The Steve Dangle Podcast - The CJ Special | July 15, 2025

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, 00:00 Marner's departure 32:00 The new Leafs era 56:00 Preparing for McDavid's free agency 1:05:00 The Crosby conversation 1:24:45 The Trevor Zegras trade 1:36:00 Is hockey in a good place? 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 the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake It's the yearly tradition

Where we commiserate And sometimes we do it right after the Leafs are eliminated From the playoffs Although we have found in recent years It's better to just wait until free agency is over Because While the Leafs basically Decided every year we're not going to change anything

I ain't fucking leaving And then the guy that was leaving Left And we knew he was leaving And it was pretty clear he was leaving So, CJ, welcome to the show. Well, Brendan Shanahan left as well. Yeah, I suppose he did.

This is the one year there was actually change. There was change. Things happen. Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like it's a new world. Pontus Holmberg moved on. I know.

Yeah. Who else? Who else? Nick Abrazzisi. Yeah. Alex Steeves. Yeah. Some crazy, some crazy names.

Big names. It is one of the first years I can remember that all of the Leafs, you know, top five, six defense will be back. There was always usually a change there. Maybe. maybe oh oh july 15th it is that's true that's true so training camp doesn't start for two months i know are you are you actually are you getting any time to relax right now before we get into the actual hockey stuff dude you basically pulled me off the beach did i i mean not actually not

much of a cobert beach not much of a beach goer but i'm i'm in like my monk state where i'm not on the phone too much well he's wearing white linen and he's looking relaxed look at him he's a man a man about town i met him at a coffee shop today and he's he's got this shirt on this white shirt on the sun behind him like the white lotus theme playing right like just so cj is jesus yes see jesus well i mean i haven't worked in like 10 days which doesn't happen during the season right 100 if you think about the year if you can imagine it and i and look at what i do isn't really work anyway but it it is takes a lot of time and energy and so this is like as relaxed as you're ever going to find me behind a microphone and that's done get back to work jack roslevic where's he

going brett leeson where's he going uh everyone else last year at this time we did this show and and uh did we do it this summer yeah we did it like i thought we did it in early july but but Steve basically was saying, and he was passionate about this, they cannot come back with this group. They cannot do this again. And your thought was, well, it really doesn't matter because they're going to. They don't really have any other options anyway, right? Because everybody had no trade protection.

And it turns out that there was some discussions last year. And forgive us for one more time for mentioning the name Mitch Marner, which you must be exhausted by at this point. No, because, again, because you're pulling me off the beach, this is all fresh material. Oh, this is great. All right. I haven't, I'm not bored of any of this.

So just, just fire away. Where do you want to go? So, so that moment of frustration was interesting because you guys got into it and CJ literally looked at Steve at one point and said, what do you want me to tell you? What? Like, like, I don't, I don't know what else I can say. Where Brent Leeson is signing. Yeah.

Now. But. Six foot five. Beef. Tell me now. Sorry. Anthony Petrelli did a great piece in Maple Leaf Hot Stove about, okay, what if they had signed Marner?

And forget Mitch just not wanting to be here anymore, which is pretty clear he didn't. That's a hard thing to forget, though. Yeah, it is. That's a big—well, forget this inconvenient truth. He said, like, hey, the Leafs wouldn't have got much better, and they would have essentially been in the same position they've been in for half a decade already if they had signed him. And he wasn't signing for 12. He'd be signing for, like, 13 and a half to stay here, right? That's what the Leafs offered him, reportedly.

and so you know it's a it's an interesting thing because now we sit here president is out because one of the star players is gone with very little coming back nothing against uh nick roy but like i you know i want to see um you know you want to see some action when a president lets a player like that walk in free agency um we obviously did where do you think because there's been a lot of back and forth about this and there's reeves interview over the weekend where do you think things started to split off between mitch marner and the toronto maple leafs he referenced in his press conference a couple years ago when things started to go weird and i'm like that's interesting because that's when brad true living stepped in uh what are your thoughts on when you know this

breakup really began i think it's that two years ago point and and it has nothing to do with brad in terms of timing i think that was just the year and helped me with my memory that 23 so they had lost to florida yeah second round five games another series where you know mitch marner didn't put up a lot of points took a lot of criticism obviously they went down three nothing in that series and i do remember i believe there was two off days between games three and four down three nothing and i remember one particular interview in florida where he was so dismissive of sort of the criticism i think it was just it was piling up by that point right and so the split up here on one hand it's it's the team and the player but it's really the city and the fan base and maybe

the media is some degree of this like i don't know how that stew looks but i think for mitch it was becoming less and less comfortable to live in toronto full-time and be a maple leaf around that point in time and obviously this is if you overlay it with everything else we know that happened in his life he's you know since become a father earlier this year he was you know he's moving in a direction where he got married he started a family now you know i think that those two things were happening kind of at the same time he was becoming less enamored with his life as a leaf uh and obviously his performance creates some of that too like i'm not i'm not saying he's completely a victim here but you know it was a hard life you know he did it for what

nine years so that was about year seven uh where where i'm identifying the point where i think it was uncomfortable ironically this is this will be the the road we could never we can't go open that door over here and see this alternate universe but that's when kyle dubas was willing to consider trading one of these guys and you have to believe that was mitch marner so obviously you know hindsight 2020 and this is all just fantasy but do you think he actually does it the hard part to know is he was 100 going to gauge the market yeah but i don't think kyle just knowing kyle the way i do a little bit i don't think he would have boxed himself in in his mind was like i have to move him so if the if the offers were just pure junk like non-starters i don't think he would

have made the move really what he was open to in that moment was okay doing the same thing here is is not like he had he got to the point where some of us had been saying even earlier than that yep like as far back as the Montreal loss, I'd say, you know, is really where those questions like, can you really expect a different result with the same group of guys at a time when the cap isn't rising? So there's not a lot of ways to improve the roster. Like you can, you can move around the third line left winger, but you're,

are you really affecting much change if the guys at the top of the roster aren't pulling the chain? And so that summer, I think he would have certainly wanted to listen and see what was out there. And they had until July 1st of 2023 to move Marner without any, any no trade protection being involved so they could have traded him to any of the other 31 teams so july 1st 2023 comes his no move kicks in was willie ever discussed i don't believe so no i mean i'm pretty sure you're gonna have to help me with some of the timing here

was did willie he didn't have a full new move at that point no he was still sorry let's rewind yeah sure because this this was actually one story that was my my report that was days after that loss kyle acknowledges publicly right days after that he's fired yes bradshaw living's hired and before anything can even happen brennan shanahan calls each of those players or their representatives and says don't worry these changes these changes don't mean that you're in danger here like this is this is an organizational change but you're still part of the plan right so brad true living was hired into the environment where it was expected none of those players would be moved right so willie wasn't really discussed because that wasn't what he was hired to do

he wasn't allowed to move him well i guess that's where maybe and if brendan was sitting in his room he might have said well brad had come to me and said this was you know i can't say that he wasn't allowed but before he was hired almost like your legs are taken out from you if that's what you think and quite honestly i don't know that brad true living in that moment you can't come in and trade one of those players yeah like i know how a job works when my boss wants something i'm not gonna come in and be like no i'm gonna do the complete opposite i think a lot of us take that job honestly so okay i'm not why does everything in toronto happen out of order when you think about it oh because well because brad tree living is not right now as we sit here just over two

years into his time as gm his boss is now gone with a new boss it just feels like they it never goes top down this sequence of events you know i mean like and we could we could go all the way back to like the early 2000s and explain like they keep hiring out of order this sequence of events was it's infuriating because from that moment when they fired us it's like okay well so here's what's going to happen brad's going to come in he's not going to be able to do anything um uh mitch is his full no move is going to kick in i guess they're going to extend willie and they're not going to get anything done. Sheldon's going to get fired.

They bring in the new guy, but the team is fundamentally the same. Shanahan finally gets fired. And honestly, if they had a one game seven, I don't think he's fired. Well, no, they'd be in the final four. That's a lot different from being eliminated. Yes, I know.

But, and I know how that game went down and we don't have to go back into that. It's still one game. Yep. No, I know, but if I had scales. It's not one game though, CJ. It's nine years. yeah but it it came down to one game and often that's what happens but he it was pretty clear

like listen had brandon shanahan made the conference finals with any of these teams previous to this maybe it doesn't come down to that game right no of course not but i'm just i just think it's amazing that ultimately it came down to oh i think it's something and i think it's a lot of things what what's interesting cj is it's probably easier that they lost the game 6-1 in a way because you don't go yeah but because you could play awesome and lose 3-2 in that game and then you might be playing the yeah, but game, but there's no yeah, but with the way that happened. Lucky us then.

Well, I think it's a little cleaner this way. We got to look at it too, like Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment wanted to get rid of that role. Like they want to eliminate the president's roles. We just saw that with Masai. Masai and Brandon within a few weeks. They committed weirdly for the Raptors

to do a search for a new president. Yes, but that will be a president that doesn't make $14 million, right? Yeah, but it was odd with their commitment to get rid of the president role to commit to a search for a new president. But CJ, like with the- Just wait a minute.

I heard that Masai got paid much more than 14 million on the way out. Oh, because he was bought out of his deal? He had a one year left and it was a hefty deal. Like I heard, this is not my area of expertise, but north of 60 million. Six zero? Six zero?

Yeah. Boy, they really wanted him out. Well, no, I think it was to do with, he had clauses in his contract that were tied to the growth of the overall team revenue. sure right yeah and so i don't know exactly how those clauses work but i heard that he got a massive pay and he was larry's guy right like that was a so was shanny they were larry guys right and to be fair if you do work for a boss and that boss sees his or her interest grow

like he contributed to the success of the team certainly right like the value of the team is only what it is today in part because of what he did for 10 years plus yeah so i'm not saying he doesn't deserve that money but i anyway sorry the timing on that respect is so very clear like as rogers gains full control of the organization they're getting out the people they don't want in the organization anymore and they've never been a fan of messiah and they didn't want to pay him that 14 million dollar contract and what are you doing are you giving him a raise on that like you know yeah let's face it the raptors have kind of been in the mud it was probably time to say goodbye to him yeah probably the same for brendan quite honestly i mean yes obviously he

wanted to stay and and all those things but you know i wanted a winning team we don't always get what we want they they won a lot of games i don't care so what happens if the ones that i wanted what happens if they don't win many games going forward i'm not saying that's going to happen but oh man that's everybody on twitter yeah no no so that is that and people are they're going to dance about that and and i'm at peace with it because this purgatory is killing all of us um i think it's killing a lot of leaf fans brains this looking great literally great every year blowing it in near identical ways like we we yeah it was it was like strangely predictable oh the the moment the Leafs won game five against the Bruins I'm like well this is going seven and

they're gonna lose and they did and then Florida they go down with that horrible game five and we're all like so we're all under we're all in agreement how this ends right like do you know the view in the Panthers room was when they saw the way the Leafs fans turned and I'm not saying in a bad way on the team at the end of game five they knew that the pressure would be so huge in game seven that they probably weren't going to see the best of the leafs and it's not to blame the fans it was just it's more to point out that the panthers gained strength mentally knowing the way that they'd kind of broken things on the other side with that game five win yeah i don't think that happens though and i that was told that from someone in the dressing room yeah i'm not

speculating on that that's right from i mean i believe jesse i believe continue your question with sorry we're all over the place yeah before we look to the future i want to keep going with mitch too totally yeah this this is about mitch i come in and we just go in the ditch steve and you go the the last episode we did last year in july early july i think it's like around the eighth it was called the thought and the feeling do you remember that yes yes the conclusion that cj is the thought and steve is the feeling what it was a wonderful episode if you can go back and watch it do it oh it's hilarious it's the thought hilarious uh but the question going back to 2017 2017 that leafs team that loses to the capitals seeing how the next almost 10 years plays out

with mitch marner and all that are you shocked that it played out this way because that team there everybody thought had a couple championships a couple deep runs in them so much hope and looking towards the future with all of their star talent and we get this point where they lose a guy and nothing's been accomplished knowing that 2017 cj was there around the team how do you feel looking back from that team to this team they underperformed i mean there's no way around that i think at that point in 2017 you'd say the worst case for this leafs core is that they become those capitals and remember those capitals were known for not getting over the hump having magnificent regular seasons they won multiple presidents trophies early in the sort of ovechkin backstrom

you know braden holpe era carlson all those guys and you know but they were at least getting to the second round basically every year um they got to one third round i believe where they lost and then they finally won in 2018 but you would have thought that was the worst case scenario for the leafs and in the reality the leafs got to the second round twice now in this era so they've definitely won fewer playoff games than those capitals did and they didn't win the president's trophy which i realize is nothing necessarily to celebrate but it is a sign like i can understand why washington's management kept doubling down on that team because they were scoring the most goals in the league and and finishing as the best regular season team so there's no way around it

from that moment there was so much hope you know like i don't even know how much history we want to do here but all of it well when you think about it like babcock was a sign of hope at that time right when he came to toronto yeah and they tanked in the perfect tank because they weren't even that bad and they they actually won the lottery which you don't always do when you tank and austin matthews scored four goals in his first friggin game like in his first season right and even like you drafted marner fourth and he fell to you frankly because you know the coyotes took strome i was turned out to be a great player but i mean mitch immediately was a more effective pro um from the moment and even william nylander like he was probably the he's come on later in his

career in terms of how he's viewed publicly but like they they had all these guys in this moment you just felt like in in a league where it's just hard to amass that kind of talent and they're so young and they're already good when they're young and they're making the playoffs in that first full season together and they had other players they had JVR they had Bozak they had Kadri they had Riley they had Gardner Hyman you know there were guys that Connor Brown Connor Brown very valuable Aaron Brown was a good player. Yes, he was. He still is.

Yeah, but I mean, they had to let him go at that time when they were in a cap trouble. Yeah. The New England Brews trade to Ottawa. But had they held on to him, if they could have kept that all together, you'd still want a team today,

probably with Kadri and Hyman on it. Absolutely. And Brown. Why were they in cap trouble? Hold on. So let's not go to that. I want to go to this because I think this is important.

We got to talk about this part. One of the things Mitch talked about in his press conference was the fact that it seemed like there were trade, some sort of trade talk last year with between the Leafs and Vegas. And that he and his family sort of mentioned or talked about the fact that

they would be interested in that prospect. And obviously nothing came of that because I believe the Leafs reportedly wanted Shea Theodore and Vegas was like, yeah, we're just not going to do that. We'll wait a year. And obviously that worked out for Vegas pretty well, being patient on that. i think for a lot of leaf fans chris this feels like a guy that probably should have asked his

way out knowing that in retrospect because for a lot of people uh but he didn't have to i know i know so just let me let me just pose this and then you could poke holes in it because he he didn't have to uh but their thing is how could you possibly have your heart and soul in this when you're a summer before talking about the next place you're gonna go and i think it's because most fans have never been in that position maybe that's a normal thing that that players do and they talk about whatever but i feel like there is a there's a seething resentment for hey so you weren't really in this anyway and is that a fair comment to make look at i don't think the trade talks with vegas and toronto last summer were that real like there was i think there was a

discussion or discussions but it wasn't it wasn't like this was necessarily a real thing that was going to happen at that point once it got into the season and Marner wasn't negotiating it became more urgent obviously for the Leafs to try to get something back for him and you had the Carolina discussion which he didn't want to go to Carolina and at that point in time it was much more real where Mitch knew maybe there's a chance you go to Vegas and it was communicated one way or another the Leafs knew if they could make a trade work he would go to Vegas at that time because he didn't want to go somewhere where he wasn't going to sign an extension and be long term and he wasn't going to do that in carol with a seven months pregnant wife yeah um so i i think i think that

that whole flare-up around the trade deadline is where all of this was like very much it could have everything before that was pretty hypothetical it was a lot of it was the stuff that gms are doing all the time hey would you ever think about this you know that's what would it look like if i think that's literally the way a lot of gms have to talk to each other because you're almost just like postulating an idea like would you ever consider trading one of your star players and if you did you know like i think that's how it kind of goes it's not really like all right we want marner and i don't think it's i think it's far more almost like hey could we dream up a scenario that might work for everyone and i i think it was very loose last summer call it and

and i don't think it ever got to the point where it's like hey mitch we got a deal would you go to vegas so i don't know how much vegas was truly in marner's mind last summer like it's not a mystery that he would want to play there but frankly right now star players on lots of teams around the league probably hypothetically would be interested in playing in vegas uh for for all the reasons mitch is there but all the reasons that alex petrangelo once signed there and mark stone signed an eight-year deal right after getting traded out of ottawa and down the list max patch ready i mean like they've always been able to attract top players um so i i don't think this was in reverse it's getting written far more like this was destiny it was always going to go

this way first of all i think mitch would have played in other cities certainly we believe dallas is a place he would have played if there was a world where that made sense it didn't make sense they went and got ranting and at the deadline they don't have the cap space we all know what happened since but like i don't think it was vegas or bust all along i i don't believe that this is as nefarious as it looks and quite frankly any player that's appending ufa you could make the same point about how much is his heart fully i mean he just had his best season statistically so i don't think you can say that mitch didn't hold up his end of the bargain maybe you wanted more in the playoffs but you've said that other years when you didn't question

where his heart was i mean i don't think i i don't i don't think he did anything wrong in this circumstance i mean if you wanted to try to have a cleaner exit there was maybe that way maybe you go to them last summer and say hey look guys i'm not gonna sign here but the one thing we don't know is in the back of his mind maybe he was thinking maybe this is the year we go and win a cup and maybe i want to stay like i don't know that he closed off the possibility yeah but it was another year the same for him too right how do you think the leafs received the conversation between his management group and them and them saying uh we're not going to negotiate in season because what i was told was they sat down they said uh we're not negotiating don't bother we're

going to free agency how do you think that was received in september was that a surprise uh and if it was a surprise why was it a surprise um you know this is where it's less to me about mitch and more to me about the shanahan era and how this team was managed i don't have i don't know that answer yeah i i it's a fair question look i think that they they were trying to keep hope until february that they were going to resign him like i think that it was always in their mind that maybe he'll soften you know as this gets closer but if anything the fact that he didn't bend on that i think they got to february and late february and into early march and we're like oh wow okay he hasn't he's not staying so now we and they were too late if if if you judge too late

by managing your asset um i do and that's fair i do but you know they still had them contribute 102 points last season and they had them in the playoffs and they got to game seven of the second round and for the fans that are and i just want to dispel this and we can move on for the fans that are pissed at guys like ryan reeves or max patcher ready because because marner named them both because they both played in vegas come on just because they he said what's it like to live there and apparently was talking he and his wife were talking at four nations with some of the vegas players and their wives about what it's like to play there you know again for leaf fans who feel a little stung that feels salt in the wound is it landing the way that it should is that a

misrepresentation was it misspoken and is that something no players do all the freaking time and it's not a big deal look at have you ever had a job anyone out there that's mad about this have you ever had a job and wondered what would it be looked like to work across the street for this other boss who may be better or in this other city i mean it's the conversations we all have yeah like you and i might sit here and go like hey i mean we've all between all of us we've worked everywhere in media we could easily turn these mics off or keep them on and and have a really honest discussion about what it's like to be employed at rogers or bell or the nation's network or or or or all of these places i think it's the normal conversations that happen what

maybe isn't normal is mitch said that into a microphone like he said that at his his vegas introductory press conference but you know if you've worked for someone like you always wonder what it might be like to work somewhere else i i think it's frankly it would be surprising if those conversations weren't happening and and i suspect if we were you know in winnipeg and this those Nikolai Yealers I suspect he was having conversations like this about Carolina he mentioned oh he knows Frederick Anderson they're both Danish right they go back like I bet he had discussions in I think the difference is that Freddie Anderson wasn't a jet at the same time you know I think that's where people get annoyed it's like well hey these guys yeah but we don't

know all those conversations usually those conversations are kept in private my point is there might be guys on the jets that he had those type of and maybe about cities he didn't even sign in right sure maybe hey you played in New York what's that like oh yeah it doesn't sound like it's for me like i think this i mean anyone there's lots of things you can be critical about and you can be mad you can be mad as hell that's your right as a fan but i don't think you should be mad at people who are being a good friend to someone because that's really i view that as i don't i don't think it's crossing any lines it's certainly not illegal by any way and i do think it's the literally when i worked at wendy's in coburg on division street i looked across the

street and there was a mcdonald's and i probably at that time was like hey wonder do they get paid more over there do they get treated better and i can tell you damn much if i had to learn they got paid more or they got treated better i would have walked across the street and turned in my hat and put another where's your loyalty to wendy's cj come on man i mean we're only dealing in hypotheticals yes i put in three good years there i left on good terms moved to toronto set records at the drive-thru so that's one of my favorite stories i know i wish i had more wendy stories that's that's a good one to come away with but i don't have a lot of likes i don't have a number two or number three story it's mostly like yeah we made a bunch of burgers and

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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 jesse how close was the tampering issue how close were we to actually getting a tampering charge on one of these teams i don't think it was that close i mean my sense is certainly when the trade went down i think that that takes it off the board yes because look at that was an emotional time when it was all coming to a head and it was a crazy weekend it was a crazy weekend obviously the leafs are losing a hundred and two

point player in this 40 hour draft right but if you do step back and just the known facts including the fact that the leafs and the and vegas had discussions at the trade deadline and which mitch marner or his representative communicated that he would wave a note like everybody at the table knew hey if there's a trade you would go there so i mean look at i tampering is a it's a slippery slope in this league right because i do think that there's a lot of wink wink nudge nudge but i what actually rises to tampering is like having a contract done ahead of time and i don't think anything like that happened okay at all was was the trade to avoid all of that mess or was it more so for the eight years or was that eight years thrown in there to avoid the mess

well it was two things it was a guarantee for vegas because as much as they know mitch marner would like to play in vegas if it gets to july 1st at noon eastern time there's always the possibility someone comes in with a 20 offer a max offer like some deal they wouldn't do and as much as you might say well he still wants to go to vegas but maybe if la is offering 18 million a year who knows like i might change my plans in that in those cases so it gave vegas security it gave them the eighth year which i think was valuable to the team the eighth year is valuable to the player in this case and in the leafs you know they got a serviceable third or fourth line centerman out of it which is better than nothing it's not amazing there's no way to

there's no way to sell that as a win for the Leafs but I do think it's better than truly letting him go so it it brought some finality to it and I do think it removed it but you know I was obviously talking to people at the league at the time all these allegations were going around and and I never sensed it had any legs wow so the the fans I'm not saying people didn't maybe within like I don't believe elliot made this up so i should be clear i i just don't think this was ever going to be seriously investigated i i don't know if it was anything more than just frustration about the way everything was kind of unraveling and ending so the the fans of the other 31 teams who are accusing bradshaw living a blackmailing vegas like they should calm their horses a little yeah i mean

come on blackmail for nicholas waugh no offense and i say that with respect in fact like i know the Leafs, once we move beyond the fact that he was got for Mitch Marner's rights, I mean, he could be a useful player for Toronto. That solves the issue that they had last year, right? Which is not having a center in that position. And Vegas was over the cap. I think they still are, aren't they?

They may be. I mean, I've been on the beach, so you tell me. Somebody's got Puckpedia behind one of these laptops. Absolutely. Well, listen, it's not, we don't have to worry too much about their cap situation. They are over the cap. Yeah, they and Florida and, is it Montreal? Somebody else's. Yeah.

Yeah, I wonder. Montreal, eh? Oh, because of Carey Price? Yeah. A little phony over the cap. So I guess, you know, CJ, now that that era is over, we are now squarely just, I think, we're calling it the Austin Matthews era, right?

It can't really be the Core 4 era, you know, with John Tavares. Do we have a nickname for what this is now? I mean, that's the best one I got so far. I mean, it's been a few days, so I haven't really thought of anything. The Berube Bunch. No, no. no terrible no one liked that are you underselling william nylander in this no i i think the reason it'd be the two-headed monster or we could do that i'm happy it's not good listen willie was

second in goals last year i think that there's uh this is not a you know he continues to be sort of the third guy of three and marner didn't like he's number two now well of those three though marner matthews nylander he was the one that well they're going to trade him they're gonna trade him they're gonna trade him oh he's this he's this he's this and he's just blossomed into this fantastic player who's nobody complained about either contract he's weirdly gotten better pretty much every season every year every year you know there's something to steady improvement right but it seemed to bother people in the marner camp and i won't say mitch uh that austin got the captaincy got a lot of the glory got a lot of the credit whatever

willie it's never bothered him at all he doesn't care uh and i don't know if anything's ever bothered him yeah so i i like anything ever there are some guys where this media market maybe it's not for you willie seems like this is the perfect place for him because i see him walking around yorkville with his two dogs off leash they're really really well trained all the time and he just he just kind of goes about his business he lives in the city he doesn't doesn't really get bothered uh and he goes to his condo and that's it and and like that and then he goes and he scores a bunch of goals uh i mean you would have liked him to be a little more bothered in the last three or four games of the florida so so that part of it mitch was the guy getting booed every time he

touched the puck but we did see disappearances i think matthews was injured there were a couple line changes where i just wanted to reach to the tv at willie so what does this team now need to be because we're like i know matthias michelli and nicholas war through the door here and you know there could be a jack roslovich which we can talk about in a bit we'll leave that for now but like what at the top of this team you've got Tavares at 4.39 million which is he's clearly not three eight it's even better he's not even at that number he's not a member of the core anymore he's guy on the team but he's not member of the core this is not a core four this is at max a core two maybe a core three if you want to include Morgan Riley uh what's the

what i guess nize is maybe jumping in uh but what is the what is this team now what is this like you you sometimes you go through a breakup and you're like okay well like what am i now that this partnership no longer exists well i think they gotta find areas right yeah i mean they gotta they gotta i mean look if what has dogged them in the playoffs quite frankly is they haven't scored enough to win but it's crazy that hockey you don't always address that with just superstars like i think that now they're rebalancing the books i mean at the other than calling the core four like a really catchy nickname what it did speak to for a long time like half the team's salary cap was tied up in four players four special players but still it didn't leave a lot

of money for the other roster spots and that caused constant challenges it caused the odd trade out of town it caused you know zach hyman inexplicably like a heart and soul guy the team that left for what five and a half million or something but like probably an amount of money the Leafs could have paid them if they had to prioritize them a little more um and made other hard decisions instead you know now they they're going to have more flexibility and so I don't I'm not going to sit here and say you know I watch Steve's video there he's got the Leafs lineup all which is great queued up which is great love a July 8th release but I would say I'm not going to say that lineup necessarily represents what i'm about to say but it's going to give them a

chance in theory to build three stronger lines what do you think those which is what i think they have to do they have to be able to score more down the lineup and then you need austin matthews have a bounce back season this year which if he's healthy would be the safe bet if you look at his nine seasons when healthy and playing he's great he's going to score more than 50 goals um and i don't think he as much as obviously him and mitch marner had a special connection i don't think his his output is tied just to getting great passes i think he's someone you count on to produce offense almost no matter who he's playing with what it's clear though that the identity i mean the goaltending was was great last year when they were healthy and the and

defensive play of the team awesome much better than what it had been the season prior and much better talent on the defensive end like brad has come in and rebuilt that defensive just not a lot of puck movers back there right and so so on that point we'll start there because i think goaltending is safe right everybody everybody's happy with that leave it that tandem it's safe until we watch game one yeah and then all of a sudden like a guy that can play can't play at least i knew with peter marazic he wasn't going to play well as soon as he started here right and i'm sorry i'm not i'm not chipping away at wall or stole ours i'm just saying it's always a little bit of a what let's see what we get when we open the box what is there to these you know there was

the and again it's mid-july rumors so you'll have to forgive the the nonsense but there is a bit of uh there was some word about the leafs checking in on a dougie hamilton there was some word about the leafs checking in on an eric carlson is that something you think that they want to do well this is what brad true living does he is one of those gms that wants to fully he doesn't he's not relying on hearing what we think of who's available he he's very active in having those kind of discussions So it doesn't surprise me to hear those. So he's a call everybody kind of GM? Yeah.

I mean, once upon a time, he basically finished second for Jack Eichel. It's forgotten about, but Calgary was the other alternate option when he ended up going to Vegas. But the Flames were very much in on Jack Eichel at the time. Maybe that's not even the best example because in that case, he was an aggressive bidder

in addition to just checking in. But he's very much a keep tabs, very good handle on the market. And so it doesn't surprise me to hear that. I don't think we should confuse it with the Leafs are definitely going to go and make that kind of trade either. Because the only way to make that sort of trade, in my view, would be somehow removing Morgan Riley from the roster. And that doesn't seem to be something that he or his family want to do. No.

At this point in time, I have no reason to believe he would want to do that. Right. I also don't think the Leafs have approached him about it either. Do you think Berube trusts him? Some days. I mean, maybe not implicitly. and and look at i think morgan would be the first to tell you last year was very up and down for him he didn't have a great season so the one season where craig brube's been his coach was not his

best and and i'm not i'm not going a direct line like that's brube's fault but i'm saying brube's operating off what he's seen and he didn't see morgan's best and it got better with carlo i think we should say that for sure those were better so maybe a full season but look at i mean is he going to be on the top power play unit next year well so this is my thing siege i and i keep saying this to the guys but points matter to someone like morgan riley like there's confidence in yeah but he can't he doesn't have a shot from the point he doesn't have a big shot so we don't see shea weber type power play goals what you do see guys that can fire more than a muffin though and this is the problem is that when morgan riley was on the power play teams figured out pretty

quickly well we can leave the point somewhat open because you can cover the other guys off and dive in front of his pucks when they go go at the net right you can't do that with a guy like petrangelo you can't do that with a guy like lane hudson um so if he's going to be the guy it's got to be more than you can pass right there's different ways to solve an equation i mean i mean that's just a marks of art problem i get it yeah and look the least power play last year ended up pretty good like it started off very rough but i can't really you know you can't find fun like that wasn't the reason they didn't get it done in the end um so i do wonder this is what's funny when steve said earlier like they're going to bring back the same 6d i'm not saying

they're not but i i don't know that we can count on that yet because i'm not sure as much as they have they they have definitely improved in that area i think we wouldn't even debate about that from when tree living took over to where they are today and we know that obviously he's someone who's traditionally built a strong defense he played defense i think he's got an eye for it and a vision for it and likes tall guys i wouldn't uh i wouldn't he likes to be able to look him in the eye yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't be able to find a spot on that blue line for a lot of reasons but especially with my height jesse good jesse's in there i don't have the size like the the other way you know right yeah oh you gotta see a little meanness from jesse you want to see some cross

you just have to drink some gravy every night before you go to bed and just beef up i think that's i'll give you some tips steve who's your prospect story that you love telling who just ate candy all the time to beef up oh uh eat candy all the time yeah they just ate a bunch of candy and they were trying to beef up in the off season you tell the story all the time oh wasn't that uh didn't johnny goudreau johnny goudreau used to have Nutella sandwiches yeah well that and he loved his dad even when he was learning to skate put skittles on the ice and he like got to eat skittles based on doing certain drills and stuff no way oh i gotta try this was a famous uh i think he had a sweet tooth and certainly did not have a refined palate like that's what his buddies they

would go to like a sushi restaurant and he would like get a ham and cheese sandwich or something like he wow that's yeah that's where all the tributes came yeah from the jackets fans right exactly so right because skittles and and purple gatorade i think yes thing yeah they left that behind at the arena but we saw how the defense was going to look you know tough shot blocking that sort of thing they also got outplayed a lot five on five not not just the defense the whole team uh i would shot a lot and think about it you have these fours and you still have a pretty talented like the top six of this team is still good very good like i know they've lost something but they still have a lot and they're also pretty economical now with tavaris i mean i don't mind

knives at the number they got them at like there you go but they need how do you distribute the puck to them like how do you get them playing where you want them to play and where they can do damage i'm not sure they have the right mix yet to do that that being said it's not to say this trade has to happen this summer either like i the carlson thing it's it's a stretch for me it feels like he makes 10 million dollars against the cap right now and i can tell you for certain pittsburgh's not just giving them away they're not of a mind we got to get them off the team so and they're not retaining they're not going to retain half of that yeah for anybody and so a team really has to want them and so look morgan riley makes about seven and a half am i in the

ballpark seven and a half you nailed it yeah so if you were ever removing morgan riley maybe i could see the argument to replace him with carlson and maybe you can make the money work with whatever else but like that's that's two significant trades two guys that have no movement clauses that's very much sitting around in mid-july like hey wouldn't this be kind of cool right and i'm not sure how much reality is in there yet but the one thing i'll say on carlson is he's only got two years left and so even if he doesn't get traded this summer you're going to hear more of this talk because he gets much much easier to move in a rising cap environment when there's only that much left like if we get into this year's trade deadline and pittsburgh is nowhere near the

playoffs it could be a malcolm crosby or sorry not malcolm crosby malcolm uh uh carlson sort of deadline for them right i mean we'll see i it would only be if malcolm wants to go yeah yeah you know what's interesting about malcolm he's on an expiring deal yeah this could be his last nhl season I know that there's been some discussion uh with the Penguins and Malkin's camp about does he want to play another year you know we'll see where that lands but it's it's certainly fair to say obviously with all these guys whether it's Ovechkin who's also I believe on an expiring deal Crosby's got two years left starting the next season but we're at the end for all of them in the next few years but possibly next season Malkin just feels like a panther to me

no because he's psychotic and and where does where would he even play i don't know backup goalie they're good they're set was gonna be like rodriguez that they came out 14 months in advance and said that he won't be a penguin after this upcoming season did they say that yeah they they had that release and it was in the athletic and everything this is oh i missed that this is last year as a penguin so basically they're drawing the line if that's the case and I have no reason to believe it isn't. I just hadn't heard it. They're basically saying,

if he wants to keep playing after that, we'll let you play here for the rest of your contract. But if you want to play beyond that, it's up to you somewhere else. Right. Look it, I think this is not a mystery. I think the Penguins would like to cut ties if there was a neat and tidy way to do it.

There's no neat and tidy way to do it. But Pittsburgh, we're seeing the moves that Kyle Dubas has made now really for two straight years. Going back to when they traded Jake Gensel, like that's kind of that's across the rubicon moment right because it was a key part of their last two cups in 16 and 17 uh so what's what's this say there's uh june 16th evgeny malkin will return for his 20th campaign with the penguins next season it will be his last in pittsburgh while it remains unclear if the future hall of famer center will retire following 25 26 season

the penguins are not expect to offer him another contract with the franchise sources within the organization josh yoey my my colleague i'm sorry i missed your report josh yeah so he's done as a I don't think this would leak out unless there's some reason for the organization to want that out there. Yeah, or Josh is really good at his job and he's got some real intel. So, I mean, I think it's a reflection, though, of what I'm saying here. I do believe they would like to start fresh, but also honoring these guys in the way,

like respecting what they've done for the Penguins. I mean, it's no stretch to say Sidney Crosby's arrival in Pittsburgh saved the Penguins in Pittsburgh. like it actually that saved the penguins there's the alternate timeline as they're playing in hamilton or kansas city or wherever and we're all still using blackberries and we're all still using blackberries i never graduated to the google um i did you know i interviewed jim balsillie once did you i've met him he's quite the guy yeah i interviewed him back when he was interested in getting an nhlt what uh what was he like then i was a young reporter

it was when i worked at the canadian press and get this somehow i this is this is a really bad story but anyway i don't know why i just thought of this give it to us but so i woke up that day i didn't have a car at this point in my life the interview was in waterloo where blackberry's offices were and for some reason i'd lost my license so i got i went to like where i was supposed to rent the car and i didn't have my license so i obviously couldn't rent the car so i literally panic called my one buddy who wasn't working at the time and i was like i need you to drive me to waterloo right now or else i would have missed that interview which at the time was a big deal for me to get that interview uh so i the whole morning was just a total cock up by me

and but my buddy drives me out to waterloo i go to jim's office and i sat there i think 60 or 90 minutes and man he was like i haven't at that point in my life i hadn't met many people like that like you could tell he was brilliant yes and you know it was almost like everything in front of him was like cascading waterfalls like i felt like he was like looking around and explaining like that zach galifianakis yes like exactly like math equations are happening exactly that's exactly that's what it felt like like i felt like he was like looking into a world i didn't even understand and just going on and on long answers explaining everything like he was it was damn compelling it was really cool for me to get to do that and the the only takeaway i want you to have

from the stories i nearly screwed that up i nearly didn't get there it's good to know that even people like you make mistakes like that oh my god and it was my birthday it was actually the day of my birthday oh that sucks you call your buddy this is my birthday you have to drive into waterloo this is my present may we all have friends as good as adam gallagher my good buddy all the way my days in coburg but i called him literally on a moment's notice and he just was like okay i'll drive you to waterloo oh that's a good person like hung around while i did it and then drove me back oh didn't even make the train amazing well i don't even could you take a train this is a long time this is good back then this is 20 years ago probably like it was early 2000 somewhere in

there so yeah maybe not maybe not i i guess cj what there was no uber i can tell you that was it putting canada on world stage rims co-ceo belcilli's latest passion play of the canadian press chris johnson october 29th 2008 it's just an excerpt uh i don't have the full yeah yeah yeah that would be it so it's 2008 look at this fine jesse well there you go i like that you've at least proven that i didn't make any of the story oh it's an article of that yeah look at it's got the waterloo byline i was only there because adam gallagher drove me there and uh what's not pictured in that story is that i lost my license and couldn't rent the car oh that's okay you physically lost it i don't know i or i couldn't maybe i misplaced it i don't remember too young

there was like a lot too but people for 24 years old couldn't rent i don't know how old you were Well, 25. I was old. I was, I was old enough. You old enough. Okay. But anyway, it exists. It happened.

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I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. and today i'm still figuring it out somehow things usually get worse before they get better apparently that's how i roll so bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride don't miss the new season of north of north starting september 8th on cbc gem hey so so i guess sorry i don't know how we got there i guess it was the penguin stuff i want to i want to just ask about the in this sense that like what you know when we talk about a team like detroit one of our major criticisms is what are you like what are you uh when you talk about the kraken what are you uh but we talk about the great teams you could tell me what the panthers are you could tell me

what dallas is you could tell me what the oilers are when vegas were at their best and i don't think they got walked last year they got people don't talk about enough how they got dominated in that second round but when they were at their best you knew and they just lost alex petrangelo yes that's a question we will come and i know he played this year and he was obviously injured because he's ended his career. But he was really good. He's still really good with the injuries. But I mean, you don't just find him on a tree.

Right. And so I want to know what you think the Leafs identity is going to be. I don't think it's sustainable that they walk in every game and get outplayed five on five the way they did last year. I don't think that is fully sustainable.

Berube hockey? Is that what he does? So what are these Leafs without Marner? And what is their new direction? What's their North Star? If Bradshaw Living were here, what's the goal he has in mind i'm sure they want to see better five on five play or more consistent five on five play but i mean they're still look at it as much as a coach has

as an identity that they're trying to teach or gm has a vision i mean at some level you're you're dictated by who your actual players are right like the team that craig ruby coached in st louis and coached them all the way to a stanley cup final they didn't have a high they didn't have in austin matthews they didn't have an individual like you they had curtis sanford or was it was zach sanford not curtis no and they had ryan o'reilly who was awesome and won the cons my trophy and is a beast still a really good nhl player but he never had a season where he scored 69 goals in fact nobody has that isn't named like lemieux or you know the guys the guy that were in the video games when you were a kid basically um so the point is is i think they you have to

somewhat adapt to what you have but what are they going to be they're going to be aggressive for checking team i mean i think everybody's trying to be something like the panthers honestly now that's not sustainable and on some level i think you have to stick to what you are too because if you if you're trying to imitate you're not gonna yeah well look what happened to the the canucks when they tried to become the bruins after 2011 oh everyone did everyone no team has been more poorly replicated than the 2011 bruins yep everyone tried to do it i would say the panthers we might see it with the pan i'm not saying with toronto now but everybody's gonna try to be the panthers now the panthers are i i think everyone was just like look let's just get

big and what's weird yeah no one's no short guys are getting drafted anymore no but i i feel like people are taking the wrong lessons from the panthers like they weren't the biggest team they were the most violent uh definitely but they they weren't the biggest team and competitive is what i think it's extremely competitive aggressive and if you took their their speed for granted you were getting beaten every time and that's how they beat the leafs in game seven right it's oh you made one mistake here we go the other way and it's in and now you're playing from behind and our defense and goaltending is too good and you make another mistake and you make another mistake it's just it's boa constrictor hockey it's such a good point that it wasn't

necessarily done with size it was skill there on their forecheck you know they're not small but they're not they're not big but it wasn't like their ethos is we are just big and that's it no we are big most around the lineup but we also have a relentless play style yeah and do you know what a lesson for me from the 2024 to 25 panthers should be like they made big changes right they lost brandon montour they lost oel guys that were in their top four when they won the cup Lamborghini. Lamborghini. You know, but I'm just saying they didn't just bring back the same team.

Obviously, they brought back the absolute core players. But there's opportunity and change, right? And I think that's what the Leafs have to look for. I'm not even saying to mimic the Panthers, but there's now a different opportunity to spend money elsewhere. And there's a chance to, you know, let's see if Auston Matthews can do more to carry even a line on his own at times. like maybe i think he can do it yeah well i mean we saw him cindy crosby's done it for years though

like yeah like yeah like you know probably the best remembered crosby line this chris kunitz baby yeah and pascal dupuis and with respect to those guys two otherwise probably third liners on a lot of teams i mean kunitz was on the olympic team because of crosby there's no other reason kunitz is there and that's okay that's great that's your dude man and what did they do they won and so like it i think that's the thing with austin and mitch and i i want to ask you about the dressing room cj because it seemed like austin and mitch had a stranglehold on every coach that came through except for babs who wouldn't let them play together uh from the time keith let them play together uh it doesn't didn't matter how many offensive coaches defensive coaches head

coaches changed they were stapled to each other with the exception of sheldon keith running bertuzzi domi matthews which looked like a pretty sick line actually going into the playoffs two years ago and we were always that's why you're hearing all the domi talk for the top line that's i i think it actually makes some sense 100 go back and look at those highlights they're they're actually incredible together well and domi is a great playmaker and austin matthew shoots the puck so just start there and and the fact that you've seen some past you know reason to believe in it i mean i think that that makes a lot of sense and you got a bulldozer in nice so i guess my question is how did that pairing stick together so long why did it stick together so long and then

the next follow-up is going to be uh before we go a different direction is what's the leafs dressing room actually like is there a good culture there so two very different questions absolutely the the the reason they played together is because you're trying to get both those guys 20 minutes a game like on some level like as much as you're like oh it'd be nice you could just spread all these four guys over three lines well there's not enough minutes for the third line right i think that's been the problem at times with nylander because at times he's been the guy that's got lost in some of those minute shuffles now i think they've addressed that obviously last year he very famously said he wanted to play more and craig brube played him more but i think like

on some level there's just so many shifts in a game and they obviously had a ton of success so there wasn't a lot of reason not to play them together um and i don't i don't know that it was so much like they were gonna pout or something like i i think that that might be i think that might be an exaggeration of what really went on which is why i asked the question they obviously liked playing together though but i think the leafs have like when you're talking about the dressing room these guys do want to win that part i can tell you unequivocally that it doesn't mean that it doesn't apologize for any of the things that have gone wrong when they haven't won but i don't think it's a lack like i don't think they give a shit honestly about winning another award

about a president's points like i think if if there were if you had to come up with a compelling reason last season that marner you're on this line and it's not with matthews and this is why and it was explained to them this will give us a better chance to win i believe they would have bought into it i really don't think they're long beyond like this is like it's so funny it's like the life cycle of an athlete you get in the league and even when you're as talented as they were you got to prove yourself right and one way you prove yourself is obviously putting up points but it's winning awards it's it's proving you're at a certain level with your peers and but then eventually you realize it's it's all empty it's all yeah i won a heart i won a heart trophy i've won two

rockets yeah which are great and and austin will be proud of those for the rest of his life and they'll be written on his hall of fame plaque one day uh like they're they're real achievements that i'm not taking anything away from but the only thing when you get to this stage of austin matthew's career and this is the same for Conor McDavid like we haven't even got into him but all this guy cares about now is winning the Stanley Cup like quite literally that is his reason for being as a hockey player I think it's the exact same for these Leafs players like even John Tavares coming back to Toronto on the contract he did you mentioned I mean he clearly could have made more money elsewhere obviously he's made a lot of money but you know every time I've made more

money than I had in the past you still want more like there's there's a human instinct in that but i'm saying he sacrificed that because he wants to win with this team and it doesn't guarantee they're going to win but i i don't think there's any issues culturally with the room about it has to be this way or that way i think these guys are still trying to figure it out and then look they may never get there only one team gets to win each year right like we could be having the same conversation about the oilers and they've been to two straight cup finals yep they've been as close as you can get but they quote unquote regressed the game because you know they didn't make well they were further away from winning in 2025 i don't just mean because it was game six and game

seven i think if you look at the teams so on that point we've talked about on this show that the leafs would be stupid would it would be managerially like suicidal to not have a plan for if conor mcdavid becomes available you have to have that plan yeah you have to have that conversation i'm sure it's occurred to the los angeles kings i'm sure it's occurred to the new york rangers yeah you know you don't think julian breezebaugh down in tampa might be looking at his long-term roster i mean he's always he's a master of of keeping his roster in a certain way i mean i think that there's the panthers they're shorthanded yeah i mean obviously there's 31 teams that would like to have him but there's probably 10 teams that would think that they would be in the running

if they're ever got a chance so if he doesn't sign this rumored two-year three-year pact with the Oilers this summer that that has been thrown out there a little bit now I'm not hearing so much about it if that doesn't happen and he does go to free agency next July how does one whatever city they're in position themselves to be a team that he would want to join it's simple it's well okay sorry it's simple for me to sit here and say it's hard to execute you need to have the cap space to sign him and be able to prove to him demonstrably that you have a chance to win once you sign him to that contract if you can line it up like that i think you're in the i think you're in the ball game so if you're the raptors minus kawaii like the season after kawaii remember

where everybody was like man if kawaii was here they would have won again and they made it what where they go to seven seven games in the second round was it yeah they lost uh boston boston and it was in that bubble playoff but that was still an amazing team they were a kawaii leonard away do the Toronto Maple Leafs need to be that like well you need to be forcing teams to the absolute max even if you can't quite get over the hump let's get you know you need to have a plan because more than anything like we all know the contract wherever if Connor extends in Edmonton or if he ends up signing a free agent contract in 2026 we all know there's no negotiation it's literally he's going to pick his terms more or less right so it's not about it's so it's about everything

else around that we can accommodate make you the highest paid player in the game which you should be and this is why we're going to win and this is what we have and this is our plan and this is how we're going to attack the summer i mean i i don't know what's going to happen here quite honestly i mean we're getting a little ahead of ourselves but sure look at it's been two weeks that he could have extended edmonton and to my knowledge there's been no discussions about an extension yet that being said i think it's a five minute phone call if uh if uh his agent john moldaver wants to do a contract with the Oilers it's just a matter of getting the other side on the you know what we're preparing right now you know fill in the numbers um so but if he becomes a free agent of course

the Leafs they'd be nuts but I but again I think it's any of the original six teams are probably feeling like there could be in that mix if they're good enough obviously some of them aren't uh at this point in time I think it's really any of the like Vegas probably has to think about it I don't know how they do it i'm imagining they've already signed marner i'm imagining they're going to extend eichel who's a year out from well eichel make more than marner god i hope so willie i don't know you don't know he might make the same yeah maybe that's the way you go about it i'm not sure okay i don't know where they're at with that those discussions but those i mean kaprizov could be available uh kaprizov i would be surprised if he doesn't shine in minnesota it

sounds like they will give him whatever he wants i believe he'll get more than dry sidle he'll become wow for a time the highest paid player i guess he wouldn't because the contract doesn't kick into july 1st 2026 even if he signs it now and by that point mcdavid will be signing somewhere or will have signed somewhere with the oilers so he may never actually be the exact highest paid but he's going i wouldn't surprise me if he gets something like 15 million wow wow and long term oh yeah okay i mean if he's if he's signing he's going to be one of these last remaining guys who gets an eight-year deal i think if he stays in minnesota okay can i throw a name out there for connor um carolina they just they feel like they always have such a solid team and like a weird

amount of cap space for a team as good as they are yeah they they have their problem is has been attracting those players right that like that was the problem with miko randon they i give them credit for that set of moves i know somehow they were taking criticism for it first of all i think they made out okay on net in the series of moves yes like i don't think they're any further behind people have to remember they weren't going to be able to sign martin nash's either so they traded him before that became an official problem it was already an unofficial problem in their minds you know but bratton didn't want to sign there but they gave themselves a chance to at least sell him on it come hang out with our fins a little bit look it wasn't for him that's that's totally

fine they at least put themselves in that conversation they wanted to to make an aggressive pitch to mitch marner they didn't get a chance right when when we talk about why they make the trade jesse a team like carolina like i don't know what the number would have been for them but it would have been bigger than 12 times eight i'm sure that right and so and that's where for if you're on the vegas end of that you're just you're like could they put something monster in front of him that changes his mind yeah you didn't want to come here march 7th but when there's this dollar figure attached to it maybe i mean again yeah if you get a leon dry sidle type number you're kind of like yeah maybe it sways mitch's you don't have to live there forever

wherever there is right it's you have to remember all these players careers are relatively short yeah uh and you make all that money and then you live where you want to live the rest of the time every place is probably a good place to make 14 mil yes yeah what about 50 and i know you guys have been playing the no trade game there really aren't any bad places to live in the nhl like every city has when you're making this kind of money there's there's a reason to live in every of the 32 markets yeah and you're talking about carolina even ottawa steve i saw well the labretton flats aren't real we know that that does it's just a made up alleged ottawa i'm pretty sure it just skips from nepean gatineau my nephew is he lives in ottawa but he's a massive sense fan

so i have to defend the sense on his behalf a likely story cj oh he lives in ottawa jesse i'm not kidding i saw him this weekend it's july weekend and he was wearing a sense jersey at my dad's house wow i'm just saying like even in july he's wearing a sense jersey like he is he has the passion the the sense version of of what you guys are all infected with he's he's a sicko he's a sicko for sure yeah carolina coming out uh i think net positive with that deal stan coven's still on that uh elc upcoming for next season like he's making 800 grand to be their second line right winger behind jarvis like that's a ridiculous contract to play with for this season i think carolina is an underrated in in an underrated position right now uh in the

league in terms of the cap space and the amount of talent they have and they're dying for that superstar yeah yeah and you know look at they they're thrilled to get nikolai ehlers as they should be right they pop them up there on the top line as you're showing and and you know so he he maybe scratches that itch to a degree but you can be sure if number 97 is available they much like they were prepared to make a monster offer to mitch marner i am certain that would be in the position where they'd want to do that with mcdavid and i don't know if they can win like i don't really know it's too soon to say to handicap who's the most likely or anything like that again we're in probably the most likely is edmonton frankly to sure resign david if we're being

clear here but if in this alternate universe where next summer we get a free agent i mean what is the equivalent if conor mcdavid ever went to free agency i don't know in nhl history because he's still at the peak of his yeah gretzky we're talking the decision like we gotta cross sports yeah go lebron yeah they would have the live espn feed i think 100 like it's so unprecedented in the salary cap world of the nhl for a player to get to free agency that i think you gotta cross sports to find an equivalent right and he would be doing it at this time when the cap is like taking monster league floating yeah like it's this really unique period in time you you know it must be in his mind a little bit oh yeah and like the

otani stuff that happened what was that two off seasons ago and major league baseball like right we're talking the exact same i'm still not over that too soon conor mcdavid is on a plane he's on a plane to toronto right now honestly with with the passion that these hockey fan bases have i see the same thing playing out where people are following the jet that whatever Connor's on to go sign this contract. Absolutely. It could be so much fun. Jet? He's going to Winnipeg?

CJ, can you confirm? If you're an Oilers fan, they're not thinking this is fun. No, I don't know. And I have to say. But that's the joy of having great players is that people are going to speculate whether or not they leave. You have great players that people are going to ask. But then people get offended

like the whole Crosby thing. Well, we had a whole chat about that last week the idea that we even having the discussion is disrespectful to sydney crosby i think is i think that's misplaced i understand do you know what it's missing from because i can tell you every single person in hockey is having discussion isn't like four of us sitting here in the studio like all the people behind the scenes are yeah all the people that interact with sydney crosby daily are privately having this discussion i'm not saying they're having it with him but everybody's wondering this it is the absolute elephant in the room i mean it would be naive to think that kyle dubas and the penguins front office hasn't thought about it

that the other front offices and places he might play haven't like thought about it to the point where they're thinking we need to keep certain things available in case there's this trade that could happen where sydney crosby's representatives were his own family like everybody is thinking about this i mean his childhood the team that he cheered for could you sure use a 2c uh montreal canadian yeah and you know the colorado avalanche could use another win after losing ranting in the way they did like the and there's other teams of course that would want to get in on that i mean my point is it's insane to say it's disrespectful to him every single person that cares about hockey or the nhl specifically is thinking about this including the people that interact with him every

day i'm glad that you're saying it and i no but i just this is where i get pissed off because the notion that it's not a conversation is ignoring that the conversation is happening at the highest levels ultimately the decision rests with one man and we know who that is and we know why sydney crosby is a pittsburgh penguin today because he wants to be but the minute that changes he will no longer be a penguin all right so that's the information you have but have you ever just tried plugging your ears and singing i'm going to ignore every text and conversation i've ever had he's not getting traded ever ever ever and it somewhat calls back to what you're asking about marner like we can't pretend that everybody is just this robot yeah and

isn't imagining multiple realities like that's the way we live our own lives right we all think about other things we might be doing i occasionally wonder like what would i do if i wasn't a hockey journalist uh you know on a mid-july day that does cross my mind i never obviously take action in that direction but i think everybody thinks this way like i do believe it's it's normal and i do believe that part of what's happening with conor mcdavid is obviously looking at where the oilers are looking at his own life looking around the league and imagining where he might fit again that's in the abstract i'm not saying there's any tampering going on i'm not saying he's leaving edmonton but i just think it was it's naive to think that even players steve eiserman

who spent an entire career in detroit had times when he was a player where he thought what would it be like to play somewhere else he was nearly traded to ottawa many years ago where he grew up i'm sure at that point in time him and his family were thinking oh like where would that might not be so bad if i got traded ottawa like what would that be like this is the reality look at this the flip side of this business look how many guys connor timmons jumps to mind like he's just been traded like three times in a year like the same he's buffalo now he's in buffalo now but i'm sorry i just he jumped to my mind right now my point is is at the same time when you have these players that are moving all around against their will all the time you can't imagine the guys that

share the dressing room with them don't go like hey that could be me one day yeah like you'd be again you would be plugging your ears and going you ever heard of completing the rainbow no it's It's more of an NBA term, but it's finding its way into hockey where you've worn a jersey that is every color of the rainbow over the course of your career. And that's got to be an exhausting way to be. Who's got it now? Like Tyler Toffoli, maybe?

He's been probably pretty close. He has been pretty close. Because he's jumped a fair bit. What players have completed the rainbow? What does purple represent? Like you'd have to... He played for the Kings, so he probably wore a third jersey that was purple. It would have to include the Kings.

Yeah. NBA is a little bit better for that. You got to be with the Jazz. Oh, there you go. The Jazz. There's Shaq's rainbow. The Raptors. Oh, there you go.

So Shaq has a rainbow. Oh, wow. Miami, Phoenix, Lakers, Celtics, Magic, Cavs, and a different version of the Lakers. I actually forgot that Shaq played for Phoenix. Yeah. I think Shaq forgot that Shaq played for Phoenix. Yeah, he was there with Matt.

Actually, I forgot he played for the Celtics, too. Now that I'm looking at this closely. That was bad. Yeah, everywhere else I'm very aware that he played for and was a star for, but... Like, look at that. Four different numbers, I think. Yeah, the 36 looks weird.

Everything about that's wrong. 33 looks weird. They all look... Yeah, no, very... It's all disturbing. And, like, Yager definitely has whatever the NHL equivalent. Well, yeah, because he had the stars, which are green. He had the Devils and the Panthers, which are red.

Flames. Which are orange. What would be our orange? Flyers. He was a Flyer. Oh, yeah, he was a Flyer. and penguins he was yellow yeah see hey see somebody put this image together yeah yeah yeah we could have a jogger rainbow for sure yeah yeah i i uh i wonder yes players play for multiple

teams even superstars because shack was a superstar there you go uh yeah but shack's not sydney crosby you just don't understand but like i understand the pushback from fans and that like crosby has never spoken publicly about wanting to do that yeah because he's only going to speak publicly about it once when it happens well you could have stopped it crosby's never spoken publicly like what do we know about the guy right like and i understand them also hey hey i want you know listen we're not all you i know you know stuff about they're also cheering for what they want they want their hometown hero to stay there for their entire career yeah and there's a certain romance with sports right and there's something romantic about

the idea of him sticking in like through thick and thin and you know they started this rebuild two years ago maybe it would make a lot more sense well and i've started to see and i can't remember apologies if this was your tweet and i've read it and i just forgot who tweeted it but someone's like well sydney he is the rare player that might actually still be good at 42 oh certainly and i do believe that is possibly the case and so you can start to maybe twist yourself into thinking maybe they get good again but the odds are so far against it so okay players are the last to see this usually because they players have to believe against all belief like to achieve everything he's done he's like defied odds and expectations right he's been the best at what

he's done for 20 plus years so he has to believe that like wanting something and working for it it's going to happen but like look at their lineup man but like i believe crosby thinks he can turn this penguins team into a playoff team right and he probably feels an obligation yeah like that's what makes him different i think than some athletes like i think he actually feels a responsibility because of what was passed on to him and how great the organization was to him to not just abandon ship the minute. I mean, we can't accuse him of abandoning

the minute it got bad because it's getting worse. So I feel like he's taking that mentality into, was it two years left on this contract that the extension kicks in this year? So he's like, I can will this team to victory. I owe the city something. I'm going to try and make this thing work.

Like, is he the longest serving captain in NHL history? I don't know. With one team? Well, when was he named captain? second season wow and he just finished year 20 his second season he was named captain yeah they're still saying it's so that's that's uh oh six oh seven he's had 19 years as the team captain so eyes admitted did 20 oh what so he's gonna beat that unless unless he leaves but the point is is

like for him it's you know the penguin sweater isn't just laundry and pittsburgh isn't just any old city along the way that he could play in like obviously he's got all the winning i don't he's got everything you could want in a way here so i think that's what the fans are trying to tell the rest of the world outside of pittsburgh this is more than just a team to him he is this organization just jesse can you pull up the penguins depth chart just just so we can put a you want to see rutger mccurdy on the first line do you know like this is what i mean how do we need to just wait no no just wait just wait though do you know how you get to be as good to sydney crosby at anything though uh be from cole harbor be obsessed to have challenges and

to constantly keep pushing yourself and put like to set the bar even farther and farther away and keep pushing and obviously climbing the mountain like i would argue there could be one more challenge for him and it might be the challenge of leaving that all behind going to a new place all the unfamiliarity all the difficult things with that the risk it might be a friggin disaster they're like who knows we don't know that's he could go out in the first round with another team yeah and then he might be like man i should have just finished it off it could be gretzky on the blues so right right and and hey they made the second round i would argue anyway that's what would honestly that's what would make it compelling from the outside for those of us without skin in

the game those of us that aren't living in pittsburgh who aren't a fan of the penguins i would just love to see like what happens yeah what does that look like i don't just mean him in another jersey like we saw it with marshan right marshan was a pretty beloved bruin now He's not on Crosby's level. He was captain. Like, it's crazy. Yeah, but he was a Bruin through and through, and you're like, how is that going to travel?

Travel pretty good. Travel pretty good. Yeah. So here, let's do a little picture-in-picture action. So, okay, let's look at this team. Look at the Manta. It doesn't even have the number. Yeah, like, this isn't a good team.

Okay, great. So, Malkin. Half of these guys can go right on my trade board for next year. Yeah, Russ and Raquel are one and two. Malkin, staying or going? i think he's staying you but i don't know you don't think i think that's the montreal canadians 2c oh interesting okay alkin that's my guess yeah are you drunk what are you talking about they need a 2c you get it you have get any malkin for like two months can he still do it like i know

he's psychotic though that's the thing when he gets back in the playoffs somebody's gonna lose their head maybe i'm missing something i feel like his fall off like no one wants to call it out because he's an all-time great nhl player but it's is it has it been precipitous in your eyes well it's hard to know because look where he's been playing like yeah it's hard to look good sometimes in that environment yes miles have been pretty hard um rust staying or going well i think both of those right wingers are gone okay so rust and raquel are gone the question is when right like it could be not till next march right because you know they both have extra years left on their deals but they're two of the most available quality players in the league letang getting

traded or retiring anytime soon not that i'm aware of okay interesting uh eric carlson staying or going i don't think he finishes that contract in pittsburgh okay so jesse can you do me a favor and just take out raquel rust and carl you don't have to i'm not on this i'm not on gm on this already ass roster no i can't do that like on this i don't know i don't know i i keep looking at his numbers and how incredible he is and he can do whatever he wants but part of me is always going to be curious yeah i don't i'm still of the mind it's more likely than not he doesn't finish in pittsburgh so crosby yeah okay so what are the obviously he's not there today or the trade would already have happened like yeah right but i think there's a history there where the the twitter

meme is he gonna finish with five years out of the playoffs yeah that's what i keep saying because Everybody's like, no, you're stupid. You don't know what you're talking about. We're already at three, and I will say pretty confidently they're not making the playoffs next year or the year after. Lemieux began his career and ended his career with four straight years not making the playoffs. You know what would be cool, right?

Lemieux had a different career. But Buzz Flibbitt is built out of Sidney Crosby. The idea of throwing whoever next to Sidney Crosby and him making it work is Buzz Flibbitt. Blake Lizotte is a Buzz Flibbitt-ass name. So I feel like Crosby doesn't care who's there. He's going to try and make this thing work. But what if he could do it with Matt and Stella Brini?

You know, like a team that is on the rise. He's going to do it with Gavin McKenna in a year. Yeah, and Gavin's going to get Conor Bedarded. There's not going to be much else on that team. No, Crosby McKenna is going to be so much fun. This is the counterpoint, is that if he does hang in there long enough, there might start to be reasons to stay, if that makes sense. Like, if they do get a McKenna, maybe he takes that seriously, right?

Because you did it for him? Yes. So I'm saying some of that is the X factor. I'm imagining they miss the playoffs for the fourth straight year. That's just going to feel even worse. It's just compounded another lost season. Listen, let's get rid of the garnish. Here, mic's off.

CJ, is the draft lottery rigged? Is it rigged? No. No, they bring in an outside security team to do it. Yeah? Yeah. Ernst & Young. Yeah.

They do have a reputation for fairness. I've never met either of those guys. If it was rigged, Connor McDavid would have been a Leaf, I think. Or a Sabre or something. Yeah. I don't think he would have gone, you know, how many first round or first overall picks that Edmondson had at that point in the last five, six years.

They were just spamming the first overall button. Like Gary's like, no, it has to work. Nobody on this panel wants to say it, especially Adam on the end there. But Kyle Dubas has done a good job tearing it down now that he's been given the opportunity to tear it down. He's accumulated good assets. It's the one thing I'll say he does undeniably well.

That's the thing he can do. Yeah. So he's got an army of picks. There's an opportunity for Dubas to turn this thing around. Look at those picks. That's a beautiful thing if you want to make trades or draft players. Imagine he gets a McKenna or somebody else at that level. He doesn't even need those picks.

Toby Niemela and Roni Hirvonen are available right now. 100%. It's crazy, man. You could draft so many Travis Dermot's with that. You know what? In fact, if you trade down, you could get two Travis Dermot's in the same draft. I like Travis Dermot. I like him a lot.

I don't appreciate him catching strays here so you can make a point. He is actually a beauty. He's a really nice guy. No, he's amazing. That's not a hit of Travis. It's more like, hey. I'm just not going to sit here. Is it a compliment?

We had garbage drafts outside of the first round. If you're going to pick guys, pick guys who didn't play in the league. Okay, well, all of the 2020 draft class, with the exception of the first rounder, obviously, because Rodion Amirov passed away tragically. Yes. And we've gone through this, but they have not drafted well outside of the first round. Name those players. Don't be Travis here.

I can't name them. That's the problem. I'm just not going to stand by and let Dermot get dragged. At least he played a game, right? Like, I can't... He played lots of games, and he played well. He's a great guy. Yo.

I don't even know... Sorry, you pushed the button there. I'm sorry, CJ. I don't even know if I'm going to do a prospect pyramid this year. No, you need to. You must. Here's five minutes on Ty Voight. Yeah.

No, no. His contract, actually, the team and the... Just while we were on the chat, Ty Voight is unconditional waivers today. Wait, are you serious? Yeah. He's not making the pyramid. Ty Voight wants out. The Leafs want him out.

Get out of here. I didn't know that. That happened during our show. CJ, where were you on that? Where were you on the Ty Voight news? I'm so deep in summer, I haven't even been looking at my phone. Damn it! Yeah, I know, CJ, you don't give it...

I don't know if you care too much about the Ty Voight news, but that's what happened. So, what are the... He could do Easton Cowan. Yeah. Ben Danford. There's two. These videos usually contain like 30, 40 people.

That 21 draft, though, is a success forever, because Matthew Nye's. Yep. Second round pick. Great pick. Awesome. 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've got to try breakfast at A&W. At participating A&W locations in Ontario. what what teams and players are you looking at that are kind of getting that aren't getting the play that perhaps they should because what's happened here is the it's funny uh the nhl always finds ways to be not exciting in when it comes to trades oh well we everybody's up against the cap so we can't make any trades now everybody's got fucking cap space and it's frozen the trade market and so i don't know that noah dobson trades pretty sexy but that happened before the draft i'm talking post july first year that was like 20 days ago i know it's not so far ago that we

can't be like the world has changed we can't talk about it now it's too far in the past it is there is one where i don't i can't abide good things happening to montreal i just can't well speaking of things happening to montreal there is one that we're all sort of sleeping on and that's carrie price is one year left on his deal and there's not a lot of money owed no and then there's a bonus to be paid in september bingo that's uh the big one once that bonus is paid in september that contract move i would imagine there's a high percentage of that will move the money owed is 2.5 or 2 i can't remember which after the bonus is paid yeah i'm in summer mode man what's but i know i know there's a bonus due in september that is there anybody you're looking

at going that could be interesting well define that like what do you mean well i mean we talked connor we talked sydney uh we talked carell caprizoff a little bit jack eichel but is there anybody like leon he just started is this one of those he donated a bunch of uh equipment back in cologne germany oh did he yep good guy good guy leon i'm wondering for i guess for fans to me it feels like you know if the reports are to be believed that the penguins are the only ones trying to get worse right the only ones selling they are so look at the actions of every other team then there will be a massive attritional thing that happens in the first three months of the season where only half of the teams that are trying to get better will or at least make

their own expectations and be in the playoff hunt by American Thanksgiving there are going to be some firings and at that point there will probably be some trade so if you're like a Leaf fan you're going well we we we might have a hole in our top six for a you know a big name player or something like that you may have to wait right is that kind of what we're looking at yeah and I think that's okay like to me the dumbest thing a team like the Leafs could do is finally get cap space and feel like they need to spend it because we don't i don't no one's gonna no matter what the number is on the first day of the season of all the the criticisms you might levy against the leafs ownership management it's not that they're cheap right it's not we know that if they enter the

season with a bit of cap space it's not because they're trying to they're not buffaloing they're not skimming some money off the top they're they're trying to make the best use of that cap space to to win and so you know i don't know how it's going to play out i i still think that they're out there trying to get better now so there's a chance that they end up you know being right at the cap to start the year but i also think that there is a universe here where this does seep into the season a little bit and for a lot of teams it seems like yeah well like the ducks wanted to spend big uh and then i don't know if they spent big they got some players they haven't signed mason mctavish like i you know is that is that a relationship that's on the rocks is that

something that that can be mended there seems to be something weird going on there i don't i think it's it's a player with some leverage it's you know he's definitely a player teams thought can we get him through offer sheet and i think for the reasons you're highlighting you can't because anaheim was going to match that offer but he's someone for sure other teams have identified as a player they'd love to get their hands on with good reason uh he's good he's young play center uh that's that's actually you don't need to go to a next yeah that's right that satisfies all the categories needed to try to do something silly to get him um you know i don't know that the relationship's necessarily gone bad there it's just he doesn't just have to take any old offer

right he's he's got he's got the old leverage um which is a nice thing to get when you're a player because it means you're going to get some more money in your bank account okay on a similar vein to mason mcdavish you sort of look at the age and talent level like why was trevor's egress in trade rumors basically from the beginning of his career onward and why did the ducks feel the need to move well he was in those rumors initially because they were worried and keep in mind this was even under a previous administration than pat verbeek um that he was a one-dimensional player you know he had those 260 point seasons really early in his career but they they had concerns internally with that team about his commitment to becoming a more trusted player someone they could you know

play the kind of minutes you want with that young star and and be trusted defensively now to Zegers his credit and I know in the last year the numbers didn't follow it they did actually feel like he started to make that transformation a little bit and but I just think that they got to a point where their relationship was strained enough that they just felt okay let's rip the band-aid off you know they're trying to I'm not saying they couldn't be good with Trevor Zegers but you know the Ducks are really trying to be good next year and so I think that it was easy to keep a player around like that when you weren't necessarily trying to be a playoff team yep but if the doubts were there if maybe the player wasn't fully bought in and honestly they were getting to

the end of the window where they could trade him right because he's getting close to being unrestricted free agent uh everything lined up where this summer it made sense for them to cut bait and go now they probably got a less of a return than they might have if they had done it sooner but that doesn't mean at some point you just got to do it i think if like even if you could have in hindsight been like you know what maybe we should trade them two years ago it doesn't mean that's not that's not a good reason not to trade them today i guess if that makes sense and so why did it happen now it's because they are they they it's all systems going and i'm now i don't i don't know what's going to happen if you actually look they're a bit of a forgotten team

in some ways i believe they had the highest year-over-year point gain of any team last season they did yeah or second they had some of the best goaltending in the league which is why it's a shame they had to move on from i think john gibson because unless they got somebody else in there Lucas Dostal, though, a lot of people think he's the real deal. I think he's the real deal. But, I mean, John Gibson playing 30 games is not bad either. And now they got Mrazek. Yeah, what's up with the Ducks having Dostal, who is the real deal,

Mrazek, and also Huso? Let's see. There's still time, right? I mean, look, at worst, you're putting one of those guys on waivers and setting them down. You know, most teams want to run three deep. I like this team a lot, by the way. I am on it.

with the ducks i do think they're a good team adam you're such a quack uh but um i like this team yeah i don't know what to make of it fully but getting chris crider is interesting especially a lot of average it's a lot of mid are you related to ross johnson me no no adam not you that would be really weird cj the most yeah he's my cousin why do you ask the most important question out of the zegras uh deal how do you think dixie d'amelio will be received at philadelphia flyers games i don't know what that is what's a dixie d'amelio dixie d'amelio is a big she's a big tiktoker you set me up jesse oh i thought i'd ask the question you're the insider

so you're gonna have to explain the joke now that i am a famous tiktoker named dixie and now she's dating her now yeah they've been dating for a couple years now you appear on her tiktoks i don't know no not really but she's at she was at a lot of games at the ducks games la obviously based but now he's playing in philly and she's got to go deal with a philadelphia hockey crowd yeah the jerseys don't change much but the crowds do the crowds do and the location is definitely not close to where she's living in la no what kind of tiktok city's philly like maybe she'll be a rock star there maybe yeah i don't know i guess you don't have any insider information on the d'amelio no that one went right over my head and i knew i knew it was something

like this but i didn't know literally i've never heard that name before till really okay not once yeah i guess it's not in your never get old kids never get old we gave you a lead yeah yeah there go i do you think that there is and you on tiktok adam am i on tiktok i'm on it yeah yeah well i mean we're on it through stpn and stuff like do you produce them and everything uh well our our producers produce them i do not do not i am not an editor because i'm i'm immediately looking to you as like the next oldest guy oh yeah no well steve and i are the same age okay steve is me by a month and steve can edit but i i assume steve i kind of i think of him as young immature yeah like i think of his brand as young i'm older than steve like yeah i look at you as the adult

in the well jesse's a true adult yeah steve's brand skews younger so yeah that feels okay like shaved yeah it's fair i assume that you know about like you're basically a zoomer but in like dad bod oh i'll take that i'll take that that's okay yeah okay yeah i'm not body shaming you by the way i'm just trying to like no i'm trying to drop some terms and make it seem no no no you got it we got we got coffee before the show and when i stood up i just i i'm at the age now where i can't get up and sit down silently oh you're not sneaking up on anybody no no it's been a long time since i did any of that you're probably like lifting kids all day like man that's the no god you got him started on kids no no it was upset it's breaking my heart because it's getting harder

to hold them both at the same time oh yeah and they know that you're pretty much out of that aren't you no it's getting because it's getting harder it's getting funnier to them right so they ask for it more adam would you rather have steve talk about this or traffic uh all the kids all day the traffic so let me talk about the birds that i saw while oh my god it's it's are you a birder buddy it snuck up on me and punched me in the face you like birds it punches good content in the face so there's this blown away by it there's this app here adam leave the room for there's this app called merlin okay this is actually more shocking to me than the dixie D'Amelio so I recent if so you get it you have a real list of birds that you've seen you get it

to listen to bird calls and I just hit 60 this is so bad for your brand 60 I found a great egret the other day in Ajax and what a thrill I got it you're gonna pass Austin's high goal mark what are you doing what am I walking around the woods from you I'm walking around the woods in Ajax and this is a terrible for the brand like I really don't like there was a finish saying that you skew young and now you're skewing grandpa yeah well going on sometimes

just Chris you friggin see a belted kingfisher and it changes your life you ever see a belted kingfisher if I have I will never look at that that's a unit that's a unit of a bird you saw one of those I saw one of the guys in market we have any proof that you saw it or you just

click a thing in an app I think there's a way that i can click on it and it takes me back to when i heard it yeah like do we do we have any proof you play the sound into the app and it verifies that that's the burr yes because that would be smart let me see i can play the i can play the great egret if i can find it here one adam's done oh man you shouldn't be let's go back to talking about kids this is no this is really taking a turn thank you thank you chris thank you thank you because jesse's encouraging him i know You should not feed the animals, okay? Do not feed the animals.

What other weird shit are you into? Like, that was... I would never guess that. I got a fossil kit a couple Christmases ago. Like, chisels and all that shit. Wow. Yeah. You go down to Lake Ontario, you bust open some shale,

you find some... Some of us just watch sports. This is me trying and failing to have depth. What's the... CJ. uh what is what's the thing like when you left because you know it's been a couple been like a week right when you left things and then went to the beach and then graciously i didn't actually go to any beach i know i went to the coburg beach yes and you know what a great

beach uh underrated beach i i wonder although we don't want outsiders to know about that no no we won't say too many people know no one's is it is it becoming like a place it's just busy because port hope has that too right where they're like listen i don't know i would have to go to port hope to know i know port hope's like hey we got that nuclear problem you don't want to swim in our beach and then everybody swims in the beach right because they they they have some sort of like nuclear waste that's buried and yeah don't come to our town we have not nuclear waste and meanwhile it's gorgeous you know what the most shocking so i grew up port hope was the big rival it was like it was like a springfield shelbyville kind of vibe and one of my buddies i grew up with

i bumped into him in town he goes just so you know port hope's the new coburg whoa and i was like holy wow wow did you punch him no okay i mean i believe him you believe him he lives he lives in port hope now wow lots of good antiquing to be done in port yes there is they also shot shoot a lot of movies there but you can bird like hell in port hope honestly yeah it was shot there you could bird like you could bird like hell in port hope i could so bird in port hope thanks i'm gonna do that cj where when you left it like when you kind of were like okay it's vacation time what was the biggest story that you're like i'll be following that one uh in the coming season not one that's like immediate but one that you're like i'm interested in where this thread goes it

might go nowhere it's got to be the mcdavid story i mean i know we've been over that but that like that's the one the the entire league to some degree hovers on what happens with that decision right yeah i mean we're talking about a team that's been to two straight stanley cup finals so just and the fact that it's so clear what's going on right that they've been open like we're waiting for connor uh we're all waiting for connor to see to see where it lands and and you know it's not really yet a story it's like one of those things it probably becomes a story if it gets to september 16th and he's not signed just because he's going to be coming to training camp that would be the first question you would ask it might be the first 10 questions like some variation of yep what's

going on here what are you thinking why did you do you know and and over time like if the season goes along like with Marner for example was the first set of questions last year at Leafs training camp that he played his year and it perked up now and again but he was able to so you know I think that's probably the biggest story I'm just wondering about beyond that honestly I think about hockey less than you guys I feel like I believe you I yeah that's fair like Steve legit is texting me what's going on with brett leeson yeah and you still haven't answered he was all over you about steven lorenz i know that just all over me yeah and and and that that ended up the way you wanted three-year deal yeah which is great the passion stays in toronto 100 um i respect the

hell out of it but i when i get away i get away okay um and so i'm not trying to dodge your question like the true answer is like i went i stopped working and i was like this is amazing And then I went and touched grass. I'm living like a monk now. I'm going to bed at 9.30 every night. Waking up early, going for a run? Going for a run, trying to beat the heat as much as possible. How many straight days?

I just passed 1,900 on Sunday. Hey, that's amazing. So 1,902. So it'll be 1,000 in October? 2,000 on October 20th. Okay, October 20th. 20th or 25th. Two in five Canadians will hear the words,

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And what better way than with a delicious Pret Organic Coffee, starting at just $1 all day, every day, now until December 31st. You gotta try breakfast at A&W At participating A&W locations in Ontario. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know, the same way you can skip an ad. I get it. I'm Siaya, and I live in Ice Cove.

I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow, things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Don't miss the new season of North of North starting September 8th on CBC Gem. hockey as a whole seems to be in a really good place right now though they just they're doing the cba vote that that went through and gary betman's going into like the sunset of his career

it appears i don't know if he's going to try and hang on for it's been a long time but it's been a long sun setting of his career but he seems to be leaving hockey in a really good place where they're talking about expansion they might beat the other four uh major north american sports to 34 teams if they get to that point and they is that a race you want to win maybe maybe not but it seems like hockey's in such a good place that they want to keep growing the game it seems the game's getting bigger especially four nations the amount of noise around that what is your opinion on like how he's leaving things right now and hockey as a whole and the general direction it's going in terms of the overall landscape of the game i mean it just shows you if you're stubborn

enough and determined enough you can change the view of everything i mean i'm old enough to remember when i was a media member and people would deride him still on like the sunbelt strategy or like you know whatever they'd use that word against them and here we are at a moment there's been six straight stanley cups with teams from florida in them uh the sunbelt's looking pretty good right now we we had the best free agent mitch marner go to vegas uh maybe the second best this year would have been miko ranton or whatever however you view those two players but he goes signs in Dallas I mean the Sun Belt's having more than a moment and Gary Bettman's having a moment because you know for good or ill you know this league is I don't remember it's been on more

stable footing do you think he rushed the Canadian rights deal like it feels like really long term when it didn't need to be why would you have gone shorter well because you probably are leaving money on the table in the back half of that five-year plan are you not I mean the economy is in a good place generally speaking although it's not working for the working class as much and we all know that i'm not going to get into that the economy is hitting which door do you want to open because i would actually love to get into that conversation the reason i say that is because it's even with the tariff shit and all that the the the stock markets are going berserk right now and um you know there is a lot of uncertainty there are wars there is you know

a total reorganization of the international trade order. But in five years, I would expect some of that to be settled and a new set of problems to crop up. I'm curious about with the way that, you know, the NBA for me has sort of gone to this crazy growth curve and you're seeing a lot of guys sell out of their teams and like even the Buss family sold the Lakers because they feel like, well, this is the,

this is sort of the big growth value that I'm going to reach this peak. the NHL feels like it's still got to go on that curve. And I wonder about... The NHL is on that curve, though. I know, but it's not at the top of it. It's on its way up. And I just wonder if five years from now,

the NHL would be like, damn, it should be $1.2 to $1.5 billion a year. And we could have had that. And maybe that's not $500 million Canadian or American dollars over one year, whatever. But you compound that over a decade, that's $2.5 billion. But I think that goes to what CJ was talking about there,

the stable footing that they're on i think it added to gary betman's complete picture of like everything is kind of set including the media rights deal so him signing that adds to everything is kind of done and checked off the list for him yeah now i mean he hates the question but the question is how long does he stay right can't be too much longer right and i wonder you promise alan alan threw out there that uh that there's a potential that even when he leaves he'll still be on as sort of an advisor i believe that yeah i mean it would be nuts to have someone run a business as long as gary batman ran it and to not have him involved like yeah it might i don't know how they'll phrase it but you want to keep people like that around like his institutional knowledge

alone he knows everybody and everything is worth an immense amount to the nhl you would never want that level of an executive with who's had the dealings he has has the mind he has to not have him involved it would only be as much as he's willing to do and based on the evidence in front of us he doesn't look like someone who wants to go play golf no right like he likes this he long could have done that so i i would be surprised if he wasn't involved either in an official capacity or maybe more of an unofficial one how do you think the players made out in the cba i think it's because i know you read it i know you read it i did read it um look at there's 800 or 900 players in the union you there's probably a segment of players that

don't like things that i think that will always be the case that's the the value of negotiating on behalf of 32 owners and of course there's different views within those ownership groups one thing that didn't get talked about at all but they've restructured a little bit how the revenue sharing works between teams and among owners that could be controversial right basically the richest teams are funding the least revenue generating teams to some degree and so is it more now it's more yeah the formula is very complicated so I would urge you to read it and then we yeah yeah we're not gonna ask you to do it but but yeah basically because I think this is one thing we have to be cognizant of as we go into this world where the cap's jumping like it's going to

we're gonna have way less team spending to the cap yeah and we're gonna I think on a long enough time frame we're going to get back to where there's a have and have not to some degree there's always going to be a cap floor so that's meant to that's meant to keep the gap you know you don't want keep the pirates you don't want the pirates and the yankees right you don't want that baseball version um but so the but there's going to be a window there and so how do you keep the the teams that don't generate as much money frankly in business you need more revenue generation anyway that's controversial among owners of course because how that pie gets split up is something they would debate about but with players there's so many issues whether you're

ELCs stood out to me the entry-level contracts they're the same yeah well one thing I'll say about unions generally is that they don't look after people that aren't yet a member of the union too much like that's that's this is all unions it's not a shot of the NHLPA or this specific CBA like you don't account for the people that are coming in what do you know what the kind of deals unions make all the time everyone who's been in gets this deal the next people get that like some worse version for example of benefits uh i've been part of a union where that existed where there was like a tier depending on when you're hired by the company so what unions often do is trade the future rights of the union members for better current rights because the current people

are in charge i mean i think it's human nature this is i think it's a function of unions i'm not again i'm not taking aim at the pa here but the original you know players you talked to colby armstrong my buddy i think was he drafted in 2001 jesse i could look it up i asked because you have computer steve i i think you're right i think he was drafted in 2001 he would know i remember him telling me about his signing bonuses they were a lot more than any player can get now uh and he was a first round pick but he was in the he was drafted 21st overall in 2001 there you go and because at that time there was no entry level system and he was able to get i believe he got three bonus payments and i don't want to throw the number out because i don't want to be wrong

and i don't remember but he he got paid more than what the player since and obviously all his peers did at that time and the entry level system came in in the 0405 lost seasons not only did they come up with a salary cap not only did they roll back all existing contracts by 24 they also came up with this entry level system which includes obviously the the bonus a's the bonus b's that's gradually grown over time but it's still you know it's been pretty muted so you're right there you know you could get to a world it's funny julian was asking about this on the last cj show um you know could you get to a point where the nil money could pay someone more as a ncaa player than what that person could get as guaranteed money on an hl contract especially if you're able to combine

that with it's possible endorsements right like yeah to be fair nil money really isn't there for hockey at that level yet but maybe in the next four years it could i mean i don't know that is a reality that exists with the wnba right now where their entry-level salaries are so low that caitlin clark and in particular is making like hand over fist in the ncaa and it's not even close to what she makes at the end uh at wnba level well so that is a reality amongst pro sports i will say that this is all good for players though like so yeah maybe the entry level system didn't grow a lot in this four-year extension of the cba but if that starts happening the system's going to have to adjust to it because nhl teams are not going to want to be in a position where

they can't sign their top prospect because that player wants to stay in the ncaa because they can't physically give that player more because of the rules so look not a perfect cba probably for players but what do you know what's bad for players missing time that's money you never get back forget even just how annoying it is and how much it sucks and it's probably but like oh we're thrilled about it like right us i mean we run a network on it right right but if you were a player we could probably find the perfect player i don't have this person in the back of my mind but who lost the entire 0405 season and then lost half of 2012 and that and so they lost a year and a half out of what could be like a 10-year career ovechkin oh yeah ovi ovi yeah right but he's at

least played long enough that we're we don't have to take up a collection to make sure that he can yeah but there are some players that lost a year and a half out of what could only ever be a 10-year career and yes they make a lot of money compared to you and i but if your career is only 10 years it's not a lot of earning potential what about colby armstrong who came in yeah he didn't start his career in the NHL until the 05-06 season because he played in the AHL before that

and then played up until 12-13. Wow. So right there is a pretty good example. I know. And then he went to Vekvia.

Is that how you say that? Yeah, something close to that, Vekvia. When Lilligren was playing there, we were not pronouncing it that way. You don't go heavy on the X. You don't go Vaxjo. That's what we thought it was.

I thought it was Vaxjo. But I think I'm not perfect. I'm sure you have some Swedish listeners, so please chime in and tell me. But it's something along a little bit more of that there's somebody who probably left some money on the table because

of lockouts and uh it's okay i'm sure sports that he was in a walmart when he got the call from brian burke to say he's being bought out by the leafs no yeah he was in a walmart in like suburban pennsylvania or a target or something like that but like a a big box store oh my god just like wham we're buying you out that's rough hey colby it's brian oh you mentioned there i bet you that was like a seven second conversation i bet it was like brian knew it yeah okay thanks they're probably you know brian's a great guy but i can't imagine there was a lot of warm and fuzzy no expansion we touched on briefly you said uh you weren't sure if it's a good idea that they win the expansion wars against the other teams are you are you pro against expansion i i do wonder

when too much is too much yeah but the one thing i didn't that i didn't account for when i made that quip to you is the other leagues don't have seven teams in canada yes right and so there's a lot of opportunity the nhl is leaving on the table if they don't expand because they have some major american markets where first of all there's massive demand for teams like to be fair this isn't the case of the nhl saying hey we're opening an expansion process come get us i do actually believe they're in that level of demand from very well-heeled people and they're they're asking two billion dollars expansion fee so that's hard to pass up because that's money the owners just split That doesn't have to go to the players at all.

It's just a check they split. I just wonder, when does it get too many teams? I don't know the answer. Maybe this fear has probably existed if you went back to when it was a 21-team league and they shot up to 30 pretty quickly. Damien Cox wrote a book on that. He's like, the league peaked in 93, 94. And I think Damien's life probably peaked in 93, 94.

And that's why he wrote it that way. When you're younger, it's easy to look back on your young years and go, that was super fun. But, like, dude, to tell me that 32 teams or 30 teams hasn't been good for the league is a joke. That's a joke. Right. And who am I to say that there's a magic number?

Well, I think the thing is it allows for a guy like William Carlson to go from playing eight minutes a night in Columbus to score 40 goals with the Golden Knights. A lot of these guys are super talented. Sometimes it's just opportunity, right? and i and i so i'm of the i'm pro put 40 teams in let's go and because i look at i look at you know the soccer leagues across uh across the pond in europe and there are a million of them there and they're all well attended and people love these teams and london's got like 40 60 100 like you

can't tell me that that there isn't talent out there that's exciting right that that is always the argument it's not that there's too much too many teams because oh there'll be too much revenue or there won't be fans to go it's there will not be the talent level i just don't believe that do you think you create too many halves and halves not with the salary cap going up in too many i think that's a fact is pro sports pro sports is have and have not but then you got fan bases who just like i like winning so tough right now one of 32 and it just keeps getting worse the more well and you know what you do uh you extend the regular season and don't do a playoff plan that's how you do it like to me the biggest miss on this is they go to a play-in i'm absolutely pro play-in

oh me too sorry i thought you were saying the opposite no no no he was being sarcastic gary that's literally my brain just went into summer mode and i like i just like wandered off and i thought you were arguing that the season should be longer you said it very emphatically you were sarcastic adam was having a sarcasm i i am a hundred percent and i was like steve's into birds maybe i should go with him sometime uh tick tock star yeah yeah i think i think that that was the biggest miss for me is they okay well they added to you know a home game for away and home or whatever yeah we're at 84 now but like that that there's such a resistance to going six through

10 you're doing a play-in that tell me that wouldn't be one of the most exciting incredible weeks of hockey we've ever seen i can tell you internally the demand for that is so high that the minute i shouldn't say the minute but when there is a change in commissioner and there's a new approach to this i think it'll be one of the first major changes the league makes i don't understand by the way oh seven through ten i don't understand why gary digs his heels in on this one though it's like here's a great revenue making opportunity for a whole bunch like the owners should be like gary yeah i have your 82 84 game season but like gary that's two or three more home games for me yeah i mean i'm not arguing the other side of this argument so i don't i'm sorry what i

mean is you're not gary you're chris but chris like don't make me play not making the what's your what what would be the resistance to that i think it's that apparently the tv networks have not shown a big demand well there's one in canada yeah and they're not exactly forward thinking right i'm just saying yeah so there's not like there's not this demand at the network level where they're like we want this and we'll pay more for it or whatever sure but again i feel like you create that market like the four no one was bidding on the four nations which by the way they just gave away to their existing tv partners but you know what they'll be bidding the next time they have that tournament because it was a massive success yeah so i think you create the market and

then you serve it um and then the second one would be that gary and i will say i believe he's right with this because i'm heavily biased but he thinks the stanley cup playoffs are already the best thing going in pro sports so his view is why even monkey around with something that's working perfectly why change anything right yeah i mean listen when you build a ferrari why build another one why try to outdo your best this is where i well this is where i have an issue with you you're gonna nail the apex better than me i just say some of the but i'll say this some of the best teams don't the best teams try too much like you change too much and then you fall from grace a little bit but that's the fun part about pro sports well i think that he's worried about

changing something that doesn't need fixed right in his view again i'm not taking that stand you're on you're on board i'm very much on just because i know even the other sports i only pay half attention to when there's a wild card game it's really easy to understand yeah hey one of these teams their season is over and the other one it's basically hand you a game seven blue jays orioles edwin incarnacion right and and you can have it on i think the key in hockey is you probably don't want too much time off for the teams that skip that okay because i think it can actually become a negative thing like rest is a little bit of rest is good but i think you got to launch right into it and then get into the first round yep which will be a disadvantage to those teams it's

sort of disincentive to be in a wild card not only might your season be over in a one game or maybe two out of three situation right away then you've also got to play a series against the rested team yes but look at i think there's no way i'll tell you there's no way this doesn't happen in our relatively near future okay i just don't believe it's very clear gary betman will not be in charge when it happens when he leaves do you think we'll go back to 1-8 seating i hope i mean this is the one i i don't understand why that was a problem in need of a solution or what a solution in need of a problem would help me out with that yeah yeah it's it's nobody had a problem with one day nobody i get it they were like they're trying to

force feed you more divisional matchups the problem is some divisions are la and edmonton which it's fine but like there's no real rivalry there right but they played four years in a row now um like not my point is you don't get four calgary edmontons which okay that would probably be pretty great for battles of ontario or for you know to be fair the florida battles have been going on a fair bit lightning and panthers but you also have divisions where teams aren't really rivals they're just in the same division so you could get like four carolina and new york islanders and it's like okay yeah those teams are in the same division there probably will be some bit of hate there but like it's not every leafs lightning game should be bloodlust at this point

and it's just it's not i feel like the team's like i almost feel like there's like mutual respect yeah which is boring there's no like enemies there's no enemies in that game really it's it's crazy given the setup that there's only been one battle of alberta and one battle of ontario yeah and neither series probably lived up to the hype no no no no i mean and like and but that's just the way it's going to go i guess my argument would be you can't you're just as likely to get the odd battle of ontario battle of alberta in a one to eight like just over a few if you're willing to test it for eight years in a row it's probably statistically going to happen you're going to get those or rangers islander series at some point or whatever you're sort of aiming for

and then you're always going to have to live for it especially with more cities and more teams you're just not going to have natural rivalries in a 34 team league and it's also tough to have every team in an eight team division hate each other right like the divisions are too big okay you guys are least fans how many other atlantic division teams do you hate like actually hate Boston. A little bit of Ottawa after that playoff. That was good. But I still don't hate them. Do you really? I don't really hate them. I think Boston really. Isn't that like hating

your cousin or something? Panthers? Yeah. I just mean I get that there's a bit of stuff. I don't even hate Montreal. Max three. Max three. Right. Yeah, like the Leafs and Habs don't have enough recent anything. They have to be good at the same time

and that would have helped. Yeah, they had the one playoff series, which like I hate the Leafs a lot more after that series than Montreal like I didn't come out of that series going damn Habs I was like oh the fucking Leafs I'm like it feels the Leafs play against two teams every time they take the A's and uh so I would say uh probably Bruins sends uh Panthers right and if you're like a Kraken fan and they're new and they've been in one playoff so like it's not fair maybe but like how many teams do they hate like anybody maybe maybe vegas i don't know do they view vegas as like oh maybe they're more have a rivalry i know maybe vancouver i guess but

there's been nothing to hate that's just geography i know and some of those things will take years right although san jose and vegas got a pretty immediate hate now part of that was having a killer playoffs oh that was crazy so crazy anyway i think it works as often as it doesn't I just don't think you can force it. No. And they're trying to force it right now with this divisional thing. And at the expense of, I think they make the regular season less interesting because some of those years, the division's basically sewn up.

And it's like, I don't know. I feel like one to eight would be more fluid. And then even better, one to six guaranteed, seven to 10, because you're bringing in teams 11 and 12 and maybe even 13 right to the end of the year. And you're dying for that sixth pick. You're just clawing your eyeballs out not to be close. It's honestly, without relegation, it's sort of what you get in soccer

where there's different tiers that create interest naturally. And obviously in soccer, it's a relegation zone. And maybe you care about getting your team in the Champions League if you're in the top four, whatever. But the point is, is like within the division, there's all these interesting dynamics. I think that they've eliminated that with the current system. I agree.

But you could mimic it without, I mean, relegation would be the ultimate, but I mean. They'll never do that. But I mean, it would be cool. We are at two hours. All right, I guess we should wrap it up. All right, so... What's the longest pod you've ever had?

240? Yeah, we've gone like... I don't know, 40? Maybe 230-ish? We've gone pretty long. Tavares signing his first deal, I think, was like close to three. Oh, yeah, just like pure jubilation.

It was amazing. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. For like three hours. We did do a live stream for the draft, and it was four hours, 53 minutes. Yeah, we've had longer lives.

Well, that's because the draft was four hours and 53 minutes. That was the first round. Yeah, I'm not going to even ask you about that because it's just going to make me mad, but I can't wait for next year. uh you know what though there's an easy solution make the show good don't give a shit about the show just pare it down to nothing pare it down to pics and that's yes yes but don't don't make

it a show don't worry about having tom green there nope or some wrestler i've never heard of or whatever no offense to these people because i know they're all famous and they're successful but like just literally have one person whoever you designate announce pics and just go bang bang And we don't need the Wizard of Oz video board. We need about three interviews, too. Yeah, yeah. Seriously. How does it feel?

Good. The draft is a local story. The whole point of this decentralized thing is that all those prospects then fly to the city, and then they become a story. The Leafs draft someone 18th. That becomes a story in Toronto. But it's not going to be a national story, most likely,

unless that player has something incredibly tragic. In general, most players are like, hey, I was good at hockey. I tried really hard. This is a great moment for me and my family. Yeah. Like there's not much to say. It's like graduation day.

Yep. Imagine go to a high school graduation. Let's interview kids coming off the stage. I know I was blown away. So how was the calculus this year? Well, I passed with a 57. I think the teacher just, you know, wanted me out of his class and didn't want to get me again.

And I'm going to take my talents to Toronto Metropolitan University where I plan to go to a few keggers. And yeah, like, I mean, yeah. Steve, good memory. uh i was off the tavarez episode on july 3rd 2018 two hours and 55 minutes wow and look at you're in the old studio yeah this is the sports net back i remember being in that closet with you guys a few times oh yeah oh that is a terrible angle that is a young adam while so many v-necks too jesse who are those two skinny guys you did a show jesse looks the exact same he does it's

very frustrating i hate him i haven't changed too much yeah yeah a little more gray definitely i don't even see any gray where is it i got it just had a hair a little bit so it's uh yeah oh like but he also grecians it he doesn't tell you that but agree what is grecian that's the fake hair dye for men that have gray you just comb it in oh my god no that's crazy where do you buy that uh all right cj listen i hope and easter egg at the end of the show i like it we that's from working at shoppers drug mart that's where you get it ah i i just want to say cj you have put in this is four years now you've been with sdpn uh a lot of shows and a lot of work and a lot of effort and a lot of weird hours so we so appreciate everything you've done for us so

far and uh we're looking forward to you coming back rested and relaxed and feeling better and we're still here we are still here whoa are you doing anything on vacation that you can talk about or you're just gonna hide that I'm going to Japan this summer. Wow. Where in Japan? All over the place. I have to go to Japan to see a baseball game because I'm sworn off the Blue Jays.

So being a man of my word, I have to travel across the world to see high-level baseball in person.