The Steve Dangle Podcast - Now+ | April 2, 2025

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, 00:00 Gary sticks with Rogers 60:00 Montreal knocks off Florida 1:12:00 Toronto takes on Florida 1:16:00 Ovi gets closer 1:22:00 Rick Tocchet's extension 1:30:00 The streaking Blues Visit this episode's sponsors: Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with Mando and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code SDPN at http://shopmando.com/ Enjoy 15% off your online purchase with code DANGLE at https://ca.monos.com/  McDonald’s Canada’s new Smoky Maple Breakfast Sandwiches are made with a smoky maple sauce that is made from real Canadian maple syrup. Get them before 11 a.m. on the breakfast menu in-restaurant or through McDelivery. Available until April 14th, 2025 at participating McDonald’s Canada locations while supplies last Subscribe to the sdpn YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sdpn?sub_confirmation=1Join - SDP VIP: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0a0z05HiddEn7k6OGnDprg/join Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/thestevedanglepodcast Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sdpvip/subscribe - Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.BlakeJoin us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/MtTmw9rrz7 For general inquiries email: [e-mail] Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Let's start the show. All right, so we just saw the press conference from Rogers and the NHL announcing their new $11 billion Canadian deal. And by the way, it's $7.7 USD as of today. But with new tariffs announced, who knows what that number will be. And, you know, it's interesting because under the new agreement, They're claiming a few things, and I want to jump right into it. National rights across all platforms, which is pretty much the same TV, digital streaming.

All national regular season games in all languages, meaning that Rogers owns both French and English and Punjabi and any other language they decide to go into. National rights to all playoff games, the Stanley Cup final and all special events and tentpole events in all languages. out-of-market rights for all regional games exclusive category sponsors for the nhl and nhl tentpole events held in canada meaning if there's an all-star game or something like that tentpole that's what you know it's like you know a tentpole is a playoffs or a tentpole all-star games a tentpole four nations was a tentpole that's it's a sales term it holds up the rest of the tent a hundred percent yeah no canadians got a tentpole in their pants for this deal i that is a hundred percent true so uh so this agreement is expected uh to first off it has not

yet been totally voted on i believe by rogers shareholders so if you own rogers share you don't get a vote in this if you own a class shares you do b class shares are what are publicly available and guess who owns most of the a class shares that's right the rogers trust and i think they'll be fine uh the financial terms are uh comprised of escalating payments that will total 11 billion over the 12 year term. Now, the way the last deal worked was it started off and I'm just going to throw a number out there that was reported the first year. And this is when the dollars were on par. Rogers paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 million dollars U.S. for and this is 2013, 14, I believe, when the deal started. 14, 15. So then the payments go up

each year. And what we saw in that first year was a lot of innovation. We saw cable cameras. We saw this and this and this but as those payments came up down went the amount of front front facing staff production uh uh even cameras at games everybody were cut back everybody and so um what's interesting about this too and this is i'm just getting to the the overview of this and then we can discuss it's likely that um and they said it in the press conference tony staffieri who is the ceo of rogers mentioned this it's likely that one night a week at least are licensed out to somebody else probably amazon the word is amazon might want to move on from monday nights might be a wednesday night thing not sure we don't know wednesday was a national night for rogers well

mondays wednesdays and saturdays are national nights so that's why so amazon may want to move off big deal of it yeah monday i think they may want to move off of mondays i think there's the nfl element playing off there and monday will still remain a national night it just might be rogers night they're gonna have to get uh forsland to redo all those promos yeah it's amazon it's on wednesday it's also on wednesday but he doesn't have to worry about that until 26 27 because that's when this deal kicks in remember this deal doesn't start until 26 27 which is september of that year or october of that year uh so we're talking 18 months from now um now it's so i said likely that a a knight gets licensed out tony staffieri was asked directly about amazon he said

we're open to it we'd like to see that happen they like their partnership with amazon and amazon has said repeatedly from their side that they're in canada in hockey to stay so i think that that is it's likely that happens it's just imagine a matter of how much that costs and does amazon really care what things cost uh they have a lot of money uh the other thing is french language broadcast rights now belong to rogers and they will sub license those out to i are the either rds or tva or both um tvr tvr i call it tva because i'm english because you're terrible uh rogers does very little business in quebec traditionally specifically from a broadcasting perspective i don't even think they own much in the term in terms of cable and streaming uh

internet any of that in quebec so i think that that will um that will very very quickly get sub-licensed out depending upon who wants to agree to that but it's interesting i was talking to somebody who was very intimately involved in the Quebec media scene the other day, and they said that it's been cut back significantly. Quebec has been its own ecosystem, has its own star system, has been very profitable for many, many years, and even they are feeling the hit of softer ad markets and just less discretionary spending. Also, you take sports rights, and the reality is, and Jesse, we saw this when we went to the Ivy Business School, Phil King, who was the former head of tsn now with mlse said you don't expect sports rights specifically hockey in canada

to be profitable right yeah he said you go ahead well no you tell me no he said the the idea of having sports uh having hockey in particular is so that you can sell everything else you don't expect the hockey rights you own to be the profit driver you have the hockey so that you get the advertisers in the door so you can sell other things that's right and you look at like the way a grocery store runs the business their business right eggs and dairy are what they call lost leaders they might lose a little bit of margin on that but you know getting people in the store requires you know milk and eggs traditionally and bread so that's hockey has become sort of that that version it's the it's the thing that gets you in the store and then everything else it's

like well these oreos sure good there's a good margin on these oreos right now there are some questions guys and i'm gonna start with the high level business stuff and then we're gonna go to the fan stuff okay so the high level business stuff is there have been rumors for years the nhl has not been thrilled with the quality or the coverage but gary's in his last days and this is a great send-off for gary right it's not like he has to make the hall of fame he's already made it but this is a this is a great way it's a great way for him to do a send-off Oh, that was like a shiv between my ribs. But it's true.

God, that's so dark. From what we have heard, Rogers has already struggled to fulfill the current deal. And with the Canadian dollar sinking, and like I said, the potential tariff war for at least the next four years, it's going to be an interesting sell to shareholders. If I never hear the word tariff ever again. I know, but we got to mention it here. That'll be every birthday for the rest of my life. The ad market right now is soft. part of it is because of the economy part of it is because ad money has gone to places like meta

and google over traditional outlets uh and i can tell you that the agencies are certainly not about to pay double for this um so it's going to be interesting how they build that in which brings it to your cell phone your internet and your subscription to sports net um because currently right now sportsnet standard is 29 or 24.99 a month or 199 a year that gives you 350 nhl games hockey night in canada wednesday night hockey all outdoor games four nations uh your draft and your stanley cup sportsnet premium uh you get everything that i just mentioned in standard plus access to over a thousand out of market nhl games so basically every in-market regional game plus national games and then you know sports net world events like the fa cup rugby uh etc so and whatever

else they might buy uh so all that is to say that you should expect and you know they they talked about providing value in the press conference um if you're paying 25 or 35 a month for uh sports net now uh which sports net right now it used to be called sports and now it's now called sports net plus it's not confusing uh i would i would prepare for a world where you're paying in half a decade 75 to 100 a month to stream hockey and that's just with this channel obviously if you got prime then you're paying what is it 100 a year for prime like whatever your amazon subscription costs um so yeah it's currently 250 bucks a year for everything i would expect that that probably doubles at least in the next half decade, maybe triples by the end of this. And while Rogers can

make some money back on the sub licenses, the reality of regional programming is that as we've seen with ballet sports in the States, it's not as profitable as it used to be. And the question becomes, we know TSN is going to have Habs, we know they're going to have Ottawa, we know they're going to have Winnipeg, and we know they're going to have Toronto, half of the Toronto games that's agreed to for the next 20 years half half of the regional games oh yeah half regional half regional so regional is like half of the games so they get half of half so they get a quarter yeah exactly what it is right now yeah and and so you know we asked like or somebody asked in the in the press conference you know how uh what are you what are you planning to change or to add and

it seems like not very much it seems like things are just going to stay the way that they are they just got more expensive so what that brings fans i believe from the reactions on twitter at least and that's just one place but anybody i talk to is is saying the same thing which is they're not happy about it guys can i talk about something of the business side about how we sold this before we get into like the reaction and stuff like that um before we get too far from that because the way gary sold this i think is the complete antithesis of how the smart business people are selling television rights right now because last year in 2024 the nfl had 72 of the top 100 broadcasts on television in america 72 of the top 100 were nfl games by what ratings by ratings wow but in terms

of most watch the top 100 most watched programs last year 72 were nfl games wow in canada or in the states in in the united states of america got it so the nfl kind of knows what they're doing from the tv perspective nobody watches anything more than nfl games and the way they're doing their rights right now is we are going to break this thing up as much as possible to maximize the amount of money we can get the nfl this coming season next season will be on netflix amazon cbs espn uh nbc and then abc is also espn did you say youtube as well and youtube tv owns uh has red zone rights and all of that so youtube as well so it's like seven that's about seven or eight different places and then if you count north america then tsn has the rights in north

america plus if you want to count nfl network we're getting into the double digits of places that can purchase nfl that can uh stream broadcast nfl games because the nfl decided to maximize the amount of money they can get from all of these networks and everybody wants nfl so you sell it to everybody and everybody's paying a top dollar for it and for years now we've been thinking that gary was going to do the same with the nhl rights because we thought amazon was going to come into this thing and be a big player and and want a piece of hockey and tsn's going to want to get back into hockey because they've missed it for this this last 12 years they haven't had hockey and they've done a great job broadcasting regional games but they don't have any national stuff

and then we get to this exclusive negotiating window that they talked about there it started on january 1st and they extended it and gary decided to not talk to anybody else i assume through the tentacles of the business world in his relationships he had an idea of what these other networks would have paid for it but he never talked to them no he never he never officially on a real capacity to get those numbers and that's not the way anything works right now the mls is struggling with this apple tv deal that we thought was going to be the next evolution in sports rights where they sold everything to apple apple has the whole thing and now mls wants to get some of that back because they're struggling to get people to sign up to apple to watch it and the

nba they went with three different networks they went to nbc espn and amazon so they're splitting it up in chunks because that's how they're maximizing the dollars and the nhl in canada is doing the complete opposite and it feels like gary did this because he got the guaranteed money that he could get that he doubled the price that he wanted to do and instead of doing the hard work and going out and doing a longer negotiation with everybody he took the easy way and just signed back up with rogers but okay so help me out with this uh i've seen a lot of people say this is like a cartoonish amount of money though yes that rogers paid so maybe he was maybe he figured okay i could do all the legwork or one person is offering me far too much money

why don't i just take this right now i don't think that the rogers deal would have eclipsed what he could have got if he gets a bidding war amongst all of the networks to break up the pieces because that's how it's all it's been done the last few years with all of these sports rights that have come up in terms of the NBA and the NFL and MLS as we've seen that fall out. And MLB is its own thing because that's such a regional sport and ESPN blew up their own deal. So we can't really count them. But the NBA, their negotiating rights, we've seen that it explodes because you had all of these networks bidding against each other. And the NFL especially is the one you want to look to about how these negotiations work. And you can really maximize

your dollar if you have companies wanting to get something that you have, that you have the determination to determine where it goes and not having them bid against each other seems like a spit in the face of the maximum doll you can get for the owner but i i'm sorry go ahead i was i was gonna say uh amazon is the free space in terms of like who else would have bid on it who else though tsn tsn yeah don't they have no bloody money well that's that's the problem right is that so you've got bell bell as a whole has a significant amount of debt they seem to be able to manage it they took the money that they they got for selling their stake in mlse and bought uh some some regional cable in the united states so they can become because their whole mantra now is they want

to become a tech company don't ask me how that makes sense it's not working out for them right now but we'll see i mean you got to measure these things in years not months um but you know tsn could still have made a play for that one of the national that that money doesn't exist like if they want to come up with money they can make money money money is real money is just numbers when you're a billion dollar company that money doesn't matter completely and utterly you can you can go anywhere and get money yes like so i'm not concerned about like them not having current money it matters in what kind of strategy they want to go with it's like hey do we want to invest in this and then go into more debt and do all this stuff but if they want to go into more debt they can get

a credit line they can get this money if they want to yeah 100 and i i think he did such a disservice by not splitting it up to give you an idea of of and it hurts fans of just debt leverage steve like there's a company called clear channel which is now called iheart media in the states they bought up a bunch of radio stations in the early 2000s and 2010s and it's been disastrous for them because they bought up radio stations just as the digital world was happening so they paid top dollar for them and then all of their assets shrunk but they leveraged themselves 10 times their own value to do it. So if they were worth a hundred, a hundred million, they would have leveraged themselves a billion. And like, just to give you the math on that. And so with

Bell and their, and their debt to asset ratio, they're worth, depending on the day between 30 and 32 billion, their, their debts are in the neighborhood of 40 billion, but that is relative to a company that size and their income completely uh easily uh managed by the company and by the lenders themselves and so i want everyone to remember this conversation when you're filing your taxes well and you're stressed about owing like 1500 bucks yeah well you know what the yeah so that but if that's that's how there are two worlds well it's it's like it's like if you make uh if you make a hundred thousand dollars a year and you have a house that's worth a million or you have a house that's worth 750 000 or something like that i just said house is worth

a million because every house is worth a million these days it doesn't matter how shitty it is um do you know what i'm saying like it's it's it's there is like there's most people are leveraged well beyond what they make in their own personal finances when you account for the asset that they buy which is their house right so this is there's business terms that are different but essentially you're looking at it sort of the same and tsn probably would have made a play they would have been the lowest bidder amazon can pay whatever they decide that they want to pay yeah uh and rogers the major thing i think for them is control of this they want to own this and i think you know there are a few things that don't make sense and then there are a few things there's one

big thing that does so i'm gonna give you all of the stuff that doesn't make sense and then i'm going to give you the one thing that does okay so the nhl as i said number one from what we've heard not been thrilled with the coverage or quality right yep you're talking like they were talking in the press conference today as though ice level cameras and cable suspended cameras that move with the puck or some sort of new thing they you know the nfl has been doing those for 20 years oh that was that part of the press conference was disgraceful well is it is it an innovation or is it something that's existed for over a decade and you just chose not to do and they did it before right they just cut back on that that's not an innovation so uh rogers already

has to you know like i said struggle to fulfill the deal um potential tariff war ad market is soft so all these things don't make sense and and as i said it's not like these agencies are going to pay double they'll just find elsewhere to spend but rogers much of their own shit to sell 100 but where this makes a ton of sense for rogers is the asset value of maple leaf sports and entertainment. By paying this much for hockey rights, they have just taken the Toronto Maple Leaf brand and pumped it worth probably another 20% in value. And when you expect the Toronto Maple Leafs, if they were to go to open market right now, would be in the neighborhood of $6 to $6.5 billion. Now push it to $7. Now push it to $7.5. I think that where this makes sense for

rogers people are like well how do you make money direct off this deal they don't make money direct in a profit loss ratio they make it an asset value and it also boosts the value of the money that they've spent to buy stadium stadium rights right so when you buy like rogers arena rogers place rogers sent rogers centers in toronto but you know what i'm talking about um all of these deals now look so much better because hey we bought them when the nhl was only worth this and now it's worth this and so it also makes like a total sense for the other parts of the rogers business like rogers xfinity is the thing they're pushing right now they're fast internet whatever thing and like having say game seven of the leafs the third round they're up against uh the tampa

bay lightning run a rogers xfinity commercial in there like they own the ads to run that on that programming like it is theirs for the future whatever big programming whatever they want to advertise in terms of the other parts of the rogers brand they own hockey in canada to do that so it makes sense from that perspective too which isn't like money directly in but it's you own the platform you can control that and then you get money in the business the other ways yes exactly and so instead of giving that money to a competitor you're giving it to the nhl exactly well yeah kind of well you're giving it to yourself too yeah right yeah you're not allowing who better to give it to exactly you're not allowing bell to advertise bell five on this

leafs game because you own all the leafs games you're putting your own product there and that's something you don't really quantify in real dollars but that's insanely valuable to a company like rogers yes yeah and and like so when rogers buys advertising space from itself it doesn't buy it at a discounted rate so sometimes like you like let's say let's use walmart as an example and they're going to do a big buy at sports net but they're also going to buy city tv and the green branded news stations across the country so 660 news 680 news news 1150 like whatever it is all the hey we're going to buy all that when we buy in a bundle we expect a 20 to 25 discount or more right but when rogers buys from itself it's going to pay full price and then write off the

difference the difference so when you see a rogers commercial it'll be like well that's that's that cost us x amount of marketing dollars because that's what it costs to buy an expense so it props up it props up their uh value proposition to outside people it also gives you a great way to write off some money for taxes and keep the money in the business in the asset yeah so i understand why rogers did it i don't understand well i guess i understand why gary who's retiring in about a year and a half ish when the cba is all done he'll probably do like a year-long retirement too after that it'll be like marcon dre flurry but less fun yeah no it'd be the opposite of marcon dre flurry it'll be awful um i i think he did it because it's the easy thing to do and

he's going out and retiring and why do the giant long legwork to to get the best deal possible when you can just take this go into the cba negotiations with a hard number you have everything on the table now you know all the facts of the economic realities of the league moving forward and then you go from there like for him it makes sense because it's easy i just wish that somebody else was in charge who was willing to do the hard things and do a long negotiation to get the maximum dollar that's the best thing for fans and i think jesse there were four people at that press conference none of them will be there to see the end of this no i don't think i don't know if any of them will be there in five years right it's just the it's the nature of the the business i

think the last rogers steel they were all gone with them like what two yeah but gary and bill were there yeah yes yeah um the here's the other thing jesse nailed something i don't want to highlight it. It's the NHL, NHLPA, CBA talks that, according to Pierre Lebrun this morning, resumed this week. Now, they've already been ongoing. And what's been interesting about these CBA talks is that they've been extremely tight, as in there have been zero leaks. If there have been disagreements, we don't really know what they would be. And all we're hearing from both sides publicly is, yeah, we're pretty much on the same page here. And so what this does for Gary and for the owners is it provides cost certainty from a company that you know can pay the bill it's

easier to do business that way you know that also that company is a stakeholder in the nhl they own the one of the most valuable properties if not the most valuable property in the nhl at current moment so you know that they're going to make good on this deal the owners love this and um it for Gary, it provides him the closure of that last loophole that will play into the CBA negotiations because that nebulous thing of what will the Canadian rights be now no longer exists. And so when he goes into negotiations with the NHLPA, it allows him about the steadiest ground he could possibly be on for this. And his last piece, the ribbon on his career is going to be this negotiation and just getting it done because it isn't about at this point fighting the players

for an extra couple of percentage of hrr although i sure hope they don't yield any um it is about really uh kind of ironing out some of the things from the previous agreement i really don't and that's from the one that they signed in 2020 i don't know which was just an extension of the previous one yes but there were some changes in it about like rab share and all that the slight things but the long story short you're recording with alan after this there were no major changes and so i think this is gary going i want to get this done and then i want to go on my retirement tour next year and then i'm going to be finished i'll walk away because gary i think all people have a little bit of an ego and to a lot of people gary betman's legacy will be a lack of hockey

it'll be games not played um you know right now we're celebrating games played in in in a market that was unsustainable or that like right now we're we're about to celebrate Ovechkin breaking Wayne Gretzky's record and one thing you can't help but look at is like Ovechkin would have broken this like a year ago um had it not been for lockouts obviously Bettman didn't invent COVID but um Ovechkin missed the entire first year of his career he missed half a season in his prime in 2012 i i think like you know business aside he wants this feather in his cap to say i set us up for the future yeah yeah i think there was three main things that he's trying to solve in the last like year or so just so he can retire i think this canadian rights deal is one of the

main things the olympic participation in the world cup schedule i think that was a big thing that gary was trying to solve it's let's get the world cup then the olympic participation then the world cup and the all-star game that consistent rotation he wants that into the cba and then the last thing would be actually finalizing the cba and i think that's kind of what he's aiming for and then he can ride off into the sunset and give bill daly the keys now he get he gets a lot of tomatoes thrown in his direction but he's not dumb and one of the things that we've heard about next year's all-star game uh which is on on the island uh is that all of the planes for the nhl players going to the olympics leave from new york so people are like well who the hell would go to that all-star

game if you've got the olympics you know like the next day and gary's like well we're going to put the all-star game in new york and we control where the nhl flies and who they fly over with so we'll make you go to the all-star game and then fly over to the olympics to make sure our stars are there which i think is it's kucherov's like i'll meet you there yeah some of them can afford private planes but yeah yeah like but it is it is i think it's very interesting as you know we were in san jose last week and the luggage that we used that this is important was monos yeah uh we look look how cool we look with our monos for anybody listening there's a picture of us at Pearson Airport with all of our

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are pretty clear here. And I've said this for years on this show. Sportsnet is great talent. They have great producers, but they don't seem to have vision from a managerial perspective. And I'm talking about how do we push boundaries? How do we make this coverage? if people are going to pay more for it, how do we make it better for them? And that, I think, has always been their downfall.

Now, you'll get comments in the comment section today, well, I like this person, and I don't like this person, and whatever. And listen, we all have our people that we kind of relate to and people that we don't. And that varies from person to person. I don't think these people are like bad people, but I think when you combine a lack of vision with fanatical cost-cutting, which is Rodgers as a whole.

They are, their whole thing is finding redundancies, cost cut, cost cut, cost cut, as much as possible. You kind of get what you have now. Hockey Night in Canada, I think we can all agree, has its moments, but is not what it used to be. And I think there are a few things, specifically making it non-boring, that we could do. And I think it's not, again, I don't put that on the talent.

I put that on the, we're Sportsnet, and this is the way that our brand operates. I think that they're a bit stuffy for today's environment. They got to loosen up a little bit. And so here's what I think they could do to instantly make fans happy. And you guys tell me what you think. Okay. Where they go, okay, okay.

I'm not happy. I don't expect that fans are ever going to be happy about the price they have to pay. Ask somebody if they like how much money they're paying for gas, even without the carbon tax now. I don't think they're going to be like, yeah, I'm thrilled. Awesome. So that aside, because the costs aren't going down, the first thing you can do is eliminate blackouts. regional blackouts are stupid um uh last night i had trouble watching the florida montreal game let me watch the game let me just watch the freaking game right especially

i understand regional blackouts at the beginning of a season right but as playoff races heat up i feel like they should be eliminated because you should be able to watch out-of-market games to see how that affects your team that builds excitement and interest in the in the sport oh this is this is a great time of year to like surf around the different ice that the nhl has like you could what could you call a program that might do that oh you know maybe generic hockey twitter show uh oh you wouldn't call it i would have thought like ice surfing like this you know oh that's even better yeah anyway yeah no let's go with that um so that's the first thing that's that's such an easy one they said they can convert as many

is 10 regional games for the Canucks, Oilers, Flames, and Leafs, but they can't convert TSN games from regional to not. So if TSN has a game, it's never going to be national. If Sportsnet has a game, it could be upgraded to national, which the NFL does, right? The NFL has the ability to do that. I've been in Pittsburgh when they've changed the game time. So when the Steelers were good, like really good,

they once when i was there the game was supposed to start in the afternoon and they moved it to the evening that nbc can flex a game that's like an important game into their night schedule for like an 8 30 start yeah changed it that day that day so i got that day oh it was like the day before it'd be a couple days before it'd be like that week yeah and we we were like okay well i guess we're leaving late uh so yeah because you can't just be like oh players show up at a different time are bad yeah um i guess you can so then uh i think so that's the first one so i think we all agree on that right it's pretty simple second thing move to a good streaming service the the sports net now carrier and what what i mean by that is the video player i think everybody can

agree especially when it's an important game like the playoffs it crashes it's bad it sucks it's just bad and and they've if you've ever had to use it during an important game and you've seen it crash over and over again people will be like we'll just get cable okay you just get cable um i want i i if i'm paying 250 350 dollars for a streaming package per year i should be able to watch it one of the most damaging things to our evolution in media as a society has been all the cable providers owning all of the digital innovation um what incentive has there been for the last 10 15 years for rogers or bell or any of these other companies to truly knock it out of the park and as a streaming service there's none well yeah there's no real need to right if there's no

competition then why why push the boundaries they want it that there's no competition and they want to keep you on cable they want the cable company wants to keep you on cable it's hard to even blame them but they own the digital platform as well you're doomed so i know that they don't so they own the rights but they from what i understand behind the scenes they didn't develop that platform they bought into that platform and they buy that platform from a company yeah and right whatever not every like thing they make is they make in-house right yeah yeah but if they wanted they could just pour money into it and make it good and there's been zero incentive for that be like us paying somebody develop an app you know like it's kind of similar yeah 100 i think

they need to improve that sure um the cable is still the best way right now to watch sports on purpose i have cable and like you get the 4k broadcast on your cable box and the way the world is going right now where all of these stupid companies are splitting up all of their stuff on digital when you get the cable package it's all there and then your cable box comes with an app where you can watch it on your phone so you get like the best of both worlds and i think they purposely do that because they want you to keep getting cable and as somebody who works in sports i don't have a excuse to not have the best service to watch sports so i write it off still like an old and it's the best thing yeah like the best way to watch sports i've never i've never used

the sports net app because i have the television they're never going to deliver it to you uh to in in anything other than like 720 right yeah i don't know how you guys don't watch 4k well i have i have the rogers xfinity app um now uh but what's hilarious about it is rogers and bell are in some sort of fight right now so even though my family pays for the full app um i can't access any ctv channels and any global channels i can get specialty like i can get tsn but they a couple of months ago just pulled all of the bell stuff and i don't i don't know if that came from roger's side or from bell's side but i think they're doing it on both sides where it's like yeah on streaming wise we're not going to even provide it anymore all right you get on the phone and

complain to someone about that well so here's so we did and the next three hours the crtc rules govern that if you are a cable provider on cable you have to provide all the channels you have to make them all accessible but as soon as you take that off of cable you don't have to anymore oh interesting the crtc in its wisdom which it has zero the game has not has not in the last 20 years gone you know what we should apply this to the internet too not to be nihilist about all this but or defeatist i guess the game is completely utterly rigged well it always has been it's just i know it was it was i i would argue it was more rigged 20 years ago when they owned everything yeah they used to try to be subtle about it um now they're just like it's

rigged i was probably more rigged when there's four channels exactly that's exactly what i'm yeah um now uh now at least we got the internet and pirating so the two things now at least we of theft now we can steal honestly yeah now okay so that's things in a good place when we're like well you could always steal people used to steal cable too yeah oh i know my family growing up we stole cable uh for a little for like a half a decade yeah it's not hard we got like it was one of those ipt boxes or whatever it was and we just had an illegal cable we all had a neighbor with a funny clothesline about your house?

What's that about? We had the illegal cable box for a long while and then we had the illegal dish. My dad, and probably still is, but he doesn't use it anymore. He's got other methods to steal cable.

He was really into the illegal dishes. So like, I don't know, every few years, every couple summers, whether he'd go up on the side of the house and install his own dish

and then we'd get the illegal box that's hacked or whatever and we'd steal the satellite feed. Deep dish thief stuff. I remember like, I feel like I can say that now. Oh yeah.

I remember friends who had like MTV, but it would be like a green color, like MTV before it came to Canada. You know, it was like, it was like a green color. And sometimes the screen be like, you know what I mean? I'm Carson. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent.

A hundred percent. Um, so you have, these are the two things so far, eliminate the blackouts, especially around playoff race time, uh, move to a good, like streaming service that is belongs in this decade. Okay. number three i think your pre-game and intermission content needs improvement and i and and i i don't mean it in the sense that the the talent and the producers aren't good no say you're lying but there seems to be call them good people they are good people and i think they're good talent i i

don't i don't have an issue my issue is there seems to be very little market research into what people want how many times do we see hockey night in canada start and people go what the fuck are they even talking about and and and it's not again it's not meant to be an insult it's meant to be like a guys like we get we get market research from the fact that we have a comment section from the fact that we have dms we know what you want to hear with hockey not canada research is uh uh reliably informed like positive feedback um like now because of the comment section i know i've gained weight it's good it's good that we have them to tell you that it's good i didn't know that what sometimes it comes across as is the announcers seem to

i don't know whether it's their choice or it's someone behind the scenes pushing this it's we're gonna tell you what you what you're gonna hear rather than here's what you want to hear and we're gonna deliver it to you it's way way too inside baseball you have to remember This didn't used to be the case. The reason Hockey Night in Canada used to really stand out is because it was the premier sports broadcast in Canada and there was very little competition. The NFL was not fully really that available in Canada

for a long, long time. The NBA until the Raptors came and then it was only Raptors games and the Raptors were bad. If you are watching a sports broadcast now as a fan, not only do you um do you get intermission segments that do well on twitter from the states coming up here you can watch that you're comparing and you're contrasting the nhl to the nfl and the nba broadcast generally when you see the nba broadcast what do they do when

you see the nfl broadcast what do they do they sell the game they get you excited for the game They're not like, here's a morality question. Here's a history of Canada question. It's, guys, you're about, you worked hard all week. You waited all day for this. You put your kids to bed on time. You folded your damn laundry. You're sitting on a couch now.

This is your time, and guess what we're going to do? We're going to bring you the lights. We're going to bring you the fireworks, and we're going to bring you the game that you've been thinking about all day long, and we do not get that right now. We just don't. And I don't know how many people will watch this and get super pissed at me, people that work in media, whatever. But I have to tell you how it is.

It's not meant to be personal. This is legitimate criticism that comes from not just me, all sectors. Anybody that's watched this will tell you, hey, listen, I just want to have fun, man. Can we have some fun here? Can I take my best shot? So I used to work there. I worked there for nine years. and i got to see a lot behind the scenes and i got to work with a lot of people great people

who are good people they are good people and they work freaking hard they do work really really hard and obviously you know i don't do a good job hiding my feelings like there's there's some hurt feelings there with how things went at rogers but when it comes to everyone who i worked with um all of them incredible all of them did good work and i got along with all of them um here's here's my like sort of insiders look at the operations there this press conference to me was a complete waste of time um because talking about innovation there's no reason it's baseless no reason whatsoever to believe them um in fact the Their commitment or lack of commitment to innovation and talking about the status quo,

I actually admire a little bit because it's them being honest with the audience. What happened in 2014-15? Who remembers the puck wall? I don't remember the puck wall. Utter silence. Yeah. The puck wall was this big thing. Do you remember the puck wall?

I do, yeah. Yeah. But you should explain it to the audience because, yeah. Why would we remember? I shouldn't have to. I assume people don't. This is the thing, but I'm going to. And it's not the audience's fault.

It's Rodgers, beginning, middle, end. They had the puck wall. It had like all these pucks in a wall, and you used it to talk about different teams or whatever. And it was digital, and it brings up blah, blah, blah. I don't even remember. It lasted one season. They hated it, and the thing collected dust in the studio for literally years.

It might even still be there. I don't know. Well, actually, no, the studio's not there anymore. Yeah, it's not. They changed the studio. So I think it might have just stayed there from the first season of the deal until when Rogers literally moved buildings,

collecting dust. So there was that. There was George Strombolopoulos. You know, a lot of people really didn't like George. Well, because it was supposed to be James Duthie, and James Duthie re-signed a huge deal with TSN to stay because they didn't want him to leave i i think i have complicated feelings uh about all that i think a lot of people were determined to not give him a chance and you know when he maybe fell below

expectations it was self-fulfilling prophecy or or whatever um what i would have done there is had ron for another couple years and then ease george and that's what they should have done they hammered you right over the head with here's george and i think he was set up to fail from the beginning. And, and I think it was probably, uh, not great to throw him to the wolves for two years and then abandon it and stick with the status quo. And this is nothing against Ron, but you made a decision, stand on the decision and they didn't do it. Um, they hired all these people and there were crazy layoffs after the uh i think it was the 15 16 season no it was a little later a little bit later they had all this which one like there have been so many waves right um

the the different camera angles were all these things like when they bring them back they're not new. They, they're, they were mothballed. They're stuff that they tried and abandoned immediately. Ice surfing. I will from the top of my lungs with all of my chest insist that that was a great damn idea. It was on the wrong platform. Should have never been on Twitter, but Twitter paid for it. And who's going to say no to a check. If it was on YouTube, I think they'd still be doing it um tried it for a season or maybe i think it was two i worked on it i don't even and the pandemic i think knocked it off right like it was sort of we were never even formally told it was done yeah you never you never got to go collect your things i never got to some of it's

still there like i i kept waiting uh to be told like oh yeah the show's not done i might have got it eventually i don't remember but it was a great idea once again they tried it they tried a lot of things and i think there was resistance internally from some of the not to play this card uh older people in charge um there was resistance they relented and go oh go ahead try it and then they're like see it's bad and they get rid of it immediately um the streams the watch alongs that we did uh when i left i was like oh okay well can't wait to see what they do with that they didn't do anything with it oh okay well i wonder who's gonna do this they didn't replace me like in the least which definitely makes you feel wanted um or makes you feel like your work uh meant

something to the company is when they don't even bother trying i think i think the the the ethos with that is it's they don't want to split their television viewers with people online oh great oh so once again it's cable intentionally working against and fighting against this digital push you wonder why there's so little um in the way of digital content coming out of coming out of Canada from the big broadcasters it's because of that they want it to die they badly badly resent the digital world and want us all to be hooked to cable forever so I guess I guess the there are so many people who have so many great ideas in that building and every company is full of people who have great ideas and they pitch it to upper management and it gets shot down I think the rate

is higher in that building than it is in other places there's a lot of talent oh i got a great idea shut up i got a great idea shut up what are you gonna i i think when you started a new job what is a person more likely to do pitch all their great ideas immediately and right away or ease into the job they're probably more likely to ease into the job the turnover rate at that company is so like insane. There's a lot of people. I spoke to people who are just waiting to get packaged or retire. Um, people are just trying to keep their head down until they get full time. Like you need innovators. And I just didn't see from enough people in charge, a willingness to allow innovation um it was just deep deep deep resentment for the modern world

and we're in a tough place um in canadian sports media if that's how it's going to be treated going forward well um i i'm going to get back to the original points here but i i and it's not because i'm saying you you veered us off course but i think it kind of all ties in no give me your finger give me a finger which one this one i'm glad we held space for your opinion i think that's very insightful from an insider perspective yes and i just want to say that i'm happy we held space for it yeah thank you yes um yeah no no that was great i would think it was great i think i think that's such a unique perspective of somebody who worked there for a long time and then left the company and then now you see it from the outside and what they're

doing and yeah and i think you represent a lot of people who don't understand why they're unhappy with it but are unhappy with it and they know they are they know they're unhappy like they they know they have that feeling but you're providing perspective on why this is probably subpar to their expectations and what did we have like during the intermission and these are all people i love like you're not going to make me say a bad thing about any of them we had headlines and it was ron mclean cj elliott and who else there was well damien cox originally was on it but yikes all right yeah so anyway just uh just then cj leaves and they do 32 thoughts which great idea i thought i personally thought it was a great idea it was dry it was it was drier i

but i like but you were yours this second intermission is for news and i love that i am learning love that news i it's still that way like well yeah but give me a sec so first intermission used to be for coach's corner they're still trying to figure out what to do with that to the point steve yeah come on it's isn't that what he used to be called it's called to the point now oh is that actually yeah oh i thought you were telling me no it's called to the point i get paid to watch the games i didn't know that well you're also streaming during them i can understand why no i don't stream during every game i didn't know that well it's it's only saturday so yeah i don't expect you to know that's okay well anyway it we had headlines then we have 32 thoughts that's

great highlight um again your digital stars i know that's not exactly what frege and merrick were um they were like tv and radio primarily but they had 32 thoughts which is this titan in in the sport and they highlighted it and now it's back to headlines but it's one guy like why is elliot tasked with doing bloody everything because they don't have anybody else and whose fault is that they don't employ other insiders so they have to rely on the one guy to do everything like and they and here's the thing they don't want to well does that cost more money as a viewer right i'm love elliot undeniably getting less than it was a few years ago yes You keep cutting down on the number of people.

If you watch the trade deadline show and you compare TSN to Sportsnet, there's about like six guys sitting on the TSN desk who all break trades. They can't even fit them all on that desk. It's too much. They have to spread it over a couple of different desks because TSN pays for all these insiders because they think that's valuable to have on their roster and Sportsnet doesn't feel the same

and they think that Elliot can handle all of that by himself. And that's a lot to put on Elliot. And that's a lot. And he does a great job. I think what it is is that, by the way, I think CJ and Elliot had great chemistry when they were on it. I thought it was a really great back and forth. Oh, yeah, so good at what he does. And so I've gone through these four points.

So the elimination of blackouts, you need to have a streaming service that's always reliable and actually good. No, you don't. Need to improve your intermission content. You need to remember that you're being measured against NFL and NBA broadcasts. And yes, I know that there's more money in that. There is absolutely no reason. Chemistry is not something that it's not something that's easy to find and easy to repeat. But when you have it as a manager, you must look at it and go, I better hang on to that. I better build that. And I haven't seen that. And I think that they need to, for my last point, loosen up. and and i don't mean like you know george tried to get on hockey night in canada and not wear a tie and that was a big thing internally and you know and finally they said listen wear the tie or you're

not going to air and so he wore the damn tie what are we doing no no i i agree with that there is a uniform it's hockey night in canada dress your best i get that the tie the suit and tie and the tight neck doesn't need to apply to the content though. You can have a good time in a suit and tie. Shaq and Charles Barkley do it all the time. They all wear ties. They're looking good. They're looking sharp. What we need is to remember that you're working in hockey and that you're working on TV and hockey and that rocks. You should be in there every day and creating the vibe for the audience, which the audience will then pick up that this is the best job that you could possibly have. And it's, it's just right now, I feel like they're so concerned about brand guidelines

that they are smothering any of that. You see it with BXA. He's funny. See it with Colby Armstrong, funny, like guys that, but when I watch a TSN panel, those guys, it's like, ah, we're going to have a good time. And, oh, we're going to make fun of Jeff O'Neill and whatever. I was watching, you know montreal last night they had a desk in toronto with carlo uh and cara dyken on it uh laura dyken excuse me uh and then they had um brian mudrick and frank corrado in montreal and they're having fun with each like breathe and and that has to be something again that management does management has to make you on the air and i've i've been on the air long enough to know that when management is down your neck you tighten up let him breathe let him let him make a

couple of mistakes and figure out where the boundaries are these are people that are really smart i want to see you know what i want to see more of i want to see more of kelly rudy's um personality we know that that guy should be probably the most beloved personality in the sport and it's i would criminal it's criminal that you don't get more of him he's never asked me to kill someone i would do it i do it for him i uh he's just the best guy i've told the kelly rudy story yeah yeah of course yeah yeah and and and and you know there are there's this is what i'm saying is there's so much potential there um so if they are going to carry these rights forward man try to enjoy it a little and that's i guess those are my things and so you know like it or

not we're going to be you and i are going to be about 50 when these rights expire uh which is crazy could have done without that yeah we'll be we'll be 50 years old because we're going to be 38 when they kick in you said it again yeah i would like you to stop i'd like you to not do that anymore so if that is what it's going to be i hope that's what they move to going forward i don't expect rogers to spend a bunch of money on production but there are other things you can tweak that will make the average fan much much happier and and more willing to pay right make it easy make it easy make it easy make it fun so anything else to add gentlemen anything else to add um i i mean i want to keep an open mind to everything improving like i i think i've

offered a lot of defeatist things and pessimistic attitudes towards this uh i'd like to leave the door open that it could be really good and they do have great talent digitally there that guys like tom stewart and uh i love tom's hilarious anytime i'm flipping through and his shit comes up i'm like well stop him what i'm doing yeah it's tom time there are great great things going on it's just let's get to them everyone there has great ideas i think management needs to listen to Oh, Canada! Like the song. Whoa.

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So let's move on to Montreal beating Florida in overtime last night Although Montreal winning meant that Montreal and Columbus won, so it means that the Leafs do not clinch a playoff spot yet. That's okay. It does really help the Leafs because— They're not going to. That's not something to be concerned about, Leafs fans. I'm not worried about it.

But it does—Montreal did hold Florida to only one point. And so the Leafs and Florida play tonight. The Leafs get Florida on the second half of a back-to-back with travel. It was a great comeback win for the Canadians. Nick Suzuki scoring in overtime. 78th point. Career high. Lane Hudson's been unbelievable. It was a great game. It really was a great game.

Weird to see Brad Marchand in a Florida jersey. We're going to see it tonight. As I said, Leafs get floored on the second half of a back-to-back with travel. Does this mean it's a scheduled loss? For the Leafs. It's impossible to look at hockey games like a normal person when you cheer for the

Leafs. Yeah, the Leafs have every fathomable advantage. They're at home. They've had several days off. Florida's traveling second half of back to back boy how does florida screw this up i don't think they do the carpet is laid for them yeah like i i don't i have a hard time thinking they do either what would make me feel a lot better is if the leafs simply beat them um but it's a lot to ask yeah it's a lot to ask man i i really like you have every advantage man you have i tell you what

you get your ass kicked tonight there's no point winning the division what does home what does home ice matter what does home ice matter if you can't win a game like this what does home ice matter well they won that game in LA and that gives me heart because that was a gutsy win that was on the road see you don't need it and they do well the Leafs have been extremely good at home this year if you look at their splits yes they have they have been good they have been good Florida still doesn't have Ekblad right they're still shorthanded no Kachuk did Bobrovsky play last night or was it van a check uh v tech ah you suck ah all right well i guess we're getting bob montreal outshot them to hell though v tech had a good game they've had a good they played

a good game defensively so v tech sorry all i hear is joe bowen's voice oh yeah yeah you can win a v tech phone worth mentioning by the way that elaine hudson is closing in on the most assists by a rookie defenseman record. He just passed Chris Chelios, who was second, and he did it with the Montreal Canadiens in 84-85 with 55 assists. Larry Murphy from 1980-81 holds the assist record with the Los Angeles Kings at 60. Lane Hudson has 57.

I would like to change my vote. May I change my vote? There has been a smattering of, yeah, but he gets sheltered minutes, but who cares? He's a rookie defenseman. Of course he does. He doesn't get sheltered minutes. He gets a lot of ozone starts.

Yeah, those numbers are skewed. He's starting a lot in the offensive zone because he's a great offensive talent. That doesn't make sense. And he can't play 60 minutes. Yeah, I don't understand that. Quinn Hughes, Kael McCarr, all those guys are, I believe, top 20, top 15

in terms of being sheltered. And I don't really think anyone says they're not good defensemen. Now, for me, this Calder Trophy race ended over the last couple days because on Sunday, the Florida Panthers lose to the Montreal Canadiens who got really something going here, really good. They do. In that game, three points by Lane Hudson. Last night, once again, three points by Lane Hudson.

Doing that, those back-to-back three-point games kind of cemented everything he's kind of been doing all season. and where he's going in terms of points in a season by a rookie defenseman where he's top 10 all time by the end of this thing. Let's see how far he can get up the list. And then the assists, obviously, breaking records. He's also entering historic company on a team that's going to make the playoffs. So you have, in comparison, Wolfe, Celebrini, and Michkov,

who are all on teams who are not going to make the playoffs, and he's ahead of those guys, the two forwards, in terms of points. and then dustin wolf has not had a good last seven games i believe one time in his last seven games he's only had a save percentage over 900 or one time in those last seven games in the crucial part of this season where you need the guys to perform the most lane hudson is stepping up and being one of the best performers on his team he had an assist on the goal that happened with 8.4 seconds left from nick suzuki to send the game into overtime to then get the two points in the three on three where he also had an assist that wasn't a big assist he like touched the puck at

some point it wasn't crazy assist but like he got the assist there in the big moments and when you compare that to the other guys it's not fair it's not a fair competition the wolf like i said is failing in the biggest moments and then mitchkoff and celebrini aren't playing on competitive teams when we lane hudson wins the calder when we were talking about wolf you know getting heart votes and winning the Calder, it looked like he was single-handedly dragging the Flames to the playoffs. They were 32nd, 30th, 31st, whatever, in everything. And still are.

And still are, and that's why they're not winning. And, you know, a lot happens in a week or two. Lane's game has stepped up. It was always close to me between Wolfe and Lane. You so rarely get a rookie goalie this good, and you so rarely get a rookie defenseman this good as evidenced by we're talking about chris chelios um it's a i i've been beating this drum for a long time this is a really really good calder race like the fact that sell one of celebrini and mitch kov aren't even gonna make

it like aren't even gonna get three yeah this is crazy yeah there's a reason that lane hudson winning it this year means a lot because the competition is at a higher level than it's been in years i can't remember like usually we get a two horse race or sometimes three but it's usually one guy who just runs away with it and we know it but this year it matters between these four guys because all four are having spectacular seasons and that's why like montreal canadians fans are hyped about this calder race one one of the hockey world is too one of those four guys probably one of celebrating your mitch kov isn't going to get nominated and they're going to have an unbelievable career and we're going to look back at the end of their career and go and they didn't even get

nominated for rookie why you had to have been there what idiots voted yeah you had to be there yeah okay go look who was one two three oh shit that's why we're currently living in a you have to be here moment yeah that's such a great point like we're going to look back on this season be like you remember that year holy shit all four of them just going head to head and at different points in this season i think they all kind of held the crown because mitch got very early when celebrina was out we didn't know what lane hudson was and dustin wolf wasn't had didn't have the team in the playoff spot he was definitely the calder front runner and then we saw celebrina hit the ice and we're like is that a five-year veteran just out there with the sharks he was

crazy he looks so complete and it was like give him the calder and then wolf had the team in the playoff spot it's like now it's wolves and they can't score and then they can't score a single goal wolves has them in this and that now that the season is almost complete we see the full picture of this guy is on a historic pace like no rookie defenseman has ever been he gets the calder and for me it's done and mark uh mark dumont actually said it's the leafs that are responsible for lane hudson being a have awesome uh the leaf sent renat valley up to montreal for thomas placanitz which turned into brett kulak which turned into lane hudson so that's a great trade tree uh because i said hey thanks montreal canadians and he said really the hab should be

thanking the leafs uh yeah that's where you get talking shit i was happy i was happy that they did it i was thrilled thank you montreal um shame on every team in the nhl including the leafs who drafted fraser mitten for allowing lane hudson to drop to second round in the in the draft that year he went 62nd overall that's that's a crime against humanity i'm just but they all committed it so then it's okay yes i'm i'm just looking at like the the nhl scoring leaders like cutter gautier who i think people have talked a fair amount of smack about has been great 15 goals 23 assists for 38 points he's fourth yo that philly trade is looking worse and worse and worse they tried to spin the shit out of that i told you guys garbage trade at the time even worse now

will smith garbage will smith i think you're no it's in keith jones and danny briere for that moment should be i'm sure they're good people embarrassed how dare embarrassing how they went at him in the media kid's a freaking teenager come on will smith 13 goals 24 assists 37 points top five he's not even the top rookie scorer on his team like this is a really logan stankhoven oh yeah he's still considered a rookie yeah not fair he's six like oh man it's a really oh number 11 jay blake that was weird to me yeah jay blake no that's uh carolina's uh jackson blake oh the son of jason right oh i was like what are you doing here that's that's his kid right i believe so yeah and i learned that during a game recently uh he uh i mean this year this this this group

i think is crazy nhl fans should be so happy because the future is really bright with the next set of stars that the league has it's something you've been trumpeting for a long time that we're in a golden era of of kids who are going to be the next superstars and we shouldn't be worried about creating the next crosby or ovechkin or any of that because we have so many kids right now that are going to be superstars how many times this season have we talked about Zach Bulldog or Maxim Siplikov or Marco Kaspar. All those guys have 30 or

more points. 30 is kind of like a milestone for rookies. A lot of them don't get there. We don't even talk about guys who are still relatively new and are amongst the next generation, but are kind of already superstars like Quinn Hughes,

like Jack Hughes, like the Hughes brothers just keep naming them. Both Kachups. I was going to say Brady. Matthew's kind of in the middle more than more brady and even like a guy like um jesper bratt who's having an unbelievable season super underrated the kids what 22 yeah like the he is growing into a superstar in his own and it's so under the radar he's 26 oh 26 oh my bad a little he's growing into the superstar in his own at this point in his career um and and he's going so under the radar because

there's so many other guys in this league it's stacked league and i think we can afford to have a couple more teams uh fuck it we shouldn't be worried about expansion that's what you took from this there are so many guys the dumbest take in all mankind history is we where will we find the players shut up there's so many good players oh my god everybody acts like william carlson didn't go from a nothing player in columbus to a 40 goal scorer in vegas and all what changed ice time for For God's sakes. People are good. Marchessault.

Oh, my God. They paid to get rid of Marchessault. Outrageous. Outrageous. Riley Smith, same team. We can do 36. We can do 40 eventually. Now, Maple Leafs projected lineup versus Florida.

Nyes, Matthews, Marner, McMahon, Tavares, Nylander, Lott, and Domi, Yarncroke. Holmberg, Conf, Lorenz. Looks like basically everything is the same. Nick Robertson sits for the third straight game, which means that he's going to score like a hat trick when he actually does come back uh patch ready probably not activated i don't think till the first game of the playoffs because of cap issues um hawk and paw is on the ice maddie's ears perked up

maddie's favorite leaf of all time he's played two games now i'm telling you he's playing i want to just quickly talk about what this lineup gives you because if this is the lineup going into this game I think it's pretty fair to say that's the ideal now lineup going into the playoffs with the exception of probably Max Pacioretty subbing in probably on the fourth line and Hockenpah uh I and Hockenpah yeah you know what I think they do want to play Hockenpah over Benoit especially the way a hundred Benny's games been lately it's been a bit sloppy um when you look at this lineup I said it last episode and I want to say it again I do I know people are like well we acquired lawton to be a center lawton can win cent can win draws domi can win draws whatever i like lawton

and yarn croak with domi because now i'm not worried about that line being a defensive liability and it allows domi to be more of what he is well and it actually helps domi on face offs as well because i feel like we said this earlier this season one thing domi hasn't had is another center on his line consistently um and well i've also argued he shouldn't be one but now he has two uh lawton is the center yarn croak was a center for a very long time both guys very capable in the face off dot both uh there's a lot of guys who are you know who's also listed as a center as lorenz yeah i believe he's played some of that holmberg nearly every player in the lineup has played a little bit of center yep yep and i i think that is something that mike babcock

used to talk about was like we need more when he talked about more depth he meant more options at center because remember this is something that happened in the playoffs mike babcock was so against the centers that they had that zach hyman on a bad knee like a knee that he needed to have operated on was was taking face-offs in the defensive zone on a short-handed you know play against patrice bergeron oh the leafs traded pair uh lynn home pair lynn there are par they called him pair to winnipeg and he cried and shit his pants about that who babcocked it oh he was so mad he was so damn mad centers man that guy bad visual that guy he cried and shit his Well, and I think his punishment for doing that was,

okay, now I'm putting Hyman at center, which was not fair to Hyman. Oh, yeah, I am not fixing this. I am going to put Nick Patan in every position to fail on purpose. And then Marc-Andre Fleury robbed Patan and Babcock got fired. Good. Yeah, that might be Marc-Andre Fleury's greatest career achievement, I would say.

Oh, 100%. Robbing that and getting Mike Babcock. God, he cost the Leafs a lot of money. He sure did. He sure did. Par Lindholm won a championship last season in the Swedish Hockey League. Good for him. With who?

I don't know how to pronounce this team name. Steve? Let me put it. Skellefteå. Or is it Skellefteå? I think Skellefteå. I think it's Skellefteå. Yeah, Shell is S-K-E-L-L, right?

I think so. Shell. I don't know. No idea. But there's a little trophy logo next to that season. Career goals as a Leaf. One. Uno.

61 games that season. 18-19. And then, yeah. That's so many games. Yeah, but Jesse, his plus minus was good. Oh, yeah. No, plus five. Let's go.

All right. All right. Let's move on. Let's move on. Alexander Ovechkin is at 8-9-1, which makes him one hat-trick away from tying Gretzky and one hat-trick plus one away from beating Gretzky. Thank you for saying correctly.

And tonight, while I stream the Panthers-Leafs game, we are going to have an Ovechkin sort of watch happening. We could only switch if we need to, if he's going for the hat trick or something like that, because I think the tying goal with Gretzky is going to be important. I think the passing Gretzky is going to be important. I also want to say, programming note, Friday, I'm going to be streaming the Capitals game.

Oh! Because we got to make sure that we're watching for Ovi. Yep. and then sunday if the chase is not over jesse will be doing the capitals islanders yeah so 12 30 p.m we are following along hanging out on youtube with you yeah on the tubes on the tubes so we're very excited for that um and we'll see what happens i i believe he missed an empty netter last night uh which is hilarious really on purpose yeah yeah he wants to make it hard yeah he did he saw our podcast and he's like i don't want to get benched on the

road that's just so they should they should 100 i still stand by that wholeheartedly bench oh like on the road you should do this at home see i don't understand why you guys aren't for the fans i am for the fans of the washington capitals i think they deserve to watch this moment in the home of ted leosis listen i don't i'm not saying that i i'm thrilled about the prospect of ob doing it in tom dundon's house tonight uh because he could i think it would be a real shame if he did it on an island and not in uh washington well the home of ted leo maybe friday maybe we got a couple goals tonight and a couple goals friday and boom bob is your uncle bench him sunday if he gets close but bench him sunday then you don't do the stream yeah so what

and then it's what carolina next week me adam it's about the fans so you you he plays today wednesday carolina scores like two you know and then he's what these two away then right yep Scores one against the Blackhawks on Friday. No, he's at home Friday. Yeah, so I only want one, though. So he scores one. Then I don't get my benching. Then you bench him Sunday so that he does it against Carolina next Thursday

or the 13th against Columbus. You're more than welcome to boo Jesse at this point. No, he's got to do it at home. He's got to do it at home. Jesse, enough. Here's what's going to happen. Put it back up. Let me help you.

He's going to score two goals tonight against the Hurricanes. Sorry. He's going to score two goals on Friday against the Blackhawks. Oh, so it's tied now. Yeah. And then you bench him. No, no. He'd be passing.

Sorry. He's going to score one goal. I thought he was four back. One goal. He is. So two and two, he passed. Four back of winning. Four back of being ahead of.

Three to tie. Got it. Eight, nine, four is the number. Got it. He's going to score one goal tonight against the Hurricanes. He's going to score two goals on Friday against the Blackhawks. So they're tied. So they're tied.

He's going to come real close to a hat trick. He's not going to get it. Bench him. Doesn't get it Sunday. Doesn't score a goal Sunday. But there's a three-day break before the Hurricanes game. Right. And we're going to hype it up.

And it's going to happen. It's happening Thursday. Here's the highlight pack of all the goals he's ever scored. And it's not going to happen. Oh, so then he benched him Saturday. Madden A game in Columbus. He plays Saturday, and he doesn't score. You venture.

Oh, no. And he plays Sunday, and he doesn't score. Oh! And he plays the second-last game of the season. Against the Islanders. And he doesn't score. Oh, but wait. What's the last game of the season?

And then the final game of the season, Alexander Ovechkin in Pittsburgh wins it in the house that Mario built. I hope Penguins fans boo. Oh, they should. like like it would be a sign of respect i think yeah yeah out of respect for the tradition of the caps rivalry i think boo if they cheer for ovechkin breaking the record i think you move them to hamilton that's enough all right gym balls yeah hey they made the sitcom about me

i believe ovechkin has scored the most goals of his career uh against the maple leafs like of every team i believe the maple leafs are number one i don't believe that's true at all You don't think so? Yeah, yeah. It's definitely not. In terms of total goals, no, definitely not. Maybe per game, that's true. But total, no.

Okay, I'm looking at it against each team. Yeah. So, oh, you're right. Okay. Oh, this is crazy. What? No. He scored 57 goals against the Jets?

Oh, the Thrashers. Oh, that's how they're counting it at StatMuse. Okay, so it's first, number one, it's Jets at 57. number two it's flyers at 52 number three hurricanes 51 number four lightning 51 number five uh rangers at 46 and then the panthers and leafs are tied for sixth uh in at with 45 wow good lord that's nuts what an animal yeah just crazy holy shit um two and five canadians will hear the words you have cancer that's why every step and dollar raised matters on september 19th, join thousands in Toronto

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Yeah. So anyway, I want to hit on a couple other things here too before we go to press conference or wrap it up or whatever the heck we're doing rick talkett and the vancouver canucks this is a this is a story i've been watching with great interest i've been watching your career with great interest um because there's a lot of questions about hey rick how about that extension and he's like no no we'll do it at the appropriate time uh i'm just focused on the next game which to me is always coded language for i'm not sure and i'm not saying that he wants out of vancouver but I'm not saying he wants to stay either because if he did he's in line for a huge race his salary is apparently about 2.75 million dollars which if you're one of the NHL's top coaches and if you

look at his you know the season he's coming off last year uh he was very good season uh and he should probably maybe maybe he's not going to be John Cooper highly paid but he might be a five million dollar coach and it's interesting because Thomas Drance wrote about it today and he said it's clear Talkett doesn't want his contractual situation to be a story while his club fights for its playoff life. The Canucks would prefer to work out an extension because they can exercise a team option. They have a team option on him this summer. They said it would be a major storyline once the season concludes and a serious conversation and negotiation for both parties involved. Now, i was talking to somebody today i'm like okay so if if rick talkett uh says i want to be the

coach of philadelphia which we kind of talked about last last week right i want to go to philly i played a thousand games there or whatever i want to go to philly and and be the coach there the canucks could simply say well you're not going uh we'll exercise a team option and and i said so what is it like why do the canucks even want to worry about an extension right now they just exercise the team option and the person reminded me of something uh he could just resign and then the Canucks are paying him for the season to not coach for them so if the Canucks exercise the team option he can just say yeah I resign and what's the point of the option exactly wait why do you get your check if you resign because well because there is I believe if you want to keep him out of

working in a different competitive situation you have to pay him well what if you just so if he because coaches contracts are guaranteed now i think it would be probably where the canucks would be like okay well if what's clear here is the canucks want to retain him what's not clear is what rick talkett wants to do if he doesn't want to stay he has the option to resign but the canucks at a competitive advantage could pay him to keep him off now they could allow him to go and seek new opportunities but then why exercise the team option in the first place do you see what i'm saying here not really there's what what don't you see he's allowed to just say like unlike a player players can i mean they could cancel their contracts but most of them don't do that the team

option is worthless yeah what i'm saying is the team option gives them next to no control except for it would keep him out of the nhl next season if they were willing to pay the 2.75 or whatever they own okay so you know this is where because Canucks fans are sort of like what's he going to do here you know yesterday we we found out you know that Philip Heedle probably doesn't play for the rest of the season um there are real doubts about where this future where this team is going now got a lot of money to spend this offseason attractive market great players they probably bring in some good free agents attractive market to who I mean it's a great place to live yeah if you're rich yeah well but why do why does every nhl player who has the opportunity put

all of canada not just vancouver on their no trade i think taxes are part of it media pressures are another so every place is a good place to live if you're rich and you can be richer somewhere else sure sure you and i mere peasants are like vancouver awesome that sounds great and these guys are all like let's sign in the same four places nhl players sign right right well uh it is a it's a storyline i think it's worth watching because yes anyway you know like it's not just oh well they got the team option so that's that it's not actually that way um he can he can he can resign and now i don't that would be messy but the canucks have been messy in the past like there are certain teams that are just not messy i don't see it happening the canucks are messy yeah i

don't see it i don't understand why this would happen well i think there are two reasons number one if he doesn't want to be there and the canucks want to keep them this would be their power move there are holes in it why would they want to keep somebody who doesn't want to be there well i think if somebody doesn't want to coach your hockey team i don't think you'd go out of your way to keep them there and i i agree with that jesse but they seem to be doing that like look at look at um what kyle remember when kyle dubas was like oh in toronto was sort of like i got to think about this or whatever i know talk it is is coaching and whatever and he's talking about the the fact that he just wants to focus on wins or whatever if rick talk it was 100 be

honest with yourself i know canucks fans are not going to like this but you're a guy or a gal and you're making 2.75 million dollars and you know that you're in for a raise of probably double wherever you go okay and the canucks are going we're willing to do that right and there hasn't been any sort of story about the Canucks aren't willing to pay. They are willing to pay. They've said it publicly. We want them here. But your coach is going,

eh, we'll talk about it at the appropriate time. What's the appropriate time? Because if it were me, being a pleb, I'd be like, hey man, that sounds like a great extension. Let's go. Unless I was not sure about the future. I think it's worth asking

the question. Do you think this is going to come down to a personnel thing? like this is going to come down to you know either we make some significant improvements here or i'm out i don't know that's the fun part about this story is i don't know i would i would imagine he's probably like after the season we've had petterson's been uh petterson's clearly got some sort of injuries not playing up to his standard uh philip heidel has always had the injury thing follow him around uh what's the future here hey uh you know whose team had a pretty good weekend um we got to watch them up close the Abbotsford Canucks um they played two games against the San

Jose Barracuda kicked the Barracuda's ass both so you think you're thinking Manny Malhotra uh I've already I've already seen his name a couple times Manny Malhotra new coach of the vancouver canucks question mark question mark could be okay just interesting uh the other thing i want to hit before we uh before we wrap is the st louis blues have won 10 straight games uh let us never speak on goalies ever again what do you mean well that's enough jordan binnington just deciding to be dominic hasik like is very funny i mean they've they've now jumped ahead of the minnesota wild too ah poor hayden i mean we saw this coming a mile away yep it's possible not probable possible

that the st louis blues could maybe possibly catch the next team in their division which would be the colorado avalanche now there's a five point spread there it's getting tight and the abs are six two and two but the the blues are ten oh and oh so let's do we make that the race in the western conference can the blues catch the abs out of a possible 20 points the avalanche only dropped six and the blues made up six points yes that's insane now that's insane if you're the blues jesse and steve i want to ask you you're gonna play very likely now you're not playing the jets you're playing the golden knights and the golden knights in the playoffs are not fun you almost would prefer i would think

playing the jets based on their recent history in the playoffs i listen i think the jets are an unbelievable team they play the blues they're in big trouble they're in big trouble so then if so do you what do you do take your foot off the gas like then if you got if you were somehow able to pass the abs you're playing the stars no the west is brutal you know what i'm sick of this uh because listen i i know you don't want to play a team that's won 10 straight games but if i may make it about the leafs for a second oh well you don't want to play this steam and you don't want to play this steam and you don't want to grow up grow a pair freaking knock it off yeah there's good teams in the playoffs what what yeah but there's also great

teams in the playoffs now you're gonna have to beat them too you remember what jesse jesse had us all shocked a couple of years ago when he's like you know the vegas golden knights they're everything they might have a chance and we're like jesse and then they go and they won the cup yep every team's good like i don't if you're a st louis blues like you don't care who you play every team's good there's no good matchup in the west especially so just stay hot yeah that's that's the whole play your best hockey exactly like i'm i'm evaluating the western conference playoff picture purely by purely by who is playing how right now yeah like oilers were my beginning of the season stanley cup prediction i'm feeling kind of nervous about that right now out of all

those teams they're not playing they're great there's seven teams that are playing well in the west and the wild aren't and i think all the other seven teams are good then the oilers yeah a little iffy right now but they're still a good team they still have mcdavid and dry sidle like mcdavid will be healthy for the playoffs and we'll see about stewart skinner i don't know how that's gonna go but who's currently out right now even the wild like supposedly uh i thought i read eric sinek and kaprizov are both practicing there's something so all of a sudden you got a playoff team who's dropping but they're a playoff team and they're gonna get back those two and they were on fire when those guys were in the lineup back in the fall like when those guys were playing

full tilt like kaprizov was a heart trophy candidate so if they get those guys then there's eight good teams in the west you know there's there's no bad teams it's the playoffs yeah it's stanley cup playoffs baby win four to seven or eat shit that's all right the beginning middle end there's something you can put on a t-shirt win four games promo actually in 26 27 win or eat shit well it's rogers that's why every it's only on prime um that's that's why every year oh man the leafs for a goal away that oh man that's crazy win four games or fuck yourself like no one cares no one cares you almost won okay no one cares so with that we will leave the show we'll do a press conference friday okay oh friday no sorry yeah friday so we're gonna roll

but we hope that you have a great day you have a great day i pointed at the wrong camera and also vip friday morning anything else nothing no all right usually you want to talk right to the end here stay the same never change the steve dangle podcast follow the guys on twitter at steve underscore dangle at adam w y l d e and at jesse blake connection complete two and five canadians will hear the words you have cancer that's why every step and dollar raised matters on september 19th join thousands in toronto for the princess margaret cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear

of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.