The Steve Dangle Podcast - Pumpkin Spice CJ | October 12, 2020

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, Tyler Toffoli signs in Montreal and the Josh Anderson deal (00:00), where will Alex Pietrangelo sign? (06:00), Is Vegas getting a bad rep & MAF's current situation (11:00), Celebrate with Frosted Flakes (25:00), Taylor Hall signs a one-year deal in Buffalo (27:00), Tyson Barrie & Kyle Turris to Edmonton (40:00), what grade do we give the Leafs? (49:30), the Leafs sign TJ Brodie (54:00), the Leafs sign Wayne Simmonds (1:01:00), the Leafs sign Jimmy Vesey (1:10:00), the Leafs trade Andreas Johnsson for Joey Anderson (1:18:00), what was it like living inside the NHL bubble? (1:25:00), there's drama in the Blackhawks organization (1:33:00), and Canucks fans are not happy with the off-season so far (1:45:00). Originally aired: October 12, 2020 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/ddiVTvG3JX8 Merch: https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/fancydangleshirts Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Subscribe to us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/steve-dangle-podcast/id669828195?mt=2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake and chris johnston yes back on the show the official fourth member finally the family is back together in time for canadian thanksgiving it's so wonderful to have a full show we don't we don't have a full show most of the time because chris isn't here he's out doing a real job but when he is we have our full cast together the official fourth member of the show Chris Johnston welcome back Chris how are you how is everything are you dead yet this is the weirdest year guys the weirdest effing year for everybody no matter where you are in the universe so that includes this uh aging hockey writer as well well we're gonna have bubble questions for you uh

later on in the show because I I want to know everything about Toronto and Edmonton and some of the stories and that sort of thing but obviously we got to get to right away some major happenings in the nhl obviously just a few minutes ago as of the recording of this show tyler toffoli signs for four years at 4.25 million per season in montreal which you know they have the cap space uh they have the ability to go out and sign guys and they haven't been using it and it seems like now that they are they're actually weaponizing their own space uh what do you think of a deal like that and obviously the Canucks is a they're their own story so we're going to leave the Canucks out of this for now because we're coming back to them Tyler Toffoli Montreal how

do you like the fit how do you like the deal well I think it's a home run for the Habs quite honestly I mean the the salary is entirely paid as salary no signing bonuses there's no trade restrictions in the contract and let's face it this sums up for me for agency 2020 I mean this kind of player was getting a six-year deal probably six million or above in a normal market really i i think there's no doubt about it i mean he's he's mid-career he's not an old guy yet you know look at i don't have the stats in front of me but i know he got traded to vancouver he was a point of game guy there he was he's won stanley cups he's got the pedigree i i just think in a normal market this is you know you're andrew ladd or you're louis erickson and maybe i should make

some more favorable comparisons but you know guys that have hit pretty big home runs in free agency in years gone by, and the money just wasn't there for them. And so for Montreal, I think this is a huge value play. Only four years is a great term. The fact they can trade him at any point. And, you know, let's face it, in the short term, he makes your team better, as does Josh Anderson, even though that was a bit more of an abomination of a contract.

So I think that the Habs are getting good, and the Atlantic's going to be stronger. Interesting to hear you say that about Josh Anderson. And, you know, I texted, full disclosure, Steve, I texted Chris right after that contract, and I said, wow. And Chris's words were, and it's very Chris Johnson of him, that's a big swing. Oh, yeah.

So, Chris. They're aiming for the fifth deck at the Rogers Center, and it might be a foul ball. I mean, if Toffoli's available, I know Josh Anderson is big and scary when he's not hurt, and most of the time he hasn't been, but obviously he had a pretty severe injury. to give up Max Domi, who admittedly was not getting along with Claude Julien,

to get Josh Anderson and then sign him to that kind of a deal. How does that even come about? And how does that make sense for them? Seven years? Well, essentially, the word from Anderson's camp after that trade happened was they'd do a one-year deal, which would have walked them straight to unrestricted free agency, or they'd do a seven-year deal,

which is the maximum term he could sign with Montreal. And so I think Montreal surveyed what they had and decided that they were going to make a bet on josh anderson and and you know look at if he has a 25 goal first season here which i don't think is out of the question it's just a huge unknown or something on that pace depending how many games we play this this coming season i mean i don't think we'll be looking at this as a terrible contract it's just that you know someone coming off you know significant shoulder injury who had four points and one goal last year i mean you don't have to give them this term but um you know it's it's a huge bet it could be david clarkson all

over again i hope for josh anderson's case that's not the case because it will mean he's not healthy and his career doesn't go in an upward trajectory but um you know it's it's a huge gamble for montreal i i sort of get where they're coming from i just don't know that i would have made the same gamble in their in their position now you know we talk about it being a huge gamble for montreal which means it's awesome for josh anderson and the the first thing i thought when i saw this trade and then the extension for both players is darren ferris is going to be a gm in the nhl one day i think because i i couldn't help but notice it was a one-for-one trade two of his clients one of them gets a deal that takes them to unrestricted free agency and the other gets seven years um at

a at a very big number do you think do you think that guy might be an executive in the league one day if he can handle the pay cut i i've never asked him honestly i don't know what his ambitions are but you know it's it's possible I mean look he operates in a way that maybe some agents don't but I think if you look across the last bit of time if we just look at it in the vacuum of is he doing the job for his clients I think most oftentimes you have to say yes he's maximizing the contracts they get let's remember NHL players have really short earning windows relative to other people in other industries and so you know every year that you can get someone that the kind of security Josh Anderson just got I mean that's life-changing money for him and his family and

and you know coming off an injury again we hope he's healthy and can play many more seasons even beyond the seven on his deal but if that doesn't happen he's pretty well insured here because of this contract um we'll get to another Darren Ferris client in Taylor Hall uh coming up on the show but I think uh you know before we get to anything obviously we've got uh our Kellogg's uh selfie thing not yet not yet we do need to talk petrangelo first but i'm going steve i'm taking the reins away from you and i'm giving it to cj and he's going to give us his favorite celly in in a moment i'm sorry i know i know your name's on the show but it's gonna be chris johnson doing um before that though where do we stand with uh steve's off the air i'm back where do we stand

with uh there's no way he's walking out on us no no no this is no chance um alex petrangelo i mean this is a guy that was talked about and talked about and talked about. And what you're seeing now is you've got an NHL that's sort of in a, you know, like a lot of industries right now in a bit of a, a financial crunch, a lot of uncertainty. Don't even know when we're getting back.

And Alex Petrangelo, who is a, you know, a massive free agent and sort of still a surprise that he's going to leave St. Louis has not signed anywhere yet. And the cap space in on most teams without an internal budget is pretty much filled.

There is one team that he's been linked to. that he flew to, that he did a tour with. And that's the Vegas Golden Knights. Is that the only suitor left for Alex Petrangelo? I wouldn't say it's the only suitor left, but it's the one obviously that's, you know, it's getting chosen at the Rose Ceremony here. It's just, it's really about, you know,

Vegas has to clear money out before they can sign this contract. Yes, legally you can go 10% over the salary cap in the off season, so they could carry up to 89.66, I believe. a million on their cap. But I think that's far too risky given the current environment where you have the Tampa Bay Lightning trying to trade players, the New York Islanders trying to trade players, many teams to a lesser degree trying to shed some salary. And so I think that they need certainty. They need to move a Nate Schmidt. They need to move Marc-Andre Fleury. They might need to move both of them and someone else, but they have to clear out that cap room, I think, before

the ink dries on a contract. So I expect that that's the way this is going to all conclude, that you'll see a trade or two from Vegas where they're shaving money, like the Paul Slastny deal, and then you'll see the Petrangelo contract signed. But if that can happen, I do think there are other teams out there that would step into this. I wonder about Philadelphia, which is sort of quietly lingering with some cap space and has lost some blue liners this offseason. Matt Niskanen's surprising retirement and that kind of thing.

I'm not saying that they're going to come in and steal him from Vegas, but i do think that there's other places he could elect to go and the truth is this must be a little bit uncomfortable for alex petrangelo because you know while he's obviously the cream of the crop in this free agent year it's just such a weird year no one no one was saying taylor hall was going to sign in buffalo for one year eight million probably including taylor hall until yesterday and so you know there could be a set of scenarios where chaos uh goes on and maybe petrangelo isn't signing the long-term deal he was hoping to with this free agency and so this one still has a bit of a stay tuned on it and just what i know of alex petrangelo i don't know how

much he he likes the the spotlight and and all that just being zeroed in on him at least when it comes to off ice stuff i i posted a meme last night why is it whenever there is confusing hockey nonsense the florida panthers are at the center of it i i can't feel i can't help but feel like they're the ones holding this all up there was supposedly a nate schmidt deal in place he was going to go there mackenzie wieger's name has been floated for all week what's going on there i wish i could tell you i mean they're definitely trying to trade mackenzie wieger you know i don't think that those rumors they're not they're not being made up and you know there was a scenario where he could have been a maple leaf i don't know if that's still on the table with what

toronto's done here in the first few days of free agency if that's still a consideration for them but but they there was definitely some conversations going on there uh and i'm not really clear what florida's going to do i mean they're a bit of a wild card because they have a new general manager and i think when when that happens and obviously there's a few new gms around the league right now but those guys aren't aren't married or they haven't made promises to the players on the current roster they they have a little bit more freedom i think to come in and i won't say act recklessly but but you know mess things up and try to put their own stamp on it inquire maybe some players they have relationships with which we've already seen florida do with with wenberg

and the new DeVara trade, you know, both guys that Bill Zito, who was the assistant GM in Columbus for years, you know, hasn't passed with. And so, you know, I think Florida is still going to make some moves and I would expect Uyghur will be one of them. I mean, he filed for arbitration. So the arbitration cases haven't been scheduled yet, but they start as soon as October 20th. I'm assuming it's October 12th today. So that's only a little bit more than a week. There's going to be arbitration cases. So I would think that they're going to be motivated to deal in before that arbitration case comes around and so yeah the Panthers are the Panthers are in the middle of everything it doesn't sound like they're getting Nate Schmidt right now so I don't know

where Nate's gonna end up I know Winnipeg's kind of been linked to another trade like that with Vegas as well and you know this is a tough time for Kelly McCrimmon and George McPhee of the Golden Knights because no one is extending them all of branches I mean any any trade that they make here is not probably going to look that favorable except that it's going to be in the context of clearing room to sign the number one free agent on the market well and that's what i want to ask you next because i think there was a there was a brian burke did a hit with sports net central jesse fuchs um i think it was sunday morning and it was very interesting because brian dropped a little tidbit at the end and i've just seen frank cerevalli tweet something similar

and i wanted to ask your opinion on this when you get to so was brian burke right when he said players that sign in Vegas are going to get fed up and not going to go because Vegas keeps giving up on them a couple years into their contract and let me read Frank Cervalli of TSN's uh uh tweet along the same lines fair to say the core of Vegas is unnerved as the Petrangelo watch hits day four they saw Paul Stastny shipped out they've heard their names in play Flurry, Schmidt, Smith, Pacioretty, Martinez, and Marcheseau as they now wait for the other shoe to drop is it true that vegas is developing a reputation with players around the league as we'll sign you long term and then we're going to ship you out in a couple years when someone sexier comes along

maybe a little bit but you know this is still a business you know and when there was william neilander rumors earlier this this offseason i reached out to someone close to william and said you know was there a promise made by the leafs that he won't be traded and and the response came back something along the lines of promises aren't worth anything in in professional sports you know and and it wasn't a bitter thing it was basically saying like william understands that you sign a contract you get the money but you you're property of that team and they can sort of do whatever they want with you and so you know i i believe the part of frank's tweet that's right is that those core players are unnerved they're unnerved because no one wants

to leave vegas it's it's a top five top three destination in the nhl right now i mean the the suburb of summerlin where all the players live is a great place to live it's not that expensive relative to some cities where players play in the league they got a great practice facility that was built brand new they have an owner that looks after their players that building when you're allowed to have people in it where they play T-Mobile Arena is is rocking I mean this and the team's been great I mean they've won a ton of games since entered the league and legitimately are Stanley Cup threat so you know yes they have to act a little bit callously at times or or you know cutthroat but I mean that's what it takes to win I mean look what the Leafs are doing too I

I mean, do you think Kyle Dubas has enjoyed trading away Kasperi Kapanen, Andreas Janssen, guys that he had since he was with the Marlies as their GM? I mean, unfortunately, personal relationships and business relationships in pro sports, they're difficult to maintain because quite often your emotions with both, you know, end up crossing. So I guess Vegas may have a bit of a reputation here,

but I don't blame them one bit. They're trying to win a Stanley Cup and, you know, it's too bad for the players, but also those guys get guaranteed contracts. So if Nate Schmidt gets traded away, you know, they gave him a six-year deal i think around 36 million i mean that's that that's that's his security so there's two ways of looking at it they gave him the kind of security he never had prior in his career and and i'm sure he wouldn't want to be traded because he loves living there

he loves playing for that team but you know this is this is the price unfortunately of trying to win in a cap league i think it just it's it's brutal on on the people in the sport one guy who makes a lot of money on that team and is rumored to be heading out is mark andre flurry there was some sort of rumored three-way deal and some way absorbing the cap is that dead in the water now is that still on the table no that's still only in play and and i think it's really the only way a flurry trade makes sense for vegas is that they trade all of mark andre flurry to a middle team that middle team you know with a pick you know with a sweetener and that middle team flips them and retains half of his seven million dollar salary and cap it and the the team that ultimately

wants to play with mark andre flurry then gets him at three and a half million dollars i think that's the only way this works i mean maybe maybe there's a scenario where vegas is the one keeping the three and a half million but i i'm just not sure that opens up enough cap space for them because remember they're going to need to pay another goaltender to platoon or be the backup to robin lennar and so you're not really saving a ton if you end up paying someone one and a half million and you're retaining three and a half it doesn't accomplish what i think they need to get done here sorry for all the math on a sunday or holiday monday actually sorry i don't even know what day it is but uh but you know i i think that's very much on the table and the one place

i'm looking for flurry is is you know there's interest from pittsburgh to bring him back and pittsburgh has some of its own cap challenges um but i i do think that their team if this sort of middle scenario can work um you know where maybe they get him maybe there's a fourth team i mean that would be kind of crazy i don't think we've ever seen that but it could happen where he gets traded twice in the middle and teams retain salary to make the cap it ultimately even lower for Pittsburgh but unless that's something that scenario Pittsburgh's giving up some some some pretty significant picks or something right to the team that takes the second contract I would think and obviously Vegas is too and and the issue that I've heard is is the

teams that Vegas has talked to in the middle they want a first round draft pick for retaining half of Fleury's salary and and you know that's a lot you know it's over two seasons and look there Vegas is in a tough spot so you know of course teams are going to squeeze them on that I'm not saying that will ultimately be the price it takes to to do it but i think the reason it hasn't happened is because those middle teams are playing you know hardball with with the golden knights i i think those middle teams are perfectly and they're right i mean it's over two seasons like you said and uh patrick marlow cost the first and he was only for one here's my ultimate chaos scenario is there a chance there is a murray flurry reuniting in ottawa wow right oh man that'd

be something i know especially because they were both involved in beating ottawa on the 2017 eastern conference final remember murray came in for flurry uh well let's remember he's got no trade protection and he's got a number of teams that he won't go to and basically every player in the league that has that has all the Canadian teams on their list but they certainly would have Ottawa on their list I would take with where Ottawa's at and some of it's tax related it doesn't mean they wouldn't ever go to those places I actually heard interestingly enough Ben Sherratt is one of the few players in the league that has that kind of no trade protection that that has basically that doesn't have the Canadian teams on it but it's pretty much standard operating procedure I

think part of it again you pay higher taxes to live here and not everyone wants to play in the Canadian market and deal with podcasts like this one that scrutinize every move that the team makes you know that you don't always have in every other city and it's not just this podcast of course it's a lot of other noise too so anyway that's a long long way of saying i don't know if flurry would want to play in ottawa because i think he really wants to play somewhere where he's the unquestioned starter or pittsburgh because pittsburgh has such great sentimental ties for him and his family it's a great place to live and i think he'd be fine being the number two there are on that point and i i i'm going to relate this to tyson berry later on are they

listening to sports radio and are they listening to podcasts like this not necessarily this one but I've always found the players don't listen but their family or their friends do so yeah I mean I'm sure there's the odd player that listens to but I don't I think most of them hear it sort of through a third party they don't always hear exactly what you wrote or said like they hear a variation of it but usually they hear the broken telephone worst possible you know interpretation of what you might have said about them or written about them um but certainly you know look at players families they're paying attention they're googling their names they're going on twitter and seeing what's out there i mean i i think that's human nature and i don't blame anyone for doing

that i think steve's actually had a few awkward run-ins with family members and stuff of teams and players and coaches and that sort of thing who you know steve will he'll be upset with what the player or coach will do and then they'll come up and go hey i'm so-and-so's daughter or i'm i'm so-and-so's parent and you'll want to take a picture with them well yeah so i don't know what i'm allowed to say here but i've actually had players and executives reach out to me saying like why did steve say this x y or z no way that has happened more than once oh that's funny but i don't i don't really want to get into which players in which situations because no it's probably not for the best

So you know that there's an OHL team that really doesn't like us, like really doesn't like us. Which team? I won't be talking about that one, but there's a team. London. Well, the Spits had you blocked, man, so it could be them too, right? No, the Spits, like me, it's their social person was a douche. But anyway.

What did you do to London? Oh, I mean, who's their GM there, Chris? well i'll tell you their assistant gm is a guy by the name of rob simpson who grew up in the fine town of coburg ontario oh no kidding and i used to play minor hockey with him a little bit he was a really good hockey player he was a better player than me which is why he's working for a team and i'm just covering the league from the first question was going to be is he a plug i just know he was really good you reminded me of all these run-ins the most awkward one recently they're usually very positive but um uh chris i was drunk at a playoff game i i think this was

one of the this was one of the ones against um i think it was washington and this sweet lady walks up to me and she's like are you dangle and i go yes she goes i'm ann brown i'm connor's mom and i had to really try hard to not be drunk for a moment wasn't there a particular coach that said uh coaches players or kids that said hi uh do you want me to name it oh yeah uh uh yeah that was that was babs yeah mike babcock's kids went and said hi to steve which was really i took uh yeah that's a tough one that's yeah given how tough you were on them but it's not who's the former who was the former backup goalie for the rangers valaket what was that Steve Valliquette so I said something so it was like in my first or second

year of making videos so we're talking like 2007 2008 uh did you chirp Steve Valliquette no that was the weird why did you go under Steve Valliquette man I didn't it was it was a shootout and I want to say Jason Blake like missed he got stopped by Valliquette but like he lost the puck kind of and I was like oh he's kind of a lucky save or whatever and this guy's cousin just comes in and starts carving me and it's like you don't know anything and you're a freaking idiot and about a month later that person got an internship at sportsnet 590 where i was interning oh man they weren't there for very long but like they sent me a message like oh haha i got this internship isn't that funny totally backtrack all the all the trash talk they were sitting there

yeah it's not the same thing quite but there was a night after early in this this season that never ended in hockey like last October I was coming home from a Leaf game but I had a few drinks with some friends after the game and then I got out of a cab in front of my building and someone's like CJ I didn't know who it was and I go talk to him and it's Darcy Tucker's son and he's like I'm a big fan and I was like oh my god like the world is turning on its head like I remember when I was in high school and watching the Leafs with Darcy Tucker on it now his son's saying he's a fan of mind so that was kind of a cool moment for me but not along the same thing because i didn't chirp him or there was no issues with that no no uh darcy is a is a gem i had a a moment at the

i told i know i told jesse this story steve did i tell you this when i was hosting the nhl new year's eve party so there was a there was an nhl new year's eve party and chris you might have been there where um like everybody was there and it was uh it was the next day toronto uh the next day was the big uh was the detroit toronto game where austin matthews wanted an overtime outdoors centennial classic yeah yes so i was hosting that night and and like you know building up for brian adams and i came up on stage whatever and um anyway darcy tucker approached me and i'd never met him before and he said hey i'm darcy and i said i know i'm adam and he said i know and he's like i want you to meet my wife she watches you all the time on breakfast television so i was like

okay sure mr tucker whatever you want it's amazing he's amazing well yeah the thing is we went down and i think later was it later that year guys to uh was that the 2017 or the 2018 i think it was the 2017 year we went no with air canada down to yeah yeah we went down to uh chris we went down to boston i remember the leafs lost that game badly if i remember correctly oh we just got killed and like and we've told this many times but on the bus afterwards with all the fans and ally afraid he's there and a few other leaf guys and darcy the steam was coming out of his ears and he's like i just want to walk in that dressing room and tell them what kind of an opportunity that they're squandering here you only get so many shots at this how can you show up like that

like and he was you just saw the fire and you're like that is why you grab it yeah like you just that's why he made it because he's so competitive that oh his eyes man his eyes tell the whole story no eyelids none oh god i loved it just get you get amped on that do you remember when he would go down like the senator's bench and just like stare at everyone and be like i dare anyone to do anything yeah and then at some point just going into the bench deciding that's right and and you know what he's not that big a man like he's like he played fearless for the size he was anyway good memories shout out darcy tucker yeah no no kidding what a beauty we've been trying to book him on this show for years and he's just he's elusive but uh we'll get him one of these

days now let's get into the kellogg's it would be selly of the week but we're gonna go back into the past because there is no sellies this week uh and we're gonna ask you chris john um you know it's a it's an honor to be on this segment with you you've seen so much hockey and what we do with this segment is we want hashtag old the whole hashtag well you're not that much older than us man if you're old so are we um but i got some bad news for you guys shit shut up shut up um what we want to know is uh the best celebration you've ever seen like you've seen a lot of goal celebrations the best one your favorite one the one that sticks out the most in your mind oh man for am i allowed to pick two yes for pure emotion i'm going with

crosby in vancouver 2010 just oh just like just wanted to get everything off as quickly as possible and like the whole country just like exploding so for pure emotion i love that one but for creativity i gotta go with the austin matthews goal signal that was like that was one of the coolest things i ever saw honestly it was hilarious i think it was a game against colorado right it was like a january game you know what i mean is a game not against a rival the stakes weren't that high and he was so pissed that they had taken back a goal from him earlier in the game that he scores one and he's like confirming the call and i was just like that was badass and it was like a week it was like a week before the all-star game like i just remember going to the

all-star game and everybody was talking about it still jack eichel did it yes exactly yeah it was the all-star game in tampa and i just remember it being the buzz of the league and i kind of i love the young guys honestly this will go against my old guy thing but i love the young guys coming in and doing stuff that you're not supposed to do that it's kind of breaking their unwritten rules like i love that stuff i don't care if these guys ever wear a suit to an nhl game again i i don't care what like i want to see more crazy celebrations i mean we got to embrace the fun of the sport and i i that one for matthew's just i just felt like what a cool moment for one of the stars of the league like the young stars of the league and actually the one he went back

and forth in chicago with kane and all this stuff was pretty cool too but i mean that was fun anyway i'm sure that that the old hockey men are rolling around angry about all that stuff but i i love it and i would encourage any young nhl out there let's keep making the game fun that is your kellogg's Frosted Flake, celly of the cellar. We're going back into the cellar and pulling stuff out. It would be celly of the week. Celebrate with Frosted Flakes. Thank you, Tony.

That's exactly what we're talking about. Now, you did mention Darren Ferris earlier in the show, and I think kind of the bomb that went off yesterday, an absolute shocker. Taylor Hall to the Buffalo Sabres. One year for a hockey player, a star hockey player. One-year contract, $8 million. The money is about what we expected.

But how does Taylor Hall decide Buffalo's the destination? Well, I think the easy answer is that the market wasn't as strong for him as it probably certainly would be in a normal year, but even maybe than he expected. And, you know, I actually don't hate this move for Taylor Hall. I think it's like, was it Steve Cohen at 3D chess? I think it is like 3D chess for him. I mean, it's making the best of an imperfect situation. I mean, the Colorado Avalanche would have fulfilled his need to play for a winner, but they weren't going to pay him anywhere near $8 million to do it. You know, a lot of the other teams that were interested, I think, offered some intriguing options.

And I think he got closest with Nashville before signing in Buffalo in terms of actually maybe having a deal there. And for whatever reason, that fell apart. But I think they were talking about something a little bit longer than a one-year deal. But once they got through that, I think it was really only one-year deals, essentially. And he chose one that pays him at market rate, that reunites him with a coach he loves, and a coach that doesn't mind some offense, which obviously is how Taylor is going to keep his value up, and allows him to play with one of the best young centers in the NHL. And if you look at Taylor's career, he hasn't really had an elite point-producing centerman too often. He really hasn't.

I mean, I like Nico Heischer and obviously they had a great season when he won the Hart trophy in New Jersey, but you know, he hasn't had anyone like Eichel ever to play with. And so I think that he could have a monster year in Buffalo and be in a great spot. You know, I think he's going to go back to Edmonton one day. Honestly, I think that that's, I really think he'd like, like in a perfect world, he probably would have liked and liked to go to Edmonton now, but the Oilers just don't have the cap space. They had no ability to do that kind of move.

And you know, that's, it's, I'm not saying that a deal's cooked up or anything, but I just think in his mind, he wants to play with star players and, and, you know, obviously McDavid would fill that. And certainly Eichel fills that for him now in Buffalo. The only real way I see he loses this situation is if he has a bad season and the Sabres went, uh, uh, missed the playoffs by like one to five points or something like that. He'll either be amazing with them and help them be good. And he can resign there if he wants, or he can resign somewhere else in free agency,

or he can go somewhere at the deadline because people are going to want him because not only is he Taylor Hall, but now he costs less money because they didn't have him all year, which I'm sure will make owners around the league really happy. It's probably not his first choice to do a one-year sort of show me with the Sabres, but I really don't see a situation where he loses here. No, except that there's a physical gamble. I mean, every athlete, you know, I'm a Cowboys fan. I just watched Dak Prescott, you know,

carted off the field yesterday unfortunately it was really sad moment just on a human level but you know I do think that there's always physical risk for these guys and I think that tends to be why you don't see NHL players play on one-year deals I mean if you look at the NBA right LeBron James basically has played on short-term deals because it maximizes leverage it ensured that if the cap went up he earned more money in those years but you know and I'm not saying NBA players don't risk serious injury but you know I think hockey in general just weird things can happen you can be through no fault of your own could have a career ending injury and so you know i i give credit even to like guys like petrangelo that played out the final year of their deal that

didn't just sign something to have that security and in taylor's case it reminds me a little bit of marion hosa not not the same circumstances obviously marion signed on a one-year deal in detroit to try to win a cup um whereas you know i don't think truly taylor hall thinks he's going to win a cup in buffalo although i shouldn't put those words in his mouth maybe um but you know he's still betting on himself here to have a strong year and to be in a better position, maybe next year to, to hit the home run. He would like to. Jesse, you have a quote from the Taylor hall press conference. Do you want to read that out to us?

Yeah. He said, this is from Luke Fox. He says he's the best player on the team. There's just no doubt about it. Taylor Hall says of Jack Eichel, he just wants to win. I can't blame him, but I think the quote you're looking for Adam is the one about the team. So he also said, Buffalo is a team. whether guys realize it or not everyone around the league kind of pulls for them channeling his inner pierre dorian we're just gonna say they're a team what are your thoughts you know i thought it's a good it's a good hockey market

though i pull for them a little bit honestly i mean obviously i don't really cheer for anyone but i i don't like seeing a place that cares about the game is the way they do have the kind of run they do and i would have said the same about toronto you know at least toronto in the last few years i know they haven't won a playoff series and you can make all your jokes but they won a lot of hockey games the last three or four years and the 10 years before that not so much it gave rise to steve dangle so um i gave a lot i'm not here if they're good i'm not in this room right they gave lots of fuel to your well i don't know what i'm going to call you your dispositions so um that's a good word so wow you know well put well put i would like to see them get back

you know it was going way back like chicago was a down and out hockey market and it was awesome to watch the blackhawks become good and have star players and you know have 22 000 people in the largest building in the league at united center i mean it's great yeah i know it's crazy the circle of life how dare you but that's and that's the thing i want to say because because here's the thing kevin adams went in and controversially in the height of a pandemic cleaned house now that's probably at the behest of the pagulas but this is a team that that like the senators barely has any staff and they are now signing you could say i guess you could call him the number two free agent he's the top forward on the market and yeah he only signed for one year

and yeah kevin adams is like we'd like to make this a little bit more permanent or a longer term relationship which we all do not believe is going to happen yet maybe it could again anything can happen it could happen at this stage in the game it's hard to imagine that it does because i don't think buffalo is going to be able to turn it around this year however this is a home run for kevin adams where does he take this from here does it make buffalo a more attractive market for players that are still out there on the market because they do have some space. I would think it does.

And to me, they need to build up their bottom six. I mean, their top six right now is a legit NHL top six. I mean, it's not the best in the league, but there's a lot of weaker teams at the top six than Buffalo is right now. I don't know what the plan is in net yet there. Obviously, Rasmus Darlene, I think, is still going to be a star.

They've got some pieces. They just have holes and, and, you know, I don't know how much license or how much money Kevin Adams has to spend because it does seem as though cost-cutting they're one of the organizations. I mean, the Pagoulas outside businesses have been hurt and then they're far from alone in that. A lot of NHL teams are the same situation, but you know, they should be competitive for some of these free agents and let's face it,

the free agents aren't costing what they used to. So they'd be wise to add another player or two. Interesting. Well, you know, yeah, the goaltending situation, I think for them is going to be the hardest part. uh linus allmark remains unsigned as an rfa and carter hutton obviously has is on the last year of a 2.75 million dollar contract so i mean if they go with that pair it's i guess would it i mean linus allmark has great moments carter hutton had a year where you know steve you talked about it a lot where he was going to get paid and he got paid uh but the question then becomes like

you know is that tandem going to be enough whatever linus allmark costs you and you've got 13 million dollars in cap space if chris if you're suggesting that they have an internal budget and we have no confirmation on that you might i don't know um you know can't you know now that they've landed taylor hall can can he go back to the pagoulas and go listen i mean we want to keep these stars in town we want to have somebody if we can if we can if you gave me some money and you know for the for this season and let me go out and get a goalie let me go out and get another defenseman to play with rasmus doline just to just to be his the batman sorry so doline can be batman and this this player can be robin um you know buffalo could nip around the playoffs

next year do you see the pagulas doing that and you see kevin adams having the kind of pull within that organization in his first season to pull something like that off well he certainly got a lot of pull with them because remember he was working for them for years you know running the the practice rink next door to the main arena and you know ultimately parlayed that into becoming the general manager obviously they thought well enough of the way he did business and what they learned about him that i think that he has their ear now you know i will say this too i think ralph kruger is a great coach and giving him a second year there i just i to me i think we could pick them as one of the surprise teams as long as they get a little bit more net i think that's the

biggest clear area where they need to be better uh but like eric stall can still play you know that wasn't like a huge sexy headline grabbing trade and i think hall's gonna have a monster year i mean look out for like who's gonna miss the playoffs if we have the atlantic division next year i mean i wanted ottawa and detroit are in tough but then after that i mean you got some pretty good teams not a lot available both of them got better i thought yeah but they're coming from a long way back in the pack that's true yeah um not a lot available in the goaltending market And we know that Corey Schneider is probably going to sign with the Islanders this afternoon.

If he hasn't already Craig Anderson is an interesting idea because you know, he's 39, but he had a nine Oh two last year and probably can be had for nothing. You know, what about trade though? I mean, we still got flurry. We still have one of the Columbus goalies could move. And I think both of them are pretty good. I mean, maybe there's,

maybe there's a trade option there for Buffalo, which might address some of the financial issues. If they're trading back, you know, some, some money too, to even it out. right flurry that would be good where do you want where do you want flurry to go you don't want him in vegas do you steve flurry and no i mean it's kind of funny given the alan walsh stuff and then he just has to sit there but uh no i i want to see him it's it's how should i put this flurry is probably going to be in the hall of fame one day oh i think no doubt yeah and i'd like to see him play more of his career as a number one you know what i mean he's

played kind of a lot of it as the backup or tandem guy and i'd like to see him go somewhere and have some success at the end and it seemed like we were going to get this beautiful swan song you know at the end of his career tail end with vegas and it fell apart so fast it's yeah very what what about edmondson because they missed on markstrom and i know that they just signed tysonberry and we can go to what about honestly you can't tell me that they really think going into next year with koskinen and for some reason one and a half million dollars of 80 million year old mike smith is a good idea two million it was two million yeah you got more than long like i mean come on and also i mean i can't i can't see why edmonton would have done that deal

but maybe because mike smith said well longquist is even off the market so we'll grind you on this one i'm pretty sure for them it was either it was either going to be mike smith or ryan miller were their two options at the end and they went with the known commodity it was there last year so i then then you know that you got you can't think if you're them that that's going to be it right like they must think that there might be some trade options out there they got to be looking to upgrade that spot yeah and i think that they think they can do it during the season too maybe like that it doesn't necessarily have to be something that happens in October 2020. It's the only part of their – I actually think with little cap space,

they did a pretty good job to dress some of their holes. They need better defensive players. I think we would all agree there. But they also lost their power play quarterback in the cleft bomb. And so, you know, getting Tyson Berry is not a bad power play option for them. He just has to be sheltered a little bit at 5-on-5. but well i like what they did with no cat they have no cap room they got everybody cheap they got everyone on good market value contracts that's the confusing thing about tyson barry though just

because i want to talk about that for a second because first off you know what we saw in toronto with tyson barry i don't think it's completely fair i think you know you had 20 games of mike babcock being a stubborn ass basically uh he and then you know and the team was then really good for the next 20 games 25 games the keep was the coach and then they kind of went into their january february kind of blase and then we had had covet it was a weird weird year and i don't think the criticism all of it of tyson berry is fair however he was lauded as the solution at right hand d and and certainly was not the full solution still had a pretty good year um he was offered almost double in vancouver apparently what he got in edmonton he get he

gets 3.75 million to play with mcdavid on the power play um he was apparently offered something close to six million in vancouver i'm not sure if you can confirm that but those are the reports we're reading um vancouver's got a good team why why why not that and why not more money is it that he thinks hey i get to play with conor mcdavid on the power play and i'm going to make a boatload of cash next year i think he understands after the toronto experience that fit is is probably as important as anything for a player and this doesn't just apply to him but he's got to play somewhere where he's the number one power play guy at this point in his career i just don't think he's he's not giving you enough value I mean that's what he's good at and and I think the

source of his issues in Toronto honestly started with the fact that he was on the second power play and the Leafs had a killer first power play uh you know so they don't get the second power play unit doesn't even get on the ice much in Toronto and and that started him off on the wrong foot with the Leafs and with Babcock and and I just don't I mean he's look he still put together a pretty good bad season for himself you know all things considered but you know I just think it never got off to the right start there and if you're gonna go sign with the team that is Quinn Hughes unless they're using two defensemen on the power play you're not getting on the first power play right and so I think he understood that finding the right situation to to flourish and

show his best made sense it's why he had to leave Denver right Kale McCarr came along and stole his job at the end of that one season and it kind of made him redundant there in a sense and so he's almost a little bit of a specialist type of player with what he does well because what he does well is he does really really well and so you know in Edmonton they're going to play the crap out of him when it's five on four and I think they're going to try to to protect him at five on five and and if they find the right mix and if you know I think he can be very successful doing that and I think he understands that better that was his lesson from Toronto it was a it's hard to play somewhere new after being in Denver so long where he was very comfortable and was I mean Tyson Berry

is one of the best guys you could ever meet in the NHL quite honestly he's a super guy and it just it didn't go well in toronto i think he learned some lessons from that and that informed his decisions he made on free agency day to give you an idea by the way uh you know in terms of situation and what a difference it made i tweeted this the other day barry under babcock zero goals seven assists seven points in 23 games which is a 25 point pace over an 82 game season barry under keith five goals i think he scored what was it three or four straight games five goals 27 assists 32 points in 47 games which is a 56 point pace and he scored the first goal of the season the very first night when keith took over in arizona and then he's oh i remember that and they returned

to colorado then that very next game was his return to colorado he scored there like it was like literally like turning a light switch the the minute the coaching changes made and and look i'm not going to blame babcock exclusively because you know morgan riley is to me a legitimate power play one guy like i don't think it was i don't think it was insane but what it was it was reflective of a front office and a and a coaching staff that wasn't totally in tune which we've all kicked around enough over the years 100 so you know i mean really with edmondson it seems like they you know they they made a really i think one of the better moves of the day which was kyle turris um that is a to me uh i i know that people didn't like kyle turris based on his production

versus salary but if kyle turris can give you what he gave you last year in nashville at the money he's going to be making which i think is in the neighborhood of one and a half million dollars 165 i think 165 and this is a guy that i mean 30 or 40 points for 165 is i don't know pretty good in my books uh especially for a player who is trying to prove himself and trying to prove he still belongs he's 31 years old yeah 31 points last year so you know there's a a playmaking option what do you think of that deal and what do you think about his fit because that's going to be really important it wasn't a fit in Nashville pretty much from the beginning for Kyle Torres yeah you know he did have a really good first year there and the Predators had a good

first year it just didn't end up with the Stanley Cup and then right for a whole bunch of reasons their team is kind of I wouldn't say completely falling apart but they certainly haven't they they didn't take the steps that everyone was projecting for them. And so Kyle Turris is a bit of a victim of that. Obviously he's got to own his own performance too, but I think he was scapegoated a little bit. He had some injury issues there and he signed a big contract and he didn't live up to it. So, you know, again, it's a harsh business.

He gets bought out, but I think when you're looking at him on a one-year deal and not making much money, I mean, it's a no brainer to me. He's still young enough and he's played for Dave Tippett before in Arizona. I just think that he'll be much more comfortable. I think the expectations will be reasonable. And remember, he's going to play behind some version of McDavid, Dreisaitl, and Ryan Nugent Hopkins as the other centers.

I mean, he's their fourth line center, or I guess if they're using Dreisaitl or someone on the wing, he's their third line center. But, you know, you're not asking a ton from him. He's probably getting some power play two time. But, you know, I think at this point in his career, I like the signing and, you know, good for Edmonton. It's a place that kind of is the butt of some unfair jokes,

I think, at times. i actually just spent a month there and it was awesome to be there in september i mean i've only ever visited during hockey season in the past and it's usually minus 30 but to be there when it's like 15 degrees celsius and gorgeous there's like great running trails and it was it's actually i just say it it's a low key it's it's a better spot than i think it's given credit for and good for them for landing some free agents and look that that team should get better at some point i mean if we're cheering for teams if we're cheering for buffalo i think we should be cheering for Edmonton too, honestly, with the best player in the game to, you know, actually get to show

himself on the biggest stages. If you have Kyle Torres as your third line center, how do you not run McDavid dry saddle every game together? Like you've got Nuge, what does it matter? If you've got, if you've got 240 or 250 points on one line, what does it matter? As long as the other guys are playable, like you're talking about, you know, guys that could do 120 points together easily, those two right and look I think what Edmonton's going to look at is better defensive play I mean they don't need more goals it's actually it's a lot like the Leafs like any discussion about the Leafs shouldn't be how do you make this team score more how can you make the third line more dangerous it's more about how can you build a team and to support the superstars because

you know Tampa is the best example of this for teams like Edmonton Toronto you don't have to win 7-6 and I'm also not arguing that you got to win 2-1 but when you have the offensive power they do at the top of the lineup i think how the bottom of the lineup is built and constructed is really important and you know kyle turris himself doesn't always have the best defensive metrics he did a couple years ago you know we'll see if he can rebuild himself but i think put in the right role with the right understanding you know that that team can become more maybe more complete at the bottom half to support those top players i need to know because it's just it's a lingering anxiety of mine just throughout this show like are you are you expecting like at some point for

news to break like are you constantly looking at your phone like why why am i on the podcast with these chumps when it's such a big potential day i know my why because i love being with you guys so i'm never i'm not saying why am i being it but like i'm not lying like i have a bunch of text messages and usually that's where i check them comes from nowadays is text you know what mean yeah sure let's look at it you check them live we'll just hang out here what do you imagine oh we got we have breaking news on the podcast well and if it broke on the podcast it's wasted here and he's frozen unbelievable he is frozen he is frozen so um you know it's interesting with that edmonton situation because that's a team he's back anything anything exciting no all my

idiot friends ask me what's going on sometimes that's actually the funniest part of this job like you get to that day you know like you're on tv live and it's the free agent day and like you're so you're obviously texting people that are and every second counts and then in the middle just like my buddy going like hey what are the leafs doing or it's just like i never want to be a jerk but it's like just don't text me on that day you guys excluded yes yeah yeah i always try to i always try to catch you early and just say hey good luck and that's it uh and chris to his credit always gets back to me goes hey thanks and like i'm like that i got a response at all is a freaking miracle because i know it's getting crazy now the uh the thing that that obviously

you know that your buddy wanted to know that we all want to know is the leafs we're going to go through the leafs we're going to start with the defense on the leafs chris and your panel at least from my view is frozen but are you still with us there with you there he is okay so we're gonna to we're going to have a we're going to run down the day now if we were to just take a step back from everything that happened on an abc schoolyard curve what do you what do you give the leafs on their defensive moves or on their moves and just the whole the whole moves in total i'm giving them a b grade so far okay and my mind is my mind is open to upgrading it i i think that this has been a fascinating couple of days for the Leafs, honestly. Like,

I mean, we've seen a bit of a turn in how Kyle Dubas wants to build his team. I know he probably chafes at all the discussion around this, but let's face it. He was not the kind of GM that was going to sign a Zach Bogosian in the past. And, you know, the only crazy thing to do is to just keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. And no matter how he wants to frame it or phrase it,

if you just watch what the Tampa Bay lightning did, and I don't mean just winning the cup. I mean, how they, how they transform their team from a 62 win disappointment that gets swept out of the playoffs to a team of bad-asses, which they were, they were awesome in the bubble. They dominated the bubble. There was never a point. I didn't think they were going to win the Stanley cup during the bubble. And so I'll say that if you're in Kyle's shoes and you look at how your team's

constructed, there's obviously some parallels there and you didn't at least think hey there's you know maybe we have to just recalibrate um you know you'd be crazy so i give them credit for doing that and i like what they've done but it's very clear we're looking at a picture that isn't fully complete like this painting there's still some work to be done on this one and and the next moves could be interesting because like they're they're signing all these guys at great value like no matter what you think of jimmy veezy getting him at 900 000 like there's no risk there at all so hold on jimmy veezy hold on that because we are going to get to him and i want it and when we get i want to get

to what they've done first and then i want to go to what you think they could do because i think that's what's fascinating and i want because otherwise the conversation is going to go all over the place as it often does on this show and so i want to run through this are you trying to keep this orderly yes yes i want to keep it orderly i want to make sure that we do it right now steve you can you can hear me too right you can still we're good you're good okay so here's what i want to do chris i want to get your reaction to each signing as they've as i as i bring them up and then steve i want to get yours as well because it's very important to get both here now starting with we'll start with the defense tj brody four years 20 million dollars

obviously a guy that they wanted for a long time um and it seems the feeling was mutual especially after the details of the cadre trade come out anytime a team wants you and your team considered trading you you probably feel like well i probably want to be with the team that wants me um how does that deal happen pretty good value on it what's your initial reaction chris and then steve will go to you after well duh you know it just made it made so much sense that we could even figure out that that was a natural spot for him i mean look the leafs needed someone who can play the right side on one of their top two pairs there was really limited options if you're not doing petrangelo which it was pretty clear the leafs weren't if you're not doing petrangelo there

were there were just so few guys that would fill that hole and i think brody was the best of the remaining bunch so i like the i like the signing i like the term i don't think the money's crazy it just made so much sense honestly it was like a natural fit uh if the glove fits we got to quit you know it was just it was so easy it just was it made sense so um i'm sure it wasn't easy to get them there was other teams out there interested in them i think calgary had some interest in keeping them but um you know this this to me it's already it already improves their team right you're you're removing barry and cc who barry wasn't really a great fit for what they needed cc just isn't performing as a top six defender on that team you're getting better by putting

him in there uh notice you said top six to not top four um i i agree by the way but dubas apparently still doesn't now uh steve with regards to that react like when you when you saw the tj brody signing come across because you were doing a ton of coverage for sports net um what was your reaction to it what are your initial thoughts thank goodness because they needed someone on d and uh you know it finally put to bed well unless cj tells me something different it put to bed all the petrangelo talk because it just didn't really seem like it was ever going to happen i kept trying to galaxy brain a situation where they could make it fit i i'm sure there was a way but uh just getting t.j brody for no assets other than cap space just seemed like a good fit

uh and what what did i say should be the leafs number one priority this offseason improving defense partner exactly improving defense is way too uh broad of a term they need to get their best defenseman a proper partner to play with it wasn't cc it wasn't barry uh Brody makes them better automatically by that. So I was happy with the signing. Well, let me hold you up there because what I'm hearing, Chris and Steve, is that it's not going to be TJ Brody and Morgan Rielly.

It's going to be Morgan Rielly and Zach Bogosian who signed for one year and $1 million. Now, the reason for that, and Steve is not going to hear this, Chris. Did you actually hear that? I have heard that. Now, the reason- I would snap.

You're bringing the news to me, Adam. the reason where where did you hear it from well it was uh it was you know there were so there's so many worst nightmare there's a reason why we talked to one insider because because there's there's legitimate insiders and then there's people that are like i know a guy who's the cousin of a guy um uh uh chris chris as the official fourth member of this show being a real insider would know more about this than i would but what i was told and what i've heard is that because the Leafs saw Zach Bogosian playing with Victor Hedman on those badass Tampa Bay Lightning teams that, you know.

Victor Hedman played with everybody. Right, but Zach Bogosian also played with Victor Hedman. That's why people said, hey, he's kind of a slower, he's a right shot guy, he's a big presence. Maybe they just put Bogosian with Riley and then you put, and I think Jonas Siegel's article in The Athletic this morning even talked about it. You could have then Brody and Muzzin.

And then if you say you have Justin Hall or Travis Dermott, cause Kyle Dubas has come out and said, Travis Dermott will be playing the right side. Now that's if he's wearing a leaf Jersey next year, but if Travis Dermott's playing the right side next year or Justin Hall is there, then you have to think that both of those guys would be on the five, six role.

Like is this, is, are we galaxy braining this or is, is Morgan Riley or Morgan Riley and TJ Brody playing together? Chris, you ever get any complaints from your neighbors with all those planets and moons revolving around your head, Adam?

here's what i'll say this is way too premature and the only reason i say that i still think there's another move coming here and you know i've heard it's possible we're not just talking about dermot or hall being moved i mean it's possible they're both moved and obviously if that happens i would assume there's another defenseman coming in like i just it feels too soon and i'm not trying to to you know crap on your your theory here but i i just my theory do it it's a stupid one i just don't know who's playing for the team yet so it's hard to say what the best pairings are like like miss miko letnan is going to play for the leaves i'm telling you i realize the hype train always comes with a european free agent but this guy people i trust

in europe say like he is absolutely a top four nhl defenseman and he's the best defenseman in the khl and the KHL is not a nothing league you know I don't think the Leafs have them outside their top six like where's Rasmus Sandin in this like this like I know the problem for me I know that Rasmus like he had options if he wanted to to be one of these guys that could be loaned to a European team um to to get seasoning in and this this time off and I don't think the Leafs have wanted him to do that because they wanted to be ready for a full season well I mean obviously that could still be a full AHL season assuming there's the AHL there's all these unknowns but you know i think they envision him as being on the team too there's too many bodies here and so

unfortunately they're not all staying i can't tell you who's going i don't know where they're traded but you know this is this to me is it's so hard to really talk about their blue line in totality yet because i don't i don't know who their top six are so then with that in mind i mean obviously a little bit of depth is good if we could just if martin marincin doesn't uh set foot on the ice for the leafs again i know there's gonna be a lot of people who are pumped and i get that marty's the big a good guy i get it i get it i get it must be the best people and he better be great but there's a lot of people that never want to say that death is not the longest tenured guy in the organization now yes no morgan riley he's close though like he's in the mix yes 2050 this is

they the leafs acquired martin marincin for one of the picks they got for daniel winnick that's how long he's been here wow right the first daniel winnick trade by the way the first daniel winnick um so the good news for you guys is he's got to be like 10 on the depth chart right now like i don't i don't have it in front of me but he's the problem is is that's where he should have been last season the season before and the season before that you know it's not that he's he's an ahl stud and that's it's like you know he's like the the opposite of tj brennan great at the ahl level great at the ahl that's it and and that's and i think there's a lot of there's a lot of i mean there was a lot of martin marincin propping up and i sort of bought into it for sure

but every time you see him play you're like i don't know what he's doing i'm not sure what he's gonna do tonight like where's that puck going not really sure he's a good penalty killer 100 sure yeah well he's huge uh the thing though chris if you don't see yeah but for passing he's not handling the puck you could have given him a potato gun getting similar results chris this this if you were to and this is this is we're not holding you to this no one thinks that you know anything on the no no we know you know but we're no one is holding you to this what do you think the leafs top six looks like in an ideal situation to kyle dubas keeping in mind no one thinks you know anything no but like nobody's like

no one's going to extrapolate anything from this is probably a better way to put it i just love well you got riley muzzin and brody is the absolute guys that are 100 in the top six right they're in the top four then it's just a ton of question marks you know and i i don't know honestly i don't know what kyle dimas thinks on this one i've never asked him um you should he's kind of busy he's probably having thanksgiving right now with his family It's even due all day anyway. I don't know, but I know I'm talking to their people like they had a crazy weekend, I mean, especially Saturday.

I'm pretty sure there was some wine consumed around the Leafs' offices after they got through all that Saturday. I can imagine. Another name that has popped up, well, the first name to pop up because he was given permission by the Sabres to talk to the Leafs. Four minutes after free agency breaks, Wayne Simmons to the Leafs, $1.5 million. One year, he lives in Aurora.

he's from scarborough steve and i went to school with him uh and uh and and obviously i went to school with wayne i went oh you didn't okay i went to school with wayne and seven and eight yeah i used to play road hockey with him uh great guy really nice guy always was and was always destined to go where he's going like there's there was no question when when wayne when you saw him on the ice and my friend played him at double a and i remember going to the game and wayne just it was it was Wayne and then everybody else he just danced through teams um I think he was playing for the Toronto Aces or something at that point he was unbelievable but you know he gets to come back home gets to play for the Leafs which I think both sides definitely wanted and he's got a lot of

time to rehab whatever ails him because he has had some injuries um what does Wayne Simmons bring to this team do you like the signing um and do you see this making a big difference with the Toronto of Maple Leafs going forward? I hope he makes a big difference just because that means he does get his career back on track. I mean, last year was a miserable year for him. But I think what he brings is just character, you know, and I love his story. I love how much he cares about the organization. I love that he's willing to take less money to be here in the same vein as Jason Spezza. You know, I think the Leafs understand they got to, they're still building a culture And that's such a buzzword. Businesses use it. Obviously, sports teams use it. But I really do think it matters. And you can't fast forward it. Right. I mean, it's funny, like when Babs used to talk about how like the Leafs need some scars. Well, they do have their they got their scars now. Right. They know who they are. Like they've been through some shit. And they're supposed to be really good. And they need these guys, I think, to come in and just it's like an injection of confidence as much as hockey.

And, and I know that, and look at, I'm, I'm all for the statistical analysis that's come into the game. I love, I'm not anti-analytics in any way, shape, or form, but I do think that there are, yes, you are not, I'm not, but I'm just, no, he hates stats. If you like stats, he hates them. Any analytic, like any analytical arguments are just logic based arguments. I love logic. Like, like to me, obviously you want the players that are doing the effective things on the

ice to be on your team and you want to be able to measure those things. To me, it's, it's, it shouldn't be controversial. But there still is a bit of a secret sauce idea here. There's still something about the way your team plays and the fortitude you have and how hard it is. Because remember, the playoffs is so different than the regular season. Like, to do what Tampa just did, you've got to push and push and push. Like, they played – I think they played four extra games worth

of overtimes in the playoffs. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you have to be able to buckle down and just battle through some crap. Like, that five-overtime game was wild. And that was the first game of their, their first round against Columbus. And those guys, a few of them have said, since if they lost that game, they don't know if they have the run they had. Like it meant so much to their confidence to finally beat Columbus.

Cause they'd been swept by Columbus. Obviously they get, you play eight periods of hockey. Like you're being pushed to the limits of what your brain can handle, let alone your body. And so, you know, I think that, I just think you need that, that kind of character and leadership and all that stuff. And, and so anyway, that's a long way of saying I think Wayne Simmons is like a home run for the Leafs on every way shape or form I think it's awesome that young fans of the team get to see a guy like him who

grew up here and you know found a way to the NHL kind of through an unlikely path and like that he's living his dream and living his best life I think he's a great example and I think the Leafs are going to appreciate it too he's going to fight someone he's going to he's going to throw some big hits he's going to play in a way that this team doesn't always do and you know again they're not going to reinvent themselves they're still going to try to outskill other teams but i think a little bit of that sandpaper is going to help i need to know some of that skill oh yeah you know he did yeah he has that skill yeah they're going to put him net front on the power play i guarantee you might be power play too but like he's he'll fight to get there and he's still got hands like he can

he can score i need to know what it was like in the studio because it was like all right and we throw it to the insider's desk and it was elliot looking down at his phone you like uh this isn't actually ours and you threw it over to to Stewie so what what were the first few minutes of free agency like when you uh because I think Wayne was the first one yeah so it's such a chaotic day you know Elliot and I are sitting up on this platform essentially at our desk especially right at 12 like you're you're texting everyone you're you're you know you're you still got spirit at that point you're still like into it so you're trying to find stuff out and all of a sudden the ear the producer goes stewie says wayne simmons is going to the leafs and i'm like good for stewie

you got that and then like all of a sudden they're like and to you guys it's like wait a minute well this isn't our news like and i certainly wasn't disputing its veracity but we didn't even have a chance to like text someone and confirm or just get the contract number you know like we didn't have a way to further the story and said all of a sudden we're on live tv and then i'm just like well anthony stewart says wayne simmons is signing with the leafs and where was he he was uh ice surfing studio right yeah he was in the the big upstairs studio so i actually didn't even see anthony face to face that whole day i saw him on our tv set but that's it wow and he had the first one of the day and that was a nice little bit of hosting you did there because you know deer

in headlight for one second and then you're like and to anthony stewart right and it's funny elliot was getting chirped by the producer that he was like that he wasn't he kept looking down at his phone whenever we were on or whatever that he was deferring too much so he was doing a lot yeah uh so i mean so wayne is a and i love that wayne in i think he did nine interviews uh within the first couple hours of signing in toronto but one of the things he said is he brings he will bring some face punching which is really good and i think toronto fans are gonna love that didn't he say i'll punch your head off yeah yes that's what he said you won't be afraid to punch someone's head off yeah what a legend yeah too much is made of how you know the sushi culture at uh at at

scotia bank arena the reality is in in the gta leaf fans are really blue collar and um and really yeah yes everybody knows die hard passion or whatever but the idea that everybody who's in the stadium every night uh is any sort of um cross-section of what leaf fandom looks like is is crazy um that's even even outside it's young kids outside and that's great that it's young kids outside but you know most of the guys are um you know watching their garage watching in their basement have been watching for years um working tough jobs and you know kids and this and this is their thing and when they get i think when they see a local guy going in and working like that it's it's going to take a lot of the pressure off of the players that aren't doing that

uh, and let them sort of be them. Like, I wonder, you know, you put the, the, the, I think the work ethic part is contagious. Like if you've ever had a job where you worked with someone who like gives it every day, like there's sort of a subtle pressure. That person doesn't have to say anything to you that you have to kind of like up your own level. You know what I mean? And I think adding those kinds of guys, and I'm not suggesting the Leafs top players don't work hard. Let's not turn this into a narrative thing, but like, I think that the group understands that they have more to give like that they haven't all given their best yet to this level that they can all be better and that's where the success is going to come from you know like kucherov two

years ago was a disaster in the playoffs get suspended just you know emotional wreck and then this year he was just a beast like i just think you have to and he's still a superstar he won the heart trophy two years ago but it's just i think that guys like wayne and i think jason and Spezza does this are even Jake Muzzin I think Jake Muzzin actually is like a low-key driver behind the scenes of how the Leafs are um I think that that stuff matters sorry to hijack your thought though no problem no problem well and one of the I think one of the tidier signings and you've already made mention of this Chris is Jimmy Vesey now this is a guy that the Leafs were in on originally when uh his rights came up in Nashville and he ended up signing with the Rangers I believe

Vesey Sr., his father at the time, worked for the organization, and I believe his brother was in the system somewhere, and I don't believe either of them are still with the organization. However, Jimmy now is at one year, $900,000, and what I found really interesting when I was looking at his stats, you look at a player like Jimmy Vesey, in his three years in New York, he scored 17, 17, and 16 goals. Obviously, last year was the disaster for everybody in Buffalo. Jack Eichel, Jeff Skinner, right on down. Wayne Simmons, I guess, was a part of that for a little bit, too. everybody had a bad year so Jimmy Vesey had a bad year in Buffalo but my thing is Jimmy Vesey's a guy that you would say out of four years he's had three where he hit 16 17 goals compare and

contrast that with a guy like Andreas Janssen who yes we love great great person great attitude and a very skilled player however Andreas Janssen has one season where he has eight goals and one where he is 20 and then last year which was unfortunately cut short because of injury um that you know for the money in on a value proposition that's some pretty tidy work by kyle dubas to get a guy that you could probably reasonably projects to get 12 to 15 goals in maybe a third line role on this team exactly and that's how the leafs know they have to try to win i mean when you allocate all the money to have to the top of the roster you have to find some bargains that can play at the bottom of the roster and it just so happens this free agency plays perfectly in many ways into the

hands of a team like the Leafs because I think that they're unafraid to make some of these bets even knowing that they might not all turn out and I'm not saying it'll be Jimmy Vesey but it's possible one of these signings you know the guy just isn't good enough to be in their top 12 or 13 forwards and they got to pay him 900 grand to play for the Marlies well the Leafs are willing to do that not many teams are willing to do that and I think it's more likely to say that he's going to have a bounce back year he's going to become a contributor on this team and as you rightly point out he's what makes a quarter of what andreas johnson was making to do it right and you know i don't think he'll fully replace johnson i'm pretty high on johnson actually

as a player but i just think that's reasonable i'm not trying to detract from him by saying that it's just you did have to lose johnson's salary right so right you just couldn't be paying third liners three million bucks except maybe alex kerfoot but i mean that's essentially what happen here right they traded Kapanen and Janssen just because they couldn't pay those guys what they were making in a cap structure and still be competitive so I I love these signings I I just think there's no downside if you're Toronto and you know I still think Joe Thornton's coming here too like that's like I don't know how this is all gonna fit that'd be cool okay okay I don't There's a, there's a, there's a bomb. Really?

Well, let me, let me reclassify this a little bit more accurately. I think that they remain very interested in Joe Thornton and I think he is open to the idea. I don't, it's not that obviously if it was done, they would, they would announce it. It'd be on the Leafs PR account, but I think that there's some mutual interest there still. So even the bottom six is still a bit of like, if we're going to ask what the lines look like, like I have no idea where this all fits with all these guys are bringing in.

and if they added someone like Thornton it's what kind of points me again to trades like I think the Leafs are in on everything right now so I this was so right before Jason Spencer resigned with the Leafs I notoriously on this podcast said yeah you know I don't know if they're bringing him back so I know that was a no you said he wasn't an everyday player yeah I don't know if he was an everyday player and he might not be though so here's my question though so he's back but he's at a different point in his career if Thornton were to come to the Leafs at a different point in his career are those guys everyday centers or do they maybe move a little bit more to the wing well I mean we saw Spezza play the wing a bit last year like I think

that I think that they're probably wingers with center potential and look they're injury insurance too if it happens right I mean they can play center in a pinch if you you know sustain some injuries at that position so I don't think it it hurts to have guys that can do it um I just don't know what the lineup's gonna look like I'm kind of fascinated by like that's what I like the VZ signing but I saw it I was like like where are all these bodies going like remember they signed Barabanov and you know I don't know a ton about him like what I've heard from the scouts like let's have modest expectations of him and in the sense I don't think he brings much offense likely doesn't project to bring a lot of offense to the NHL but I assume he's gonna play I mean

part of the way the Leafs keep luring these guys is that they give them a legitimate opportunity to play. Right. And they obviously have a good relationship with Dan Milstein, who happens to represent a lot of the Russian players, but you know, Oja Ganav played here. It didn't work out, but you know, he can't say that the Leafs signed him on a promise and then only gave him 20 games and sent him to the HL. And they gave him his equipment too.

Exactly. Remember that story? He walked off with his equipment. I heard, and I see, he did a Russian interview where he criticized Babs too. wow like pretty harshly i would love to read that severe words you can probably find it with one google search like it it was like it was like a scathing it was a scathing teardown of like the way the leafs do business but anyway it's a tradition every summer the the when the russians players go back we finally get the translation and oh kucherov's trashing like calorn or something

remember that yeah and to be fair he might have been misquoted like i shouldn't actually put this on on nozigan off because i never asked him but i actually don't know if i ever talked to him other than a quick hello he was he was here and he was gone right well i mean and that's how he was for most leaf fans too to be honest so to get back on topic like let's like we we can start with the bottom six and so you assume bear ban i assume bear banoff's playing i assume vz's playing i assume spets is playing in that bottom six like are they keeping nick robertson that is there even going to be an ohl season to send him back to like that has to be part of the development decision here what if what if there is no ohl but there is an ahl is he allowed to be sent to the ahl in

that case i would assume he would be i mean they haven't set the rules for that yet but i mean nobody wants their top prospects who are 19 years old not to play this year like anywhere can he go to the e probably he can be a growler is that allowed because i know it's not he's not allowed to go to the a well he's not into traditional rules steve but i i have to believe if there's no ohl season and the ahl gets going and the nhl i mean there's so many ifs here man like this is we i'm glad we've avoided this topic because it's really depressing but i don't even know what i don't even know what we're talking about here i don't know what next season looks like you're building a team and you don't even really know what it's going to be like what it's

for yeah yeah like i'm even thinking that like yeah they'll send travis boyd to the ahl it's like what happens if there's no ahl so have they even made a decision yet on roster size because that was the first thing i thought when i saw this is well wait a sec maybe you'll be allowed to carry six guys instead of or sorry six extra guys instead of three because there's nowhere to send them exactly sort of like they had in the bubble right like every team had expanded rosters for the ball they haven't made that decision because they you know no one knows what it's going to look like that that'll kind of come in time when we know if there's going to be an AHL season but like the AHL has more complications than the NHL in getting back up and going next

year um because some teams are owned by individual owners that use this as a business to make money like it's not just development for them right and those teams aren't going to want to operate if there's no fans that they're building because they'll be losing a lot of money. Yeah. No kidding. Well, and it's already tough enough to make money with an AHL franchise, right? Yeah. I mean, some do well, I think the Chicago wolves do well, and that's one that has an independent owner and they're always a team,

the wolves that they they'll sign sort of a semi-expensive HL only guy just to have talent. Like, you know, I think there are ways to make it work, but it's you're right. It's no, one's getting super rich off owning an HL team. I don't believe. no no um so that's why they always stay put and never move that the last that's a good point i bet some ohl teams do better uh but i mean also the fact that you don't really have to pay the players all that much probably would have to do with it too but um you know who we didn't talk about yet who is joey anderson well that's what i was getting to that's

where i was going i i want to know about all this well where does he fit is he you know from from what I heard from you know obviously we saw Rachel Dory put out a thread obviously she's pretty familiar with the New Jersey Devils said he wasn't necessarily developed in the way that he needed to be is this a guy that's a year off like where where they you know assuming let's assume the AHL is back is he uh you know an AHL guy that they're grooming for the NHL eventually or is he a guy that they see in the roster now I think they see him in the roster now and I'll tell you why i know that they had trades for andreas johnson that included just draft picks so if it was just their desire to just you know shed johnson's salary and and get back future assets

they could have done that and yet they take the deal that includes joey anderson and you know i have to confess i saw rachel's thread it was great i don't know a ton about the player but to me if they didn't just take a draft pick for him it suggests they like this player and obviously he's 22 years old so he's at a spot in his career where you would expect them to be able to play and so i assume that's what they're going to do you know johnson what's kind of interesting he could have been a montreal canadian i know they were one of the teams with with heavy interest in him which is would have been would have really pulled at steve's heartstrings i think yeah wouldn't like that probably a better outcome for you that he ends up in new jersey yeah i wonder

if they wonder what the package from montreal would have been because they have a ton of picks and they have a ton of young players right and they've been using their picks to get guys right to acquire Joel Edmondson's rights and sign him and all that. I don't know what level of a pick it was, but certainly I think they were a team that was just going to take him for his salary and for futures. But there were other teams around there too. I mean, Janssen has a lot of value.

This is the one thing about the Leafs. Like, for all the crap they take from the hot take artists, like, they don't have bad contracts. And so all of these players are movable. Like, yeah, you might not love the number for Janssen because they have a cap problem, um but other teams look at 3.4 and the fact he signed now for this year and plus two more and they they like that security they're like that's a great number for him like we know we're gonna

bring him in and he'll be a player for us for a couple years so you know and the fact that the leaf structured it where it was front loaded with the money made made it so that he's actually paid less like they've done a lot of smart business here and unfortunately the people that just come at them with stupid crap get all the attention for the stupid crap they throw at them but like the truth is the Leafs have been a really smart front office and and I know that they haven't won a playoff series and all the things you can trot out there but like they're they're pushing the boundaries and using their financial might to to maneuver this whole cap picture and I think they've done a great job of it and it's all going to pay off one day you watch it they're going to

become a a force and everyone's going to go oh yeah of course that was always going to happen but right now they're taking a lot of bullets well Chris we're going to be climbing that one appointing that on instagram and seeing what people say just gonna put that out there in in terms of in terms of shit out of context it's the best isn't it and he also said uh thornton to the leafs confirmed i think it's confirmed i believe yeah yeah absolutely if i can ask anything of you please just don't do anything like that we don't don't worry what drives me nuts about doing radio hits like you just say one little thing and they just take it and like twist it and then the someone's texting you like you said what does it remember anyway we're about to find

out if account for hockey is a podcast listener yeah right yeah yeah no well he is the last time chris was on he live tweeted the whole thing i'm like hey man can you just like let people listen oh yeah remember the time i did it after the leafs breakdown day no chris we don't so chris after the leafs breakdown day i remember you texting me but what was the reaction because i i remember what your text said but but i don't think a lot of people knew that there was some follow-up for you as well oh my god it was a lot of like you said what and what and anyway i think we should actually revisit that one day like i'm pretty sure what i said all pretty much came true like i don't think i said anything at the time that was like completely off base it just it was

maybe a little too early to say some of what i said or a little too direct or what i don't know whatever this is my view though so like my day-to-day job think about it i write for sports net i do these little tv hits i do radio hits like that that service is like the casual fan but i feel like i used to do these live shows in toronto the puck talks and and obviously podcasts like this one like i feel like your service you got to give like this is the hardcore it's like how deep are we into this thing like over an hour and a half like anyone who's listening you're still listening to this like i should give them a reason to listen like i want to tell them things they haven't heard somewhere else because they deserve that i mean the hardest core hockey fans deserve the real

kernels of truth i think agreed agreed um well and we we appreciate that because it's fascinating for us because obviously we're hungry for all of that and you know chris to be honest it's entertainment too like who's getting here we're not like this is life and death candy store is it's the candy store it's it's really um can you believe this is my job i get paid to do this like it's insane look at my office is this work is this i'm not coming i'm not walking out of here it's a hard day yes oh god covered in soot it's no this is awesome this is great uh uh there is a couple important stories i do want to quickly get to here before we go but chris i do want to say that when you are honest like that it also for a fan from a fan's perspective which is all i am

Uh, it, it, it just adds to, I think your credibility because everything you said happened and it may have been a little too early for certain people, but that sort of honesty is the kind of honesty that keeps people coming back. And I think that's the, you know, at the time you may have been a little bit hot for you for a couple of days, but at the end of the day, like what from that episode didn't happen? Well, I'd have to revisit it. Cause like, I've tried to block out the memory of everything happened. i remember i said they were going to trade cadre which happened you know god you said there would

be bombs that would go off i'm pretty sure i said that babs was in trouble which didn't happen that off season but it happened 20 games into the season yeah anyway good times just think of the fun we've had together fellas so um now i remember my boss is actually at sports that i think were some of the most unhappy people with me really well it's like you go on a podcast and say all this like where's this on our especially back then it was pretty it was on the sportsnet platform i think at that point so i don't anyway well it wasn't a huge issue but it was i was reminded who i work for okay well two of the four members of this show work for sportsnet currently so technically i think there's some adjacency there and sportsnet can benefit from that as well right

am i wrong yeah and look at there i should be clear they weren't like jerks about it but like no you know there's always someone watching what you're doing is the point and every once in a while you got to be reminded steve any comments just imagining brad pitt from inglorious bastards no i'm gonna get chewed out i've been chewed out before adam before you get to your two things that you got to finish off i gotta ask chris if for the last what was it three months you've lived inside of a bubble in Toronto and Edmonton what's that like day to day oh man it was kind of soul-destroying a little bit like I oh if I'm being honest I mean if we're staying on the honesty tree here um here's the thing I gotta be really clear like I was actually really grateful

that somehow the NHL had that playoffs and I got to cover it and be a part of it so like I was coming at it from a position of gratitude and like it was really cool that they did it but it was hard man and i didn't even live fully in the bubble like i i have so much respect for the players and the staff members for the teams in the league that like they were in the bubble for 66 days these players are staying it's an awesome hotel jw marion edmonton like we'd all would be fine to stay there obviously for a normal visit but they couldn't even get a coffee in the morning and walk around the block like there was limited opportunity for them to go outside for 66 six days plus they're in the playoff pressure cooker like you can never get a release from work

right like you're just stuck in it the whole time and you're separated from your families I just have a lot of I have a lot of respect for what those players went through and you know some of them I know well enough I was texting with and stuff I just I really I know it was hard on a lot of guys probably in a way that they won't talk about too much publicly but you know if we're in this year I think we have to be open about mental health and I think there are some real challenges there for those for the players and for the staff members too that work for the teams you know i know a lot of those people really well too you know i wasn't actually in the bubble i was bubble adjacent so i got to sleep at home and when i was in toronto and i got to stay in a hotel in edmonton

enter the arena and get temperature checked a whole bit and then basically go to a specific section and watch the games and leave so i never came face to face with players or gms or whatever during that time and it was hard it was so weird like my two favorite parts of the job are getting to know people like you know ruffling around for info having those conversations we have normally in the dressing room and the interviews and stuff and number two is just the excitement of the games themselves like it's cool to go to all these big games and just you just feel it even if you're not you're not rooting for the team so you took that those two my two favorite parts of the job didn't exist you know we're doing zoom calls like this one to interview which you know it's

impersonal at least we know each other well enough like it's still fun but it's not the same as sitting in a room together and you know the the games themselves like it was weird like tampa wins the cup and it's you can hear everything like there's no cheering it's you can like literally hear the players yelling and some of it was actually awesome like when there was like skirmishes on the ice and you can hear the chirps and stuff like that was great it was really cool but it was just a hard environment like it didn't feel this it didn't feel quite the same i think the hockey was the same i think that it was just as hard to win the cup but the experience of going to those games was not like going to a normal playoff game there's just no way around that

and and for the players so i think i read something tampa and the islanders coming over from the toronto bubble to the edmonton one were a little put off so i know in toronto you were able to use bemo field and you were actually able to go outside when you were talking about the not being able to go outside for a coffee thing but where what was available to everyone in the western bubble so basically the jw marriott's connected to rogers place with an above ground walkway uh so you didn't have to go outside to walk into the arena now on the concourse of the arena they had a bunch of things set up because i i would go on the second level but i couldn't go down to the main concourse because that was technically the bubble and but they had like golf simulators and

things for the players to do there but so like a lot of their social time was walking across this pedway into the arena and doing stuff on the concourse that was set up there they used you You know, it's a big, it's an awesome building actually in Edmonton. And then outside in Edmonton, there was just a small concrete courtyard that the players were calling the prison yard. And it was really small. So you could go out and get fresh air there, but like, it was so small, like I guess you could walk circles around it, but you know,

it wasn't ideal. And, and they did do some bus trips to Commonwealth stadium, but that's not connected directly. So you have to get on a bus and go there and you, you know, they did get to go outside. I know they did some golf days, not too many because it was complicated with the restrictions but at least that hotel exit in toronto what the lightning really liked about it so there's actual tennis courts in that hotel like legit ones there's pickleball courts there's a rooftop pool there's a great view of the city from up there i think there's multiple restaurants and then they could literally walk outside

it was all fenced in and go right to bemo field where there was a restaurant set up for them and obviously they could kick soccer balls around or spike ball or whatever they were doing there and so they had a little bit more freedom of movement there and i even know like one guy who works for the lightning was telling me he would do his daily jobs just along that fence back and forth between the hotel and bemo field but like at least he could run outside because you know not not everyone likes to run on a treadmill um you know obviously you'll do it when you have to but i think it just they felt they had a little bit they like the setup and i apparently it's a really nice hotel i've actually never been in it but um it wasn't a comment on edmonton like everyone took that as

like everyone's saying edmonton sucks i think it was the setup in edmonton was probably more ideal from a pure bubble standpoint because hotel x they had to get on a bus to go to the arena and go to the practice rink what have you so that the edmonton setup is is is more contained but i just think it was worse for kind of peace of mind and things not related to hockey and and what happened with the whole families thing families being allowed and then a lot of players didn't end up having their families join them well the issue was the government and as a canadian citizen i'm not speaking as a reporter now i actually like that the government didn't bend its rules but the government didn't bend its rules and so families could have come but they would have it would have

required them to fly to edmonton on their own and spend 14 days completely in quarantine just as anyone would have to do you know traveling any way across you know into canada right now from another country and the problem with that when you think about it is because the series were so compressed like a series was done in 12 days so if you're you know the partner of one of the lightning like do you want to fly up here in quarantine for 14 days and the team might not even make the cup final you know you know i mean like you might you might watch them lose in the conference final entirely on tv from airbnb in edmonton and then just fly home and so you know the only family members that ended up traveling here were those that were canadian citizens that

were already in canada and so they didn't have to observe that same quarantine and it you know i i that was really hard i think on the guys because truly one of the cool coolest moments of seeing the cup one is then after the tv broadcast ends all the families that are there just flood the ice and it's just moms and dads and you know it's almost like 17 weddings or 28 weddings happening at the same time like you know getting different variations of the photo okay one with mom and dad not one with your partner one with your kid you know and the cups out there and everyone's emotional and i think you know that's one of the cool moments i mean in fact i remember being in Boston the last time we could do this and seeing Luke Shen out there with Braden and and like Luke's

on the ice and as an active NHL player with his brother as he wins the cup like it's so cool and then the next year Luke wins it and obviously Luke's family couldn't be there because these restrictions so um you know I think everyone made the best of it but the reason it didn't happen quite honestly is the government didn't allow for modified rules for families and I'm sorry for any family members listening because i understand truly deeply honestly why you'd want to be there but you know the reason we've limited the spread such as we have is because we've had rules like this and there should there should be no exceptions um now we do have two major hockey stories to get to before the end of the show so i'm going to try to get through them quickly because obviously our

time is is running a bit short the first thing is the blackhawks my time is your time's good i know that uh steven just what normally i guess bro okay um but but relatively um relatively quickly after um cory crawford uh uh was told he will not be he would not be re-signed by uh the chicago blackhawks we had stories from mark lazarus and and i think scott bowers as well who by the way have a great podcast and one of a chicago blackhawks fan pointed me in their direction talk about two guys that really know that team and the two of them team up and it's it's a great show uh but you know mark came out with a an article in the athletic with quotes directly from jonathan tase saying stan bowman hasn't talked to us but i guess we're going through

a rebuild now and stan bowman actually hasn't talked to anyone cory so just to give you an idea chicago started last year with cory crawford and robin lanner robin lanner went on to the conference finals as the starting goaltender for the Vegas Golden Knights Corey Crawford put up a 928 yes he's older but he did put up a 928 save percentage which is still pretty good the most Chicago offered him was a one-year deal worth three million bucks now Corey Crawford has obviously since moved on the Chicago Blackhawks are very clearly preparing for some sort of retooling or rebuild and everybody is mad at Stan Bowman what's interesting about this is I think for the first time in about three or four years,

Stan Bowman is doing the right thing. This is a team that started last year with Corey Croft and Robin Lanner and that, and the best they could do was 24th. What are your thoughts on how Chicago is to handle things and what they should do going forward? Because Stan Bowman, I haven't agreed with a lot of what he's done

and the Brandon Saad and the Artemi Panarin and the Zdorov trade, and we'll get to all that. But Chris, it's time for a rebuild in Chicago, isn't it? It is. And I think the question you're not quite asking, but you're maybe leading me there is like will any of these star guys leave you know will any of them want to go and i have to believe they won't like i have to think of jonathan taves and patrick kane and i don't blame them for this they in a lot of ways should be career-long blackhawks

just because i've literally transformed this organization i think they're in their history the blackhawks won three cups before them and they've won three cups with those guys so i mean those guys are going to have a statue beside the statues that are outside that awesome building they got a jordan one out there and bobby hall stan makita like those guys are going to have a statue one day so i think it's going to be completely on their terms i don't think anyone's going to low-key try to push them out or whatever so it'll be up to them but there's other interesting guys on this team like i know duncan keith in the past has had interest from teams and he's got a no move clause or no trade clause and he hasn't moved it but you know maybe now with some of the writing

on the wall you know maybe those guys think about that and it's probably too soon to to handicap it a hundred percent and say which way it's going to go but you know clearly the core of those core guys are upset and they're honestly they're really upset at seeing Crawford go Crawford was a huge part of that team as you mentioned he's still performing like it's not like you're you're not letting him walk away coming off a 902 or an 888 or something like he's he's still a really good player and so uh there's some fence fences to men there but i'm with you like this is it's going to be painful you have a team probably the best team of its generation or certainly with pittsburgh one or one number one or number two and you know now you're going to see the dismantling and i'll tell

you in pittsburgh we're not far off this day either like they think they got another two seasons next year and the year after to try to take some swings and they've almost drafted nobody like they trade every pick that isn't nailed down right i mean that's that like and that's like i don't blame them if you have two generational centers like the odds of them getting players as good as crosby and melkin at the same time again like they could play another hundred years as an organization never have that so like they should try to go for today but you know it's starting in chicago a little sooner but i think you know pittsburgh within a year or two we're going to be talking about the same stuff and then there it'll come down the same thing does does melkin

want to chase another cup or does he want to finish his career nhl career in pittsburgh i can't imagine a scenario where crosby leaves but who knows pro sports is weird what i found this is a cat so anything could happen yeah well what i found interesting about this though is that tase and kane especially tase and he is the captain there was a sense in the quotes that he wanted to be and i'll read some of the quotes to you guys tell me if this is your same interpretation um bottom line is i want to win this is what tase told the athletic on saturday the expectation for our leaders on this team and myself is to come ready to training camp every year to be a playoff team we prepare ourselves to win a cup for our fans i've never

been told that we're going through a rebuild that has never been communicated to me for that matter a lot of this comes as a shock because it's completely different direction than what we expected um crawford said he was devastated after he got the phone call from bowman that they would not be resigning him uh tay said it's sad it's really disappointing crow has given so much to this team i feel he could be ready to bring more in the next few years and still be a big part of the group he had that mindset uh that he could help this team go deep in the playoffs again and there's no doubt that he could and like we said sure he performed well singularly but there is i mean obviously the brent seabrook deal is hanging over this organization's head if brent seabrook

which he's trying to do makes a comeback and is fit to play it puts them in a really bad spot and i hate to say that because that's the cap world we live in brent seabrook the best thing that that could happen to the caps is he sits on ltir for the remainder of this contract financially speaking not talking about emotionally but beyond that if you're if you have lanner and crawford and net performing as they did last year and the best you can do is 24th what else is stan bowman supposed to do now i wouldn't say you know a couple years ago one of the biggest one of the worst trades i think we've seen ever in the nhl that sod for panarin deal uh has hurt them and hurt them and hurt them again and now he's taken panarin and then he had sod and now he's traded sod and had

to retain a million bucks on each of the next three or four years on that deal just so he could get nikita zadora it's it's a it's a very i'm not necessarily agreeing with the way stan bowman's going about it but if i could say one thing stan bowman is absolutely right they need to do some sort of retool rebuild here how do you do it well you don't lose a fourth trade involving brandon because they've lost three already i think that's that's like that's a good place to start um this is where it's hard honestly i can see this from taves's perspective i mean look he let's remember and obviously they were gifted a spot into the playoffs with this you know you return to play format but he played great in

that playing round against Edmonton looked reborn and even if you look at some of his statistical last couple seasons like he's still been producing at a level offensively where I like he still looks like he has some juice left Patrick Kane is still a star frankly straight up and so I can understand why those guys don't want to see this happen but Stan Bowman works for the owners and the owners have to think what's right for the organization long term and and their long term contemplates a time when Jonathan Taves and Patrick Kane aren't playing for the team anymore and so that's why I say this is just an awful spot I mean if I'm them like I don't know how cutthroat you want to be I wouldn't even try to trade those guys I would say to them look if you guys want out you come to me

but I'm never I'm never coming to you saying I have a trade but if you get to a point where you're not comfortable you know my door is open and I'll listen to that because you've done we want to do right by you've done so many great things for the Blackhawks organization but I think it's a really delicate time there and you know i think he has to continue down this road i think he should probably try to trade everything that isn't nailed down and that that isn't these core guys if he can and that isn't dominant kuba league right right of course and you know maybe and we'll see what the brink it is like i know last year didn't go as well for him but he's still a young it's they're just in transition but i think that they should try to reload honestly boston

reloaded like everyone forgets boston missed the playoffs a couple times with this core and then they could have won a cup last year and they've been one of the best teams in the league since then you know pittsburgh reloaded between 2009 and winning their next cup in 2016 around the star players like i i would try to convince tase and kane to see this through and be relentless in trying to build a better team around them because again this is your greatest generation why not like the only thing better than their story is is if somehow at the end of this they win a late career cup for kane and taylor's i mean that would be pretty cool right like even if they don't three three titles i mean the three banners will fly forever there like

these guys are legends but i think i think the way i would do it is not trade those players because once you trade them you're signing up for eight years of being bad like you're like detroit had no choice but look what happened to them when that's who had to go and lidstrom had to go like it's a long road back to respectability and I'll believe they'll get there under Steve Eisenman but it takes forever and so I would still be convincing those guys that I you know maybe have a conversation with them because it sounds like that's what Jonathan wants I mean I didn't talk to Taves but based on those quotes it sounds like he just feels a little left out in the dark on the plan but I think the plan should be built around them but be ruthless about

it and you know that probably means finding somewhere else for Brent Seabrook too I think it means potentially trading Duncan Keith um I think you really gotta you gotta go for it being half pregnant doesn't work uh one one quick last thing Chris and you're in your estimation obviously when the Panarin side deal happened there was a lot of speculation about the the guys bringing the band back together meaning well you know if you want us to they had just come off that terrible game or the terrible um uh thing against Nashville where Nashville was so dominant and I think Chicago scored three goals the entire series and it was, they've been swept out

and Bowman went to the guys and said, what do we need? That's apparently what happened. And they said, well, we want Brandon Sod back and that's how that deal happened. That's one of the stories out there. In your experience, when a general manager consults with the star players on his team about what the direction should be,

as in not the GM dictating it, but the GM saying, what do you think? Because we all know LeBron James is the GM of the Los Angeles Lakers. We get that, right? does that happen in the nhl and when it does happen does it work out i think it's pretty rare you know someone like sydney crosby i believe has had a lot of it's not that he's pulling the strings but i think that they've sought his input on a lot of decisions made there over the years

you know it helps that he lived with the owner at the start of his career for four or five seasons you know he had he has a great relationship right up and down the organization with everyone in pittsburgh but you know i think you have to be careful with it too because the gm's got to do some unpopular things i mean it's just it's it's part of the job it sucks it's probably why i could there's lots of reasons i couldn't do that job but that would be maybe chief among them as you just have to deliver bad news or be cutthroat or or do things that that aren't popular in the moment that get you a lot of heat that piss off the other players but but you're doing something with the longer-term vision in mind and so you know i think what's important at some point with

these star players of the blackhawks is is to is just to see where they're at and and if you believe they're going to be like i think one gm told me this like you should never sugarcoat anything with anybody in your in your organization because he said it always comes back to haunt you if you try to sort of dance around topics or lie about them and so i think stan bowman should have a very open discussion with them let them know exactly what he thinks what he sees for them for these next three or four years or whatever they have been left in their careers five years and and let him know his plan and you know maybe leave the door open for some suggestions but you can't have players players you know the gm is the gm the players there to play and and even

though you respect your players and you treat them as human and and you know are my bosses at sports that don't ask me too much right they expect me to do my job and and i don't and i'm not looking for that and so i i think that you got to know your place in the packing order and at this point even as great as you know taves and key and kane have been we understand where you were going with that and you were pretty much wrapped up on that last last point that we need to talk about is we're finally seeing what what the ardent vancouver canucks fan base and i say ardent as in the the ones that are whatever the Canucks do uh is great by me there is a subsection of that with Lee Phantom with Edmonton Phantom a lot of a lot of teams have that there were Canuck fans that

were super pissed at us whenever we said these deals are bad the Sutter deal the Beagle deal the Roussel deal the Berchi deal there were tons of deals that Jim Benning and the Vancouver Canucks made especially on July 1st that have served to unfortunately negate some of the amazing stuff they've done in the drafting. They've built a really good team there, but they just lost their starting goaltender. We do think Thatcher Demko could be that starter, but we don't know enough yet. So he's had to go out and spend $4 million a season on Brayden Holpe, who has been good, but hasn't looked the same since he won the Stanley Cup. We're finally seeing Vancouver's mistakes on July 1st come to roost. Where do they take it

from here? Because obviously they've got, you know, some money coming off the, I believe it's fair cheap Pearson and someone else comes off next year, but you've also got Pedersen and Quinn Hughes who are going to command more than the money that is coming off the books next year. They have 7 million, seven and a half million dollars in cap space this year. Apparently there's still players for Oliver Ekman Larson, because by the way,

Chris, give us your thoughts on the OEL thing. Everybody thinks that door is closed. Not necessarily true. Well, I'm just thinking of it from Oliver Ekman Larson's point. Like I get why him and his agent, Kevin Epp wanted to control the story,

why they didn't want this to last for weeks and weeks and weeks it's a disruption to your life it's unpleasant but if if Jim Benning phones him on Tuesday morning and says we have a deal with Vancouver if you waive your no move clause like are you telling me he wouldn't I have trouble I just have trouble believing that to be the case so you know it doesn't seem like there's been a lot of talks there in the last couple days but I just don't think we can pronounce it completely dead like this might be like okay everyone take a breath and then see what happens in free agency And obviously that's playing out now and then take another run at this. So I would think that that's at least still lingering as an outside

possibility. You know, the truth is, I don't see how Vancouver is any better next season than what they just were. And you're right. There's a huge opportunity cost here. They couldn't get in on this free agent market because they had no money to spend and they had no money to spend because they overcommitted on bottom six players or defensemen that are beyond their prime. And, you know, those contracts have unquestionably played a huge role in what's happened here. I mean, I'm kind of stunned, honestly, that they lost Troy Stetcher for what he signed in

Detroit, that they couldn't make that work. Local guy, great story, you know, homegrown product in their, in their team. You know, at least they're smart enough to recognize that everything starts at 2021, 22. You know, that's when, that's when Pedersen and Hughes are getting paid what they're going to be paid. And so I think that they've been really careful not to commit money in this year's free agency to to do anything that might disrupt what happens then but it sort of left next year as this middle year just lurking there and and i would expect you'll see them maybe sign a free agent or two to a one-year deal because they do have some money maybe to play with with that but you know they also got rfas to take care of they signed holpe i mean they're just they're

in a bad spot and they were put there by their decision making and so where i feel sort of bad for jim benning in a sense is this is the one year you just can't trade money away like the Tampa Bay lightning couldn't give Tyler Johnson away to the league right now. It's crazy. And like Vegas is having trouble evidently trading players. Like they're, they're going to trade good players at some point, but it's not an easy trade to make. It should be easy, but no team has money. You know, someone who works for teams told me right now,

I think it's 90.5% of all the cap allocation for next year is already accounted for. There's still like, there's still like a hundred open roster spots league wide where teams have to sign players, but they don't have money to sign them. and then obviously within that structure you're trying to move money around but it's just hard to dump money in a trade right now and so i'm a little surprised vancouver didn't use the buyout window to be honest on one or two of these guys i know that's not pleasant and it's not ideal but um they're just in such a cap bind of their own doing that you know that that might have been

the way to go but i i anyway i think they're going to be worse on paper entering next season than they were last year there's just no way around it but they got superstars and once those contracts come off the books they've got an opportunity to improve their team maybe i'm crazy but yes and this is for all of you yes the yeah it's possible uh the question that i had when i saw the way that they were building this team is that they felt when they were building it that you know with those contracts that i mentioned before they thought well by the time we're good we can just attach a draft pick to this and shuttle it off to arizona or whoever else takes these dead deals and um you know at what point i know vancouver canucks fans are pissed because

they've just come off a great feel-good run they lose their top right-handed defenseman they lose their top goalie and i think they lose their second right-handed defenseman for nothing for basically nothing um and they didn't need to lose that does jim banning pay a price with the aquilines for this because obviously i know that they're close and i know that uh you know that they they tend to work well together that's what we've heard and again there have been some major successes with the way jim benning has built this team but as you said this is a key year for them to take a step forward and they're probably not going to unless pedersen which he can he has the talent to do really likes the league on fire next season uh what does this do to jim benning's reputation

And I'm not saying he's on the hot seat at all with losing his job, but is this very damaging to him? It could be long-term. He's certainly not on the hot seat now. I mean, they're still basking in the glow of what was a great playoff run and they still have two superstar young players and they didn't have to finish last. They didn't have to get drafted first overall to get them. And those guys are going to get better.

And so I think there's still a lot of faith in the job he's done, but over time if this proves to be the start of a downward spiral you know that could be the case i mean he's under a lot of pressure he's under a lot of heat i mean it's one thing to have a team that can win a you know the playing round and in the first round of playoffs and get all the way to game seven um you know with a chance to go to the conference final but it's another like how do you augment that group how do you make it better i mean they have to be raising the bar and they just they're not really in a position to do it just because of where they are you know vis-a-vis the cap I also think though I should say that some ways they were judicious and not overpaying

to to keep a Chris Tanev and certainly Jacob Markstrom I mean Markstrom got a big deal and if too it can be hard emotionally to let those guys walk out the door because you love them as players and they've contributed a lot to your success but you know if they gave the contracts Calgary gave to those guys in their situation I mean that would be its own fireball offense so you know i just think that they're they have to take some lumps right now they have to be creative and have to find a way to to get some flexibility every time he freezes it freezes differently right and it's always at the end of what he's saying which is so eloquent it's because i talk too much not at all not at all listen it's like the emmys and the music's coming on that's

what these freezes are to maybe put a bow on what you were saying everyone who wants a good laugh just do a twitter search jim benning the roast has begun and it's i can imagine it's bad well gentlemen how do you have time to twitter search jim benning steve like you got a baby you got a job you got a hell i just i live 30 hour days man it's great i highly recommend it um chris we love having you on thank you so much for coming home uh especially on thanksgiving uh because the your family missed you and we are your family um we uh had an absolute blast and obviously there was a ton of business to get through there is one quick thing i do want to mention before we go we're not going to do a press conference today but what we are going to do is

say that chris you and i had a deal where you were going to come on and you were going to um just we were just going to drop the episode kind of like beyonce dropped her her uh album at midnight and boom it was just there and i told steve that we were going to do this so last night steve naturally then tweets out that tomorrow you're going to be on the show so now yeah he did scoop you now what i want to do is tell you what happened because steve is blaming this on red receipts steve can you can you explain uh red receipts are the most bullshit invention of all time i don't know what kind of narc uh asked for this stupid shit uh i have them turned off you will never know if i read it and i hate uh that i don't think you can turn it off on facebook or

anything like that there is no such thing as an important text message it is called a phone call uh so like for any any app where red receipts are just automatically turned on guess what i'm not reading your freaking text until i have time i'm not even opening well on messenger so steve blames this i said you i saw your red receipt i know you saw this he knew you were coming on chris but underneath that in the same message here's i'm gonna read the actual message what day did you send this what day did i said this on sunday and i said sunday oh shit was anything important happening on sunday adam so i said it on sunday that's just my fire yeah hey right it was after the baptism it was after the baptism oh yeah my day just stopped nothing happened the leaf

two people and have a trade in the same message i write okay got chris booked don't announce it that's one message and the message continues and it's the same message let's just drop it like a beyonce album at midnight that's literally what i wrote and steve took hey chris is going to be on the show that's all he got that's all we got adam adam is you messaged me in the middle of an extraordinarily busy day and i missed it and i mean you must have been really busy friday because uh i sent you uh after you told me since things that we tell each other don't matter uh you told me you were gonna come by for a driveway wave at leo and then on friday i texted you hey man you still coming to which you responded you didn't respond you have yet to respond

and you haven't sent a text since. So let's not play this game. You guys have some things to turn out here. As long as we're pulling out receipts, we might as well pull out all of them. Steve, you also responded to a message after the CJ message. What was it?

Like an hour later, you laughed at an image that Adam sent. What did I type? LOL? You said LMAO. What the fuck? That's nothing. That's nothing.

you were reading and responding to the messages so you don't really have an excuse here if all anyone ever sends is lol they did no who has ever lol who has ever i thought you lol that might i thought when i sent you stuff and you thought it was funny i thought you actually lol i don't remember what your stuff is no you kept i don't remember it it's already evaporated from my memory adam you know it's funny nothing to me what's that chris there's like some old older people that work in the nhl like running teams that like lol and stuff and i always find that hilarious like if gary betman like gives you an lol like it's pretty funny that's an lol from gary betman i think that happened i can't it's in my memories yes but i can't say 100 it's not

fresh but i'd love to know if gary betman sends lmaos lmao i doubt it that's that's for 2021 he's gotta you know add it to his repertoire gentlemen we're gonna wrap it up chris johnson always a pleasure thank you so much for being on the show uh it's so great to get your perspective and your knowledge and uh you're just a great guy all the all the way and shout out coberg shout out coberg and uh honestly shout out your audience like literally i'm getting to the point where i don't really love social media like it's hot garbage half the time but like nothing fills my mentions with like greater joy than when i'm coming on your show or do your show and i know everyone gets pumped about it so it makes me want to keep doing it so is it all the news they send

no it's just like funny memes and i don't know it's it's like i feel like i'm part of the club a little bit you know what i mean so it's it's cool to you are you're a part of the show of course love you pal yeah love you guys too be well everyone be safe all right thank you chris we'll be back wednesday with another episode of the sdp thank you so much and obviously get your questions into justy for then we'll try to get them all answered and anything that we missed this episode don't worry we're doing another one for 48 hours we'll get to it i promise 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