something it will be uh it will be such a shame if they don't and i'm not even talking about a cup i'm talking about get to the conference finals once gilmore has a jersey in the rafters i need you to under gilmore back-to-backs conference finals though back-to-back back-to-back conference finals big goal against st louis in overtime back-to-back conference finals and a selkie like did sundin even win an award uh lady bing the king clancy yeah like and that's the thing i'm not taking away from matt i don't even know if he got nominated he got he got to three conference finals matt cindy but like that's what we're talking about 94 yeah yeah no no

Oh, he wasn't part of it. He did. 99-02. Yeah, the Cujo. And then there was, was there not a Belfort conference? No, maybe not. I think maybe it was 94. Yeah, because Ben O'Clark was traded.

I don't remember. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Does Austin already have his jersey in the raft? Yes. Oh, I think they all do. You think Marner and Willie do as well? Based on the curve that we have, yes. I mean, if Willie's passing Frank Mahavillage, yes.

I think Austin for sure because of the individual trophies. Like, I think that's. Yeah, hard trophy, multi-time rocket. Yeah, he's already locked it in with the Calder. thing in there you got um marner and willie i'm not so sure yet i think they would need to accomplish marner maybe because of where he's ranking on the points list all time if you're top 10 in points you should probably be on there don't you think i don't know it's pretty low bar maybe the leafs have a pretty fucking low bar man this is leafs maybe raise or their legacy like

listen their regular season legacies are viewed unfairly because of their playoff legacies yes we we talked about this the other day there was the comparison that someone made um it was matthews and marner versus uh marlo and thornton and thornton are thornton and marlo are looked at as these you know bums who never won and thornton had that one really terrible quote from the the amazon documentary documentary oh we're in first place like we're doing something right They went to double-digit playoff games in the same playoff run nine times each. Tavares, Marner, Nylander, Matthews have done it five times combined. And Thornton won 16 playoff series.

Marleau won 14. These guys are not... Those two came between, they were within two wins of a cup. yeah they're not in the same stratosphere and we need them to like when i said happily ever after i meant just their leaf tenure came to an end in an amicable way it never ends that way for basically anybody like even like salming left sitler left mcdonald sundin left mcdonald he did get his happily ever after just not here if marner leaves this summer is his jersey in the rafters they lose tough they lose in the second round marner leaves this summer does he get

retired in 10 years that's tough it's a lot of career left yeah 10 years he goes to he plays in chicago wins two cups with the blackhawks or something oh that's all right it's phil kessel get his name in the oh no no why not why not well he's not anywhere close to those guys anyway what no he's just not i don't think that you're changing the conversation yeah no i'm asking you about mitch marner what no but i need the leafs to have a deep run and maybe even win so that we can all look back on how good these guys really are and and and really absorb it no does mitch marner get his jersey in the rafters probably and a lot of people are upset about it and that that goes for all of them that goes for all of them it's not a mitch thing uh i want to say this to

John Tavares, is John Tavares the greatest Maple Leaf free agent signing of all time? 500 games he just played. 475 points. Very nice rounded numbers. We love that. Is John Tavares the greatest free agent signing in Maple Leafs history? And I tend to think yes. Still almost a point a game player seven years after signing.

Everyone else who was so good for them as a free agent, again, they just weren't around for very long. Curtis Joseph. Four unbelievable years. Unbelievable. Belfort was amazing for two years after him. He was very good. He was very, very good.

Alex McGilney. Gary Roberts. Outstanding. Two years, though. Neuendijk. Two years. Joe Neuendijk. Michael Renberg.

Robert Reichel. No, yeah. So, yes, it's him. James Mardle did an article in 2020 on this. Number one on his list, Boreas Olmec. Oh, he wasn't draft. Okay. Fine.

All right. If we're splitting hairs, then we'll give it to Boreas. I think even JT would like that. Okay. New rule. Best free agent signing after the NHL invention. Or best free agent signing after having played an NHL game. Because Boreas signed right out of Sweden.

Oh, that's interesting. so like you know I mean it's like oh well we got to put Tyler Bozak on that list because he signed out of college like I think you know that's a little bit different it's a bit it's a different circumstance I understand what Adam's saying I understand what you have to play the pro game

you think the list is wrong I think I think James and I would say this to James if he were here because James knows I love him James is being James about that like that is a James Myrtle ass article right there and he would and I know he would say that too that's game's going well technically and i'm like yo don't well technically we know what a ufa is

he's a free agent yeah and this is back in the day when they used to do the draft on the telephone in 1973 is when he signed yeah and i think they drafted similar literally on the phone in 1971 or two he was one of like he was probably one of the first five swedish players in the league and something like that all right best free agent signing blue jays history vladimir guerrero like i don't know it's just no that's different well how is that different jesse because uh it wasn't baseball doesn't have rules oh yeah 16 i guess i guess if you want to look at it that way sure uh yeah i like adam's rule kujo was number two on his list yeah i think that's fair uh three was bell for four was jt so i think i think or i remember this was 2020 this was written in

the middle of the pandemic in june of 2020 uh so tavara still had another five years of leafs hockey i love the line there he's also only 29 um uh oh man how funny is that i think i think you know john had been with the team two seasons at that point yeah like i feel like if we ask james to update his list it might look a little different i agree yeah i like that i like that list a lot i think i think john's at the top of that list now can i know i don't count borya Although I love Borey. Can I ask you guys a question about the Leafs and winning before we move on? Please, please.

No. Since Four Nations, amongst teams in the playoffs as of today, the Leafs have only beaten one of them. Damn. They beat the Carolina Hurricanes the day after Four Nations ended when they broke their break. And since then, they have not beaten a single team that is currently in a playoff spot.

So February 22nd, I believe. All of their wins have come against non-playoff teams. is that concerning yeah and does that not put a spotlight on tonight's game against colorado even more sure does are the rangers in a spot no no so can't can't do it against them can't do it against the preds on saturday and then i think they play one more game and then they go to california and there's not a whole lot of playoff action out there there's la oh boy so this stretch features losses to vegas colorado florida ottawa oh so they're in their next three games after tonight rangers preds philly nope nope nope then you go to california sharks nope it listen listen

uh this is the uh the quiz en route to the exam if you fail the quiz at the end of the day you can still pass the exam but do you don't you feel better yeah you do well on the quiz yeah you pass the quiz there aren't a lot of playoff teams to face so these games become even more important because these are the litmus test games and yes you have not passed a single one since carolina that's in nearly a month yeah yeah this is a big game for them yeah you know you can score on these guys i think don't let them hang seven on you i think tonight means a lot uh based on how the last two weeks have gone and the calgary game was great it's nice but it is against a lesser opponent and when you have come against these big opponents in the last three weeks four

weeks really you have fallen short so we'll see and this this does include a win against new york who's no longer in the playoffs remember that second week right the third game out of four nations they beat new york there but new york hasn't looked good at all and like calgary is sort of in this weird no man's land yeah the same place new york is so like this colorado game means a lot and huge florida meant a lot and you didn't show well they all meant a lot they kind of now do but is the confidence now are we looking for the confidence now yeah build off of this this so the win against calgary changes um your day it changes how you look at your day a couple wins out of this back-to-back year changes i think the story of it just changes the

story let's face it after a night with some drinks we don't bounce back the way we used to no that was those were good days but you know what there are ways around that z biotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic it was invented by phd scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking here's how it works when you drink Alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's this byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for your rough next day. So pre-alcohol produces an enzyme. It breaks the byproduct down.

And all you have to do is make pre-alcohol your first drink of the night. Drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow. And Jesse and Steve, tell me about the things that you need to get up for early the next morning. Doing a podcast with my friends. Or being a dad. and and yeah yeah but no you can't lie in bed all morning no one of them's harder yeah all right jesse what about yourself uh for me if it's like the summer the early thing i'm doing is golfing so it's like oh if i got like a it's 9 a.m tea time or something like that or

8 a.m tea time you got to get up it's so early drive out to wherever ontario and get ready so if it's on a friday and i got tea time on a saturday you know pre-alcohol help that that friday night another reason why golf is not for me you got to wake up early jesse is pronounced Go to zbiotics.com slash dangle to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use dangle, D-A-N-G-L-E, at checkout. Zbiotics is backed by a 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they're going to refund your money. No questions asked. Product only available in the U.S.

And remember, head to zbiotics.com slash dangle and use the code dangle at checkout for 15% off. Trade ice skating at Nathan Phillips Square for ice cubes in your umbrella drink. Let Porter Airlines fly you from Toronto Pearson nonstop to 10 top sun destinations in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Costa Rica. Enjoy award-winning Porter service Toronto has loved for 20 years and start your vacation as soon as you're on the plane. Book your sunny getaway today at flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. Let's go through this Gary Bettman press conference, boys. Okay, so Gary Bettman says the NHL and PA will meet April 1st for CBA Talks. He said, I hope that these can be quiet and we get it done.

And I think Gary's aiming for June. If you were to ask Gary, from what I've heard around the league, he wants it to be done in June. So right around the Stanley Cup, they can announce that they've got the CBA extension done. That'd be nice. From what we've heard, there's not a whole lot stopping that from happening. Both sides are working well together.

So that's great. Believe me, as a business owner with Steve and Jesse, we're really hoping that they get to an agreement. How good are you guys at video games? This is going to be a great NBA show. Yeah, no rules proposed at the GM meetings. No rule changes. We do know Tom Fitzgerald,

and there was a big article about it, wants to really push the NHL to get cut-resistant gear into the game, which makes a lot of sense, especially his family connection with that. Bettman is not a fan of the decentralized draft. Well, that's a shame. Maybe try it once, Gary.

you probably weren't a fan of the four nations thing either and look at that try stuff man just try it uh he also said he doesn't favor extended three on three oh i agree with gary on that one by the way i do two the more i think about it what what what the extended three i know you don't know not the extended three wait what's for you oh i'm talking about the draft oh i was talking about extended three on three which i already moved on no no no the decentralized draft no no i i i think i think you're every good league is doing it decentralized this isn't hard anyway uh like what no it's a better entertainment product when a general manager plus 20 of his entourage are not walking up to the stage in a freaking stadium thanking all the bars for all the great drinks

that week and then finally fucking making a pick let's make it a good entertainment product please watch another sport for fresh ideas thank you so i agree with you in the way the production aspect is is presented like i don't think you need everybody up on stage doing the draft picks at all but i i enjoy the idea of all of them being there at the same time and it being event for all of the players and scouts or not players gms and scouts to get together and people to go to those events and i like draft three days right okay i think it's i think it's a good event but you can present it differently on television here here adam i'm pro beers with friends yeah me too okay well it doesn't sound like it stop i i think the media also is pro not decentralizing the draft so

they can all go and i don't blame them it's a lot of fun uh we've been down a couple of beers yeah they're pro couple of beers for sure uh betman says he he uh does not favor extending three on three ot because of the wear and tear and i also here's what i think will happen some freaking coach will come in and figure out a trap system and it'll just be eight minutes of boring ot rather than five uh a lot of teams just rag the puck and try to get it to shoot out so i mean well i was gonna say shootouts are so rare the only way leave fan talking they've only had two the only way to make overtime better for me is get rid of the loser point you want you want competitive you want people losing their minds get rid of the loser point why why should they get a point for

going to overtime what have they accomplished game isn't over if you want people to go hard in that five minutes of three on three pull that point it's done i don't mind a team getting overtime and getting something in the standings i don't think you should get half a win that's a lot well a quarter of a win then quarter points oh that'll make things exciting well i don't like and i have to be honest with you i don't like the way the pwhl does it either like i know they're trying things but there are four different categories in the pwhl and i'm like how does a new fan even absorb that i don't every other league is at all every other league is win loss you know win loss just did you win you lose four nation face off i understood it perfectly

because you won or you lost no no the other points is very the opposite fart three yes i know sweden tied canada in points in canada yeah fart and i understood it perfectly fine next season starks october 7th the league was surprised by the and we're going to leave this because it's it's not even really worth discussing but i have to mention it uh nhl khl all-star game that trump and putin talked about yesterday whatever um yeah cool i'm sure that i'm sure that um they apparently uh elliot and we mentioned this earlier lots of brainstorming about the all-star game uh next season gary did say that four nations has raised the bar which is good because finally uh And according to Elliot, players will have to be there because they will travel to the Olympics from New York City right afterwards.

So that's how they're going to force the stars to be there is you're going you're going to the Olympics from New York because the NHL obviously is chartering those flights. So you'll have to be in New York at the All-Star Game, too. Doesn't mean you have to play, but make appearances. Oh, it's make it like mandatory. That's the media. we're gonna get a nothing like a great all-star game well you know what there is something to that yeah they are going to italy it is italy right yes um now that's basically the press conference which is nice it's not that i told you nothing would infuriate you nothing yeah he's not

like holding anything over anyone no i think they're just they're making it happen now so did he talk about the trump putin stuff i know he did he just said i don't know anything about it because we weren't asked about it yeah i don't know i think it's something that they just kind of threw in there at the end well the united states government does not own the nhl we're not focusing on this we're moving on uh so uh i listen jesse steve question for you okay how does chris johnson aka cute journalist normally make you feel warm warm jesse what about them yeah warm happy yeah confident yeah are you ready for chris johnson to give you anxiety okay did you guys see this article maybe it's an article about what happens if alexandra

ovechkin's record-setting goal to beat wayne gretzky has to be reviewed which i thought was a great freaking premise for an article uh no i'm not stressed out that's hilarious yeah so so he did interview uh your buddy colton campbell who i know you love oh good what did he have to say he said we got to treat it like any other goal any other situation uh i said nothing special just do your job and be ready uh i know there's going to be a lot of noise it's hard to protect yourself against that sort of passion the nhl has made the determination and i'm quoting directly that it's hockey ops department will take the lead whenever ovechkin finds himself one goal away that means that none of the production elements or special plans

for what's going to happen when this goal inevitably goes in will be unfurled until the window passes where an opponent can challenge his potential goal. And so that means to me, though, that if the goal goes in, they got to wait till the next faceoff to play and then they'll stop the game. And then they'll do that. Because they don't have a time limit right now.

So it's when the puck is dropped, when the refs are satisfied. So they're not going to be able to sell. They're going to celebrate it. Then they're going to review it potentially. and then they're going to drop the puck and then they'll bring the whole bench out and celebrate the most alexander ovechkin thing ever is going to happen he's going to score the bench is going to empty they're going to review it it won't count play will continue he'll score again the bench will empty again it'll count he's going to score the 895th goal of his career twice will it

be jesse a huge disappointment if that goal does not count do you think it will be it will take the air out of the balloon and make the celebration a little less that'd be the worst thing ever to happen like we saw it when nathan mckinnon scored his a thousandth point the other day did you guys see that when everybody came off the bench and they celebrated then it didn't count at all like it was so it was um it was a laughable moment like you're like this is so embarrassing what are we doing here and this would just be a higher level of that it'd be awful the necessity gives birth to innovation or whatever the saying is i hope it is a offside 45 seconds after offside and the review takes forever and it negates the goal and we finally fix reviews

this could fix reviews it's a good point 100 oh if it's a random goal from a random player on a thursday knowing they are not changing it gretzky breaks or ovechkin breaks gretzky's record and it's a gong show instant change so why i don't think that's gonna happen is because something like offsides will have to be challenged and i don't think the head coach on the other end is going to challenge ovechkin's 896 goal but we'll know like what if it's definitely offside and it's not challenged then that's it then it's a goal then it's a goal so the record-breaking goal shouldn't have counted maybe who knows but i don't think it'll ever be i don't think it'll be challenged by the head coach so i think we avoid those situations where it has to be something

like uh like uh i think a hand pass would be challengeable or offsides would be challengeable goalie interference however what chris uses in the article his example is something that's just reviewed by the nhl so a goalie interference one would be a situation where we could bring it off the board but off sides i think you just let it play goalie could be broken in half i don't see contact yeah yeah i don't see any contact so i honestly don't think it's really realistic it is possible if there's a goal interference but ovi's never that close to the net he's in his spot That's also true, yeah. You know?

Well, yeah, but what about Tom? Tom Wilson started somebody else. If Tom Wilson's the reason Ovi doesn't get it. Hilarious. Listen, it's Ovechkin. We all know what's going to happen. He's going to go into the game with 893. 894, 895, 896.

That's what's going to happen. Hattrick? Of course, it's Ovi. My bet is it scored on an empty net. Nope. Keeping in line. No, it'll be on a goalie. You think so?

Yep. Yo, empty net and it's called back for offside. What if the net is empty and he has $8.95? What is he going to do, not shoot it? He's going to miss because he's bad. What is he going to do? He's going to miss because he's bad. I'm giving this to Strong.

He's going to wait for a goalie? I want a friendly bet. I want a friendly bet with you. Right now. Will it be an empty netter or on a goalie? No, I'm not taking those odds. I would need juice on that. He would need juice.

That's fair. That's not a fair bet. I get a minute of action that has to happen if they get in the lead and then they pull the goalie. And those aren't fair odds. Like, I'm not just doing a straight-up bet. We'll figure it out. Okay.

Suggestions welcome, by the way. This isn't my first rodeo. Suggestions welcome in the comments section. Right? Right? Come on. Next one I want to go to is daily checkup on the Rangers, where the Rangers are, and they're not in a playoff spot.

And the Montreal Canadiens are with two games in hand. That is pretty damn exciting for Canada because, frankly, we could have six or seven teams in here, probably looking more like six at best. I don't think Calgary and Vancouver can't make it. Yeah, it's sort of like one or the other. Max is six. That would be kind of neat, though.

Awesome. It'd be awesome. And what's hilarious is that Montreal beat a very, very good Washington team early on in Ovechkin's career and surprised everybody. I think that was Halak Spring, was it not? Yes, it was. And, you know, there's some talk that, well, Washington's PDO's a little out of whack. maybe they were grass in the first round no that would be insane can you imagine the celebrations

in montreal oh like if they got into the first round and then beat the caps because they'd be playing the cap you know what um we didn't have in 20 uh 2010 was uh that like habs fans tv some dude with a grill just going holy shit just ripping stop signs off the beam that's what we need in 2025 yeah just don't let russian machine never breaks uh see this yeah they'll never forgive you no uh it's it's a very cool story very excited for montreal canadians fans uh hopefully they can stay there uh what you know and what a changeover from the first three months of the season where they look like crap uh they didn't they were not playing as well at all and they took a step forward the way that you mentioned at the beginning of the season they

needed to they buddy and but they disagreed with you there no we don't need to take a step forward No, and now that they have, hey, any Habs fan who yipped at me for saying that this season Montreal needs to take a step forward, permission to enjoy this revoked. You don't get to enjoy this. You wanted them to be bad. You wanted them to be bad. You wanted me to be wrong, and I said they'd be good,

and you wanted me to be wrong, which means you wanted them to be bad. So shame on you. you don't get to enjoy the habs being good you don't get to i was right about them being good where was your faith this leaf fan was all over it where were you exactly wow yeah i don't think they'll ever recover from that they might um uh under the radar montreal slipping into that playoff spot is as a result of columbus not kind of getting back to what we thought they would be like it's it was such a great story for the entire year up until this moment where they've they've kind of they've fallen on by the wayside and lost their playoffs hey jesse uh what's columbus's last

10 oh it says four and six hey what's detroit's last 10 jesse two and eight that is once the season's over father whoever are the writers the beat writers for the detroit red wings i can't wait wait to just read all of them if this remains this way that's this is going to be an all-timer journalism feast the bruins are going to get such a good player i hate this what's hilarious is detroit will get a less good player at least if right now oh 100 as as is tradition jesse can you can you pull up the western conference wildcard picture because here's here's what we need boo minnesota don't let hayden hear this here sorry he's in the other room boo minnesota and more like saint buis that's what we need to happen we need kevin lankanen to keep kevin

lankanening and uh the flames to stop abandoning dustin wolf worth mentioning the flames did beat the new york rangers last night two to one and still two games in hand on st louis they got a game in hand of vancouver game in hand on minnesota i think i don't have my glasses how did the rangers how did the rangers let the flames win new york's the most depressing team to watch in the whole league every time there's an opportunity to do something they can't get it done they have no will to win a hockey game second half it's a back-to-back with travel it's awful it's awful hockey well i mean okay let's let me be like good for calgary what a bounce back i agree but let's the new york angle is is the stronger angle which is yeah good for calgary it's great

but like i was such a fan of what new york did at the deadline i think they'll be back next year it might be back this year uh well i think i still think they're gonna make the playoffs um dallas oh yeah you're not so i'm i'm not backing off on that i right now because it's montreal versus new york yep taking the rangers i want montreal and ottawa in rah rah canada okay I think New York will do it. And I think the reason is his name is Igor Shcherkin. I think he can turn it on. It's been a garbage year for a franchise that's chaotic at the top.

Eventually, that filters down to the team. I think it's pretty hard to overcome the start they've had, right? But their start, October, November, was garbage. They were like last place. So the fact that they're here, I think, says something about where that team actually is. Yes. Is that fair? they probably weren't the president's trophy winners they were never the basement dwellers

they were never there with the sabers they're somewhere in the middle yeah right like they were with the sabers and speaking of jesse i want to i want to throw a graphic up on the screen can i throw this to you um uh the sabers here's here's a you know i want kevin adams if he's watching this to ignore everything we've ever said kevin adams never make a trade again never don't because every time you do the player that you trade even though i do like the norris trade for them every time you do the player that you trade does really really good elsewhere what you need to do is figure out what the hell the problem is in buffalo that you can't get those performances out of out of them and this goes back before kevin adams uh brandon montour jake mccabe

jack eichel sam reinhardt who else who else we want to mention oh yeah good good list uh lena solmark oh lena solmark's a good one they let him get away he was great and they let him get away uh you know who they drafted brandon hagel no way they drafted brandon hagel good pick yes he'd be great for them imagine um can't look at dylan cousin's stats since coming to ottawa oh my god for uh this is since joining the senators he is first in scoring chances first in slot shots on net first in hits first in face-off wins and controlled zone entries second so he's doing everything and sabers fans have a legitimate gripe here which is dude you made a lot of money why couldn't you just do that here i heard that with jack eichel too well

right there's some consistencies with the story something is wrong in the water in buffalo like this is why we talk about the blackhawks differently than we talk about the sharks like bedard looks miserable celebrini looks like he's at an amusement park every day like there's there's something about attitude there's something about mood and the mood in buffalo is always grim the last player to show up in buffalo and have this bright eye and bushy tailed attitude about it like i get to play for the buffalo sabers was alex tuck and he came in they're from buffalo yeah like fired out of a cannon and uh who's jacked to be who ends up on the buffalo sabers and it's like i've done everything right if you get drafted there

it's one thing did taylor hall sign with the sabers a few years ago like hell yeah i made the right choice no he signed there because he had to he took that deal because he messed up Because he and his agent didn't take the big, fat extension they were offered. Yeah, and Buffalo was like, okay, we're geniuses. We're going to overpay you for one year. Trade you. Trade you for a couple of packs of smokes. They did not get a great return for Taylor Hall.

You know why? Taylor Hall was ass garbage for them. Why? Every time they get a guy, they're ass garbage. wow and then it's quite the term they leave and they're better that almost every time something's the well is poisoned and it ain't the fans so what's been there the whole time ownership and management no not management very not management they keep rotating through those guys i have a hard time blaming kevin adams for anything he's just some other guy who's failed

in a long line of guys who have failed at some point the common denominator is the person who signs all their paychecks it's ownership there you go jesse anything to add uh we can take a look at the playoff odds one second uh sport logic had the playoff odds for the west and the east The Blues actually have the best playoff odds to make the playoffs. They have 45% chance to make the playoffs. The Canucks, 26%. The Flames, 25%. Utah, 9%.

That's how SportLogic is breaking out the playoff odds right now. In the East, they have Montreal with a 43% chance to make the playoffs. Detroit, 20%. The Rangers, 19%. The Islanders, 17%. and the Red Wings 7%. I know the graphics guy was like, do I have to? We can't rule out the Islanders going on a little bit of a run.

They snuck in last year, despite everybody thinking they couldn't do it. Games in hand as well. They have an opportunity with a couple games in hand. I don't rule out the Islanders making the playoffs there as well. Hey, the Pittsburgh Penguins are not mathematically eliminated yet. Only one team is. San Jose. And we'll be there next week.

Yes, as truthers. The other thing I want to quickly mention, NHL Global Series will happen in Stockholm. Get your vormchock a lot and get to Avicii Arena. Hell yeah. Both real things. Just a stunning lineup. No, they're not.

Stunning lineup. Not as a real thing. Stunning lineup of the Penguins and the Preds. They'll be fun games. What are you talking about? It's cool. I'm so excited. Two of the NHL's worst teams.

You got the wrong. I know it's Carlson versus. You got the wrong grade of this. It's when the Swedes score in Sweden, the roof flies off. Nylander, roof. Freaking Lucas Raymond was there for that. Roof. Swedes, I mean the Swedes.

The Pens got Carlsen. They got Ricard Raquel. The Preds got Forsberg. And I can't think of anyone else. England. Who? Andreas England. and that's gonna lose it for that price of admission right there lose it for that guy

uh we're gonna come undone for that listen it is a good swedish matchup it's just you just kind of wish one of those teams was a little better maybe they'll be good next year it's all about the game in front of you yeah true it's like uh last year what was one of the better games it was sends red wings when friggin stutzla scored in overtime because reimer ducked I forgot about that. That was a great game. I want to say there was like a blown 4-0 lead. It was a great game.

And one quick last thing before we get to the John Forslund interview. NHL Olympic update. Hey, it's Italy. The plan as of now regarding Olympic rosters is for each country to name six players in June. We don't know when. Why are we doing this? And the rest of the rosters will be end of December. So I would imagine post-Christmas.

It's the 31st. Well, there you go. Pierre Lebrun did not say the 31st. I think Frank had the 31st. They're both right. Yes. McKinnon, Crosby, McDavid, McCarr. Petrangelo.

No. No? Yeah, but it's... Yes, but no. Who's a good lock? Bennington. And I need a fifth square. Honestly, they might.

Can you give me a fifth square? Okay, sorry. What do we do? I have McDavid, McKinnon, McCarr, Crosby. Crosby, yeah. McDavid. Did I say that? McDavid, McKinnon, McCarr, Crosby.

There you go. Oh, okay. There's the four. Yeah. Who's five? Binnington. What am I missing? Binnington.

Do you do Tate? No. Do you do Marner? Do you do Tate? Marner. Oh, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Marner.

There you go. Leaf. You don't do the goalie? You don't do a goalie? No, no. Leave it. Leave the goalie. We went through that.

Point? Point? Marner. You nailed it. But there's six, though. Oh. They got to name six. Oh.

The three Ms. Yeah. Oh, four Ms. now. No, let's repeat them again. McKinnon. McDavid. Oh, no, no. Crosby.

No, shut up. Maddie's murder. McCarr. I'm just looking at the Four Nations face-off roster for Canada. Nick Suzuki. Nick Suzuki. Yes, is going to be. Yeah, I think we nailed it with McDavid.

Stone Point. It's Petrangelo, guys. or Doug Armstrong guy, Petrangelo, Bruce Cassidy, Pete DeBoer. He said no to the tournament. Stoner Point. Nah. I think it's Stoner Point. Petro.

Coach Point. They're wrong and smelly. Yeah. It's Point. It's Braden Point. That's the correct answer. You think Petro said no to Four Nations and he's going to get one of the early slots? No. You're on drugs. Well, yeah, because they're salty about that kind of stuff. Oh, yes.

Team Canada management is the pettiest people on earth. I do want to say that I think... I think we nailed it. I think he made a mistake. Yeah, we've been through that. Yeah. On the USA side. Oh, okay. I can do this too. Matthews? Yep.

Eichel? Yep. Hughes? Yep. Both of them. Luke Hughes? No, I'm kidding. Adam Fox. Ooh. Connor Hellebuck. Hellebuck, yes. Wow. wow one guy who is a fraud i disagree i disagree with fox okay okay okay so i mean he's gonna make

it scratch that this is oh i'm fucking idiot um scratch fox oh oh i'm scratching i'm an idiot matthew kachuk yeah there you go i think you gotta go both i think you gotta go you can't matthew and brady who do you pull off that then you gotta have both no i don't think you have to have both i think matt is the lock i austin's a lock hughes both uses are a lock i think um and then hellebuck's the lock do you name i think they take i don't think there's room for brady they take jack hughes off because of the injury here's an alternate perspective what if you named all six members of the minnesota wild medical staff sorry was that too bad all right all right Very cool.

I think that's a pretty good six for USA. We can do the Brady for Jack flip-flop, whichever way you want it. But I think the other five, then you lost. I think it depends on, because Jack's out for the season. If Brady's in the playoffs and he has a great run, then you have to name him because Jack had the sort of older thing. But it's not a hate against Jack. Quick question. Playoff dependent.

Can we do a Sweden one, too? Sure. All the guys we mentioned from the Preds-Pens game. Yeah, so Raquel. England. Here, let me do this. Carlson. Hedman.

Yep. Hedman. Nylander. Nylander. Pedersen. Yeah. I don't know, Jesse. He's going to be on the team.

Yeah, but are you naming him in your top six? You can't. I think Pedersen makes it. Which one? So you don't say Ricard Raquel, who's got over 30 goals in here? I'm going to pick one. Ricard Raquel? Forsberg?

Oh, yeah. Phillip. How many is that? Five? Yeah, ish. And Lucas Raymond. Oh, Lucas Raymond's a good one. Then maybe Zbigniew Zabinijad. No, you can't name Zbigniew Zabinijad with the season he's had. So Forsberg.

Sorry. Oh, Darlene too. Any goalies? Gustafsson, Markstrom, Allmark. You could toss up. We don't know who's going to be the starter there. So three defense, three forwards. So Hedman, Carlson, Hedman, Darlene.

Darlene Yeah Boom Viking Viking Viking Raymond That's not fair Nylander Forsberg

Okay That's the only way You can keep Raquel Off that list for me Because you can't put Or Who cares You go Pedersen

Instead of Raymond Yeah I don't think You put Pedersen Based on performance Well okay Omitting the last two weeks Yeah I'd have Raymond Ahead of Pedersen

For sure And then do you do The thing where it's like We don't want Raymond Because he's the young guy and you throw on Adrian Kempe. No. For one of the top?

No. For one of the first six? Raymond's a stud. Okay. This is the best of the best. I would give it to Zibanejad over Kempe. Eriksson Ek? No.

No. It was good. It was very good. Raymond, look. Matthias Ekholm? Great player. Oh. Yeah, but you can't have four defensemen.

Yes, you frigging can. Who cares? We're Sweden. That's true. They'd be like, you know what? We'll just do it our own way. We're big. All right.

All right. So let's do Finland. That's fun. Henry Yokiharu. Shut up. Yanni Håkon. No, I'm kidding. Martin Paulo.

Martin Paulo. Finland's actually not bad. No, Finland's amazing. Laine. Yeah. Barkov. Aho. Barkov.

Three locked in. Mikko. Heiskanen. Ooh. Then we get a little... You got to put Mikko in there. Ranty. Goalie?

Ranty. Oh, Mikko Ranty. Oh, yeah. Fuck. And then... That's five. And a goalie. And a goalie.

And then we can do Rupe Hintz. We could do... I don't want to... We could do a goalie, which would be UC Soros. He's a stud, man. He's a star. I think UC Soros. That year, UC Soros is six.

But he's a star. He is a star. Yeah. Because then we're getting to like Capococco or Eric Paula or Granlund. All good players, but not star. Yeah. Terran. Let's go Soros.

Yeah. Because Soros still... Listen, he's had a down year with the Preds, but let's be honest, it's not his fault. He's going to start. Yeah, and he sells tickets. The top six are the guys that sell the tickets. We're getting so caught up on all guys

who are definitely going to be there. No, we're doing the talk. But it's fun. It's fun. I love that. I love that shit. I enjoyed that. Let's get caught up, baby.

All right, Germany. Dreisaitl. Marco Schurm. No. Nico Schurm. Nico Schurm. No. Yeah, Dreisaitl.

Hold on. J.J. Paterka. NHL players. Okay, yeah, J.J. Paterka. Okay, Moritz Seider. Oh! Leon Dreisaitl. Tim Stutzla.

Philip Grubauer. Oh, Tim Stutzla. Grubauer. We can get to six. J.J. Paterka. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're at five. We're at five.

Oh, God. Lucas Reichel? No. Oh! Like, he's Chicago, right? What's he at? What's his season like? Not great.

Not great. because I don't think they've utilized him well. Current NHL German player. Nico Sturm, if he wins in America. Active NHL... Okay, there are only seven. Oh, never mind. So there are Dreisaitl, Stutz, Lesider,

Paterka, Sturm, Reichel, Grubauer. Who's the odd man out? Grubauer. Okay. I think. What? He's their starting goal? I know, I know.

Okay, well, then I guess it's Lucas Reichel. Okay, yeah. Tied to the veteran. Yeah, because Lucas Reichel has 52 career points in 158 games. Niko Sturm is 91 and 321. Don't let Grubauer being bad get in the way of him literally being their starter.

I got another one to throw at you. Alright, alright. Czechia. All of Alan's clients. Oh, yeah. Alan Walsh, Alan Walsh, Alan Walsh. Jonathan Huberto, Max Pacioretty. Yeah, David Yerchak. Marc-Andre Fleury. Pasternak. Okay.

Nietzsche. Yeah. Palat. Oh. Hurdle. Hronik. and then we get a little it's got to be gudas he's the captain ratto gudas for sure that's it that's six yeah that's a pretty good that's good that's pretty good that's a pretty good six who else is gonna be there great britain like lucas lucas dostol it would be criminal not to have him in there but i get why you don't because he's oh he's not gonna make the six he's

not gonna make the six i think you gotta have gudas he was the captain and they won the world championship can we do pretend maybe russia makes it they redo the yeah i would love who's their six oh yeah oh v oh v oh yeah kucherov kucherov kaprizov now he's in and they are in shisterkin that's oh somebody somebody's gotta go oh you already have vassy you can okay now no you're not just jerkins you're doing two goalies what are you talking about No. Are you telling me they don't? Like, those are two of the best goalies in the NHL right now.

Yeah, one of them is going to play. They're like top. If you were to name top three NHL goalies, they're both in it. Adam, only one of them is going to play. He'll be. Well, that's the Russian coach's problem. You can't put the backup goalie in the starting six. Yeah, you can.

That's hilarious. I think you go Shveshnikov. That's a good one. Shveshnikov? No, you drop the goalies, both of them. No, you can't do that. I can't play favorites. The easy thing to do for all these countries is to do three forwards, two D, one goalie.

No. You got to do the top six stars. Okay. Regardless of position. So you're going to say no goalies when they have Shcherkin, Vasilevsky, and Bobrovsky. Can you count this for me? Okay. Kaprizov, Malkin, Kucherov.

Panarin, Ovi, Sergachev. No. You got to have a goalie. Or instead of Sergachev, Shveshnikov. You got to have a goalie. off Vasily. Leave off Shostakovich. Because one of them is going to be the backup goalie. You're not making

that decision in June. You leave him off. Ovi Malkin. Kucherov. Kaprizov Panarin. You got five. Kaprizov Panarin. You can't leave any of those guys off. Vasilevsky. Over Shostakovich.

I honestly think Vasily will start that. Two cups. He's been the better goalie by a decent margin this year. On a better team. Adam, do you know the geopolitical landscape? Your friends in the billionaire club are always

making the decisions for the world with your being the little puppet master. Yes, well, I was on that call yesterday. Yeah, what is the landscape amongst Russia and making the Olympics? I think if they, if there is some sort of peace deal, whether or not it's a good peace deal, I'm not getting into. But if there is a

ceasefire peace deal that can be held to for more than a month uh like as soon as the i the double ihf has already said we want russia back we need them to wrap up what's going on we need this needs to stop so the second it stops russia's in the olympics and uh i think it's a very good possibility because here's the deal uh if you're looking at it from a russian perspective that gives putin a nice pr win and you know having hockey in the olympics like you remember the sochi uh beer cans where they had like the russian hockey player taking the canadian woman to get away from the american woman do you guys remember yeah there was a russian tall boy can at the olympics i remember

this being a story where the russian hockey player is more handsome and attractive uh to the canadian woman than the canadian player is it was like a fun little russian joke um and yeah i know i know but that was like an actual story and it was a thing that you could buy when you were there so yeah i would think that that they'll be if if this peace deal is for real there it is this is this is what you're talking about yeah oh my gosh yeah and there's the canadian guy looking on um if the it's weird it's weird as hell i know uh but it's true it happened uh the i think that i think they're in but it's a question of you know there's a lot more geopolitics that i'm not getting into here because this isn't a political podcast

on that particular matter. Not interested. Don't care to expand on it. But yeah, that's what it'll be. I'm still mesmerized by these beer cans. That's just insane, right? I'd never knew this was a thing.

Something. It's 1960 somewhere. Don't put the camera on me. I don't want the camera on me looking at this shit. Matty, could you zoom in on something? Don't stop it. It came on the screen, and I was like, whoa, hey, whoa. No, thank you.

Just because you're looking at it doesn't mean you made it. What's wrong with you? I don't know. I don't care. I don't want to be associated with this in any way, Jay. You know, Jesse, we were all in the room when Steve drew this. Yeah. It was a joke.

You can't say anything. All right, Mr. Forslund. Let's bring on John Forslund, who is an absolute legend, and watch Steve get super embarrassed about a minute into this interview. All right, from the commentary box at the top of Scotiabank. Matty, can we get a shot here of the ice here? Is this NHL footage? Oh, but the game isn't on yet, is it?

It's close enough to puck drop. All right, fine. I'm concerned about the ice. All right, fine. We don't want to get the video pulled from YouTube. We'd love to welcome to the show for the very first time, John Forslund. Oh, wow. Thank you.

It's my pleasure. You get a round of applause when you join us. I love you guys. We love you. Can I leave now? That's all we wanted. That's all we wanted. Well, first off, I think the crazy thing is,

and we didn't believe it when we met you a couple weeks ago, but you said you actually watched the show. I do. Which is amazing. Halfway. Halfway. One episode. They are long.

One cast. You watched it on mute, right? No, no. I watch you guys. That counts as a few. You guys, no, no. You get my attention, and I watch, and you're the next generation.

I applaud you guys. Well, we appreciate it. You know, it's funny. We were mic checking and John said, do we need to yell? And I'm like, well, you're in the right place. You don't need to, but I'd like to. It's a lot of fun. You get it out. So we had a great conversation with you in the green room downstairs a couple weeks ago. And that's what kind of started off the idea of doing an interview in the first place, because we could not. Steve and I left that conversation going, oh, my God, Jesse, you can't believe what he said.

Like, it's just the stories you had. And so we thought, oh, my God, like our audience would absolutely love this. And I know when a kid comes back from school and they like learned a new word or like have a new friend. That's what these guys were. We made a new friend today, dad. Yeah. You settle him down. I did. I did. We'll talk. Let's rope it in a little bit here. But it's it's you know, you're somebody who has such an unbelievable history covering this game. and not just this game, not just the NHL game,

but you have years in the AHL, in the 80s too. And I want to go to that. But first I want to talk about your schedule because obviously you're doing the Seattle games and we were talking about your flights in today and that sort of thing. This year has been sort of unbelievable for you because you're putting in the type of road trip NHL teams do, but double. Maybe double, you know, multiple cities and time zones and everything.

But let's just knock this out early. I love what I do, right? I love the game, always have. And now I'm getting an opportunity to do something that really matters. And I say that with all due respect to what we do in the United States and all the work I've done starting in the 90s with ESPN and then, remember, Versus back in the dark ages. Versus.

It's really dark. By the way, the last time the Sabres made the playoffs, it was on Versus. It was on Versus, yes. And anyway, yeah, that was something. It sure was. But it was versus, I guess, was better than the Outdoor Life Network, which was what it was at the beginning of that. But then NBC for a number of years. And then the world changed in the United States.

It changed for me a little bit. It changed with me leaving North Carolina in the hurricanes. It changed for me where I didn't have a lot of national work the first time the bread was broken and they changed. So I went to Seattle. I had a choice between going to Seattle or Tampa Bay, and the Seattle situation was so good and still is that it's just unbelievable, and I've had the four best years of my career there with that team. And then now I'm back with TNT again and doing games for them on a part-time basis

and a lot of it in the playoffs, but then this gig was presented, and this has become an unbelievable experience for me. and so I don't feel fatigued at all you can run through my schedule and you can look at it and I know my wife does and she shakes her head and she worries about me constantly going to see you this week yeah and she doesn't she isn't but but it's all good it's it's all good so when the game drives everybody drives you guys it gives you the passion to do what you do gives me the passion to do what I do and it gives the fans a passion to follow it right and that's what we're all looking for is just to draw them in more to a great game and a great product and go from there

change can be you know big and scary uh and you know maybe you know decades in into a amazing career how's how's it been for you has it been like uh like a fun challenge or like what were your feelings heading into it the amazon show or just the change leaving north carolina leaving the hurricanes and getting on with this kind of both of them yeah it was a kind of catch-all Well, it's a really good catch-all question, Steve. Oh, yeah. Very good. I like catch-all questions.

I'm so good at this. Let's catch it. You can't really miss. And let's spread it around and see where we go here. Things have changed once or twice for you. Tell us about it. It's my first catch-all question of the day, Jess. I think Steve did a great job.

He did. Yeah. Great delivery. Always do. Oh, yeah. There might be some nerves at play, John. No, I don't know about that. No, it was a very serious question.

He gave you the opportunity to take it wherever you want. Well, let's go back in time. it okay so the north carolina thing changed my world and rocked our world rocked our family now remember when that thing happened uh and the situation broke down uh it was in the middle of of what was the beginning of the pandemic right so i don't know if you guys remember but i was the first individual exposed to rudy gobert's hotel room i didn't remember that no no i had no idea so in march of 2020 we were at the westin jersey city and uh we had come from chicago the hurricanes had come from chicago and uh we're going to play the devils on a thursday and the

wednesday night is when the world changed and that's when rudy had his infamous press conference where he touched all the microphones right and he was the first pro athlete to have coronavirus and all these different things and i remember watching it and texting our pr guy and saying uh get a load of this guy in espn rudy gobert get a load of it what's going on here anyway the next day the two buses the league shuts down and we're going home and the two buses are getting ready to leave and i'm on the media bus obviously and the pr guy same guy gets on comes kicks everybody off the bus and says i got to talk to you so i thought that finally they got me i'm getting fired it took a pandemic but after all these wars with objectivity and peter carmanis god bless him who

used to yell at me all the time because i never blasted officials enough for him and i was always kind to the opponents and i don't sell down goals when the other team scores on local packages anyway they finally got me it's over no he said you've been exposed to the coronavirus really is Rudy Gobert's room in Detroit oh my god so we were in Detroit and the the Utah team had left and the Carolina came in and that was the last game I ever did for Carolina was in Detroit and Rudy was there and I had his room and I said well I had his I had his room room it's a little dusty yeah i had to clean up there's 20 people in there swabbing it down i came in i was like what's going on oh don't worry about it sir just lay down okay no but

anyway um so so i said what do we do what do we do and and uh he said you gotta call a teen doctor so i called uh josh bloom is his name a great doctor of the carolina hurricanes and I said, Josh, what's going on here? And he goes, do you have symptoms? I said, no, I feel pretty good. Well, go home and put yourself away in quarantine for two weeks because I can't get you tested. It's just it's really politicized, and there's nothing we can do about this.

Yeah, the tests weren't around then. He did not say gong show, but he said another type of show. You can say that word on this show if you want to. Okay, well, it's a shit show. That's what he said, and that's what's happening in the world right now. So I went home and stayed in my basement for two weeks and did a series of podcasts and interviews about being someone who was exposed to Rudy Gobert's hotel room and got some notoriety for that. And then that was March. And then in June,

my contract was going to expire. And here comes this take it or leave it type situation that I had no choice. So my world changed. I went to the bubble for 72 days and worked for NBC. And then it was after that that was presented the two things. But I never thought, to get back to your question that would happen i expected to be you don't take it for granted but i've been there almost 25 years with that one team i thought i'd do my national work and continue with the hurricanes i was very proud of what i did there along with other people um but anyway it changed and i was offered like i said a couple of opportunities and todd lay wiki called me up and sold me on seattle with ron francis and it was the best thing i ever did the light wikis are something hey yeah

they're something and they're great they're great sports executives as forward thinkers they're always ahead of where everybody else is and that's why they've been able to get it done in so many different places uh tim and todd lewicki are very special you know all about tim and this stuff so you worked a lot in american markets you come you do prime hockey yeah canadian it's on canadian television you're going to a lot of canadian games you're here in toronto it's different right hockey's different up here well it's you know what what's different is it's it's it's it's it's the reason for just about everything you know what i mean it's it's it's it's that's how it is now i've been in hockey for 40 years and i am american and when this happened

i was i was flattered number one and then i was also floored by a great deal of responsibility that would come attached because now a canadian package with an american play caller well a lot of other canadians surrounding the broadcast but i wondered how it would be well you know i think i've been around long enough that people understand how i do games and i think my my call is a classic call at least that's how i would describe it and my influences as a young announcer came from a lot of canadian hockey announcers like dan kelly and danny gallivan and people like that doc emmerich in the united states and that's where it ends kind of with those three individuals and bob cole but bob cole was more of a contemporary for me he was already going and doing what he was doing when i

was starting and continuing and getting to know him and being very shy around him and in awe of him and everything but i was already a professional when bob was still doing his great work so it's that legacy that we're kind of picking up here along with all the great canadian broadcasters that we have today that are doing network games and local games here in canada so there's there's a burden there and i respect it and i love it and i love hockey and always have since i was seven, eight years old, as far back as I can remember, and you know, that's why I'm thrilled

to be part of this. This is a two-parter and it's not catch-all. I promise I put some thought into this. He's going to try to recover. Yeah, I'm going to try to recover. Well, I thought it was a great answer, and it takes a great question, you know. You're really good. I'm so good. Thanks. Thanks, Forzy. Can I call you Forzy? You can call me Forzy. That's great, man.

Just for this show. So, we were talking before this show that's going so well. He's too running. Yeah, come on. We were talking before the show about the flight schedule and every town that you're in. And I think, what was it, nine games in 11 days? Yeah, that's what you said before the interview. It was so good.

How do you, well, first of all, walk us through the schedule because I couldn't believe it. And then after that, I have a follow-up question. Okay, so just this pocket in time is a game in Seattle on Sunday night against – who did they play last night? Winnipeg. There you go. I know. Winnipeg, and then an overnight flight to Chicago,

and a Chicago jump to Toronto for the game here on Monday night, and then tomorrow morning I'll be back to Chicago for the Kraken, and then we'll continue on. And some of these weeks have been 7-9 and 8-11 and things like that. Yeah. Wow. but it's always first flight out in the morning don't fool around with anything else that's when you know they start changing the pieces on the on the poker table and it gets a little sketchy so

even if you want to sleep in for another hour or two i go early i try to get as much work done on the airplane as possible that's hard uh you know but i have a set routine that i do for every game which consists of about maybe four and a half hours of prep work. I've got to figure that out. When does that come? It would probably be a hell of a lot easier if you could just travel and sleep and show up and do the game. But as you guys know, you've got to put some preparation into it.

And so that's what takes time. And you've got to not get frustrated, figure out ways to do it. I've learned this over the years on how to do that on consecutive games. And then realize that, you know, when the game starts, take a deep breath. don't try too hard because your brain will when you're tired will play tricks on you so um there's a method behind that too so the second part of that is your voice is incredible thank you i feel like i'm talking to the television right now and in many ways i am uh we do the podcast we do four podcasts a week i do a video after every leafs game i've started

to do more streams i i do not have the vocal uh workload that you have but over the past couple years i've been losing my voice a lot yeah how do you how do you keep your voice healthy well you regulate it and when i was younger i would lose my voice um there was a long road trip in hartford in 1995 16 days you know daryl ray razor yep dallas stars he's a great friend of mine and and we were a duo for the first time full-time together with Sports Channel New England covering the Whalers back in those days. And we were younger, and we had a lot of fun. Yep.

Okay? Sure. And so when you have a lot of fun, you kind of burn it at both ends, and this is a hard job to do, although we pulled it off somehow, when you have a lot of fun. But there was a game in Vancouver, and Andrei Nikolishin, as a russian player and he scored an overtime winning goal for this unbelievably almost undefeated six or seven game road trip the whale was on and my voice cracked on the overtime goal

to the point where sports center down south espn picked it up oh no as a blooper as a blooper and they said here's a call and here's peter brady of the brady bunch remember that show Do you guys remember that? You're probably too young for that. Yeah. Well, anyway, his voice cracked in a couple episodes when he was going through puberty, as I was. And so anyway, yeah, so that was embarrassing. So over time, you get older, and you have to change a little bit.

But I've recognized a couple things. Water is key. Yep. A ton of it. Caffeine is a killer. But I have to have coffee. I drink it. I probably drink too much in season black coffee that constricts your vocal cords. The water will loosen it up. And so I drink a ton of water and stay hydrated.

The planes will suck all of that out of you. I'm a little dry around the lips tonight. You know, from long travel overnight, you know, you get these warning signs, you know, it's time to pound on the water. and then you just um you know you learn how to control your voice and you learn that during the day um you know doing long podcasts with people is probably not uh probably not a good thing okay well uh well listen right jazz we're supposed to take a hint you and i can go in the hallway no no no but anyway um but that's that that's it and and uh uh but but you you learn over over time you learn how to how to manage it okay but it's natural and the worst thing we hate in our business is when people say geez didn't sound a little hoarse last night oh yeah right don't you

hate that yes or are you sick yeah here how's that you know but we all get sick yeah yeah and you get congested and then when you do this you get self-conscious and it plays tricks on you now one of the things you told us when steve and i met you in the green room a couple weeks ago there's two things i want to hit on the first thing and we had seen this because uh the lovely people at amazon pr had brought us through and oh yeah and is and what i'm pointing to there it is are your notes now yeah uh maddie's getting them on camera so i'm not going to touch them because i don't want to mess with them okay good but i i want to uh you start this process at 5 30 in the morning i start i try to start the shell the day before okay okay so the day before is like the information

that you know carry over because everything's to date so you can't do everything the day before because the numbers are not real until the next day so rankings and and if the team played the night before whatever so as far as the stats are concerned that's what you have to keep in mind but anyway the day before i will start and then uh the day of i will complete that mess over there and what struck me about it when we saw it before we met you was it's completely illegible to us right so it's really my shorthand it is your short it's like looking at a doctor's notepad so what types of like you well adam all on your own i did so that's the same thing i developed you know no one told me or taught me how to do this i didn't go to school for it and

i just started doing as a hobby when i was a little boy and i broadcast every single boston bruins game with my dad from say age uh eight to about 16 where i kind of thought okay we better stop this because we're going into high school or in high school and this is a little bit different um but as a little boy his his buddies would come over the Bruins were great in the 70s with Bobby Orr and Esposito and all that grew and they could have won the cup every year but didn't they probably had too much fun too but uh but you know um I started doing something similar to that because I took it seriously and I taped all the games on an old cassette recorder unfortunately i lost all those tapes um my dad was my color guy he did color the guys would come over

we had a we lived 90 miles west of boston we had an old parabolic antenna that situated on top of the house and we had a booster that he got it like a sears and roebuck and he attached it to it we got the signal so tv 38 did all the games when they're winning cups in the early 70s and i would prepare for the games memorize the players i can give you rosters i can give you this 1975 philadelphia flyers by number right now wow you know number three tom bladen you know uh number four barry ashby number five larry goodenough number six moose dupont number seven bill barber number eight dave schultz number nine uh uh mad dog uh kelly bob kelly wow hey that's number 10 Bill Clement. Don Selesky

number 11. Bill Clement, who by the way became a broadcast writer. Do those things never leave you or are you like a computer where eventually No, I think I was, God gave me a gift to talk, obviously communicate but most importantly I have a memory

if I write stuff down, pretty much photographic and that's what it is. So by writing that chicken scratch I remember basic, I remember a lot of it verbatim but I got pretty much a handle and I've realized over time that 5%, 3% of that's going on the air tonight. The rest of it's trash.

When I was younger, I had to get 80% of that. And that's a big mistake a lot of young broadcasters make. I'm going to let you people at home know how much I know instead of the other way around. The game's first. And that preparation means that that 3% is worth it, right? Whatever that makes it to the air. Yeah, because it's really poignant.

it right because it's really something as you know uh that means something at that time and he can when the game's over you can say yeah that's going to register with the fans yeah because they're not going to remember he has points in 10 of his last 13 and you know 17 points in that time period they're not going to remember all of that no just like the graphics they're going to see the graphic graphic goes away remember goals saves fights funny things that happen on the broadcast excitement that's what resonates right that's what you guys do you bring life to the game and talking about it i i mean this sincerely that's why we're going where we're going because it it it's important it really is one thing that i know that that i wanted to hit on because you told us an unbelievable

story you know we were talking again in the green room this is we did all the pre-interview prep two weeks ago but you i i said to you like what was the ahl like in the 1980s because i remember talking to stevie thomas about that we did a charity tournament with him and he was like i would try so hard when i was with the leafs trying to break in because if they sent me down to the all the big mean guys would target me yeah right because i was the hot prospect yeah and you told an unbelievable story about a 25 minute fight yeah and it featured four future nhl coaches four future nhl coaches and all i'll say about this is that the nine seconds that everybody loved of the four nations happened virtually every game so that's that's basically like this

was going on and my phone was blowing up and what is happening and i'm like well this this used to happen all the time you believe it yeah and coaches used to say we need a line brawl you know we've lost five in a row we need a line brawl tonight right and it was a way to bring the team together It was absolutely barbaric. But anyway, so this happened in 1987. Springfield Indians, Fredericton Express, Quebec minor league team, and the Indians were the New York Islanders affiliate. Gord Lane, legendary four-time Stanley Cup winner with the Islander,

defenseman, tough guy, coaching Springfield. A guy named Ron LaPointe coaching Fredericton. They end up in the runway between the two benches in a fight for some reason. So it's off the ice, the fight starts. Off the ice with the police and the stick boy. We called him the fridge, the stick boy. Carl was his name. And poor kid was, he was about five feet tall and about eight feet wide.

He was a big boy. He was big. We can relate. But he was wedged between the two benches and his face, because it's all on video. It's pretty good resolution in terms of cable back then. Anyway, and the teams are coming together. Mick Ficotta started this fight.

and he too was a legendary tough guy and anyway it went from the benches onto the ice and it went on for in excess of 25 minutes mark crawford bruce budro todd mcclellan claude julian were all players in the game they were all fighting they weren't the main combatants but they were close ron tugnut fought a kid named marty wakeland two goalies one of the best goalie fights you're ever going to see but the key part of this and this is gruesome but the you guys you like this and everybody will everybody watching this we like the bruce will like this it happened there was a guy named jacques mayotte that played for fredericton and a kid named dale henry his nickname was the colonel from from saskatchewan he he was uh for the islanders anyway uh they

squared off at center ice and they're in a tussle and it's a long bout and and colonel henry dale Henry grabs Mayotte by the sweater and blotches his head and headbutts him and splits him open. He goes, face plants. He face plants. He's down. He tries to get up. He's wobbling around down again.

He goes to the room. We didn't have concussion spotters back in those days. So he goes, we used to put dizzy spells in the game notes when a player was not playing. Yeah. What do you think that was? That's true. Dizzy spells. Dizzy spells. It'd be like,

you know shoulder back dizzy spells yeah it's true things have changed a little thank goodness right so anyway uh mayott leaves the ice the head split open goes to the room and minutes later with a headband or bandage wrapped around his head he comes back and joins the fight again and he looked like a an image from the spirit of 76 or something like i i mean he went to war and here he is with a bandage you know around his head and it's available on youtube okay And you just Google it, and there it is. You're a young me, and I hadn't gone through puberty yet. John, your stories are unbelievable.

Thank you in your busy schedule for making time for us. This was a pleasure. We really do mean a lot. Love you guys. Thank you. Keep up the great work. Can I make one quick request? Yeah.

Can you tell us it's on Prime Monday Night Hockey just into the camera? Would that be okay? Remember, it's on Monday. it's on prime it's only on prime that's awesome 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 complete