The Steve Dangle Podcast - On Purpose | June 9, 2021

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, shoutout Taya Currie & Sarnia (00:00), the Winnipeg Jets lose 4 straight to the Montreal Canadiens (04:30), Mayweather vs Paul (13;00), James Mirtle joins the show to talk about the current playoff picture, the Leafs, & working in the media during a pandemic (17:30), Tampa knocks off Carolina (1:00:00), the CN Tower lights up in Montreal Canadiens colours (1:03:00), Tyler Toffoli and Jim Benning (1:17:00), and head to https://naseeha.org/donatenow/ to help support Naseeha Mental Health (1:25:00). Originally aired: June 9, 2021 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/cGJqyVC02PM Visit https://sdpn.ca for merch and more. We've joined The Athletic and you can too! Hit the link to subscribe: https://theathletic.com/sdp Visit this episode's sponsors: https://magicspoon.com/sdp https://www.creditkarma.ca/ https://www.getroman.com/sdp https://ca.manscaped.com/ https://betmgm.com/dangle Follow us on Twitter:@Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram:@SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake and with a tremendous oversight on the last show so we're going to address it right away but first you want to let you know that james murrell will be on in a few minutes so we'll be talking to him about all the things including mark shifley hooray shifley says stuff which you know sometimes Steve, what's your rule about NHL owners? If NHL owners speak, it's bad, always. I actually love the fact that Mark said what he said today because I think it's really good for the game,

but we'll get to that in just a second. First, drafted, the first person ever, first female ever picked in the OHL draft. We've got a shout-out to Tay Curry from Park Hill, Ontario, picked by the Sarnia Sting. He said, quote, treat me like a normal player on the team, And I would expect, like, why wouldn't you?

Although I have to say, there's nothing normal about being the first when it's something like this. We're talking about a league with decades of history. So in that respect, obviously she would want to be treated normal, but what an accomplishment. Sorry, it was on my prep sheet last week to get to, and we just didn't. So I apologize, but it's pretty spectacular and wonderful news, and good for her.

It's like the I love Lucy thing with the chocolate on the conveyor belt, and that's that's what life is it's speeding up and we're starting to miss chocolate yes yes 100 that's a really deep cut reference but a lot of people will surprisingly get it the the i feel like it's i know it's old as hell but like it's before my time but it's embedded enough in our culture that enough people know it but like um we just posted our dang it's video like an hour ago and we didn't even talk about shifley hitting evans and like last week i was like we're gonna do it don't worry and then we didn't and i'm sorry i have no excuse other than we forgot did we talk about the hit on this show yes yes we did okay i honestly don't know i'm not sure

i don't know i don't man i don't know listen ask me in 10 years and i'll remember you guys have terrible memories anyway do you remember what episode where you mentioned blah blah blah lot i'm like did i say that i don't i don't know the worst the worst was uh like a book signing someone will say like something very odd to me and i'll just be like ha ha ha and they'll be like that's you i'm like i don't know what you're talking about they're quoting me to me and i'm like i don't remember saying that that's right i'm sorry anyway shout out sarnia yeah well that yeah and and uh and that terrible driving spot that was incredible i look forward to making that awful terrible drive to watch her play it is a tough drive sarnia isn't it there's just not

very much it's like they took a swatch of new brunswick and just put it in ontario and they went we have they went we have too much nothing we need to you know export some of our nothing and ontario was like i'll take that and it's the road to tarnia it's it's when you when you get through like when you're going if you go like around i don't know if this is gonna make sense but if you go like around past kitchener and london like you don't go through ontario you just go kind of around it and down the lake then yeah it's just it's a whole bunch of nothing well in and it's funny because that's lakefront property man that's prime real estate there's adam hey i'm just saying where's where's all the uh where's

all the big buyers now adam i think like if you tried to buy in at lambden shores it's gonna run you a couple million probably maybe maybe is this the ontario version of the californians yes yeah well hey did i i told you guys that the original mustang i was gonna look at was in sarnia right you did mention that yeah right it's it's still for sale and i think it's only because the guys in sarnia yeah you're gonna have to take the 402 coming off of the uh 401 to the 402 and hit up sarnia you know show up and it's like what are you doing here we are gonna get so much shit from listeners from sarnia i know that and i'm okay with that but it is uh it is a heck of a drive it really is um so i i guess i guess what we can do right now is get right into what

happened with uh the montreal canadians and the winnipeg jets and i think you know when you watch the series and we kind of talked about it on the last episode montreal just like it was almost like um you're you're playing easy a little bit on on uh your your nhl 21 game it was just they they they outmatched them everywhere and carrie price is a god in the playoffs and and not that conor hellebuck isn't great but conor hellebuck has a much thinner lineup in front of him and without mark shifley there who we will get to by the way we are not getting to that right at this second i want to talk about the actual game first um it just seems for winnipeg it was just there you're just flatly outmatched every time they had a lot of leaf syndrome going on in that wheeler i think

it was wheeler connor and eelers combined for two points total over the four games like that's not enough when shifley's out your stars didn't show up so that's just that's a huge hole in your lineup when you take out one guy and then your stars don't play and then uh Pierre-Luc Dubois definitely looked a little injured like he was he was non-existent on defensively or offensively so just for your top guys the only offense you're getting is from your defenseman like how are you ever going to win a game so he's like no no I wasn't injured and so the logical conclusion is oh so like you were just kind of bad then like that was I remember that conversation about Ryan uh dylan strome coming out of the 2015 ohl final because it's supposed to be this two-headed

monster of mcdavid and even if you contain him there's dylan strome and against ashwa he was strome was completely like ineffective and so he got defensive though at the idea that he was hurt after the series and so everyone's like all right well then you were just sort of bad then it it felt to me like i'm not mad but with injury you know it's like you were injured but you know you're like i'm not injured what are you talking about play my hardest no it seems like you definitely had a little thing ailing you um i i the thing that blew me away too is uh nikolai is going yeah i felt 100 except i had this labrum tear in my ribs i was like what the fuck yeah i felt 100 and then it's come out today that he had a labrum tear

in his ribs and and that's a trunk you know that's a trunk muscle and that's you're moving side to side every skate every time his skate touched the ice to push that comes all the way up through your body that is gonna fucking hurt and I just so you you compare and contrast Ehlers who's always good always a spectacular player versus Pierre-Luc Dubois who you know forced his way out of town and the thing is when you force your way out of town you put yourself at a bit of a deficit because you have to perform in the next place. You're saying, I don't want to perform here anymore. Team gives up a lot to get you. And in Patrick Lainey, they sure did. And we're not even sure that you can live up to a trade like that. If Patrick Lainey lives up to

his potential, I don't think Pierre-Luc Dubois has the ceiling that Lainey potentially could have, right? And then you, on top of that, weren't great this year. Just were not great at all. and I you have to wonder what what that's all about with Pierre-Luc Dubois maybe there's you know uh changing countries and everything right new systems whatever but you need more than that from that guy otherwise why didn't you just hang on to lining for the rest of the year right zero goals seven years zero goals every situation is unique um every injury is certainly unique and he had a unique season a horrible horrible start in Columbus and this is this is where some of the criticism about him just straight up not trying with columbus is valid

how do you then get traded take two weeks off because of quarantine and get your brain into trying mode you know what i mean and maybe he was here i go i'm ready to try and he gets hurt right away because he had the two-week quarantine or at least people factor that as as part of it now you know how much of that is his fault i i don't know but it's uh it's like it's like running through snow we've all done it um it's harder when you turn around for a buddy hey you coming and then you got to build back you got to get speed back up again and uh and i just don't think dubois was ever able to do it this season he could come out and truck teams next year it was never going to be this year he was never going to get the momentum back um and i i think you know in

winnipeg situation you got to think that this is the best they could hope for when the season started most people didn't have them in the playoffs and if you ask mark shively okay well again we'll wait on mark shively sure um you know and blake wheeler called shively top five player top three player in the nhl or something like that and i was like okay all right but it's a Good teammate. That's exactly. That's a great teammate. But it's certainly for the Winnipeg Jets.

I know it's disappointing, but boy, I think you've got to be, if you're a Jets fan, you've got to be happy with how this went. That blue line's been decimated. They lost a 40-goal score in his sleep in Patrick Laine for a center that, frankly, just didn't perform this year. And that doesn't mean he can't. It just means he didn't. I think they did pretty damn well, given what they were given.

um you know out of all the fan bases jets fans were realistic all season long no one hated that team more than jets fans they they they were along for the ride they knew the faults of the team and uh you know it's amazing like shifley going down while going down getting suspended dubois underperforming all i ever saw was how important dylan de mello was and and the fact that he wasn't there and you know this isn't to discredit montreal um because no we'll get to montreal yeah but like you want to you want to play teams at their best to prove you're the best right but not knowing how it happens if they were given the option of tavaris is going to play virtually none of the series and muzzin won't play the most important parts of it you you take that

deal with the devil you go to the jets all right shifley's out most of the series we're not telling you how and dylan de mello is out i don't know what was it at least half of it you make that deal with the devil as well um it's it's the playoffs injuries happen um but man that's uh i'm not i'm not gonna say it's fortunate for the montreal canadians but it certainly makes their their their target softer you're talking about you're talking about uh two guys who are number one centers on most teams in this league and just you don't have to deal with them yeah de mello got in one game by the way yeah like well and i think that's going to be something that uh shovel day off has to address this offseason they got to do something with that

defense you know you go from one of the strongest defenses in the league to not having any of the three guys that made it that that strong in the first place it's pretty tough um and they managed it anyway and good for them second round i mean how do you hate that now um jesse you um you have the yeah well dude i mean we didn't get what the hell did we get um i also i i do want to say because i was sort of laughing at mark shifley on twitter today and i think rightfully so um the uh uh the the fans that reach out and go well the leafs are a bunch of losers dude you need to watched the last week of our show we know so before we get into these just you know listen to the discussion steve i saw you actually um you tweeted out the lula amorello clip

yes we had should the leafs have kept lula amorello and a bunch of people commented and then you wrote has not listened to the discussion right like just listen right watch the video first people i this is you know my one legal punch law um another thing i suggested a long time ago and um you know spoken to mark zuckerberg about it and and he didn't want to buy the idea you got all this money mark i don't know why you're being so cheap i'll take it at elon or something but here's here's my idea if you comment on an article or a video that you have not watched yet a boxing glove comes out of your screen like a spring-loaded boxing glove comes out of your screen and punches you in the face and not a mayweather versus paul

uh punch a real punch i was texting jesse all week trying to make that fight interesting i was like watch mayweather's taking a dive is what what's this there's no winner or loser he's taking gonna dive and what did i tell you he's gonna hold them up for a rounds and he literally said i am about to rob you then he robbed people after the press conference he was like i robbed you and i can't wait to see who he fights next because he's just gonna rob you again he said i made 30 million dollars you guys are all idiots i made 30 million dollars off of this he's ruining his legacy no one's going to look at these fights in the future

they're going to look at the fights that made him Mayweather they don't know what cares about this celebrity bullshit 55-0 it's there, the legacy is good yeah it's the number though I'm sorry, it's modern boxing

I don't care no one cares that's why who's spending all this money on boxing i need to see them i need to meet them that's why my friends are ever like did you watch that boxing match no like they have a community let's not have they do yeah they do it's still there's still a fan base there it's not what it was it's not right it's not the cultural phenomenon where it's like the world stops because ollie or tyson or foreman are in a fight it's not that anymore

it's hey it has this niche community tyson versus mcneely um i was a kid for that and i remember and it was it was like 90 seconds long and the entire street packed into my neighbor across the street's house who i don't even know if he paid for it he might have got it like illegally i don't know but like the whole street was in his house to watch that 90 second fight and i remember there oh all this all the stars are here and jim carrey's in the audience and he was the biggest thing in the world in the mid 90s and 90 second fight it was a thing mike tyson was a big draw people wanted to watch my oh absolutely floyd mayweather no one wants to watch that shit i don't care what your record is boo

boring for the people that paid a pile of money for it you guys both watched it are you kidding me no i didn't i saw clips and i was like yep good i haven't even seen the clips i was like i just i i think because i'm not a huge fighting fan in the first place i'm more of a motorsports and football kind of guy but like it's a uh i certainly like i just i don't i can understand the mike tyson thing i would watch mike tyson or a boxer like him i get it the jake paul thing logan paul thing i don't i don't really get it i don't understand a question when mcgregor was knocking everybody out did you check out any of those fights i watched the one where he got knocked out for the first time okay yes one i watched him diaz one and it was spectacular what

an event like that was a it was a great card didn't rousey get knocked out too that that day it wasn't the same card she it was like a couple months before right knocked out as well i watched that because remember she had like the eight second fight yeah like before that she did it like three times in a row where she knocked out girls like in eight seconds and i think that's what boxing the ufc stars have kind of taken over that lane in combat sports where they can create the cultural event where you get somebody who's not even interested in combat sports to at least check out a rousy fight or when gsp was big or they become real celebrities exactly yeah and i think ufc is kind of taking that lane and boxing is kind of like hey we're doing the celebrity

goofy thing for i think in triller you know you know as much as there are question marks about how things were done i think boxing is missing a guy like don king i mean wrestling has sorry wrestling ufc has um dana white he's done a brilliant job of of taking this sport and promoting it. I believe he's already sold the UFC. They've just kept him on because they know whoever the company is that bought him, I think it was a Chinese company. The guys who own the rockets for Tita,

they owned it with White and then they sold it to I think a company out of Asia. So, you know, and they keep Dana White because he's the most valuable employee in the UFC. It's not the fighters. It's not the trainers, not anybody else. It's

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You've got to try breakfast at A&W. At participating A&W locations in Ontario. Hey, Myrtle. Ladies and gentlemen, James Myrtle joining the show. We held back on Mark Shifley until you got here, and so we ended up talking about boxing and UFC. Did you watch the fight this weekend? No, I was just...

Towards the end of it, I was like, okay, I tried to find an illegal stream, and I was too slow, and it ended, so it's probably just as well as I didn't watch. You tried to get past the paywall? What is this? It's garbage. It was in, like, the sixth or the seventh round,

so I was on my phone, and it was late at night, and I was just clicking around. I was like, well, maybe I'll watch the end of this and see if he knocks him out or not. By the time I got something working on my phone, it was over. It sounds like I didn't miss much. No. A lot of hugging.

Did you guys watch the whole thing? No. I was busy watching Game 8 Leafs-Habs. I think they're going to pull it off. They're going to pull off the comeback. That's like some sad hallucination you have in your basement or something. What are you talking about? we will uh we will talk about the Leafs later James but we got to talk about Mark Jifley

we've got to we got to play these clips first if you haven't heard these Jesse go ahead with them please uh from a press conference today I've loved I've loved you know an answer from them of what of what would have been a better thing to do because you know you know I replayed the thing over and over in my mind and the only the only real thing is if I gave up on my teammates um on that play and just didn't back check so uh you know it's over and done with i'm not gonna you know i'm not gonna continue to to to cry over it but um it's it's it's the decision they made it's it's crushing to you know that my season was ended um by that and i wasn't able to i wasn't able to play in this series um you know i thought i was gonna be i thought i was gonna be tried to

shut down by Philip Deneau and you know it was Department of Player Safety that shut me down so that that definitely sucks okay we need I need a side-by-side of Mark Shifley saying he's done crying over it and the amount of time it takes to cry over it again and I need to see if it beats Usain Bolt's 100 meter dash record I believe it's 9.58 I want to I want to see if Usain Bolt I want to i want to see oh someone put together the video you know what i'm trying to say and i'm just communicating it poorly anyway he's a baby james you are a guy that has to listen to player quotes all the time and usually they suck and they're boring uh this one is one of the most interesting we've seen all year in the nhl i wanted to get you know what's your initial reaction

when you read that when you watch that i mean i'm surprised because mark shifley's not known as a guy to he's known as kind of the sucks in our boring guy you know i'm surprised it was him saying that and he's been always been known you know like one of the things that came out when he was suspended is that he's never been suspended before he's barely got any penalty minutes he's just one of the cleanest he has a reputation as being a really clean nice guy player in the nhl and i almost wonder i give him a little bit of the benefit of the doubt because he's never been in a situation like this before he never expected to be in a situation like this before he's not a guy that gets suspended all the time um i think that and and you know the the playoffs and the

way that the team went out without him and all those things i think what you're hearing is some the frustration boiling over into quotes that don't make them look very good is basically what what's happening there it it does seem if you're mark shifley in this the one thing i will say as much as i disagree with his point of view is when you look at what happened and caps fans are going i hate this but when you look at what happened with tom wilson um or what didn't happen with tom wilson and you know and you compare and contrast you can understand why mark scheifele's like where's the bar here and you can you can sort of understand why nazim khadri's like eight games really and i think i think from that perspective do you think the frustration is more just we just

don't know where department of player safety stands on anything right now yeah that's that's probably part of it i mean i don't take any issue with the suspension that mark scheifele got to be honest i mean it and i don't take issue with the one that that cadre got either i mean i think that the cadre one makes sense i mean you look at i was reading the ruling from the neutral arbitrator yesterday and it's the case they that the league laid out i mean cadre had been suspended for hitting guys in the head like six times or something like that i mean that that one makes a lot of sense should there be more leeway for mark scheifele with that was a weird play it was a really strange play it was a strange player to be making that play he says he doesn't know what

he should have done differently he shouldn't have clocked the guy i mean he had already put the puck in the empty net like why are you why are you destroying the guy at the end of a game he didn't want to give up on his teammates james obviously it's it's so it's just stupid it's disingenuous right like it's very just so like i mean he what he should say is that i made a mistake there i shouldn't have blown the guy up in that situation i misread the play and i'm not going to do it again and i he's probably not going to do it again because you look at his history and he's played like 600 plus nhl games he's never done anything like that before uh but then you know the people i talked to around the league were surprised that it was mark scheifele that did something

like that and was involved in an incident like that it's sorry go ahead steve well i was gonna say there's such an enormous disconnect in this sport um i mean there's always going to be differing opinions but like it it would be nice for the nhl once a year to take a compilation like on their own youtube channel to take a compilation of hits and go see this hit this hit rules like and just show hard like devastating hits and show the ones that don't violate any rules and explain why they don't violate any rules like is is there have you heard any anything about the nhl trying to communicate what is and isn't clean better they i've actually seen them do this before i can't remember the year we're going back like seven or eight years but i used

to i used to go to florida to the board of governors meetings or the or the gm meetings and they would be down in like boca raton or whatever and in these meetings the department of player safety gets like a video screen and puts it in front of all the gms in the league and say this is what we want to get rid of and this is this we like this and like this is okay and they have all these different examples whether or not they should do that i mean they probably should do that publicly but and it's they they try very hard to find the line in those examples that they give to the gms and then there's debate among the gms over what's okay and what's not and that's where the the tweaks to the rule language come from is like all these debates over the

various things that they're talking about so they do they do that um the process isn't as transparent as it probably should be like that should be something that that everyone can see those videos but uh but i have seen things like that before and it's really really interesting do you know what prompted them to send that tweet about hey there seems to be a misconception about what isn't isn't a repeat offender just i can't remember who it was we there were a lot of people on twitter that were saying that you know cadre is not a repeat offender on because of the 18 was 18 month rule is that what it is right so they you know there were a lot of people that were kind of dunking on the nhl saying that

and that they see that i mean the the league sees when i don't know exactly like the genesis of which tweet or whatever pissed them off but to me that's that's someone at the league office being like come on like that's not what repeat offender means that those repeat offender rules are just to determine how much salary guys lose or whatever right but like the totality of your history still matters when they evaluate a hit it's not like your your slate is wiped clean after 18 months yeah well and and and so that's that's the thing that we were unclear about because it you know the way they say it it it sort of does give the average person i.e a guy like me uh the impression that that that it would be wiped clean like what you know that's that's the thing so i

find that i find that really interesting so it doesn't totally wipe it clean they still do look at your history yes yeah well like if you look at the the the cadre ruling is out there publicly if you look at it it like goes through like all these different incidents and all that really contributed to him getting the number of games that he did so yeah they should probably clarify it better than just sending out like a tweet that's like angry at people getting it wrong it's like well you're right i mean people are getting it wrong because they talk about this repeat offender status all the time when it comes to the fines and the number of games you get um when that doesn't really like they probably shouldn't even talk about that repeat offender

status like like who who cares if it like changes the way the fine is calculated like that's not really pertinent to the conversation um i'm sorry go ahead steve i was just gonna say like it it was the tweet was so jarring to me like you're mad at your own fans for not understanding the sport well if if anyone doesn't understand hockey it's your fault you're the national hockey league yeah yeah communicated poorly you're the biggest hockey league in the world it's your fault don't get mad at us shut up what's the i know that's not a question i just wanted to say you know at the very least steve they should communicate it to the media that to explain it better than than it has been explained and then they should just get rid of that idea of

repeat offender status they should just say call it something else and say that the fines are calculated or that whatever differently based on if you've had one in the last 18 months but don't call it repeat offender because then it makes it seem like it doesn't matter if you're a repeat defender or not right which it doesn't which doesn't because well with Kadri I mean with Kadri they they nailed him based on and you know the Wilson ones have escalated based on you know guys like Rafi Torres that had multiple I mean there are a lot of the guys who have four or five of these it seems like it tends to matter in terms of they ramp up the number of games that these guys are getting uh with when it comes to Nazem Kadri I mean God Vegas won last night how many

games would he have left like can he join soon game seven's when he can come back game seven so they got to push it to game seven do you have any sense from colorado um because i mean i don't think anybody on the show disagreed with what he got it was a it was a terrible hit you need to be suspended that's what it was um do you get a sense from the colorado organization james about how they might be feeling about this guy doing this again honestly i haven't talked to anyone there i mean it's been the middle of the playoffs yeah yeah i'm sure you heard i was in the middle of another playoff series until last week what the hell you've been doing anyway i've been like like that ended and then they did like their post-game stuff and then i just lay on the floor

for a few days and so you know like i i didn't reach i could have i could have tried to talk to some people in colorado and um i do know that they really like nasm cadre and i know that when they acquired them they were like doing backflips and like they were so happy with that trade and and they just felt like he was one of the missing pieces for them um it's it's it's got to change the equation for them a little bit if if they end up losing this series and he's not part of it i mean you know it's such a such a great close series he could have really been a deciding factor for them and for him to not be available especially when all the warning signs were there based on what he did in toronto i i'm sure you know the leafs organization this is the

number one reason why they traded nasm kadri they just didn't they felt like he would do it again they felt like he had had so many chances and they couldn't trust him yeah yeah shanahan suspended him personally when he was when he was in charge of player safety and then he joined the team well and shanahan suspended remember he was suspended for an incident that it wasn't a hit but there was an incident where and there was a lot of talk about cadre's maturity and you know shanahan remember that day at the at the rink shanahan showed up at the rink and started talking to the media out of nowhere and basically said you know we want him to grow up but we want to give we believe in giving him another chance and we believe in you know a lot of people were speculating

that maybe he would get traded then uh and then they gave him more chances and they gave him i believe they gave him more than one additional chance after that so i'm trying to think of with a timeline for when that suspension was but you know then they let him get suspended a couple times in the playoffs and then they're like okay like we've given this guy enough chances and they and they he rewarded them with two back-to-back 32 goal seasons yeah and then he yoink yeah he's a very good player i mean anyway we don't have to like talk well no i don't want to dump on him but i do want to move to i do want to move back to montreal i mean obviously we talked a little bit about winnipeg we've talked a little bit about what happened in the series but

you know you covered montreal directly against toronto and i you know i guess you know we can talk about the we've broken down that toronto series toronto montreal series over and over and over again but i would like to get your takeaways because you've got insights that we don't have and you know there's i think the first thing i would want to know is montreal is into the third round in less than seven days uh what is it about this team that is special they've they found a way defensively to really frustrate their opponents and really limit their opponents in a way that whatever they do give up carry price is able to stop so you know a lot of people are crediting carry price i don't think enough people are accrediting the coaching staff

you know i you could really see an adjustment with the way that montreal was playing after game four when it was clear things weren't working and the Leafs were getting too many opportunities it seemed like montreal had their backs against the wall and what they did is they just played even more conservatively you know i did i've compared them on one of our shows to to playing like team germany and in the olympics where you're just like you could see in the press box how the canadians were lining all five guys up along their own blue line it was a very very very conservative defensive style that they were playing and the leafs didn't really have an answer for that and it really frustrated them and it was really hard for them to break through and score goals and

by game seven they just they didn't know what to do so you know i i gotta credit the coaching staff because there were a lot of people after game four when the habs were down three to one they were saying you know do charms out of his league and you know is this guy supposed to be is this yeah like we were sitting in the press box and people were like like is this guy supposed to be good or because it just looks like he's got no answers for this and then they came back and they had they had big answers for the for the leafs you know after that you know and you know a lot of people that watch the leafs a lot say that they struggle the most when they play against was really really um like trapping kind of shut down teams through the neutral zone you know and

i said before the series that all much what montreal should do is they should go back and watch that columbus series last year and try and play like that and that's kind of what it feels like they did yeah oh no defense my one weakness how did you know but it's just like a stifling boring really patient like montreal was was fine to go what was the game that they went into and it was zero zero in the third period was that game five or game six i think it was game six and then montreal got a couple of goals and then yeah there was yeah well you know you're in game six your season's on the line you're down in the series montreal's like that's fine you know like game campbell was so good first yeah first period of game seven nothing happens like literally

nothing happens and i watched that i was like this is bad for toronto like montreal is fine to take a zero zero tie to the end of game seven with their season on the line like they they just you know they got a veteran team they just they were happy to win games one nothing and the Leafs weren't able to do it you you've seen the criticism and the fallout with the you know Marner and Matthews combining for a goal um and specifically Mitch Marner seemed to be you know a bit of a target and rightfully so in the sense that the performance wasn't there I'm not one of those people that agrees that that you know we should send death threats and things like that And we've said that multiple times on this show that people are fucking

crazy. But when it comes to performance in this series, I asked the question, do you think Mitch Marner's got, got the ability to perform in the playoffs? Like is, does his style lend itself to, you know,

to an $11 million player who has to play big minutes and score big points for the Leafs going forward? Well, I think Kyle Dubas is right that he has done it in the past. I mean, the first series against Boston, I'm going to get my years wrong, 2018,

Mitch Marner played really, really well, but also i believe less competition though yeah if i remember correctly i believe he was on the third line wasn't he was he wasn't he not still playing with bozak and jvr yep and the idea was babcock had really kind of spread out so i honestly i think i think marner is probably taking a little bit too much heat because i think the coaching staff the leafs coaching staff should have adjusted earlier than they did i think it's it's it's difficult to say because matthews and marner were so good together all season but they weren't good together in game

five six and seven and you have to make an adjustment and i think if they would have had john taveras that they would have felt more comfortable moving marner onto his line given how much success those two have had together over the years without that it just felt like they kept running out the same thing over and over again even though it wasn't working and i think what they had to do is they had to get either matthews or marner against lesser competition and i would have broken them up i would have broken them up it's like the habs watched the five game series against columbus and the leaves didn't like right wasn't this the same problem yeah is there any internal criticism of the way sheldon keith handled the series i don't i mean there's no

way they're gonna let that out like you know they're they're not calling me to to dump on No. James, I'm pissed. Kyle, call me back. Jesse, there's external criticism of the way that the Leafs coached in this series and the way that they didn't adapt. It's tough. I mean, I feel, you know, I think Sheldon Keefe was thinking, you know, my bench was short and I needed the big guys to get it done. And in game seven, he was getting them away from, from Danone. He was getting them up against fourth lines and third lines and different deep pairs. And he was getting them offensive zone starts. It was probably too late. They probably should have needed to make that adjustment earlier and give those guys more time. Game seven was just a complete disaster.

I wonder if this started game six, if you started to really make the minutes a less challenging and that, that quote at the beginning of the series that, that Keefe wasn't worried about playing Matthews and Marner against anybody was it ended up coming to bite them in a bad way um and the with the power play you know it seemed like i mean i guess they made adjustments but it seems like they made adjustments too late all season it struggled is you know there were people who i think rightfully so were highly critical of the way it was run and and the fact that you know we got a new coach behind there running things

is there a potential change in system or a potential change in personnel coming do you think yeah i mean i think you could see both i think that there's a lot of things on the table like sheldon key is not going to get let go kyle dubas is not going to let go brandon shanahan staying but like i think that some of the supporting pieces could be certainly be different i don't know if i don't know how far along in that process they are at this point it's been pretty quiet out of the out of the maple leaves i think that they're what they're going to do is they're going to sit down and really kind of have a clear-eyed assessment of where they need to go but i think that i would not be surprised at all if you see different

people in management different people on the bench different people on the coaching staff you know there was a lot of talk about getting Sheldon Keefe someone with a lot of experience to really support him on the bench because they felt like after the first year after the Columbus series that he needed someone you know that's why there was all the talk about Bruce Boudreau and I really thought that that was going to happen or something like that was going to happen in the end it didn't in the end they went with Manny Malhotra who does not have a lot of experience on on an NHL bench they do have Dave Haxtell they're obviously running the defense um wouldn't shock me if there's a change there uh they do have Paul McLean who was kind of like

the eye in the sky I don't know how they feel about if that worked or not but they're gonna need to change some things because you know the power play was a disaster for 30 odd games and and the last three games of the playoffs were a disaster too and I'm not trying to hang it all on Sheldon Keefe I'm just trying to say that I don't think this is all on Matthews and Marner not being able to score i think that the leafs really didn't adjust as a team very well and that falls on a lot of people in the organization what do you see coming in terms of changes in player personnel this summer because like the thing is the team's pretty strong all the way through is it not yeah yeah but i mean i think they do have to do some soul searching on

i i think you know in light of what happened at the end there yes they're a pretty strong team but if you rank them in the NHL and if you watch the rest of the playoffs, are they strong enough to beat a Tampa or a Vegas or a Colorado in a playoff series? No, probably not. And the question for me is if you keep the core four guys together, that's half your cap space.

How do you get better? How do you get better? If you lose Zach Hyman to free agency, which could happen, how do you get better? If Morgan Riley walks in a year to free agency, what's, how do you get better?

If like, they don't really have, this probably doesn't get talked about enough. they don't really have prospects ready to step in and be difference makers right now. They don't like, you know, Sandin should be a full-time NHL player next year, but he's probably on the third pair. Nick Robertson was up and down in the AHL. I don't know that he's even ready to contribute to the NHL and there's nobody

else. You know, if you look at, at some of the teams that, you know, that, that, that if you look back at some of the teams that spent a lot of money on, on few players, like let's say Pittsburgh, pittsburgh spent almost 50 of their their payroll on the the team in 2016 that won the cup or 2017 that won the cup they also had guys like jake gensel and some other guys that were on entry level contracts or making hardly any money the leafs don't have kids like that coming right now so they're gonna have to find it another way and some of the players they didn't spend a lot of money on last year that they were hoping could help them like joe thornton jimmy vc travis boyd

uh zach bogosian was fine obviously jason spezza had a really good year but there were a lot of those guys that they tried to win with and spend not a lot of money on that it didn't work out uh uh letting in barabanov there's probably other other ones that i'm forgetting there's a whole long list of them they need to hit on some of those players and that they're actually making a difference on their third and fourth line and their third deep pair and they haven't been able to do that nearly enough you know what i don't like about this conversation and we've had it with a few people now it reminds me a lot about uh when the leafs lost game seven to boston in 2019 and the obvious choice was to fire mike babcock and they decide no we want to be shit for a month

and a half before we make that decision thank you very much and then they were the decision seems fairly obvious the more people we speak to they're spending too much goddamn money on four players spending too much money on four players but for some reason we just gotta oh, what's another year? It's been over 50. What's another year? What is the percentage chance they do anything with the core four

this offseason? I don't think they would have come out in those press conferences and said we're not doing anything with the core four and then do it. I take them at their word. I don't think they're going to come out publicly and say we believe in this core

and we're keeping it together. I don't believe that they would do that. It would be really weird for them to do that and then all of a sudden go and make a trade. But to add to that, Steve, I don't know why they did that. I wouldn't have done that. I mean, most teams would have just said, we're going to evaluate everything and we'll see.

Maybe they're trying to calm the waters and they're trying to... So you don't think, Steve, there's any way that you can win with those four guys eating up that percentage of your payroll? There's no way to... I mean, it would help if Tavares had been there, right? Well, that's the thing. i mean you don't know we just don't know mazen's missing and you know isn't giving you anything and i mean injuries happen but we have to take injuries into context like the thing is is that

when when you when you have put so much of your payroll in four guys you're more vulnerable to injuries because if we've seen that in the past like during the regular season like when matthews has been hurt it's like holy crap like they don't have they don't have enough when one of those guys goes down so hockey just it's a sport personal it's not personal it's numbers it's math but i think then the question becomes okay let's let's let's say let's say they do theoretically want to trade one of the core four you're not going to trade taveras he's got the no movement clause he's not going to agree to waive it he's your captain etc matthews you don't you don't want to trade him neilander like are you going to is there a trade you can make with neilander where

it's going to make your team better you know what's the crazy thing the thing this year is that the defense was not a problem goaltending was not a problem right and they still and they still lost okay i really i genuinely yeah they still so this wasn't a matter of the core four eating up so much money that your goaltending or your defense was so poor that you couldn't win that's not what happened like that wasn't the story like every other year when they've been talking about trading a core four player it's been let's trade a core four player to get better on defense or get you know some people i've seen some people say you need like a marquee goalie you can't win with whatever um they could have won jack campbell was good enough for them to win

the blue line was good enough for them to win they couldn't score oh my heart it couldn't score my heart hurts my heart hurts james well and now they're gonna go back into a division with tampa and boston i think that that's montreal i think that that's actually good though guys i think that i think they need to raise the bar in terms of what they're trying to accomplish like it shouldn't be like we want to be in an easy division and sneak through and then get lucky in the playoffs it's like they should like the the point of the evolution that the franchise is at with all this the core players are in their prime they should be trying to be as good as tampa and boston so this season is a good litmus test for them they should try and beat those teams during their

regular season and finish ahead of them and but some people might say that that's impossible but that should be their goal you're trying to beat them in the playoffs why is the goal to be the sixth or seventh or eighth best team in the nhl which they've done a couple of times in the last few years management's goal should be to aim higher than that i mean how are they going to do that i don't it's it's going to be difficult but that should be the goal this hurts man this hurts okay you got to do um your your name is vegas you're vegas you run vegas um who is the most likely leaf claimed by the seattle kraken and who do the least protect i should have perhaps asked that in reverse order

i was like okay i'm the gm of vegas okay yeah i didn't know actually i'm the gm of seattle now is what's happening right did i say vegas yeah yeah i meant for odds james it's a terrible a question let me ask again who do you protect and who are they losing i think who you protect i think you go four and four and you protect the core four forwards and you protect your top four d and and seattle's choice is between travis dermot who played 13 minutes a game last year or or alex kerfoot and i i think that the kraken like kerfoot and i think that they're going to be hard-pressed to draft forwards who can produce offense so he might appeal to them he would certainly play higher in their lineup than he does with the Leafs I think the Leafs probably lose

Kerfoot and even though he played great in the playoffs and you could sort of see a little bit more of the potential that the Leafs organization had seen in him I think it's okay because you're getting back to three and a half million with the way that the cap is right now it's borderline whether or not Hawks Kerfoot is worth three and a half million. That gives the Leafs some space. Let's put it another way. Let's say that Seattle takes Dermott. That doesn't really help you on the cap at all. The Leafs probably still have to look at trading Kerfoot anyway. So if you lose Kerfoot in the expansion draft, I mean, I guess maybe you could get an asset back for Kerfoot in a trade that you're not getting if you lose them to Seattle. But that could be something they look

at too. I mean, they could decide, you know what, let's trade Kerfoot, get back X, and then we'll lose something else to to Seattle in the expansion draft I think there's gonna be a lot of movement before that expansion draft around the league and the Leafs are gonna have to look at how they fit into all of that boy not a fun gig not a fun gig at all um I gotta ask James you've been have you been watching the uh the to move on from the Leafs a little bit have you been watching the Bruins Isles series no I gotta I kind of it's been a long season with the condensed schedule and I kind of overdosed and uh i'm hearing a lot of that i've been taking i've been taking uh taking the option on some of the games so i have not seen a lot of that series no okay all right well so

okay so then but you've you've seen this before so bruce cassidy gets fined 25 000 for criticizing the officials and you know there has been a lot made of the way the islanders have spoken to the refs quote according to bruce sold calls and i went through games one uh games game one two three four and five um equal penalties in game one bruins had five penalties aisles had three in game two in game three the bruins had three penalties the aisles had two equal in game four and then uh the bruins have four penalties in in game five and the aisles have two so it you know it has slanted bruin um do you think that there is i'm sure the least fans probably love this conversation a little bit the bruins the bruins are complaining that they're taking too many

penalties like the leaf stands have been wanting that for you know ever since the the the series in 2017 against boston to or 2018 against boston that this was going to be the case and you know barry trotz had a good good response like he he said we're the least penalized team in the league like i don't that we're not taking penalties because we don't take penalties and that's you know boston's played this way and i mean you play that way at some point you're going to get some calls against you right like some point especially if you're playing against a team a lot of penalty can you imagine not getting calls that must suck i mean my heart bleeds for the boston bruins not getting calls you imagine that is is there

anything to that though can can a can an nhl player sell a ref on a call oh yeah yeah i think i mean cadre was the master at it don't you remember when cadre was with the leaps like he He would lead the league and draw in penalties there. I think he led the league for, I want to say, his first three seasons. And then the refs seemed to adjust and stop calling so many penalties. But yeah, it is a skill. You do see players that are better at it than others. I haven't noticed in any of watching the replays or anything like that

any calls against the Bruins that I thought were egregiously shouldn't have been calls. And I think in general, I think the league needs to call more penalties. you know and i think they need the the star players to be able to to do more i mean there's that conversation was around the winnipeg edmonton series with conor mcdavid and you could see it there that he was being mauled conor mcdavid was being mauled and i think that at some point the nhl needs like a come to jesus moment here where they they decide they want to let the stars play and they don't want the game to look like this and so i don't know i mean if anything i mean

you're reading how many penalties there have been in the games that doesn't strike me as very many penalties it doesn't seem that you know sometimes it's it's not what's called it's sorry what it's not that the amount but it can be what they didn't call or you know the penalties they did call were ridiculous or whatever it is it you know you can leave that up to the fans i just think it's a it's an interesting thing it is very very very funny to see the bruins complaining about it i'm a big bruce cassidy fan um is there a chance james that he's trying to create an us against the world sort mentality with the Bruins where they're at right now a lot of coaches will do this when they're down a little bit it's like you know everybody's against you um and and and maybe that $25,000

fine was was good in the sense that he's trying to push his team together and get more out of them um so it was maybe less about what was actually going on in the ice and more about creating that you know Tom Brady does that right it's always well now nobody believes in us it's like Tom you've won like 10 fucking Super Bowls people know you can do this but every time he's like nobody believes in us no and it seems to be a mental thing that he gets his teams whipped up into yeah i mean i've covered enough playoff series that you know i am a big believer in in controlling the narrative and changing the narrative and like because you know you start saying stuff like that then all of a sudden the islanders are getting asked about it every day

and they're talking about it every day it's a little bit different when we don't have we're not in the dressing room like when when we're when you have when you cover a playoff round series especially later in the playoff or within a big market like like boston and they open the dressing room for the reporters to go in and it'll be like an army of like 50 or 60 reporters and cameras and whatever and what happens is the guys get they ask the same questions over and over and over again and if the questions are all about the referees and the penalty calls and whatever i think that's great you know i think if you're a coach you should try and do that you should try and control the narrative you should try and you know it's a way of lobbying the league in a very

public way and saying that this isn't fair and you know i i the league's gonna look closer at what's happening in that series and the officials are gonna think about it a little bit differently and if you can get it to break your way then why wouldn't you do that he's a very strategic guy that's that's you know the the series that we saw i think you know bruce cassidy versus mike babcock two years in a row i think bruce completely outcoached mike babcock outclassed him in that last game seven no question um so i just wondered you know it's kind of bruce playing mind games again which you know what power to them um you know i think james when it comes down to um the actual game and coverage itself and then you know and then we'll let you go because i know uh it's

your daughter's birthday and happy birthday to her um but uh he's three three years old yay that's amazing so my daughter just turned two about a month or sorry about two weeks ago nice yeah does she know it's her birthday yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well she's not sure about which day it is and we're going to have her party on the weekend. So it's a bit confusing because today's the birthday and then the parties on the weekend. And, but with, with the, I think the lockdown eases up here in a couple of days or something like that. So like, she's going to be able to like actually see a couple of her friends, which is going to be like the first time. So that's going to be pretty neat. So that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Well, listen, we know

you made time for us today, so we do appreciate it. I want to talk to you about actually covering the game because you've had to do this over zoom for a long long time already um do you have a sense of you know let's let's say because in ontario we're a little behind the u.s but um everybody gets their two doses this summer or everybody has access to it you can't force people to get them and uh next year there's fans in the stands which we expect there to be fully we expect there to be a full full house uh come october um do you think you'll be allowed in the dressing terms i hope so i know in baseball they're starting to let uh media are starting to get like one-on-ones and things like that but the difference with baseball of course is that it's

outside right so they're they've been a lot more open about that in the u.s with access is going back to normal in baseball so you know i've been keeping a close eye on that obviously we have you know whatever 46 hockey writers at the athletics so you know we have a lot of people that want access and that are going to need it um i hope so it makes a big difference you know i don't know how much the fans have noticed but the kind of stories that we can tell and the kind of detail that you can get and the kind of conversations you can have and it's so much different when you can sit down with a player in the dressing room and talk to them and you know i sometimes i think that fans are dismissive of the access questions because all they see is like kind of the really

lame you know you were talking about players being boring and whatever but what they don't see is you know we have great reporters like uh like a mark lazarus in chicago and he'll go and he'll talk to jonathan taves for 20 minutes and you'll just get this amazing feature about you know something you never even thought about as a fan that's just not possible unless you can have that that kind of interview process so it'll make a huge difference for us i think it is going to come back but whether or not it's going to be there in the fall i don't know i mean the thing that people need to keep in mind is that not everybody is going to get vaccinated not every player is going to get vaccinated as i haven't seen that i haven't seen that talked about a lot

but there are players in the nhl who aren't going to get it so does the league have to worry about does the pa have to worry about protecting those guys i don't know i don't know what their answer to that's well how do you protect someone who won't protect themselves what does the pa do they're not forcing players to get it and i i understand that from uh i'm i i think everybody should get vaccinated, but I understand that there's this undercurrent of anti-vaxxer bullshit that's permeated our society. I just, you know, does the world need to stop for the people that like are just denying science? Like, do we need to, do we need, they've chosen, they've made their choice, right? Like if it's sort of like, it's, it's, it's odd to me. And I understand why

you might have to consider that, but it would be odd to me to protect somebody who doesn't. It's like, it's like, listen, man, you should wear your seatbelt. Well, I'm not going to, well let's stop traffic um let's just we can't drive we can't drive nobody can drive because he you know joe won't wear a seatbelt because it's akin to that do you know what i mean it's an interesting thought experiment it's you know even if things go back to normal this isn't going away like this conversation's still going to be there there are still going to be players that that get covid and you know miss games i wonder if they're going to test all the players next year they probably are um i got my brain tickled yesterday that's great fun great experience

love it do you get they give you like the big long one is that what they do like the they made me do it myself it was a rapid test and i got to swabby it up uh my big italian nose and we had to do the i don't have it yeah we had to we had to do the rapid test when i was going to scotia bank for the for the games so were you at every game in the playoffs uh i went to i didn't go to game two i went to one five and seven so was it eerie when you're in the arena and it's empty and there's no crowd and the guys are just playing yeah it sucks i mean i went to it's it's it's brutal it's it's really brutal i went to some of the playoff games last year in the bubble and it was i went to the very first one that was in the bubble it was carolina and the rangers and it

was in the afternoon it was like 12 in the afternoon there were literally like five people in the stands for that game there was no one there there was nobody there was hardly any media there were like two media people there and i just walked around i wrote a story about i walked around i like took pictures and you know there was it was it's really really strange and at that point they hadn't cranked up the fake crowd noise to the volume that they did later on like now when you go to the game that fake crowd noise is so loud it's it's really uncomfortable to sit there for like four hours listening to that crap be pumped in there as loud as it is um it's like being face to face with the speakers too yeah that's yeah when you're up in the press box and it's it's

really cold in there and nothing's open and like you can't even get anything to eat and like i would bring in like a box of crackers like just in case the game goes to like triple overtime you can't eat for it it's just it sucks it sucks there's no atmosphere there it's hard to talk to people are you partitioned off in the like a box no we we were able to move around you're we're told to keep uh six feet apart but we were able to move around and like and talk to each other everyone was wearing a mask but the only people there are media like so the only people you could talk to is media normally when you're in the press box there's scouts up there the other team is up there there's there's league personnel there there's the radio broadcast and the tv

broadcast is up there there's a lot more people that you interact with on a daily basis in a game and this wasn't like that they actually we weren't in the press box we were actually on the other side and it was just like trying to think how many probably like i would say 35 or 40 media were up there and they they left out like a bunch of cans of like diet coke or something and that was that was literally all that was up there was like 40 media people in cans of diet coke yeah like the this story i find is just so fascinating watching these games with no crowds because i feel like in 50 years it's going to be such a phenomenon that sports went on with no crowd and like your experience there is going to be a story that people will want to hear again and again and again

because it'll be a part of history i hope so jesse because that means it never happens again And like, we never have to go through it. You know, like my fear is that this isn't going to be the last of these things that we see. And then, you know, we'll have to live through something like this again, but maybe I'm just being negative or something. We're hoping not maybe once every a hundred years, we'll let, uh, great grandkids deal with it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So listen, James Myrtle, uh, thank you so much for coming on the show as always. We'd love to have you. And, uh, we'll do this again because there's going to be lots of leaf stuff to talk about lots of nhl stuff to talk about but go enjoy your daughter's birthday

and thank you for making time for us yep nice to have me guys you want to you want to plug where you work where do you work athletic.com download the app today yeah we're gonna have lots of great content we're working on what our off-season content plans so and if people like reading about the nhl playoffs like we have people at every single game we have beat writers for every single team it's uh the coverage has been fantastic jesse granger who covers vegas for us has an awesome story about Mark Stone up today. So I love that you can read about any team, any player, any, you know, situation that you want. It's, it's, it's, uh, if you're a hockey nerd,

it's definitely a good place to be. Perfect. Happy to plug your, uh, your little startup there. Yeah, we're not little, that's for sure. Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer.

Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. You've got to try Bread First at A&W. You gotta try breakfast at A&W And what better way than with a delicious Pret Organic Coffee, starting with just $1 all day, every day, now until December 31st. You gotta try breakfast at A&W At participating A&W locations in Ontario. So, Tampa gets through to the third round,

but i just want to say shout out to carolina hurricanes fans who uh from what i understand saluted the team people what the hell are they cheering for they lost man come on shut up you fucking idiots i honestly it's just crazy i love everybody loves carolina fans if you're part of the i you know unless you're part of the uh i only like talking in the 70s crowd and um honestly a a good run but tampa's just strong they're so good like i really i don't have the heart like i i keep saying carolina's got to eventually have a run where they get over the hump tampa's an unusual hump like there is in the cap era there are three teams that i'm like you're not allowed to be this good vegas colorado tampa this this is their last what four years 2018 conference final

we're up three games to two brayden holpe plays the best two games of his career 2019 win the president's trophy blow it in the first round but they did win the president's trophy 2020 win the stanley cup 2021 bare minimum final four pretty cool they're staggering they're Such a good hockey team. Are we going to talk about how they cheated? What do you mean? Are we going to talk about Nikita Kucherov and his cheating? What other team can do that?

What other team can do that? Legal. The Hurricanes. Let's say the Hurricanes were in cap trouble. They could not just shelve Sebastian Ajo all year. I don't know. If Matthews gets some strange knee injury, maybe he could just sit out 82 games.

Have $11 million free to sign somebody else. And they'll miss the playoffs. yeah they will no we got we got jt you'll hold it down tampa who's number two so sneak into the eights you have 11 million dollars to go get a second line center oh just go get one just go get one just go get one free agents exist you won't be on ltir until the season begins all right all right all right so um uh i think there was a one last thing i wanted to get to here before we get to the uh the press conference we don't need to spend too much time on it and i'm not sure who made this call i usually thought i thought this came from city hall but apparently

not the cn tower was lit up red white and blue to support the montreal canadians yesterday um john tory our mayor said uh i'm not really sure what was up with that but we're not doing that at city hall with the big toronto sign i guess i'm the only one but i didn't hate it i i i didn't understand the outsized crazy visceral mean reaction to it and people were like when i tweeted that people were like uh well montreal would never do that for us and i was like yeah no i know that but that's okay they don't you don't have to do things just because somebody would do them for you i think it's just like you know what they beat us fair and square they've done something amazing they're in the conference final nobody expected this except

maybe them adam i i have a theory what's the theory twitter sucks ass oh it's a bad idea and we should abandon it like i i i had garage beers with a with a friend outside fresh air we weren't lip kissing or anything so you know don't worry limit the spread um and we had a disagreement about the mark shifley hit and neither of us hate each other really yeah we're fine we're just still friends is there some tension though underneath no did you did you did he like go over to your house search your phone records try to find things about you to assassinate your character oh well like he threw a on fire bag of dog poo at my car when i was leaving that makes sense but he waited till i was leaving that's a human thing right yeah yeah well and he never

confirmed that it was dog so steve are you pro or anti the cn tower being being lit up pro just humiliate me just make me feel like shit honestly i think it's a good message for the team is it not just spit in my face just i hate i hate these guys i'm ready for jesse to weigh in on way in here so the cn tower is not a toronto landmark it might happen to be in canada but it's controlled federally and sean fitzgerald spoke to the cn tower people about why it was in montreal canadian colors they said the cn tower stands proudly in the heart of toronto it is a federally owned and operated property that belongs to all canadians primarily the cn tower's lighting helps to raise awareness for registered charities and causes our lighting also helps to celebrate canadian arts

culture and sports we have lit for gray cup champions we have lit to highlight the achievements of canadian musicians and performers we have helped to cheer on canadian teams in in international sporting competitions now so the cn tower is uh it's a federal thing and has every right to light for the colors of montreal canadians it should have done that like it should be hey we're gonna all politicians like justin trudeau should be on the side of the canadians trying to galvanize canadians to get behind this uh montreal team he would not be doing that shit if it was the leafs shut up justin he would not he absolutely would not but like i would understand from a politician's perspective you're trying to get a country to come together and

that's all the cn tower does it highlights canadian things and it tries to get canadians to celebrate canadian achievements that's it and a team from canada is about to go on to the final for of an international league the problem that i have with this whole thing that's going on here is the idea that if you're a hockey fan you cheer for another team just because they're from this country the being canada's team is the worst concept we have going on right now in the stanley cup playoffs in hockey it doesn't make i'm if you're a toronto maple leafs why why do i care that another city is in the final four like why hey all those all those new york rangers fans uh well we'll bet we'll get them next year and you take off your panarin jersey to reveal a

barzal jersey underneath like you know every year right all those flyers fans were cheering for the penguins in the playoffs like that makes total sense matthew chuck oh no we lost mcdavid i don't know why canadian media or sports fans or hockey fans i don't even know who's behind this canadian team thing but when i see it it doesn't make sense to me because you're you're you're a fan of the crest that you cheer for not the country where the other teams in the league might reside that doesn't make sense there's no canadian team that people should be cheering for so that's my problem with the the cn tower because it it just it furthered this idea that there's a canadian team that we're all rooting for because they happen to be from canada right and team canada is team

canada yes that is when they play international competitions we all cheer for team canada not montreal who's the last standing team and that's the thing you can listen i'm i'm all for like being classy and tipping your hat and saying you know and montreal fans are super pissed at me because i still don't think jeff ducharme's good or dom ducharme jeff jeff ducharme could eat it too we got we need jeff's the best he's such a nice guy too like i feel bad but we need jeff ducharme shirts and it's a picture of jack mark what i'm what i'm saying is is that i think that you got to tip your cat to that team but i don't think you have to root for them i don't think you have to i don't understand that concept either and i think there's like a um there's like a mentality of and

it's a small man syndrome in canada well it's we gotta send we gotta cheer who for whoever gets there because we need a cup in Canada. No, we need a cup in fucking Toronto. I can give a shit if Montreal gets a cup. It means nothing. I agree, Adam. So there's a disconnect with bring the cup home, right? Because the Montreal Canadiens

won't be bringing the cup home to you. No, they're bringing it to Montreal. They're bringing it to Montreal. Okay, so that being said, the CN Tower is Torontonian, not Canadian. Well, it is. I know that's a federally controlled thing, but let's be honest. Federally owned fart?

like anyone in fort mcmurray is like like like we torontonians have no control over it like no they don't federally run building i think i think at the end of the day canadians have got to get past canadians have got to get past the inferiority complex with the united states they're bigger they're faster they make more money we get it we gotta we gotta bask in what is ours and be happy with what is ours and and accentuate the great things that make canada a great country and i think that at the end of the day that doesn't mean that we just go you know what i'm just going to cheer for any canadian team because i just hope someone wins for fuck's sakes it's like what steve said a couple weeks ago the bar for hockey and success in this country is so low we were guaranteed

a spot in the final four oh the hab somebody was going the habs won the canadian stanley cup They did. Which is making the third round. Yes. And now we see if they can ascend. Now, Bergevin will have his job until 2030 now. Congratulations, everybody. Whether they make the playoffs ever again or not,

he will be there until the end of Carey Price's contract and beyond. It's just because he made the third round that one time, guys. Also, Carey Price... The first guy to be GM and Premier at the same time. We're dismissing the Habs right now, but Carey Price might win them a Stanley Cup. this is a very realistic possibility i don't care who they're going up against in the next two rounds they could win and like i'm seriously thinking about picking them to win the stanley

cup right now because carrie price might just do it can i tip my hat to the montreal canadians while simultaneously being like it's not weird that no one believed in you yeah it's well okay last year they finished 24th this year they finished 18th on purpose was this part of the plan was this part of the master strategy they want it to be underrated people are like the rangers the rangers the rangers are dog shit i can't believe they didn't take a step forward they finished 16th guys guys we want to finish we want to finish with fewer wins than two teams that

missed the playoffs. The Flyers and Flames both had more wins than Montreal. Dallas and the Rangers finished higher than them in the standings. No, they're playing 40 chess, these guys.

They know what they're doing. Everything you just said makes the Leafs look awful. Like shit. And I tell you what, this is what I'm gearing up for everyone who railed against the idea that the canadian division sucked i got news for you the habs are canada's team now and you better cheer for them because if the habs get steamrolled in the third round this division is going to look like a hunk of shit the oilers got swept

by a team that got swept the least loss to the habs and if the habs get destroyed by whoever they play no offense to the islanders fans but the idea of a montreal boston final would sure be fun um but i swear to god if they get steamrolled everything everyone said about this very shitty shitty very shitty division is 100 true as a collective that's probably our cultist take from this season us multiple podcasts defending the play in the in the north division hog shit division yeah it might just be it might just be seven terrible teams so canadians fans are going to say well you can't you just can't fucking give us credit no we have many many times you may have finished 18th with a negative nine goal differential but they won they won

we have 40 chess smartest team in the sport fired your coach get out of here you're doing well great like it's not weird that people were like i don't know if this team that finished with uh eight more losses than wins is good what say that again they finished 24 21 and 11 oh you're counting the ot losses because they lost those games right okay can i say something Can I say something? Go for it. Eight games under 500. So now that, okay, if Montreal has to play one of Vegas or Colorado,

which they probably will, right? They have to. Yeah, because it re-seeds. They're the lowest seeded team. The 18-place team has to play one or two. They're playing Vegas or Colorado. So here's the thing. My bet is that Montreal does not win a game in the third round.

I would not. That's my bet. What do you want to bet on? I will say that. Montreal will not win a game in the tournament. What do you want to bet? What do you want to bet? What do you want to bet?

You have to make a $200 donation to a charity that I'm going to pull up right now. Hold on. What about like Black Girl Hockey Club or something like that? Sure. Let's do Black Girl Hockey Club. $200 if Montreal wins a game. If they get swept, Steve and I will make that donation. Oh, you can't split it.

No way. okay we'll okay we'll do 200 each it'll be 400 so uh it's a lot i just thought it was between you and me we're involving steve i don't remember agreeing to any of this steve why don't you just give money who cares which way this goes i'm fine i will okay all right i will take that bet montreal does not win a game in the third round against either vegas or colorado whoever they have to play does not not a chance shake my hand through zoom yeah and it's a fast to put a bow on this i am no someone clipped that to put a bow on this i'm not taking a thing away from the montreal canadians they are one of they have a 25 chance of winning the stanley cup and math nerds

are like what no they don't shut up they're one of four teams remaining you know what i mean hey one of four teams left once this is all said and done cool they finished 18th in the regular season so you know what james not weird that they were doubted james made a really good point it We'll be going to the Leafs to play against the Bruins and Lightning all next season. It will be good for them. Something that nobody wants to admit. It was terrible this season watching the same seven teams over and over and over again. Oh, yeah.

I like watching all 32 teams play. The one thing I hope they do is they do like sets. I did like the three games against one team, you know, whatever. I also think it saves players' bodies. you know like if they're not especially if you're in the west like the the amount of flying those guys have to do i think that they should stop into town it's like hey montreal's got they're here all week yeah do the three games do the do the baseball model do three game sets but yeah i like that play everybody it's yeah i hope it sucks the schedule is going to change for the better

yeah next season and uh to our point about the playoffs you know we did talk a little smack about the central division because it really does seem to be three good teams and the preds made it too um but tampa still somehow despite that had to play florida and carolina so they were one of the three good teams and then they had to beat the two others right there was no they're not getting an easy path to the cup no matter what and now they're gonna have to play the winner of boston uh islanders tampa has had the most difficult run so far yeah tampa can't be looking at the islanders like they got to be looking at the islanders like not you again right because that was not an easy series um i just want to say quick breaking news before we wrap the show

because we're not going to do a press conference today i have to ask one question one question we are going to do the press conference today ray shiro has been hired as a senior advisor to the gm for the minnesota wild and i believe he's a native of minnesota too so it'll be a nice little homecoming for him and let's get to the press conference um i teased this guy i teased this to you guys on text but uh jeff merrick was on hockey central at noon every day as he is and he asked an interesting question that i wanted to ask you guys so tyler tyler toffoli scores the game winner uh for montreal uh what was it two nights ago closed out the series yeah is was tyler toffoli the best off-season signing one part a part b what does that say

about jim benning who didn't want to offer him enough money well so part a do you agree is he the best off-season signing from uh this past ufa class to what does that say about jim benning only question thank you for your time so let's listen let's bring up tyler toffoli like let's let's see what we're talking about here we are limited on time here so let's not bring too much 52 games 52 games and he still somehow puts up 28 goals which is the second most of his career uh 16 assists jesus so this guy was just cy young candidate like he was not passing the puck he was shooting it and he had 44 points in these playoffs he's got four goals right man that's another thing that kills me so much about that leaf series tyler toffoli could not put the puck

in the net until late in this year good anyway so he's got 10 points through 11 games uh i gotta tell you you add an over 30 goal pace to your lineup for no assets and you get him for what what is he making 4.25 yeah it's pretty good that's a really really good signing man yeah And if you remember the Benning quote, it's that they ran out of time to offer him money. No, listen, he's a bad general manager. Let's call it what it is. Yeah, he is.

He's a bad general manager. And there are guys in this league that I think are just ill-fit for their roles. Jim Benning, in some alternate universe, he runs your draft or he runs your amateur scouting or something, and he's awesome at it and we talk about him with nothing but reverence the canucks haven't done shit oh they want to play off around you okay okay hang that banner then oh say can't like as beat the blues last year like who cares they haven't done a thing and his management of uh their assets of the cap has been monstrous it's been horrible drafted really well

drafted really well and that's why the Canucks aren't completely a lost cause they're threatening for a playoff spot every year because he's so good at the thing that he's good at but the stuff he's bad at he's cataclysmically bad and the fact that they gave up all that for Tyler Toffoli he only cost that much in free agency and they weren't able to bring it back inexcusable and he should pay for it with his gig but he's not going to because eventually he will they're not going to get that much better it'll be okay but they've got a lot of re-signings to do this off season too he's had the better part of a decade and they haven't done a thing and here's the deal you got tyler myers in there uh making six mil what's quinn hughes gonna ask for oh oh you know

like that's that i mean that's i'd be looking at that going um this is the problem man this is the problem you got to pay besser and they did got but at some point you're gonna have to use you're gonna have to pay peterson you're gonna have to pay hoglander like they have guys they have some really talented young guys but man that cap situation is a world of hurt to answer your question number one jesse the first question was best signing in the offseason i think was alex petrangelo i i think that you get the best player you have the best signing okay that's fair i don't think anybody would disagree really with that he's top three yeah to fully yeah yeah no and then that's not to take away from to fully i mean our bergevin great move like awesome um what was the

second question is what does it say about jim benning everything we've said on the show for the past five years about jim benning is what it says about jim benning we have said this over and over and over again fantastic at the draft please flush his phone on july 1st or whenever free agency is this year throw it away put it in dog poop whatever it is do not let him pick it up and actually this year you don't even have to worry about disconnecting his phone because he's got no money to spend and and so like you know i i mean everybody that that tweeted me that one goal jay beagle scored in the playoffs last year fucking great how do you feel now right and that And that's the thing is like I told you, Beagle's not a good contract.

Roussel's not a good contract. Myers isn't a good contract. Sutter's not a good contract. Pearson's not a good contract. Erickson's not a good contract. I could go on and on and on and on. You lost Tanev, you lost Markstrom, and you lost Toffoli. And you lost Toffoli at a huge discount because everybody was afraid to spend money this offseason.

So you could have made Toffoli sweat, got him at less money than you were going to pay him even in a normal world. And you still couldn't get it done. We, quote, ran out of time. Jim, time's up, pal. It's over. And I don't care if the Canucks even make the playoffs next year. It's a total disaster over there with the cap. Canucks fans know what?

I'm not telling Canucks fans anything they don't know. They need a new GM. And if I was running a team, I would absolutely take Jim Benning as the head of my scouting staff. He's spectacular at drafts, good for you. But when you have a guy who's not good, doesn't realize he's not good, then he can't address the issues that he's not good at jim benning does not know that he is not good if you do not know what you do not know you're fucked and he has surrounded himself by

with people who are not stopping him that's what your advisors are there to do stop me from being dumb and so i'm looking at their draft record there's some players there are some players but from let's say 2015 onward it reeks of buffalo where the first pick is great because it's really hard to screw up your first pick year after year after year but in the later rounds it's there's just nothing 2015 fifth round to get adam goddett well he's gone uh olia levy from 2016 that's looking tough 2017 you get peterson and you get seven games one game two games eight games from these guys 2018 your first picks played 129 games in in quinn hughes the other guy like they still have time to develop for sure vasily podkolskin uh podkolzin sorry hasn't come

over from russia just yet i i just i don't get why this guy's got so much leash i don't get it he's really got a good relationship with the owner that's why it's like why anybody gets leash when they haven't performed listen if i'm the owner and my team's doing poorly you don't have a good relationship with me well there you go and we'll leave it at that can we close out the show by sending love to all of our muslim brothers and sisters out there um i know like a dear friend of ours, Faisal Khamisa, was pouring his heart out on Twitter yesterday. And I feel like he represented so many people who are just having such a difficult time. It's really eye-opening what the news is happening in Canada right now. And all we can do is just send love and help and

support. There's plenty of resources online. We'll retweet them as much as we can just to amplify those voices who are trying to get help to the Muslim community. And yeah, just sending all our love to london and if if i'm oh go ahead steve go ahead uh nasiha.org uh we'll we'll put a link in the description this is what uh fazel was uh shouting out uh yesterday like you said jesse just pouring his heart out like i i can't i can't like you you talk about like um re-traumatization you know i i just see it i just see it in fazel's words like he's had to deal with this so many times it's unacceptable we were talking about it and there was a there was an attack um that is starting to become public that happened i think at wards beach jesse uh over the weekend on the

island on the island of the toronto island uh it was five five men beat a homosexual man to within an inch of his life and it's just gaining traction there's word there's a professional athlete involved the ottawa red blacks are investigating one of their players um and cf Yeah. So the, so the, you know, to the LGBTQ plus community, you know, saying, and I, you know, everything that Jesse said there, I think we would echo again. What we were saying in our meeting today is what's shocking, you know, when we work at Virgin Radio, it's supposed to be fun and lighthearted. And that's what it is. The amount of hate crimes I've seen in the last two or three years in Canada, not that we were immune to this before, we never were. But, uh, it's, it's, there's been an enormous uptick. It's unbelievable. And I don't know where you begin, um, to, to turn this around other than to reinforce with anybody that's feeling fearful right now. Um, you know, if you're in a position like we are, uh, you know, privileged and lucky to be here. um you know we send our support and our gratitude and everything that we can do to support we will and we will continue to do that and uh so anyway to the to that community to the muslim community to the asian community that's seen a rise in hate um they're you know our love and our support and

anything we can do in the future we will and we'll leave it at that we will be back friday thanks so much for listening 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.