The Steve Dangle Podcast - Pawns | February 25, 2026

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, 00:00 Team USA visits The White House 1:02:0 Penguins trade Kulak to Avalanche for Girard 1:15:00 A look at the standings post-olympics 1:18:00 mlse send an email to Leafs fans 1:36:00 Fiala, Crosby, Rantanen, and McDavid post-olympics Visit this episode's sponsors: Go to https://duer.ca/sdp to get 15% off your first order! For all the odds, T’s and C’s, and to learn more visit ⁠https://betmgm.com/DANGLE⁠. 19+ to wager. Any opinion expressed is not advice, a promise or suggestion that increases the chance of winning. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Watch all episodes of The Steve Dangle Podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEidkgWpSiHVkYT7HrIzLPXlY Watch clips of The Steve Dangle podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEieOJuIrqWyZPWSIJtVMCbLz Buy SDP merch https://sdpnshop.ca/ Check out https://sdpn.ca/events to see The Steve Dangle Podcast live! Watch hockey with us! Live on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLk7FZfwCEifCTX0vkKEaGg9otrW4Zl2k Subscribe to the sdpn YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sdpn?sub_confirmation=1Join Subscribe to SDP VIP!: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0a0z05HiddEn7k6OGnDprg/join Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/thestevedanglepodcast Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sdpvip/subscribe - Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/MtTmw9rrz7 For general inquiries email: [e-mail] Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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S-D-E-P-P The Steve Dangle Podcast With your host, Steve Dangle adam wild and jesse blake all right just right off the top uh i'm gonna be honest with you given the events on the internet yesterday was it exactly jacked this morning when i woke up and was like cool we could talk about it but i want to start with this and let's start with the important thing today in canada and new zealand is pink shirt day uh it is an annual event against bullying held in canada new zealand according to google uh participants wear shirts pink shirts

attend or host informative events to raise awareness about bullying, and particularly in schools. Now, I don't own a pink shirt. Steve had a bit of a morning. We'll talk about that later. Don't tell him. But Jesse remembered his pink shirt, and since I don't own

a pink shirt, I thought I'd bring in my daughter's pink cleats, because these are her soccer cleats. Which is adorable. Thanks to our VP of sales, Christina, who reminded me this morning to wear a pink shirt. So I wore my Lovia's Jumbo floorball participant jersey what a authentically worn jersey game worn absolutely steve and i went down there and played in the floorball tournament gotta get upper deck

to authenticate that cut that up right yeah put that into they should absolutely make warehouse games like trading cards that would be a great uh sponsorship like if they partnered sorry if they did a partnership there to do upper deck cards with john boy jimmy get on it get on it i think i only want a fraction of the sales jesse the worst thing you could have done is bring up the john boyd tournament not because it wasn't awesome but because steve will talk about it for 45 minutes now oh well because we won right like it was so cool that we won we won that was awesome i think i heard the story before but you know um anyway uh listen uh i don't think there's any way to characterize what happened online last yesterday as anything other than the messiest it's been in

a while i think that's fair and whatever side of this you fall on um and both sides will look at each other and go i'm on the right side um you know it was a it was a mess and i think uh to start it off uh we should kind of give a sense of what happened so you know the united states wins gold president calls the dressing room uh invites him to the white house on tuesday for the state of the union and obviously for a tour um makes the joke about the women's hockey team and how he would be impeached if he didn't invite them as well on cash patel's phone on cash but else won't yeah yeah um and then um the women's team uh politely declines the men's team goes they do the tour of the white house the usual stuff and then um some of them uh are some of them stay for

the uh for the state of the union which was the longest by the way state of the union in history yeah was it all the sitting uh sitting down and standing up it was almost like a catholic church baby sit down stand up and kneel i know they do that for all of them but that was a lot well every 10 or 15 seconds it's a yeah i'm not here to we're not talking about the state of the union and i'm just talking about the standing up and sitting down yeah and you know what they all kind of do that like they do it's not like this yeah it does i i wasn't trusting but i i so in there is obviously uh where the divide amongst people online happens and it goes several different ways but the main crux of what happened is the joke and uh i'm gonna um

you know when we talk about a joke right because this has been so hotly debated online ah these comedians ah you can't say anything you see actually you can it turns out you can say anything um uh in his latest special i know steve doesn't like him anymore but i actually really liked his take on it ricky gervais talks about jokes and his thing is um he's like when i make a joke and in this case this is ricky's version not mine okay he said if i make a joke about anne frank people think i'm punching down on the holocaust he's like usually though and i'm paraphrasing here. He said, usually I bring it back to myself and I'm the subject, but people can't get past the first part of it. And he said, just because you don't find a joke funny doesn't

mean you're right. And I think, okay, that's fair. Now, if we were to apply this to the situation in what happened with the American women's team and the American men's team, you have the subject of the joke people will argue was donald trump hey and he's making the joke hey if i don't invite them because he knows he hadn't invited them yet um i'll come then i'm going to be impeached and so when people will they'll argue hey listen this is a um this is a joke he made it about himself and what i think has been profound and very interesting in just viewing what happened yesterday and in the days leading up to it is the fact that as of right now there have been no public congratulations from the president no phone calls uh to the women's team no social

media posts nothing and so whether or not you found the joke funny um and i will tell you that i did not uh i understand why the women's team was like okay well you called them and you invited them and then you kind of said well you guys can come too if you want to i wouldn't want to get in trouble for not inviting you and you look at the uh the breakdown of the social media that the united states women's team engaged with yesterday there was a quote and i'm paraphrasing it's a quote but essentially it says pay attention to what jokes they laugh at it'll tell you a lot about them right and one account posted it you can tell how smart people are by what they laugh at There you go.

That's the quote. Same thing. Same thing. She said it better. A good chunk of the American team liked that post. They didn't say anything. They didn't make a public statement, but they liked that post. And so it's fair to assume, without being in their group chats, without having interviewed

them, that there's probably some pissed off feelings there. Is that fair, guys? Am I not? Why not? So I'm just trying to give you the breakdown of what this has. And I'm trying to be as straight down the middle as possible for anybody that might have missed it, because I have to understand and acknowledge that just because I'm chronically online and we're all like we're aware of what's going on, there's a lot of people that watch

the gold medal game on Sunday and put their kids to bed, woke up, fed their kids breakfast, took them to work or took them to school. They went to work. They came back yesterday or the day before. And we're not privy to any of this because they might not even have Twitter. No, I totally get it. So I need to kind of flesh this out for anybody that might have missed that, all of that.

Now, then the conversation shifts to should they or shouldn't they accept the invitation? And there were five players that didn't, on the men's team, that is. And where we ran into issues, or where people, I think, run into issues, is they ascribe a meaning to that. Or, well, they're not going. Well, they're all, three of them are from Minnesota.

and there's been some four of them are from minnesota three of them have the same agent who is also from minnesota right i don't know the reasons they didn't go and neither do you why is minnesota significant well because of what happened i think we know that oh the ice murders yes oh okay yeah sorry so i think and i'm not saying that that's the case and genzel said today it wasn't that for him no um and i like whatever i i on on that i i think we run into a huge huge problem when you try to take what somebody's actions are and put your own meaning behind it especially in a scenario like this like we can do that with a hockey play but like this is a little bit different you will end up disappointed um so the actions of the white house are different for

the men's than they are for the women's and i think that's the heart of the issue here and i think a lot of people were upset by quotes by you know jack hughes quinn hughes uh their mother um you know the various members of the american team saying listen we supported them we parted with them we're friends with them like whatever and i think you know if you were to go back to that phone call in the dressing room you know a lot of people laughed one person said close the northern border whatever brady kachuk brady i know i don't think that that's been confirmed so i don't think we can say that um and i think a lot of people some people think it's not some people think it is some people are that's right we did speak to someone who said it's it's absolutely not brady

We'll see. So I don't know. The reality of it is that in that dressing room, there are going to be a group of hockey players that all have differing opinions on that joke, and they were in the moment and whatever. I will tell you my personal opinion on it is that I found that disappointing. I didn't like the joke. I don't like the actions. I clearly don't like who's running the White House. you guys knew that about me and um i think that they could have done a lot better and a lot better could be done by just saying hey you know what uh we were in the moment we had just won the gold medal it was like seven minutes later and we fucked up and i'm sorry like that that's all it would take but that's not going to happen and so then it goes to guys the uh the conversation about

whether or not to go to the white house and i know that i've dominated the early conversation on this because i really want to get this out there if sometimes we do wait on on stories until they kind of the dust sort of settles i think everybody wants the instant reaction in real time and a lot of that is adam and jesse going easy tiger well uh which is good and i want to which is good i want to address the you know like so austin matthews did not stay for the state union he is on the ice for an optional skate this morning he's playing tonight so let's get that out of the out of the way because there's a lot of consternation about that in toronto jess i had this conversation with you in the car um jess and i had to do a a quick chore run uh before the show

and i'm gonna tell i'm gonna tell you about the choice to my view on the choice to go to the white house. Okay. So I told Jesse this, um, you know, a lot of people don't, they don't really take it, take me too seriously and include friends included. I know you guys do, uh, friends included when I say how American my childhood was. My mother is a Canadian has lived here for a long time, but she's the only one of her sisters that moved home. Every one of them is in the States. One of them passed away. One of them is still in Pennsylvania. One of them is still in Washington state. My cousins are American. Uh, her, her roots are American. She was in the States until she was almost 30 years old. Like you can't wash that off, right? You're,

you are very much raised in that world. And I can tell you, so when I was 10 years old, my mom took me to, um, she said, you know what? Here's our fun family vacation. Steve, you say you hate the beach. How about a Washington DC summer? And for anybody that's never been to Washington DC in the summer, it, you think Toronto's humid. Washington DC is literally a swamp yeah and it was built on a swamp yeah like it's it it was swampland so it was hot and i can remember we went to the white house we went to congress we went to the senate we did the national walk we did the jefferson memorial the lincoln memorial martin luther king the whole the whole thing and it was important for my mom to take me there at 10 years old while i'm sweating

through my shirt i was even hot back then that i got to do that and see that she said it's important you know where you come from it's important you know what your heritage is as well as being canadian because you are both sure and uh hey and we spent an entire freaking week on like tour buses and i was agitated to say the least but i've been back as an adult and really appreciate it now and when you've if you've never been to the white house or congress or the senate whatever it's hard to describe what it's like it's it's almost a religious experience everything is white marble clean it's august it feels very greco-roman and and intentionally so right supposed to be a throwback to the great republics of the past and you get a sense of the power and the prestige of

the united states and its own national myth right what people believe about their country true or not it's a myth right true or not some of it's true some of it's some of it's made up some of its glorification. We all have that. And I remember that trip more than I remember any other trip because it gave me an insight, not just into the United States, but as I grew up, I think about it now and it gives me an insight into my mom. She grew up in a school system and in a country that venerated Washington, D.C. That, you know, for all of its messiness and corruption and whatever, the United States changed the world in the 1700s and led the charge to what we have now, which is so many more democracies than we had before, right? Absolutely. No question.

And I think when you grow up in that, and this is the Canadian bias coming through, we can't relate. Do you think my mom took two seconds to say, we should probably go to Ottawa it too no no now my dad ended up taking me it was a good trip but our our houses of parliament are like oh that's a nice 18th century building where people get some stuff done i guess kind of a building it's a building it's beautiful like i do like the gothic sort of architecture i'm into that sure um but it's it's not it's not the same and it's not meant to be the same do you know what i'm saying yes and like the the the house where our prime minister is supposed to live which is 24 Sussex is so in disrepair that they don't recommend anyone go in it

without a mask right now. It needs something like 10 to $15 million in renovations to bring it up to code. It's a national embarrassment. And I can't believe that we actually have successive governments going through parliament and not fixing it. Like fix the frigging house. Cause no one,

it's a tourist attraction. No one wants to be the one to sink. 10 to $15 million, 10 to 15 million into it. And then the opposition party goes, see, exactly look at this waste of blah blah blah so we in canada cannot relate to the gravity of washington dc because we don't have that here and i'm not saying it's the same for every american

i'm not saying it's the same in every state in every school system your experience is your own but i do understand why the decision was made to go for these players i can tell you what i would have done, which is I wouldn't have gone. But I also can say that I understand why they did go. I understand why that might be a once in a lifetime opportunity. I mean, God, there's pictures of Sidney Crosby in the White House with Donald Trump when they won the cups in 16 and 17. I mean, three members of the current Canadian Olympic team were there like a month ago. Yeah. With the Florida Panthers.

I get it. I get it. It's not going to be my call for them to do, and i'm not going to choose that if it if i was an a high level athlete and i know i've got the look of a high level athlete the body of a high level athlete i was gonna say but i will tell you that when you make that decision you are not then free from criticism of it and that is where i go i understand your your call but i don't think i would do the same thing and in fact i know i wouldn't i know i wouldn't i would not go and easy for me to say i don't make millions of dollars i didn't grow up in the states and i'm not an american uh by birth and uh and so that's that's my but i'm allowed to say that um when when it becomes what what frustrates i think a lot of

people besides the women's hockey thing which is its own thing women have to continually justify themselves in this sport in sports in general not just media but players like you we know this we've had these discussions we can have them again but we know when you go to the white house and you just walk around and you shake hands with the president like listen any other president i'd be like yeah i'm gonna go this guy i don't like flat out no when you go and you shake hands and you take a picture it's one thing when you put on a make america great hat yep that's a different thing when you take your gold medal off and place it around the president's neck that is a different thing and when you stay for the longest state of the union ever and stand up and clap for these

policies which we know have harmed people then that's another thing so you can't really have it both ways you can't really say well everything's so political and then go to the political rally because that's what the state of the union is yeah you can't put on the political regalia which is what the hat is you can't so so that is where for me the biggest problem lies i know that american teams are going to go to the white house i know that i know that i know seahawks are going sure i in fact actually the seahawks are not going steve oh it is a choice and you are not free from criticism of that choice and so when i see a you know specific american with big followings going if you can't celebrate this you can't blah blah blah i'm like well hang on a second

um you're allowed to not celebrate it you're allowed to say i disagree with that you are can it can i can i point out it is beneath us everyone listening everyone involved that we have to justify this i know but i feel like no no i i understand i understand what you're doing it's not 2016 we know what you are we know what you are it's been a decade of this we know what you are um it's fully mask off whether you're being intentionally bad faith i don't understand what yes you do you're not a dumbass yeah you're you're not you're not that stupid i know you're not that stupid yes so you know exactly what everyone's problem is oh everything's so political you're not a dumbass i i know don't play stupid with me don't play

stupid with me i know the the the hockey player oh you know i'm just focused on the it's 2026 that shit doesn't work anymore we know what you are all of us you know what you are or i don't know why you're trying to tell me you're something other than the thing that you know that you are enough i it's it's not 2016 yep yep and i you've been putting us through this directly making everyone's lives worth for a decade and we're a little tired of it and we're kind of fed up with your shit we have to get back to and i i'm not taking away i know to get back to this i think you know on this show uh if you're a long-time listener you probably know that for a while there, especially during COVID and that sort of thing, when there were no games

going on, there was massive social movements, massive social upheaval. And we were, even in 2015, very much outspokenly against Trump live on this show every single time. And what I realized after that was, hey, like, and there have been studies on this. You think we want to talk about this? We are relinquishing our right to have a good day today. Hold on. You know what I mean? Yeah, I get that. we're not gonna have a good day but let me say this let me complete the point on this one because

i agree with you and i but the reason we have taken a step back from attacking this subject specifically is because there was a re-election and he was re-elected and uh we are canadians and there are psychological studies that have been done that have proven that tweeting and yelling at people and getting in their shit does not change their mind. In fact, it makes it worse. So we made the conscious decision here to live the example that we want to set. Meaning that with this company as best we can, in our personal lives as best we can, we have a certain set of beliefs. Jesse and Steve and I basically share very similar belief patterns. And we are going to live it. And if, and just like, you know, when there's people I look up to who I think are like

really intelligent, smart, better than me at certain things, I go and I grab a piece of what I think they're great at. And I try to emulate it in my life. If we spent time after time, after time railing and beating the drum and whatever, we're going to, we're not going to get anywhere with anybody. Sometimes it's the softer approach, which is we're just going to live the way we live. And we're gonna conduct ourselves the way we conduct ourselves. And we're gonna celebrate this and celebrate that and do our pride month still

and do all the things that we do and not go at this head on all the time because you don't change minds that way. You change minds by living it. Well, and definitely not from here. Certainly not from here. We are in a different country and we talk to Americans and love American friends

and had amazing messages from Americans on monday yeah and you know but we have our own stuff here that we are not that we need to fix in this country and this show needs to be a place where people can come and enjoy the hockey talk and enjoy the jokes and all that stuff and you know understanding that a society is not built on one opinion there are plenty of people who listen to this show that have very different opinions than we do. And the stress between that, the gap between those opinions is often what produces the societies we are in. Every single era of the United States and Canada, frankly, on a smaller level, has been divided. It's just a question of how much and how. And I feel like

my opinion on this is that we needed to take a step back, let other people handle it, watch how it played out give you our opinions and i'm not going to be out here doing this every time i'm just not sometimes life throws your curveballs and you don't have time to get to them and that's where task rabbit 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 oh and they're way around on that it's 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've got to have that scraper thing and the washer thing. The chemicals. You've got to have the right chemicals. See, that's what I'm saying. That's why I used TaskRabbit, and I employed a tasker. Here's the thing. TaskRabbit connects you with taskers in your area for furniture assembly,

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Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. can i derail the show um with something that's not an opinion it's an objective fact sure several objective facts that's what you're here to do okay he is a misogynist talks about grabbing

people by yep you can't even fucking say it you know i just said fuck you said grabbing by the pussy and that was 10 years ago and no one gave a shit cash patel is currently leading one of the largest cover-up of child sex trafficking in human history and that's who was in the locker room on the fbi's private jet drinking with the american hockey team and people are talking about well you know uh so and so went when biden was in office and so and so went when obama was in office and so and so this is not the same shit and like i said we know who you are we know what you are so you trying to fool us is a waste of everyone's time and i'm fed up with it now from the canadian perspective

you know i've i've been asked a number of times over the last 24 hours which have not been a pleasant 24 hours for me and least of which it's not the politics we'll talk about we'll talk about that later um people have been messaging me off the hook about austin matthews yep because i talk about the leafs for a living and he's the leafs cat and you know one of the one of the conversations is you know whenever the leafs next home game is i know their next two games are on the road saturday saturday there you go oh great we'll be streaming it so the leafs next home game um is he gonna get booed when the team inevitably honors him no that's sean buchi gross who wrote who asked that question by the way i found that really funny that he didn't ask it about ottawa

though yeah found that interesting it's it's bad faith and in the same way that uh i'm sure american media outlets are uninterested in canadian hand-wringing about all this i am not interested in a single thing any american media member has to say about canada and i'll get into that not interested in the slightest please shut the fuck up john and crew with austin matthews should he get honored yes should he get booed when he's honored no and i'll tell you why he's getting honored for winning a gold medal he won the gold medal fair and square the american hockey team two the canadian hockey team one he won it fair and square cordial clap good for you winning the gold medal winning a hockey game was never the thing anyone had a problem with

we talked about the three-on-three overtime oh my god we uploaded a video a little over a week ago about how three-on-three hockey to decide games at the olympics is bs the amount of comments from knuckle-dragging dumbasses who are like oh this is just sour grapes and it's like this was uploaded over a week before that fucking game that was the moron the day the tournament started or the day before it that was one of my biggest gripes with the tournament when i was like oh this thing's starting and we could get to the situation where the gold medals is that at three on three sure enough it happened yeah and sure enough yeah now people are going back and being like you're coping i was like you can't cope with something that hasn't happened what are you

talking about so uh there was that um you know the too many men call we we talked about it we moved on from it and that was it they they didn't capitalize on their chances and that's what we wanted monday show to be they played good enough to win they didn't win here's the things they could have done differently to maybe win next time shucks they didn't win congratulations to the u.s yeah that's what we wanted it to be so that's why i want i want matthews to get his due now you can never say he's not a winner anymore though he won he won and and the hughes brothers were taking shots at the toronto media about uh how he's a great captain i'm like i don't think anyone in toronto was criticizing that yeah it was oh yeah all the leafs fans during the olympics

talking about how matthews is a bad captain for team usa joe hagerty in boston like i don't know guys guys what we need to do here guys guys anyway you know yeah anyway what people have a problem with trump besides being directly responsible for the murder of american citizens through his ice gestapo with the context of canada he threatened our sovereignty he threatened and those those players taking pictures with carolyn levitt and shit don't think we we haven't forgotten with that with her smile on her face that looked a little different at the time but that smile on her face hey we look forward to the u.s uh beating our soon-to-be 51st state canada you fucking asshole we'll never be your 51st state and that's got

nothing to do with hockey that's got everything to do with you motherfuckers showing up at our front door with guns and tanks and shit of course we're gonna feel a certain type of way about that and you're the captain of a canadian nhl team austin brady connor hellebuck might as well be quinn until a couple months ago quinn until a few months ago and you shook hands with that motherfucker fuck you that dude threatened the place where i live and actively continues to do so and i'm supposed to just look at you and feel fine about that fuck you now it's not as simple as being a good person or being a bad person i've heard nothing but good stories about austin during his time literally not not a bad one brady

too brady too during austin's time in toronto the way he deals with kids an executive from sick kids hospital told me directly like sheepishly because they're like i don't even know if he wants me to tell this but like he shows up at sick kids uh or austin shows up at sick kids uh unannounced to spend time with the kids at sick kids hospital all the time that is an objectively good thing to do but when someone threatens the sovereignty of the country where you make a living where you've built a life and you shake hands with that man you give that man a signed jersey you smile and pose with that man that's got nothing to do with hockey and of course i'm gonna hate that you did that and like people were like i'm gonna get the nameplate taken off

of my jersey some people were like i hope he's traded now that's a little much i that's a little honestly i don't think it is i i think it is i think that's heat of the moment stuff it is heat of the moment but that's where we're in the moment yeah and then a week from now that'll be that'll go away greatest player in franchise history no question okay so imagine this imagine this greatest take austin's name out of it take the leafs out of it you cheer for the the paw tucket patriots it's a made-up team uh greatest player in franchise history uh greatest goal scorer in franchise history your team's captain one day you find out they're super stoked on hitler

you're gonna feel a little different about that player you know what i mean so i'm not saying trade the guy uh i'm not saying take his name plate off or don't but people's feelings of genuine hurt from that are absolutely valid now there's going to be the conversation of is he one of the kachuks because those guys are disgraceful bootlickers, like genuinely enthusiastic participants in this disgraceful human beings. I'm not sure there's a difference. I'm not sure it matters if you are a, an enthusiastic participant in this, a passive participant in this, or simply a useful idiot. Um, at the end of the day you're all going to be in that picture forever and no one is ever going to forget it and

no one should and he's probably going to score at some point in the next few days maybe the next few hours next few hours right maybe maybe he's already scored by the time you're listening to this because it's up late and that's my fault and we'll get into that um if you cheer for the team that he plays for i mean your team's up a goal that they weren't if you cheer for you know the sins or you cheer for the leafs and those guys score you should feel good about it you don't have to feel good about those players and brady's gonna blow this popsicle stand like we all yeah brady's getting traded like real soon we all know there's a reason why there's like profiles being done on his wife and people magazine i'm like yeah yeah no disrespect this

is not a shot at ottawa it's not i just think he wants to be a star and and it's going to be hard for him to be the star he wants to be playing for canadian team but put it this way uh after the past few days like i've always wanted austin to be a leaf for life and um yeah i'm open i'm open i see i disagree with that a hundred thousand percent okay and jesse go ahead you were going to say no because um yeah steve i think it was it was important for you to get that out there because i think people's feelings are always valid in that like hey somebody's actions somebody did something and i feel a certain way about this and this is how i then feel like that's that's completely justified and adam i think it's great that you added your american perspective on it

um i don't think the audience understood that before but so i'm glad you explained like the where you're coming from as kind of a part-time american well i love that in your childhood i love the country i do yeah so i i wanted to just add on because i think what you were saying is kind of where i landed on the whole thing yesterday in that like i'm not a fan of donald trump i don't think any of us are you know if everybody if anybody on this panel is gonna be oh yeah i'm just saying so like i'm a i'm allowed like i'm sure people watching this right now so some of them sitting there uh they think i'm a loser you know for whatever reasons they have in their mind they think i'm a loser right can imagine so the gall so like god damn people

mega jesse is you know so just the same way like you out there might think i'm a loser i think that individual who's the president of the united states is a loser like i think i think cash patel is a loser too so yo that guy is the biggest fucking dork that guy that guy's a fucking giant loser and also a very active protector of pedophiles yes and on top of all the political stuff uh yeah i think he's a loser and so when i see them inviting a guy that i think is a giant loser into their locker room my feelings then are like oh you associate with losers and then you start going even further where you gather around his phone and you start pouring champagne on him and i i never played sports at any type of high level not professionally

definitely but i know how like locker rooms work and i know how teams work you know how teams work just by being at a workplace teams are teams for a reason they're very insular and hockey might be the most team sport we have in sports where it's like it's about brotherhood or womanhood and it's about the guys in the locker room and we win for each other and then when you win it's about those guys and to see you bring in somebody from the outside who's a loser and then make them feel like they're a part of that i can't help but feel your association to this person is enough to include him in your brotherhood that you're not now also a loser just by proxy and association and these are american words these are american words the the online has been flooded by americans

who are celebrating that win going god what a bunch of losers yeah and listen it's not going to mean anything coming from us when we literally cheer for the team that lost and then that's i think i want people to understand this isn't coming from the perspective of the canadian who is the actual loser and that our team lost never had a problem with them winning they won fair and square congratulations celebration is fine i'm talking about my personal feelings and you don't have to share them towards two individuals that are the main topic of this conversation donald trump and kash patel so and i'm glad you brought this up adam when brady or it was matthew kachuk puts a gold medal around donald trump like that symbolic that is an association

with a dude that you are chummy with did you see the new york post this morning no no no hold on hold on i want to go back to that no no no because it it's i know but hold that okay no no let him go let him go it's the front page literally said trump wins gold oh no okay yeah so no definitely yeah definitely so it's not theirs anymore well it's not even theirs anymore and i was gonna get to that for sure i know it's okay when matthew kachuk is anointing trump and giving him his gold medal to wear and everything i i i'm allowed to feel like matthew kachuk is a loser in that moment because i think donald trump with everything steve you have correctly stated about him through those things i think he's a loser i'm gonna use the word consistently you're gonna get sick of it

so now my opinion of kachuk whether i had that before or whether this is this seals it i'm allowed to have that opinion of that guy based on everything he is doing in front of my eyes and he has every right to do it and he has every right to yeah that's like they have the right to go there sure and i'm allowed to feel my way about them going there yes as a canadian who has no vote in your country who has never lived there i'm no we're not even telling you how to vote we're telling you how we feel i'm just saying based on the images i see with my eyes and the videos i see i think it's loser activity to put a gold medal around that man's neck and the other 20 guys who stand around there in his office being like hey let's go we love being around this guy i also

think that's loser activity you guys look like a bunch of losers being there with him because i personally wouldn't do that because i don't like that guy and you guys all chose to do that and this is now my feeling towards all of you including austin matthews who's the captain of my favorite hockey team uh you're kind of a loser austin for going there and just being like yeah this is awesome because i think that guy is garbage i i want to ask you something will you feel the same way when uh inevitably unless montreal or edmonton win a cup this this uh spring uh when inevitably another american team wins the cup and a bunch of canadians go yep okay yep that's why i know that's going to be the rebuttal so i just want to get everybody on record no because because what

these was the difference is now i think is that you you touched on it this man has threatened our sovereignty yeah they he hadn't in 2016 he had in 2017 right he'd done a bunch of other horrible things sure but we didn't like them then either with regards to canada yeah um you know that's why i wanted to mention you know so the panthers are the reigning cup champions they had their white house visit brad marchand is on that team sam bennett is on that team sam reinhardt is on that team i don't know if all three were there i believe brad was for sure let's assume all three were there sure it's hockey all three were there um yeah no that's horrible that's horrible to you it's but we have to say that so here's another thing i want to get

out of the way because what they like to do is just flood the zone with whataboutism i am not claiming to be on a higher ground i am not claiming to be on uh the correct side of anything you know when people use the term the tolerant left in the big 2026 they haven't learned another fucking term in 10 years right i'm not trying to claim to be the good guy or on the good guy side i'm not even trying to identify the good guys i know who the bad guys are the bad guys are those who associate themselves with him you are the bad guys oh i've been a listener forgot i don't fucking care you're the bad guys history will know you as the bad guys unless the bad guys win then they'll just fucking rewrite everything but you're usually too stupid to pull that off

that's how this works so when you mentioned the the new york post um uh headline today which is yeah trump wins gold it's him at the speech uh from all intents and purposes the speech went about his uh you know the way people the right loved it the left didn't you know what i think was interesting is that and i tweeted this yesterday i saw this i saw the cash patel moment and i saw the trump phone call not just in the context of the women's hockey team but also in a stolen valor sort of way because these guys you know all from different backgrounds um different uh income levels families and that sort of thing and whatever um they won this through hard work and and attention to detail and and missing birthdays and school

dances and christmases and you know spending entire weekends at the rink and we all know the stories they're amazing stories and for that to be in this case specifically with this administration cheapened and used as they were literally the next nikki minaj you know nikki has become what she's become and the and and that group loves to use that and he's already chewed her up and spit her out of course and that's and and so it wasn't and i know the americans got the american team got their headlines and stuff on sunday but like he took them and used their hard work and made it about himself and that and they don't i don't think that they're going to know that i don't think they're going to see it that way i don't

feel bad for them i'm not i'm not asking you i'm just saying that's what happened and i i think that that is the the criminal part of this because they deserve it in a pure victory sort of way this is you know i would argue the olympic gold is sort of like a more if you're very moralistic about it it's a more pure way your pure championship to win than even the stanley cup because the stanley cup you get paid to win right the olympics you're just there yes you get athlete endorsement deals i fucking understand that there's maybe more factors but you're not into a stanley you're not signing a 10 year 80 million dollar contract with the u.s olympic team there's there's more factors that more variables that go into a stand you are the greatest of your country

and you have earned this and i just i was sad to see it in my view uh used for political gain and and and i and i don't think when they went to see clinton or bush or obama or biden or even back in the 80s with Reagan, that it was used quite that. So it's always a little bit political. It's always a little bit used as aren't we great, but it's not quite like this. The sports teams visiting the White House used to be a bipartisan affair. Yeah, yeah. Go do it because that's a cool place to visit.

Not unlike you visiting it as a child. It's like, whoa, look at this thing that we all kind of know. It's one of the most famous buildings in history. It's the White House. We're going to go meet the president. and there never used to be a big political attachment to it but somewhere along the last few years that has become a political statement when you are there so things have changed and things do change throughout history yeah because the guy is on a world tour of making everyone's

life worse yeah and that's what you gotta understand don't like and and adam here can i just correct one thing please you said stolen valor this is enthusiastically surrendered valor sure yeah and i i also think like listen i'll be i'll be open about my bias like one of the things that has bothered me the most in this and we obviously haven't touched it on on it much is the the comments about nato in afghanistan you know steve and i uh along with many other canadians uh have friends that serve there and did we have a friend that did three tours there funnily enough his name is steve um and he told me from time like i used to message on facebook and stuff and he'd tell me about it and you know that administration spat in the face of everybody

that was a native nato ally for 15 to 20 years in afghanistan canada was not in afghanistan because canada had any beef with afghanistan before that canada was there supporting an ally and you know when you when when i i need like even guys like wayne gretzky i'm like i get why Gretzky doesn't understand this because he doesn't live here and has not been exposed to our rage about it but you spat in the face of our military of our you know of people that literally because in the military you like give up your citizenship and become a soldier it's a different designation under the law and you sacrifice at very least a good chunk of your early 20s right through to probably your late 20s or maybe even longer for your country and so for that comment oh they were

just in a support role or it didn't matter they weren't 169 canadians died what the fuck would you know about a uh uh people came home and were never the same and it's it's and that's the same in every country that participated and so for us our rage comes from the fact that we were unwillingly the united states's best friend for every single year after world war ii and they just turned around and punched us and so that is also part of where we're coming from there is an anger here about the treatment and you know they're in the states they'll talk about trade deals or whatever else and you know canada's taking advantage whatever you have demeaned us in the most elemental way and so yeah we're gonna be we're gonna be furious about it and what's funny

about it is when you talk about it to americans they're like i don't understand why you're so upset well and i i felt i felt here's what i felt bad about during the olympics because i had to really compartmentalize i know there's a lot of americans listening to the show right now who this is very uncomfortable listen what i had to compartmentalize is there was a lot of chirping coming from american fans and it's and that's okay like sports though i like sports and it's playful we're not a lot of us are not as receptive to it right now yeah at the moment yeah um and if i you know weirdly i didn't feel the same way about friggin france no but you got or you got way to take that not personally right so i had to compartmentalize it and you stop i mean there

were so many you can't decipher okay which one is being a troll which one is doing it out of fun so you just so you just shut it off and you just become this vessel of talking about hockey that's that's and that's what i did this is about fun i'm not letting anyone ruin the fun hooray let's did you have fun i had lots of fun so did i had a great i think there's a an important he ruins everything he touches i know everything he's separating the like the individual americans who listen to this show like i don't have any problem with anybody i know like the the issues lie as a canadian are with the administration not the people who just yeah that's so key not just hey you live in america there's any problem there or you wanted to root for team usa at the olympics

that's fine like no this is strictly the administration and the policies and what they've done here can i also say i have no idea what's being said within your borders like last year when canada won the four nation face-off i said you will never have this country and you will never have that trophy and some americans not trumpers felt really not good about that and they messaged me and they let me know about it and i was like guys you clearly have you don't understand this moment at all at all you don't you don't understand where i'm coming from you don't understand that i'm not talking about you sally in maine specifically yeah you don't understand that i'm not talking about jake in michigan yeah those individuals were also

confused as to why canadians were booing the flag because it's not like that started out of nowhere it was a it was a response to what was happening it was the 51st to our countries i'm gonna stand and enthusiastically sing your song when you're talking about taking over ours the fuck are you talking about right and maybe they're just not getting the info i don't know i don't know they're not and i don't know what's being said in your in your borders also i i i have to say you know like that's that's my main thing like this is not anti-american it's it's anti that that group and i don't have any problem saying that and i've i said it at the beginning of our american streams because you have to be honest like you know it's i did all the usa streams right it's a little bit

people were like why are you guys doing that you're canadian a couple of people whatever and i'm like listen oh i want to be free of that for a minute and just enjoy the olympics we have a lot of american listeners of course and i know i know that this is in no way reflective of that entire country which is why we started this show the way that we did outlining it i gave you my american heritage i love that country and that's i don't like where it's at right now and i think that's all right but you know it comes back to as a group how do we feel about this i don't love it i thought you know i saw the athletic article about it you know the i think the title was how the americans won gold and lost the room and i think right you know i think that there is a and

this is my opinion again and you guys might disagree i think there's an over estimation about how much effect this is actually going to have on fans in the game i think a few weeks from now this will be behind us the move cycle the new cycle moves too quickly people will be talking about playoffs and you know the one of the cruxes of that piece was well it's going to be there's going to be like people are going to be alienated from this and uh it's going to prevent hockey from growing i don't see that and i don't agree with that i think maybe for some but i don't see this are you really going to stop watching hockey because you disagree with that maybe you are but you're far more principled than i am and good for you and i'm going to continue watching this

game and i'm not going to love that moment with austin or any of those guys i'm not going to love it you can't get me to love it but that doesn't negate the fact that austin's been a great player for the least the best ever he's been a very very good citizen here in terms of and i mean global citizen i mean you know you talk about the charity stuff all that stuff that i can i can take all of that on balance i can't and so i want anybody who's american who's listening who might feel like i don't understand this or you feel attacked or whatever that the target is very clearly two people in this scenario right very clearly two we've outlined who they are you don't i and two are my american listeners i would encourage you to try try to understand how you might feel

if another country which was bigger and more powerful than you said uh you should join us or we're coming uh that is that is a it's an ugly ugly feeling especially when it was somebody that we did nothing to steve how are you going to feel about austin going forward these players not just austin um because there's a lot of people wondering how to feel about the players on this team they're vessels of hockey talent get out there and play that's how i feel right now what i'm not enthusiastic about this person you know what i mean um how am i gonna talk about it if he scores like tonight

or i don't know i don't know if it'll be much different um you know it's my son's favorite player it's got posters well he right now it's extreme it is it is it's a little unfair for me to ask you put you on spot right now because it is so fresh no of course like i'm not gonna it may not laugh a weak perspective on it might change your mind entirely a month who knows it or you know it's just a part of the full picture maybe well yeah like because i'm so much good what i'm probably gonna do is do what everyone's done over the past cursed decade which is uh be forced to remember it but move on i think that's what's gonna happen yeah i think that's fair i think that's fair i see the

same in ottawa by the way these are all all these discussions about matthews is like man it's the same thing i'm seeing on sense twitter too yeah with brady yeah 100 and people like oh i'm really upset whatever i get in the moment but like does that make brady a bad citizen a bad captain of the senators i don't think it does i think it i think it's an awkward moment i think it's a part of the story but you can't he knows a fucking thing about canada okay well but i don't i can't comment on that because i don't know all i know is that i'm giving you my he's been a good citizen in ottawa that's all i can tell you one thing i know like this isn't gonna stop me from like doing my job no like i you're allowed you're allowed to work with people who you disagree with you're

allowed to have your personal opinions about people but still be cordial with them you know next time the Sens are in town and you got I got to go in a scrum with Brady it's not like I'm like I'm not like upset with this individual I don't think any NHL player particularly likes anybody in the media I don't think he likes me just by default of my job but he can have that personal opinion of me and still give me the whatever answer I needed in whatever scrum and then the same thing's gonna be with Austin right you've never shaken hands with a guy who was friends with jeffrey epstein so i don't know steve i don't know allegedly have i well not allegedly who have i shaken hands with on on goddamn camera you know what i mean there's a lot of people on

that list yeah well you know lie lie lie lie lie document proving lie video proving lie audio proving how many how many jets you've been on in your life not that many hey would you have bought his jet yeah no you know who did him uh did we shake we didn't shake gary batman's hand when we met him at the amazon thing right i've never met him i would we were in the room with him we were in the room with him i've never you never you didn't go up to him i'm trying to think i would shake his hand yeah but then i'm trying to think like i'm not a child like here's the thing i the other thing is the he's never been accused of sex trafficking i don't like the way he runs my hockey league i'm trying but he's never been accused of being a criminal powerful

person that i've had the privilege of shaking their hand off the privilege anymore of shaking their hand and if they could have been an association well oh right that's what i was trying to go through my head yeah i i think i don't need to do that on air i think it's this i think it's this we told you how we feel you know how we feel we're not going to hit this every day but you know how we've reacted when the hockey canada scandals happen yeah and it wasn't like well they're canadian so let it go like we were pretty hard you know um i think you know how we feel on this stuff and i think just to wrap it up because there are hockey things we got to talk about including i got a compliment kyle dubas

get oh me too major compliments too um uh you know how we feel this is how we feel If you are ever confused about how we feel, you can refer back to this episode and we're going to move forward now. a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca You gotta try breakfast at

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it's about being able to bounce back oikos pro feed your strength visit oikos.ca for more details that's right and let's talk about the trade let's talk about the colorado avalanche and the pittsburgh penguins making what i think is a phenomenal trade for both of them now this is a um it's an interesting one because for colorado if you just look at the trade you're probably like why calf's face is why we'll get to that in a second i want to give kyle dubas his flowers can you read out the trade oh yeah sorry excuse me the vidsport penguins acquired samuel gerrard in a 2028 second round pick from the abs for brett kulak so the penguins got the abs to attach a second rounder yeah and put samuel gerrard in the trade who by the way i think

could really help a team like the leagues that would have been great i'd love to have him on the team he's a good player and i think he matches exactly what the penguins uh how the penguins try to play hockey they got a crazy amount of puck boomers now i don't think sam gerrard ever panned out the way that perhaps the abs or i think he was drafted by the senators was he not was he not part of the duchesne trade sam or that you know what i think he was or his draft pick was whichever it was yeah i don't think he ever panned out to be the top pairing defenseman that they needed or thought he was going to be but in colorado that really doesn't matter because they've had the emergence of and i'm just pulling up the name sam malinsky who just got signed uh to the contract

that he got signed to and he looks phenomenal this year so joe sakic's going i need another center he was drafted by the preds drafted it was a three-way trade with the sends and preds got it yep um uh joe sakic said i need to shed salary and kyle dubas said i know you need to shed salary and you're going to pay to shed salary and by the way here's brett kulak and what i love about this trade and what i have always always always said about dubas people from pittsburgh i know you're waiting for this i've always said with a couple notable notable exceptions he his best attribute as a gm are trades as a seller as a as a as an asset acquirer he's exemplary he's really really good at that specific thing he's everything i want a modern gm to be in that he's kind of playing

nhl with it it's like i'm gonna acquire these assets i'm gonna move things around and we get crazy with the draft picks it's a lot of fun he did a good job with the leafs at that um like very early in his tenure when like before i think he was even officially named gm when he was named gm they were already a playoff team but uh during that weird little pocket um before lou lamorello became gm and him and mark hunter were splitting duties he did such a good job at acquiring assets but it looks so much better now that he's doing it with a team that's already in the playoffs yeah this is where he's gonna thrive it's this middle ground where he's supposed to be bad but then now they're good and he can sell and add at the same time he's in his element this is a great this is

a great move for the penguins i think it's exactly gerard the way he plays is exactly what the penguins need further down the lineup especially with letang being old and carlson being old and maybe they're not there in the next couple of years he's a he's the perfect dubious defenseman undersized puck mover yeah oh yeah like a thousand percent to a t and and so uh you know the the penguins have something like is it i have to pull this up the draft picks they have are absolutely insane in the next few drafts they have a first two seconds two-thirds 2026 they have a first two seconds two-thirds 2027 they have a first two seconds sorry three seconds and two-thirds in 2020 so that means that is that is a boatload of picks in the top three rounds

and the team's gonna make the playoffs now he's storing them like a squirrel who knows winter is coming and make no mistake winter is coming yeah one day crosby and malcolm will not be there crosby malcolm letang eric carlson at some point even brian rust is getting older yeah ricard raquel i mean they they have 16 picks in the first three rounds in the next three years that's i can also see a third one of those two thirds he has in 26 becoming no maybe two fourths oh you're so right you're so right you're right you're so right yeah i have a third when i can have multiple fourths oh my god he loves loves i get multiple fourths he also is going to right he's also and then both the guys don't pan out he's also gonna have 40 something like the drafting is a problem

48 million dollars to spend this summer now there aren't a lot of great free agents available and so the numbers on july 1st are going to be berserk for for mid-level guys yeah like jade schwartz and who else is available there's like uh bobby mcmahon bobby like the contracts are gonna be bonkers but where i think kyle duvis he signed the extension all right uh five years believe it or not with philly good for him um the what is going to be interesting is i don't think kyle dubas is going to go out and i think he's going to be active in free agency of course but i think a lot of that cap space when it gets eaten up again will get eaten up by trades i think they're about to have a really interesting trade deadline too yeah because crosby's out four weeks

yeah them making the playoffs is by no means guaranteed yep uh that that's gonna hurt and he should try to make the playoffs i i think so too but um like this is i don't know what you call this like it's not buying it's not selling um i would argue here's what i'm gonna say i think gerard is arguably a better defenseman which is why he makes five million dollars and he got a second round pick like this is a it's a good trade for both teams because colorado's end of it is incomplete and we'll get to that but the trade in a nutshell is a smash home run victory you look at it on paper and you're like what the fuck yeah this is one of the like if i was doing a trade tree about this the challenge would be like sometimes a trade is part of a tree and it's so

odd that you are forced to do additional research and you got to go why did they do this you have to find the context why that trade happened in history yeah if yeah if five years down the road you just looked at this on paper and somebody who wasn't like living and breathing the nhl at this time probably doesn't understand the context that was stupid right yeah no but it's it's to give colorado cap space yeah right for it's for um nazim kadri so supposedly they have 8.7 million dollars in cap space which is a lot of people were pointing out is really interesting i don't think that's happening he's going to stay in pittsburgh forever no um i've given up i'm giving up white flag it's not happening i said kadri because dregger went on tsn radio and was like

oh cadre's available and then this trade happens and it looks like maybe well it's funny bring him back because colorado's trying to win and they got rid of a player they know they can win with because they won with him but they also won without him because he was hurt for a lot of that run and they might use the space to acquire another player they know they can win with because they won with them in nasm cadre so the trade uh in a vacuum is obviously not good for colorado but it's incomplete because we know they're gaining cap space and we know that it's for the purpose of buying adam and steve if you were an acquiring team would you be worried about the 26 27 season the 27 28 season and the 28 29 season where you would have to pay

nazim qadri seven million dollars no no not not when not if i'm colorado listen if scott lot and goes to free agency don't be shocked if he gets five million bucks oh yeah now some cadre at seven that is going to be a fucking steal and heading he scores 40 points heading into the playoffs if you get cadre what you get to do is take a little burden off nathan mckinnon heading into the playoffs take a little burden off brock nelson those are guys who just went through an intense olympics one of them got hurt um they've both been playing incredibly you need them right So you think about the team once they get to the playoffs, but the road to get there is important too. And like, you know, since the Olympics have ended, you know, people have been making the joke to me since Canada lost and they know I feel bad.

They're like, well, at least you have 25 Leaf games to look forward to. And I'm like, oh my God. Is that how many games are left? Riley Myers, let's go. yeah there's still like nearly that's just under a third of the season left yep what that's crazy so if you can make a trade now um that eats up like a quarter of the regular season and then takes you into the playoffs i think there's value in that too do you think there's a way calgary retains on this or do you think somebody's gonna be desperate enough and was like

oh i don't pay it i think there's too many people looking for centers yeah and if they retain i think it's minimal there was that report yesterday that cadre had officially requested a trade yeah i mentioned that yeah dragger on the tsn radio and i i i look at what colorado has guys what are they going to trade to calgary because look at look at what they have in terms of draft picks zero in the first three rounds this year i think there's a lot of value in just getting them off the books uh what well no no sorry i'm not saying trade him for nothing but there's value in getting that money off the back that seven million bucks you're saving over this season the next three is worth something oh yeah yeah it's not gonna age great steve's right about that next year they've

got a first and two seconds that's valuable okay uh the following year they don't have their second but they have their first and their third and all the way through they also have four seventh seventh they have four seven they have four seventh round picks this year for some weird reason what uh nobody nobody wants holy shit nobody cares i don't think i've ever seen a four if one of those media seven picks plays good for them that's crazy and you turn four sevenths into like a one one fifth how does that does every draft pick this year get it done so that is nine draft picks but it's two fourths three three fifths and four sevenths does every draft pick this year get it done do you think that kyle dubas is looking at those four sevens and going oh we

can go back oh that looks good justin's running uh running the board today um i mean yeah hell yeah i do think he is so or like you got two seconds next year so what if one or two of those is the is the star of the show in the trade but then you have just this that's crazy that they have more than one pick per round but they don't have a pick until the fourth round i also that's crazy can i can i just throw this out there just back to the pittsburgh payments for just a second yeah yeah sure sir no no i mean i'm not trying to like derail thing i think it's amazing that they turn that oilers trade into what they turned it into they turn it into getting out from the jari contract after a 10 week run where he was good after trying to waive him last year all hail

kyle he's got two more years left on this deal after this one and the edmonton oilers are now saddled all hail kyle and he's done an unreal job brought in skinner skinner's been very good yeah and then and then he can resign skinner or not you change your mind as new evidence presents itself holy shit what a job and then he goes and and is take able to take brett kulak who was a part of that trade yep and and say all right not only are you going to give me a second but you're going to take kulak back because i know you need a defenseman and that's going to take that's going to make the monetary part easier because it's really only a 3.75 or whatever it is or three it's like a two million dollars three million dollar difference like and and i think brett

kulak's a valuable defender i think he'll play good minutes for the colorado avalanche he's been to two straight stanley cup finals yep like that's valuable on your you know five six seven defenseman was he on the abs when they went kulak i have no idea i can't remember but regardless it The point is, that is unbelievable asset management. And that is exactly what the Toronto Maple Leafs need, funnily enough. You know what? We should probably completely yard sale our relationship with him for one more year of a lame duck president.

What are we doing? It's a master class. And I'm excited for what the Colorado Avalanche are going to do. I just don't know what they're going to move on from. I guess you got the next two years first round picks to move. i think they got to go for it though i think you have to this year kulak the reason i was like wait was he on the avalanche he played against the avalanche in 22 uh with the oilers oh okay you guys like my shacket yes it's very nice you know where it's from uh a store i i do actually

i do or no where it's from thank you for stepping on that oh did i wreck your joke i'm sorry okay jesse listen you you you were where steve was wearing his quarter zip jesse i know you've got some doer jeans yeah um this is this first off when do you ever see me not on the podcast with a black t-shirt because i'm too damn hot you like the simon cowell vibe it breathes you are sweaty doer uses cool max fibers that help regulate your temperature are you cool maxing i'm cool maxing right now i i'm looks maxing and cool maxing and by the way it helps me regulate my temperature maybe not my mood but my temperature for sure they should add that they should that cool maxing ability uh also their jeans are antimicrobial which you'll love because you can

wear them more between washes and it helps them stay fresh when you're a sweaty boy like me who refuses to wash jeans that's important really important now i know you love doer as much as i do also if you want to look sexy like me i mean who doesn't uh you should check it out get your own pair of jeans, get a cool shacket, go to doer.ca slash sdp. You'll get 15% off your first order. You don't even have to have one of these in your neighborhood. You just add an order to your house. Again, doer, d-u-e-r dot c-a slash sdp for 15% off. It's doer.ca slash sdp. Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer

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You gotta try breakfast at A&W. At participating A&W locations in Ontario. So Dom LeCision did a quick, and this is just for the playoff hunt, just so everybody, to reset everybody, tell you where we're at um he has a a couple of um charts on who's in who's on the bubble and who's definitely not going to make it so for instance on the eastern conference uh the basically in group is the lightning and the carolina hurricanes the safe pretty small group safe

shots montreal likely bets uh buffalo detroit pittsburgh the bubble is columbus washington Islanders sends, they're all between 41 and 59%. Oh, Leafs are on the outside of that. Unlikely bets. Boston at 33%. Boston? Florida at 30%. Toronto at 21%. Long shots

are Philly and New Jersey, and then basically out of the New York Rangers. And then in the Western Conference, there are four teams that are basically in Colorado, Dallas, Minnesota, Vegas. Safe shots are the Mammoth and the Kings. Likely bets are the ducks and the oilers unlikely would be the sharks and preds long shot seattle washington seattle

new jersey sorry new jersey what am i saying winnipeg and then basically out blues blackhawks and we know about the flames and which category is boston interestingly enough this is why i brought it up uh the unlikely bets because am i missing something well i think because there's maybe some probabilities and again it's a full article but they're 10th place yeah and they are second wild card yeah right yeah and they are and it's interesting because the sabers have a 79 chance but according to dom's model the bruins have a 33 chance oh all righty and it's probably based on how they played and expected goals and some more i'm giving you the baseline read his article sure sure oh i just of all the things you threw out there i was like boston well especially with

the caps and blue jackets and islanders uh uh well mostly caps and blue jackets immediately trailing boston and yet having a better percentage of getting in well yeah the islanders is because they're in the they're in the third spot uh washington has not been good um and they've played like even like look at that they're tied with columbus they've played three fewer games though yeah which is a huge problem i've been shocked by washington this season i thought they were going to be a okay i think i had them winning the metro i thought i think i might have too i thought they're doing a fantastic job with their young talent and bridging this ovechkin era to this new era and like everything they got going with strome i don't know and i love their defense

farivari carlson like freaking i don't know for whatever they got in for like i wonder in all world year i wonder if the blue jackets get a bump because they've won sorry seven straight games one thing i can point to just looking at the standings things are a little different if they can win uh some of these uh shootout games yeah they're one in five in the shootout they might be in a playoff spot if they turn some of these around a couple of games a couple of games if you reverse the record they're in yeah which is tough but i don't know you got it you got to win the games right yes you do that's that's the whole thing yeah and they haven't been doing that They can be anywhere from nowhere close to like second in the Metro.

I'm surprised. Yep. They're one of my bigger shockers this season. The Toronto Maple Leafs have the, you know, there've been a couple of reports, but I'll, I'll cite Darren Drager on this one that essentially they're going to take a

look. And this is our worst nightmare. They're going to take a look at the first few games of this. So Tampa, Florida tonight, tomorrow, and then who are they playing Saturday? Ottawa,

I believe Ottawa, who's not been great uh and then then next week they got the uh they got the flyers who have not been great the devils who have not been great the rangers who have not been great and they're going to base and then that's it yes because then we were straight deadline friday the 6th and that's straight deadline day so they have they're going to do their entire season evaluation over six games coming off a break you're the dumbest people a lot i resent them so genuinely they're so fucking stupid this is the dumbest thing you could ever do i resent them so much and they could win every game and i'd still be like you guys are fucking what about the months of evidence before that

they don't operate that way never have no matter who's in charge and you are allowed to sell and make the playoffs at the same time i'm not saying abandon your goal of making the playoffs you are allowed to sell and make the playoffs at the same time the best example of this that i can give is in 2015 when the calgary flames traded sven barchi and they got a second round pick that turned into raspis anderson and they also traded curtis glencross for a second and a third i don't remember what that turned into and then they made the playoffs and the gm who made those freaking trades was bradley trilling but no let's wait and see how you do on a wonky back-to-back in florida after the olympics you dorks now i have some insight

i have some insight what comes from the toronto maple leafs itself did you know that in the last couple of days the toronto maple leafs has sent out a mass email to their season ticket holders no and i got a couple of messages about this and i had to corroborate it with somebody that i know that is a season ticket holder and i got the email forwarded adam looked in the mirror and said hi hi i own a season ticket holder i would like to uh confirm this i so listen this is gonna i don't need season tickets i own the team this is gonna be fun for me you'll you'll see why okay why so um i'm gonna i'm gonna protect the names of the innocent here which are the season ticket holders in this instance the nhl season has been a unique one

this is written by keith pelly ceo of maple leaf sports and entertainment this nhl season has been a unique one with a condensed schedule to accommodate for the participation of NHL players in the 2026 Winter Olympics and the competitive parity in the league and within the Atlantic division in particular that we have not seen in a number of years. Where's the butt? In the 25-26 season for the Maple Leafs so far, we've had a series of ups and downs. And unfortunately, with a number of key injuries that have affected the team, we are not currently in the position we had anticipated. But that is professional sports. This team has made the playoffs nine seasons in a row, the longest streak in the NHL, and something to be proud of. But as I have said

since joining the organization, our goal is not just to make the playoffs. We will do whatever is needed for this team to take the next step. Being able to witness and be a part of the passion and commitment of Leafs Nation has been for this team an honor, and we will not stop until we deliver a championship to our loyal Leaf fans in the city of Toronto. We understand this team's strengths as well as the areas we need to address, and we know that with the support of our fans, we will achieve the ultimate goal together and while we always strive to be as open as possible i know that you will understand in the world of professional sports protecting competitive advantages is paramount and limits our ability to reveal team strategy until the appropriate time

thank you as always for your continued passion and support for the team we look forward to seeing you at scotia bank arena for these crucial weeks ahead as we push towards the 2026 nhl playoffs it is impossible to understate the important role our fans play in delivering that season now here's the fun part as we manage the renewal process for the 2026-27 season it is important to note that new next season

the NHL will expand to 84 games your membership package oh man I forgot I totally forgot thank you for the update your membership ticket package will remain unchanged from the current season with 41

season home games and one preseason game as a member you will have first opportunity to purchase tickets for the additional 42nd regular season game at a later date so they're doing 41 normal and then one game is a bonus game that they're just so here's what i can all the revenue on i had two different people quote me packages i had somebody in the upper bowl and somebody in the lower bowl the person in the lower bowl told me it's going to cost me an extra seven to eight hundred dollars the person in the upper bowl says it's going to cost me an extra five hundred dollars the package overall so that i believe what they're doing again i'm not a season ticket holder so i can't check my

rich guy account although not these people are not rich people is that what they call it uh the rich guy account yeah they haven't named it that yet but that's the informal term in there um oh man just gold bars farting at her ass no these are people by the way these two people that message me are not rich people these are working class people who decided that that's an asset for me and i'm going to spend money on it and so they have said they are couching this as we're not raising the price but with the extra game of course they are right and i wouldn't be shocked to see next season well you gotta buy all 42 games and this is what it'll cost well and not to mention they already they can afford to not jack the price this year they jacked it last year

yeah i can see them jack it i can see them though leaving that one game alone to get all of the extra revenue from that one game yeah you know like i can see the season tickets sitting at 41 that's kind of how they've outlined it there and and not doing the you gotta buy 42 now it's we charge a higher price on those individual tickets than we would charge a season ticket holder on that one extra game so we actually make like i don't know very small percent higher on this one game than on the rest of the games of the season but more money is more money exactly this is it's a little shady they have an opportunity to do something really cool with that game and i don't think early evidence appears to be no the thing that you've been asking for is oh the fan game

where it's like oh it's cheap we gave away uh 10 000 coca-cola tickets and this the fans are for a preseason game yeah they did that for preseason game way back in like what was that like 2012 the dog yeah i was like a child when they did that um is but i assume they'll just use that one game to actually charge more so so but i i and like that's a negative view on what mls he might do with it yeah but i think they've earned that i got a message from a habs fan they haven't earned the benefit of the doubt i got a message from a hab season ticket holder uh just got my renewal email and gotta say i did not expect a price increase of 1.59 for the habs tickets this year that seems startlingly low all things considered hi that is a team that is in

such a good position to completely rake their fans over the coals they're on the come up they're on the whoa they're gonna be they're good and they're gonna be good for a while for a long time some of their best guys aren't even there yet and 1.59 it's good that's good so anyway just i thought we should we should bring that up um it's also one person's story who knows maybe for most people i went up 20 like i don't know i want to uh yeah i want to i do want to say too uh just on your note there it's interesting that he's still adamant about the playoffs um of course that's kind of what he's going to say but and we can't reveal our strategy can't reveal a strategy just it's just like okay guys you're really gonna try and fight for this i don't know if you want to

take insight into how gradual living's thinking based on keith pelly's pr email but i think this front office is fighting and grabbing at every last morsel left with this team to try and say that we are a playoff team this year and we are a contender yeah if you are natural living knows his jobs on the line here the leafs next three games are against the panthers who aren't going to make it the lightning who are going to make it no matter what and they're going to be dead on arrival in terms of injuries yeah and the sends no it's the lightning i know they'll be fine and the sends aren't going to make it it is in the best interest of all three of those teams to let the leafs win oh yeah let the leafs win these next three games and uh they'll the least will

trade someone for a first round pick so that they can send that first round pick out the door to buy yeah i don't know how you guys felt about thinking about the team over the break at all but i think it is an absolute travesty if they re-sign bobby mcmahon and don't get all the assets they can for him right now one you can re-sign him in the off season you can trade him and if he loves so much toronto so much prove it to us come back here two he could be the bell of the ball here i know all the other 31 other fan bases are like bobby mcmahon you're gonna get a lot for bobby mcmahon with the limited amount of sellers that are out there it's like it's you and the blues and i don't know if the jets can sell because they don't make trades you can't complain about toronto dominating

all the media coverage when you don't know anything about bobby mcmahon how don't you know anything about this player i'm gonna get a lot of assets and he makes so little money imagine if you also retained on bobby mcmahon he would make less than league middle he's also one of the fastest players in the league and he's over six feet tall and play on potentially your top line a stanley cup contender immensely yep and you need to trade that asset regardless of if keith pelly would say he already is oh my god regardless of if you are gonna win the next six games in a row by 20 goals and everybody on your team breaks hitler's record every game regardless of if that happens bob mcmahon's gonna get you a haul and you need to move them yep and

it's i think they're trying to galaxy brain their minds into thinking no resign him now keep him for next year let's push towards the play well here's what they'll say okay well you trade bobby mcmahon we got to replace bobby mcmahon well you could replace bobby mcmahon with bobby mcmahon this summer and you know you'll be blown away by this jesse uh the uh bobby mcmahon loves it in toronto not willing to give a hometown discount and i and that dreg said it and you know what i don't blame bobby he's 29 he's got to make his money yeah if i'm him i'd say thanks toronto but i'm going to the open market on the biggest jump in free agency and nobody's got there's nobody available you're gonna do really good in utah like go play for the mammoth fortune

like are you kidding me have a hometown just don't discount to your actual hometown just go go to edmonton go anywhere yeah i want like crazy amounts of money because we're not paying it this is not the bobby mcmahon discount year it shouldn't be he should go and go i'm gonna set my family up for life yeah go good good and the leaf shouldn't give it to him at the end of february like that's not i know give him all this money i know well you gotta that's the other thing oliver eckman larson's great i love that there's such a great case study so that the oliver eckman larson conversation is he's 35 or will be this summer okay and oliver eckman larson is a fabulously um uh renowned swedish defenseman i would say when he retires he'll go down as one of the greatest

swedish players ever swedish greatest swedish defenseman ever and the reason that you might disagree with that is because he played for the coyote i was about to say his years with the coyotes were unbelievable he was a crazy he had a bad couple of years in vancouver because uh that is not a well-run organization and he wasn't great there and there was injuries and and and he was overplayed he goes sorry overpaid he goes to florida revives his career changes the way he plays comes to toronto he's the best defenseman on the team this year sorry chris tan if you haven't played and uh and yes has all of recman larson struggled in defensive minutes yeah because they're giving him chris tannev's minutes yeah but i'm looking at and mccabe has fallen off a cliff

and they're also stapling him to morgan riley sometimes and i'm like i'm respectfully your numbers are not going to look in the right yeah so all of recman larson has been phenomenal this year member of the olympic team which nobody saw coming really no and heading into this year no way no way no way and you have the opportunity to go out and get whatever it is you can get is it a first round pick i don't know is it two seconds i don't know the guy signed for two more years at 3.25 million dollars which is a fucking steal 3.5 oh 3.5 sorry steal steal and i don't think he'll ever be this good again and wherever he goes next he shouldn't have to be because you know when i say that it's not an insult it's h and it's also the role the leafs have

been playing in which is too much he's been great and he's excelled and rah rah rah but and i will miss oliver eckman larson i love watching him play he's he's got a bomb from the point he's got great vision on the ice he's got size and he's a fucking asshole he's a prick to play he's a he's a guy that i'm begging the rest of the toronto maple leafs defense with the exception of um jake mccabe and chris den of when they're in the lineup to be he's a dick you want this guy in your benny you cannot and but the argument's gonna be well then you go to replace him well what do you make all that money for you found an oliver eckman larson in free agency two years ago do it again where are your pro scouts go do it again i'm so tired of this but it's hard

yeah the leafs last trade was july 16th 2025 when they acquired dakota joshua there's only three teams no so when we first visited this only three teams had made a trade less recently so winnipeg jets who haven't made a trade since march 7th and if they don't make a move at this trade deadline they will go over a calendar year without a trade which is go from march 7th till they miss the playoffs when they could make trades again if they want right so then oh right forgot about that yeah then it was the panthers and also the red wings and if i'm not mistaken one of those teams has made a trade since then oh hey really i and i know that you're annoyed steve about where about the fact that they haven't made a deal yet and i get it

sure but give me an idea of what the market may or may not look like nick kiprios reported today that the oilers were prepared to send andrew mangiapane to toronto for matthias michelli to me straight up straight up and listen matthias michelli has got some warts in his games but he's pretty good since he came back from the nine game scratching oh yeah and you know what he doesn't have next year a contract right manji apani does and is not great and is not a berube i'm not convinced he's that bad i don't i'm not convinced he's that bad either i actually really liked him in in washington there's a reason manji apani's making what he's making yeah but i don't think he's a berube fit if you're hanging on to berube and yo if that's what the market is i would rather

than right now i'd rather than not just sit sit back and wait and wait till the market gets better because that ain't it i don't have a problem with we traded my coming a leaf but uh michelle for i don't like that trade it'd be like like for like it's the same fucking thing yeah yeah like what are we doing at least michelle can like somewhat quarterback a second power play on this very thin leaf stop sex you know he moves the puck he's been better he's been more engaged it's two guys with high-end capabilities that just so rarely show them yeah why would we want another year of that you know yeah so change the scenery at best perhaps yeah so like this is what i'm saying so like when people are upset and and rightfully so you got every right to be upset this

is their job uh remember that the market just may not be there yet i would say you know that is actually the kind of trade the least would make and i'm not saying that as an insult they last summer prioritized acquiring control yes dakota joshua you have control matthias michelle you have control yep i think there was another player in there that had term as well um they prioritize with the cap going up acquiring guys who already have a set number so the more i think about it the more i'm like yeah that is something i could see them considering i don't love it but i understand the logic i don't oh i disagree with the i would hit the roof if that was what they got i can understand the logic and hate it yeah and not because michelle is worth some enormous

amount of whatever but i'm like what are we doing here we're just trading for three million dollars on the cap next season yeah you could just keep michelle pay him right there are days where i think craig berube would rather he'd be dead wait craig or matthias yes there are yeah yeah it's he will he's the exact kind of player who will score you two cost you one score you one cost you two every game kevin fiala is out of hospital uh he posted that on his instagram nice so that's good we wanted to kind of i didn't realize he was in hospital this whole time yeah i didn't know that's a thing yeah yeah he had the surgery i didn't know either wow but he had the surgery and uh in italy um because it's a broken bone so it's

like pretty pretty much the same anywhere and it took you know with a broken with a leg that's broken that badly you kind of just have to sit there for a bit i guess there's worse spots to be than italy well at a hospital bed he's in a hospital it's not my thing i don't know he's touring sightseeing yeah listen oh no then he's got to go home to la you know you know what i mean like yeah i think he's listen i think he would probably yeah maybe siberia but like i'm probably not loving the hospital bed in milan i don't know i'm very happy yeah good for him um uh as we sometimes you don't have to have a thought we yeah you know we mentioned crosby's going to be out a minimum of four weeks it looks like miko ranton and will be as well uh he has

been put on the ir four weeks potentially two to four oh geez uh so that'll be interesting for the dallas stars gary bettman has said and i think he's right on this one uh he wants a better time slot for the olympic hockey gold medal men's game and our suggestion last week was if you want to do that then start the tournament a day earlier and we could have had the women's gold medal final on the friday the men's on the saturday and then the reason they had to do it so early on the sunday because they had to race to get to the closing ceremony why would you have the same day as the closing ceremony fuck that i think that's tradition of the olympics though yeah i know the last day 2010 the last day of the olympics the american men's gold medal game takes place that morning

okay i think it's it's a lot of complaining about time zones like okay they exist in italy they played it in the afternoon in italy time you gotta wake up one time every four years it's also like like yeah i think for the he's probably thinking west coast i mean nine million canadians roughly tuned in 26 and a half americans tuned in uh so the numbers were pretty good considering that the average nhl game in the united states right now is averaging 440 000 uh that's a pretty big jump actually yes tnt's uh ratings are down 38 or at least they were at the beginning of the season yikes yeah dude so the hockey's on ice product is in such a good place and i think such a shame i think it is on the rise i just think television ratings are extraordinarily flawed i guess that's

true um edmund mcdavid is not expected to join the oilers lineup right away they're going to give him some time to have a break something i want you guys to keep an eye on though is the more we hear about it and the more that we you know the game comes back to north america evidently paul coffee and we've talked about this paul coffee his a re-arrival with the oilers coaching staff is has not been well received behind the scenes they're going to put up with it because they were ordered to but i also have heard weirdly that paul coffee might not be thrilled about that scenario and i'm thinking just a thought i could see a world where he's the next head coach of the edmonton oilers really yeah oh i don't see that at all yeah especially i understand yeah i i think i think

that there's genuine tension there and uh i think that perhaps he's the next and edmonton is notoriously ruthless with head coaches look at the amount of head coaches leon and conor vat i mean if any team could use a kick in the ass it's them right like more is expected of you and they've been poor they've been really mediocre yep right i know where they are in their division but it's been a pretty poor division right yeah um given how that division has gone you should be dominating it yes you should be ahead by a margin and they're not so they uh they got to figure that out uh lastly um i want to i want to get a prediction from you guys least need to go roughly 16 and 8 to make the playoffs roughly what's their record the last

uh roughly 16 8 and whatever you know it's 25 games whatever the fuck it is i don't know i didn't do the math 24 25 what do you think their record is the rest of the way 15 and 9 Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. You think it's going to be like 2006? No. Missed by a point. The Steve Dangle Podcast. Follow the guys on Twitter at Steve underscore Dangle,

at Adam W-Y-L-D-E, and at Jesse Blake. Connection complete. Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.