The Steve Dangle Podcast - So the Habs Only Need Four More Wins, Eh? | June 28, 2021

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, Steve is a dad (00:00), previewing the Stanley Cup Finals (05:00), OUR PICKS!: The Montreal Canadiens or the Tampa Bay Lightning? (49:00), the most important trade in Leafs history (54:00), an update on the lawsuit against the Chicago Blackhawks (59:00), the Leafs core staying off of socials (1:30:00), and Netflix shows (1:36:00). Originally aired: June 28, 2021 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/xUhk-ZWaYfM Visit https://sdpn.ca for merch and more. We've joined The Athletic and you can too! Hit the link to subscribe: https://theathletic.com/sdp Visit this episode's sponsors: https://www.betterhelp.com/sdp https://ca.manscaped.com/ https://betmgm.com/twopod Follow us on Twitter:@Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram:@SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake wow that's a cool shirt steve i thought so really cool why don't you show everybody on camera if you're listening to this i want you to imagine that steve is literally brian cranston from malcolm in the middle no why i don't know i thought it was something different show show show him the short sleeves steve yeah ah dress shirt guy i know i've never been and i thought i'd try something new and you guys are reinforcing that no never do that it looks like and i assume this is true you could handle a baby and a beer at the same time oh yeah well hey oh hey in my house you step away from the grill that's my girl wearing these thick socks up to my ankles

or well past my ankles thank you very much where's your apron that says q master oh um it's it's right next to uh i hung it up next to the hose and by the way i i cannot wait to just water the lawn after the show hands in my pocket just you know thinking about you know how lucky i am to to have such such great kid you know why don't you get a sprinkler dad why don't you mind your own goddamn business no yes what a sprinkler does not understand that certain parts of the grass need more attention right maybe there's spots because of the dog does the sprinkler know what parts of the lawn are shaded or unshaded i'm never wearing the shirt again thanks boys that's good what if i was what if there looks like there's little dots on it there jesse

there are and i swear i i swear i've seen people with that exact same shirt only they're like instead of little dots they're little guitars um yeah there's little anything or like little cars or sailboats sailboats oh yeah sailboats is a big one why does everything have lobsters i don't know i don't get that one either when did that and also why is my as long as we're talking about random shit why is my for you page on tiktok just people killing crabs they've got to stop that the algorithm knows what you like so apparently you enjoy those videos it's the crusty crab uh sound thing and i'm like man money um also steve if you want to have a good shirt on you should be able to button your collar down that's the sign of a good shirt

and then you you my friend what what does that mean button but you should be able to button the collars down that's how you so it stands up on it so but you should be able to do that at very least now he looks like tony montana what about that but from oshawa durham region's tony montana that's tony altona steve do you remember when you sent me the scene from the sopranos where the kid tells santa claus to fuck off yes what was and then everybody in the room reacted the exact same way that was the most italian thing ever i i'm shy it's a curse well uh there we have it everyone hey by the way uh as we do this podcast you'll

Yoel Armia is on a PJ flying down to Tampa to set up for game one of the Stanley cup finals. And, you know, listen, I know he had to go into COVID protocol to get it, but I don't think there's a more bad-ass day in that guy's life than taking a private jet from Montreal to Tampa to get, go play the Stanley cup finals. That's pretty cool. So he he's just in protocol. Yeah. So, so like literally it's, it's a,

it was probably just a test that was, you know, inconclusive or something like that. And because especially with Dominic Ducharme's positive test, they have to be super, super careful. But he's not ruled out for tonight. No, he's a game time decision. Oh, okay. Very interesting. If I'm ranking Stanley Cup finals arrivals,

number one, I'm putting Marcioso in a Lambo in Vegas. Number two, Armia on the PJ. That's true. Although, wait, wait. we still haven't seen how um armia gets from tampa's airport to the actual arena until we see that we can't i mean maybe they rented him a lambo as well right maybe they rented him a ferrari maybe the florida panthers have a deal on ubers and they get him one from the airport to the arena yeah use the promo code galant 50% off your uber rides in florida you know they're just down the road i like that yeah i like that i like that's clever

so uh lots to talk about today there will be some blackhawks news uh obviously coming up which is now fast and furious you know where that story sort of had a slow burn we're like hey where is everybody and everybody showed up and that's been nice um but we'll talk more a little bit about what's happening there obviously the kind of the major story tonight is staling cup finals and this is your chance to make a big bold prediction that won't matter tomorrow but people will hold you to anyway and that's what's so fun so i think we're gonna have to make big bold predictions and i would like to know what your honest assessment of this of this is because i'm finding this stanley cup final of any of the stanley cup finals in recent memory this is

harder than it should be to talk about in terms of what we think is going to happen would you not agree well because you can't you're basing your opinion on the montreal canadians this year on such a small sample of games compared to most teams right like it vegas in 2018 were at least winning games all year right but montreal were going okay from game five of the first round onward they have been elite prior to that completely mediocre like literally bottom half of the league not even good and what they turned to switch and figured it out so you know like uh betting odds for them like they're always going to be the underdog um and every opponent i'm like well surely they can't do it against this one and then vegas shows up and look awful

and now they got Tampa and every instinct in my body is like well surely Tampa but who wants to make that bet now who wants to just be like oh yeah Montreal's toast I'm I will say I'm glad it's Tampa because god they're just Tampa in the playoffs is so fun they're just so fun to watch like just what a bunch of Tasmanian devils no one no one plays faster no one plays more intense um we really should put more respect on the islanders names because the past two tampa versus islanders series have been gifts to hockey they have like just just two games over time like come on doesn't get much better than that watching that series it just all series long and this is the this is the mind of a leaf fan right now all series long

especially game seven i was just like any professional hockey player not watching this game right now i want i want traded i want traded out of this team get out of here if if you're not watching and appreciating and and letting it sink in with your eyes how hard it is to make it to the stanley cup final i don't i don't think you belong here and i don't think you want it so get out it's they're so intense listen if you're already off in some far off land having margaritas on the beach can you at least have someone bring an ipad down to the beach and watch game seven of the tampa bay lightning versus uh new york island it was great and it was you know it was one of those series that when you get to overtime and you're watching in that last period

you think i'm gonna be sad to see this end like you know it has to end and you're like i'm sad to see this go because that that i think you know usually at the end of any sort of playoff you can you can pinpoint one round there was a couple where like in the early 2010s where like philly and pittsburgh would play and be like that was the round of the playoffs doesn't necessarily mean that was the stanley cup because i still i would have thought it was colorado vegas everybody would have thought it was but the best series so far has been that series islanders tampa without question yeah there are some series that you just remember and what you're talking about i think is philly pittsburgh 2012 yes war just war yeah just war um extremely good uh i mean pittsburgh's been in the

middle of so many they had a great one against the rangers just yeah really really entertaining i was a little sad uh to see that series and now one thing that i've said for a a few years though tampa and montreal always seem to play each other and it's a carnival when they do one team goes up big erases it the next game it's the complete opposite high scoring doesn't matter who's in net so i'm curious to see if this one's a gong show because we haven't we've been robbed of like a real gong show there there was the eight nothing win but that's not that's not a back and forth that's a massacre i want to see i want to see a 5-4 game here you know what i mean 6-5 um if i were to say i i there's a particular team that this montreal canadiens team reminds me of and

i want to know what you guys think because the 2012 los angeles kings went into the stanley cup finals um being kind of what we thought was an underdog now i mean if you look at the numbers now i'm looking at the regular season they still had 95 points going into the playoffs but they finished 13th in the nhl they were third in their own division which i think is super interesting you look at back then the can you name the number one team in the um what it was at the at the time the pacific division uh it must have been the canucks in the pacific division the canucks were not in it so this is division this is the pacific division 2012 so you have phoenix san jose la dallas anaheim oh okay what was oh they were like north northwest or something no they changed the

name of the division so the division was literally called yeah the canucks were called the northwest division the pacific division was phoenix san jose la dallas and anaheim who was number one san jose jesse phoenix phoenix 97 points that's right was that the year they went to the was that the year they went to the conference final yes i'm pretty sure and 2012 yeah and it was la that that got through but la was a lot of people didn't take them seriously i think they were seventh in the conference going into the playoffs and then all of a sudden kind of turned it on and i'm sure i was trying to think of teams in recent memory that can really compare to what montreal's done and i i there hasn't been a lot like recently you've seen a lot of domination

by teams that should dominate obviously there are teams that finish first in the league that are out in the first first you know round i get that but what i'm saying is like we're talking seventh eighth seeds how many of them are going this deep and how many of them are going this deep and being this dominant and that la king's team when when jonathan quick decided to turn it on and i believe did they not make a trade right before the trade deadline as well that was pretty pretty consequential for them um that team just became this world-beating team and even when they got back on the ice the next year they were a completely different team they were not a seventh place team anymore they were tops in the division for the next couple years and won another staling

cup with montreal i'm wondering you know if we're looking at the next iteration of that so i'm trying to look february 23rd is when the kings acquired jeff carter that's what it was oh my god like okay this team barely made the playoffs this is to me is the big difference between that team and the montreal canadians heading into the playoffs the montreal canadians never went on a run really it was just the beginning of the season and then they never really got it back here's the kings after they got jeff carter that year where they finished eighth and had to play the president's trophy winning canucks win loss win win win loss loss win win win win win loss loss win win loss win loss loss win win win loss win win win oh wait

no now i'm into the playoffs so there were some signs though that they were going to win some stuff yes and i actually remember writing about it um because from because the canucks were this analytical darling for many years and i mean that term is loaded they were good like they were extremely good they had the puck all the time they generate generated a ton of chances they were extremely good if i'm not mistaken from the time of that trade onward the kings and canucks were one and two in terms of possession so this this was a team that was scraping to even make the playoffs they get jeff carter all of a sudden they're a top three team in the league based on the numbers so that that was one of those uh you know catch you off guard series that wasn't it

wasn't really a one versus eight right sort of a little bit like columbus versus tampa in 2019 columbus happened to finish with that bottom seed there but they loaded the hell up and if you give them a couple months to you know sort of play and get used to it they started tough but if you gave them a couple months i i guarantee you they wouldn't have finished in that seed montreal i can't think of anything like them dude there were there were no signs they had this and people are going to point to you know they had some good possession numbers and and everything they couldn't finish they couldn't finish and they didn't get this goaltending right so something's different something changed at the beginning of game five and even then they blew a three goal

lead i hate it i hate it it feels like every time we got to come back to it but it's such a special and unique story so the question i have for both of you is what happens on the ice tonight uh couple things with the comparison comparing them to the la kings we forget that the kings faced new jersey who was also a sixth seed in that stanley cup final so it wasn't uh la going up against um this great team and then they beat them as the underdog it was kind of two underdogs who winded up in that stanley cup final because i remember it was it was broder on his last leg and everybody kind of unexpectedly they just kind of wound up in the finals and then i think history proved that we shouldn't have looked at at the kings in that year as an underdog because

two years later they won the Stanley Cup again and now we look back on those Kings teams as these great teams who won two out of the three years and then as recently as 2017 the National Predators if you remember were in eighth seat when they went to the Stanley Cup

final and they came out of nowhere on the back of really no offense and this incredible defense and goaltending and that brought them all the way to the Stanley Cup final where they ultimately lost and then if you look back at like the last i don't know 10 years in seven instances where you have like a clear underdog in each finals the underdog really ends up not doing too well like

i look at probably um dallas tampa even last year i would rate dallas as the underdog because tampa's the 100% failure dallas loses st louis boston that's the one instance where you kind to look at you're like okay these two teams are even uh they're finished in the middle towards the middle of the conference finals uh conference standings in each of their conferences and then st louis wins a tight series but then you go vegas washington vegas an expansion team nobody literally expected them to be in that finals they lose uh nashville they lose to pittsburgh san jose they drop to pittsburgh because they're pittsburgh's on that great run tampa their first year where they reached the finals where they're actually good they lose to chicago chicago coming

off of a stanley cup uh two years before that and then before that's the kings when they won it the second time so i feel i feel like like going into the series adam you asked what happens in the on the ice tonight like i'm i'm gonna take tampa in the series overall just because of how how i don't see there's a history of underdogs who make it all the way to the stanley cup finals and they they they finally always drop to goliath it seems that that's what happens in hockey so i'm definitely gonna pick tampa here one one quick thing jesse what i remember about the the pittsburgh san jose final um i don't know about sports net but i believe it was espn not a single person picked the penguins to win really okay whoa it was that one it was unanimous yeah it was unanimous

across the board the sharks were going to finally do it and then game one benino benino benino and the penguins rode that all the way to a stanley cup victory it's funny how we remember that now and we're like how could anybody choose against crosby in anything i know yeah i know we were like oh yeah no he's because burns thornton marlo uh uh uh what's his primer right yeah Who was the starting goaltender? Martin Jones, I think. Was he not? It was pre-shitty Martin Jones.

Yeah, Martin Jones before Martin Jones got in Martin Jones' head. And then there was, like, I'm pretty sure, too. Yeah, he was good. He had a 9-18 that year. That team featured, I think, four or five Olympians, that San Jose team. Like, who was on defense for them? It was amazing. Burns, Vlasic.

Vlasic, yes. That's who I was trying to come up with. Polak, Brendan Dillon. uh justin braun uh well that could be an olympian man i i think he might be on the czech team i think he was oh yeah but like nick spalling you know he was there too that's right there were three leaves on that team thank you for reminding me nick spalling i always forget his name even couture uh pavelski yeah like prime of san jose good team you could see why maybe they would have thought okay well there's a lot of team canada team usa here on san jose i'm you know not

that against crosby and malcolm but this is a pretty loaded team well in pittsburgh like the blues in 2019 weren't even in a playoff spot around christmas remember they fired their coach yeah right and we were like jim rutherford's about to lose his job if he doesn't sort this out oh yeah he's sort that out whoops yeah but i mean that they were bad they were bad and that's why they fired him that's why they fired their coach right so it's but again we keep talking about teams that were maybe not so good but at some point gave us a reason to believe in them they found it is there is it possible steve that this winning streak would have been inevitably what would have happened for montreal if we'd had an 82 game sketch that is an extremely good question

i would argue uh we would never see it um we would never get to this point because a huge part of it is cole caulfield yeah and his season uh would still be gone that's right he wouldn't have been able to join the um i i can't uh maybe no maybe he could have joined the team it was always the final 10 games or something wasn't it yeah it was always gonna be the final 10 games isn't that usually what it is with college yeah i don't i don't know the exact rules i mean and let's let's not forget like they did make the playoffs in their division they were you know they made it because they deserve to but again it wasn't it was like halfway through the first round where they were like surprise and like that with the kings with the penguins with all these teams

we're talking about there was a eureka moment and i just don't know if montreal had that they didn't have brendan gallagher they didn't have carrie price it's what they're doing is making ahl rehab starts a week before the playoffs people forget that you know so it was gallagher it's unbelievable he played his first ahl game since like 2008 or something stupid like it was crazy they're on their fourth head coaching i was like kerry price is injured yay not that i want to be injured but i was like we don't want to face healthy kerry price well exactly exactly and anyone who's who is like no i want him 100 like shut up you're lying like you're like listen You want him to be healthy as a person,

but you don't want to play against arguably the best goalie in the world. No, I don't think anyone wants to play against the best goalie in the world ever on any night ever. So, okay. So let me ask you this because Jesse, you brought, you say you're going with Tampa on this series. Yeah. And I had three things on the ice that I wanted to get your guys' opinions on.

Okay. So the first one is the matchup between Price and Vasilevsky. Because I think we have the Vezina trophy winner and then the guy who's probably the best goalie in the world. Playoff Vesna. Playoff Vesna. Yeah, playoff Vesna. The Conn Smythe winner, if Montreal wins it,

versus the guy who's going to win the regular season Conn Smythe goalie trophy. So that's the big matchup there. And then we have Deneau and Gallagher versus the Tampa forwards. Can Deneau another round shut down selection of all-star forwards? And then the last one was the PK versus the power play.

So we have the people, it's gone underrated, underrated but tampa's power play right now is historically great it's at 37 percent this is from nbc sports going back over the past 20 seasons no team that has played in at least 18 playoff games in a single postseason has ever had a power play that efficient the only team to ever top the 30% mark was Boston in 18-19 when they had a 32.4% power play.

And then Montreal's penalty kill is 97%. The last time they allowed a power play goal was versus the Leafs. Unstoppable force, immovable object. I think that's going to be so much fun. So those are three things on the ice. Start with the goalies here. Start with the goalies. Repeat the goalie thing again.

We've got the playoff. It was a playoff Vesna and regular season Vesna, right? Yeah, exactly. What do you guys think? andre vasilevsky's got that special sauce right now four straight shutouts in elimination games like so i think of that makes me think of like braden holt b 2018 sort of thing where like he didn't have to be the best in every single game but when all the chips were down he was he became god right and like all capitals fans seem to point to this one moment where they're like oh we're going to be fine and it was an enormous save that he made i think it was in vegas i want to say game

two huge paddle save you know we're going to be fine um if as long as vasilevsky stares down carrie price and doesn't blink um the goaltending should be at least even in this series and that's a problem for montreal i would agree with that and on top of that you know i think there's a lot of people you know does this game count does the been here before game count meaning i've been here before i've played in this before and as far as i know carrie price has never seen a stanley cup finals game nope as good as he's been in the playoffs he's never seen one and andre vasilevsky has seen a few he's been here been here before been here before on the bench i believe as well he was no he was baptized in the cup final uh because bishop went down because well yeah well

he's like no it's just a flesh wound and he was like barely able to play and i think vasilevsky got some action in right and i mean this is a guy so this guy's the third third time he's been at the stanley cup finals and that's not carrie price's fault it's just what's happened but then you look at carrie price who's played for team canada in the olympics and i think that matters well there's a guy that's been there before uh and and so my my question always is who's got more of the been there before and and i think when it comes down to it i think steve you make a really good point if he doesn't blink it's going to be a problem for the canadians because objectively on paper the tampa bay lightning are much better skating team than the montreal

canadians are i think goaltending you probably based on curry price's performance this playoff have to call it equal. I don't know that you can, I don't know that you can give one team an edge in that particular department, but I do think that lightning get an edge in the way that they play because they can play grinding teams like the Islanders. The Islanders gave him plenty of trouble, but they solved the Islanders and the Islanders are the best team in the league at what they do, which is grinding you down, which is how they continue to get better every year. they just grind and grind and grind now that number two on that list jesse was what uh gallagher and dino shutting down forwards because that's been the consistent thing with montreal in each

of their three rounds is they know how to limit the other team's offense so can they do it again to tampa it's so much harder to picture against tampa just because they're so deep they're so unbelievably deep um no injury so severe that it's keeping anyone out of the lineup when i saw the oh is kucherov injured stuff i was like you have got to be effing kidding me like there is no way montreal is gonna get this again there's no can you imagine can you imagine a road to the cup where you you barely if at all have to play against tavaris shifley chandler stevenson who i know maybe doesn't quite match those names but he's the number one center of vegas and nikita kucherov get lost get out of here but i mean they're they're they're so deep they're so fast

is another thing you know oh i'll just skate with them yeah you're just gonna skate with brayden point okay steve i'm gonna jump off a point you made in the last show what i thought was really good i know it was great you're the it's the greatest point it's too bad you're such a traitor to the Toronto Maple Leafs. But anyway, I think one of the points Steve made in the last episode was, hey, Vegas, Philip Deneau is one guy. He doesn't play 60 minutes.

What happened to the rest of you? Where are you, Max Pacioretty? Where are you, Mark Stone? Where are you, Mitch Marner? Where are you, Blake Wheeler? Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. There was a lot of star talent that got the

where the hell were you treatment these playoffs against the Montreal Canadiens and deservedly so. But like we've said, Phil Deneau does not play 60 minutes. Phil Deneau and Brendan Gallagher do not play 60 minutes combined. So to me, it's going to be very, very hard to shut down everybody all the time. So if I am the Montreal Canadiens, who's the guy that I need to neutralize? And it's Braden Point. Has to be Braden Point.

Braden Point. All the time, every day. If I can neutralize Braden Point, Nikita Kucherov is still an MVP, but it makes him far less dangerous if Braden Point, who has scored, what, nine? Had scored nine straight games? Something like that? Yeah, it was nine.

And then he didn't have one in game one. And if it's like the end of the Islander series, then like Kucherov's injury might limit him himself. Right. So this is the thing. Everyone thinks Montreal is going to target Kucherov because he's, you know, potentially injured and he's the soft target.

No, that means you got to target the other guys because you know he's not playing at 100 that doesn't mean you know you go after 70 of kucherov and you try to knock him down to 25 or whatever no okay with the the the softening's already done there the pulverizing's already done thank you very much new york islanders and now we turn our attentions to stamkos or point or kill lorn or yanni gord you like going headfirst into everything well how about you go headfirst into this you know it's it sorry go keep going sorry oh no keep going just i'll list every tampa forward you know what i mean i'm curious if tampa doesn't uh run the matchup of like the the blake coleman line with um yanni gord and barclay goudreau

against suzuki um caulfield and the reason for that is i mean those guys seem to be able to handle themselves but they are still young and that is still a pretty devastating mean line to play against i have a feeling like if you ran pat maroon out there um against against caulfield in Suzuki, you get eaten alive. And it's nothing against Pat Maroon, but I just, I think the skill level is different. I think if Pat catches you on unaware, then yeah, you're in trouble. But I look at that line specifically the Gord Coleman, Goudreau line. And I think, man, if you're running that against young Montreal players, Blake Coleman can kick your ass so many different ways. He gets in your head. He also does stupid shit with the puck. Sometimes as I say, I think we saw in game

remember he flipped it out of the air and batted it over and somehow got that impossible angle to was it yanni gourd every team's got one guy stupid why'd you do that yeah how did you do that and i know i remember when the barque goudreau trade happened with san jose everyone's like what why why did they pay that much for him well when you see him in the system and this is something that there's a few nfl teams that i think are the best examples of this are able to take players out of another team and pull them into their system and make them stars and you look at what the the the new england patriots were able to do for about 15 years with certain wide receivers that just came in and were nobodies they pulled these guys they didn't get drafted there they

drafted they were released and turned them into absolute studs next to tom brady because they played a limited role in the system and what tampa bay does so well is they take those guys and they go this is your role and no matter what happens you don't have to deviate from their from your role and i think we saw that specifically in the leaf series where guys who were supposed to play a role didn't play a role because they couldn't play the role i didn't feel confident playing the role and they got off of their own game tampa bay doesn't do that and i think when you look at the defensive uh nature of of goudreau and and i'm sorry not goudreau of dino and of gallagher it's going to be tough for them to stop two lines devastating lines and then have their best guys

be their best guys with a third line that Tampa has so I'm going to say Tampa gets the edge there this is and and like it sounds like we're just doubting Montreal again it's not about doubt against Montreal the these are just facts they're about to play the deepest team they've played in these playoffs they're about to play the fastest team they've played in these playoffs they're about to play the biggest and meanest team that they've played in these playoffs they're about to play the team with the best finishing power that they've played in these playoffs and they're about to play the team with the best goaltending that they've played in these playoffs if montreal wins they win and it will have been well earned because all those things i just said are true

i just want to hop in here with uh some breaking news guys there's a couple bits of breaking news so first off toronto maple leafs and wayne simmons are working towards an extension according to Elliot Friedman. What's the other one? The other one from Chris Johnston, the Tampa Bay Lightning are increasing capacity at Amelie Arena tonight to 16,300 for game one. It's being reported in Quebec media that by game three,

Montreal should be able to have half capacity, so about 10,500, they're saying. Oh, wow. A little over half capacity. For Canada, that's a pretty substantial development. Yeah, it's huge. Anyway, Jesse, the third one there, which was really interesting.

I love this. yeah i thought this was gonna this is gonna be really cool because we're seeing uh historically great power play go up against a historically great penalty kill how do you guys think that plays out because so much is made of how the game is won on special teams and that's why we limit penalties in the playoffs so it's more fair and all that so i want to see what you guys think of that and how it's going to play out steve um yeah i just i don't think series are won based on on