The Steve Dangle Podcast - Mirtle But Free | July 22, 2019

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, James Mirtle (@mirtle on Twitter) joins the show to talk about leaving The Globe and Mail for The Athletic and the current digital media landscape (00:00), the Milan Lucic for James Neal trade (47:00), let's revisit the Cody Ceci conversation... why is he on the Leafs? (60:00), let's revisit 2019 game 7 versus Boston... what was Babcock doing? (1:06:00), the Leafs backup goalie situation (1:16:00), no news on Mitch Marner (1:19:00), and the press conference (1:40:00). Originally aired: July 22, 2019 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/mwrugQLFHwM Merch: https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/fancydangleshirts Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Subscribe to us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/steve-dangle-podcast/id669828195?mt=2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Steve Dangle Podcast with your hosts, Steve Dangle and Adam Wilde. well it's been a while yes it's been a long time and for reasons that we really can't get into we couldn't we couldn't make this happen before but we're so happy to be able to do this again and hopefully far more regularly one of our ogs one of the guys who we throw it back first first top like first three guests on the show something like that yeah like your old oh god how many pieces of property you go okay my condo my condo when we used to do it at the dinner table at my condo yes one mr. James Myrtle lent his credibility to our little show and he's back today thank you James for coming in thank you thank you and I actually

remember the first time James when you came over it's I was first off extremely intimidated second you brought beer too which was really cool and I was like nice we had a beer and it had the podcast it was awesome well we did it late at night right it was like 830 at night or something like that it was hot yes yes and I remember when Justin Bourne came over later that summer he was also hot, and the air conditioning barely worked in that place, so everybody was just sweating. And did Bourne bring beer? No!

He did not bring beer. Okay, so here's how high-maintenance Bourne was. Bourne is no Myrtle. Guys, like, I sweat a lot. Like, that's kind of my thing, is that I sweat a lot. So Adam literally had a fan he hadn't put together yet, and he had to put it together himself with, like, a screwdriver. Tower fan! Yeah, it was one of those,

yeah. Before the show, in order to get it done. And it was behind Justin the whole time. And a bunch of the comments were like, yeah, Bourne was a great guest, but the whole time there was like a he does sweat a lot that's a i've been on panels with him and it's man i i can relate i'm like that too we did a coaches conference last year and it was out at humber and the room was like oppressively hot it was like one of those days we had last week and they gave us like this comp this issued thing you had to wear like this this polo shirt and it was made

of like polyester it was made of something terrible so hot that shiny material yeah he was wearing pants and he was just dying we were up there for like 45 minutes in this auditorium that didn't have air conditioning and it was we still talk about it and and they just had the conference on the weekend and they didn't invite us back and born was joking just because i went up on stage and just sweat it all over well when i see shirts like that i get nervous like if i have to wear something like that for a promo event even if it's in the winter i will sweat through it and there's certain colors that like if it's gray you'll see it if it's a light blue you'll see it So I keep it to blues like this or darker blues or black or whatever

so people can't see how much I'm actually sweating. It's bad. It's really bad. That goes into your wardrobe planning as well. Yes. Well, yeah, because you've got to plan for temperature. I'm sure Justin, if he hears this, I'm sure he'll be able to relate. I'm sure of it.

I'm sure. Maybe. Listen, Jay. I'm sure this is what he wants us talking about. Oh. We're just going to go deep on this. Yeah, just an accomplished writer who sweats a lot. That's all.

We should talk about that and not his work. So, James, obviously, you know, a lot's changed since we, I mean, we've seen each other. We were hanging out in Nashville in the Stanley Cup Finals. We run into each other all the time. I interviewed you for Leafs TV. We were talking about Joe Bowen. But, like, a lot has changed for you since we last talked because The Athletic exists. And that was something, that was part of the reason, and it's not The Athletic's fault,

but it was part of the reason we couldn't have you on is because there was, there seemed, there was a competition thing. Yeah, last time we had you on was pre-Athletic. That's nuts. Our goal is just to get so big that it's not an option to not have us on. Yeah, there's no one left. I mean, are you not already there? We're pretty much there.

So, like, I got to ask from that. Like, we'll talk about the Leafs. All the Leafs topics have been beaten to death anyway. But we'll get into all of them because I'm curious to get your thoughts on them. But with the athletic itself, obviously, when you, and I don't know if you've talked about this much or how much you can talk about it, but you were in traditional newspapers for a decade? More than that.

Yeah, I was like 13 years. And then what happens? Do they call you and say, hey man, we're starting this subscription website, which at that point I would have been like, I don't think so. You mean you got to pay for internet content? And then on top of that, it's only sports. And then somehow they pulled you over and made you believe, and you guys have turned, Toronto was one of the first markets, and probably in the first season the most successful one? we're still one of the biggest markets toronto's still really really impactful for the company yeah so yeah i mean they they headhunted me and some other toronto writers they flew into toronto for like 24 hours and they interviewed a whole bunch of people and yeah you're right the idea did seem kind of crazy two and a half three years ago lunacy yeah almost three years ago is when they it was september of 2016 and um i had dinner with with adam who's one of the founders and you know what but he had some of the product available to show me he had the app he showed me

the app and I was like that looks legit he talked about the funding that they had and I said well that seems legit um and you know what something I had to give at the newspapers too like I mean we've seen what's happened in the newspaper since I left I mean you know the Globe and Mail hardly has a sports section anymore and I could see that's the direction it was going when I was there and you look at how troubled the Post and the Sun Chain are and what's happening at the Star and it's it's bleak scary and pretty yeah so something i had to give and i think whether i stayed or i went and jumped into this new thing i knew there was going to be a huge amount of risk no matter which way i went so but you were a father at that point too yeah like and this thing is a new dad

you're like you start to think about your mortality becomes a thing like where like your financial mortality like oh my god what would i do if in a couple years this website goes under there's a lot more pressure on you for sure that that you put on yourself because like all of a sudden there's like a little kid that's going to be depending on yeah we had we had just bought a house i think we i think we were in the house like a little over a year my son was like one and a half and yeah i have a very understanding wife she's she's in the business she like understands the industry she knew i wasn't i didn't want to be at newspapers for long term and that didn't make any sense so you know i i made the athletic commit to giving me some term and that's that's where we went yeah

They talked to me in September, and I didn't start at The Athletic until December. So there was a lot of conversations that we had to have. Did you go Darren Ferris or Lewis Gross? Threaten to write for the cage. I tried it. It didn't work. I did get someone to look at the contract. I did get a lawyer just to make sure everything was legitimate, and it was. But in the beginning, the story of The Athletic is incredible.

in the beginning it was just two guys in this rundown office in san francisco and that's it like they were doing everything they were like taking out the garbage they were like like they did they did literally everything so when i started you know i was we had like 10 full-time employees in the whole company wow and to see where we're now it's you know we have more than 400 we're launching in the uk in like two weeks with 50 full-time staff wow so now we're starting to go into canada was the second country now we're going in all these other countries and it's it's massive just sorry you're opening in the uk with 50 new employees yeah full-time people wow i heard that correctly holy smoke what are you covering over in the uk obviously football

pretty much yeah there's gotta be a hockey writer no no no no no no i'm sure you'd find to volunteer we have a lot of uk hockey fans to listen to this show who would volunteer to do it we get we get asked for like when we started toronto we got asked for all kinds of crazy stuff like why aren't you covering like ultimate frisbee why aren't you covering like it's like no one cares man we have to cover something that enough people will pay for that it pays for the writer then it's the same like if you look at what we're doing in canada almost all of our staff are writing about hockey almost all of them like we we have a couple raptors writers we have a couple we have three blue jays writers you know we're doing we do a little bit of other stuff but the

vast majority of what we're doing is hockey hockey hockey works there's enough of an audience that it works for a subscription website and it's gonna be the same in uk like they know that like let's just premiere all premier league yeah and maybe league two like maybe yeah yeah they do have some league two people yeah wow because some of those teams are are a big deal yeah no they're doing the same thing they did with hockey where they're looking for the best beat people on every team and then a bunch of national people and they kind of pool that together and i've talked to some of the people over there they've you know i've been on the phone uh helping recruit some of the people and sometimes they're they're like is this real like is this like like you know they're kind

of just trying to sound me out to um the mechanics of it and i was like yeah it's and i tell them the truth it's been great it's been a fantastic company to work for it's it's just that you're selling it now the way that i like sort of heard about it a few years ago because i remember the first time i heard about the athletic well it's a subscription bit no it's gonna fail That's all I had to hear. People thought I was crazy when I left the globe. I remember walking out my last day and shaking people's hands. They're like, well, that's a gamble.

Wow, they're not even – it's such a shock to them that they can't even be nice on the way out and just say, hey, congratulations and good luck. It's, well, that's a gamble. That's nice. And that's the kind of move, though, I think a lot of us dream of making is that, you know what? I'm going to give this a shot, and when you do give it a shot, it actually works. And that's what's so cool about it. Like, I'm a day one guy, so I got the introductory rate, and I'm so glad I did. And I'm still on it.

I'm grandfathered. Yeah, you get to keep it. Yeah. If you signed up early enough, yeah. So if you signed up now for the first time for a subscription, your rate would be a little bit higher than it was back then. The athletic pays me to read it. I'm pretty sure.

Is that how it works? That's part of what appealed to me about joining, though, is that I remember they were putting the price points in front of me very early on. I was like, well, I think I can get enough people to sign up at that number that would want to read what I'm writing about the Leafs and what other people are going to do that I think this can work

and they were talking about we only need originally they were saying we only need 8 to 10,000 subscribers in Toronto to make it viable and if you do the math on the money times

how many subscribers it's like yeah okay and there's no office right? like there's no brick and mortar stuff to support we have an office in New York we have an office in San Francisco

we have an office in London England now and I think Toronto at some point hopefully we will have some kind of a newsroom so right now all your writers in Toronto

are working from home? they're working from airports and hotels and arenas and from home sometimes, too. Wow. So it's just conference calls? Yeah, I'm on the phone a lot. We have Slack. Do you guys know what Slack is? It's like Silicon Valley.

Most companies use that just to... What was the one we had at Rogers, Jesse? Was that Slack? No, no. We had our own Rogers one. There was a Rogers one. They invented their own Slack, essentially. But it was funny because it was only the managers that posted on it. Yeah.

Yeah, but Slack is actually really Useful I remember Obviously thinking It was going to fail But like the second Thanks Steve I know

But when I heard You were I was always saying to you How you were going to succeed No no Your weight Steve is everybody You worked with at the club

I heard of the I heard of the concept And he's young And he's a digital native Yeah what You would think I also thought Twitter was going to be a fad

What about YouTube YouTube just a fad Yeah I never thought YouTube was a fad I have a tendency To be wrong about some things No but

Then I heard you were getting involved and i was like wait a sec that actually makes a ton of sense because you sort of got to experience firsthand the errors of i guess the old biz right with newspapers but you got your start in blogging so i wonder how much of that yeah you apply to it i'm a digital native like i was building websites and stuff when i was like 17 18 years old and i was way into that stuff and when i got into the business that's what i wanted to do but that didn't exist In Canada, there wasn't a digital-only outlet that covered sports where you could get a full-time job. So, yeah, I had my own website, which I essentially ran for free and got Google Ads and got some money.

Was it Blogspot? It was Blogspot, yeah. I mean, I started that in 2004. Blogspot sounds so quaint and ridiculous now, but back then it was fine. They were important. Yeah, that was what existed. Yeah. And I was one of the very first hockey blogs.

There were four or five other ones. There was hardly anything. Delo what was that guy's name there was a Tom Benjamin and yeah yeah that was a reverent

Oiler fans yeah yeah wasn't Tyler wasn't he like Mick 79 Hockey or something MC 79 Hockey

so everyone had these pseudonyms and it was all these weird sites and I was the only like media person that was doing it and again

I remember like being in I was in the sports department I worked part time at the Globe on the desk so I would work four to midnight and that's like

a pretty you guys I'm sure you've worked like crazy shifts or whatever that's a pretty I was like 24 25 years old i'm on the desk four to midnight part-time the rest of the time i was just running

that writing this website i would go home and i would work on it to like four in the morning and then people would come in the morning and there'd be all kinds of content there and whatever and it it started to take off and then vox uh jim bankoff who who runs vox came and purchased my site and had me come in and uh launch for box yeah not very very long and they they had me launch all their nhl sites like sp nation everyone knows it now is this having all these sites but when i went there they had like four hockey blogs or something and they said we want to have every single team it's like okay they had got a big influx of funding so that was like my introduction to like the startup world the digital tech world and i did that in like 2008 or something i did it

for about a year and then the i i was getting a bunch of job offers and i was going to leave the globe uh and they wanted me to stay and um i said i wanted an nhl job and that's how i started got to start covering the leaps it was kind of like an ultimatum like i have all these other companies are interested in this this kind of digital stuff that i'm doing um and then i was then i became a print guy but if it would you know if it would have been my choice from the beginning i would have run something like the athletic like 15 15 years ago it just didn't that wasn't a thing that well it would have been pretty tough to i think pull off 15 years ago like the technology is now at a point where and i think enough people are web savvy like to make that yeah there has to be

it was too clunky back yeah yeah like i mean think about like your you your options were paypal or some unsecured credit card service or something that you didn't know where it came from we needed you know what we needed we needed like the tech world in silicon valley to get interested in like helping media build something yeah the the story of our company is really one of not just sports writing and media but it's also the other half of our company is tech and silicon valley and innovation and you know we have an office in in the financial district in san francisco and it's 75 80 staff and they're all from like facebook and uber and there are all these really smart young people who are building this company on the back end and that's why it looks the way it does

that's why it works so well that's why you know and i know the founders they envision this as kind of like a tech company as much as a media company and they have a lot of experience on the tech side they didn't have the media experience so i was always arguing with them in the very beginning about the way you do things in a media company because we didn't we didn't have anyone else to kind of advocate for that side of the business yeah well i mean and i'm and i forgive for anybody that's listening that's like okay can you guys please get to the goddamn least content i'm like i just i i'm i'm so interested in it because to be honest with you so much of what we pull for this show comes from that website and comes from your writers um and i and it's such a it's such

an amazing thing that a website that was, what, 2016? Yeah. So 2016, we signed up. Yeah, December 2016 I went there, yeah. So it's two and a half years, yeah. And I can remember messaging you at the time and going, hey, this is pretty cool. Congratulations. And like, you know, this is awesome. You were doing like a subscribers event. And it was this

event where you met people at a bar. The Athletics NHL coverage has been in the NHL for less time than Austin Matthews. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. The Leafs were a non-playoff team basically when I joined. That was the year that they had that surprise run with all the rookies yeah right so it was good for

subscriptions and that they were a super exciting team all the stuff was happening a lot of if you go back and look at my first stories for the athletic a lot of them are austin matthews like half of the early ones or something like that i remember one of the first very successful things i wrote was essentially why austin matthews is better than patrick liney or something like that and that did incredibly well and got a lot of attention and rightly so yeah it looks it looks good now yeah it sure does yeah that's funny that that even going into last season was still a debate i mean because look at the numbers yeah it should have been and then linea fell off a damn yeah and i bet you know what i bet that comes roaring back because i think linea comes roaring

back to be honest with you with um linea is more one-dimensional though yeah yeah 100 but when that was the argument like when they were like 20 games in their career that i was making is a austin matthews is bringing so much more to the table yes agreed i and and i wouldn't disagree with that at all i i think it's just with you know with jets fans they like their they like they're guys right i don't blame them which is fine because for a while they didn't even have a team exactly right so of course they're going to defend it um yeah so james i just i i wanted to take a second and talk about that because that was one thing that always kind of was like that's a seminal moment in someone's life and i just had like i mean obviously maybe one day we can actually

do like uh we can have the you guys and the founders on whatever i'd really honestly like to just do a podcast on how this all started i really would love love i think it's someone's going to do a book at some point i think it'd be a great book you think so yeah there's it's jeez if you it'll be available online if only you guys knew any writers it's an amazing yeah someone will do it it's an amazing story it's true it's crazy that it worked it's really really crazy in your journey how you had to go backwards to the print world and then wait for kind of the tech world to catch up to media and then go back to that world because vox was so ahead of the time and you go back to print and then it kind of catches i literally saw that like i was using

the pub tools for both like i would use the what espination had built and we could they had this this pub tool where you could just you could get a post up in like 10 seconds it's like headline bam here's like two words of text click a button to send the tweet automatically from the account for the site it was it was very smooth and very well designed and then i go into the globe and it's like oh yeah yeah you know and it's going to take you like eight minutes to post something just because like there's all these levers you have to pull and when like it was it was very very very old school there there was a there was a writer who i will not name but they did not know that their the digital version of their newspaper could host video like host the interviews that

they were recording and but because i had an idea of the back end they were using i'm like no no i'm pretty sure you can you got to talk to someone at your thing and they they eventually but they didn't want to do any of that like i was trying to put charts and stuff on the website and it was it was really complicated to do that kind of stuff it was like because because they were i found that frustrating and i'm sorry to cut you off but i have found that very frustrating in my career personally when you know because we were jesse and i in in you know when pop music and that sort of thing were sort of ahead of the curve on certain things and people just didn't know they just didn't care it was like a sort of a so when you when you talk to the guys from the from the

athletic the founders were you're like hey can i can i publish a chart in my article like were those were those questions that you had i remember they adam sat down with me and he was like you're you're way underutilized in your role like they're just using you to write like an 800 word print story in a newspaper and like you know we had we had dinner for like two and a half hours he's like all this all experience you have and all these things you can do and they're not using any of this and we wanted we want to use all of it so it wasn't just charts it was it was everything Everything. Yeah, I use charts as the example, but there is GIFs and videos and everything.

It's funny, because what I love about the articles, too, is Ian Tulloch will go into something, or Dom LeCision will go into something that's super complicated, and they'll go, and if that didn't make sense, here's a GIF. And then you go back, you look at the GIF, you go back and you go, oh, okay, now I sort of get what you're talking about. The numbers suggest this person does this thing very well. Exactly. Also, here's a video of this person doing something very well.

Do you ever forget who writes for The Athletic? no I they're all they're all my babies yeah I love all because I do I've forgotten

well in Canada my role right now with The Athletic and it changes every six months is I'm in charge of the Canadian operations that's what I'm doing

so I've hired everybody in Canada work with all the freelancers all the writers all the editors we're adding a bunch more this summer is what I've been

working on lately and I feel like a personal investment in everybody we've got I love like it's been great building a team and and having that investment in people like that i can imagine so you've never

forgotten no i'm kidding you can quiz me that's really encouraging don't ask me about like who's the baseball writer for some nfl team like i don't i'm afraid i don't know that but we're so like we have 350 writers that's not including uk coming we have that's unbelievable we have a lot where do you think's next like where's the athletic going uh well the podcast network that we've started is going to get built out we're going to uk i imagine we we do do french in quebec but i think i could see us doing other languages in other countries that that'll be a thing um but you know we kind of go in in in stages and the stage for 2019 is build the podcast network out go into the uk continue to scale up some of what we're doing in in the markets we're in already

and get stronger in those markets and i don't know what the plan is for 2020 yet they'll tell me when it's time for me to know that but that's that's kind of like above my pay grade sure how about the athletic mississauga where you only cover the 905 the steelheads and that's it well i sometimes wonder like the york nine of this you gotta cover the york nine a lot of the papers in those small cities are gone like yeah the camels daily news where i grew up it's gone it doesn't exist and the building's been torn down and it's a parking lot and it's so who's gonna write about that team and i will often wonder like is there a business model there where it would make sense that we have a writer covering teams like that and like we're even a development business model

where you're developing your next your next generation sure right and right now we're kind of doing that with freelancers and a lot of the people on our staff like dom scott wheeler uh we just we hired harmond dale in in vancouver today they started as freelancers and they're just writing like once a week or every two weeks or whatever and then that's been our kind of feeder system but yeah you're right like if you know we if we had smaller markets we could do that like i wonder if we had a writer in newfoundland writing about their hockey team if that would be viable for us like you mean the growlers yeah yeah or or halifax or like there's there's these city city centers that have like what's newfound what's st john's have like 250 000 people something

like that yeah you know if we can get like 3 000 of them signed up and you're the only resource for that team it would work for us that pays the bills right yeah yeah you gotta tell scott wheeler to stop traveling then because he's just he's just taking it up for everybody he's driving out to the boonies like oshawa right adam oh he's going to jenny's games he's going to peterborough but that's what scott wants to do like that's his like that's his dream in life is to go to all of those games and to go to oshawa pretty much scott even call call me once i am convinced if scott wasn't writer he'd be a scout like that's just seems to be he's like a kind of like a road guy loves to be at the game sort of person just seems like that doesn't wear

enough black no truly no all scouts wear black where the scouts where they it's those five guys up there and they have to have lanyards yes he doesn't have a lanyard he can't be a scout right even if there's no pass attached to it it's like an old one because they feel naked that's right that's right yeah I hate lanyards I never wear those yeah yeah I can't stand we're supposed to wear it at the like at the Leafs games we're supposed to wear that I never I never do that well i i'm gonna ask you about this and and you know this it's my job to ask you about this but we don't have to get too deep into it um you've you've taken some criticism from from

people in the traditional spot right like the people who are did yeah i've seen a few tweets from here here and there and i don't know if it's if it's any of its personal but when you when you do hear criticism from people from the traditional side so we talk about newspapers or whatever else how do you handle that and and is it usually does it come from a place of uh would you say fear or is it not understanding or is it they feel threatened like what is that normally do you think i think it could be one of all three of those things i think i mean like i said the business is in trouble and i feel bad for you know people have put their lives into these you know i was in that situation i haven't put 12 years in at the globe and it's

Like, I don't think there's a future here. And it's a scary situation. So I could see that if you're in one of those situations and there's this new thing and you're not part of it, it's probably natural that there's some animosity. Could this model work for news? Yeah, I think so. Could we get news back into local markets again? I mean, I don't know to what scale, but I think you could do business coverage. I think you could do health coverage.

You could do politics. You could probably do entertainment. you could probably do like a lot of different verticals we're just sports like we basically pulled sports out of a sports section and it lives on its own but yeah i think you could start doing some other things the political oh that sounds like a nightmare i won't be subscribing to that one um that sounds like just an awful that sounds like it'll fail sorry i just feel obligated to say that um do you ever do you feel a pressure with uh you know the athletic sort of being man a lot of people in the industry were really cheering for the

athletic hard because we were just watching it shrink around us and we're like okay please and it still hasn't stopped shrinking by the way let's put that up oh for the rest of the industry yeah i know it's just wanted to see how the rest of the industry no but like but no it's true it's like the press box at the leafs game has a whole bunch of empty seats now which is like it's crazy it's just like there's not enough people to yeah oh yeah they should sell but do you feel a pressure as sort of this i don't know the basically the one place that is growing for for lack of a better term uh and as the digital entity to sort of always be at the forefront of like evolution do you always want to be first on whatever's next there's yeah i mean

because it'd probably be good for the company but like it's not up to us to create something else that's going to be like us to give other people jobs like we can't right we're not going to do that all we can do is do the best we can do and the way i look at it is like as long as we can keep doing well and getting more people hearing about us and signing up that means we can hire another writer and then we just keep doing that and keep doing that like i want us to replace the sports sections in all of the cities right now my role is canada in canada i want to replace all the sports sections across Canada and we're not there yet you know like we don't have three Canucks riders we don't have you know the way that sports sections did 10 years ago and I think that we can

get there so there's still lots of progress for us to make but will there be other places that can have similar success I hope so I I wonder about because you are the guy that does a lot of the hiring and there are a lot we get messages all the time from people who say I want to be in sports i don't want to do what you guys do i like the podcast but i don't want to talk there's a lot of people just don't want to talk on the camera right they don't they don't want to be in front of a microphone but they want to write and it's like okay i can write for you know the local blogs and that sort of thing but is there a future in that money wise i mean they don't pay well let's just be straight with that they just don't or at all uh or at all don't get into it for that you're

in it for the development bingo yeah what do you look for in a great young writer or does it have to be young just a great writer on the upswing yeah no they don't necessarily have to be young i mean we've had some people that have come in as prospects who were a little bit older but i mean it this is going to sound really dumb but like you have to be really good like you have to really be able to stand out and i think that you just you can't be producing what's out there and available for free and then put it behind a paywall and expect people are going to be like oh you know it just doesn't work that's what we saw really early on is that if we did anything that looked or read like something that was available for free online it was just like it

did absolutely nothing for us so we quickly moved away from that in the beginning so we look for writers like we were talking about born earlier he's a good example dom's a good example people that have a very very down goes brown has been amazing for us we got him last september full time uh jason botchford rest in peace was amazing for us people that have this really distinct brand are are super important to us it's interesting they seem to all bring very unique perspectives when i read what bourne writes it's such a personal thing he's been a coach he's been a player at a high level both at high levels and seems to have a way of looking at things and then you look at you know dom or what ian tullock brought i'm a huge fan of ian and dom but um

you know those guys i find those guys challenge not only my viewpoint but my intelligence and i don't mean that in a bad way i'm not as smart as those people and it's kind of fun to read them because i have to read it several times to get it it's it's like going back to school a little bit like i don't know what the hell some of these things are and when you it forces you to go okay i'm a i'm a huge sports fan i'm like that one percent fanatic sports guy especially with hockey i like the fact that it actually challenges me and i don't think that's the interesting part about the athletic is that for so long the the the thought was just give them what they want at a grade three level of reading and and don't get too deep because nobody's gonna understand what

you're talking about the athletic seems to go let's turn that on its head let's challenge our readers to to rise to this level i say like depth is what we talk about all the time so we talk about all the time and we don't have some of the limitations that the newspapers had in terms of you know really short word counts and like you're talking about with the charts and all those kinds you know we have some writer like like mirad in in winnipeg i mean i don't know if he ever files anything that's under 3 000 words like he's just jonathan willis too yeah so like depth is what we talk about a lot and there's an audience for that there's an audience that wants that and you know if we did the grade three level thing it just it wouldn't work with a subscription product

we gotta and i think the people that are subscribing to us are kind of the next level people that want to be challenged they want to learn something that want to consume this kind of content so that they're taking something away from it other than just what the player said or something like that when was the last time you had a piece come across your desk or email i guess that was just way too long you're like no way slash that oh it happens for sure it happens does it because well because we're asking for this depth and we're asking for people to go deep and and and reach so sometimes you get people that reach too far and it's you know yeah well and you you might lose people because that's a challenge with us that's where the editors come in and we

have we have an awesome editing staff like who do you the group that we have they don't get any of the credit for but that's why most of the time you're not reading stuff on the athletic that's like oh what's going what's going on here i'm buried in the weeds here because we're trying the bigger we get the more staff support staff we have and the less that that's going to happen it's it's it's just something that's always interested me because one thing sportsnet has uh has like really tried to hammer home for me and i think it's made me a better writer is i used to write way too long and they got me they're like no thousand word limit because i was just everything i was handing in was three thousand words so like absolutely not you got

to figure out a way to slash that yeah there's not it has to be something pretty good to live at that length for sure i mean i think the sweet spot's like 1200 to 1800 words in there is like you can say something of substance in that it's kind of like radio breaks they they usually kind of tell us and at least in the format that we're in and jesse and i you should be able to get it done in about two and a half minutes but we say to dom and and ian tolick and these people like maybe that should be like a two-part story maybe that should be like a three-part thing maybe that and it's easier to digest and it we can spread it out on the site and and you have the ability to do that that's the cool part like you've subscribed you have people who are actively trying to be

there right so like what i love about say for this podcast is that versus like um radio radio is a little bit different because it's a passive listen you can have it on in the background when someone is listening to this show they've actively been seeking us out you have to look on the internet go through a couple apps before you can actually download the podcast the athletics same thing you act you have active participation rather than what's in the sports page today it's i subscribe to this i want this and i think that's what's so neat about it and with young guys like that who have so much knowledge just exploding with it it's kind of cool to see them be able to to transform that right and what i found interesting too is that you're not afraid

to pull from the blogs not afraid to pull these guys no no no no i mean that's a lot of our talent has come through like that's that's the pipeline you know you were you guys were talking about development i mean that's how i developed i was hammering out four crappy blogs a day and but i mean so many people have been have been people in your position in traditional media have been very hard on the blogging culture very hard on these on these young guys i love i think i'm a product of it 100 and like i think some younger people on social media stuff don't realize that they don't know that that's the place that i come from but like i'm still reading what's there and i'm still i love all those but that's why we're hiring you know if you look at our staff

our staff in canada is young we have not just gone and hired a whole bunch of newspaper people we've really looked for digital natives i mean i'm trying to think like in canada our staff is it's like 27 full-time people and then we have a big group of freelancers and there's not most of them are what we're talking about they're they're younger writers that have come from online with some down goes brown and born but i consider those guys to be young writers as well i mean they're yeah if they're if they're old world honestly i mean they can't be old yet also young at heart like Douglas Brown

is one of those weird guys where like I feel like he's my dad but also like my son at the same time the way he talks he's definitely a weird

cat yeah he is a very interesting guy I'd love to talk to him you should have him on here he'd be amazing we tried to for a while

and we couldn't get it to work out and then I just sort of gave up so which is stupid we gotta have him we're trying to get a podcast off the ground

that would be him doing something because I think it would be fantastic does he have with his articles and i've got another question about about something that i want to get to in just a second here but as an aside with with sean sean mackindoe if you don't know that's down goes brown um with sean does he actually have like a photographic memory or is he just a brilliant researcher he's a smart guy for sure he was working for corral in ottawa

that's what he was i can't remember exactly i think he was man i can't remember exactly but he like he's a really bright guy who and i i think this is true for a lot of people he wanted to work in sports and he liked the idea of media but he's like he didn't see a future in that so he went to another path and then he starts his blog and his his twitter account and starts getting noticed and starts getting jobs the national post gets him as a freelancer and that's how his career builds i mean he has one of the more like steve is one of the more unorthodox career paths that's come out of the internet being a thing that exists so but yeah his process i've never gone down that wormhole but i bet he just reads everything i bet he's just plugged in on a whole bunch of stuff i he's

forgotten more today than i can remember my entire life like it's unbelievable i love hanging out with him and getting a beer with him because you just never know what he's going to talk about and it's always like he just keeps you on your toes it's always interesting cool i've never met him he's I've only gotten to hang out with him once. He's a very quiet guy. He's not like his persona at all. But when he gets excited, though, it's a lot of fun. You ever see him excited?

What did he do? I don't know. What's the context here? I can't tell this story. It's his to tell because it's frigging legendary. When we have him on, there's a story to tell? Yes, it's legendary. It's awesome.

But what I remember about him, because he's so dry as well, When we were driving around I'd go for my wallet to pay for the cab Because we were in Philly And he'd just go, no, don't worry about it It's on Walt And finally I go, who's Walt? And I didn't realize that

He worked for ESPN Or yeah, Grantland Which parent company was Disney He had like a Mickey Mouse credit card I think I remember being at the cup final with him And he was using that Yeah, I think it had Mickey Mouse on it I wonder if Wyshynski's got one of those now

Probably Probably. I'll have to ask him. Probably, man. Can I ask a question? Please, please, Jesse. Like a broader question? No.

What do you think of the news cycle that's developed in the last, like, two years, two, three years, where something will happen on, like, a Wednesday, and by Saturday it's no longer a story? It's kind of old news. Like, how are you guys adapting? Probably even faster than that, right? Like, yeah, we talk about story timing is really important for us, too. Like, we want the depth that Adam's talking about, but we also don't want to have some in-depth article a week later, because then people have already chewed over every single thing so but that's always existed

that there's this push-pull between doing something quickly but not very good and spending time on it and like where's the right balance for it and the the milan lucic james neal trade on friday like that's a good example that happened at like four o'clock on friday or something like that which was not great for my friday afternoon for me i'd just done a week of radio bastards and when nothing had happened nothing nothing i was dying all week that's the oilers punishment for you making fun of them i know and the truba extension same thing but like by today it's already been dissected a million times i think we've had like eight stories on it or something and so like we our writers know that like ideal world and i know from being in the business like if i can get something up that's why

often after a leafs game if something has happened that's of note nazim cadre getting suspended all write till like three in the morning just so that we have we have the most in-depth piece we can the next morning because if you wait to write that piece you're you're just losing bandwidth like you're just you're losing the interest level that you're talking about right so you have to be good and fast and all these things it's it's definitely challenging yeah i'm gonna do more night of well of course what's been so interesting is like it growing up you know i would read the sports pages in every newspaper and when i actually worked at shoppers drug mart on my breaks we got all the newspapers for free so i was able to pull the sun and the star and the globe and the

post and i would kind of read them all and you start to get to know the writers and that sort of thing and like what i loved about the sun was they all had these like mean mugging shots they're like this is steve buffery and he's pouring a glass of water on you oh that's steve and this is you know steve simmons's picture and they're like everybody had their own sort of thing one thing that i never saw i never saw and i've now at least seen this twice maybe more with with the athletic is the writers of the content getting hired by the nhl teams that they talk about that is an accomplishment that's actually happened to us a bunch of times we had jack hahn freelancing for us and then the leafs hired him rachel dory was writing for us and the devils

hired her dello has been hired by the devils obviously um and we just lost ryan beach in vancouver so that and that's just canada staff like those are other than tyler who's a friend of mine i mean those are young people that we brought in to kind of freelance and do that training ground thing are you calling tyler old is that what's happening yes yes he's older than i am so that that yeah i didn't know that yeah and he just had a kid too so congratulations to tyler yeah hey that's awesome um little chart nello it's a girl so chartina he's gonna be listening to this back and over and over and over again and i'm sure i'm gonna hear about it in a day or two well hey listen i i wouldn't i would be shocked if he listened

to the show to be honest with you it seems below him oh my god so far below no no how dare they insult my little graffity he'll find out he was mentioned and he'll need to oh okay fair enough but i mean that's so so so what happened i'm pretty sure what happened is that not in every case but in a lot of cases we have a lot of gms and assistant gms and head coaches and this around the nhl and players and everything that are reading the athletic so we hire let's say jack khan was one of the first people i hired he might have been the first person that i was like come come right for us um just as a freelancer and so those people are getting more on the radar of some of these gms and that that you're just seeing their work on our site and thinking it's interesting

and interviewing those people for jobs and there you go so that's interesting because i was one of the questions i was going to ask you is you know would it surprise people to know how many people from within the nhl actually read the athletic it sounds like there's quite a few yes yes and there have been you know cases where i've called people and they're like i don't usually talk to the media but i really like the athletic i'm going to talk to you and then yeah i know it's interesting it's been really good yeah for that any any names that surprise you or any names that you'd be willing to name i would actually as a writer would rather not know who's like i don't look i totally get that i don't look through like all the data for how many times is i don't know pick any gm how

many times is it what stories is this gm reading like i'm not gonna look at any of that stuff that's not no but it's better not to know that i think i wouldn't want to know oh 100 because then it then it affects your well this so-and-so could be listening like you know what i mean you got to be like obviously they could be listening and you know that but i don't i'm not going to seek that out but we i've gotten it a lot more than with the globe where it's just bringing everyone collectively together has made it somewhere where it's brought there's writers that people wouldn't normally read that are being read now by by people well rachel was 20 right like that's so i know the story there so i mean she was hired by the devils i mean the devils

read her work on the athletic and that's the connection and then you know they asked for her contact information and that's that's what happened one one degree of separation it's not And that's the thing. I mean, obviously, Tyler's been hired before. He's got, unfortunately, with the team he was hired with originally, they won't listen to anyone and won't get out of their own way. Well, I mean, going from the Oilers to the Devils has worked out for others. Yeah, exactly.

But I think, you know, you look at the, that to me really says something. Like, that's a real testament to the people that you're hiring. and i i wonder if you expect it to happen more i hope not no i hate it i don't like it i don't i don't like it happening no probably not and and you know my superiors don't like it happening either and but it's it is good i mean it's and i'm happy for the people for sure yeah i mean tyler is you know that's that's where he belongs he was just kind of moonlighting with us imagine being able to moonlight with the athletic i'm gonna go back to the nhl now

He'll fall back on The Athletic. I'm excited. It's funny. There seems to be an effect. And it's so funny that P.K. Subban, of all people, ended up in New Jersey this year. It kind of makes sense, right? Well, I think it makes sense. But with Tyler's opinion on these sorts of things, it's going to be so interesting to watch his effect on the Devils.

Do you think, because Ray Shero is a bit of an old school guy. Tyler's pretty convincing from what I understand. I've met him once. do you think that there's going to be um do you think there's going to be a a major change in what the new jersey devils do now that tyler's as because he's not just coming in as some guy he's got a vp position does he not yeah i mean he's i don't know the exact title but it's it's senior like director of analytics or and there's gonna be more and more of those more teams that have that title and the other thing too is i mean he had a lot of teams talking to him too like it

wasn't just there wasn't just one team that was trying to get him so um yeah i think the devils are going to change what they're doing and i mean that comes back to their ownership i mean their ownership group is very we're talking about the athletic being new school and tech and all that i mean there's a lot of a lot of that big data money that's on the eastern seaboard is investing in buying teams and then with the ownership group is progressive and believes in using data to to make decisions then that's why we're seeing those changes wow fan cool just very very cool seriously I guess, I don't know, one more thing and then we'll get on to actual sports

We can tell people to skip ahead I think they'll be interested in this to be honest with you, I think it's pretty cool I mean, we've talked about The Bachelor Just don't ask me, because I don't We can go along with this show It's full of drama this season, James Queer Eye can do, I can't do that

Has anybody watched the newest season? Yes, well I started, I'm halfway through One episode We put on season 4 The first episode last night And then the baby cried like 5 minutes in We'll watch 5 more minutes tonight I feel you

I cried much sooner than that Then 5 minutes into that first episode I can't even remember What the first one was So Prints obviously work great And you've been talking about You're expanding into podcasts

Is video going to be part of that as well and will all this be behind a paywall as well i'm assuming yeah all the podcasts are behind the paywall and we've done some video have you seen like we did a we had a suban video we haven't done a lot of hockey video yet but i only watch my own stuff but we actually we have a video session um we have someone that we hired from hbo that's producing it and jesus i'm trying to think how many videos we've done now they're like mini docs they're like 12 minute documentary kind of pieces there's been some on sports gambling there's been some on um land speed racing there's been like there's all kinds of land speed record racing and um i think that's going to be the model

for us is like try and do video sports video differently than because like we're competing with like big networks and they're obviously going to have like the rights to the games and those things so we have to try and offer some other kind of element yeah i mean we're going to keep experimenting with different kinds of mediums we're not saying you called it print we don't call it print because we don't actually print anything out unless unless you hit like the print button on your computer or something but text yeah okay like yeah and and we have been successful there but by no means do we want to just rest on your laurels we don't want to confine ourself to one thing i like that that's going to be very cool to watch neat yeah i'm

interested okay james so uh your first reaction to the milan lucic james neal swap well duhachik had been rumoring it was going to happen for a while he kept talking about it over and over again it's like okay enough eric like we're tired of hearing about and there was that thing with louis erickson was thrown in there too and it was like this three-way swap of bad six million dollar deals i didn't think it was gonna happen just because it felt like james neal had more value than lucic just because you doesn't he you can yeah yeah you you can fire that contract in the sun too if you don't want it because you can just buy him out and this is like goodbye whereas like milan lucic has the david clarkson unbreakable contract that's just it's indestructible

you can't get rid of it you can't buy it out why would unless james neal and i understood i from what i understand there was some uh he was not on board with whatever management was trying to do uh if he's not a personality fit there milan lucic like that i don't understand that like and it's nothing against milan lucic personally but when you watch the like any oilers fan will tell you that where's he gonna play it's just you're like i mean it's effectively dead cap space either way right and you're trying to get a piece like this is the same thing like i know when columbus got david clarson from the leafs they traded nathan horton and it's like we don't love david clarson but can he play in our fourth line and play like eight minutes a game they were

like yeah maybe you know maybe we're getting like something and i wouldn't be surprised if like if calgary looks at lucian is like and he's only going to play seven minutes a night and give them like a physical element and whatever i mean that cap space feels dead to them anyway i know you talk to people in calgary and they said james neal was their worst player many many many nights last year most nights kent wilson who's our analyst guy in calgary said that he was the worst player on the ice over and over and over and over again which makes no sense to me because especially coming off that run they had with vegas back to back you went to back-to-back cup finals right nashville could that be it though could he just be tired maybe i think what we're seeing

around the league is that players are aging out faster than ever and but like he went from 25 to six yeah and some of that's he didn't mesh with they were trying to get him on that top line with gaudreau and monahan it didn't work yeah so then all of a sudden he's bumped down to a different line and then it really didn't work you know so like whereas if you're in vegas and you're being i don't want to say propped up but like you're being elevated by really good line mates and then you play with the good line mates in calgary and it doesn't work all of a sudden you're not with good line mates you're not getting as much ice time you can go from 25 to six or seven goals i think something like that less than terrible right yeah yeah lucci had six yeah so but i think we're

gonna see we're gonna see players age out of the nhl faster and faster you know the more analytics you get and the more like the the leafs guys wear this like bra thing that's got like uh it's got like a it's good it's got a tracker yeah and it it's got a gyroscope in it it can like measure how their body is like the more that the players are getting evaluated not just in terms of numbers but in terms of actual data and harnesses they're wearing and all this kind of stuff they're going to be able to see when they decline and if you have a player in your organization over a long this is what's happening in other sports nfl they do some of this stuff they can see like the the load on each leg and they can see when this one of this guy's knees blown out or so like his back's

out we're talking about big data like there's like they're going to be able to get biometric data on all the nhl players and i think that what teams are going to see is they're going to be like this guy's knees no not as like we can see what it looked like three years ago on our charts and he's now he's not skating the same way and whoa so i wonder like you look at the way that let's bring it to the leafs you look at the way the leafs are constructed they have hardly any players right now that are older than what 29 is yeah tyson berry might be the oldest at 28 him and taveras 2009 um frederick anderson i think is 30 like there are not very many older players on the Leafs.

Muzzin 30, Spezza obviously 36. Oh yeah, Spezza's it. He's making league minimum, right? And that's going to be more the model. If you're an older guy who's declined, you either got to take a really huge pay cut to stay in the league or you're not going to be in it. Wow. Wow. I mean,

I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, and it matches perfectly with the predicament the Leafs are in, really, and Scott McArthur was sort of beating this point on the radio last week. It was supposed to be you're on your entry level then you sign a whatever contract it's not very long where you make some money and then your big payday is basically for all the hard work that you did

not necessarily which makes no sense if you think about it right no it doesn't make any sense but it's finally changing over right at a time where it screws the Leafs the hardest but had this happened two years ago the Leafs would be fine but the Leafs are smart in that they don't have they did they had to get rid of a couple bad contracts but they don't have any bad contracts if you look at the way that the roster is now there's not if they had to people ask me well if if marner gets 11 or 12 or whatever million who are they who's next to go who are they going to cut and it's like well there's not really a lot of fat on this roster there's nobody that you point to and it's like that's a bad contract they got to get rid of that which means

they can get value back if they do have to move someone yeah i suppose but it's it just means you're maximizing the value of your cap space if everybody's making what they should be or less well is that why you're talking about the biometric stuff and obviously you know jake gardner is unsigned still and i know we haven't gone into the leafs yet but why is the back that bad and we know parise had a really bad back injury that was similar it's not the back no it's not the back like the gardner things there's just a number of pieces in play that they're that they're waiting on like he's gonna sign no no i don't know he won't sign in toronto okay no but he's gonna sign somewhere else he's gonna get a contract it's not like he's not getting offers

Can you elaborate on the pieces? No. Okay. I'd rather write the story than tell you the whole thing. Put that behind the paywall. I think that makes sense. All right. Fair enough.

But no, I think Dick Gardner is going to be fine. He's going to get a contract. He's going to play somewhere. He's going to be in the top four, maybe potentially top pair. There are teams that want him. He's a good player. And his back is fine. Oh, okay.

Okay. The NFL, a league with non-guaranteed contracts, seems to be the most honest league about talent and they'll cut you as soon as you stop performing. Do you see the NHL shifting towards that direction as they get smarter and smarter with evaluating talent? I mean, they can't do that because the contracts are guaranteed, right?

They can't. So you're kind of stuck with these Lou Cheeches and Andrew Ladd and James Neils and Louis Erickson and there's all these guys that if it was just on merits like you're talking about, would they be in the league or not is a fair point. so do you see shorter contrast coming than the nhl players oh we're starting to see that already time to turn over yeah i mean i think some teams are getting leery of doing the long-term deals

and i think that could be what happens with someone like gardner is that you can't necessarily get the seven-year deal that you used to get in free agency every time when you're 28 9 or 28 years old and you go into free agency i think teams are going to get more and more cautious about that and be more willing to do two three four year deals at bigger numbers potentially maybe not though maybe like maybe teams are moving away from these older and that's happened in baseball right i mean there were older free agents that had a really hard time signing last year and i think that that's coming to hockey real fast and then the thing you're seeing like the average age in the nhl is dropping every year and teams more and more are putting their entry-level guys

who are cheap onto the roster it's easy to do see the life cycle of an nhl players could change dramatically in the last like 10 years do you believe that i mean the leafs have been very patient with guys like sandin and lilligrant and that sort of thing and oh they are 19 they are 19 but you just said you know they elc guys making the main the main roster is are we going to see more of those guys i'm not necessarily thrown to the wolves because only the top of the top talent are ever going to make it anyway but are you going to start to see guys like that not have the ahl careers that they have beforehand so that teams can accommodate i think that's already happening that's already happening in the NHL like if you look I don't have the numbers in

front of me but I remember looking at it in mid-season last year and how old was Dermott last season like 21 maybe maybe 20 I think he was 21 in December or something like that like he started the year at 20 and you look at I remember looking at the list mid-season last year and there were a lot of guys younger than Dermott that were in the NHL as defensemen so and if you go back six seven years ago there's no 19 20 year old defenseman in the NHL hardly any you know when Morgan Rielly did it and Luke Shen did it. It was kind of an anomaly. Right.

Now there's like 20, 22 guys who are doing it every year. And that could just continue to grow. Especially with the way that they can objectively measure people using the analytics, they might see that Sandin is better than some defenseman you can sign. Oh, I think there's objectively players that Sandin was better than last year that were on the Leafs roster. I think there's no question about that. I mean, looking at who's been projected to be on the Leafs' bottom pair,

I'd argue he should make it opening night. Well, and that's where I want to lead us, because there's uncertainty about the Leafs' roster, but are the Leafs, this is just a broad question, we'll get into the specifics, are the Leafs better opening night than they were in Game 7 against Boston? Are they a better team? Well, Boren wrote about that,

and I talked about that after the trade was made for Barry, and I've thought about that in the weeks since I wrote the story after the Kadri-Barry trade, and I think it's probably the wrong question, because they don't necessarily need to be. Like, if they can stay as good as they were last year and just continue to maintain that level and their young players get better,

I think where they might get better is just internally. Like, they're young, and then the cast around them just needs to stay roughly the same ability. And then there's Matthews and Marner and Nylander and Dermott and who am I forgetting? Kapanen and Janssen. Their top line is locked up forever. Yeah, they've built this team very, very young,

and that means that there's still some lift that they're going to get from these guys as they move into where they're 22 23 24 years old that could just be how they get better right there and then it doesn't really matter you know maybe swapping cc and barry for zaitsev and hainsey i mean and gardner you lose as well maybe that does end up being a wash but it doesn't matter because you've got all these young players that are getting better and better um i just i just freak out whenever i see the harper hall third pairing that some people have projected i'm You've got Marincin, too.

Oh! I'd rather! Marincin is the best name out of the three that we just mentioned. Magic Hands Marty is back for another tour of duty. I'll take Magic Hands Marty, man. I'm actually excited because Jonas laughs at me, but I've been working on a big Marincin feature for a long time. And when it looked like he was going to be back, I was like, oh, I guess I can't ever do that Marincin feature. And now it's still alive.

So what are you going to even write about with him? Oh, I've just got to get on the plane to Slovakia. Oh, James. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. I can't wait for that Marenchian. When it does come out, James, we'll make sure and promote it. The thing is with our audience is that we found if you can do a deep dive on something that...

The Globe would never let you do that. No. I could do 4,000 words on Marenchian and our audience would read it. The hits would be out of this world. I would read it, but I'd also... The whole time I'm going, how is he still a leaf? How is he still a leaf? But I'm reading to maybe find out.

You would want that in the story, yeah. Yeah. Well, like Simeon Dura-Argachentsev I don't think has ever been printed in the Toronto Sun. No. I don't think it's ever made it to, like, a newsprint for any newspaper. Well, Wheeler's done four big takeouts on him or something. He loves him! And now I love him!

Yeah. As a result. Except he plays for the Peets. I'm not allowed to love him. I don't think he had a very good year, right? Uh, well, dude, he's on the Peets. Okay. The Peets stink.

And they have stunk for, like, a long time. Also, he's an Oshawa fan, so he has to hate the Peets. Yeah, a friend of mine just got hired as a play-by-play guy for the Peets, so hopefully they turn it around. Man, that sucks for him. well it wasn't swift current so i think this might be an upgrade oh okay i've never been to swift current i don't know it's small oh okay fair enough i love the prairie people i'm from out west but it's it's just small and cold and yep not untrue i think swift current's the small

city that has a major junior team i think it's like i think it's under 20 000 people it's really small is it really yeah 20 000 so that's such a great example of the of the prairie there's nothing to do but everyone's at the nothing yeah i bet you know what i mean sells out i bet they are one of the better attended teams 16 000 people yeah dude are you serious 16 604 in 2016 last census dude i lived it man i grew up in western canada in a city where there ain't nothing to do and we never was at the nothing we had season tickets like when i was a kid canvas is probably like 75 80 000 people and the arena held 5500 so that's a pretty big percentage of the city that would be at those games

and it was sold out every game. If you were like a cat burglar in Kamloops, that's the time to strike. You just clean out half of Kamloops

during every game. Man, you want to jack a car while everybody's at the game. All the cops are there too. They're working the game. Probably. Yeah,

it's their overtime. All the cops, sorry, the cop. No, the sheriff. The sheriff. That's right,

sheriff. Hey, there's like 80,000 people. I know. I'm talking about it like it's a science. Whip crime. Poe Duncan's like

the size of Pickering. Pickering doesn't have a major junity. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. You know, so one of the things, and Steve and I have had this argument, and Jesse rolls his eyes at Steve, as do I, because Steve has an anxious streak. I'm not sure if you know that. What?

And one of the things that Steve's been freaked out about that I know a lot of people are freaked out about and that we don't quite understand, and I didn't understand the arbitration rules properly, Cody Ceci is a really interesting one because the Leafs, from what I understand, didn't have to pay him what they paid him, correct? I think there were avenues that, I mean, they could have also just traded him, right? Yeah. They still could. Or do the arbitration thing and walk, yeah, they still could.

Is it that they see in him that they're like, yeah, that probably is our second pair of right-handed guy? Part of what they see is... Or top. No. No, I don't think so. It'll be Muzzin. Part of why they think that he can work is they're going to move him to secondary duty. And I think what they see is, I think they kind of feel that Ottawa abused him a little bit.

We talk about not throwing young players into the fire so much. He had terrible D partners. He was in tough minutes. He was on a bad team. On and on and on and on. The Leafs seem to think that that's why his metrics look the way they do and not necessarily how he plays. And it'll be fascinating. But I think the point you make is they still could trade him.

Maybe they look at him for like October, November. And then Dermott's healthy and coming back. and it's like, this isn't working. But it's a four and a half million dollar try where you didn't have to, I guess. They think something's there. They legitimately think something's there. Now, do you think there's something there?

I don't know. I mean... Well, your opinion matters. I mean, what do you think, like in a best case scenario that is still realistic, what are we looking at with this person? And how does he fit on this team?

And is Mike Babcock going to use him like he used Ron Hainsey and Roman Polak? There it is. There it is. It's not even Cody CeCe. It's Mike Babcock's usage of Cody CeCe. Yeah, well I mean that's... and what about his usage of Ben Harper and what about you know... Ben Harper's not gonna do it. Yo, can that guy not make the team please? Ben Harper's not gonna do it. There's no way. He's gonna be Marley.

So who's your... Justin Holl. When Dermot... yeah, and who else? Until Dermot goes by. Anybody! Magic Hands Marty. I think Harper probably gets a chance as like a depth guy. no no simply no yeah he's your healthy scratch every night yeah to begin the season i would think but the thing is like babcock's gonna look at that guy and he's like he's big he's six six plays the pk every time i just wonder if they'll i wonder if they'll play him like 10 minutes a night it'll be like easy okay i'm not saying my opinion i'm saying i'm trying to forecast Guess what they're going to do. Yes.

I know that. Yeah. Sorry. No. Sorry. What do I think CeCe is? Rule one of broadcasting. Yell at the guests.

I think CeCe. No, I like. I enjoy it. It's good. Yeah. It's better than the yelling that I get at home. At least this is about hockey. Yeah.

Exactly. I think CeCe is going to be a one-year experiment, and that's what he's going to be. Okay. Does that mean the four and a half? I think they look at it like Zaitsev was making four and a half, but we were stuck with that contract for five years. He couldn't move the puck out of his own end very well. CeCe's better at that, at least.

And I imagine they're going to play him with good players. He's going to be on the ice with either the Matthews line or the Tavares line. And CeCe's role is going to be, yeah, CeCe's role is going to be get one of those other people to puck. He put up points. He put up some points. And he might excel in that role of just getting other people to puck. And maybe they start him in the offensive zone a lot.

And maybe they, Dubas, Kyle Dubas would know Cody CeCe really well from the OHL. He would have seen him play a lot there. I'm playing devil's advocate. Because if you look at the analytics and everything, they're terrible. Yeah. They really are. There's no escaping that. But, and the other thing I think that we've got to talk about is that the analytics that the Leafs use are not what we're looking at.

They're not looking at, they're not using that stuff. They're just not. So, what are they using then? I don't know. You've got to get Dubas on here and get him in here. Oh, God. Oh, easy. I wish.

This is another one where it's like, if I knew that, that would be a paywall story. Right. Fair enough. Okay. If I had extensive knowledge of the analytic data. You're not dropping that for free That's something that team is going to protect With their life

Oh my god CC I'm even like Okay yeah alright I'm willing to give him a shot Harper dude Because he just fits so many Babcockian criteria And I have this bad thing When I'm watching where

When I watch a Leaf game I'm watching what the Leafs do Not necessarily what the other team is doing to them sometimes so it's difficult for me to notice players on the other team at times but i remember mid-season i was like ben harper's really bad right like this guy he was just getting what every single shift and then i saw he was part of my nightmare trade when all the sites i was going to ottawa oh as long as it's not cc guess what it's cc and harper what i just lost my mind man i think they're gonna give him a shot i really do now and i don't know if that's just

training camp and pre-season or i don't think they just acquired that to throw it in the month to put him in the minors i don't want to call him it to put the contract in the minors so then okay when you look at i think we can probably safely say that a very very very good probably hall of fame head coach not probably definitely hall of fame head coach in mike babcock probably coach one of his worst games in boston in game seven is that fair but enough about 2018 2019 probably one of at least from my perspective and this is just a personal thing it looked like they were beaten everywhere they were beaten on all fronts bruce cassidy had his number and and you know as you said as you tweeted and i will never forget this tweet i don't know why

sticks out of my mind Patrick Marleau on the ice in the last couple minutes well I remember watching the end of that game in the press box and being like what is going on like they're it just and the players are would just look like they were done too like they just they the Leafs I think have to be careful because you know you're gonna lose player confidence if there's stuff like that happening and it's gonna be really interesting when Babcock finally talks at the beginning of the year because he he's one of the people that vouched for Zaitsev and brought him over from Russia and advocated for him to get that contract he's one of the people that recruited Marleau and advocated for him to get that contract some of the things that were wrong with the Leafs roster

weren't just the coach playing those players he helped them be part of the team I didn't know about uh Mike Babcock with Marleau oh yeah oh yeah 100% well he coached him right with the olympic team yeah he was all in on on bringing marlo aboard that was that was a lamorello babcock decision did that which was the brain trust at the time when that contract was signed so there have been some mistakes that have been made that the coaching staff the coach the head coach has had an influence in and now i'm not in the room to know who's making what argument and who's making what decision but i'm sure you could deduce it though you're around them enough yeah Is this a paywall question?

Does he have a lot of impact in the signings? I think he did. I think he had a lot of – I think Lou Lamorello really respected Mike Babcock, understandably, and I think that he took his opinion on some of these personnel decisions into account, yeah. And, you know, one of the things that we thought – Sid Sixero actually tweeted it and I was definitely thinking it. He said after that last game, Mike Babcock's coach's last game with the Leafs.

And you said no. And even at the time, I was like, I was so mad. I was like, that's got to be it. That's got to be it. This is crap. But then you look at the history, and he's done such an amazing job. He really has, especially that first season and that second season with the bunch of nobodies and then the bunch of rookies.

And it just seems like there seems to be a wall with him where he just won't commit to coaching this team the way they're constructed. And Kyle Duba said at the end of the season that everybody was up for review. and then a few days later he's met with Babcock they've had a conversation he said the conversations were very productive do you think that means that Mike Babcock is willing to change or willing to look at changing the way he's deploying these players because this is a this is a team that is the antithesis of what Mike Babcock wanted to coach he wants tough he wants some skill lots of like high-end skill but he also wants the Advil Cater fourth line for some reason well

that's what I was going to say is that he has no choice but to change now like you look how much different the roster is. What a bet. Who's going to be his Marlo Hainsey Zaitsevs this year? Ben Harper, Cody Can't wait to find out.

Jason Spezza. Can't wait to find out, James. Ben, CeCe. Who are the three worst players? Those ones. That's who it's going

to be. Jason Spezza's on the first line. Oh, yeah. Austin Matthews is going to sit. Jason Spezza will not make the opening night

lineup because it'll be go. Oh, it'll be Freddie. Let me put it this way. It's getting harder and harder. It's much harder for him now to do what he did last year like there's no patrick marlowe you can give 15 minutes a game

there's no you playing around playing with austin math yeah there's no connor brown that's yeah that's another good one you know they've gotten rid of a lot of the fat the comfort goats who can't i can't i think i think tyler dello called them comfort goats like these kind of players that make the coach make the coach a comfort goats like i think they use them uh i don't know i can't remember the reference but it's a good one i think connor brown was used wrong yeah you know what i I actually think he'll work out. He'll be fine in Ottawa, yeah. I thought he was going to go to Edmonton.

Same. I thought the Oilers should have ponied up. Was it going to be Benning? It was going to be nothing to get him. I think it was like a pick, and Holland doesn't want to trade picks. But they should have got him in there. Oh, Hutton. There you go, Hutton.

Remember that? Oh, my God. Yeah, no, it seemed like he would have been great. And imagine James Neal, Connor McDavid, and Connor Brown. That sounds like a good line to me. Conor Brown was misused, but he also didn't really fit with what the Leafs had, right? Like, he wasn't really, and I think he'll fit better in another team. Just the way the Leafs are built on speed and skill.

We'll always have that tip-in goal, though. Yeah. Against Pittsburgh. Ah, so good. Well, Conor Brown's such a good dude, too. Like, he's, you know, he was one of the best people in that dressing room. And it's, you know, like, there was, they didn't want to trade him. He's making $2.1 million, and he's on the fourth line.

You know, they need that money. It's not even a bad deal. It's just where he was. If there's no cap, he never gets traded. They keep him forever. They would just, yeah. I wonder with Mike Babcock, you know, you say that he's running out of options, right,

in terms of how he's going to coach the team. Do you really think, or is that being devil's advocate, James? No, I mean, they took away Brown, Marleau, Hainsey, Zaitsev and and is this Kyle Dubas planting his flag in the earth and going no this is what we're going to be get on board or get out I think Kyle Dubas is doing what he thinks he needs he has to do to win and I'm sure he was sick and tired of watching Zaitsev and Hainsey and that's that's not the kind of hockey that Kyle Dubas has always wanted his teams to play he wants them to be able to move the puck efficiently and like you you could go and watch the Marlies and watch they

were the way they were playing and when watch players like Justin Hall and that fit in in the AHL environment, and then the Leafs weren't doing the same thing, and part of it was personnel. This was always I think what Kyle Davis was going to do. I don't think it's a Babcock thing. Interesting. Yeah, it just makes the most sense, which to me

even more says there's a disconnect, right? Oh, there's a disconnect. He was always going to do this. Well, then it's even worse. So is there a scenario where Mike Babcock doesn't make it through the season? I don't think so. I don't think so. I do. You do. They would have to be just brutal. Like, they would have to be

bad out of a playoff spot they like something would have to go seriously wrong i'm not even sure it would have to be that bad let's say he's got a clean slate and mike babcock's contract ended june 30th who's his coach this year yeah next year like who's the guy who what's the type of coach that that i mean steve mcfarland's the new assistant obviously paul sorry paul mcfarland uh i don't want to keep saying steve mcfarland and then you've got dave hackstall which was interesting i wonder if that was a babcock input or i don't know i don't know well i'd be surprised if mike babcock was allowed to put input into something like that normally a coach gets some input into their staff i mean mcfarland was obviously someone that that dubas would have

known mcfarland he went to high school with jonah siegel so oh really really yeah is there a feature coming yes ah there you go i won't ask what it's about that'll be behind the further questions directed to them subscribe today 40% off can I read it now or I don't have it I haven't seen it yet we need Jonas to get back to work yeah right what's he been doing it's not like that guy works hard come on all the hockey writers go to like Mars I don't blame them I would need to disappear hey we still got lots of content going oh yeah oh yeah oh I didn't say the athletic necessarily I mean you're here that's me um I'm working on a leaf story hoping to have something for Wednesday What are you thinking?

What is it? I'm going to do something looking at their cap situation and what their roster looks like into the future, like trying to spitball. They have some money next year, do they not? Yeah. And one defenseman. Yeah, but all their D is UFA.

So that's kind of what I want to get into is looking at and even looking beyond that. Does this cap situation ease up a little bit? The cap not going up very much is really limiting for them because if it continued going up $3 or $4 million a year, you can project where that would be three years from now and obviously they got lots of space and they're always going to be spending to that limit so if it gets stifled like this it's it's really tough because i'm sure when they signed the matthews contract they were like well we're

gonna have an 83 million cap next year and it's gonna be 86 and it's gonna be it's like no the projections are wrong like it's not gonna happen that way interesting that they didn't the nhl is making more money than ever i'm surprised it's the players it's escrow so they didn't want to vote for the escalator basically right yeah okay well that's what that's what happened yeah they They should have been doing that, like, five, six years ago. I mean, every time I talked to players about this, I was always like, why? Like, you don't like escrow? Then stop voting to raise the cap artificially.

Because the escrow was at whatever it was. Was it 10%, 11% or something last year? Yeah. So the value of your contract is not real. If you're a player making $10 million, you're actually making $8.9 or whatever. Does it never come back? No, if you lose your escrow, then it's gone. Oh, wow.

Escrow is an adjustment mechanism based on how well revenues match up with how much teams are spending. Wow. So then they balance out at the end of every year. Okay. And the players lose that big chunk of their contract. Oh, wow. I had no idea it worked like that. The players you meet ever agreeing to that is shocking.

Do you have the same fear as Steve in that you see a lockout coming? Maybe a short one, but I don't think it's going to be Armageddon. I don't know what we're going to do with, like, 50 hockey writers at Midlake if there's no hockey. We're all going to be in Swift Current. Yeah, all right. Well, you could have some fun with that, right? I think what we talked about last time is what we would do. We would just switch to the KHL and learn about the KHL

because it's a wild, crazy place. Not a single sober show. No. Not one. Yeah, we'd have fun watching people cancel subscriptions. Oh, no, I don't think so. James, the... Yeah, and then they come back as soon as the lockout ends

and you jack the price. The one thing that I really... I look at the roster and I go, ah, this is a little bit concerning, is the backup goaltender situation. Because it's very clear, yet again, as it was before, that Freddie Anderson can't play as many games as he's played. Can't wait to see them not address this as well.

They must know, performance-wise, how many games a goalie should play. What a bet. Right? I'm sure it's 50 games. 55, maybe? Well, I mean, look at the year Tuca Rask had, where they dialed, like Boston specifically went into the year saying, we're going to get a good backup goalie. We're going to pay Halak $2.5 million. We're going to allocate that money on our cap.

And look at the year Rask had in the playoffs. I mean, he was just, he was a different goalie than he was in other postseasons when he held them back. And I remember in that first round series, the fan base and the media in Boston were really hard on Rask and were really getting on him. And then he just had a great postseason. And, you know, people were talking about, you know, he could be the cons might guy. I think you're right.

I mean, I think that the sweet spot for goalie, and I think as analytics take over more and more, you're probably going to see goalies play less and less, and they're going to top out around 50, 52 games. Anderson, 66 games his first year, 66 games his second year, 60 games last year. And part of that's because he got hurt around December last year. Because of course he did, because he's playing 60-plus games. That's one of those, I don't have a devil's advocate answer on this one, because I don't like what they're doing. What are they doing that you don't like? i don't know what what's the option here like they got on a pto right that was today yeah i mean i

that's from like a european source i didn't i don't know did anyone confirm that nobody's confirming no but even if it's true it's magic beans right like that's a guy who was a is he any better than hutchinson like i don't know he he might be he was better but he played i think eight hockey games last year right and not very well we're good yeah right he was he was hurt And then there was Hutchison, who prior to coming to Toronto was terrible. And are any of those guys better than Garrett Sparks? Who was bad? And the Leafs basically kicked him off the team.

Their backup goalie spot right now is a giant question mark. I've always argued that teams should allocate more resources there. I think what Boston did was brilliant. The Leafs are in a tough spot where they've got to pick what they're going to do. I just think they should have went and got some backup goalie who was decent for like a million and a half. and just, like, spent some of that cap space, as opposed to, like I said, there's not a lot of fat to trim, but, you know, maybe you can find a little bit of room somewhere else.

And obviously, you know, the big story that we're probably going to have to wait until training camp for is Mitch Marner. And there's a lot of angles to this story. Have you seen this? Have you read about this? Yeah, I know. It's good that we haven't talked about it. And if people go, look, we're not writing about this all the time. Like, we're not. But, no, I mean, we're tired of talking about it. I'm tired of the Nylander stuff.

There's nothing to say. There's nothing. Like, I'm not writing a story. Marner did his charity event, and there were a bunch of stories, and there's nothing to say. And what was he going to say? He's not going to say anything? No.

You see the kid at Wonderland? No, what happened? The kid's like, here, Mitch, let's take a selfie. And then it ended up being a video. He's like, when are you going to resign? And Mitch is like, ah. That's funny. But, like, James, how do you see it playing out?

and there's a couple other follow-up questions i'll have but how do you see this playing out if i'm the leafs i start in early september i start or even late august i start leaking trade rumors of you know the leafs are talking to so-and-so about mitch marner and they got to put the fear into him a little bit that he might not be here and do you see a scenario where he may not be yeah i think it's possible i think he's going to be here but they need his side they need like some sort of reasonable negotiation to happen to get a contract done and why hasn't it been why is this agent and it seems to be the agent this is the agent's mo this is what he does he did it with the fantasy you he did it with uh josh anderson josh anderson and i think uh bennett in calgary

or no who was it he's got he's got bennett now was it was he with johnny gaudreau when all that happened no no no uh actually neilander's agent is gaudreau's agent lewis gross lewis gross is gaudreau's agent so why what is the because i've been really hard on this guy he he has fallen flat on his face several times now in the media trying to negotiate through the media he's clearly trying to put fan pressure on the team this hasn't worked leaf fans well the offer sheet thing hasn't worked either there's no so what is this what is the what's the strategy now because he's got no leverage there's no lever point here other than mitch marner's talent which is obvious so if you're the agent and this is your your playbook and it's the same playbook every time do you think

a guy like kyle dubas isn't going to find that out and secondly if mitch marner is not a leaf at the end of this because if they've been asking this obnoxious number which we hear is 12 and a half million dollars or 11 and a half million dollars which is still crazy oh yeah according to darren well if you want to if you want to ask darren drager it could be the moon the the the what is the end game for him how as an agent do you win this because you've sold the marner family and specifically mitch people people people always say it's paul marner we don't know if paul marner's involved in this at all and i think it's unfair to to include him in this um how do you how do you now go back to the client and go yeah we can't get anywhere close to that sorry it's gonna have

to be nine i i personally believe that mitch wants to stay and that whatever the resolution is he's gonna be fine with and he's gonna be like he he wants to be here of course he does he's not he does not want to go play for the islanders like it's just not like and even if they did offer him a deal does he sign it well that's it he has to in order for this to like for that to actually be a threat yeah so it's such a silly situation because like if it was a different environment and it was like the truba and winnipeg situation where he doesn't want to be there and there are various reasons why he doesn't want to be there okay like i understand playing this level of hard ball and but with marner it makes no sense because so if i'm the leafs i you got to put that that

threat out there that potentially you could get moved that potentially your dream scenario you grew up wanting to play for the leafs it's your hometown team you're a star you're one of their best players what are you doing well and what's the difference and and people i get i get lit up for saying this but it's the truth um and you can back me up on this because i know you know a little bit better than i do um the money making potential outside of the toronto maple leafs organization in this city i think is greater than anywhere else in the nhl oh well i mean look at the endorsements that marner has like look how many commercials you see him on and like look at i mean so if he loses a million bucks on or two million bucks a season he can make that up in

endorsements can he not 100 and especially if he continues to be a big part of this team and they win and they because they become like they go on a run i don't want to say like the raptors because that's that's not just a run that's a that's that's something different but almost a miracle yeah yes but you know if the leaps continue to be good and he continues to be part of that and has 94 point seasons again and again and again he can write his own ticket off the ice like it doesn't and and the other and on the ice too i mean at some point he's going to come up for another contract i think his camp like they should just sign a show me deal sign a two or three year contract and then the leafs are not going to have much if he if he has 94 points for the next three

years and whatever he wants he's going to make whatever yeah he will make more than austin yeah Because with inflation, there won't be much choice. Yes, and there will be more cap space, and the Leafs will probably happily pay it. Is that really the issue? Does it have to be more than Austin? Is that why? I don't know. I don't talk to the father.

Is the father involved? Oh, 100%. Everybody knows that. I wasn't sure. I never got confirmation on that. I don't like involving people in the story if they're not. I felt like what happened with Michael Nylander last year was perhaps a little bit unfair

and I wanted to be careful with Paul obviously we read Jonas' piece with Paul and then we heard the interview that he did basically walking back all the claims that he made in the Athletic on TSN later that afternoon when it all came out that Ferris did

Paul Marner did too was that Jonas? Aaron Ferris did the big blow up on the same day matthew signed his extension no he also had the piece with in the star where they yeah how did that go over but we had one earlier than that where it had paul marner in it and it had ferris in it and i remember that he said those quotes were from the summer and they came out yeah that's what i mean like paul went on 10 50 and walked back all of those claims well those quotes are

old i think it was the agent though it wasn't the dad yeah i didn't yeah i didn't hear the dad on the radio yeah he didn't paul didn't go on but didn't the agent say something specifically referring to the deal he got i thought he did in in the star story oh yes yeah okay on the day on the day they announced the contract and it's like it was a huge day for austin matthews personally and and for the team to to do that to throw an egg on that day was well how did that very unusual dressing room well i don't know i'm not i mean i technically am in there sometimes but i'm not in there when they there's no way that i the thing is is that mitch and austin are really close like they're they're good friends they want to play together like i think that like they want to play

on the same line like they want to be on the top power play unit together they want you know they don't want this to end badly none of them do so i think that the piece i wrote during the season is that essentially that there's the dark cloud around mitch marner that he doesn't deserve at all i don't think it's of his doing i think that there's people around him giving him bad advice and what do you think that bad advice would be i'm not asking for like exact word but what What is the, because Elliot Friedman said something like that similarly on the 31 Thoughts podcast. Well, this whole negotiation and like the way that they've put it out in the public eye and everything, like that's. Because it seems to be about respect, right?

I guess. I don't think Marner's been disrespected, though. Well, no. He's beloved. He didn't get to play on the line with P.A. Parenteau when he was a rookie. He didn't get to play on the line with P.A. Parenteau when they intentionally finished last. And that was a slap in the face, James. That's what he wanted?

That's what they said. For sure. that was one of the things that was named on the rookie bonuses and uh him having to play on the fourth line for eight games with his buddy matt martin and like i don't think mitch this is this none of this seems to affect mitch marner one of those games on the fourth line he put up like four points well exactly and this is the weird thing is that you you mentioned it the yeah we put up four points actually made the fourth line viable but none of that seemed to affect mitch what seems to affect mitch or what seemed to affect the marner camp is is every slight that

paul marner and uh and darren or yeah uh darren ferris have written down it's like uh chris jericho in the wwe he's like you're on the list and it's what i don't i just don't understand where the win for those two is what are they trying to win and is and mitch marner's a man now he's got to be responsible for the people that represent him so at what point does he step in and go you know what guys this isn't really my style i want to be here i can make an obnoxious amount of money anyway why don't we just make this happen does he do that i don't know it hasn't happened yet right right and i don't i don't know i don't know how that like i'm not in that inner dynamic i just know you just hear from people around it how it functions okay but i think that he's getting bad

advice and i think he's a good kid i think he wants to stay here and i think that you know a lot of players don't neilander was the same way they want their agent to handle this negotiation because they don't understand where they fit in. They don't understand what their value is. So when you talk about bad advice, that's all part of it, right? They're handing a lot of this over for them to handle. Right. Austin Matthews wasn't deciding.

He wasn't pounding the table asking for what number, the number he got. His representatives are doing that. Right. Right. Interesting. Well, I mean, sorry, I wanted to save the Marner stuff as late as we could because I know everybody's sick and tired of talking about it, but it just, for me, seems like there is no win here for this agent now. He has done everything he can to exhaust every single angle. I don't see it.

He probably did. He probably will if he does sign in Toronto. He probably succeeded in getting him more than we would have thought. And at a cheaper price than we thought. It's almost at the point where no matter what he signs for, it's, whew, you know, at least it wasn't 11. I don't know. I think there's going to be a mixed reaction.

Like Austin's? I think it's going to be like everybody's unhappy is probably where it's going to end up if it gets done. That's the perfect compromise. Everybody's sort of unhappy. Nobody wins outright. Where's your line for what would make you unhappy on a Marner contract? What if it's like five years, 10.7?

Do you like that? It's what I said with Austin. I don't love 11.6, but I do love the fact that he's on my team for the next half decade. For the best half decade of his career. yeah so five years i don't care i i like that mitch marner will be on my team for five years so ultimately i won't be that i think it's gonna be but that's too much money i know i'm not i i actually don't think it's gonna be that much i mean if if the leafs get in a situation where

it's much more than 10 things are so tight i don't know how they're gonna make that work well nick patan they might have to swallow that contract and do something with they just won't be able to carry anybody on that they won't have their taxi squad right might strap them to a Like people have been making fun of the Oilers for all the bottom six guys that they have Leafs have a lot the Leafs have like Six lines right now, and there's all these guys. Okay, maybe you have the inside track on this Who is it Agostino? No, no

Well do those guys exist because they haven't even been announced. Yeah, they're gonna be part of the team. Okay That's weird Here wait Let me get out my You've already paid You just gotta This is the awkward thing About doing a show like this

This is the awkward thing About doing a show like this In the middle of the summer Is that there's all these Things that are half Right Like all these things We're working on

That are half finished How do I get it Fully finished I like I can't talk about it though So what you're saying Is we should have Another tier at The Athletic

Where you can like Where I just Hand you money in person And you tell me things He follows you to Leafs games And just hands you 20s But yes Agostino and Nick Shore

Are Leafs Okay Okay Good But not officially announced Until what Mitch Marner And also Nick Patan

And also Jason Spezza And also Freddy Gauthier Yeah but like Those guys that make Under a million Like the Leafs can just like Maybe the Marlies Will be really good

Right Yeah I think You called it a taxi squad They're literally going to be Taking a taxi from the Rico To the ACC Every day

Because you save whatever it is like four grand a day if they're when they're down so i think the least would do that so this really gets into the nitty-gritty um oh i love it i love it you love the nitty-gritty so forget about the star player making too much money or not why do the leafs always have um two spares up front and a spare on d they don't they don't always have no no well when guys are actually there were times last year where they would only have two spares or sometimes only one there were some games yeah because well because there's no need for it next year they're gonna have to do that yeah they can't have three yeah because the cap yeah and they don't use them

yeah you can't have three spares you need you need a spare on the road though because it happens actually pretty frequently that someone you're on some road trip and you're in carolina or whatever and someone gets hurt and it's like or they're sick four hours or they're yeah four or five hours before the game you can't have no spares on the road totally but justin hall seems like the perfect guy for that just porch put him in on the right wing and then there's no way that He's going to want to do that again There's no way That's another story that I need to flesh out

And I need to figure out Does this guy have a role or not You could write a book Just guys Babcock never played And just write a chapter On each one Here's Peter Holland Here's Josh Levo

Here's Frankie Corrado Justin Hall come on down you're the new guy Who's it going to be this year Can't wait to find out It might be Justin Rowe. What does a Mitch Marner trade look like? Thank you, Justin. Jonas, this is the kind of thing Jonas and I yell at about it.

He says you can't trade him because you will never get anything back that will make that a good trade for the Leafs. That's probably true. Yeah. But if you traded for a need, like what if it's an Aaron Eckblad coming back? Right. It's also $11 million in cap. That's the kind of thing I say.

You could trade him for a very good player who makes a little bit less than what Marner's going to get. then you've got cap space and you've still got a very good player that maybe fits on a piece of part of your roster that you need more help in i think it still i think there are ways to do it that makes sense um what i've heard a lot of is well fine sign the offer sheet i'll take those four first round picks there's no way you would take those four first round picks would you how big is the number 13 so who are you going to trade to fit a 13 million dollar deal onto the leaves long term yeah you're gonna have to shed other players dude if it's 10-6 i take it oh

sorry yeah why did i go 13 yeah if it's 10-6 you take it because i don't i just don't think four first round picks is worth it for mitch marner but it's also no space yeah but if you're it's also the cap space but there's no one available the first number you is is the right point if it's 13 let's say some team offers 13 over four years because they're just like trying to just screw the Leafs as much as possible. And they do it the day before you have to be cap-compliant. Jesus. That's funny.

This is fun. There you go. The day after training camp ends and you've got to get down to your 23-man roster. I mean, obviously they get some time where they get to decide on that offer sheet, but then you'd have to trade other players to make that fit. I think there are scenarios where, well, I mean, in that situation, it would be really hard to take the picks because all of a sudden you'd have this huge amount of cap space what are you going to do with it like it on like october 1st yeah

but if you're another team that that wants to go after the leafs or or tampa with point or kyle connor and line a with winnipeg or you know tampa with point is the guy that i would if i've got the cap space that's the guy i want right he said he doesn't want to leave and don't even bother but i think if you came at him with 14 or 15 million he might go well and his agent's the same as aho and aho signed an offer sheet so and and by the way is is mark bergevin working with don waddell because that seemed like a big favor that he just i don't know what they were doing i don't know what they were weird you know what i i laughed when i dom for us uh did a story on the best value contracts around the league and aho's was on there it was the new contract yeah

it was one of the most it was one of the best value contracts in the nhl how long is this deal again wasn't it a five year i think it was a five eight and a half times five yeah eight point four something yeah beautiful fantastic i remember being like all right you know what it's gonna suck if ajo goes to the habs because they're gonna be a really good team what's the number and then no you see the number i'm like it's like no waste of time no eight point four or five i don't know why they got this idea that carolina wouldn't be able to pay that too like well they're they're a cap team now i mean they've got a couple dead cap spaces on there with a lot of money yeah they have an owner who lit a lot of money on fire for that football league that was not a problem for him so

why would an offer sheet that's front loaded be a problem for him for one player yeah their best player like they weren't going to take the picks i don't think it was the most pointless offer sheet i've ever seen plus i think with the home playoff games revenue and everything else i think carolina is going to make money pretty here pretty soon well maybe not but i think that their owner can lose money yeah it doesn't matter well some of those teams like i remember seeing the books for like the coyotes when they were going through their bankruptcy and it's like holy cow this team makes like it generates no revenue well i went to uh i've said this on the show before i went to arizona for my honeymoon and i asked the person who we were renting the car from who by the way

upgraded us uh to a mustang convertible because it was our honeymoon which was awesome i said so like how close the uh are these coyotes arena and she's like excuse me i said you know where the coyotes play i don't know what the coyotes are i'm like i'm staring at the city that they play in And she's like, I'm like the hockey team. She's like, oh, hacky. Hacky. And she's like, yeah, I've never seen them. I don't know.

It's far. It is far. Yes. It's in Glendale. It's not in the city. No. It's not in the city you were looking at. Exactly.

No, it's not. Exactly. But it's still one of those where you're kind of. Carolina's books aren't like coyotes, but there are definitely, the revenue parity or disparity in the NHL is pretty crazy. But there's equalization payments for that. yeah but not enough to like really revenue share is not that big but the leafs do pay a lot into that i can imagine i would think so at least probably put 30 million into that every year

cool wow so hard cap and they pay for everything and none of the benefits they get nothing for it that's okay that's okay listen if the leafs are as good this year as they were last year i think they make it what i think they make it further than like imagine they're as as good this year as they like one one game literally separated them from do you think they roll columbus yeah i think they would probably have a pretty good run it's tough right there's no probably no hyman and probably well i don't know about gardner gardner would have eventually fallen apart like two and dermot dermot wasn't right either dermot wasn't right that third pair that the Leafs had was not functional and they didn't have like a lot of other options and watching them they

just yeah do you think guys like Sandin and Lilligren make the team this year or do they really believe that they're going to put them in the Marlies one more I just don't see how that's possible I think one of them gets called up mid-season the same way Dermott was for the last 37 games of the year and that's when they start to integrate those guys I think one of them will come up and who's the better player I think Sandin is but he's a left shot and then so then it gets into more what mike wants it gets into more any injuries are going to be a factor and what happens with cc and all of these things okay i mean i can see logram fitting in really nice on the third pair on on the right side and that's maybe he finishes the season with the leaves do you think

people have given him a lot of shit lately because leaves twitter is hard on everybody but they've given him a lot of shit because it seems like he came in with this fanfare like holy crap this is a guy that fell out of the top three because he had mono they got him at 17 that's amazing but he hasn't made the lineup yet so therefore he's a bust where is what's his projection to you and we're not going to hold you to this by the way so yeah i will but like other people will i think probably he probably tops out as like a number four d like i don't think he's going to be like a game-changing top pair d and i don't think he's going to be a big points producer producing guy either so but i think he's going to play in the nhl they sure could use that

just a top four guy. Yeah, literally, guy. Just guy who can make defensive zone X. Like, get the puck out of the zone. Guy who's not making four and a half. Yeah. Yeah, you know. All right, so, James, we love that you've come by.

We are going to do a quick press conference thing so we can open it up to our listeners. Do we have some questions? Let's try to bring some up. Jesse's going to make up some press conference questions. He's going to just make them up. So, James, is there a calendar for the amount of stories that you need to do this summer like did you go into the summer and go i'm gonna do it's it's

eight weeks until like that pre-training camp or the rookie camp or whatever uh i'm gonna do eight stories well nobody looked because i've hardly written anything because we've been so busy behind the scenes with what we're doing so um but you are you are kind of the manager so you can say yes yeah and i'm not and i'm not just making it up either a lot of that stuff has taken a lot of time uh i i ideally i would want to write something like once a week but i've got vacation in there and stuff like that too so but we're trying to keep our hockey staff active in the summer and writing yeah most of the other outlets don't there's no hockey writers writing right now well there's a hunger for it i actually saw a traditional media guy say what

there's like a leafs thing at the end of the year for rookies isn't that the nutritional like educational camp or something like that oh they have a development camp yeah yeah in july into june yeah so this this angry old guy was tweeting about how upset he was that any outlet would dare cover that because it's not even news someone local someone here local yeah you you can guess i think we had four people there at the leaps development camp so he must have been really angry but that's just that's just like a license to print content though because you have well obviously there's no one there so you have more time with these guys but it's also guys you're not going to see for a while you've never spoken to them before because they're brand new so you

can ask them about their whole life story it's really smart to be at content wise and people want to hear about well one of the things we've seen at the athletic that does really well is prospect coverage like yeah people love that stuff i was telling people uh when i wrote about them a little bit more on uh sportsnet's website that sort of 2016 team when all they were doing was just prospect farming and uh yeah the numbers were unbelievable it was like more than like i'd get something for a tobias lindbergh profile that was like more than like raptors game recaps yeah Back then. Yeah.

They're better now. Yeah. Raptors are better now. So one thing we've been doing in our press conferences lately is trivia. So we asked our listeners to give us some hockey trivia to ask on the show. Oh, man. So I don't know how good you are at hockey trivia. I hope I don't look like a fool.

It really depends what it is, like what era and all that. So there are 14 jersey numbers that have only been ever worn by one Leaf. So I'm going to give you a number. You have to tell me the only Leaf who has ever worn that number. Okay. You guys ready? You can combine your brains. Okay, so we're working together. Yes. Okay, good.

96. He wore it in 2003. Oh, I remember this. Was that? That's when they were the really rounded numbers, too. Would that have been Alex Suglubov? Did Berzin wear it for one year? He was 94. Yeah, he was 94.

No, Suglubov was in the 80s. He was like an 80 number. Is it, was it, was it, um, who was the defenseman? Carl something, or there was a... Pierre Hedin? Not Hedin. Uh, he was a Czech guy. Harald Druken?

Oh, no. Oh, he was a Czech player, and he probably, this guy probably would have played, like, ten games. Um... Not Fran is that Cabriolet? No. Did he play for the Leafs? Karl Pilasch?

Maybe Karl Pilasch. Was it Karl Pilasch? No, I don't think it was Karl Pilasch. James? I don't know, guys. We need an answer here. I don't know, guys. I was not a Leafs diehard.

No. This is like a 90s player. Dot blogspot James Era This is Phil Housley Oh Shit 96

Wow Damn it I remember being so excited For that trade too Freaking Phil Housley Why would he wear that number I don't know I don't know

Ron Francis Is that how old he was Here's an easy one Gilmore I think came back That year too And played a shift And then got his knee in 84

The only player to wear 84 for the least Grabowski Yeah Very good Only player to ever wear 91 Tavares

John Tavares Yeah alright Hold on Only player to ever wear 88 Until this season Eric Lindros Eric Lindros Only player to ever wear

81 Kessel Phil Kessel No You're giving us some easy ones Yeah These are the easy ones Only player to ever wear

77 Pavel Kabina Only player to ever wear 73 Is that Pierre Hedin? Might be. That might be a Hadeen number. I don't know, man.

He wore it in 2007. Oh, they sucked. Which one? 2006-7 or 7-8? I don't know. Great. Good. I'm going to say Hadeen.

I'm sticking with Hadeen. All right. I'm going to say that was also Pavel Kabina. Because remember, he had a few different numbers? Yeah, he did. Oh, seven. Boy, they were so bad. Dark years.

Dark, dark years. I'm not going to embarrass myself. It was Pavel Kubina. Hey! That's your question. No way! He's the only player to wear 77 and 73. Well done.

Unbelievable. Dude, well done. No way! Somewhere you have a Kubina 73 jersey. Somebody out there has to have it. Jeff has it, for sure. Jeff 100%. And it's spelled wrong.

this is a question from b willicks what are your thoughts on having a junior team in the chl playing out of one of the territories like northern yeah travel would destroy them yeah travel's already bad enough in some of those places like prince george has a hell of a time one of the main issues in canada that americans don't face uh is that we have a um protectionist view when it comes to the airlines and you can debate whether this is good or bad but what happens is that only to fly from a canadian city to a canadian city it has to be a canadian airline so if you notice you can't take united from toronto to montreal united's like super cheap and delta super cheap you can't do that and that's why airline prices are so expensive here so it limits a lot of those

teams it's why a lot of them are on the bus or like it i mean it affects the ahl schedule that's why they play three games in a row on a weekend sometimes because it's so expensive to move well it's been really hard on st john's in newfoundland to have it like they keep losing teams right like so like they had a junior team they had an hl team yeah or not at abbotsford yeah yeah yeah so yeah it's that's that's something that so the territories and it's also you get into the population problem too where there's just not a lot of people up there yeah right yeah like i think they'd go uh well there was a kid drafted out of the yukon this year right yeah jd bunkus no no there was there was a there was a player picked yeah oh wow i could see like white horse

or something like that having it for sure i just don't how would you get there it's the travel all right the brandon wheat king's gotta go travel to play white horse yeah figure that one out i think if you could find a way to lower airline prices i think you can make it happen i think of the bullet trains they got in Japan. There you go. There you go. Just from Brandon

to there. The only thing that rides on it is the hockey team. That's right. Honestly, that would be enough, I think.

Other questions? We can close on this. Who played on the Leafs last year who had also previously played with Sergei Fedorov and Doug Gilmore?

It's from Blackhawk Roses on Reddit. Played on the Leafs last year and he played with Fedorov and Doug Gilmore. Did Fedorov play in the KHL? Yes.

So it could be a Russian. He played for Red Army, I'm pretty sure. Could be a Russian player. Yeah, but the only Russians on the Leafs last year were Ozhiganov and Zaitsev, who probably didn't play with Doug Gilmore. No. So Doug Gilmore's been gone for a long time,

so it has to be an older player. So, well, you got Hainsey Marleau. I don't think it'd be Hainsey, though. I don't think so, either, because he was Carolina and Pittsburgh. Hainsey played for Columbus, and Federov was on Columbus, so how would he have played? Well, he played Montreal too, right?

So that's probably the right answer. Hainsey played in Montreal? In Montreal, Gilmore. Well done. Whoa. Hainsey played with Doug Gilmore in Montreal. Had to be someone really old. They were still playing in the 90s, right?

In his rookie season, he played with Dougie in Montreal, and then when he was on the Blue Jackets, Federov was on there. There you go. Wow. All right, there you go. Well, listen, James, it was so nice to have you back on. Thank you so much for making time for us. Yeah, hopefully it's not four years next time.

It will not be four years. It might be a few months before we're harassing you again. But honestly, congratulations on all the success with The Athletic. We're good friends with all the writers. And honestly, the content you guys are creating is amazing. So thank you for doing that. And thank you for dropping some of that paywalled information on this show. We do appreciate it.

Yeah. Well, thanks for the plug. No problem. And by the way, speaking of plugs, we've got a couple that we should put in. First off, Easter Seals, right? Yes, Rachel's Raiders are back CelebrityHockeyClassics.com Raising money once again

Easter Seals is a charity that Raises money for kids with physical disabilities We played in that tournament last year And we're going to do it again this year Already up to $1,500 The deadline is November 14th So we got some time But I have a goal, a personal goal

Of $50,000 And that's not even what I expect Out of our team, Adam I want us to get even more than that so celebrityhockeyclassics.com I've tweeted about it

a thousand times you can go through my Twitter and find that and if you go to RussianMachineNeverBreaks.com I'm going to be going to Washington D.C.

that's going to be August 24th getting me doing a book signing in the afternoon at One More Page Books and Walters

I think it's called from 6 to 9 at night in Washington once again that's August 24th tickets RussianMachineNeverBreaks.com Is that some guy's house?

Some guy named Walter? I assume so. Yeah, it's like the one Rippers that they have in Halifax is called Ralph's. No, it's closed now. Oh, yeah, they closed Ralph's. Yeah, we found this out. That was very sad. RIP Ralph.

I will be joining the live Leafs Geeks podcast this Thursday, along with J.D. Bunkus and Mike Stevens. That's MikeyStevens81, because there's 80 million Mike Stevens. I might be going to that, too. Are you coming? Might be. I haven't confirmed. It's going to be in support of Jumpstart

Which is a Canadian tire charity Gets kids into it, 250 Front Street Boston Pizza, doors at 7 All the details, I'll tweet them out But obviously you can follow At Ian Graff or Ian Tulloch Writer for The Athletic about this But really excited about it, should be kind of fun

A good group of people And beers and pizza I don't know how it gets any better than that For a good cause James has got his people out there Doing good charitable work, which I like And, James, you got anything going on? You working for anybody, gents?

You want to promote anything? I don't know. Subscribe today. Yeah. Is there a promo code? Yeah, theathletic.com slash leaf report, 40% off for all new subscribers. Hey. Oh, there you go.

There you go. Good for you, man. I think you have a real future. Hopefully we can keep it going. Yeah, right? Keep the lights on. Maybe we'll get an office one day. What the?

follow the guys on twitter at steve underscore dangle at adam w y l d e and at jesse blake the steve dangle podcast brought to you by panago pizza order at panago.com and stuff your face with deliciousness