The Steve Dangle Podcast - The Eichel Era | May 10, 2021

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, Jack Eichel can’t get surgery (00:00), Connor McDavid hits the century mark (35:00), Florida vs Tampa, Sam Bennett, & the Preds (1:00:00), a look at the playoff picture and match-ups we're excited for (1:06:00), Frederik Andersen's rehab stint (1:18:00), and Rod Brind'Amour's contract (1:25:00). Originally aired: May 10, 2021 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/5jJfkX5T4QE Visit https://sdpn.ca for merch and more. We've joined The Athletic and you can too! Hit the link to subscribe: https://theathletic.com/sdp Visit this episode's sponsors: https://Freshly.com/sdp https://magicspoon.com/sdp https://turbotax.intuit.ca/ https://helixsleep.com/sdp https://getroman.com/sdp Follow us on Twitter:@Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram:@SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wilde and jesse blake there's been a bit of a disconnect between the organization and myself i want to be healthy to play hockey next year wherever that may be said jack eichel to the entire world and people are exploding about this before our show yeah this quote is yeah that's nice right thank you oh yeah for you know the lat the that whole thing about everything breaking after our show ended uh started with a thomas vanik trade from the sabers that's right and we used to record the show at like eight o'clock at night and for that trade to break it was like 11 o'clock it broke that night i remember that and it was so annoying

it was annoying and it's been it's kicked off ever since so thank you to the sabers hopefully that trade uh that trend ends and here we are jack eichel shooting shots the clip is so much worse than the written quote that you wrote or that you read there sorry i didn't uh who is the reporter who asked him they said paul and i don't i don't know paul who covers the sabers but do not it is real real bad so before i saw that clip of eichel you know talking about uh wanting to get surgery and i guess we'll get into that the more details there and the disconnect about what to do about his neck the first thing i thought of was sydney crosby and what happened there remember he had the concussion issues but it was also neck issues

i think he got a second opinion and for a time and penguins fans i'm sure have very you know successfully and with a lot of effort push this from their memories but there was a time where people were talking about sydney crosby is done in pittsburgh this is a fence that can't be mended um he's very angry about his either misdiagnosis or whatever it was he just wanted to play some goddamn hockey it had been a really long time and what i was going to do is be really encouraging to sabers fans and say look though then he continued to be sydney crosby he came back he was fine they won a couple cups he's still there people are talking about him in the heart conversation in the year of our lord 2021 everything's fine and then i heard the full quote

and um yeah that guy wants out yeah that's this is gonna happen this is not Crosby I remember very briefly and I think it was Bob McCowan who took heat for this he basically goes I'm hearing rumors that Crosby could be done in the National Hockey League it was a huge deal about a decade ago and uh but this this sounds this sounds like a guy who is itching to get back to plan want surgery to make that happen and doesn't want it to be in buffalo do you want to play the jack eichel audio absolutely it's horrible all right and the question was asked by paul hamilton he's a sabers reporter for wgr sports radio 550 okay whatever your thought is on that why don't you just do what you would like to do it's your body it's your decision with it doesn't work like that

paul is it because a contract yeah it doesn't work like that i wish i mean yeah you can't uh i guess that's that's you hit the nail on the head there you know what i mean yeah that's it i mean you uh yeah i mean obviously i'm under contract with this team and Um, they definitely hold a lot of, uh, a lot of cards on what I can and can't do. So that sounds horrible. Do you, do you have a thought on that, Adam, or do you want to read for context? It's a herniated disc in his neck and the Sabres apparently, or at least what he's inferring there is that the Sabres won't let him, uh, get surgery, which he, as you can imagine, probably wants um and that is the only thing i wanted to add just context now there's a few

things i want to say but steve i know you want to take this go get on that well just just free adding some because people are like why can't he simply just get the freaking surgery so about this the cba was amended last summer on second opinions now reads as follows cba 34.4 amended to add the following subsection a player is entitled to obtain a second medical opinion from a physician of his choice who is not on the second medical opinion list and has not received advanced approval from the club the cost of such opinion shall be borne by the player upon the player's request the club shall provide the player with all relevant medical information from the player's records to provide to the player's physician the player shall provide all such relevant records

to the player's physician um the club physician shall determine the diagnosis or course of treatment including the timing thereof after considering any report or other records received from the player's physician now i don't know if that thread continued because he had the number slash x um but like am i am i misreading it that like it sounds like they forget the surgery it sounds like that you're not letting them get a second opinion that's exactly what it sounds like yeah that what why is what i'm not understanding and like i know he's under contract and everything but like okay like we we talk about players like their cattle but he's the most valuable part of the buffalo sabers organization he needs to feel better help him feel better i don't like it's like

a ferrari that's got a knock in its engine and they're like just play it out you know what i mean like the ferrari's like can i just go to midas and like yeah and they're not letting the ferrari go to midas like i i don't i'm not understanding i'm not understanding what the issue is there's a couple things i would wonder here for number one if if if they're worried like if jack eichel right now announces he's gonna have surgery that hurts his trade value but it also hurts buffalo's ability to attract uh human living bodies uh because they're already a bad team and they're gonna get worse uh i don't think that there's any way that this team conceivably gets better next year so they can't really if they're trying to trade Jack Eichel he's just torpedoed

the value anyway but they I think that what they were trying to do here is trade him before they had to worry about it and I I can't imagine that the cost of that surgery wouldn't be covered by insurance and even if it wasn't wouldn't be something that either the player or the team I mean it would be on the team I would think to pick it up because it happened at the workplace but I still don't understand. Like it couldn't be that the surgery costs a hundred grand or something like that. The goulas are billionaires. Like it, it cannot be that. So what is it? And, and I wonder if the team physicians just saying, listen, Jack, you don't need this. So I'm recommending against it. And I, and I'm not being a doctor and not knowing much about

herniated discs other than they hurt. And everyone I've seen with them is debilitating, like is debilitated by it like i don't know if if it's if i'm paying 10 million dollars for jack eichel from a business perspective i want 100 or it's close to 100 of jack eichel as i can get and i don't care if i get uh 20 games of them next year um i want 20 games at 100 jack eichel I don't want 80 games at 60% Jack Eichel because the Sabres do not get better at 60% Jack Eichel. They just don't. They're not a good team that way.

So, I mean, like to me, they're in sort of a death spiral, right? They have no talent to trade, so they can't make trades. And the talent they do have wants out, which torpedoes their trade value. And they have no scouting staff, and it's a bad draft year. i mean it's it's this is really really really bad like when was the last time we heard a good

buffalo headline it was the last time the sabers had something positive well hauser that's a cool story over the past week that's a cool story and like don granato has hardly a headline hardly no it's it's nice and like don granato has been better than ralph krueger but i'm really grasping at straw i wonder if you threw the players out there if they couldn't be better than ralph kruger to be honest with you just throw them out there and let them figure it out for themselves honestly i have no idea well and and like that was another thing that like greg wischinski pointed out is like eichel seems to really like ralph kruger it just this last year there were eichel trade rumors and i think they were largely based on the saber suck

you know like this is a guy who's frustrated with losing this sounds like a guy who's frustrating with with losing and it like if you have a herniated disc you're in like constant discomfort and it's your neck it's it's everything it's every goddamn thing someone next to you asks you a question you don't think about it you look that way you know and and it's just and then you've inflamed it for god knows how long it's it's uh and every moment every time his neck pains him he's thinking of the sabers you know what i mean i'm i'm painting a picture here like i said i'm not a doctor but um i think it sure sounds like he's very very done this does not i sabers fans i'm sorry like i wanted to come on here and be mr sunshine and i wanted to compare it to the

crosby situation and don't worry that ended up getting fixed it's broken he's done one thing i look at i'm like oh jack eichel really doesn't want to negotiate with these guys is the fact that he hasn't filed a medical grievance yet because like if there is an actual dispute amongst his uh second opinion and the team doctors and like okay here's what they're both saying and then the evidence is just so apparent that i should get this surgery then he can file a medical grievance with the nhl and the nhlpa and then dreger came out and he said that that hasn't been done like no official grievance has been filed so it seems like there's some gray area obviously with what he should be doing in terms of surgery and he's just leaning hard on the you're

wrong i'm not even willing to negotiate with you guys side of the of the equation which is with the sabers and he's just like not because like he can do a neutral party file a grievance and just get it all done you know but he's not even willing to talk about it it seems like so i think because he doesn't out the door is it possible jesse that he just doesn't want to drag it out anymore yeah because he wants out of buffalo yeah and and here's the thing he does say oh well you know the teams hold a lot of cards i think that's a veiled shot at no actually i hold all the cards yeah because if if you've got a team that's really good or on the upswing with a ton of talent um you hold less less of that but he is literally jupiter in that dressing room the the gravitational

pull around jack eichel is immense and that's because he's all that's out there uh and so you know he's got all the all the uh all the stuff and if he goes and files that grievance jesse maybe it's well you know why do we want to we want to um uh we wanted to trade him but you know we're the new york rangers and we don't know where this grievance is going to go and then that because it takes it out of his hands right if the rangers trade for him he's going to say here's what i'm doing and they'll say we just blew a bunch of stuff out to buffalo to get you so do whatever you want yeah because the grievance solves the issue and if as long as he doesn't do that then he can get his way out of buffalo it's funny i i keep thinking to myself and oilers

fans aren't going to like this but the Oilers to me with Connor McDavid were just a hair a hair away from this um you know thankfully you've got Leon Dreisaitl you know heart trophy winner guy that scores a lot uh but I think you're about you know you're one bad Mike Smith season away from this you know with as of last year I think it's completely changed the picture now they've they've they've sort of rebuilt Mike Smith has risen from the dead and become this unbelievable goaltender what a story he's been incredible yeah but who who would have seen that coming if they'd had all year they'd be a 500 or less team which is what he is and we might be having this conversation about edmonton as well so it's why did you use this conversation about the buffalo sabers to

dump on the edmonton because i don't because i still think it's coming eventually but anyway um that's neither here nor there i suppose i just think we might have i think we might have a blueprint for trading stars in the nhl and i think this is a good thing you know when we look at what makes leagues outside of the nhl exciting trade deadline and free agency is pretty pretty exciting i mean they started talking about the end of kevin durant's contract like two and a half years before it ended um in golden state they're like in the middle of winning like two championships three championships or whatever it was and they're like whoa what happens when it's all over it's like who fucking cares they've got 120 games before that happens and this is you know you start to see

player movement like this it starts to become a lot more exciting doesn't make sabers fans look or feel good um but you have to wonder too if you're the pagulas now do you finally say okay we're diminishing our own asset we got to do something here i will i'll say this like and i want to level with sabers fans because listen you've had a terrible year and all anyone ever does is shit on your team including us including myself i will say this um like as your buddy as someone who wishes you no ill um if eichel's neck was totally fine um the writing has been on the wall for at least a year and uh it's sort of like line a in winnipeg where we looked at that and we like at the beginning of the season and we were like just do it like either extend him

or just do it do the thing that you've been talking about doing for years now just do it get it out of the way stop putting your fan base through this stop putting the locker room through it make a decision now this is different because eichel is signed to 10 million dollars and you know number one center and everything those don't grow on trees not that 40 goal scores like patrick line i typically do but typically 40 goal scores score 40 goals so uh that's that's a conversation for later in the show maybe but the eichel relationship with buffalo being done has been pretty obvious for a while now it's just more done it's just more obvious and i think the sooner the sabers do this thing the sooner they'll be able to move forward look at the islanders

when they when well I was about to say get rid of when they lost John Tavares for nothing which the Sabres will not do they're not going to lose Jack Eichel for nothing they'll get a king's ransom even if it's a disappointing one you'll still get more than nothing um when the when the Islanders lost Tavares and then they went in free agency and they got like Leo Komarov who I love but for too much money and Valtteri Filippola for too much money and then they trade for matt martin and the leaf somehow uh get out from under his entire cap it we were all and andy graziano when we had him on the show when tavara signed who covers the islanders and i was getting islanders fans texting me everyone including islanders fans were like this team

is about to suck and they made an entirely new identity and and look at them they're great and they've been great for a few years now yeah but barry trotz but okay and the goaltending coach who's the goaltending coach i keep forgetting his name i forget too but like adam these are all changes you can make you can then uh focus your energies to different places once you've done this one thing just do this thing now this is ignoring the right or wrong here about how they're handling eichel's injury but for the sabers fans who are now mentally preparing themselves for that day i'm here to tell you i think that day might end up being a great thing for you and your team and it's not an insult at eichel i think he's gonna thrive wherever he goes

he's a good jesus he's such a good hockey player man he's a really good hockey player you'd be dumb to bet against him um but it's obvious it's obvious we're done here we're done here move forward figure out what you got to do to move forward and then just do it so what what is jack eichel worth an injured herniated disc jack eichel the well the sooner you get him surgery the sooner um he's in games so the sooner uh the the the sooner he gets surgery the higher value he has i think um but whoever he goes to is going to want a word on that they're going to want to offer their opinion so maybe the second opinion he's waiting on is a different team uh i don't know and the 10 million dollar cap hit um i think makes it so that it's impossible to get fair value

uh you you'd have to ask for any team is going to have to give you players off their roster and they're probably going to be a good team so they're not going to want to give you anybody good so that you're going to get a pile of shit and to supplement the pile of shit you're going to have to ask for picks you're going to have to get prospects but it's not going to be like man i've seen people talk about the rangers and oh yeah they're just going to give up lafreniere um i i guys i don't i don't think so i i maybe i mean if i'm the sabers i certainly ask for him um ask for him and caco i don't freaking care i want the first overall pick from one year and the second overall pick from another but like look at the rangers cap situation like how do you

do that how do you just have a 10 million dollar player go poof and now he's on your roster so few teams in the league can do this without seismic shifts like i was i was just thinking about like like a guy like what if you could organize a three-way trade that includes a guy like tyler johnson dude that's five million bucks you're only halfway there so the salary cap uh makes these blockbuster deals with true superstars harder and harder to do question you're ron francis and you say we'll take Ocpozo's deal or we'll take Skinner's deal

but you got to give us Jack Eichel too if it's Skinner that's 19 million dollars that's just gone from your which the Pagoulas are going to love well and now if you're the Buffalo Sabres though you get nothing you're all the prospects

and picks that you wanted you don't get no that's Skinner that's skinner you want like bro you give us eichel and skinner and we'll give you like a third like this is this is what the salary cap does like for a team to shed 19 mil in one trade i unheard of i don't think it's ever been done ron francis is well acquainted with jeff skinner though and you know like that's sort of what i was when i saw this sort of sort of thinking is that like you know like you it sounds crazy because it is crazy but why not like does does jack eichel does sorry does jeff skinner's contract hurt you so bad that you don't get jack eichel

come on you get jack eichel for a new franchise it could like we're in it's a it's a copycat league all leagues are copycat leagues right you know one team starts shooting a bunch of threes okay we all shoot threes now and now we're in this three era right but in hockey we up managerially we appear to be entering the dawn of the three-way trade era and it's and it's necessitated by uh covid obviously and the flat cap if i'm seattle i'm calling everybody anyway seattle should be talking to every team in the league about three-way trade scenarios where maybe they don't end up with a eichel but hey we'll take on skinner we'll take on okpozo or we'll help eat half of skinner we'll help eat half of okpozo they could even

they could even potentially i don't think this is going to happen but they could eat like half of eichel or a percentage of eichel yep you know what i mean what if all of a sudden eichel's cap hit is eight mil and you gave me x y and z and it's two mil against my cap it's a different conversation it's a very different conversation that's that should be every conversation seattle has i mean and you could have two centers making big money on a team if jack eichel is making eight like for god's sakes the least of two centers make an 11 the preds had like three yeah yeah and and so you know that's the that's the interesting kind of um uh wild card going into this is the other thing what we don't know with seattle is we don't know what their stated goal is with with

the golden knights when we were doing those um those shows talking about it we figured the golden knights would want to build the team like we'd seen the leafs being built like you know strip it back get a bunch of young guys you know fill the roster with some players and then draft a bunch of really good players and hopefully you're good in five years the golden knights are like now we're gonna do this now and by the way don't be surprised if you see the golden knights in the jack eichel sweepstakes at some point because that's just what they tend to do they tend to go and get the best player available the most expensive player available and still make it work um i i wonder what the stated goal of the oakview group slash ron francis slash whoever else is

there i wonder what their goal is is it is it to be good right off the bat and bring fans in and see the similar excitement of what we've seen in vegas or is it oh well we got more of a three to five year plan yeah we want to be good yeah we want to be competitive we squeak in that's great but we'd really like to compile graphics and be absolutely dominant i need someone to i need someone to send me any proof that anybody thought vegas was going to be good like right out of the i don't think anybody did that and it's hockey twitter so usually people go hey you know and i mean i do as they should why not well exactly if you're right let the world know shout out for the rooftops i don't remember anybody going oh yeah this team with like cody eakin as their number

two center and william carlson who no one had heard of portsy barely knew his face probably and he came from Columbus you know and oh yeah James Neal he's just gonna score every goal for a little while and Marc-Andre Fleury is going to be the best he's ever been in his mid-30s and William Carlson who has like a career high of eight goals is gonna score 41 like come on come on like they did some moves that were crafty and oh I like this oh that did really well and like their their their de facto leader was derrick engeland like guys guys no one no one thought vegas was going to be good it was such a small percentage of the hockey world um so if seattle gets a good team or they end up being good i don't know if they'll know it

like i i think it'll be the same conversation again that's that's the only way to have an expansion team be good is the way vegas did it give opportunities to a bunch of guys who never got it before but you couldn't possibly know it'd be good because you've never seen it there's an expansion team cannot be good the same way that any other team is good if if that does that make sense it does it does and it and uh it reminds me every time we talk about it of my favorite twitter interaction of all time justin bourne tweeting man whoever is on the columbus blue jaggets who didn't believe in william carlson needs to be fired and the guy tweeted him and said excuse me and then deleted his twitter account because everybody was like no you're

still in the wrong man i don't know wow it's all about different roles you know most players you put them on your top line i think will actually succeed because throughout their careers they've been the best which is why they're in the nhl case in point leaf fans have you had a look at what alexander barabanov is doing in san jose that's nearly a point of game he's got like six and eight that's he's got a score yeah score effects as well i agree you can't agree you can't take the stats from a team that's that bad i mean though like he's doing well he's doing well and he's in a situation that compliments him um i love how i love how deep we're going in on seattle now that's fun it's fun to start excited for it i it is fun to start talking about i'm just

so dialed in on the playoffs and figuring out what the hell is going to happen and uh never mind i was about i was about to go in on the leafs anyway seattle could be a factor in any eichel buffalo whatever uh conversation and adam i think you're right you're gonna want to knock on the jeff skinner door and see who's behind it no on september october 10th whenever the 2021 22 nhl season starts i picked a random date is jack eichel still a buffalo saber no not a chance adam no no he's not no i don't think so jesse what do you think i'm i'm on the same side as you guys i Wow, I thought you were going to choose the other side and just be like, nah, screw you, chaos.

I can see it. Like, there's a path to him sticking around and then just maybe it still doesn't work out and he gets traded at the deadline. Because I think your packages at the deadline seem like a little bit more. Really? You know what the teams are,

so you know where some of the draft picks line up. It's just the money, the money, the money. The money situation is a little tough. Yeah, his neck. Goddamn neck. Maybe his neck is the thing that keeps him there. man i don't know it's i don't get it it's the sort of i'm sure people tuned into this waiting for us to just go in and carve the sabers but it's such a completely confusing situation

that is on the precipice of yikes but i am confused enough by it that i feel like there's something we haven't heard yet and i would imagine by the time this episode is up the sabers will have said something well i don't think they can't okay well uh let me say this if you wanted somebody to carve the sabers here it is it feels like the pagoulas just hired their buddy down the street who says i watch hockey sometimes and that's not to devalue kevin adams as a former player and a person that's been involved in hockey for most of his life but i i have yet to see anything from him that leads me to believe that he's a mind brilliant enough to carry a smaller market team on a shortened staff. It takes more brain power to do it with less brains.

And I haven't seen a single thing yet that leads me to believe that Kevin Adams is the guy. And that doesn't mean Kevin Adams isn't good. It just means you got to be a genius to kind of fight your way out of this one and i don't see anything from the sabers that leads me to believe that that's any sort of action plan in place that that's what they're going to do adam what are they doing what do you think they're doing right now what do you think's going on at buffalo hq at the sabers headquarters are they just are they just walking around the office looking around at each other all three of them you know it's super cool to live in the states we could all get our vaccines uh adam they have a really important scout meeting that's where they call with their

yeah and uh so his name is scout by the way i just if they're gonna hire one guy it better his name better be scout it's a little too perfect right you think to add to your ron francis uh theory in there by the way we were ripping on the sabers to uh go out and get an assistant gm and they did uh jason carmanos who i believe would have worked with francis yep while they were with the hurricanes interesting so he was is he really he's obviously related to their to the carmanos family yes i want to say wasn't okay remember like one of them like either sued their son or sued their dad peter carmanos the owner sued his son no no peter carmanos was sued by his son because his son and I think a couple of the other kids

were worried about him squandering their inheritance. I don't remember. Because there was a trust fund set up and I believe how it works with rich people is I'm going to put this amount of money aside for my children and then the rest of it, I'm just going to play with. And I think he was trying to dip into their trust fund that was set up for after he died.

I believe that if I'm wrong in those details, I apologize. Man, to be rich, I would very much like to be that. the lawsuit by the way was settled in mediation who was it back in 2016 uh carmenos was sued by his son for 105 million dollars peter's son jason uh i don't know which son yeah okay well anyway there's there's a connection there and like this again with the savers like it was all three sons oh yeah all three of his wow suit them and jason is one of them yes yes okay uh so yeah that was settled in mediation so they're all good whoa okay all right all right so it's pretty aggressive but anyway listen no deals with the canes then i think i think that that the long and short of

this is um it's you know you've got to really you got to have a genius at the helm we'll see where kevin adams stands but right now i'm not really impressed with what i've seen and to be honest with you it was never a fair fight to begin with well you know like botterill got way more support than this look at the sense look at the sense who are ending the season fantastically no one looked at that team on paper and went yeah they're great but i did look at them and i said young and pain in the ass and they are exactly as advertised they have an identity they're the pain in the ass team they're the we can't play them hung over team usually bottom of the barrel we can't play them hung over we can't play our backup against them you know it's it's just we're

not gonna have a fun night Ottawa Senators are not a fun night and DJ Smith I think is the is the fuck you coach he's he takes the players and he goes look at what everyone says about us and then look at who we are we're we're not what they say we are fuck them all they if they can get a coach who instills that in the team that like you said with tortorella the squeeze of blood from a stone sort of thing i i think the sabers can be decent quicker than you think but it's a it's a culture thing and what DJ Smith has been able to do what Pierre Dorian has been able to do the Sabres should actually be jealous of it and they should be studying it and they should be trying to replicate what the Ottawa Senators are doing also worth

noting you know what the Sens have prospects you need scouts guys wow you need scouts I I don't That's the craziest thing. The Sens have done a really good job, too, of trading for other people's prospects as well. Because when you don't have a scouting staff, augment it with other people's prospects. Yeah, you know me. They've drafted well.

They've been able to get goaltending out of everybody except their starter, who I think has been injured. No, the Sabres, you got to make it fun to play there. The Sens look like they have fun all the time. every game sabers it's awful it's awful you need a us against the world attitude as you know about the sens as well since february 12th they're 18 15 and 4 wow dude that's pretty good that was a month into the season yeah february to less it was a month less a day that's pretty cool there's they're not bad for comparison by the way this is a tweet from mike

kelly at mike kelly nhl the jets record in that same time frame 1917 and 2 so the sends have racked up more points than the jets in the same time period the jets who bought at the deadline and just clinched a playoff spot i believe are three and nine since the deadline not good that edmonton winnipeg series is going to be something else oh yeah i can't wait that it's just going to be so much fun because because you just don't know what you're going to get like if you get vesna connor hellebuck that it's a different it's a different game oh but if you don't it's over i mean the oilers are just murderers right now who's the oilers who's the i know i sidle and tyson berry's secondary assist i was laughing man i was laughing they when i saw connor hit

100 points and i go wow he had a four point night what was the score four three it's crazy he was in on all of them oh my goodness by the way are we do you want to transition to connor sure let's do it 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. Because that, I, I just, I brought up his game log. Oh, it's stupid. So his last game with no point. his last game with no point was april 29th since then three four two three four you are a mutant good lord how is that even possible how is that even and he's got games to

spare that's goofy three straight games with a power play points you know like this this guy and he's not playing an unbelievable amount of time he played less than 20 minutes in two of his last four this guy is i don't know how you stop him it's like i said with justin hall four to seven games of that shit in a row yeah have fun and if you're the jets what's your answer for that well and it goes back to what you said in the last episode about their best players being not right in their own end what so it's none of your forwards because none of your forwards can handle that shit could pierre luke dubois it's i adam that's a yes that's your well you'd have to he can try because everyone's got a wheeler not going to right they need to score everyone's got to try

um but like on the back end like if if you're if you're looking at the canadian division landscape heading into the trade deadline you got to be if you're the jets you got to be thinking all right we're going to get one of the leafs or oilers and your deadline acquisition was jordy ben man that's not good enough like what what's your is the plan to like staple dylan de mello on them they might say well we got here like what it's it's gonna have to be like a course in yashin thing like to go that far back you're gonna have to staple a forward to this guy and dubois man i hated him in last year's playoffs so he's he's i mean he's the best option the the jets have and i don't know who you put on a line with dubois but you don't let shifley or wheeler or connor get

anywhere near mcdavid because he'll eat them alive if you're let's say you're pierre luke Dubois and you've heard from Paul Maurice this is going to be your job and Steve tell talk to us like you are Paul Maurice and you're breaking the news beer uh today is the opportunity for you to change the story of Pierre-Luc Dubois you know everyone looked at you as the soft kid when you came here you took your ball and you went home in columbus and you showed up here you got injured you haven't had a good time since you got here let's be honest let's rewrite the story i'm pierre luke dubois game once tonight you go out there and you get a piece of connor he's gonna if you're the oiler it's okay so mcdavid's job is to be mcdavid

dubois's job is to be if this is our assumption that it's going to be dubois dubois's job is to be the anti mcdavid so if you're zach cassian for example your job is to erode dubois like a rock under a waterfall you got to be in his kitchen every opportunity like I don't know who, who are on McDavid's wings. I know he usually plays with dry saddle. I'm trying to think of who the other guy is. If you're Darnell nurse, every time you go into the corner, you're nailing Dubois.

If you're Zach Cassian, every time he's in open ice, you're getting a piece of them. Every time the whistle blows, you're face washing them. You're sticking them. You're, you're, you're doing, you just need to make his life miserable. According to daily face-off, it's either Dominic Cahoon or Yessi Puyarvi.

I'm assuming because Dry Saddle does move up, but they've got him listed as the second line center right now. I think it's been Pooley-Yarvey a lot. I know they've had a lot of line juggling. Boy, that's going to be a fascinating series because the Oilers have been so hot and the Jets have been so bad. And they're the 2-3 matchup. There shouldn't be that much of a discrepancy between the two.

Well, there's, what is it, nine points now? 68 to 59. It's a big discrepancy. Man. I mean the Oilers are the reason it's taken the Leafs so long to actually put the clinch on the division they're on a tear it's true and it's not like the Leafs have been bad

no like they both barely lost any games am I the only one that thinks that series won't be competitive won't be competitive yeah no I think the Oilers I don't think so either I think we're looking for ways to make it competitive yeah I feel like all of these are

like a stretch goaltending is the only thing and maybe yeah is the only thing that would make it competitive if the and it would have to be the Jets is very good and the Oilers is very bad if they're Mike's average 26

he's dude he's been very good he's been amazing very good and they've even won a few games where he hasn't been you know like he's just really really good getting back to McDavid oh sorry what would you want to say well what I was going to say is maybe it's not pure Luke Dubois job to shut down McDavid

maybe it's it's Hellebuck and maybe it's just that's the only thing you got i mean good luck got it yeah good luck try that for four times in a seven game series well because it only take four times right yeah well well yeah i mean that's what i thought the oilers would handle chicago so you know you never know man but uh mitch marner and brad marshan are tied for third in nhl scoring with 67 points third tied for third they're the third best the nhl has hundreds and hundreds of players those two are tied for third right just to emphasize third where are they third you know how many players have more points than them two that's it two how many points did they have again

67 mcdavid has 68 assists he's a mutant this shouldn't be possible what he's doing it's and um nick who i play nhl with had a very good tweet he's like mcdavid's about to hit 100 points and the nhl is going to send out like a tweet and call it a night like this league is not putting enough what do you want them to do hype the shit out of it i think they have been not it's whatever they're doing it's not enough like mckay dude this but it's not it's not like this hasn't been done like there are better what did mario did it in 34 games no but this is the thing just he's he's the he's doing right now he's on pace for if this was an 82 game season it would be 155 points nobody or no he'd tie

Steve Eisenman has the highest scoring season by a player not named Wayne Gretzky or Mario Lemieux and I think it was 155 exactly which is what McDavid's on so he's on pace to he's on what is the best non Gretzky

or Lemieux season yeah when did those guys retire it was quite some time ago I'm sorry it's not an 82 game season so like you can't you can't just say like he would have done that because that's so far from anything we can fathom because it's not going to happen but i think they've been doing a decent job like there's so much hype around it everybody's talking

about it what do you want them to do 100 points go now go now go win a playoff round you know win the second one of your career go do that for any oilers fans who just rolled their eyes believe believe me we're thinking the same thing about matthews in the league oh yeah i'm like okay go get the rocket and now go win a playoff series it's meaningless if you don't win a playoff round because who cares right right that's why i'm like okay we've seen guys do 100 it was it's everybody's hyped around it for the regular season now come next wednesday i think when the playoffs start i'm like win something now win four games the uh oh you're right uh it was funny rob rossi uh who is a penguins reporter for the athletic

was tweeting about how he thought sid should should be the unequivocal heart winner and he said it's you know it's it comes down to the way the heart's written right it's best player to his team and it's anti-pittsburgh bias right which you know that's okay but that's how rob zach works we've roasted rob on this show before he had that he had that video i remember when washington and pittsburgh were playing in the playoffs and i forget what happened and then rob just sat in the stands he's like it's coming for you washington barry trotz we're coming for you like it was one of those like yeah literally it was like the ultimate sin is the cream of the crop there ov and he's gonna rise to the top here wait that's what it looked like so rob

rob speaks in uh hyperbole to say the least i think we have him on to make some big sweeping statements for sure but pittsburgh's had a great year and if crosby comes second in heart voting awesome he should but conor mcdave is the best player to him if to me how is it that you can be the best player to your team and not also be the best in the nhl i do i do struggle with that i know the wording's there and it's supposed to be and i've tried to play with this for a long time but how how can you actually give an award a prestigious award to a guy that you're like hey he's not the best but he's on the he's the best on a shitty look at this shit that he's got to work with dude he's not like the guy we need to give an award to fuck this 100 points in 56

games what about this shithead with his cast of bums but he's good like what kind of word is that crosby is magical amazing wonderful uh the penguins clinch first in the east cody cc's a norris candidate it's amazing dude how good has he been great he's been great hey cody go get it go get it man uh i'm not mad at you go go do it sydney crosby doesn't suck because connor mcdavid is better right now you know what i mean yeah well you put the two in a playoff series well maybe we'll actually get to see but you unfortunately you got to vote before that man and like he's got 100 points like he's got 33 more points than his next closest non-teammate and the guy who's second in nhl scoring is still on his team and like 21 points

behind or something ridiculous like that and is it he like 20 points up on martyr matthews too like he's more way more like guys guys i i don't know how like listen rob's doing his job yeah he's getting you to click getting you to talk about him for the rest of you like i don't know how you genuinely believe that shit i don't know how you genuinely believe anybody else is the mvp this year and here's what i would say pittsburgh you've seen some mvps before let edmonton have this they've never seen one pittsburgh doesn't they're like we know edmonton you know no one no one good has ever played for the oilers ever it's not like they've had the award locked up since what 2017 on that team it's ridiculous since since hall won it

after that i think it's been an edmonton oilers award has it not i'd love to know what percent of all Hart trophies have gone to a Hab, Euler, or Penguin. It's got to be like 50, at least. It's got to be at least.

Or scoring titles is another one. McDavid only has one, by the way. Hart? No. Yeah, he won in 2017 was McDavid. That was his first one. And then 18's Hall, 19's Kucherov,

2020 is Dreisaitl. So, we need to get McDavid some more heart trophies, just for just so when we look back historically that we're not, like, embarrassed by ourselves of these times, and be like McDavid should have won, like, five straight hearts. So, let's get him some

more in this little area. Yeah, people voting like fucking hipsters. Come on. He should have had 17. We all know that. He had 17. He should have had 18. We know that. Kucherov had an unbelievable year in 19. I don't think you can take that away from him and i'm sorry to leon dry saddle but i thought mcdavid deserved it last year too history is is riddled with those who you look at that it's i brought

it up before but you look at the vesna and you go jim carrey really it's hashish hashish hashish jim carrey hashish hashish hashish wow who is this amazing phenom who came in and he stole the oh it turns out he wasn't even good literally was not even good right oh my god like these things like they should be a reflection of history when you look back on them like that's that's all i want out of these awards just okay in 10 years in 20 years when kids grow up and they look back oh gretzky won uh eight seven straight heart trophies during this they're during the 80s like that's that's an accurate representation of history and how hockey was at the time this guy was the best seven straight years we just gave it to him mcdave is the best player right now let's just give him

some more heart trophies because he deserves them and history should reflect that and if you're the mvp of the playoffs i got great news for you there's an award for that too yeah actually there's two one of them is a con smith the other is the one that you actually play for like guys he's the best player this regular season end of discussion like there isn't a there isn't a counterpoint here he's got a hundred points hundred stop stop a point for per period player if if Crosby broke Sittler's record twice in the games remaining I know he would still be like 20 points back like stop it's crazy how you can lose the game when you're guaranteed to have a guy score a point a period yeah right like the last last 30 games he has 31 or he has 29 points he must walk

in that dressing room and just say how dare any of you right how the audacity of you here did you have you seen i might as well bring it up because once he hit 100 i saw a few people were going all right here are the highest scoring oilers forwards okay oh yeah so mcdavid's got 100 points dry saddle's got 79 then you gotta go all the way down to 46 points oh that's tyson barry though throw him out he's a defenseman then it's Darnell Nurse 36 oh throw him out he's a defenseman the next highest scoring non-McDavid or dry sidle forward is Ryan Nugent Hopkins with 33 and then Jesse Pugliarvi who Oilers fans have been like he's amazing and he's having a good season he's better than

I thought would be possible after the you know start to his career that he's had he's got 25 and then it's yamamoto as their last oilers forward with 20 or more points and he's got 20 i'm not saying the rest of the team sucks which some people very are but what what he's doing is jaw-dropping unbelievable and i say this with nothing but reverence i every time i watch the oilers i i don't understand how they're not undefeated yeah dude i don't understand how you lose a game with connor mcdavid on your roster i have a question because mcdavid is so good he probably makes the players on his team look worse than they actually are right like oh yeah i think there's a little bit of that going on is it possible that it's like

you know you got this guy and you got this other guy let's not forget about dry saddle heart trophy winner you know art wash i think he's won the art ross a couple times you know rocket i think you want to rock it pretty amazing player as well if you got those guys you just again you just go with the competent bum angle right so it's sort of you know player guy who doesn't fuck up fine guy who doesn't fuck up that's all you really need to do and they're proving that again i still think they're gonna have to solve the goaltending problem i keep with the Oilers they keep saying goaltending goaltending goaltending Mike Smith as much as we love Mike Smith is Mike Smith going to be playing when he's char a years old who knows but I don't think so

they they do need to figure that out soon ish but they're kicking ass right now so you don't even need to get a great goalie just a pretty good one Ryan Nugent Hopkins has nine no sorry eight power play goals which is really good from this Leafs fan who doesn't remember what a power play goal looks like eight power play goals and 19 power play points that is extremely good mcdavid has more power play points 35 then nugent hopkins has points 33 nugent hopkins is the third highest scoring oilers forward so that's i don't get it how are you alive how are you a person how are we made of the same material so is the the competent bum strategy it shouldn't be you have two guys and then 10

four forwards who are just there to just be like i'm i'm just guy like you should probably have a collection of skilled forwards yeah i think i think what adams said about uh you know him making other players look worse it's not that they can't play with him it's just that remember remember what i was saying most players would succeed on your top line because that's what they're used to now all these guys who could potentially be first line guys are now second third and fourth because yeah but then you're playing against lesser competition yeah your best lines are going up against mcdavin and you should be over performing because they take up so much attention like the way the leafs beat mcdavin that little stretch we're just throwing waves and waves at

uh leon and connor and so the rest of the team should have this advantage of like hey everybody's looking at the star let's go get some of our own points it just seems like they haven't gathered enough skill on this team to be like okay we can win everything because we have mcdata and dry sidle and like that's that's just bad management wow there's man did that three game series wake up the beast but they're still pretty great yeah but then they're still great so pretty great yeah i mean uh i mean like in no other division would they be any higher than fourth is that true that is true oh wow i didn't know other division would they be any higher than fourth um so which makes the north look shitty but the north plays the north yeah yeah so i mean i don't

know i don't know if that says anything but yeah you've got teams like the the disparity between the best teams and the worst teams in the west central and the east is much higher um you know this is a division that was supposed to uh you know supposed to see the ottawa senators be shitty well the ottawa senators have 22 wins and uh i think there isn't a another division where the second last place team or sorry the second last place team and the last place team in the north division both have 20 plus wins whereas you know you look at the east division jersey's got 19 buffalo's got 15 which is shockingly high uh detroit has 19 and columbus has 18 in the central and then anaheim's got 17 and they're the last place team and then you've got la with 21 because

they had that hot start but they've been garbage you know it's unlikely but there's this there is still a situation where ottawa could finish fifth in the north oh yeah they would have to win their last game uh well actually they don't have to win their last game that calgary just basically needs to lose the rest of them um and ottawa could like lose one game in overtime or something like that but there are three teams in the north with seven wins in their last 10 and they are toronto who's in first edmonton who's in second and ottawa i told you at the beginning of this season i told i i am not surprised that they missed the playoffs or that they are you know could still potentially finish last in the division but this team is not going to be shitty for long no way no way they're

not shitty now they're not shitty now i think their playoff contenders as early as next season yeah for all the talk about the north division being like the weak division it's not weak it's just balanced like everybody's like oh they're gonna beat up on ottawa and vancouver is gonna be terrible and all this stuff no they're all kind of decent and then there's the top the least have good records against basically everyone in the north except ottawa um but like who have they really just kicked their ass like you know how the oilers have had a couple games where they like ran up the score on ottawa was like eight nothing eight one something i don't think they've had that unless maybe a couple vancouver games the early the really early season vancouver games

are the closest really the leafs came to just dominance like why bother playing the rest of the game dominance you know what i mean for the most part it's they get three or four and then they do their best to shut it down which is not the leafs we've been accustomed to over the past few years yeah well they would try to shut it down and they just flat out couldn't yeah but like you we've watched the sabers a few times this season like to to look at the east and we've gone why did you show up to the rink you know what i mean and the devils and the flyers have been a mess and man that's a shocker to me the flyers that's just a mind bender like you know it just shows how much goaltending is between the years because you know carter hart's good enough the

red wings didn't even red wings didn't even finish last in the central for god's sake all three california teams stink and this and the sharks really they looked like they'd be able to hang in there a little bit no kings nope ducks extraordinarily underratedly bad this season uh canada i mean if the canucks didn't go through what they had to go through i think they'd absolutely be in the playoff picture um but that's that's in the water um i would like to mention something and i think this is very important to our friends in the craziest state in the union florida we're finally getting our first all florida matchup the 305s versus the i think it's the 8-1 what is it 8-1 8-1 threes and we now go to pitbull for his take on the situation

i'm kind of excited for this like they're they're pretty close in the standings 55 games they're playing uh i believe florida plays tampa next and tampa plays somehow dallas next they both 55 i don't know that must be a mistake but whatever end of the day uh tampa versus miami or sunrise is pretty sweet i think this is really cool for the nhl and this is a great way going into the espn contract to build a little bit of rivalry there because for so long it's been tampa's good and and and the panthers suck and this is kind of nice to see and it's gotten nasty there's a bunch of supplemental discipline handed out uh after their last game and hearings and i don't remember how they all went florida's won five straight boy what an interesting summer

they're gonna have too they're gonna have to trade their second best goalie it's not bobrovsky he's not their best either by the way sergeant bobrovsky is the third best goaltender the panthers why are they gonna take a bold take uh uh drieger seems to be the guy and it's gonna be bob and spencer knight and uh they're gonna have to trade drieger like i already saw an article talking about like how he's gonna like be seattle starter or something like that he's been really good he's been really really good drieger's also he's a ufa at the end of the year so they don't have to trade him well then never mind yeah so it'll be bobrovsky and knight to uh also in that same division to all the nashville fans that reached out reached out today man you were right you were

right you guys i mean to be honest with you when i when i made the take that i had they had a two percent chance of making the playoffs two percent well if and they've won like 14 games out of like 19 since then it's ridiculous good for them if they were right i don't think they suck but you if they were right i was wrong i was wrong i can't wait for carolina to steamroll them in four but but um uh go canes uh but i don't i don't i mean i don't i i'm not gonna be one of the most wrong things you've been wrong about lately oh jesse i'm sure he's been dumber than this what else have i been wrong about i don't know but this seems like it's up there you tagged me in something else steve there was something you take me in two things on saturday

night it was oh yeah i was ripping india for no good reason it was that one and yeah sometimes you just gotta bully your friends for sure i don't know that's that's as far as i'm concerned that's what is the is the true friendship thing when people message me they're like you know i think you guys are going a little hard on steve i'm like it's because that's the kind of relationship we all have oh uh sam bennett sam bennett has the most points by any panthers player in team history in 10 games with the team goal and assist tonight he passes pavel beret that from steve goldstein that's wild now why i ask you this who does that reflect poorer on the flames or sam bennett he just couldn't score in the best division in hockey the north the correct answer for that is adam wild

who who would have thought that sam bennett would break pavel beret's record not you everybody fucking called that i'm sure you all were like no no no no you don't get it he's gonna be like beret good steve and i sat here and we said you know what we wouldn't mind him on the leafs and now look we could have had pavo beret and bro we would have i think we would have been right like if you they went out and they got nick felino for nick felino style play and i think bennett is sort of in the same boat he would have fit in on this team just fine Or I think Calgary wanted more than we would have given up for Foligno. Otherwise, Sam Bennett would be aflame.

From what I have heard from people that I have talked to, the Leafs wanted Sam Bennett bad. They wanted him really bad. And whatever it was that Calgary was saying he was worth was more than they paid for Foligno. And they ended up getting less from Florida, who probably got a you're not in our division discount. Yes, that's what they – the Leafs wanted Sam Bennett

because he would have fit into their plans long term, right? That explains why Riddick was a third. What's that? That explains why Riddick was a third then. Probably was going to be a package deal. Interesting. And I wonder if Trilliving didn't overplay his hand there. Just throwing that out there.

Hey, let's – nope, you're getting away from the conversation. You were wrong twice. I mean, look at Sam Bennett. He's been great. But I think you've got to look at Sam Bennett and the fact that he's been great and go, Calgary's had a rough time this year. it's weird that they weren't able to find a spot in the lineup for him yeah like that doesn't make any sense which doesn't make sense because line and he didn't perform they said well there is that

he like for the game he plays calgary looks like a good match and i don't know i guess maybe i'm just not seeing it but for for all the nashville fans let me let me put a bow on it for you adam bless your heart that's good i like that fair i deserve it um st louis uh i did get a bunch of uh uh dallas stars fans by the way saying i believed in dallas too and then a bunch who were like this team sucks don't don't cheer for them that was interesting um st louis blues fans hit us up en masse i don't know if you guys got a bunch of dms about bennington but it seems like with blues fans the remember we were talking about them last episode yeah i asked the question last episode if you're a blues fan reach out to us and tell us what you think of bennington because

from the outside looking in it looks like he's a bit of a hothead and that he can be contentious with fans so we wanted the fans perspective on what you guys actually think about your your boy so from what i read from from you the the reaction was decidedly exactly what we said which was fans love him because he won the cup but it's also kind of annoying and what a hothead he is like it just it was very like the messages i got were extremely reasonable like when i when we went in on uh blake wheeler earlier in the season i got vitriol from from jets fans who are usually really nice but very very upset with binnington stanley cup winning goalie clearly the mvp of the playoffs that year for them like one of and people are like yeah you

know he's kind of annoying i mean he's good but he's annoying you're you're gonna have to do if you're a leaf who wins the cup who is on that team you're i don't know what you could do to have me turn on you i just because if if the leafs had binnington and they won the cup i bet jordan come on with that let's hey you go out there and you have a better attitude next game all right get out there crazy kid don't hurt yourself steve if the leafs did win the cup would with jordan binnington would he replace james reimer as your most favorite goalie ever and felix poppin i don't know either of those men i don't babe i'm not your babe yeah babe i'm sorry to those men but i don't know them okay fair enough

that's not true of james or felix but i'll still have the pictures but the series i really want i don't know like if you know as things start to solidify here i don't know if you guys have a series that you're like super excited about and obviously we'll get into more of that as the playoffs approach but there's one that i am dying for a little bit let's see if he's right and i don't know if it's going to happen because there's only a one point separation but it looks like boston which has played a game less than the islanders is a point up on the islanders could be playing washington and i want to see the big bad caps play the big bad bruins and pittsburgh islanders isn't a great matchup for pittsburgh either because islanders have kind of run their

show in recent memory they're like the playoffs they're like a boa constrictor they just kind of hug you too hard and then it's like just strangling right yeah those are two nasty matchups i know exactly what you're talking about adam i'm excited to see like because okay because we've seen trent frederick for four to seven oh man oh god tj sent me a video this morning of him just chirping uh the rangers and he's he's he's got he's got a good like he's really good at it is that the who wants it video yeah yeah oh just what a truck what i mean if you're boston if you if you're a bruins fan in boston i would donate blood to save trent frederick's life like just just from the From the footage that I've, that I've seen. Oh my God.

If you're the Bruins though, first off, you're going against Zidano, which sucks. Like that really sucks. They could have had them the whole year. There's no reason not to resign Zidano, but beyond that. I didn't even think of that. Yeah. That's why I want to see it. But then, okay. So now you're Marchand and you're Bergeron and you have to contend with Tom Wilson. Can you get under Tom Wilson's skin before he gets under yours? No, that is Frederick's assignment.

is it oh my like a torpedo every shift is zidane ochara gonna cross check you as hard as he cross checks everybody else if you're if you're marshan or bergeron uh can i can i answer that please yeah yeah he's yeah he is he is he's gonna and then he'll give you a wink and a smile actually no he won't like that's that's for the end of the series like i don't think zidane ochara is like that like everything that you've ever heard about him is he's a great guy and a great leader and he seems like a great friend he like he really does he seems like a gentle giant on the ice he is a hardened criminal and he's got a job to do and he's going to take that job out on you i doesn't matter how long he's known you even worse uh that guy was hanging around you in the training room

and he saw all the muscles you were rolling out guess what he's attacking here i heard you want you know you want me to roll out your back there patrice oh it's gonna i don't think it's gonna be a bad or a good time for any of them after the whistle that after the whistle that's where he's gonna make his money mid 40s zidane ochara defensively is a liability he is so the bruins would be wise to use their speed against him blow by him hope to draw a penalty and this will be the first time in their careers they'll be arguing for Chara to get a call. Oh, wow.

That is a fun little petri dish of a series, Adam. Thank you for pointing that out. Is there any other ones that you guys are in particular looking forward to? I wanted to bring up the All-Florida just because it's All-Florida. I think Vegas will kill St. Louis. So the 2-3 matchup in the West right now and it's unlikely it'll change but it could is colorado minnesota and minnesota while taking steps and acknowledging that they've taken steps i did not know they were like this i didn't know

kaprizov was like this nobody could have predicted like i know that everybody was like he's good he's good he's good but like whoa the whole team the whole team like it's if if colorado gets past minnesota which i think they will because i i just think so much of this team the series i want to see the most um probably outside of the north division i want to see vegas take on colorado they just seem they've just seemed like the two best teams in the league and what does that say about minnesota who's one point behind colorado and could could they oh no i was going to say they could catch vegas but no the best they could do is tie them and finish second oh i i want to see that i think i think colorado minnesota is going to be must watch

and whoever wins that is i'm sorry blues fans they're going to play vegas and that's going to be an extraordinary series jesse have any thoughts the one thing i'm not excited for i assume next week we'll have a full playoff preview episode 100 pick our and all that stuff yeah we'll do that on monday um the one thing i'm not excited about is any of the one four matchups so really i was i was like even the leafs i was spacing out my bracket and i was like okay what do i got looking over we got a week to go we'll see we'll see what's looking i'm like i feel like every one four matchup is gonna be not not necessarily a walk but i'm picking the one seat each time because like i don't think st louis has anything going against

vegas i don't think carolina i don't think nashville is gonna knock off carolina i don't think montreal is gonna give the leafs any trouble and then the islanders the bars all sat lax they got scratched by trots last week and they got one out of four points against the sabers like they're limping and i know they beat the devils like five one what it's the devils ago but it's the devils right and so i i see them limping into the playoffs and i think pittsburgh's gonna win that matchup with Crosby back at full force so like I think all those all the interesting stuff right now is happening in the two threes so those are the ones I'm looking forward to because the one four is I can tell you right now I'm picking all the one seeds I still think uh boy I've learned

my lesson and I'm putting respect on the Islanders name so I think you're wrong there but the other three uh have you watched them lately did you watch the first Buffalo admittedly no but I think Well, they did – those were the two Michael Hauser wins. But those – I think the Islanders, you know, they have so much playoff experience the past couple years. I think they're playing at like 70% if that – Yeah, scratching guys. Well, that I don't understand.

Like, was he healthy scratched? Yeah, he got benched. Trotz came in and was like, you know, this isn't what we want to do, but we need our guys. the quote is after trot sitting on sitting bars all this was like may this is may 4th matt is a good pro he's going to be a big part of what we're doing just want to get him in the right place feeling good so he's a good player for us in the playoffs ahead of the playoffs this this is this is what it's about man this is what it's about how many leafs are being scratched right now going to

the playoffs it's a different situation yeah because one team's struggling so i'm not picking though but i don't think it's gonna be competitive yeah i just i just feel like these teams on their way down which i'm not saying they are but when they're not as good as they were the year before we go hot there's the descent no man i think they're gonna find a switch they're gonna turn it on and it's not gonna be a fun four to seven for pittsburgh what do you what are your thoughts on pittsburgh right now though oh they're a wagon like they are the favorite no doubt they are the favorite but out of the four seeds like montreal probably like i mean listen based on what we've seen this season there's no reason to think the leafs would lose to them and this is the part

where we clip that part and we put it out if the leafs lose game one but they have they were a better playoff team last year yep they made it farther farther if you're the habs you got to be thinking last year we didn't or sorry last year they didn't we did um so i look at them and i go okay you know you got to respect them nashville you got to respect their experience but if you're carolina you're like well we're carolina like the carolina doesn't have the problem that the leafs do where well you know last year they were really good carolina goes well last year we were still Carolina in the year before we were also Carolina um the Blues are boy they're just gonna get shattered by Vegas man 57 points versus 80 like I know you won the cup the captain's not there

anymore it's a very very different season you didn't do well in last year's playoffs um so I honestly out of the four seeds I think the Habs are the second most intimidating frankly at least based on situation and will carrie price be back for the playoffs it they're making it seem like he's gonna be but like even though it's carrie price who's really good in the playoffs it does seem kind of unreasonable to assume he's going to be great after like dude let's assume freddie's fully healthy which i don't know um like there's a quote it's unreasonable to assume he's going to be back to number one form here's a quote for uh the carrie price and brendan gallagher so they won't see any regular season time they're both

going to miss the rest of regular season but uh dominic ducharme says that we're confident that all will be there. The guys are progressing. Carey Price and Brendan Gallagher are expected to be healthy for the start of the playoffs. And at this point, why play? Like, who cares? Yeah, and Deneau was a confusing one.

He missed that last game against the Leafs with a concussion, and no one could really find how he did it. Tic-Tac-Tomar was, he posted a GIF, and the closest thing he could find a like heavy impact for dino is he tried to hit someone on the end boards and kind of

missed like it's this is very confusing i think all these teams that have it locked up are just coasting and resting guys and i think the i think the islanders it was probably disciplinary with barzal but like even if he's at 95 all right you go and rest up and we'll get that other five i i don't i really don't think you read too much into that right now can i tell you what's giving me anxiety with one one to four series is it the leafs clearly it's the leafs okay uh is that the leafs management will be dumb enough to put freddie anderson in a game i don't think what in the playoffs yeah which game any game i don't think so he's been he's been bad in the ahl and everybody's like well don't read too much into the game one and then game two

not good how was game two i didn't see that uh he got better as the game went on but he did allow four goals and if i'm not mistaken he allowed the first shot he faced in the second game which like holy shit how many leaf games did you see that in games where he was good in games oh yeah did he still look injured uh you know was he was he like he said moving it He said earlier this year there's no way he's going to be fully healthy. Like, this is the thing with Freddie. I think he's in the same position as a lot of NHL players. I think he just deals with stuff.

There are players who, you know, they make a decision, okay, I'm going to deal with this in 12 years. If I can hold off surgery, I'll deal with this once I retire. I don't know if that's him necessarily. um i i did see i saw a tweet from someone who i don't think meant ill but what what they said basically was it doesn't look like his body it looks like his mind your body screws with your mind right if if i'm worried about doing this movement and i'm gonna put myself out for the rest of the season or i'm gonna have to take myself out of the game or i'm not worried i'm

worried i'm gonna be i'm not gonna be explosive enough like that this was the thing with him he's such he was such a cookie cutter rock'em sock'em robot goalie and you could count on him being in his net and making these athletic saves and the cookie cutter saves as well when he's not in that mindset which could be caused by injuries and i think it is he's wild he's all over the place and that's what i saw in the clips that i saw from those two marley's games and that's what we saw earlier this season um and that's what we saw you know what when campbell went through his little slump that's what we saw out of him too you see a goalie flying all over the place these days it's rarely a good thing um now you see him and there it is ice in the veins it's exactly as

advertised you know back when when he was at the world juniors um that's why you got riddick man uh you went out and got riddick so that you don't have to make rash decisions with freddy um you know you're allowed to rehab and face shots and everything as the playoffs continue like there's definitely a scenario where let's say the leafs do win around hooray and then they're in the second round and you know game one campbell gets hurt and oh shit and then riddick plays game two and he wins it and then game three is oh god he's oh my god we can't go back to this guy for game four and you go what about freddie sure and you put him in and hopefully he's ready like i keep going I don't know what the Leafs could have done differently.

My concern is this. This is where my anxiety comes from. Where the Leafs are so loyal to Freddie and so believe in the goalie that last left us in 2019. Frankly, has not been the same goalie since. They so believe in that, that they robbed Johnson, Doug Flutie this. And Buffalo Bills fans know what I'm talking about.

I've mentioned this before. There was a wildcard game. Doug Flutie got the Bills there. and uh the owner said well we're paying rob johnson five million bucks a year to be our quarterback why isn't he playing so they started him the bills should have won the game they stunk and they lost and they were out and i really hope that the leafs go okay here's we're gonna go with the guy that's working just put campbell in for god's sakes i have every confidence they're going to i don't please give me the confidence that you have so i think he was well first of all i'm

careful what you wish for you don't want this shit second of all i think it was dave amber on the broadcast talking about um with campbell and it's something that i i i watched it happen and i didn't even realize it was happening earlier in the season what did i keep harping on campbell's never been a starter in the nhl how do we know he can do it and the least went great question let's make him a starter and they've probably been giving him more starts than they should have because they're like your starter workload yeah here it is and what's he done he's 17 2 and 2 so i think those are mike smith numbers by the way like my concerns were totally valid it's that's a dude it's a question you have to ask if a guy's never been a starter

how you can't just blindly trust that he's going to be and the Leafs didn't blindly trust it either they went out and did a science experiment they go let's see and if he can't handle it we open the Dave Riddick door which is door number three but he's handled it he's been great he's the team's starting goaltender let's call him what he is okay Adam they're not as dumb as you think Don't worry. It's not that I think they're dumb. I just think sometimes we tend to overthink things. Like maybe what I'm doing right now.

Let's get to the press conference, shall we? The 2026 Chevrolet Trax is the stylish SUV for those on the move. And with the standard Chevy Safety Assist Package, you have the backup to handle every turn with confidence. The 2026 Trax. Start your build at Chevrolet.ca. The Presser SDP. Now this press conference will be

abbreviated because we've got about 10 minutes left. So Jesse take it from here. This is from Graham. Are you surprised by how low the Brindamore contract is being reported? So it came out today that they're

offering him like 1.8 and he wants above that plus his staff to be compensated what do you guys think um i think he doesn't need the money you know what i mean he made his money as a player and a lot of these coaches though haven't and rod brindamore is actually a lot younger uh than a lot of these coaches and they played in an era an era uh where they didn't make a ton of money rod did rod got to make a big old bunch of money as a player and i do love and appreciate what he's doing for his staff but i think the hurricanes you know perhaps rightfully after essentially being put on the spot you know everyone's oh rod

brindamore such a great guy i think the hurricanes were like oh yeah prove it here's yeah we'll give you everything you want here's 1.8 you know hey we'll sign this guy this guy this guy you know make sure you guys get a better room and fresh towels and all that shit we'll give you everything you want rod you can be the hero to to everybody here's less than market value like i there's no reason to assume rod would get less than like four mil no but here's what he's doing he is assuring his legacy as a coach and to do that he is keeping his staff he's already made his money as steve alluded to by the way 1.8 million dollars oh can i yeah please give me um i don't know if i've made that in my life he made 50 million dollars as a player guy's got the money and he is ensuring

that his head coaching job which he does not have to do he can be a rod should be on a golf course somewhere but that's not rod's at rod is far too competitive for that rod would explode you would he would totally explode this is why this is perfect for him he is assuring that the all-star staff he has around him and make no mistake the Canes staff is absolutely incredible from the scouts to the trainers to everybody they've done an amazing job

and they're what fighting for the president's trophy right now I mean they're probably going to get it aren't they let me see I think it's them and the Golden Knights isn't it Toronto's still in there no they're not they are the Leafs could

tie both those teams but lose in wins Yeah. So it looks like it comes down to Vegas and Carolina and Vegas has two games and Carolina only has one. So even if they don't win the president trophy, whatever, they had a great year. The reality of this is you, if you've got a great team and your main concern is winning and legacy, who cares if you only make $1.8 million this year? rod brindamore knows all you need to do is win one stanley cup and you're a head coach for the next 20 years randy carlisle john tortorella not that john's bad but you know what i'm you know what i'm saying like think about guys that won the cup 15 plus years ago most of them still have jobs and most of them are making good money barry trotz was going to get four million dollars whether he won the cup with the caps or not he was going to get it you're right yeah joe quinville

i mean he's incredible coach but like joe quibble didn't need to coach anymore but he's coming back and he's making a pile of money if brindamore knows if he really if money was the goal which it isn't just win the cup they just have a different mindset than i do like i look at cliff fletcher and i'm like go home cliff like and it's nothing it's nothing against him it's just cliff that's that's enough you could have retired when i was a child like what what are you doing but he's still there because he loves it good for him good for him and good for rod not that he's signed it yet supposedly but he will there it is by the way today's press conference will be sponsored by david because adam in a fit of rage decided to cancel who wore

the crown last episode he's having a grumpy day so david it's not a good segment anymore we're dropping it all right we got it we'll we got to figure it out because there's a charity aspect yeah we should we should close it with like the season maybe yeah what we're gonna do we're gonna shout out somebody at the beginning of every episode how's that sound or in the press conference wherever we'll decide yeah it's better than just axing it right so i just want to shout out dave he's a new zealander in he's a canadian in new zealand and he donated to um a children's hospital over there uh they're called starship and they saved his little daughter's life last year when she was born zeta she was born um he said she was born as the same color as the leaf's

home jersey dark blue and kind of white she was booked to go into the uh nicu but at the last movement her breathing improved and she avoided the dreaded intensive care unit so he was beyond thankful that his little girl had this place at her disposal if she needed uh where she would get the best possible care so shout out children's hospitals all over the world i know we like to donate to sick kids so and um and david here donate to his local one in uckland so yeah shout out starships and uh that is that's incredible love that so we're gonna give the charity angle going you just i think there's a better way to deliver now yeah one last thing i'd like to mention is a fun little tidbit before we go the philadelphia flyers if you attend the game you

get a free johnson and jockson covid vaccine today nice are you serious i'm serious they uh They took that from the Atlanta Braves all weekend. They were doing free vaccines. And the Braves one, you get tickets, too, if you sign up to get your vaccine. So you get free tickets for getting your vaccine. Yeah. They're like, if you pre-register to get your vaccine

when you come to the Braves game, I think it was last weekend, last Friday, Saturday, or it might have been this past Friday, Saturday, you get free tickets to a future Braves game as well. And we are sword fighting each other for this thing in Canada. And now it's getting better. The Flyers are doing this. Do they have a free ticket thing as well

when you get your vaccine? Yeah, it's Johnson & Johnson. I think it's the single dose too. You only need the one. Wow, that's awesome. Jesse, by the way, you've got news. Oh yeah, I got my vaccine. Shout out Vax Hunters Canada.

Adam and I actually work, we work in a, they're calling them hotspots. Hear anybody not from Ontario, the hotspots are given priorities to get your vaccine before it's open to like the general public. So this weekend I went to one of the pop-ups

for our hotspot that we work in. And I got my vaccine. My Wi-Fi has been a lot better at home, I've noticed. And I just want to say, I really love Bill Gates. He's a fantastic human being. Jesse's his divorce lawyer. I, yes, I am. We all are.

Once you get the vaccine, you are now his lawyer. One of us, one of us. Google gobble, Google gobble, one of us. Microsoft Vista is great. remember microsoft vista oh yeah that was a good rollout anyway uh we'll be back thursday love you talk to you then uh and the playoffs are upon us how exciting so what is the actual funny thing about the playoffs i was reading this today on nhl.com they don't have a start date for the playoffs yet i was gonna ask does anyone know decided a start date which is

fascinating so it's possible there is a scenario where the playoffs will begin and the north division will still have games yeah vancouver will still be playing right why yeah it's no like and they could even i think i think because the leafs are playing what friday that they don't know they there is no start date for the playoffs because they have no idea now here's why that's a bad idea well somebody gets injured in vancouver in that game they should really shut it down shut it down i shut it down i get it i get it what do you get well i i get oh we have we have sponsors and we have this and we have that's true guys it's a different season that the sponsor stuff where there's money at stake makes so much more sense than the silly draft arguments the

draft lot of fucking go to an arbitrator and figure that shit out some of the some of the arguments were okay so if you finish a couple points up then your lottery ball changes but like come on i get the like you said i get the okay you sold a package to an advertiser for 56 games you have to you have an obligation contract contractually to fulfill your advertisers uh 56 games like that yeah yeah tune in to watch terrible genuinely terrible hockey from guys who literally don't want to be there you know what i mean by the end of it they'll play their ass off in the last game just because they're happy it's over it's i feel bad for the canucks i do not envy their position at all yeah anyway what a cheery note to end on and shout out the Leafs for getting

vaccinated and the canadian montreal canadians so there you go awesome love it so good i'm so jealous i'll be soon i'm on a wait list i'll be sorry i'm on several as well here's hope and fingers crossed love you talk to you soon if you're in philadelphia go to that damn flyers game and get your vaccine we love you we'll see you thursday the steve dangle podcast follow the guys on twitter at steve underscore dangle at adam w y l d e and at jesse blake connection complete