The Steve Dangle Podcast - Summer Kampf | July 8, 2025

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, 00:00 School's out! 06:00 An Era Wasted 25:45 11 players have filed for arbitration 33:30 Building the Leafs 25-26 roster 49:00 Nikolaj Ehlers signs in Carolina 59:45 Morgan Rielly VS K'andre Miller 1:05:15 Should the Canadiens move Laine? 1:15:30 Will Marco Rossi be dealt? 1:22:30 Gavin McKenna is going to Penn State 1:43:30 Are the Canadiens a playoff team again? 1:51:30 English is a poor language Visit this episode's sponsors: This episode is sponsored by/brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/sdp and get on your way to being your best self. Subscribe to the sdpn YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sdpn?sub_confirmation=1Join - SDP VIP: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0a0z05HiddEn7k6OGnDprg/join Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/thestevedanglepodcast Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sdpvip/subscribe - Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.BlakeJoin us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/MtTmw9rrz7 For general inquiries email: [e-mail] Reach out to https://www.sdpn.ca/sales to connect with our sales team and discuss the opportunity to integrate your brand within our content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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download that. TaskRabbit.ca. Code Dangle. Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research together we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer register today at pmcf walk.ca ready dad the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake Welcome to the summer schedule

Tuesdays and Thursdays And don't forget about Fridays if you're a VIP Because we have those coming out Wednesdays Don't forget about Wednesdays Don't forget about Friday I wouldn't want you to forget about them Friday is one seventh of your life

When you think about it Of your week No of your life I guess it is Deep shit here in the second week of July It's going to be like this all the way through July and then August obviously is vacation month and then we are back

and three episodes a week starting first week of September, first day of school. We'll be in here. Out the damn gate. That's right. We're going to be talking about this 15th forward might make your roster

for a few games. What do your kids do now that there's no school? Make so much noise. Oh yeah. That was funny. So just... Is your house like infinitely more chaotic now that there isn't school uh yeah like a lot your wife is a teacher do you have them at home

no oh okay but when they come home oh right your wife's a teacher so now she's home yeah and then your son would have been in school so now he's home more often and jesse he has so much to say at such a high volume all of the time where do you think he gets that trait from i don't know adam but yeah you ever see that meme it's like my wife and i are trying to have a conversation it's this bald british guy yeah i didn't know leo was a yeller he no he's just a very he's got a voice modulation problem jesse and a little bit softer now and a little he uh but he's very smart so every night our new thing like so it used to be tell me about mosquitoes and then it was tell me about volcanoes and now it's tell me about space and you just ask questions about space well

i'm glad he's not asking about birds because then he would truly be lost that's coming no he can already identify i'm gonna save him from that he can identify the red wing black bird and uncle jesse are getting in he knows what a robin is for being boring with those uh questions about like space and stuff i was worried about the parents because like you're not actively in school learning that stuff so you're just regurgitating knowledge that you had what like 30 years ago no in this house christopher columbus is a hero and all that no in this house pluto is a planet yeah i don't care what the current literature is not a province or territory or whatever no no that one can stay that one can stay yeah we like them yeah so we're working past 1999 yes i think

you have to remember jesse that not everything you tell your children is or needs to be factually correct like think about our parents would be like you know what on halloween the whole thing was if you don't wear a coat over your halloween costume which is what my mom made me do every year because halloween used to be cold in canada it's no longer thanks to global warming uh which doesn't exist and liberals with that and liberals and liberals uh and their ev mandates i would say that uh uh you know the the argument was well you'll catch a cold you'll get sick um and then i got old enough and i was told in biology class in grade 11 i kid you not uh my uh my biology teacher miss sharif who was amazing she said uh yeah you can't catch a cold from being cold it's

germs i was like why didn't that occur to me before this moment moron idiot being catch a germ yes catch you a cold doesn't catch you a cold so these are things that like your parent and listen i lie to my kid too right so like there was a point at which if i if i was gonna hear the wiggles one more time i would have i would have had that i would have had to like lock myself in a basement uh and in a dark room count your friggin days simon says it's like shut up simon simon says i wish he wasn't the most jacked wiggle yeah i know now i'm more jacked wiggle but for a long time he was the most jacked wiggle so i can't even have kick in his ass so i uh uh i jesse would say that the wiggles are on vacation this week things like that

ah so never really would be like ah that sucks oh that's too bad or they're not on right now right right even though we had netflix is everly just around yelling just like you know what she's pretty chill like she comes out of school and she's just fired up so like when i park the car and i go and get her and they're usually outside at the end of the day when i go get her from from the school daycare uh summer school yeah well i guess it is summer school except that they do all this cool shit like they're constantly at the park and like splash pads and uh they go to movies and they like they do really literally is like summer it's the best it's the best well summer camp uh yeah uh she just she sees my car and then she just screams daddy until i until i

kind of walk up to the fenced in area the cattle pen that they keep them in that's how i read contained to you and uh and yeah and then she gets home and once she's kind of calmed down it's like the energy falls off a cliff she eats food it falls off a cliff even further and by seven o'clock she is out jesse you have 7 p.m you just don't know the swings there's no gradual drop in energy oh no it's sudden it's and then a sleep or a jerk and they're either yeah yeah oh they can be such a-holes when when they're tired and then you tell them hey i think you're tired they know and then they're did they get the goth makeup on and they're really in their feelings about it and it's just crazy anyway yeah listen i'm telling you so once the kids hit like three four years

old the happiness level goes right back up again for adults it's it's that it's that zero to three range that it becomes it's really tricky really tricky you have your moments sleep regressions and things like that now oh i choose to believe sleep regression doesn't exist i uh one of those things if you if you just pretend it doesn't exist it doesn't that's right now this weekend i made my family sit down and watch mitch marner and era wasted i can't believe you did that uh well they were all like they were all really interested because obviously they follow the leafs especially like they were always big leaf fans but especially now their proximity to me they're watching every game and uh you know so they're invested and uh the reactions for it

have been pretty amazing i have seen some people go like steve you finally got what you want he left whatever and what i thought those are clearly from people that uh did not watch the video didn't watch it uh i listen the critics have followed a theme which is they very obviously didn't watch it or they had something to say about my gray beard and puffy face well i mean whatever uh okay i i may i'm fat and old but am i wrong i think it was i think it was very very interesting to kind of see how all that played out over the weekend mostly because there wasn't much going on in hockey is the fourth of july weekend and cj even said yesterday on the show like not a lot of business gets done people kind of actually do take that time off and sort of try to you know

see their families for once it's crazy how like free agency happens july 1st everything gets signed because nobody talked before that date and magically they're all signed at 1201 and then july no 101 jesse they need 60 minutes ah yes yes to finalize the contracts and such and then like july 2nd happens some things trickle in and then july 3rd happens everybody's golfing at their cottage yes like hockey people are just done all of the insiders tweet out hey thanks for a great season people it's july 3rd i'm gone yeah it used to be shocked every year the most annoying thing of working in sports is it no it's more of an off-season conversation that's what yeah no no reach back out to me in the off in the off season july 5th well you know it's the off season

they're not there i can't reach you you're in somewhere else you can't they they they string you along all of july august they don't answer their phone they might have changed their number I don't know. Yeah, no, no. There's no cell service in Muskoka. I'm glad you're having vacation. I want to move out of my parents' house. Anyway, don't have to do that anymore.

So, you know, long story short, it was, I mean, a video that's probably already among your top 20 most watched all time. Good question. I can actually find that out for you right now. Well, we don't need the exact number. No, yes, yes, you do. I think it's roughly a quarter million people have watched it so far. 236, though. There you go.

Roughly a quarter million. A little shy. Uh, and you know, I, I guess my question about it as it pertains to the show and us being like a news cycle show is how long did it take to make and what parts really, what kind of, what parts did you struggle with? Huh? Well, the parts I called you about, um, the, the, uh, how long did it take to make? I, I started to put together a timeline and I reached out to, you know, a bunch of people

in the sports and uh you know agents and some executives and and like also just like people who i know are just leaf sickos and i was like okay like what are like you know what insiders are not gonna remember like cj has no eye for this sort of thing um like well he's down to his last show of the season so you can insult him he won't hear it what like ridiculously chronically online moments oh yeah cj doesn't have time for that like memes that came up and hey do you remember this post that got deleted or whatever and like this isn't even pertaining to marner but like just things that they happened a few years ago it was the biggest thing in the world for 24 hours and it went away but it's it's worth remembering stuff like that i mean marner was a

for nine years right and what i wanted to get out of the way right away and it was a great way of detecting who did or didn't watch the freaking video was saying you know this video is not going to be about marner sucks that's that's you can't waste an era with a player who stinks there's a reason justin hall and era wasted is not a video you know what i mean um he was a fourth overall pick a ridiculous talent there are years where he might have gone first overall ended up going fourth hometown kid and what it helped me remember was how joyous and full of hope the first few years were uh it made me sad well ultimately that is what the video is it's this it's a nero waste it's a tragedy that this happened well it's like by the end of it i i want the

viewer to be whatever fat face graveyard i want i want the viewer to be like well it is a nero wasted right like yeah 2017 like i i was playing hockey with a guy who it's funny we kept doing drills and then he would skate back to me and resume the conversation and he was just like i went to games i think he went to a game in washington and a game in toronto during that 2017 series and he's like if you went back in time and told that guy that this is how it all ends i wouldn't believe you we all thought they were gonna win the cup like i was at that playoff game where mitch marner blocked that boston shot at the at the buzzer 19 game three i was there yep i was sitting lower bowl yep and and it was amazing had a great view of it and

boy after that it's slim pickings man it's slim pickings uh for him as an individual um and so much what i wanted to get across and and uh you know i sort of talked to you about this adam was like i don't have a beef with this person personally what i what i hate is what some people in his camp namely his agent did during the 2019 negotiations completely stripped him of like his whatever you want to call it plot armor or uh baby fat um or the love affair the that he had with him people started not to not like the kid um because like one one thing you've always talked about is you know and i know a lot of other hockey markets are going to roll their eyes at this toronto likes a blue collar team they do and this team they struggle to resonate

with them it's they didn't see themselves in the team right they didn't bust their ass they didn't play a hard-nosed style they weren't the 93 Leafs or the 99 Leafs or the 2002 Leafs like those were hard-nosed all hard-nosed kind of underdog teams right and you know what one of the best battles of Ontario is when the Leafs were seven seed the Sens were two and Leafs beat them anyway you know we we love that shit um but the the I really wanted to go to because you know one of of the things we talked about recently is is like if you're 20 and you've and mitch marner's been your favorite player since you were 11 you might have missed some stuff that because that's literally your childhood idol right so i wanted to go back okay here's some stuff that happened

when you were a kid that i wouldn't expect you to remember there's stuff i'm told about the leafs all the time from like the 90s i'm like that really oh i thought that was common knowledge i thought you knew that no i was a child you know and sometimes i and also weirdly enough you had a life outside of well yeah and like if you don't know what to look for how do you find it yep right so um there was this like here's his camp picked apart the uh elc negotiation his entry level contract okay so what was that like and what were the circumstances around it what were some of the things his family said in the media and i know some people don't like when you bring up a player's family but like when they say it well they gave interviews so i think that's yeah yeah right i

think that it becomes fair that's absolutely fair game uh and then here's what his goofball agent said idiot goofball agent and that nightmarish 2019 negotiation and yeah the world stopped it did and that made the cap flat but the comparison for that marner contract was always going to be miko ranton what a nightmare like what a complete nightmare like the the cap hits were not close to the same and the playoff performance wasn't close to the same so that that was you know sort of what I wanted to get across and then you know 20 the the 2022 or 2023 whatever it was the interaction I had with Marner you know there was a run-in I don't need to get into specifics with with someone in his camp and it left a really bad taste in my mouth and when I met him for

an interview that i did with sportsnet you know i didn't i didn't get like too into the weeds in the video but like he walks in the room he goes steve and i go mitch and like it's frosty like it's i'm not making it up in my head like he knew about it and was not stoked and i'm sure for a guy who desperately desperately desperately at every turn takes every opportunity to publicly say he's blocking out the noise he is surrounded by people who just put megaphones and flamethrowers in his face going this guy said this and you guys are idiots you're hurting this kid you're hurting this grown man now stupid stupid people so anyway he knew about that and it was frosty and then he sits down and he plays ball we had a good interview it was great smile for the camera

took a picture and then and then he leaves and i left the arena that day going you know what a pro what a professional it was so great that he that he did that on the run and wasn't with him it was somebody in his camp no it wasn't now what the camp does is it it it doesn't shield him from the outside world they do a really terrible job of bringing the outside world to mitch but what it does is it muddies the water and you don't know what he wants done or what he thinks at any given time you know it could be his goofball security guy or it could be his goofball agents or anyone else um and you don't know what he agrees with or what he's vaguely aware of or not aware of at all and and it muddies the waters and so he still has this aura of poor mitch

at the end of all of this and you know oh the one of the comments that uh would drive me nuts is it's a 49 minute video and it's well the toronto media drove him away and i'm like if if that is what you came to the conclusion of at the end of that what i thought was a very nuanced and fair video you either didn't watch it or you're kind of a dumb person like and I can't help you I can't hold your hand

I can't make you you know not read your text while you're watching this video I can't help you and that's okay it's not my responsibility to help you I made the content it's up there you do what you want with it

and I think most people appreciated it as a fair and balanced thing well i think the ultimate uh the ultimate thing jesse and i feel like you would probably agree with this too is that it's a tragedy that it had to come to this yes and now we move on and but jesse say it says something really good i can't remember if it was last episode or the episode before whatever and you were just like i'm excited for just not to talk about this frege mentioned it on 32 thoughts saying there was a player that texted him after the trade deadline saying is this ever going to end yeah and and i and what was that like so i saw that quote and was it a salacious rumor or was it just accurately reporting what happened well i

think in this case it was just more like is he ever going to get traded because he's clearly not staying oh well that's what i think in that case yes well i i what i thought the context was is why are we still talking about this since oh no accurately reporting something that we now know definitely almost happened was not the contact okay good jess what are your thoughts on video and and being able to as somebody who does this for a living move on to a leafs team post this era the first thing for steve on your wall there maddie if you want to bring it up uh that's your leafs wall right yes where's mitch he so if you pause it um oh dear okay so above my on the right side of the screen you see the red jersey yeah i'll put in the mouse yeah there you go so that's

lanny mcdonald right right above him is me and mitch this this one yes who's going there and when's that coming down uh i have a carlton the bear figure that i'm thinking about putting there i like that and the only other leaf i have two other leaves um that are not on the leaf wall Jonathan Bernier will be too big to fit so it might be Joffrey Lupo I thought it had to be people on the team no

like currently on the team I thought that's what well I thought they were like retired great like Sundin and all that but like I thought you reserved spots for like people who are playing for the Leafs I thought that's why Mitch was coming down oh I took him down just like to be silly

like because he's traded now I could just leave it You can leave it if it's not like current Leafs or anything. I could just leave it. Oh, I didn't know that. What if it's Matthias Michelli? Then I would... I don't know if he's getting a McFarlane toy.

I don't know if he's getting a McFarlane toy. You ever had Finnish pizza? If Matthias Michelli gets a McFarlane figure, I'm putting him up there. So you got guys up there who are on other teams actively? Let's go through them. Let's see. I don't know if we want to go through them.

Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Kiss my ass. No, I'm kidding. Who is an active? Luke Shen. Yeah. And JVR.

JVR just signed. Who did JVR sign with? Columbus again? I don't remember. Where is he going? I don't know. Yeah, JVR, I guess, and Luke Shen would be the only ones that I can think of. Those are the only two?

Yes. Okay. Yes. That's fair. It's weird. If you still had Cawdry up there. He never got one. He never got one.

He must have a Flames one. Nope. Wow. Never got one. Or I'd have it. What? Never got one. Can we put in a request to McFarlane?

We friggin' should. That's weird. That is weird. He led them in scoring last year's career-high 35 goals. Exactly. Like, honest to goodness, he should get one. I would say he's a top 50 most popular players in the league. Oh, yeah.

Just in Toronto alone. I mean, he's up there. Yeah. in terms of just name notoriety leading scorer of a canadian team and played in toronto won a stanley cup with colorado 100 point season when he did he should have one that's weird he should have one yeah that's weird like i don't know if jonathan huberdo has one like he'd be a good candidate if you were a must i don't know i don't know i don't think he does you gotta email mcfarland toys i should make a list of guys who have never gotten one who need to have one

a hundred percent need to have jonathan huberto i don't think he ever it looks like he has some stuff from the panthers days but that's not the new mcfarland you have to get it in the box because if you see it outside of the box that might be someone who custom painted one i would i'm saying no nothing comes up when i look for there's one i almost bought joseph wall doesn't have one but there's a store near my house that has a custom painted joseph wall they just made one yeah and i will want it no i feel like that doesn't count it doesn't but i want it like felix potvin never got one but on on that screen uh there's a custom one okay that i got done oh that's podvin got one of the really old like 1994 like nhlpa ones dolls yeah yeah how dare

you and but he never got a mcfarland okay i feel like for next season it would be odd to have mitch up there really yeah i think mitch should be replaced for that yeah for sure actively on vegas and all how everything ended i think it'd be weird to have him up there i'll get a nicola wall one I don't know if that exists either. Is McFarlane making a new series for next year? I don't know. I don't know that much. Jesse's not at their factory.

I don't work for McFarlane Toys. Why are you asking us? You would be the one who would know that. I should know that. Well, I don't have any of the new ones because we got a bunch and we gave them away as prizes. I'm sorry. I asked you if you wanted me to put any aside for you. I did call you before we allocated all of them for prizes.

But I'm a great, as established in the 49-minute Mitch Marner video, I'm a great guy. Was it McDavid, the Four Nations one, specifically? I was like, do you want this one? This one's pretty special. Oh, I thought about it. Yeah. The McDavid Four Nations one's a really cool toy. I've still never met him.

You've never met Conor McDavid? Never met Conor McDavid. I was in a scrum with him twice. Okay. But never met him. Never shook his hand? Never shook his hand. I took a photo of him and his dad after his last OHL game.

Those Henderson days, you know, with Sportsnet. Those are over. Get out to the Sober Nights practice facility and you do a bunch of interviews. You never got McDavid. No, that's the David Amber assignment. They did not give that assignment to Steve Dangle. Got it. I was going to say, did they send Dreisaitl instead?

Because that'd be odd, but I guess. I didn't get Leon either. No. You got Bergeron, though. I got, yeah, by accident. Oh, okay. Yeah, I got clever. The Bruins staff and Bergeron walked onto my set,

which was actually the Coach's Corner set. Oh. Because it wasn't getting used. They're like, you can use this. I'm like, this is the Coach's Corner set. Anyway, he's like, am I supposed to be here? And I went, yes. Ah.

And I lied to Patrice Bergeron. Good for you. Good for you. Lied to the most honest, respectful human being in the game. And he gave me a great video. That's excellent. Sometimes life throws you curveballs, and you don't have time to get to them,

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Get $15 off your first task right now with the promo code DANGLE at TaskRabbit.ca or the TaskRabbit app. You should download that. TaskRabbit.ca. Code DANGLE. Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. challenge yourself friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research together we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer register today at pmcfwalk.ca all right so uh moving on to some of the news around the league and obviously we'll

start here with the leafs 11 players filed for salary arbitration i know guys this is the most exciting part of the summer salary arb uh one of them is uh nick robertson uh lucas dostall from the ducks is another name that kind of stands out very big one capo caco from the kraken uh connor timmons who is now with the buffalo sabers uh i mean i didn't realize that and gabe ballardy from the winnipeg jets a few other people are on there but you know i'm not going to go through all 11 it's not that exciting there's a few names where i'm like oh yeah no that's actually an interesting conversation i'm like connor timmons yeah what does he want well i think what he wants is just give me bo byram's spot when you finally trade him well i think here's here's

why every salary arbitration i think is actually very interesting this year for a change is all the contracts are going so screwy and stupid i would love to know what connor timmons thinks his comparable is well that's interesting i i think the leafs would agree with you because that's the reason they didn't qualify upon us holmberg is they were worried that arb was going to go crazy this year and they didn't want to be stuck in a in arbitration situation with him 1.55 a year with uh uh the lightning he had like seven goals like he was a fine player sure they seemed to like him yeah yeah he was fine but like i don't know were you expecting anything to happen when he was on the ice no no good and bad and people are well yeah exactly compliment and this is where i go

okay so people are upset about cali yarn croak because of his lack of playoff production and i get that but i look at this and i go okay holmberg for 155 or yarn croak for another year at 2.1 and if he's healthy and has a full training camp it's likely he gets you 15 to 20 goals yarn croak as a ufa gets his current contract today like he'd get another 2.1 for you i think he'd get i'm not kidding yeah 100 i think you get more than that he honestly might like jean-no got 3.4 yeah maybe not after last season but like i don't know like i i there was a i think it was hockey illuminati who i love did like worst free agent signings of leaf's history and yarn croak was on there i'm like come on that's crap that's that's listen in the playoffs yeah he's been

useless I understand maybe not useless but he doesn't freaking score in the regular season he does so uh you know I wonder for a guy like Arvid Soderblom uh for the Blackhawks you could be like hey listen I might not be great but I do beat the Leafs every time uh so is that today playing the role of Alexander Georgiev is Arvid Soderblom yeah it's so weird um CJ says it's likely that the leafs um and this is on yesterday cj show man they've been on a heater lately so good uh it's it's sad that their season is ending because i just wanted to keep going but cj says that the leafs probably aren't able to get much done uh this summer maybe maybe a couple of smaller moves i think roslovich's name has come up um and that you know i think fridge alluded to the fact that

maybe the leafs wanted manji upon he wanted roslovich wanted them both to wait so they could potentially move on from either comp or yarn croak some people have floated domey i don't believe that not anymore uh anymore i think uh i think cj makes a point when he says uh they don't have anything to trade and outside of the pittsburgh penguins nobody really has much to give so i look at this and one of the things i've been critical of and i wanted to get your guys thoughts on this one i've been really critical of the leafs especially lately in hindsight about um their lack of patience going into a season now part of it is they had 50 something percent locked up into four players they had to fill out the roster but they would always go into camp with every dollar

spent and every roster spot accounted for last year was the first year i can remember in a long time where there were actual battles for spots in the lineup and this year it seems like there's going to be even more of that and they have a core too yes and i i hope they take a quieter approach here because i i feel like we've spent so many seasons guys in toronto talking about the offense and how it's going to why they need to augment that that's their strength they got to outscore some problems whatever i look at the defense i look at the goaltending and i go this is a team that has objectively switched their identity and that is their identity and what i know is that if there are 31 teams trying to get better which is what we've been told

somebody's going to fail and players are going to become available especially the type of players that you need which are objectively a scoring winner winger if you need a scoring winger or a playmaking winger that is the thing that you can find easiest at the trade deadline or even before that and there are going to be teams that fail they're going to be general managers that are fired coaches that are fired because everybody's trying to get better and when everybody's trying to get better there are going to be some failures oh yeah major ones and and so why not double down on what you are keep things the same let people fight it out figure out what you got maybe you give easton cowan nine games before you send him down to the ahl or something like that uh and

might even make it and he might even make it uh but i look at this and i go okay i understand wanting to move on from conf i understand all of that robertson deal probably gets done one way or the other it doesn't really matter what he does in the playoffs just get through the regular season and he can score in the regular season, I just feel like a patient approach for once in this Matthews era, it's now the Matthews era, would be nice. Wait for the opportunity to come to you rather than going and trying to force something

and overpaying for it where you don't even have assets. I think patience is going to be key for everybody. The teams that want to contend for the cup and the teams that want in on Gavin McKenna. um like you know julian brought up a great point the cj show is great um you know you're talking about how almost every team wants to get better but that's never the case when there's a player like gavin mckenna available yeah i feel like by september or october we'll see some other you know what we'll take there's gonna be some teams who are gonna be like oh do we sink and

i think around halloween american thanksgiving they're gonna be like yeah we stink all right and they're going to pull the chute and teams are going to have all this cap space preposterous cap space what was it alan tweeted this weekend 275 million free cap space right now like you know i i just i had to adjust my brain like oh man the leaf still got to trade david camp they got to trade him no they don't you have to trade him if you don't have space they do so what's the problem even if they sign robertson they have space unless he gets five or something they're they're gonna be totally fine um every team is gonna be able to make a move which is rare with the exception of like i don't know maybe i know dallas vegas is cartoonishly

over the cap and dallas is montreal's over the cap i want to talk about them in a bit they're all the cap though because carrie price carrie price and patrick line a2 like eric Genghis pointed it out in his article. He thinks that, and this is why I wanted to save it, but he thinks Patrick Laine might be the guy to move there. Right, but if you take $10 million and you throw that on LTIR. Well, yeah. That's what I'm saying.

The Montreal cap number is never a true number because you have $10 million sitting there on carry price. When's that over? Next year. Oh, wow. That's sooner than I thought. Here, Jesse, I want to play a little game. Are you able to change the spots of the players on that?

I can if I go into GM mode. Yeah, if you go into GM mode. You mean in the Toronto lineup? Yeah. Remember, there are people listening to this. Oh, I know. So when you say, are you able to change the spots on that? I'm going to narrate it.

Is it a leopard, or what are we doing here? Well, hey. Ha-ha, dad joke. Thank you. That was very good. That was very good. No, because it's July 8th, and I want to figure out what is going on. What does this team look like?

I mean, it looks better today than it has on days in the past. So I would swap Michelli and Nylander, I think. Or maybe not. Would you swap Michelli or Nylander? I would put Domi up with Matthews. It worked. I don't understand this. You know what?

Sure. Let's do that. Domi on the right? Yes. I hate him on the left. Anyway, so that's fine. Nyes, Matthews, Domi. Great.

I'll try it. Tavares, Nylander, Michelli? Yeah, Michelli's a disher. Nylander's a scorer. Boom. Done. um let's hmm now here's what i'm trying to figure out because i actually think i want scott lawton on the third and i know people aren't gonna like that

but like just think of it as bottom six top six put wah in the middle there on the fourth line yep okay it's shut down line right but he scores more than lawton does goals yeah points is lawton okay you could or you could just why wouldn't you just so here's my question you have bobby mcmahon uh-huh nicholas waugh scott lawton why isn't that a line bobby mcmahon nicola waugh scott lawton yeah you could do that you could but here here's so here's what we got right now nize matthews domey you got nize matthews disher and we've seen domey work with matthews we know nice works with matthews great why not try it sure macelli tavaris kneelander we know tavaris and kneelander work disher macelli great all you know bottom six line whatever you want to

call it mcmahon lot and yarn croak i'm not in love with it but like they're capable of scoring they're they're defensively responsible great annoying shutdown line camp laurence it's big you have right-handed face-off guy raw you have left-handed face-off guy camp lorenz can even take them as well there's no one you could kick out of the dot and have it be a problem i don't know you head into the season with that it's not the end of the world why not the all bastard line do you want nick robertson as an extra sure oh okay so no the all the only person he kicks out to me is Yarncroak so you could do if you need McMahon Lawton Yarncroak or McMahon Wah Robertson I think is weird or sorry McMahon Lawton Robertson McMahon Wah Robertson like he's he's a very

interesting player to me like Wah no uh Robertson like he's still so young like we all think he's like 26 27 at this point he's still at an age where it makes sense for him to get better and also not be the best version of himself god wouldn't it like what a boon it would be to get this guy who magically emerges as a 15 20 goal guy who's also an everyday player and responsible and not like just hucking grenades uh everywhere and getting absolutely pancaked shift in and shift out the the one one thing that's that's frustrating me a little bit like as a leaf fan trying to fantasize about what the team is going to be is i want them to get better but i also want them to get a fit for what they are and i don't see it out there like rostovic is not a fit

he can help you get through the regular season he'd be a fine addition to this lineup and you know put up 20 goals whatever he was a healthy scratch for carolina like in the playoffs you know what i mean well who's who's out there who matches craig berube hockey it's tough you like you're gonna have to trade for it and you're gonna have to get creative yeah that's why we were promised a whole bunch of activity on the trade market but it hasn't emerged yeah i don't think it's gonna happen for a bit i'd love to know like what's holding it up is it just everyone is taking a breather is it they're trying to figure out like i mean who is also giving up what the leafs want yeah it might not be anything holding up it just might not have

existed you know it might have been might have been in line with the thinking like it might have been correct like oh there's not a lot of good free agents guys are gonna have to go make trades but in reality i don't know if those trades exist because people want to keep their good players they're not really giving them up i almost wonder if like salary arb like sort of gets the ball rolling because like that's quite a few teams that are affected and they're good teams some of them yeah but those names aren't anything that should move the needle maxim siplikov give me some of that lardy is a pretty big one yeah but he's gonna get like how is that i don't know if that's affecting like big trades no i don't think so i gave velarde deal i don't know i'm just i'm

trying to listen you're trying to will i'm trying to will something interesting to happen absolutely yeah i don't think it's gonna reality might just be that it's boring i think you're missing a great prime opportunity for an all bastard line of uh mcmahon uh lawton and wah i don't know why you wouldn't do that because those guys would be a pain in the ass into it and then you have the all no scoring line of lorenz conf and yarn croak and if you need some scoring on it put robertson into it right great that to me is like you know uh and and you can have wa and lawton trade off face-offs right right and left shot uh you know camp can play fourth line center you know we can kill penalties this team is not going to be short on pretty good

penalty killers at least right now um i know that you know there is a uh to quote the cj show a mortar-sized hole there but they are going to have guys that can do that they really gotta and if you I hated that title if you could convince I hated that title if you can convince Bobby McMahon to be a little meaner and a little more attitude who I which I think he's capable of that could be a really fun line Scott

Lawton's not a fun guy to play against neither is why so let's figure this out then so can you take camp out of the lineup entirely drop Lawton down to 4C Lawrence and you're switch

yarn croak in Lawrence put wa in the middle on line three moran's over here there you go there you go uh so this allows you to have a lorenz lawton yarn croak line which is what you had in the playoffs then you have mcmahon wa and blank space likely robertson i assume the blank space is robertson and then you have camp and pesetta as extras robertson doesn't play the right side really yeah he does he does yeah I look at this lineup and I like Waugh on the wing there because at least

you're utilizing your right shot players on the right side. Nylander, Waugh, and Jarnkrok are your three righties that exist in your whole lineup and I think that's kind of a best. That's crazy by the way. So then they still need a 3C? No.

I would sooner move Lawton up. You have David Kompf. There's another option. No, this is what we had before. We switched there's the same option yeah like i liked i liked where it was i didn't think it needed to be moving like you're gonna have to use david conf if you're paying him 2.4 million dollars i feel like that's an adequate foresee because we know he can do that and at least you have a wall as your right winger with a right shot the big one is if you scroll down to the defense uh after the inflation

of this uh of this uh free agency there are zero bad contracts none ekman larson was a little rich not anymore yeah i thought somebody tried to make the claim that not more like you're out of your mind yeah not morgan riley either honestly oh we've turned the tide on that uh dude i morgan riley on free agency today gets that since 2020 yeah but that means it's been a bad deal for half of the contract since 2022 and what's his play give me a sec okay since 2022 i i came across this when i was doing the bouchard video for scoring by defenseman over the last three or four seasons he's a 10th or 11th in the entire league and he's not making 10th or 11th in the entire league money porous at times better with carlo better with carlo with carlo yeah yeah he

is going to do wonky shit and he's only in what he's going into year five of this contract yeah it was it was the theme of the leafs yeah no kyle was awful at this he was awful at the whole contract thing like it's it's interesting seeing him in pittsburgh doing exactly what he was great at in toronto which is just selling the farm and getting 40 million picks he was legitimately very good at that um the contract thing he's miserable there's got to be bottom five in the league yeah and they're hanging on to tristan jari there good old times like well and the goalies forget it uh the thing that scares me most about morgan riley is i think the worst game of his career was game seven against florida panthers yep he could not have been worse and in those moments uh like i

feel like that carries more weight than anything he does in the regular season and i'm going to always remember that and that's the type of performance we're going to get out of this player the problem with him is like his offense does elevate in the playoffs but like is that what we need out of you not at all well yeah and and i i also think like uh jesse makes such a good point like people are really hard on cali yarn croak for his lack of goals in the playoffs dude like what are we that era is over the era of nickel and diming is over the well but my point is you need your best players to be their best in their best games it's why Carolina didn't stand a chance against

Florida. Their best players looked tiny and small. I'm not buying what they're selling. And you talk about Roslovich. The guy's over six feet tall. He's 80th percentile in terms of speed. He's a right shot center who scores at

a half a point a game pace. I think he adds significantly to this lineup. Center wing. I would get him just to have him as an option. Well, you could have three centers on the third line with a guy like that. I wonder what he's asking for. well i i would hope it's a lot he had 22 goals yeah like so i see christian dvorak and i'm like well i'm at least him yeah but you're no you're not making that playing for the leafs you want

to go sign with the flyers of the blackhawks you can make that kind of money you're not making that the the leafs also like they can't spend too much because i still think they need bodies the competition we're the stuff we're talking about going into training camp they need more people to be in competition for these spots they have that 4.9 million dollars in cap space and they have right now michael posetta and nick robertson and ryan reeves fighting for the last couple lines and reeves is going to be sent i would like better humans to be fighting for those spots i'd like another situation where you have a guy like matt's patch already coming in a training camp and fighting for that so i hope they utilize that 4.9 million dollars on like one year deals

that are 900 grand or a million you know just to have people in there who because this lineup's not going to be healthy for the entire length of the season right and your only extra forward is like Easton Cowan or Pezzetta or Reeves. They need depth here. They actually lack a lot of depth in the forward group. That's where Cowan comes in. You're right. That Gruhl guy is sort of an interesting signing.

Who? Exactly. That's fair. He's got three names. I forget what. Well, what about the five guys they signed to the Marlies today, gentlemen? Today? Today.

They just signed it as of the start of this show. Now, are they NHL contracts or AHL? They're AHL, but they can always be upgraded. All right. Like they got Gunnar Wolff-Fontaine. Yo, the Leafs got Gunnar Wolff-Fontaine? They did. From the Iowa Wild.

STP legend? That's right. What a name. Wow. Ben King, Nick Rayum, Marco Sikich, and Ryan McCleary. Oh, Sikich. I think I recognize him. Yeah.

And I think McCleary is from the Cincinnati Cyclones, so that's their ECHL. Good for him. Good for him. Gunnar Wolff-Fontaine. It's our guy. It's our guy. I need to know more about Gunnar Wolfe Fontaine. That's so good.

They need more humans in their roster, in their organization, to compete for NHL spots. They did get Vinny Letary, who is like an NHL option. Oh, Travis Boyd is a good depth option. They picked him up as well. He can play in the NHL. I see where you're getting at, Jesse. I see where you're getting at.

The things you're offering me aren't of highest quality. Yeah, but what is your 13th, 14th forward supposed to get you out of bed? Last year when they brought in Alex Nylander, it felt like something of like, oh, there's a former top 10 pick who you can throw in your system. They needed him during the regular season last year because of all the injuries. They called him up, played a couple games, wasn't spectacular, not coming back, whatever. But at least there was an NHL body ready to go. And I feel like they're lacking those guys right now in the system.

but it's july what is it eighth it's july 8th there's four months to solve that yeah you cut the date wrong i'm not i'm not too concerned it's just on the list of things they need to check off in the next four months so this isn't like i'm not like pissed off that the least need more guys jesse walked in here i'm just saying like they need to do this eventually before october hits they'll get guys yeah i'm i'm really i'm not on the list of least things that needs to get done Yep, and there are Leaf fans that would love a reunion with Nazem Khadri. There are Leaf fans that would love a reunion with Tyler Bertuzzi. Banned.

Khadri rumors are banned. Yeah, they are. Because as long as he's a flame, it's banned. Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

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Steve Dangle Podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. And let me tell you something. This is a time of year for reevaluation. I always talk about September 1st being the new year. It's the true new year because you're going back to school. A lot of people are back from vacation, whatever. And you always want to hit the ground running. But if you don't reevaluate some of the things that you did the previous year

that maybe you're not the happiest with, that you'd like to improve on, get better at, then what are you doing? Sometimes you've got to retool on the fly. Oh, I like a good hockey tournament. Now, BetterHelp has over – That's a hockey tournament? Yeah, retool on the fly. You didn't know that?

You just thought it was a life term? Yeah. Okay. 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties. 5 million people worldwide use BetterHelp. It is fully online. It makes therapy affordable and convenient. Oftentimes, you can be matched with a therapist in like 48 hours.

And that is very different from other therapy where it can be like six weeks. So if you want to check it out, visit betterhelp.com slash STP today. I'll get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash S-D-P, 10% off your first month. Speaking of, I want to talk about the Nikolai Ehlers contract because it was signed in between when we last did a recording and today. This is a guy who, I thought this cap hit, guys, was a lot more reasonable than I expected. It will expire when he's 35, but it's a six-year deal, eight and a half million bucks. And, you know, he's 29 years old.

And I think what's interesting about Nick Ehlers is so much of his career, you know, he's been 60, 70 point guy, but he's only done it with like 15 minutes of ice time a night. Yeah. Yeah. And in Carolina, they need somebody who can play more. I think Nick's always wanted to play more. I don't know if it solves the issue of getting past Florida, although I don't know how anyone solves that issue at this point. They're not bigger. They're not meaner.

but they are Carolina year or like he is a Carolina hurricane. Even having never played a game there. That's the Florida problem, isn't it? Like you can't go into every season going, how do we beat them? It's just, how do we be the best version of ourselves?

Right. And I don't know, like to me, that definitely makes the hurricanes more the hurricanes. Well, yeah. Cause he's six feet tall, but he's 172 pounds.

Yeah. And so he's not heavy fast and he'll score and they'll, they'll kill it in the regular season again they'll compete for the division they might compete for the league honestly i see them as like a prime candidate for a guy like ricard raquel who would really tie the room together i assume cock and yemi would be part of the return there and they have space and but you know if we're looking at here's here's here's what i'm struggling with every year when we do like preseason or heading into break who's your cup contender we always take the cup champion and then we go yeah yeah but push them to the side let's be difficult about

this who else is ready to take the jump and this year it's very clearly we're wasting our time if it's any team other than the panthers and can i see that hurricanes team pushing them to six no no what are you talking about cockney emmy and an ancient jordan stall as your third line center what are we doing that's a that series is a waste of time carolina is interesting because they have so much cap space and they're not utilizing it right now with this set roster that we think is going to be pretty up there in the eastern conference they still have 10 million dollars in cap space so they're primed for a huge move at some point in the next like 365 days to like carry it just sitting in the press box like that's a good

player they're gonna be huge buyers once again at the trade deadline and just how they tried to get miko rancid in to stick around last year they can do the same thing this year so i wonder who that guy is going to be for them because this roster isn't the roster they're going to go no up against florida uh in the playoffs like they're going to have some sort of stud there who's making i don't eight million dollars just added to their roster their depth on the wing is really nice yeah it's very very nice aho's a great player defense is good they've got the picks to to go get a second line center too although no one's giving right now of all the teams that are not done carolina feels the least done if that makes any sense yeah and that's after they got eelers

right so they're a difficult team to evaluate right now yeah cocky and yemi i don't think going into the playoffs as their second line center no i don't i don't think going into regular season if he is then i think it's a failure to not get it done yeah i know steve i think you can you can play a of what is that four months with cocking the enemy there once you hit february or march 8th or whatever the trade trade deadline is going to be like they'll acquire somebody who's a big name because they have all the cast space and they have all the draft capital as you said i'm two first round picks next year i think it is like they have the ability to go oh no it's just next i can't believe they still have them 2028 they got to

2027 they got one they have two in the in 2028 i think that was part of the dallas trade yeah dallas and then their own pick um so they can go spend futures and go get something really good look at their 2026 yeah they're they're set up to go by and with the cap space they're gonna do it so i don't know it's hard to evaluate the hurricanes when they're set up to just be better in the future what do you guys think of the the bet with k andre miller because that's a big contract for like the rangers were like we are not going more than a couple years with you because we don't we don't know that you're actually going to make your like if we said this 18 months ago right uh k andre miller not with the rangers they had some serious doubts about him like

that would have been that would have been crazy but for whatever reason last year his defense was not great um he was all over the ice do you think that the bet that they made eight years seven and a half million dollars spent a first round pick and scott morrow like that's a that's a good haul for the rangers and it's an expensive deal for the carolina hurricanes is that in rod system a good bet because they have to rebuild you know pesci and shea and all the guys that have left they've had to rebuild that over the you know the following couple of years here i thought it was really cool that um didn't they release a video where they were like here's why miller is going to be a good fit for us i didn't see it if they did they talked about like the nuts and bolts of

of his game i didn't realize he was six five what where on earth i mean if he can play like it i think he'll fit it's difficult to also say his game doesn't match the playoffs as a guy who's been to the third round twice but and beaten the carolina hurricanes on the way by the way yes he did that is absolutely right and maybe that's what how they got so enamored with the player i honestly you're signing him for like more years of that contractor ufa years than aren't 7.5 is going to be good value you know he's going to produce it's just a matter of can this player continue to grow like defensemen are rarely done developing by 25 that's that's more like you're talking like a forward right a forward is i'm not saying there's no depth added to their game

it's usually they figure out the whole scoring thing and then they get a little bit better defensively defenseman you want to see a more well-rounded game and now he gets to like who the hell was the jacob slavin on the rangers like he's not gonna he's not getting those assignments those are all going to slavin can you handle the secondary ones i think he can yeah i think he can just fine i'm just gonna say that like uh adam fox is pretty good yeah yeah he's pretty good but like he's he's not doing the things that jacob slavin is he's pretty good he's yeah he's offensively one of the most elite defensemen in the league but as a shutdown guy he's not jacob slavin he's not he's pretty good he's pretty good but he's not jacob slavin all right in that regard

yeah he's going to carolina to kind of be their adam fox right he's gonna get like who's doing the power play it's gonna be goss despair because that's what he does probably miller i would think right yeah um yeah brent brent burns was on the power play a little was yes he's gone now though yeah that's what i'm saying now that he's gone yeah i guess i guess miller's running some of pk where is burns free agent he went to uh avalanche oh did he oh yeah really bonus laden deal he i think he's making like i think if all the what was it that said that like three million of it is attainable bonuses and like the fourth million is like uh probably something insane like them winning the cup and him getting the norris or something like that but a quote-unquote attainable

norris or votes and i i actually think by the way that that's a great ad for the apps like i didn't mind the way he played last year until they played the florida panthers and he you know he was good and he's still big and he's still a vibes guy and i think colorado could use a little bit of that after how hard last year was on the bonus thing it's three million dollars at 10 games played one million dollars if you play 70 games with 23 minutes or more i think that's pretty attainable i think that is yeah yeah but you were saying they're like unattainable well this is what this is what freed was saying i i i'm repeating that but i i yeah i didn't know the 23 minutes i guess the 23 minutes is a sticking point right with this like uh who's playing 23 minutes or more

with kale mccara and devon t yeah i don't think burns is gonna average 23 minutes on the avalanche that's fair his agent by the way that's pretty unattainable his agent run seltzer seltzer selker uh he works for icy luck inc and he is their only agent and burns is their only client oh On Buck B. All right. It's odd. So I don't know what that's about. That's icy luck, baby.

That's icy luck? Yeah, so the Carolina Hurricanes are interesting. I just think is it, I guess it's Tulsky saying this is who we are and we're going to win or lose being who we are. I don't think they're done. Goaltending is still a question for me. You're going to get 20 games out of Freddie in the regular season. You're going to get two good and one bad game out of him every playoff.

If I ask you, who's going to be your goalie when the playoffs begin? And your answer starts with, well, you've already lost. Like, Freddie is going to play. What is the maximum amount of games we think he can play? 20. At this point in his career. 20. I'll be optimistic and say 30.

Maybe even 35. like is kachekov ever going to take that step to be that guy that like we thought he could be a few years ago the last time freddie anderson played over 20 uh over 25 games in a season was 22 23 so it's a couple years ago and it was 34 and then the season before that it was 52 and you know like respectfully freddie's a great goalie when he's healthy yeah yeah and like i know he's also 35 yeah that's the problem i know we're lee fans and we got two band-aids as goalies as well but at least there's two of them and they're younger and they're younger yeah yeah it's i i don't want to judge them too harshly because i can they're very obviously not done but they they don't scare

me right now which contract would you rather have the kandre miller contract or the morgan riley one kandre miller the 25 year old same amount of money kandre miller the 25 year old all day what are what are we doing here now does that change your perspective on the morgan riley i still think it's a bad contract i said it from day one it sucks it's still not awesome full no move no ability to get out of it ever yeah that that part's better yeah like it's an ugly contract it is and it was it was from day one and i understand that he was coming off a 72 point season or whatever here's the thing with the leafs that drove us nuts and it's it's the thing that keeps coming up with that Shanahan era,

and I'll call it the Shanahan era, is that they never moved off their own guys despite the evidence. That was a prime opportunity to trade a guy at the peak of his value. That's all you had to do. Well, that's the Brian McCabe mistake. A hundred percent.

You got to understand how repeatable is this. And I think Morgan Riley is a great person and a great soldier. And I think there are parts of his games that are awesome. But dude, if he's back, again, I go back to the Leafs.

He goes back to running power play one next year, gets a bunch of assists. That's great. Here's the problem. He can't shoot from the point. So if you're a team defending the Toronto Maple Leafs power play, what do you got to do?

Cover the other four guys and let Morgan throw his muffins at the net. That's it. And that happened, by the way. I know. That's why they moved him off of it. When the dust settles and we can all sort of look back on, you know,

what went wrong with the Shana plan era. Yep. Don't worry. I'm going to work on it. Lou Lamorello is like people point at the shitty contracts he signed. Like he signed a couple of cartoonishly shitty contracts. Zaitsev was so shitty. Terrible.

Engvall then with the Islanders is cartoonishly shitty. riley's second contract was six years five as a young up-and-coming defenseman good son of a bitch you know what cadres was four and a half six years four and a half and he signed those on the same day it's pretty good oh i'd say lou is pretty good at his job yeah he went a lot You know, hot take, hot take. No, like, listen, he's, he's very old now. Very should probably retire. I think he got more right than he got wrong.

What would this Leafs era look like if they chose Lou over Kyle? It's the question. Nylander would have sat the whole year. That's what, oh, it's the question. Nylander would have sat the whole damn year and probably ended up traded. That's what would happen. Well, that's not good. It's the, I don't, it's not good.

But I don't like that either. But that's probably what would have happened. Well, then I don't want that. And Marner signs for less. And Matthew signs for less. Because the Leafs would be like, we're not screwing around. Do they get Tavares? That's a great question.

That is a very good question. Do they get Marleau? They might not. Oh, wait. No, he signed. No, they got Marleau. He signed Marleau. Tavares, though.

We don't know. I think they get Tavares. Seeing how his life played out and how much he loves being a Leaf, it seems like he kind of always wanted to be a Leaf. And I'm sure their presentation would have been just as good with Lou there. So I think they get JT. You're probably right about Nylander being traded. And I don't know.

Maybe they are better off with the smaller contracts for Marner and probably Matthews at some point. It was Lou that put them in that position with Marner, by the way. Jonas Siegel pointed this out. Oh, stop. It was. Because they could have signed him for like eight times eight after his second year. But Lou's thing was, well, let him wait. you know like have time use it sorry i thought you were gonna go back to the uh

the the b and a signing oh no performance bonus no no no no no no i was talking about a second deal hey lou like okay so lou lamorello told marner's camp we're not giving you b bonuses because we don't do that and then they gave matthews the b bonuses yeah so hey uh i know What's your first day? Matthews was the first overall pick and they always get those. So it forget violating Leafs policy or whatever. It would have been Lou breaking precedence with the league. Stupid.

Yeah. I just think, I think with the team have been different. Sure. Would it have been better? That's debatable. I don't think, I don't know.

I think Lou had a couple of good years with the Islanders at the end, but then when the Islanders got bad, he was like, no, i'm going to stubbornly hang on to what they were three years ago under a different head coach and hope that it works and he did a terrible job lose tenure head to get head against cal dubas was far more successful in long island yes like they they went to two conference finals three two or three two two conference finals they were arguably the second best team in the league for

at least two years yeah which is pretty like that's a great job considering you lose your best player yep at the start of your tenure running that team you ran into the here's the difference you ran into the eventual cup champs in long series in the third round is a little bit different than uh we got our asses murdered in game seven in the second round against the panthers yeah so it's a it's a little different eric angles uh brought up a point in his article today about what montreal still has to do now i am of the and i know canadians fans hate this uh kirby doc is coming off of two years in a row of reconstructive knee surgery i forgive me for having serious doubts that he's there to see and it's just an enormous question mark well and i i'm not i'm a

non-believer until i'm a believer on this one so i bet you so count me as i don't believe it it's like taves in winnipeg like i don't know maybe yeah he might be terrible i don't know he hasn't played for two years so with doc you know they have him sort of penciled in between bolduke and and demidoff which is an amazing opportunity that's a lot of fun if he's good it could be great and i'm happy to be wrong but one guy that eric angles had a strict and put on the fourth line in his lineup is patrick lining and you know patrick i know he just got married and everything decided for him it seems like very quickly here he is finding himself on the outside looking in potentially in montreal and i'm wondering you know we talk about like a boring trade market

what does a 50 percent retain for one more year because that's how montreal can maximize what's that like four in a bit yeah because even i think he makes 8.4 or 8.6 or something whatever it was 8.7 so let's say shit really yeah so let's say montreal if they want to decides we'll we'll hold 50 back for the year because who the hell cares and we'll trade him and in fact you can work a team in because there's everybody's got cap space right now on a double retention it's just one year so and you can maximize some serious value and maybe you don't get that 2c um before the season starts but as i told you people are going to fail i don't think montreal is no i think they're going to do well and somebody is going to trade a 2c eventually

Get Cockney and me back. No, don't do that. Do not do that. No. But if you want that asset, you did a great job with Noah Dobson. You can go and see if you can find some value back for Patrick Laine and then parlay those resources

into your eventual two seat. You mentioned something there and I want to touch on it. So in the new CBA, there's a bunch of stuff coming, but it's not in place yet. Yeah. So for example,

the eighth year of the contract is done. The 70 day double retention thing you're talking about. The 70 day double retention. so that doesn't kick in for this season right right and it's next year next like upcoming season after 25 26 so we should see a glut of them double retention because well i mean they're going away you might not need to there's so much cap well there's that too well this is the thing like truba was traded no retention rider was traded no retention i believe montreal got line no retention in this economy you should be able to get rid of line a no retention what's but if

you want to maximize the value back it's not cap space they're going to be looking for you're looking for assets you're not getting them i think you can i think you didn't give them up to get him well what does that matter what is i'm giving him up now he's gotten even worse well he but he did that's what matters but he scored a bunch on the power play when he came in and was a power play guy over the span of like a month and then disappeared line a at his hottest is like poster knock like he's absurd when he's on and he's almost never on it's just that's how it works does it wasn't he the last guy to get five goals in a game i have no idea or something and no one paid attention because he did it in like finland i think on like a world a global series game

he went when he's hot he's one of the most lethal offensive weapons in the league the like 80 of the time he's ice just complete ice and i think he was injured but basically unplayable in the playoffs and they scratched him the definition of big for nothing oh yeah no physicality who has ever even woken up sore the next morning but do you not think steve and jesse that patrick linea could go to a team that can't score a la maybe a calgary for a year retained and give cadre somebody to pass the puck to uh huberto somebody to pass the puck to who can finish and you go hey we'll just try this out but do the montreal canadians not need somebody who scores i think that they got it and demidoff and slavkovsky and like i know that i'd rather

have the kids on the power play yeah like i don't think line has got a spot that's what i'm talking about i understand what you're saying he maybe he's one of those guys who like we talked about earlier he's not a problem that needs to be dealt with right away like what what if october november december you know at least one of them is one of those hot months for him yeah like i see patrick linea as exactly how the team you're trading him to would utilize him he kind of turned their season around for a little bit oh he did when he scored all those power play goals in a row yeah like i feel like that's how you utilize him like you're if you're gonna sell him to a team you're selling him at his lowest and you're saying that he's not useful for us because he's just a goal scorer and

that's what they want but the montreal canadians need goal scores right i feel like they need a guy like patrick line and it's only one year yeah i can see them running it out or moving him at the deadline maybe if things actually don't work out and somebody wants to take a chance and they just want to dump the money but i don't know if it's like a off-season move this the new cap environment has has me going this is a problem wait no it isn't you know with so many contracts like i was talking about camp with the leafs which is obviously way different and way less but like you don't gotta move them line you don't gotta move them there's like how many teams in the nhl three that actually have to worry about the cap right now right like vegas yeah they're kind of

okay the rest of them we can wait yeah we can wait it'll be okay i think you know one of the things that sort of got popular uh over the last couple years is just throwing dudes on waivers line i might just get waved and i know you don't like that because you think they should get assets back for him he was healthy in the playoffs it's not happening you're you might get like what what did they give up together was not healthy by the way yeah that's what i mean i think okay well yeah unhealthy scratched yeah like he was on ir or he was scratched because he was injured well when he was healthy he was not very good but there's the argument that he wasn't entirely healthy I just look at it you want to give guys like Demidov and uh this you know Bolduk guy

and you know you want to give these guys as much to Cole Caulfield Nick Suzuki are you know mainstays Slavkoski mainstay on that that first unit and you want to shelter those kids by putting them in front of someone who understands how to play defensive hockey oh like he might be worse than he was when he was 18 like when it when it comes well and that's why I think you have guys like Anderson and Gallagher although as much as you don't like those contracts whatever you got great deals on the other guys so yeah but like okay so you want Caulfield to play more minutes on the power play and Bolduc and everything but like what if line is the best at the power play then he what if he's better than those guys then you're playing

a fourth line minutes five on five I think sure I like I'm fine with that but if he's putting up a whole bunch of power play points and he's very useful on the power play like there's no reason And this isn't a development league. This isn't a development system. Just because you want those guys to get better at the power play doesn't mean you take off somebody who's better than them. I just don't see Montreal re-signing this guy. So why would you take Demidov's minutes away

or Slavkovsky's minutes away at 5-on-5 for sure? But even power play, Jess. What if he's an own rental? Fuck off. If it's power play 2, I can see it. If he's out there with Anderson and Gallagher, fine. but if you're telling me that you'd rather have like a caulfield slavkovsky switch out or deminov switched out for patrick lining that what i'm like what are we building towards but he's better

than them at that that right now but he's not gonna be long term those guys are gonna be the guys yeah but you're not you're not trying like it's not about like getting those guys to be good for next season about winning hockey games right like i feel like a coach looks at that he's like i'm trying to win a hockey game tonight and if this guy's gonna score a goal and this guy isn't isn't more likely to score a goal. They're going to put this guy in the power play. I feel like that's game to game. You're just trying to win games.

I don't know. I don't know if he sticks around to the end of the season. Like it probably it's a wait and see kind of, kind of mentality. He does have a 10 team, no trade as well, but that's there are 22 teams that it could be traded to without a question.

So I'm just looking at his game log. Like he's, he's so funny. He's so funny. Goal, goal, no goal, goal,

no goal, no goal, hat trick, goal, goal, followed by five games of no goal and then like that's the lining experience i there used to be guys like that i feel like it was more common growing up of the uh streaky well no like fourth line dude who plays top power play like mariusz turkoski with the leafs i feel like

was a healthy scratch or on sundine's wing like it was yeah it was just really strange those guys don't exist in abundance today maybe he's one of them like uh like i i want to say like i'm trying to think of guys who used to do that like uc yokanen kind of well he was like a uh was he not a shootout god he was a shootout god he was such a specialized player there were there were nights he was probably in the lineup just in case you go to the shootout right and he was awesome two and five canadians will hear the words you have cancer that's why every step and dollar raised matters on september 19th join thousands in toronto for the princess margaret cancer foundation walk challenge yourself friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of

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um uh another guy i'm wanting to you know if anything's going to shake loose in this trade freeze that we're sort of in that is you know is this marco rossi thing and apparently he doesn't want he and his agent do not want to have a short-term deal they want the boldy deal because because of what happened in the playoffs they are worried that if If they go short term and Marco Rossi puts up 60 points, but then again, only plays eight or nine minutes a night or 11 minutes or whatever it was in the playoffs, that it's going to hurt his value long-term, which is why I don't think you can sign him to a long-term deal. You know what annoys me about that narrative?

Oh, you know, he only played 11 minutes in the, okay, but he, he still scored though. He scored. Yeah. But how many, how many guys of that size can you have in a lineup in the playoffs? Well, it doesn't seem like he even got the chance to prove if he was good or bad. And still put up point. Like, no one is going, even though he played this little, he still scored. Because they're short and they're small, right?

Short can be tough. Small is small. Like, you get hemmed in, you get sandwiched, you get squished like a bug. But it's just this, oh, well, the coach made a decision in a series his team lost. And that's why he's not a good player. Where they weren't the better team. Like, the entire team lost. It wasn't on him.

They looked like they were in it for four games. where he played the regular season and had substantial minutes like regular minutes and he scored 20 goals and then he gets to the playoffs and the coach reduced his minutes and now that's his fault and you're going man we look pretty good through the first four games well i can tell you what team that reminds me of and it's not one you should model your franchise after you know like it's a very odd narrative around rossi and it's it's weird how no one's questioned it up until this point where they they don't like him because he's small and he didn't play a lot i mean they drafted him ninth overall and he was he also had a good regular season yeah yeah they

drafted him ninth overall but people forget he had uh i believe it was long covet oh shit and he missed like a year oh that sucks yeah yeah you know i i look at i wonder about this guy because you know here's the thing yes yes he scored in the playoffs yes he scored in the regular season but guys if you're an acquiring team you know you have to give this guy 50 million dollars upon arrival are you comfortable doing that over how many years seven years i don't think you have do math is that that's what he wants so that's the boldy deal that's seven point well it's seven times seven basically it's 49 i round it up that's what he wants that's what's the hold up here it's not that the wild don't like him it's that they don't like what he wants them to pay they want

to go shorter term it sounds like they don't like him like it sounds like they don't like him at all as a player and as a human because of his size i don't remember if it was cj or frege but they were like well minnesota's probably just gonna keep him now yep probably this is the problem with being an rfa like you're kind of screwed kid like oh well i want this and i want that well have you tried being older but have you had more service years yeah well until you get that way I guess you're screwed. I mean, he could sit out. His leverage is he can sit out.

It worked for Paterka. Trade me. And Buffalo said, okay, fine. Let's get no picks for you. Because we're so weird. They didn't want picks. They wanted players. You should have got both.

It's JJ Paterka. You should have got both. It's strange to me how it seems like ever since the playoffs started, the minnesota wild have been trying to trash this player when he scored 60 points 24 goals as a 23 year old back-to-back 20 goal seasons his first two seasons league an enormous reason you even made the playoffs because you had an mvp candidate who missed like half the season yeah and rossi was very useful to you playoffs start garbage to us playing in 10 minutes a night he's small still put up what was it three or four three points two goals two goals one one assist yeah i for

hey we'd love that in toronto think of the guys the leafs have played that little like okay like fourth liners three point three points out of a four out of a fourth liner in one playoff series our cup runneth over holy shit and this guy's shit on your shoe i don't understand and against to team you weren't better than the vegas golden knights were better than yes that series yeah every game of that series and you managed to win a couple he was important in a couple of those games you know they went to ot i think in one of the games he scored and they lost eventually but like i don't know i don't know why they have to go out and just say marco rossi's bad i think it's that they like they've they've always maintained they like the player they just don't like then

what he's asking for paying him no i know why didn't they play him they play him 10 minutes denied so the coach probably doesn't like him yeah i think management management like coach hates him and they coaches get into weird things like look at the leafs they traded rasmus sandy and they ended up with easton cowan with epic thank god but like here's a perfectly good defensive and the least we're just we're not going to play and his assistant coach goes to the team that he ends up at and plays him and rasmus sandy's a pretty good nhler who can move a puck at least could use that fancy that yeah right i mean i listen i'll prefer i'll take easton cowan i'm i'm excited to see how the guy develops but here's a guy who plays regular top four minutes that you developed

and he's with the team that just missed out on the president's trophy right i need producer hayden here i wish he was in the room right now because something happened in in game one or two like i'm just looking at it yeah the ice time drop 12 minutes and 10 seconds in game one he had one shot 18 shifts the next game he plays 927 has 11 shifts that's it interesting maybe maybe there was a lot of penalties i don't know but then he scores in back-to-back games he had a two-point game three and scored in game four he's trash that's why plus in both games and and i wonder because he does have four penalty minutes in game six and maybe people go well i mean it's one game for god's sake yeah but it's the deciding game and yeah judge players based on that and maybe

that's it i don't know i just i think we're maybe killing this kid a little yeah i think if he does it in six or seven consecutive years then i think it's a thing um but i'm coming to the conclusion that john hines does not like this human being didn't want to play him in the playoffs and now management's trying to move on from him because the coach is not a fan of this player and john hines is a different dude doesn't like mark never been coach has never been coach has never been wrong no coaches get weird vendettas against people they're never wrong their coach is always right that's what i love about coaches they're they are always right yeah they're perfect spotless record both yeah uh yeah true okay um gavin mckenna has left uh medicine hat he's going to

be first overall we think next year uh he's left medicine hat he's going to make seven hundred thousand dollars well in nil yeah seven hundred thousand dollars worth of education yeah uh in the ncaa uh and this is part of the sort of the rules right and now that you know these guys can develop themselves in the chl and then get it get a massive deal to go a la austin matthews who avoided all that and just played in zurich right but you can go and make real money now in college because of the the rule changes and i'm just curious what you guys think about it as someone who works for a sports media company who worked very hard to get rights to whl footage i am so sad it would have been it would have been the medicine hat bowl next year big dub the whole

video series would just be gavin mckenna and his we could have done big dub and then had a separate video series that's just here's what gavin maketa did this week and we would have been right and now we can't yeah son of a i'm upset i like how you made the mechanic conversation about you it it is to me it is i think this i think this is great for the player and for hockey like i i truly think this is a fantastic thing for for the sport and i hope it leads to the ohl learning that we got to pay these players and make it worthwhile for their time to play here like the ncaa for so many years they just stole players uh livelihoods from them because they had to be student athletes and if you're you make money in the ncaa you can't you can't make money elsewhere you have to make

zero dollars to play in the ncaa and them enacting name image image and likeness where you can sell the the likeness that the ncaa is profiting off of you can go and do your side deal with nike and whoever and make money that way that's the correct way this should work you are a human adult who cares that you're a student at a university you should be able to sell your likeness to Nike for a t-shirt like I feel like this is how it should be and I'm glad that it's finally entered the hockey sphere where these kids who spend their so much time here in Canada can go down there and make money in the NCAA and you know what it's great for the game because you become a bigger star there playing hockey at an NCAA school than you do playing up here like

it's just a bigger market it's america it's the ncaa if penn state does well they go the frozen four they win something mckenna can be a star down in america and then he's always going to be a star here in canada because we care so much about hockey we're going to be watching what he does there and then it's good for the nhl because they now have a great feeder system where the american broadcasters are making stars out of these kids and then they grow in the nhl and they become even bigger stars i also think it's great said every whl goalie why is that because now they don't have to play them oh yeah yeah their stats just got better i i wonder the people are are already saying well it's doom for the chl because they're gonna lose all the hockey players

to go around that's what i think so how many roster spots you think these teams have my other yeah that's what i i was thinking that too it does open up the door for somebody else yeah i think my other question is um uh because there are a lot more extraordinarily talented hockey players out there are they going to find another gavin mckinnon no because he comes around once every five to ten years uh but i i'm wondering from the chl's perspective because they kind of take care of your schooling right um now that they don't have to because the ncaa will take care of your schooling if that's that important to you do they consider figuring out a way to to pay these players in a different way because that's the compensation right in the chl it's like i need my school

package to be x y or z or you know whatever um you know is this a conversation that that you know over the next five years we start to hear well we're gonna have to pay them because because here's the deal from what we hear uh penn state's monetary offer was in the neighborhood of 700,000 michigan states was 200 to 300,000 and michigan state got um caden lidstrom who was his teammate who was the columbus prospect he went to michigan state because that was uh there they had a giant offer too so he's going there to play and remember hockey canada spurned couple players and i forget who it was last year in their shitty selection process process for that team they were pissed off some guys that went to the ncaa instead of staying in the chl forget who

it was andrew crystal no not andrew crystal there was shoot there was a couple of guys who did not get i forget not making the team they didn't get a camp invite yeah no i know exactly who you're talking like so i forget thankfully hockey canada is not going to be able to avoid that with mckinnon now they're gonna have to suck it up uh thank god those absolute morons sometimes i swear to god it's there needs to be a documentary made on that that team and how friggin stupid that was but i think it was televised it was yeah every game it was all over tsn all christmas boy they stunk uh but i i i do think okay so maybe the maybe the new pipeline is if you're really good you get a massive nil deal with the ncaa name and likeness uh and uh if you're very good you

stay with the chl for an extra year and then you get drafted but i i like there's not gonna be 40 gavin mckenna's every year there's gonna be three or four i'll tell you the moment the chl decides something needs to be done about this when the london knights lose a guy okay why do you say that for people that don't know um i don't know it's just a hunch nothing funny ever goes on with that team they keep winning they get such a winning pedigree how did they get mitch marner so late in the first round i wonder uh you know it's you want to be part of a winning program it's it's all it is and same with him and max domey who was supposed to go to kingston christian dvorak yeah yeah it's just people want to be part of

a winning culture and patrick kane is super stoked on the london night perry an american is like no no no no no i know i have an offer from probably every school i'm going to london can i just say too like it's the chl's gotta up their game in some way because the lifestyle for these guys go into the ncaa is so infinitely better than sticking around the chl like you're thinking about a kid who's got to go play in medicine hat no offense to medicine hat anybody out there well and it's like double the games oh for the chl yeah yeah like it's more games but like you're you're going to medicine hat you got to stay with like a billet family you know and you're you're you're living out there you're living in a base everywhere yeah or you go to

the states you get to play at like asu you get to penn state you get to live you get to live in arizona boston one of the best amateur hockey facilities in the whole ncaa you get to be on a campus with a bunch of your peers live in your life hanging out in dorms living that kind of life traveling in the ncaa where you can get exposure in the states and then on top of that you get $700,000 American. Which is a million Canadian dollars. The CHL needs to do something here because we're comparing

the two and it's not close for me. I know what I'm doing if I'm Caden Lindstrom or Gavin McKenna. I know where I'm going. So I feel like in the next couple years to retain these top prospects, they need to up their game. There are so many hockey players. There's going to be

a CHL forever. There's enough guys to fill out these rosters. But these top guys, more and more, this is going to happen. Do you think that's important to them? do you just yield that point and go we're gonna lose our top five guys every year that that's just what it is that's what they might concede like they might be like we're no longer the star making league for the guys who are past the uh or still not eligible to be drafted and reach the hl and whatever that little gap you have that one year that's no longer our role we're the the pre drafting years the pre you can make it to the ncaa years and that's how we'll keep our our

core and they had what do they have 21 of the first 32 picks from the chl like it's not like again if five guys leave caitlyn's from gavin mckennett it's not like they're not going to have three quarters of the first round locked down from the chl anyway uh and and by the way gavin mckennett still played in the chl the reason he is getting this offer well he's also outs outrageously good um is that he played in the chl teams were like damn that guy is really good in the chl imagine what he might be in the ncaa so so like another name you throw out there is uh like malcolm spence yep somebody who we covered in the draft we're like oh malcolm spence chl draft pick yeah awesome going to who do you go to um fucking oh my god i'll look it up adam's got it

uh i forget anyway so one of the calgary right calgary one of the teams i think he went to calgary i don't know um so malcolm spence next year is going to the ncaa new york rangers oh he went to the rangers my 43rd um going to going to going to the ncaa like his he's done the chl and i feel like that is going to be the common pipeline now you know the chl builds up these players they get drafted they go down the ncaa maybe play a couple years one or two years and that's probably what they're happy with maybe you see those though you know because it's always exciting when you hear about a guy well you see a 15 year old he got the exemption right maybe see a few more of those and maybe that's good so here's where it'll get weird for me is if like

mckenna instead of playing in the chl this past year as a 16 year old is playing in college like i feel like there's got to be certain rules against well no you got to be 18 yeah you can't well he's not gonna be 18 till december yeah but he's he's of that he's i don't know what like what's the cutoff i don't know it's can he apply for school yeah that's the cutoff i'm old now i I forget what the cutoff is. I'm old now. We were born in the spring. Yeah, I was born in the spring.

Wasn't everyone? No, people who were born in July through December. There were people who had a different experience than I did. That's silly. That doesn't make any sense. You made a mistake. Move on. No, 100%.

I just didn't know. I have a hard time believing. Usually the most boring outcome is the one that happens. And I think we're having people like, this is a seismic change. yeah for the guys at the top yes it is seismic for the guys at the top i am not doubting that but i also am like let's pump the brakes a little bit on the chl is screwed well you know who is screwed the bchl i think they're in trouble i think that the the whl the ohl specifically and

the q are going to be just fine right so so it used to be you do junior a because you cannot do major junior yes in order to get to university that's no longer the case yes right but i don't know how many how many i also how many junior a players the chl was losing every year but now they don't have to lose them i guess i also believe that we're seeing a bit of a culture shift in sports generally like you see you know we we so often look at what the states are doing and we sort of copy it up here and i look at some of these ncaa teams that are not in hockey right um i look at you know the the the football programs the baseball programs the basketball programs and i look at the chl and i go why can't it be like that because a lot of these university

cities that are that is all that's going on like my my uh uh my family all went to university within about 20 miles. My mom was University of Idaho. The rest of my family went to Washington State. They are literally across the state line in 20 minutes from each other. And Washington State in that area, those two universities in that area, like they carry the town. Most people work at that, right? That's what they do. And I look at the hockey programs in these small towns in Ontario and all across the country, east and west, and I go, okay, maybe you're not a university town but you have the opportunity here to become the central focus of the dialogue in that town to be a a major part of the city center in most cases they already are but some some teams need

a little work on that and i feel like there's an opportunity for the chl to become like a like an ncaa in the sense that you've got this is the town lives and breathes the sudbury wolves the london knights the you know uh victoriaville london london is a knight's town it is a knight's 100 and it's also a university town yes i and they're separate my point is i think that the chl with younger leadership is moving in that direction i think like i've had the chance to talk to some of these guys the the new hires that they have and directly and they are energetic and exciting and whatever and no disrespect to like the david branch era of the ohl but david branch had been there for 40 years it was time for some new ideas extraordinarily long time and yeah and

that's amazing and impressive but let's not pretend that the league moved with the times it didn't but now it's it seems to be and i'm i'm sort of excited for that i do think the chl's got a lot of opportunity here that maybe they don't even realize right the only pushback there is just the population base that comes with the american cities and these schools penn state i just want to check the number they have uh 89 000 students which would put you out holy shit no that would just the student population alone would put you in like the top 50 cities in canada right it's like nearly as big as pickering yeah that's that's everybody right i'm talking like postgrads undergrads online people like whatever but like still that's amount of people who are registered

to that university we're talking 90 000 people so that's that's your starting point for creating a community around the hockey team yes and with these with these teams in the chl like we got towns of like tens of thousands yeah well barry i just looked up for instance just to back your point yeah here are three here are three towns that are ohl towns uh and and in order to to service 90,000 people at a school, you need to have a community of grocery stores and laundromats and all that shit. Okay. Barry's population is 157,000. Guelph's population is 149,000 Sudbury greater Sudbury, not just Sudbury central greater Sudbury because beyond greater Sudbury, there ain't much. Okay. 171,000. Okay. So Jesse makes a really good point. The population scale to us

is different and i'm not saying we're gonna be like you know the the chl can be like when you know when the pat mcafee espn crew shows up and there's 10 000 people out back game but it could be a thousand could be three thousand how many hardcore percentage of chl markets are larger than 89 000 people i don't know well let's not do that live on the air no no not live on the air the chl i'm gonna go with less than half right so just it's it's hard for the chl to compete when um you're competing against these giant ncaa schools to create that environment but they should be trying to do it on the lesser scale money wise you can do it equivalent to a hundred thousand people as opposed to all the people people in pennsylvania you're competing

money wise you can never compete passion wise you can yes yeah and i don't understand why they couldn't also enact an name image likeness likeness deal for these players like why not have like these players they have the ability to sign name image likeness deals and have like the london knights come with some sort of package from bauer and be like hey if you come to london london knights we can get you 500 grand from bauer like why can't they do that sort of things and move into that direction if that's how the ncaa is stealing these kids just see that's never happened like do it on the level i also have a question and this is so stupid but you know we're later in the podcast so i feel like i can say it with without being beat up why do we have a difference

between cis and chl mother no sorry you said my like especially like you look at the ryerson hockey team or something like that yes why can't we involve our universities in the chl h i think it is is it like they're at the chl older older you're starting the kids at 15 16 17 you know yeah and like you want those young prospects in there and when you get to the university level here it's just all of that it's just everybody 18 plus you know guys who aged out of the o yeah yeah kind of what it is and we haven't created that culture around sport where they were getting the top prospects to all compete in there because it's just not how it works but i wish it did like i wish the tmu was the penn state of up here yeah for a hockey team tmu has

a unique advantage because of the sports broadcasting program right so they they make the hockey teams a very big deal yeah um but stars would uh certainly help they did have a unique situation where they had someone who i want to say was a second round pick of the coyotes because something weird happened but i don't know why yeah oh man what was his freaking name was it duda artem duda i can't remember it's a shame we don't have the same university sports culture yeah it is it is we've done nothing to build it yeah uh the american universities were like hey there's a lot of money to be made in u sports maybe we should invest in that canadian universities are like uh we're not interested and there are some drawbacks to it but i do think we

could have gone we could have put a little more effort in and you're seeing that now when we went to ryerson when it was called that uh there was fucking nothing the hockey team hadn't won in years the hockey team didn't play at ryerson no it didn't it played like u of t yeah and they were and now they've got gyms and they've got their own rink and they're winning games and championships and whatever and like it takes some investment the one team that always invested i think carlton was one western always invested in their sports and the mustang westerns got cool cool football thing going on that whole kind of area people care about that laurier too yeah well carlton of yeah up in ottawa like their basketball program for a long time well still to this day is like

top notch and like they competed against a couple american teams like they'll bring them in or go down there every time and again you can see that challenge like head to head so like there is that aspect of it but so few and far between yeah you know it's not like we have 20 carlton's if the ncaa didn't suck it would be cool to have like a canadian division that got to enter into those things but the ncaa notoriously sucks and then you're then you're giving all that control over to them right so anyway i wish logan thompson wasn't like a once in a generation thing what's it what's his story dude plays canadian university and then goes on to make the nhl like the number of guys who do that is small where did he play ah thanks for that one i thought you were like

going to tell us the logan thompson story yeah he played canadian university and then he made the nhl it's very rare oh my goodness the list of guys it's like him and steve logan thompson born in calgary alberta played for the brandon weekend weekend wheat kings in english of the whl then went to brock university in 1819 and then went to the echl and the ach hl can't even speak today echl then the nhl of the vegas golden knights there you go it's rare it's very rare dub u e a e n fun that's pretty crazy right yeah oh what do you say maddie you're right about artem duda hell yeah he was picked 36 overall though by the arizona coyotes 2022 draft nearly a first round pick he played a ryerson

What's he doing now? I think he's with Tucson. Hey, okay. Of the AHL. Yeah, no, he's still, I'm glad he's still in. I don't know why he ended up there. I forget. Like in Ryerson.

Oh, how he got to TMU. Yeah, yeah. Do we want to do press conference? Sure, I'll ask a couple questions. All right, cool. Two in five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

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You gotta try breakfast at A&W At participating A&W locations in Ontario. The Presser SDP The Steve Dangle Press Conference. All right. Let me just pull up the questions. Here, this is related to the conversation we were having earlier about the Montreal Canadiens.

This is from Jason McDonald. Do you think the Habs are going to move up further in the East? I asked about last season, and you guys shot me down and said they wouldn't make the playoffs, Jesse. enjoy your summer fellas that's from jason uh yeah i didn't think the habs were going to make the playoffs last year i'm sorry i thought they were on the upswing i thought they'd be one of the best teams in the atlantic um it's competing but i didn't think they i think they'd fall short of the playoffs and it took the boston bruins falling off a cliff the new york rangers falling

off a cliff the new york islanders not being able to squeeze a spot the columbus blue jackets being in a playoff spot and then failing towards the end for the montreal canadians to then make the playoffs so i don't think it was you're gonna get totally locked in that they were a playoff have read it you're i'm sorry um but i don't know i think they're playoffs fans are so interesting because like they love the team so much and i remember steve there was a clip of steve that went viral and all he said was i'm looking for the habs to take a step forward this i still don't understand and they were pissed and then they had the shittiest first three months and then came in and and and didn't have that playoff spot you're right jesse but like we have to remember the

Habs season last year was two different seasons. Everyone was upset when they made the playoffs. I said they needed to take a step, and the feedback was, no, they don't. And when they made the playoffs, it's like, oh, you ruined everything. I still don't understand what I did wrong. So, Jesse, you're in trouble. Habs Red is coming for you. What?

In trouble for what? Well, for saying that, you know, what you just said. I said they made the playoffs because of those circumstances. What? No, but they, like, did do it. like I'm not like I don't understand what no they didn't it is when we talk about the Habs Jesse I think

you make a good point it is like the first three months didn't happen and they did I think the Habs did a great job nabbing that last play they did anything controversial moving up is going to be hard I mean like okay to move up you would need to no longer be a wild card team

okay so are you going to pass the Panthers no are you going to pass the lightning probably not are you going to pass the Leafs? I don't even really think you're there yet. Like, maybe. Maybe. Leafs are probably going to take maybe a bit of a step back in the regular season.

They did win the division. I know that they won the damn division. I know nobody cares, but they did win. I know. And, like, super irrelevant. Bruins won't be... I don't think the Bruins will be nearly as bad. They'll be... All they need is Swayman to be his career average, and they're going to be in the

playoff hunt. Yeah, in the hunt. And, like, Detroit will probably be in the hunt-ish. No. no and then there's buffalo i think like circumstances repeating themselves in the east oh i don't i don't know if they're gonna repeat themselves in the east but i can see the haves being a little better like i can see the haves being more like how ottawa was last year maybe the sends taking a step back because i think the haves have a brighter young core than the sends do so like i don't know i think the haves are in a good position to make the playoffs as a seven or

eight seed again i don't know yeah moving up i think it's hard but i think they'll be right in and around where they were last year just because you got better doesn't mean you're moving up exactly exactly you know what i mean yeah i think like all those those four teams that were right in there last year i feel like they're all gonna gain a little back and maybe columbus as the one team i'm probably gonna not count on being a little better or anything but i think the rangers and and island well the islanders to probably take a step back so maybe just the rangers and and bruins but like they're gonna claw back some of those points so the haves might be better but like i think the rangers and bruins will be kind of where they were last year but maybe a little

better so it'll be hard it's gonna be a hard season for the haves and but exciting yes exciting no i think it'll be boring wait wait what do you what does it need to be and i'm gonna say it's the opposite they don't need to take a step forward they don't they don't it's not necessary Next one, Jesse. What do you got, buddy? This is from Harry and Mosa. Is Toronto in danger of missing the playoffs now that Austin Matthews lost his number one assistant?

Will he struggle to score without Marner? They made the playoffs before they were line mates. No. I think they'll make it. Is there any chance Toronto's not a playoff team and we see something like with the Rangers and Bruins that happened last year or even Vancouver? It's totally possible.

Absolutely, it's possible. Of course. i mean i think with both organizations you had a toxic locker room right um that screwed up the canucks and it screwed up the rangers boston for a variety of reasons well boston just everyone got hurt like you lost your whole time you also were dumb enough to just be like well we can't give that much yeah yeah you intentionally effed your goalie that's the bruins where where bad luck meets dumb decisions and they create a shit hurricane yeah that makes your i think the rangers are that too so much of what the rangers and bruins did last year they did to themselves

yeah um it's it's uh like again the lindholm thing didn't work in boston i don't i'm not convinced it will yeah letting the jt miller uh thing no the jacob truba situation i think uh play out in the way it did from like end of july when they first started talking to him they were like hey captain so we're gonna trade you hey fuck off and then they didn't do it for like literally seven months barclay great series like it was a great series but it was that but then they held on to him for six months and like doing that was such a mismanagement of a person that they created this toxic locker room themselves. I think it's such a great point

that all of this was kind of their own doings as organizations. I think the other thing with the Bruins is had they been patient last year, this is why I was saying the Leafs need to be patient. Were the Canucks trading JT Miller last summer after winning the division and going to the second round

in seven games against the Oilers? It didn't sound like it. Right. If the Bruins had waited and not signed Lindholm to that crazy-ass deal? Because that's a crazy-ass deal, dude. What do you have, like 18 goals? That's a crazy fucking deal.

If they had just waited and waited for something to happen and JT Miller is available, is he not a perfect Bruin? Oh, man. I've never met a better Bruin who will never be a Bruin. He's perfect.

And they could have had him. Torts never coached the Bruins. No. Yeah. And he's a asshole. You're right. that's wrong it's wrong it's totally wrong so i i feel like i feel like that's part of it too is the bruins were just not they were too jumpy on certain things and we got to do this now and

you know you could have then marchand is still there i gotta tell you my heart's broken about it yeah anything else jess we got a question from alan alan writes does crosby ever play another playoff game oh god no and that's good for the penguins and the sport what yeah that's the segment oh sorry jesse did you think that was a weird thing to say is that a weird take to have i have that the best player of his generation should never play a meaningful game i think i think sydney crosby is on the pittsburgh penguins until he retires can i can i don't know if you have to be all mean and sarcastic about can i can i just hold that yeah i do can we not do this right now and the reason i ask is i have a whole segment prepared but we ran out of time why don't

we talk about it well because we ran it we're running out of time i i don't think sydney crosby playing on the pittsburgh penguins until he retires is a bad thing this is a good a good discussion i think could be like 20 minutes this is my point so you're saving it i'm saving it i'm asking you guys to save it i'm asking you guys to save it that's all i'm saying can you do that for me more like josh yo he's gonna beat our ass if we talk about this next episode jesse anything else A.C. says, what is one word you will never be able to spell correctly no matter how many times you try? You know what I've struggled with my entire life? Definitely.

Oh, it's a hard one. It's a weird one. Definitely. Massachusetts. Can't spell it. What do you spell? Massachusetts. I can't spell it.

It's a place. Yeah, but that's not uncommon. I can't spell it. I think you're missing the point of the question. Definitely. Okay, receive. I struggle with the I and the E. Receive.

That's a good one. That's a good one. All right, Adam. Okay, give it to me. Gun to your head or you die. Oh, man. You have five seconds. Spell receive.

R-E-C-E-I-V-E. I don't even know if that's right. I don't know either. I know, I'm stupid. R-E-C-E-I-V-E. I got it. Hey! Man, it messes me up every time.

And I know the rule, I before E, I except after C. It's not always true. It's not a freaking rule. It's not a rule. It's actually not a rule. stupid receive i struggle with there's a few other ones definitely is one definitely jess you have one english is so english is so dumb there's so many exceptions to english it doesn't like english is i think i think they say english is one of the the hardest language to learn yes

because of all of the the rule the things that break the rules all of the exceptions that they have in english so well it's because silly language it's also like england was invaded by the romans and then invaded by the northern germans and then invaded by the french and so like every other normal language has 50 000 words english is 250 000 what yeah it's it's insane and like normal european we have too many letters also wait a minute italian has four fewer letters yeah no they cut what are they i don't freaking care man i don't know there's no x in italian there's no x there's one okay um i imagine the vowels made it depends who you ask okay is there there's a there's no y there's no y because it's ie right

or e or sorry uh i uh let me think here there is a zed oh there's a zed oh oh we use the shit out of the zed more than most languages i would say english doesn't like the zed no it doesn't oh man welcome to the summer episodes kids this is tough i know there's c's i don't know if there's k's is there a k there is no k There we go. Hey, we got it. That's cool.

All right. All right. All right. Can you spell weird? W-E-I-R-D. Now, go back to the little exception we were talking about. I before E except after C sometimes. I'm honestly starting to think there's more words with E-I than I-E.

Where is the C in weird? What? There is none. But it's W-E-I. But it's E-I. Oh. no shit i was like wait what are you talking about isn't that what what the fuck is that it spells e i but there's no c i don't freaking get it the i doesn't go before the e or does it

not before you see yeah dude and that's funny that the word is weird that's the dumbest thing ever yeah it's a dumb like well why do they teach that in schools like you imagine imagine they taught you the alphabet and then they they were like yeah but sometimes the alphabet doesn't go in that order they make you sing the alphabet song they're like actually though sometimes zed is first do you know the new alphabet song no i hate it shut up no we've we've done this on the show no i hate it yeah yeah we played old alphabet song forever yeah right forever the woke a bit yeah you bet the woke bet all right are we there's also uh i could we could do english exceptions all day irregular plurals english will just make a new word for a plural instead of just adding an s

so like some some microphones right that's that's plural teeth tooth yeah why did we make a whole another word for multiple teeth or multiple twos but instead it's but laptops we add an s goose yeah no there's a million i will say they decided at some point we're gonna make words for multiples instead of just doing this plural thing but some words were too lazy to make plurals so we're just gonna add an s learning french is making me feel like an idiot an idiot why because if you say I do something the word is going to be different for you

do something and it's going to be different for he does something and she does something and we do something and you plural do something which we don't have a you plural which is kind of stupid and maybe they get it right unless it's you people which gets people fired

oh yes there is that oh we understood the plural there yeah they male they female it's very annoying it is

and it makes me feel stupid I don't like it I like it too I like it very much we're saving that Pittsburgh segment though I want to come back to this I have strong opinions

but I'm holding back regular season done the Steve Dangle podcast follow the guys on Twitter at Steve underscore Dangle at Adam W Y L D E and at Jesse Blake

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