The Steve Dangle Podcast - Oops!…Bennett Did It Again | May 6, 2025

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

Join the sdpn / sparc second chance bracket: https://app.sparc.fun/b/sdpnsecondchance On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, 00:00 Leafs win! Stolarz, Bennett, and the DoPS 49:00 The Rantanen game 1:05:00 1.6 seconds in Winnipeg 1:10:00 Edmoney vs Vegas 1:13:00 Andrew Brunette stays, Rob Blake leaves 1:23:00 New York wins the lottery 1:42:00 Morgan 1:46:00 Vancouver is hacked Visit this episode's sponsors: If you’re thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. Visit https://www.betterhelp.com/sdp today to get 10% off your first month. That’s https://www.betterhelp.com/sdp. For all the odds and to learn more visit https://betmgm.com/DANGLE. Any opinion expressed is not advice, a promise or suggestion that increases the chance of winning. Gambling can be addictive, please play responsibly. To learn more, visit: https://igamingontario.ca/en/player/r... Or if you have concerns about a gambling problem, call ConnexOntario 1-866-531-2600. Must be 19+ or older to play. 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

Sometimes life throws your curveballs and you don't have time to get to them and that's where TaskRabbit comes in and I think you should check this out because here's the deal. One of the things, one of the weird quirks about my condo building is that they use my floor to repel down and clean all the windows but they never clean my windows. And their way around on that is like, well, it's a patio window, you can do that yourself. And I'm like, well, hang on a second. What if I don't want to? I don't have the stuff because you got to have that scraper thing and the washer thing.

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download that. TaskRabbit.ca. Code Dangle. Hear that? It's your money calling. It wants a promotion. Elevate your savings with the Scotia High Interest Savings Account. Always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest. Conditions apply. Visit scotiabank.com slash H-I-S-A to learn more. Scotiabank. You're richer than you think. the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake hey the second round is on and it's fun yeah we're all having fun as we all expected i do want to mention that uh the sdpn second chance bracket challenge is now on so let's say that you missed out on the bracket challenge the original one or you made a bunch of bad choices

are you just bad at it like what did what did pk suban do i think he was like one for eight or two frames was he really that was really bad that's difficult if you were if you were if you feel like man i know so much more now if only the bracket started today well it does the link is in the description and we have our full main bracket and then we have our second chance bracket starting now your second shot at sdpn glory with spark uh make sure that you uh hit that up now the way that we're gonna hit up today i'm just gonna explain it there is that the side of the head there is two side of the head without anybody seeing it coming yeah we're gonna do uh we're gonna do two stories today we're gonna do the sam bennett anthony stoller story because updated from from

last night we now know that there'll be no supplemental discipline we also have sam bennett talking to the media this morning he found his spine today yeah attaboy sam we also should talk about the game which nobody is talking about no the Leafs response to Sam Bennett I think is also in there as well and and I'm able to but I'm gonna I want to handle them as separate entities because and it's hard to do that but we do I think need to obviously talk about the Sam Bennett Anthony Stoller's thing the history there everything else but there was a good game there right like yeah it's a good game that's getting lost I had to remind myself several times the least one yeah i think you should enjoy that yes um you know wonky end of the game some of that was

florida being really good some of that was mistakes by the leafs some of that was a relatively cold goalie who i believe in and like don't have any worries about him in game two um they won they won you know what i mean not every dude i don't know how you could have felt safe with a 4-1 lead forget that it's the leafs forget all that colorado dallas winnipeg st louis i watched those games 48 well 24 hours apart and that happened right before this game no yeah it's not over till it's over even even when matthew nye scored to make it 5-3 i exhaled and then asked myself what are you doing yeah exactly six minutes left and speaking of exhaled exhaled what did i say i exhaled uh it will be a uh so we're going to start with anthony stallers and

uh and sam bennett but i want to quickly mention quick uh shout out off the top i am doing the watch along for the oilers vegas golden night series uh so speaking of not being out of it ever the edmonton oilers who are never out of it why are we i don't know why you were applauding this i don't think we were applauding you and your watch a lot well thank you when we started i appreciate that let's go friend oh that's nice wow yeah this is great okay so it should be fun that series I think is going to be like a wagon. It's just going to be back and forth and we'll have a lot of exciting

moments. It won't be as contentious as what we're about to talk about in terms of the physicality and the suspensions. It's not going to be like this level. I don't think there's a sandbag on either of those two teams. You think it's going to surpass what happened last week? That's all I'm trying to say.

It's not that deep. Barbershop versus Kane. You know what? I've decided it will surpass it. That's what I've decided. You know what? It's important when you're wrong, never to admit it. You must double down. Never apologize.

Never, ever admit you're wrong. You just double down on it. Bunch of people who didn't know who Chris Nowitzki was before yesterday. He is now my entire personality. Hey, guys, I've interviewed Chris Nowitzki. So do you know him? Oh, thank you, Matty, for the applause. It's through via Alan Walsh.

Yeah, and noted huge fan of head drama. Yeah, loves it. Loves head drama. Yeah, he's your guy. for sure i mean if you're dumb you would definitely think he's your guy so you're dumb and exhausting uh so let's just talk about the play yeah the we'll start the play jesse i sent you a screen grab of one of the best like so like solo shots i've seen of it the clearest shot that you can see now it's important to understand and people are making the argument

here that anthony stoller's took a a slap shot to the head um earlier in the period and at that time exhibited no issues uh and it wasn't until the sam bennett hit to the head not according to chris nowitzki okay well he was it's valid yeah like that's what everyone's screaming at their windshield right now he was shaking his head he said he shook his head now what i would take issue with there is every goalie does that all of the time yes i saw patrick wad do that 40 times between whistles yeah he was like a head twitchy guy he might be right but to say that definitively is i think uh dangerous okay um and that's not a science thing you don't need to be a scientist to be like goalies shake their head a lot you know what i mean um and it's it very well could

be possible that stoller's got concussed from that uh slap shot what everyone is willfully no one's this stupid they're willfully ignoring from the initial crits nowiski post is he said i think he suffered a first concussion from this first specifying first as in to say there was probably more than one where do you think the second one came from i think it was probably the blow to the head from sam bennett so jesse can we bring that blow to the head up i was gonna bring up the uh the shot to the face oh you can bring up the shot to the face sure let's bring here's the shot to the face so knocks his helmet off the mask getting smashed there yep yeah which is like not insignificant i guess but it's not insignificant it's fairly common that happens

regularly yeah that's that's the thing that i thought was lost in the the arguments about this starting the whole thing is that goalies often will direct pucks with their mask like some goalies practice. They like doing that. Yeah, who's the goalie who does it in warm-ups? At the end of warm-ups, he takes a couple off. Wasn't it Sammy? Wasn't it Elias Hampson? I know Casimir Kaskiswell used to do it, and I want to say Henrik Lundqvist.

I'd be interested to hear his take on that. Like, wow, I used to do that all the time. Yeah, I don't think the goalie mask is something that, you know, we should be too concerned about. Listen, it could have dinged him. It could have, but he stayed in

the game maybe shouldn't have but like what what is annoying about that is what concussion spotter has ever taken a goalie out of a game for taking a shot off the mask yeah and there's never been like he wasn't displaying any evidence that he was concussed after taking that puck off the mask other than the shake which is shaky i think it was totally normal to shake your head after you take your helmet when you're adjusting to putting helmet back yeah yeah and i'm not i don't want to argue with the concussion specialist here in chris nowinski but that seemed like a totally normal athlete thing to do it's it's valid to point out that that's something that people do when they get a concussion and it's valid to point out that goalies do that all the time dude i do it on a

rainy day i think the correct answer is we don't know no of course we don't say either way you're lying to yourself what and they're lying to themselves by the thousands because that one single tweet from someone who they didn't know was alive or dead before he posted that uh everyone has made that their entire personality today to excuse the behavior the repeated consistent behavior of their dirty favorite player so this is the the the bennett play here here's the uh stop motion of it he gets right in there yeah and stolars did again stay in the game but he went down he was rocked from this and i said stolars didn't leave the game until after this and someone pointed out um actually it was eight minutes after and i'm like holy shit you

are gonna lose your mind when you google the word after when you learn what that word means a-f-t-e-r let me tell you you are gonna have a tuesday you are gonna lose your mind and soil yourself so so what happens then is uh you know anthony staller's eight minutes later after you might say uh yeah that i don't want to work no no for the audience what is after me uh do you want me to google it yeah please do define a prey in french for the french audience in the in the time following oh during the period of time following an event you got to be more specific i just i'm not i don't know yeah i don't know yeah so so we have you can see it again up on the screen there the the this hit and um listen uh we now know that uh that sam bennett it hasn't been officially announced yet

but you know it's leaked out this morning because nhl player safety has sources in the media and they they won't announce no suspension yeah the fact that there's just nothing means it's confirmed that there is not right and normally we would have heard you know around like say like 12 30 1 o'clock it's about 11 30 in the morning when we're recording this um uh you know that there would have been a hearing right and normally you hear nothing but what they do is they they leak it out to the insiders so it softens the blow so that later on you know people have forgotten about it and we've got three games tonight and let's talk about that so okay so that's not going to happen the the Leafs organization according to Pierre Lebrun is like okay fine we're going to

move on and I think that's all you can do that's the right approach it's all you can do you're not going to focus on taking out Sam Bennett you're not going to focus on oh man oopsie there's there goes Bobrovsky's face uh we're not going to do any of that we're just going to move on to game two and focus on getting our goalie who hadn't played in 18 days up to snuff and ready to go. He didn't even get a warm-up. No, and should have gotten a warm-up. I know what the rule is.

It's stupid. And beyond all that, I think that Sam Bennett talking about it. It is. It's a stupid rule. The Leafs had the lead, for God's sake. What are you doing? Anyway. So Chris was obviously one of the guys that interviewed Sam Bennett today.

Chris Johnston. Yeah. CJ, cute journalist. and he said from Bennett said from my point of view I'm just taking the puck to the net. He said he was sorry to hear the Leafs goalie had to go to hospital. He said they were friends. I'll just

play it. Okay, you got it? Yeah. Going to a Santa Bang Bang playing part of the net last night. Just with that I know you and Sully are good friends. Just have to help us see how everything unfolded from there and out. Softball. Yeah, for sure. Obviously I heard

that he went to the hospital last night and still there's a good friend of mine. You know, I reached out to him. He responded and, you know, obviously never want to see, you know, an injury like that. But, you know, from my point of view, I'm just sticking up up in the net.

I didn't even know that we made contact until after. and i don't believe i'm on the power play i'm trying to score i i'm taking a buck from that and um yeah that's that's really all there was to it so man he's tired of answering these questions about his behavior paul marie said this you know he said i've seen every hit sam bennett's ever thrown since he was 12 on tv this morning oh fart i don't even want to hear the and then i'm i don't even want to hear the yeah we have to uh paul marie's also said most of this for me is tempered by the fact that Stoli is one of our guys. We love that guy.

If I thought that Sam crossed the line or an edge, I'd probably be more careful with my words. I just didn't think it happened. Now, my question to these guys is, what if he wasn't your friend? Are you coming out like guns blazing? Is that what you do? Who cares that he's your friend?

I'd love to hear Stolarz talk about it, but he's in the hospital. He's out of hospital now. Oh, is he? Good. I'm glad. No, like that stuff about Nick Cousins, Stollers and Cousins are buddies. Like you flip the puck at them, but they're buddies.

Like, I don't know. They were teammates. You don't know that they were buddies. Right. And Max Pacioretty. You like all your coworkers? Max Pacioretty spoke on that in that when you are on the ice

with your opponent, no matter who it is, that you want to kill that person. Yeah, of course. He said that before, what was it, game five? I think it was in Toronto. And he said, like,

that's just the case going into these playoff games. It doesn't matter if that's your friend or not. It's just, And he doesn't have to get up for any game because he knows just when he's on the ice, he wants to kill the opponent. He doesn't care who it is. And I think everybody who's on the ice looks at it that way.

And Sam Bennett does. He doesn't know in that moment that it's his friend. He's taking out the goalie. Yeah. I'm supposed to believe Matthew Kachuk's teammate that there's no ill intent, all that nonsense at the end of the game. On Marner? The stuff on Marner? Yeah.

I'm supposed to believe prison rules Paul and his gaggle of goons. I just don't believe them. I don't care. This is where I want to transition, because whether or not whether or not anything was going to be done about this, Sam Bennett has a reputation, always has a reputation, deserves every bit of that reputation. And of course, when he does something like this, it's going to be under the microscope even more. They televise the games. That's why they like him is that he has this reputation because not everybody is willing to do that. No, not everybody can sleep after that.

I cannot believe – that's a great point, Adam. I cannot believe Daryl Sutter couldn't find a use for this player. I know. Daryl Sutter. Daryl Sutter had him on the fourth line. Or healthy scratch. Yeah, it's crazy. Every time I see Sam Bennett play, I'm like, Daryl Sutter couldn't use him.

They also had Matthew Kachuk. Yes! Yeah. And both got better immediately. Could it be because the coach sucked in Calgary? Dude. Bennett, I mean, Kachuk was always a great player. Like the Bennett improvement was so sharp.

You can see why true living never wanted Sutter and he had it forced on him. Like that was, that was all Don Maloney. And, and anyway, you know, we go to, we go to the real story.

And I think this is a sideshow. And I think it's a shame because the Toronto Maple Leafs scored 30 seconds in this game. They had a two goal lead, but midway through the first period. And they, for 40 of the 60 minutes were the dominant team. And I don't,

i'm not saying all 40 of those minutes were in a row but i'd say two-thirds of the game toronto was in control and doing quite well at least the first half and so goodness and i think that well i think even at the end of the game with nice getting that that uh you know that goal like i thought the last five minutes they had a really good grasp on what was going on in that game it took them a while but they they did eventually get the third period under control i also think it's relevant and you mentioned it in the in the lfr and i think i saw a bunch of people mentioned it the chat that when you see a friend of yours vomiting on the bench because they've taken a hit you're talking about that part yeah uh and that's where that's where i want to go with it is

is the that is a jarring experience and i thought that they were thrown by that yeah and i thought that craig berube's time out with like 12 minutes to go or whatever whenever that time out took place was a really really smart one because he said you're fine you said you kept seeing him you're fine you're fine calm down because when they were calm they rolled into this game completely in control they were in control of their emotions they were not afraid rolled right through them and then as soon as the Stolle thing happens they're a little bit thrown and the goals start going and Joseph Law hasn't played hockey in three weeks yeah and he just has to go in there in round two of the Stanley Cup playoffs against the Florida Panthers and expected to be on his A game like

it's unreasonable I'm fully confident in him heading into game two the guy's got a career nine three three say percentage of the playoffs i'm okay i'm perfectly confident uh in him but like that's not a usual situation for a goalie to get thrown into i wouldn't put any of the goals he allowed on him like one is a shot in tight rides up a defenseman stick there's two complete defensive breakdowns in front of them from like players you don't expect that from either like the lot in line yeah Tanev and McCabe were up for one of those uh Benoit and OEL were out to lunch on the 4-2-1 I have no idea what happened there um but I I recalled the Tavares hit from the Montreal series um because you know you might not remember how you felt four years ago um but like

i was streaming that and i can remember it really vividly and there that lasted 20 minutes and like the whole getting him up off the ice making sure he was okay stretchering him off the delay talking about whether or not there's going to be a penalty nick felino and cory perry talking they end up fighting and and that took so long and there was an air of they're just going to keep playing the game now i don't know how many hockey games have ever been you know how many nhl games have ever been paused because of that i'm not saying they should have i'm just saying it's difficult to keep your head in the game and and ruby situation i think got a hold of them yes and was able to do that and i want to talk i guess i want to talk about their start

because this this era of leafs and i'm talking about the last 10 years guys these guys are known for being bad starters these guys are known for being slow starters and when it comes to the playoffs the fact that we've got two seasons sorry two seasons two rounds and they've won the first game in both of them is straight up and has not happened 11 goals combined crazy they did not i didn't know this stat heading into this game the leafs didn't have three goals in a game against florida in 2023 in the whole series five games i did not know that well even this season they've only scored seven goals total against florida in the regular season jeez like and they scored what five last or four on a goalie last night wow four and a no no all five are on a goalie uh because

nice this scored on oh yeah yeah they didn't get the empty net yeah um which i wish they had there was another almost empty netter i'm like oh my god you guys are gonna get that game 25 matthews makes that yes yes i don't like i sometimes i worry about him in these moments you know because he's had a couple of those where he's missing shots he shouldn't he took he had 11 shot attempts last night he was shooting it wide a whole bunch uh it's execution is a little off in his offensive game yes i really like what he's doing both ends of the ice um i i like what that line is cooking up they're okay they got they were on the ice for the fifth one you know matthews i don't think factored into it no it's all marner is awesome play he was skating so slow to the blue line

and i couldn't read what he was obviously reading and i'm like what are you doing you know whenever a player is doing something that obviously off i'm like okay i'm missing something yeah nice on a breakaway i'm like bless the both of you both of you you're incredible i'm not as worried about matthews but yeah i'm not worried i just i would like him to finish more his finishing ability tends to slow down the playoffs and he's never on that crazy goal pace that he is during the regular seasons in these playoffs and i guess because the game tightens up and everything but you want to see your star superstar players play like it occasionally yes of course i was interested i expect more out of the captain and the highest paid player on the

team one of the highest played players in the league the 69 goal scorer i'm sorry that the bar is on the roof of the to back that point up the only guy to score of those the the three core guys in the last series against uh florida was was william kneelander and you know the other guys didn't score they had assists but they didn't score um now Steve mentioned and I had forgotten this the the Leafs didn't score more than two goals in any of those games which is freaking crazy they won any of them yeah how how they won is unbelievable but I I think you know William Nylander uh had a pretty damn good first round you know maybe game five you'd probably like to have back it's one of the worst games that was bad yeah but for him to already be at five goals

he's i believe tied in playoff scoring now um this guy has always been tied for second always been a playoff scorer always and i look at the you didn't hear what i said there did you you said tied for seconding goals what i say after that i don't know yeah that's sorry someone walked in and i wanted to wave sorry i always can tell when you're at the sport check and may believe square everybody he's one of the guys that i look at and i go okay this has always been a playoff guy yes always been a playoff score matthews and marner i think their x factor this year is having a guy like matthew nice i think that's going to open up room for them to score more and you know marner had a couple of assists i believe last night uh at least the one on nice and i think yeah it might

have been another one can i throw it out there that adam like how aren't you taking this opportunity friggin noted alan walsh client max patch ready with two assists on the first two goals and like that first goal was all him on the four check oh like he makes a check there that opens up the puck that then leads to the goal for willie it's so good it's so good and i wish that they still got to get a little better at deployment and that's obviously craig berube because patches on that line works it does well oh there were at least two shifts where patch ready was with domey and it doesn't even matter who the third person was oh my god there was that one like two minute shift in their own end lucky didn't end up in the back of the net there was no penalty oh my god you can't

put those two together yeah i wanted to see the minutes because i wanted to bring it back up because patch ready like he spends time up there initially in the game but then craig ruby always pulls it back and he ends up in like the 14 minute mark when obviously barner willie sorry and jt he'll be in the 20-minute mark, you know? So he starts there, and he goes, and he bulldozes everything, and then Berube kind of slowly pulls him back because he's 35 years old. Yes, right.

I think, you know, I mean, he ran over that Nico Sturm. That was a crazy hit. That game. What do you think that having Nyes for the first line and Pacioretty, surprisingly, for the second line, really, like, he played well with Tavares this year, but he has opened up space this series you know one of the things with with Tavares and Pacioretty together is that they're not fleet of foot and Willie is but they're able to manage

that because the series is kind of slower and Tavares doesn't need to be fleet of foot in the traditional sense like you're not asking JT to lead the league in rush chances and and exit the zone early and create all those plays you're asking him to be crafty in the corners and he is such an expert skater that who cares if he's if his bursts aren't good no he's so good on the ice his his i i said this before the series began the slower the series is the more it favors the leafs which is not something you would have said a couple years ago no um but the the panthers like yeah they're violent they're they're mean um if you don't respect their talent um if you don't respect their speed their explosiveness they are going to run you out of the building they're

going to beat you up and they're going to uh what what is it the fill them in or run them up fill them in from shorezy friggin i'm so tired but uh they will score six seven goals on you because that's what they're capable of doing what what have i been ranting about every time the panthers come up without even being prompted I go Anton Lindell and Luce Reinen are good yes like we talked about it on the pre-show last night yeah and that's the reason that game was tight in the third is that line went to work what did you think about uh the play of of Austin Matthews guys versus Sasha Barkov there was a lot of it seems like both coaches are fine to let their top lines go at it I thought that's what they were gonna do and a lot of people were looking at me sideways

because matthews uh and barkov have not had favorable matchups for the leafs but look look at it this way right so you got the matthews line you got the barkov line the barkov line has two selkie candidates you probably want to keep your top offensive guns away from that and here's berube going all right well we got two selkie nominees as well matthews has been nominated for one marner's been nominated for one just not this year right uh and you got nize who is a penalty killer beef and carter verhage is the other guy nize and carter verhage like that's a good head-to-head matchup so then what do you do with the rest of it i am probably targeting um the bennett kachuk rodriguez line with the leaf sort of secondary shutdown for check line

of lawton lorenz and uh yarn croak um and if i'm the panthers i'm probably sending out lindell and luster reinan to help shut down uh tavaris neilander and whoever their winger is and then the fourth lines can go up against each other i kind of think both coaches are fine with those matchups um the only difference is you would probably try to switch who's covering who between the second and third line um when you get to florida if you're palmer well and and sorry go ahead no did you remember adam what we were talking about during the pre-show when you're going through all the lines and you asked me about the line matching and everything yeah because we're talking about how um it's it's not advantageous for the leafs in any way to match

lines with florida because florida runs four lines you know you're not really escaping anything by trying to throw Lawton out against anybody or hiding Matthews from Barkov because then you're throwing them against Kachuk yeah you're throwing them against Bennett so there it doesn't really make sense for Berube to chase line matches because in that sense too he's losing the flow of the bench you know if you're out there and it's like okay we got this face off let's throw out this line instead then maybe you want Austin out there in that offensive situation and you don't want to be scared of Florida in any way it betrays non-confidence sometimes yeah I don't think there's any reason for berube to be line matching the series the thing that i would say

is maybe there's a reason for paul maurice to do it because if you look at and and i'm you know hit to the anthony stuller's head aside sam bennett i think won one or two face-offs last night oh he was terrible he was terrible against tavaris that's a really good player but yeah and he in this in these playoffs uh last night i think didn't help his percentages but he's taken 48 face-offs and he's won 17 of them in six games jeez like it's rough it's it's not a good look Now, again, I think he had like 10 or 11 against Tavares last night and won once. So that's something that, you know, you want to keep an eye on. The Leafs, you know, I think were 60-40 in face-offs last night.

This is where the unfortunate incident with Stallers and Bennett hides the fact that there were a lot of really good things the Leafs did last night. 100%. And I think, you know, you're going to have to do something about that Florida third line. It looked like the early Sen series Leafs again, where they were just getting in front of everything. panthers couldn't connect the pass they couldn't get a shot through just really methodical grinding it's a difficult brand of hockey to watch 82 games of but for some reason it's way easier to watch like i don't know 25 now the least four check was also good i thought bobby mcmahon we obviously mentioned max patch ready matthew nice austin matthews was throwing the body you saw mitch

trying to throw the body in there too which is not necessarily always his game there is an idea that they want to wear down the opponent the panthers do this to everybody the panthers heavily out hit the Leafs but I thought the Leafs were um I thought they targeted Barkov hard um they hammered him a few times took him down to the ice a few times and even though he nearly killed like with a capital K Pontus Holmberg was that Kulikov or was that that was Kulikov um I thought uh he got got uh pretty good Jake McCabe with the reverse hit on him and they were hammering him yeah so so I'm I'm wondering for the next game is this this is my question always with first games in series because they're always a bit weird yeah you remember that the Calgary Flames

and Edmonton Oilers three years ago it was like a 9-6 game and the Flames won and it broke them they were up 6-2 and the Oilers tied it and then Kachuk and company Kachuk got a hat trick en route to the 9-6 win right um but the that was the last game those play that was the last if I'm not mistaken last playoff game the Flames won yeah it was I don't think they've won since yeah no not just that run like they have not won since and so I'm wondering guys is last night's game for the Leafs repeatable is that something that you know that's their brand the Panthers played into their brand this this is something they can do again in game two that performance is repeatable five goals against Sergey Bobrovsky is probably not okay I will say that's fair you

You know what I mean? They did the right things. They took his eyes away. You're going to have a really hard time consistently getting five past Bob. Every goalie has a bad game. Jesse, what do you think? Yeah, I don't know why the Leafs couldn't win every game of the Series 2-1. They've displayed they're really good in these tight games.

And if what they did last night against the Panthers is any indication for how this series might go, they have a legitimate shot to steal a bunch more games here and win this series. They love these tight games, and they're really good at it. Do you think that they're going to be able to keep their composure? I mean, obviously, we saw that terrible Max Domi call at the beginning of the game. Oh, my God, the cross-checking penalty? Yeah, the cross-checking penalty that wasn't. I mean, listen, we know it was Graham Skilleter, and who's the other guy?

Chris Rooney. We know they're bad. It's like Vancouver Canucks fans know if Kelly Sutherland's reffing a game, they won't win, and statistically, they've never won. Generally speaking, and this is going to sound like you never played the game, cope generally speaking the more games you've seen a ref ref like if you go to scouting the refs and they're at like 1200 yeah terrible game right bound so so then i guess from florida's perspective you know referees change every game right sure you're gonna have new guys what do

they need to do to try to get under the leaf skin because i think that's their game right throw people off yeah skilleter rooney by the way same officiating crew from when bennett injured nize and gave them nothing. Well, they're regularly late into the playoffs, so that's not totally surprising either. Good job, boys. What do you guys think? If you're the Panthers this morning,

what are you thinking? There were holes in the Panthers' defense that weren't there when they were playing Tampa. They allowed a lot of inner slot chances to the Leafs when they weren't allowing any of that stuff to Tampa and little stuff like cross-crease passes. They're usually more efficient defensively, so on their side of things,

they need to tighten all that up and not allow like like the william neilander plays like you can't have that right if you're if you're a florida aaron ekblad coming back is going to be a factor too well and a and a factor in the nastiness right like seth jones is a he's a really skilled player really fit player like he'll he'll munch the minutes he scored a goal but he doesn't quite bring the net front nastiness that ekblad does like there's a reason ekblad's not playing right now and it's because he got suspended um i could uh i could see him especially after watching his team lose in game one coming out and just breaking ribs yeah yeah for sure no no hyperbole whatsoever uh for brovsky if the

leafs want to continue to score on him which they could not do the last time they played in the playoffs and couldn't do this regular season it turns out as well what do you do what do you do brovsky it's fine he has these games all the time yeah i know but what do you do to keep it up like what do you do to get get in on the leaf side leaf side leaf side I know Bobrovsky can rebound the leaf side is is make chaos in front of him and he's gonna have a really good couple games in this series you know there's gonna be a Bobrovsky game where he stops 30 shots and and he only allows one goal or anything like that and lose that game but for the least like it's chaos in front like that's how you score playoff goals and they're good at it and they've

been doing that these playoffs what a difficult game to evaluate your own defense internally if you're the panthers you allowed five goals on bob and you went five for five on the penalty kill like it's and you didn't have one of your best defensemen no like you're just not going to see a ton of games like that um so really difficult to pinpoint but they let the leafs have too much of the front of the net now brandon carlo told reporters about 10 minutes ago that he saw anthony stallers at breakfast this morning and uh like team breakfast this morning and then he's smiling he didn't they didn't get into that detail uh which i think is you're right jesse i think as a reporter yeah and you would know this better i would have followed up with that would you follow

what what was he eating yeah yeah i mean i'm usually the guy i'm usually the last guy in with the question that gets a chuckle you know are you are you are you are you comic they're talking about mccabe the other day and i was like oh mccabe how was the traffic you got jake mccabe to laugh yeah a little what does it sound like it's it's a very dad laugh you know yeah no no no no no he just probably or is it like breathing out the nose yeah yeah one of that's better that's better yeah yeah that's better i i think you know uh i started to put a bow on this um uh craig berube was asked today uh how anthony stallers or so will anthony staller start game two and he said we'll see and then they said do you have i'd be shocked do you

have a concussion report on Anthony Stoller's and he said we'll see uh so he's being very Craig Berube about it he said he doesn't know the game yeah it's an elbow to the head of course he doesn't know um so if you're Craig you're focusing the team on the next game just focus on the next game focus on the next game uh I'm just wondering guys do you think that the Leafs can actually win two in a row at home uh because this does this did feel like last night it did feel like hey yo they might they could they could do this it was a tale of two games it was it was a tale of two games um game two will not be the first 40 minutes of this game game two will not be the final 20 minutes of this game um in the same way that the leafs only blew up the sends once you know it was

it was fun both teams are going to adjust they're going to move on the leafs aren't going to go head hunting uh any more than they otherwise would have like it's the playoffs you can't have the notion in your head well now i'm gonna play hard right no that was your thought going into the game yeah man it's the playoffs if you're not thinking that going into a second round playoff game you're gonna get killed right so they're already thinking that you can't get distracted and it's so funny like of all the guys to take a stupid penalty it like that's got max domey's name written all over it and he gets called for a phantom call like within the first five minutes of the game as it was totally ridiculous as long as they stay as disciplined

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Terms apply. I think we would be, you know, Usually, I like to be forward-facing on this show as much as we can. Move forward, move forward, move forward. Because there's a lot of stuff that happens that we can't get to. But I think it would be a total disservice to the entertainment this weekend if we don't talk about the two Game 7s. Are we done with the Leafs?

Can we talk about the Department of Player Safety of it all? We can. I thought Steve covered it well in the LFR. Yeah, but this isn't the LFR. I guess. I feel like with this, it's like, okay, so they didn't do it. Now we move on. What do you guys want to say about it?

Because I was I was confused by the injury aspect of it all, because they said that they don't punish injuries. But that was a specific reason that Ekblad was suspended. And I can give you the rule on that, which is they do rule 18.2 in the CBA between the NHL and NHLPA. It's 18.2 B part of conduct. The following factors will be taken into account. A type of conduct involved B injury to the opposing player involved in the incident. And as you mentioned, Jesse, in the Ekblad thing, player was injured. Yeah, so what was with all the reports people saying they're not going to suspend because of the injury?

Because they don't read the rules. There are people, you'll believe. You do have to know that when these things happen. There were legitimate, great reporters who did great work who did not know that. Five days ago or whatever it was, we sat here and we played the Department of Player Safety video where they listed injury as a criteria for why Ekblad got two games. And we were like, what? and we're like oh because we've been told for a long time that they don't do that and they said

but they actually do because you know what you look up the uh you look at the rule book and it's there so so in this instance stallers's injury is taken into account yes relevant it is relevant so not relevant enough there was a which is which is stupid and again just spin the wheel of justice chris pronger had like a 20 tweet i had no time to read threat now wait i have no now wait out from from no the king shithead himself sorry if chris were here i would tell him that the dirtiest player in nhl history is going to talk about why something shouldn't be called well here's why it's relevant here's why it's relevant here's why it's relevant to come on this show and talk to us i'd love to talk to chris i think he would and he's actually very

scary but anyways here listen uh it's like 20 tweets long and all anyone did was i think they read the first one so this has been a uh sorry man i got a family to raise i don't have time for 20 tweets i'm not gonna read the whole thing you're passionate about not reading so hilarious that the guys that we go to for expert analysis on what is an injury what's a suspension are the guys who deserved the suspensions most he gives are you good breaking it's like when you're asking it's like when you're asking tim peel about doing the right thing as a referee 100 so what i did was i went to the casino with the player yeah anyway remember that cool card game we played anyway i guess yeah it was sort of a sideshow that i had to ref games but you know it was only to get

to know the players so here listen this this has been the confirmation bias olympics everyone read the first tweet i'll read the first one and then i'll go go to the actually relevant ones bring it chris he goes i'm gonna walk off set stoller's bennett i can't help but think that had the referees called a penalty on Bennett on the Bennett incident with Stoller's there would not be so much outcry as there is for supplemental discipline cool wrong anyway yeah exactly that was my opinion and everyone latched on to that here's what matters and keep in mind this guy used to run the department of player safety which is again hilarious now wait though he goes was this a blatant elbow to the back of Anthony Stoller's head yes it has two likes no one cared

no one made it that far should it have been a penalty yes all caps again uh that has one like no one made it that far uh was he trying to rattle Stoller's absolutely was Anthony Stoller's already susceptible from the previous blow he took to the head from a Sam Reinhardt shot earlier in the first period looks to be the case only he can answer that question how do you quantify the ferocity of blah blah blah blah he he uh hey hey chris broke it up into too many parts man well he's on espn it just keeps going yeah this is what i mean it's way too much yo chris you also have a blue check mark which you pay for you can put that all in one tweet now wait though oh wait first of all guarantee you he doesn't know that second of all we need to help him

is that not the most relevant thing that yes it is did he wait oh my god i lost it because there's so many he also said bennett has a history was it a blatant elbow to the back of stoller's head yes should it have been a penalty yes was it no like well i'm sorry what i miss what i miss that's the former head of the department of player safety and like you said king shit had himself yeah take one note on that yes i'm not i'm not telling you anything that he doesn't know also it wasn't an elbow it was a forearm yeah like we've yeah same with eckblad right this is I don't is it wrong to say I don't care oh yeah no it doesn't really hear everyone line up like I got a I got a fist sandwich and a forearm sandwich and an elbow sandwich and we'll see

which one tastes the best like it's I I think at the end of the day Sam Bennett hit Anthony Stallers deliberately in the head yes and that was from bleeding heart never played the game nerd let me uh chris prong oh yeah that nobody no no no no let's let's read and deliberately misinterpret that chris nowitzki tweet one more time i i want chris pronger to come on now now you got me excited you think you would i a hundred percent i would love to have him on i've met him like several times he was a very nice man he's just scary looking of course of course i don't imagine he's a mean gordon ramsay's a very nice man when you meet him in person he's very very nice i've watched uh what is it uh kids hell's kitchen yeah and he's like really sweet to

them what are you an idiot sandwich i think uh craig berube just uh said this to reporters uh four minutes ago from mark masters i moved on from it i don't want to talk about it it's over i think that's the right that's the right 100 the right attitude if you're playing in that game if you're a fan cry about it forever yeah like i'm gonna i'm gonna be upset yeah we're doing our job yes yeah we're crying about it diaper up to the waistband oh yeah that's what today is all about it wrong they got it wrong forever and the the leafs ended up winning the game thankfully but if they lose that thing because joseph wall's in their cold like it's even it's an even bigger mess absolutely thankfully it didn't play out that way defend your goalie too also stallers now he's out

of the series or whatever a couple games you know well yeah it's not that's not insignificant either i have full faith in in joseph wall that's why you have a second goalie like that right because you realize that things do happen yeah um it is kind of funny just as an aside that so many teams have put so much into one goalie throughout nhl history and all it takes is just that one little oh groin pull and and you're done and you're done right like look at look at what happened in tampa when when when vasilevsky was hemorrhaging goals in the first uh first round of both series like last year and this year what were they gonna do put in jonas johansson nope unplayable not an option no like they did have McElhinney I think for one of the cup runs I'll never forgive the

Leafs for that no but I'm just talking about when they were bad no I know like the last two years I just don't think it's a thing anymore to have one starter well dude look at the Jets they almost lost that series man that what are you gonna do not start the best goal literally the best goalie the world yeah he's going to run away with the vest how many times has he pulled though three three yeah for who eric comrie what are we doing like what's that supposed to do what do you get it does he shoot left or right just have him play roper alvin pickard is the starting goalie of the second round team we need to have more faith in our backups don't we to supply some stats to the conversation of the top flop top 12 goalies in games started this regular season only two are

left wow hellebuck and ottinger wow everybody else is out of the playoffs or didn't make the playoffs and both those teams like ottinger goes down it's de smith and hellebuck goes down it's eric comrie i don't think so like yeah it's uh if you want to be safe it's got to be a tandem yeah you got to have two goalies now and i think like it proves that if you have the two goalies playing during the regular season that it's easier once you get to the playoffs and he hasn't played that many games. He had an easier load over 82. The Leafs are playing one of those teams.

Like if Bobrovsky were to go down, it's Spencer Knight? Nope. He's the starter in Chicago now. It's Vitek Vanocek, who they traded for. Thanks for nothing, Jonathan Boettcher from the Sharks. Why'd you do that? Why'd you help them? Thanks for nothing.

All right. I want to talk about these Game 7s that we had. specifically, we'll start with Dallas and Colorado. Colorado is in control of this game. Mikko Rantanen hat-trick in the third period. He has four points in the period. For the second straight game. Second straight game.

And I asked Jesse this on our pre-show yesterday. I'm going to ask you, are you in the pay-the-stars camp? Or are you in the, you know what? We can only have so many stars that we pay that much. And you're a Leaf fan. it i mean it completely depends on their performance no one was saying oh yeah miko ran and money well spent heading into the series or even heading into game six like the guy was disappointing he was underperforming and uh then he just completely exploded the money is always

well spent when they perform right it's never well spent when they don't perform but when are they expected to perform uh in big games in the playoffs i was gonna say every game but definitely these games 100 million percent moose has a crazy as we know playoffs points per game in the last five six years i i don't know what it is now but heading into these playoffs he had a higher points per game i believe than mckinnon definitely mckinnon and i think mccarr as well and he's shed you know there was there was some criticism like hey you know he isn't worth he was supposedly at like 14 million and the abs were at 11 and a half million like that i don't believe that that's well i actually do believe that really uh i think it's just that that's where they were at in the

negotiations and they were going to narrow it down and it probably would have landed around 11 and a half 12 million bucks that's probably what it would have been and i i i think that the abs made a calculation that if we trade this guy because we're gonna have to pay kale mccarr like 15 million bucks a year it might just be too much on three guys look at toronto we can't let that happen to us adam you know what's gonna be such a shame is when people share the exact time stamp on this episode of this conversation and they send it to producer drew i think that's gonna be a real shame i feel bad but but poor guy he's been going through it the abs looked like geniuses because he went to carolina niches came in and was great jack drury was really good depth

And then, of course, Eric Tolsky is like, oh, you won't sign it? Well, I'm trading him back to the division. And he was pretty good and then not great through the first few games of that series. And I just look at this situation and go, if you were Joe Sackett, Chris McFarlane right now, and I gave you truth serum, like Veritasurum from Harry Potter, do you think they make that trade? Or do you think they eat the $750,000 it would have cost them per year and just sign the guy? I would just say, how big is the Eric Tulsky dartboard in your garage? Think about that. Okay, we're not keeping Ransom in,

but we're going to trade him as far away as possible. Eastern Conference, different division. It's never going to bite us. It's fine. Because no one ever retrades a guy. No one ever retrades a guy. It's very rare. I mean, the Canucks tried to do that with Lindholm to Boston last year.

Yeah, and it got to the point where I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. like everyone talks about this interesting thing no one actually does it the hurricanes and tulsky finally do now here's what he did in the process he probably nuked like just detonated his relationship with the avalanche right i would never speak to him again what i wouldn't i wouldn't answer his phone i well maybe not because he's gonna fleece you but i feel like Eric can do whatever the hell he wants if I was Chris has an issue with that I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire but he you traded him to me at no trade clause I can do whatever I want it was a fair trade you don't like to trade you're you're going with what he can and can't do

I'm going with dude you you could have traded him anywhere you traded him within our division that dude's gonna haunt them like a wet fart for eight years now it's the central division And it hasn't started yet, really. That extension has not even kicked in. They are going to play each other every year. Forget the regular season. The playoffs? How many times over the life of that contract, plus this year,

do the Avalanche and Stars play each other? My money's on at least five. I think four or five, yeah. If they're both good. Yeah, no, I'd never answer the phone ever again. Jesse, I want to ask you this. I would send a confetti bomb to your frigging office. What do you think Chris McFarlane would do?

If you gave him truth serum now, would he say he made a mistake? I think he regrets the Miko Ransom in trade because that's why you keep Miko Ransom in for performances like that in game six and game seven. You know, that hat trick, it's first ever, first third period hat trick in NHL history. It's literally record-breaking. And Jack Drury in the box.

Yeah. Just turning the knife. I think your anger is completely misdirected at Eric Telsky. you got to be upset with yourself for making that trade like you want to keep that player playing a character by the way i think tulsky's brilliant but i don't like i don't think chris mcfarland should be mad at eric tulsky like i think he should be mad at himself for making that trade in the first yeah that's not how people work your whole well smart people should work like that like your whole the way you're sitting there looking at this series how this

this played out it should be like i regret moving on from this player because there's so few players in the National Hockey League like Mikko Rantzen who are going to take over a playoff game and single-handedly win it for your team. And you're better off having that guy as opposed to whatever assets you got. You'd rather have that over anything. And if it was a couple million, it's worth it.

It's $750,000 a year. It's nothing. It's a game's worth of ticket revenue. And this season, you're not paying that. So this playoff run, you're missing out on Mikko Rantzen. And whether next year you're paying the cost for the salary cap and things are different, you're not you shouldn't be thinking about next year in these moments. You should be thinking about each playoff run that you're currently in. And this one, they are not as good because they don't have them.

I have, you know, I'm interested in this because obviously McKinnon, Rantanen played together a lot. But, you know, if Jared Bednar can move Nikushin up to the first line and put Rantanen next to Brock Nelson, So do you think Brock Nelson goes zero goals in that series? Zero goals. Yeah, that's also a bad trade. Well, bad trade, but that looked great, right? You didn't win a series after giving up Callum Ritchie. That's going to haunt them forever, too.

And the Islanders have the first overall pick this year, too. Oh, my God. It's been a good run for the Islanders. Yeah, it's done. Congrats to the New York Islanders. Your rebuild's over. If you're Jared Bednar, how do you lose a 2-0 lead with less than 13 minutes to go in the third period.

I mean, and you're not the Leafs. You can't sit on the puck. Like, you can't just tell your players, go to center ice and literally sit, put your butt on top of the puck and kill 13 minutes. That's disrespectful of the Stars, who, man, I don't know if I can name 20 forwards in the league better than Wyatt Johnston.

I can definitely not name 24 or any 20 players better than him from his draft class. He went with 21st, I think. Insane. Hey, you know what's cool? The guy that drafted him is the Leafs head scout. Isn't that great? Yeah, big fan.

Now, I want to ask you guys this, because McKinnon said something after the game that I think really stuck out to everybody, which was they didn't have their best, they didn't have one of their best forwards, they didn't have their best defensemen, and we still couldn't beat them. We're going to have to do something.

I'm paraphrasing, but that's what he said. And do you think he meant we? Who do you think he meant, Steve? You. He meant me. he meant his teammates and i think he meant less so than his teammates the front office i've taken that smelled like i've taken a pay cut for you i could have made i've taken two pay cuts for you i scored seven goals in a seven game series it's insane and you couldn't

win a round forget trading for sid how about you trade me i'm not saying he said that but angry nathan mckinnon is not very subtle about being angry nathan mckinnon he's angry here we go you want to hear everything oh let me hear it and the shirt chickpea pasta let's go yeah definitely i mean they're missing their best team and maybe their best forward so we still still couldn't beat them so um yeah i don't know i don't know what we're gonna man i've been in scrums like that and i recognize the pause there and the pause wasn't does anyone does anyone else have any the pause was yep that's the quote yeah that's the quote we're

all running with i guess there was no him uh in that week jesse what's the closest you've gotten to that covering the Leafs this season? Like, has there been a press conference that was even remotely that... I mean, I maybe not... I don't know if anybody on the Leafs is as intense as Nathan McKinnon is, but what's the grumpiest answer

you've gotten this year, do you think? The grumpiest answer? I don't think I've gotten really grumpy answers. I wasn't there for the Marner stuff after he declined the trade request to move himself for Rantanen. He exercised, I should say, his no trade clause because that happened on the road and then brad trill living spoke and then he

got out in front of it i believe it was on the utah trip is when that all broke and then they talked to marner and all that stuff and he said i'm not talking about all that and and everything i think that would have been the the nathan mckinnon moment from this season for the leafs and unfortunately that happened on the road okay yeah i don't travel so only alter and luke fox probably got that they're like the traveling circus might have just been altered uh masters yeah um so okay i i if you're chris mcfarland now back to him do you keep jared bednar no no you say instantly no tell me why i think i think i'll let you there's been enough failures in this team over over the course of his tenure i believe it's eight years and they have two appearances

past uh the second round now one of them is a cup one of them is a cup in 2022 which is like nine goal you can't nine years nine years nine years at the end of the or at the end yeah so yeah nine years and i feel like you expected more out of this roster and i don't like the coaching performance in the in this game why in particular i think with that two goal lead you got to find a way to keep it like it's a it's a reason you have kel mccarran devon tapes it was history making yeah like it's not it's not a common thing where teams give up two goal leads late in the third period in the playoff is it not it feels very it happened back to back nights and it wasn't even the Leafs hey I've I listen I've experienced that many times I don't feel

like I believe it happened three times in the last 20 years and like two of them were past the past this past this past weekend something like that so if you're one of those some of that's got to be on the coaching staff there and it's it's different in St. Louis where you had a team that is playing i think above what people expected and jim montgomery is obviously there they snuck in then they snuck in on the last day because of him 12 win winning streak right i think it's a completely different situation i think it might be time for a change i i want to just say this that's the way to put it just so for jared bednar he only missed the playoffs once so far in nine years as coach of the avalanche and it was the first year he only made a pound past the second

round one time and what i love about the colorado avalanche they did go through a full facelift this year right yeah a lot of new guys a lot of changes and really i mean that was to me the western conference final right there right that that was the two to me the two best teams in the west in the playoffs yeah going head to head it's a tough one doesn't matter though as leaf fans we know this it doesn't matter you gotta win uh and at a certain point you gotta make changes and what i think is interesting about the abs is that their expectations are so much higher than we've set ours here right it's like with us every year it's like oh man we lost in the first round but there reasons and i bet those won't be the same reasons next year if you next year we got a whole different

set of reasons yeah but there's reasons we shouldn't make any changes if you win a cup you're on the contenders list for at least the next half decade right you should be right i mean you would think and the abs were convincing it wasn't like this isn't just like some mirage they don't even feel like they're out of gas like they know the lightning feel like they're out of gas they're out of gas and they've been out of gas for three years it's it's it's weird to watch the the mighty fall right like the caps just won their first playoff series since they won the cup that was 2018 yeah um the blues were hanging in there they were okay uh who was it 2021 that was the lightning their fall off took a while but man it's been sharp yep it has been sharp dude you

lost to the leafs not even the barubi leaves what that's crazy the timothy lilligren leaves yeah yeah you lost a great point Ilya Samsonov was the starter man Ilya Samsonov and Eric Gustafson hugged those guys were on the same team their big defensive get at the blue line was Luke Shen oh yeah see and Jake McCabe and Jake McCabe Jake McCabe was that was pretty but he was still a little he was great but just a little discombobulated your pair your shutdown pair instead of McCabe uh Tanev was McCabe Brody oh uh don't forget that this is also the second straight year that pete deborah uh takes jared benar's lunch money dude like last year the abs only got two games against the stars a quick six

game series and then this year like it's nine and oh in game sevens this guy's the king of destroying team most insane stat i saw this weekend he's the first coach in i think it's NHL history, NBA and MLB MLB to win nine game sevens. And he's done it in a row. He's done it undefeated. How how do you hold that record without a loss? Unbelievable. And and I think the craziest part of that stat never won a cup.

Yes, yes, yes. How do either of those things? I think we went through that on on Friday. We did. We did. It's crazy. this show is brought to you by better help so when we think about uh leadership you see this a lot in the playoffs mentors that's the thing they all have people that they talk to they all have people

that they go outside to and they go hey listen feeling like this about this situation feel like that about this situation and usually it's called therapy and it's really helpful um and i'm just curious this time of year steve what are you talking to your therapist about oh my god um so this is i i'm bad at making time that is making time for what therapy oh at this time a year and it's usually i'll try to get one in before and then we do like a post-mortem where where we talk about all right so here's how i handled it but it's usually better to get the tools before you head in for me i get it yeah i got to be better at making time so you need a pregame skate you well the the thing uh about better help is it's easier to make time because

it's all on your schedule jesse what about you if you're talking to somebody right now this time of year what is it for you yeah it's not it's not probably not the leafs it's not the leafs the leafs almost never come up in therapy really yeah i feel like i feel like there's more serious things in your life you know what could the hockey team winning or not uh okay i i've been asking my therapists like who do you think would win 100 people or a gorilla well these are good that's like 45 minutes and listen you can ask your therapist questions like that some of life's existential moments uh anytime you want on your schedule with better help and we want you to try today betterhelp.com slash sdp get 10 off your first month that's better help help.com slash sdp

uh we also had the jets blues series uh which was the most unbelievable game seven ever and And that tying goal from Cole Perfetti. I remember thinking, like, okay, there's three and a half minutes to go or four minutes to go, whatever it was. I'm like, okay, just get a goal. Just get a goal, and they get it. Forget Perfetti. Nikolai Ehlers was seconds away from blowing the game.

From being persona non grata. Because I think he blew the zone, lost it. Then he fans on that shot. And he passes it. Broken play. When he passed it, I was like, you idiot. There's two seconds. And he scored.

and and but it was it turned out to be the perfect pass from two perfect passes right to cole profetti 1.6 seconds to go i saw unbelievable i saw this tiktok this poor kid he's wearing a binnington jersey he's probably seven or eight oh and they are so like the hands are coming up and then it's taken away from him and i was like oh man like i feel you man i've been there lesson kid wait for the horn 100 100 absolute heartbreaker it goes to double overtime and adam lowry gets the win And this series had it all. It had brothers fighting brothers. That was awesome.

Seeing the parents, the Shen parents in the crowd was amazing. It had a really amazing start with the Jets and the Blues storming back. And are the Jets for real? And the question, obviously, as we saw, as Connor Hellebuck was pulled three times, is can these guys get this done, specifically him, in the playoffs? This is a goalie that's going to win the MVP, I think. He's definitely going to win the Vesna. and imagine we're sitting here today and going yeah the blues won if that wasn't game seven you

might have got pulled honestly like they weren't great goals he allowed three goals and i think all of them fit into the category of you like a save or just straight up bad also one of them was deflected i think on on replay it deflected by the own own player there the jets player so i think two of them two of them you want back that's a lot yeah and the first game seven that's the first one they blow like their whole defense like every every one two on oh and he's swimming and then hellebuck decides i'm gonna go for a long vacation and rent out my home on airbnb and hellebuck's just somewhere else and and they score like losing your parachute in gta5 like just i don't know where he's going um and then yeah one snuck through and not a great game and but fridge had

a great stat it was something like the final 52 minutes of the game he didn't allow a goal well when you put it that way he settled in yeah he settled in that third period he only faced four shots like the defense that helps jets made it really easy on him scott erniell and his whole team but like um had they not tied the game he's the story no one cares that you figured it out after the third goal this isn't the 80s anymore you know oh you know after he let in the third one he really dialed in he faced four shots in the third four shots in the first overtime and five shots in the second that is great defense it's fantastic that's how it was all series long the st louis blues didn't like get a lot of shots on hellebuck that's why it was even more egregious

when he wasn't stopping them cam fowler had an unbelievable series what a pickup for st louis Ten points? Yeah, crazy. Crazy. And all I was told was that he sucked. Guys, when they're picking up defensemen from a bad team, don't trust the advanced staff. Stop.

How many times do I have to teach you this lesson, old man? Dude, it's the Ducks. Stop. But some of the performances from the first round that are not going through to the second are preposterous. It always happens. McKinnon, seven goals. Fowler, ten points.

Absurd. Now, the Jets get very little time to rest. They are playing tomorrow. And I'm just wondering, you know, if these two teams are going to hit the ice in a dead emotional state because of how this weekend went, right? Like, both teams played extraordinarily emotional games that were down to the last kind of wire. And I'm wondering if game one is going to be a bit of a letdown and that this series will build. um maybe not a letdown but like slower pace to to start like i mean dallas colorado like there's no way to rival that like i don't know if we're gonna see a series for the rest of the playoffs

that contains that kind of speed like purely through the matchup but also the um you don't expect that pace in the stanley cup final because everyone's half dead winnipeg has the advantage of being at home they've got to soak up the atmosphere the the vibes in winnipeg i don't know if you've seen some of the videos immaculate oh yeah i don't have a good time a bad day has not been had since by anyone in the city except for maybe the kid um the stars get the extra day off but they have to travel so a bit of a wash could be a slower start to the series it ain't gonna end that way okay all right now we've got uh um Oilers of Vegas which is I'm doing I'm doing the watch along for uh I know we've done our

previews on this but I just wanted to ask you guys now that we've had a weekend to think about it if there's one thing from this series that you're looking out for that excites you that's gonna what's your what's your ticket entry like what are you paying for in this series what do you want to watch I mean do we overthink it or Connor and Leon man I want to see if they can do it again i i want to see if the oilers who didn't even get the most out of those two who weren't up to their usual standard i want to see if they can find another gear because they look dead in the water after two games against la if their stars find the gear that they usually find if the depth stays hot if they get solid goaltending and if ekholm comes back there's another trip to

the final all right i know it's vegas is that is that how you feel jesse do you think i know like i you asked about like what we're looking forward to my my thing is the goalie in edmonton who's gonna start yes like yes there's rumors now that it's gonna be stewart skinner for game one because that practice skinner was in the starters net and i don't know if within like i don't know if that just means that one practice he was in the net and what that means but i didn't even play the most games i think it should be pickard yes and it's oh the guy who got all your wins yeah it's literally all of them it's it's absolutely insane if they decide to go with uh stewart skinner um and they don't just ride calvin pickard so that's my most interesting storyline for game

one that's crazy well that's crazy and and you know i i'm wondering like you know you said something in the last round steve about uh so what's your plan for when connor like to jim hiller so what's your plan when connor and leon decide to just come at you right oh what's vegas plan for that they have better horses they have better horses better bodies you can throw like everyone on the ice at them whereas la just didn't have it like you've got a geriatric kopitar you've got like a really getting up there philip to know doughty's still really effective but old some of those other guys back there are really young vegas has like a back end of prime petrangelo could still play for team canada will still play well there's politics there but yeah

maybe um shea theodore mark stone jack eichel like these are all world two-way players um that you are going to have to throw out against that line home ice advantage is going to be very very very big here and just don't be an idiot with your challenges that's it right la might have swept them and now they're gonna they might go to the cup final okay all right crazy uh canes washington uh that starts tonight uh is the early game oilers vegas the next night um and let's let's moved to some kind of like news and notes around the league uh andrew brunette is going to come back as the nashville predators head coach that was confirmed yesterday uh i know it's not the biggest news out there but i thought it was worth bringing up because uh they had a disaster season

and i'm wondering you know barry trotz if there's one thing you can't argue that he knows is coaching i would argue that he doesn't know anything else like his gming team management yeah but if i'm going to trust him on anything it's this yeah no i don't think it would have been fair to fire brunette after that because it's like you're blaming him for it this to me is trots wearing it which is one of the first things i've admired about him as gm honestly um i don't think he's done a very good job but like brunette's the reason you got there a couple years ago and all of a sudden he's the you know you're a fired coach away from riding the ship i don't think so um he deserves to stay okay now uh jesse i don't know if you have

anything to add to the nashville situation other than it's all barry charles's fault yeah how are you gonna fire somebody else for your own state like the dude dude made a bunch of bold moves in free agency and none of them worked out and then he kept making trades that made the team worse like it's his fault when you put it like that and most times in the nhl though the the the coach gets blamed for that right yeah but in this instance it's so like so blatant that we know what went wrong it's roster construction and no coach could have coached that team to be better when you keep removing parts that are good look how good carry it was for the habs in the in the playoffs it was awesome i can't believe they gave that guy up and well and it wasn't until

wilson flattened him that that you know he stopped sort of being as much of a factor um i kind of think you fire enough coaches quickly enough no one wants to coach there and yeah it's nashville and the music and it's fun and boy you fire brunette and you got to get a new guy that's a lot of coaches in a very short amount of time and all of a sudden if there's a tie break between your city and another place i might take the other job have you ever had a job where the person who manages you used to do your job uh yes it's horrible yes uh it's horrible uh i i was a morning show host and i was and and you know not a bad person but i remember the guy ahead of me above me the program director was the former morning show host and so he had a way of

this is how i would do it and this is how it's it's therefore it means this is how it's done i would imagine that coaching for barry trotz is a specific taste as well yeah because he's going to have pretty defined ideas on what this is going to be let's not forget the last coach andrew burnett coach was the florida panthers who won the president's trophy and were offensive dynamos like he knows how to coach offense and this team had zero offense this season i don't think that no one up the middle that nobody and that's not his responsibility to go get centers like he knows how to make guys score goals and he didn't have anybody on the team who could do it Ryan O'Reilly at this point being not that not to take a shot at Ryan O'Reilly this is not what

this is but like him being your number one center that that's that's just not fair does Tavares have the season he had without Matthews ahead of him probably like you can be an elite player but like that's a heavy burden and I just don't think O'Reilly's that guy at this stage in his career he can be a very important part of a cup winning team I just don't think he can be that and if he is that he needs to have the support under him he didn't have it above him he didn't have it under him he just didn't have it the la kings uh proved that you can walk away from a legend sorry detroit wow uh rob blake and the la kings announced monday that uh yeah general manager vice president of hockey ops rob blake will not return and it was by mutual decision

which it was i believe uh i don't believe that at all i'm sure if they said rob we want you back you'd have been like great his contract was up right and they tried to negotiate last off season they said want to see how the season played out and now that it played out in the same way it played out the last three years and now it's the fourth year in a row you lose to edmonton like it's time to move on and everybody probably agreed you can't lose four straight to the same team well you you you could have if you'd signed him last offseason because then you would have been stuck with him yeah um now we're not totally sure um luke robitaille basically said that uh he said i haven't had any of the conversations about jim hiller um so that hasn't sort of played out

yet I'm wondering if he survives the week does that challenge in game three is that the straw that breaks the camel's back but he had to wear this and I guess it has to be Rob Blake like I now I'm kind of more okay with Jim Hiller sticking around if that's how it plays out um I think he got out coached um by by Chris Knobloch which is not something I don't think I guess Chris Knobloch's had a like good little coaching career last season you know and his run the stanley cup final and everything but like it's you shouldn't be getting out coached that badly but i think it now that blake's out you can probably reason keeping hiller for a little bit longer the the knives are out this time of year like if you pay attention outside of the

games and i haven't really seen them out for hiller i think whoever made that decision um like ultimately it's his but whoever made that decision they know who made it i'm sure they feel terrible but like the the worst teams or the the teams that go nowhere the fastest are the teams that react emotionally to losses and i i do think the kings need to make moves again they've lost to the same four team or same team four years in a row but firing your coach after that series like what were you another coach away from finally beating edmonton i don't think they were right there's also there's some arguments about i brought this up last episode but the way jim hiller coaches defense and kind of the offense is when they get leads they sit back they're they're

not they're not great at pushing and keeping the game going and continuing momentum momentum like they love playing prevent defense and it hasn't played played well against these edmonton squads that'll break through the oilers are like fresh meat no to me that falls on the coach yep you know if you recognize this team can beat the style of hockey you're playing you need to adjust and he's never done that because it's all about consistency once you get a system you're going to play that all season long and then when you get to the playoffs you're not about to switch that but you should realize that it hasn't been successful and you probably have a new way to play so i that might fall a lot on hillary that's why i advocated last episode for him being fired

yeah they clearly looked at a rob blake's fault well i don't know what they what do the kings do from here because you know like you you mentioned steve you know drew dowdy's coming off a pretty serious injury he played great in the four nations he had like a week to prepare and then he i thought he had a good season and and wasn't bad in the playoffs onze kopitar is 40 gotta be close to be 40 soon drafted 2005 yeah it's 20 38 or 39 yeah something like that uh at a certain point like onze still really effective drew still really effective what do you do with this team you just keep going so and how do you add and 37 37 you're aging him sorry he's gotta be turning 38 though sorry this year uh august yeah okay so he's 38 when the season starts and he's still really

effective still a great player like you don't have any issues there but you do need you know you've got quinton byfield but it's got to be more than just him uh brant clark jordan spence great players but like again i'm still going we need more here you do need more um you know playoff performers would be nice um but one one thing the dallas stars have done really effectively like i've ranted about them like drafting and i just generally speaking every decision they make is a good one but one thing they did with the stars is they turned over the old generation of stars stars um to the new one without getting rid of the old ones well yeah Because Ben and Sagan are still there.

So they found a way. Yeah, Ben and Sagan, I mean, that's it, right? And they turned it over to Robertson and Hintz. And now there's even like Wyatt Johnson. Hintz is like the old guy. He's like Dallas 3.0. They have like three generations of stars stars on the stars. If the Kings can find a way to do that, like Kopitar gets pushed down.

dowdy maybe takes a somewhat reduced role like even dial back his minutes a little bit give it to someone else i i think like you can't just keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result because like you want evidence that i wasn't being dramatic earlier in the show when i said uh the stars at avalanche are going to play each other like five times over the life of that ranting in contract look at the Oilers and Kings four years in a row you have to something has to change you can't just ice the same roster take a big swing you're telling me no one wants to go to LA has to change what are you talking about no no it doesn't oh yeah you're right exactly the same sorry something has to change if you have any aspirations of not being Leafs West right I think

that started with firing Rob yeah yeah I think so too I think so too in Toronto every arrival is a statement and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at cadillaccanada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the cadillac definition of luxury um i want to talk a little bit about the draft lottery last night jesse and i live streamed during this and last year the draft

lottery sucked because uh it nobody moved the exact order at which it started is how it ended yeah this time we got a big jump but what was weird about the way they did the broadcast is they actually showed you the lottery balls which looked in like it looked like a gigantic bong actually is how they you know it was like a weird contraption and we didn't fully you know if you're not into that sort of like lottery system you don't really know how it works and they did their best to explain it but they also had uh you know it's like bill daly who is you know rose out of the grave and said okay i'm ready to do my tv hit now uh and and the islanders getting the first overall pick was a big pop but they also then spent 10 minutes after it trying to catch up

they clearly ran over time and jesse and i were talking and i'm like it's getting close to 7 30 here and this is supposed to be wrapped up and so they come back from commercial break and go oh here's the wrestling it wasn't the best first of all i'm now imagining uh and we now go to bill daily bill where's bill i'm here he really is the crypt keeper that guy it's terrifying he's just not the most and i don't mean to insult him like he's just not great on tv i'm sure he would tell you that he's not a tv person no always great to hear from bill daily uh no but um what i what i was gonna say is uh like retro things are in style uh-huh and what i noticed was uh nhl draft lottery conspiracies are back baby oh yeah they were gone for a while but they are back what is

it this is the islanders thing because the islanders lost the all-star game and they're very upset about it and it's become a political thing there the governor wrote the nhl a letter they're very upset about it and right understandably so and they get the first overall pick they can't do you can't do an all-star game no no you think so huh that's a good conspiracy theory oh it's not mine you know but i'm saying whoever came up with it it's pretty good it's a good one it and it's a shame because it was every year we had this handshake and that handshake and that handshake and it died dead buried 12 feet under the ground when mcdavid went to edmonton Gary Bettman cried himself to sleep that night.

I know he did. Bitter, like clutching his chest. That was the worst day of his life. I know that for sure. The Islanders have not had a first overall pick since 2009 when they selected John Tavares. They also selected Rick DiPietro first overall in 2000. Defenseman Denny Potvin in 73

and forward Billy Harris in 72. I wrote a little bit about DiPietro in Hockey Rants and Raves. and what was crazy about taking him first overall they had Luongo who they picked fourth right he wasn't some guy who they like didn't know how good he was they used a top five pick on him and he played he had already played for him or for them he was a known commodity and they're like now we're gonna pick this guy and ditch Luongo for a bag of pucks Mike Milbury wasn't very good at his job no he wasn't great no it wasn't great and i'm looking at uh there was a really cool

sort of uh interview because the guy that and lou lamourelle has got to just hate life right now because he they he gets fired and they get the first overall pick the guy he's gonna run for governor uh the guy that they had um you know on the zoom call because they had like dubas and mike greer and a few other guys um was ken morrow who was actually a member of the 1980 gold metal-winning Miracle on Ice team. And he's also a four-time Stanley Cup champion, I think, with the Islanders. So, probably. So, I think that's pretty neat, right?

Like, that's a cool thing to happen. One thing that did sort of play into this is that the Sharks and Blackhawks avoided the five-year issue. I think you can only get the first overall pick twice or three times within five years. The Sharks did get pick number two.

And Mike Greer said if they had gotten the first overall pick this year, they'd be willing to trade it. And there's and and they asked him again last night hey you got the second overall pick are you willing to trade it and he said if it makes the organization better we are absolutely willing to this they might get their guy at number two like they well they might get something else if you're the this is not really considered the top three in this draft are unbelievable you're talking about top four or five yeah um so that you're getting a solid player next year's

draft is going to be crazy gavin mckenna's all you here watching there's an audience here hi everybody you've got to watch big dubs on our channel gavin mckenna is cracked this kid is unbelievable and he's going to go first overall if if he could be selected second third and fourth overall as well he would he is this year's draft is very strong at the top i don't think there's a lot between the guys in the top five like you could pick third fourth fifth and maybe get like michael misa who i think had 60 goals in his draft year like that's unbelievable gavin mckenna is he shouldn't be playing junior hockey next year he's beyond it he shouldn't be playing junior hockey this year i think he could have stepped into the nhl as a 17 year old and competed for

the calder trophy this guy is unbelievable and next year i think the tanking around the league is going to shock you there are going to be sub 50 point teams to try to get this kid he's really really good but as we saw the islanders can move up from whatever 14th or 10th to first or whatever the heck you talk to yeah utah had a big move so we're going to go through that but i'm just wondering we haven't seen a second round or second overall pick move in a long time we almost never see a first overall give me a move what do you think a trade like that would look like like what what do you like and who's making a trade like that that was the first thing i was trying to think of because if you're the sharks like i don't know we got a pretty good glimpse of it when we

were there the future is teal like it's there like you got celebrini you like whoever they pick second is not going to supplant celebrini as your top guy you have ecklund you have smith you have this gaggle of guys down with the barracuda um you also have like still a pretty young crew with the sharks you have askerov and net i i don't know i think you kind of need players who can play in the nhl now right can schaefer do that like i'm looking at their defense and going do they need a stud on defense there has to be people above 30 not named tyler toffoli right i don't know if they have anymore uh other than vlasic like you need nhl players uh so do the blackhawks do they look at trading this if you were them with all the players they have

in their system it's one of the best they really do too uh i wonder if if you could look at something like like could the blackhawks trade some of their future for better quality like they have a lot of darts the Blackhawks but like not all those guys are going to make it same with the Sharks really both those teams have a lot of darts not all of them are going to make it it's sort of like you know remember the Leafs rebuild days and we're all like oh Sashnikov's going to be a 30 goal scorer like it doesn't work out that way all the time and like a guy's major junior numbers or college numbers don't always add up to NHL success but I wonder if they're able to see they have the pick yeah they'd be trading it to get more quantity which i don't think helps

them at all uh the blackhawks like they got some contracts they don't need i think they should use it the blackhawks should use it and they also have some more vets um whereas i think the sharks should consider trading it so you've got the islanders at one sharks at two blackhawks at three utah at four nashville at five philly at six bruins at seven they did the tank right the bruins uh kraken at eight sabers at nine ducks at 10 penguins i'm coming back to bruins at seven is a really good outcome for the city by the way uh new york rangers at 12 uh red wings at 13 columbus blue jackets 14 canucks 15 and the montreal canadians who acquired the calgary flames pick i believe that was the monaghan i think you're right uh is uh at number 16 so

the canadians have got to be pretty excited about that um i want to talk a little bit about the pittsburgh penguins they went on a bit of a run towards the end of the season and if you look at what josh yohi wrote in the athletic uh it's quite literally this is the worst case scenario because they were good after the trade deadline uh it means that they're drafting outside of the top 10 so they were on a wing and a prayer hoping that they might move up like utah and the islanders it but they didn't give themselves a great opportunity to do so and i'm just curious is there something going on with their pick too where they could have they were could given it away in something or is it just their pick i know last year there was last year it was a top 10 protected

and i remember when dubas was on it i think they came up 14th or something like that and he just immediately logged off because it obviously they didn't have a first round pick last year right yeah or at least that not that high i'm i'm for the penguins 11th is still a really good pick you can get great players at 11 if you're dubious do you not trade this though if you're what well i'm curious about the so so dubious has signaled a couple of things in his tenure and they're diametrically opposed a couple years ago it was about crosby malcolm tang and one more run right now it seems to be well we probably do need to do some sort of retool rebuild and okay you go draft this kid at 11 maybe he steps into the nhl but likely at 11 unlikely

likely not and you're you don't see him for a year or two okay if even if you're retooling does it not make sense to trade a pick like that and kyle loves to do what at a draft trade down that's right he could still get a first round pick in the 20s yeah maybe he gets a first a second and a third but he's able to get a quality play maybe you're able to trade down you got a couple seconds or a late first and a second and you trade those things for players who can help you now Dubas I don't know what they want to do Dubas with the Penguins has made has made a lot of moves that are good in a vacuum but the context of what the Penguins are matters you have Crosby who's still a 90 point player it's psychotic you have Malkin who's still really good you have

Letang who's an effective player Carlson's good I mean at one end of the ice at very least Brian Rust put together some incredible performances Ricard Raquel was one of the most underrated players in the league what are you every year I have to remind you hey the worst teams in the league are the ones where we can't tell what they're trying to do are the Penguins rebuilding are they trying to win everything you want to do everything at once and if if you think you're a genius you think you can do it and nine times out of ten you're wrong yeah you can't do them all the in order to know what the penguins should do with the 11th overall pick we have to know what the penguins want to be you know if they want to contend next year if they want to

battle for a playoff spot of course yeah you send out the first round pick because then you get some assets that can make you good next year but if they're rebuilding then you keep the pick maybe even try and trade up but then we need a definition from kyle on what the penguins are he could be half pregnant for another two three years yeah right yeah he doesn't seem to want to to telegraph that he doesn't seem to want to tell anybody that uh there is there's a little less talk about going for a run this year well like trade crosby well okay we don't want to all right surround crosby oh we got the future we're not gonna yeah all right well enjoy being i don't know 12th i'm in the east again like by the way the i just i'm just thrilled to hear someone else

say it because i'm the one you you hate dubas you hate the penguins no i just don't understand what what is the direction what are you i think i'm being a little nicer about it in charm okay and by the way the the penguins had the rangers first round pick from this season but it was top 13 protected so the rangers are picking 12th so that means it slides that next year and it becomes a first round pick unprotected i have no idea how they got that through the vancouver canucks trade ah so the canucks acquired the rangers first round pick and then they flipped it to pittsburgh okay so in the marcus pedersen pedersen yeah yeah so that's and then they also they they if if the lottery odds had fallen the way it did last year where everybody gets where

they should finish the penguins fell from 9th to 11th too so like it's like a double double win it's not great i'm very happy for utah like it's really cool that they were able to jump 10 spots they won the second lottery or the first one i forget i forget how that there's a team who like they're not bad no no they're like especially bringing in this player you know to an already young team like it's gonna be awesome they're in the playoff race if sergachev and dersey aren't out for six months apiece like i think there's like a you know i i do think that they're a better team than what we saw this year and they fought but like i don't know if they're better than st louis who was yeah no it's fair right i'm definitely taking them ahead of it but they're

definitely competitive and i think they'll be competitive next year uh what do you guys think about the rumors of ken holland as choice for the islanders general manager i have actually been hearing these rumors for months so i wasn't surprised okay so do you think that he'll leave his cushy consulting job with the NHL that is definitely a real job yep uh and go and and be the Islanders now he's a hockey guy is that what's right for the Islanders because they keep getting old guys right like Ken Holland had some success in Edmonton right he did yeah the Zach Hyman signing one of his best uh the Evander Kane trade worked out Matthias Ekholm he brought in uh so there's some really good ads there were some misses too never quite sorted out the

goaltending situation it worked out last year uh what kind of new direction is he bringing to the islanders or is it more the same if he goes can you believe adam barry in the lead here what's that because because it wasn't just ken holland being rumored going to the islanders who was the other one mark bergevin oh now that would be perfect i hope he does go mark they oh man oh man they don't they don't want to um they don't want it to be play time you know oh Lou's gone we can all grow a beard we can all do this we can all do that like it's they don't want it to be Lou Lamorello's gone now you rule the roost um if you have an established guy in there like Ken Holland Bergevin's been around for a long time you still establish like those guys are as deeply

embedded in the hockey establishment as anyone could possibly be um what i find interesting is the other stuff within their organization and this was getting whispered about during the season when the the lou lamorello rumors started and then once lamorello was let go people were very openly like are we just are we going to ignore this chris lamorello has been with the islanders running their farm team those guys suck and have sucked for bridgeport ever yeah oh yeah it's like they've missed they've only made the playoffs in like four of 12 years or something like that it's yes it has been i think the ahl don't they have an extended playoff format too like they do now yeah yeah no they uh they've been so futile for so long and the islanders have been so mid for so

long now after those two conference finals against the lightning you could argue they were the second best team in the nhl over those two years and you don't have a cup to show for it you haven't had anything since the show for you also are not really making any strides in the goal scoring department you have good goalies you have good defense they're not they need to score more goals hopefully cole eiserman can help them with that as soon as next season calum richie maybe calum rich well now so look at it they're not as bad as the other teams in the lottery conversation then you add to that conversation cole eisman cal richie and whoever you're gonna get first yeah bing bang boom that's a that's a pretty good rebuild right there and i think they're done like they'll be

competing for a playoff spot next season if they want jess what are you looking at i was trying to find like since when chris lamorello was uh the gm of the bridgeport islanders i was looking that been a bit their minor league affiliate has been very very very bad for a long time 2017 he's been there and how have they done uh not great they got one series victory in his tenure they missed the playoffs one two three four five six times they made the playoffs three times and they have one series victory are they uh i i wonder if he's still gonna be there like if you're gm do you want the old gm son working under you like is crystal amorello like we haven't heard anything well his time with the islanders predates lou i believe yes okay um because

dubas didn't take over till 2018 uh but holy moly that's real bad yeah they got swept didn't qualify didn't qualify losing five uh season canceled due to covid didn't qualify and they won a round didn't qualify didn't qualify didn't qualify yeah look at the games what they won 15 games this year out of 72 they went 15 54 and 3 dude in the minors the the ahl isn't even like designed for that you know what i mean yeah like and it's like what did the islanders bleed their minor league affiliate dry with call-ups not really holy toledo that's bad rough yeah it's pretty rough okay so with all that we've got two games tonight we've got another series starting tomorrow we get the leafs tomorrow as well uh anything else that you guys wanted to hit before

we do the press conference i think your hair looks great oh thank you yours too did you get haircut i did it's nice no it looks good oh yeah no i liked it yeah you and jesse don't got anything to say about it we were worried about the beard trimming me too i've never got a trim before and he started and I didn't want to stop him. Jesse, what do you think? You know the beard better than I do. Do you like Steve's beard trim? I think people

will be mad because you're not supposed to trim it because it's the playoffs, but I don't think you look bad. Oh, I think it looks great. But yeah, I was definitely like, ooh, no. The fan of it all. I think they'll be upset because you're not supposed to trim a playoff beard, right? You're supposed to let it grow and it's supposed to be scraggly and fun.

I think I'm handsome. Let's do the press conference. a toronto maple leaf is due a shout out he was not featured in our toronto maple leaf segment oh who did i miss his name is morgan riley morgan riley leads every leaf defenseman in the history of the franchise in playoff goals is that 14 he set the record last night with 14 goals uh in the playoffs is 14th on a great shot and um morgan riley has more goals than you think in the playoffs this is from jonah siegel in the athletic the only nhl defenders to score more goals in the postseason since riley made his nhl playoff debut in 2017

Kale McCarr Victor Hedman Evan Bouchard Shea Theodore and Mikko Heiskanen that is the end of the list wow Morgan Rielly

is next up and he's been to the second round twice now yes holy crap that's great that's really unreal playoff performer

Morgan Rielly that's 64 games which is it's pretty it's a lot especially with the Leafs like straight up

next year next year Leaf Nation can we chill with him i think yeah i think now that he's done it in again again it's like okay like there's no and he's he's now i mean there have been a lot of games this season where it's like mo he now you need more though but he has a partner now he does have a partner and a partner like a long-term partner yeah um geez long-term just decor um really good but like it's it's a really tough sell with leaf fans yeah but this guy who's been here forever is great in the playoffs

how great they keep losing what are you talking about but i i think now we maybe give them that leeway a little bit okay i'm ready yeah they're dangerously approaching like having more goals as a decor these playoffs than in the season it's absurd it's one of the craziest things about this current run jesse and adam you were you were captain bandwagon of the morgan riley's done as a leaf uh he was bad he wasn't good he was bad uh but i did say and i did i've mentioned several times that as soon as carlo got here then the eye test didn't follow quickly but the numbers immediately jumped yes and i was like hey it's looking better it's looking better but if you're gonna tell me if anybody tries to tell me oh well you know i knew in game 60 right with the body

of work he'd had to that point that he would be great i'm sorry that's revision you were only talking about what you had seen yeah um and the numbers showed that too yeah and i would come out of nowhere i want to give a shout out because we didn't we sort of missed it the key to game two by the way are there any leafs with a birthday because william neilander was huge in game six on his birthday mitch marner assisted on the game winning goal on his birthday and he's a new dad congrats to mitch yeah yeah um miles marner that is correct it's a great name he called his wife eminem a beast uh not the term i would have given birth and he couldn't turn off the hockey speak when when talking about becoming a dad babe you're a beast she just gave it 110 she was in

there she was a beast you know getting getting pucks in deep she was really digging in the corners yeah it was fun to hear him talk about real push there at the end oh yeah yeah i've been there yeah i've been there but good for him it's cool you know day before your birthday your son's born next day's birthday is a hockey game and you score well your team wins pretty cool really really cool for him happy for him man yeah um we had a question here from andreas who said canucks twitter being hacked is that just the icing on the cake for the canucks circus of a season explain what happened on canuck yes their twitter so so right before we went to air last night the canucks twitter account started tweeting pictures of or videos of elon musk talking and i

think it was ai and he was talking about some sort of big crypto giveaway and then it was like an elon musk coin or something like that and canucks pr which has a separate twitter account said hey we've been hacked and everybody's like are you sure though because remember this is the same account that said hey ovechkin's going after that after the uh um after this the big gold chase here buy some ovechkin gear on the canucks website which was super weird right remember they tweeted that never good when you have a promotion and it's like were you hacked yeah are you promoting another team what's happening here anyway uh so that's what happened and yes i think that the answer to that is absolutely it's been a circus jim rutherford has given two of the most quotable

press conferences of the entire season in the last eight days it's amazing it's amazing uh real mess absolute mess and my curious my question now turns to okay so you're gonna let besser walk because you can't agree to a deal with him what is the plan this offseason and they've got and with to quote rutherford we got when it comes to quinn hughes well we got him for two more years or a season and a half if he won't sign those are wild nuts say like i i almost wonder if that's him just trying to absorb everything onto himself yep boy is he being aggressive about it i don't know man i don't know jim maybe take a step back yeah just relax man i don't know jim what else we got jess um i'm happy there's no more eight o'clock starts for the leaf series as of right

now they have a 7 30 sunday start this upcoming sunday do you find it odd that they have no saturday game scheduled yeah but they have a friday sunday right yeah that's that's i think probably an american broadcast thing because saturday i don't know isn't as important a hockey night for them i guess or something about the nba playoffs it's usually they move heaven and earth like there have been series in recent memory where the leafs have gotten like weird two-day breaks and stuff like that just so they can finagle the schedule to have them play wasn't the bruins series they got three saturday games somehow i don't remember i'm almost positive it was three saturday games and to see none in this one was surprising but it's for me personally

as someone working it like i never know what day of the week it is at this time of year so i don't care i was i was questioning it when i initially saw it because it made more it's so much sense to have that two-day gap when it's travel day you're going to florida and then the next game falls on a saturday yeah and i was like it's it feels like the scheduling is really simple here and they didn't go with that well i mean i think it's just odd i love that they announced the first two games too and they're like tbd on everything else yes that was odd but like also like selfishly for me i'm like oh no i get to actually take my mom out for mother's day oh no i got a saturday to myself twice in a row yeah oh no like i haven't had this since august yeah it's a luxury it's nice uh yeah

jesse does it bother you not no no like steve said like when we're working this it doesn't really matter i think i think from a scheduling standpoint it's very odd if i can remember you know in in previous uh past years like when you have a Leafs game during a week or on a Sunday or something and it leads into the week if they lose the the the the mood at work the mood around the city the next morning I mean nobody goes to work the same way that they used to uh especially on Mondays but it's a it is sort of a uh it's sort of a thing like where if you have the game Saturday and it's a loss you got a day to recover yeah if the Leafs does that make sense right before that two-day gap there's gonna be a lot of red dead redemption in my house uh that's but

they're not they're up one nothing stay off stay off undefeated in the second round yeah um i think for our next press conference question might be fun if the audience that's here at sports check at maple leaf square in downtown toronto has a question anybody have a question any of you people have a question you can raise your hand oh not do we have anything from the audience wow nobody not a single one oh in the back would i like to feed blue a victory puppy treat so can you bring blue up yeah bring it yeah you can bring you want to be on camera you can blue is a dog is that a greener dog throw blue on the desk i think that'd be will blue poo on the desk or pee on the desk and then i can i can hit the button anytime you want adam yeah okay here bring blue up come on bring blue

up here i think awesome we got a dog here hey that hey buddy how you doing oh look don't fall off don't fall off the desk hey okay this is awesome i mean it's probably not the greatest to listen to there is a wiener dog on the desk yeah and we are gonna jesse hit the music blue can't hear it oh let me play the music for you well blue drop the ball for a treat blue hey i'm gonna oh yeah food first food first i love my job for checking maple leaf square yeah the steve dangle podcast follow the guys on twitter at steve underscore dangle at adam w y L D E and at Jesse Blake.

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