The Steve Dangle Podcast - The Hot Dog Days | January 6, 2020

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, Adam's new hair! (00:00), Canada loses to the United States at the World Juniors (05:00), Chris Johnston joins the show to talk about Leafs training camp and a special Phil Kessel anniversary (17:35), the NHL divisions now have sponsors (49:00), predicting the East Division (59:00), prediction the Central Division (1:13:55), are Pierre-Luc Dubois being traded for Patrik Laine? (1:22:00), Florida will have fans in the stands this year (1:30:00), and Joe Thornton is a 1st line player on the Leafs (1:36:30). Originally aired: January 6, 2021 We've joined The Athletic and you can too! Hit the link to subscribe: theathletic.com/sdp Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/CVNnRx4wNss Visit this episode's sponsors: https://www.netgear.com/ https://www.bluenile.com/ Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake 2021 we've been waiting for you we've been waiting and you're here and you know what listen it's a little dark right now at least here in ontario we're in a lockdown for month three now two three i don't know what we're for you for you that's true and then i was getting my haircut before christmas ah the entire province yeah yeah i uh i knew about the lockdown but okay so uh my hairdresser before it even hit the news was like hey so i think there's gonna be a shutdown and you need to come get your haircut right away i was like okay was that was that the receptionist at first choice wow how am i the one getting chirped for my hair on this show adam get your

wolf mother ass back on the screen how is this guy i'm sorry i'm sorry also no offense to anybody who gets their haircut at first that was when i first moved here how dare you how dare you At one point, you actually did get your hair cut at first choice. I did. It was his first choice. And then I stopped. I stopped for reasons.

How is my hair the one getting chirped? My hair is great. I don't know what you're talking about. My hair is fantastic. I look boyishly handsome. Thank you very much. There's a compelling, Adam. This is a reason for anybody

who doesn't regularly watch the podcast to maybe get up YouTube and type in the Steve Dangle podcast because Adam Wilde got, what do you call it, a blowout? I gave myself a blow. So I got some curls. So basically I got to the level of the pandemic where I'm like, okay, my hair, I can't sleep back anymore. Like it's curly anyway, but like, I couldn't, I can't do anything with it anymore. Uh, I haven't had my hair cut since October

already. So, um, try something else. What does it look like when it's obscenely curly? So I, I, I showered, I washed it, which I do once or twice a week. Um, I shower more than once a week, by the way it's just a hair wash you don't never your legs though uh and never my legs but uh so then i put uh i i put curl cream in it but you're not supposed to like this is what i learned you're not supposed to take your towel and like brush it dry or whatever because that ruins the curl you're supposed to let it be wet and then you kind of put your head over and then you you kind of you put this curl cream in it and then you use those diffuser things those big the big attachments for your um your uh uh blow dryer this is the thing that i know about yes and then and then

you kind of scrunch it up and that's what i did and i i put it on instagram last night fully expecting to get lit up and people kind of liked it so i'm like well you know what i guess i'm gonna keep it the more i stare into your adoring eyes the more i'm like you know what you do be rocking it though see it's i don't think i don't think people really knew how curly my hair was too like in the summertime this is just what it looks like it's just it's just no it's not adam's lying that's not true it's never seen you look no you haven't looked like this since high school well yeah and i did look like this and i but this is my natural hair this is what it kind of looks like i'm i'm like it's weirding me out but i never blew it out in high school sorry what's that

steve it's weirding me out that you don't have braces like i think that's what's making this all look weird well it's because i'm long past that point and thank god for that and a lot less give your teeth a lick there you go good and you can't do the thing that i do because my hair is a total shit show right now but i just throw on a hat every day no you can't do that because your head is too large like i every time i tell people that my head's too big for a helmet uh or or uh a hat they don't believe me like it's it's almost like a foreign concept to them and so i i every time i have to do it they're like yeah put on my hat put on my hat i'm like i'm gonna here here i go i'm dance monkey put it on and like of course it's like it it just fits around the crown of my

head and they're like oh wow your head is really big i'm like yeah i've been trying to tell you that for 10 minutes thanks for putting me through the test though i appreciate it just take a trash can or i'm sorry a barrel put it on your head i like that transition sir you know we got a lot going on on the show today i i am i'm in mid conversation with chris johnston to bring him on uh today's the special anniversary of something particularly funny uh chris was there for and he's going to tell the story about that if we can get him on he's obviously uh working right now so So, you know, Chris, if not, we'll get him next week. But this is a really, really good story,

and we definitely wanted to come on and tell and maybe talk a little bit about Leafs camp as well. We will talk about the World Juniors. Like, so much to get through. And, of course, a little bit of a season preview in the next couple of weeks. Obviously, we're going to hit a couple divisions today and then a couple divisions next week

as we kind of get, you know, countdown to the NHL season starting. And also Pierre-Luc Dubois and Patrick Laine. And the Panthers are allowing fans in this year as well. So there's lots to talk about, starting with the World Junior Championships. Obviously, you know, I... The U.S. cheated. Well, they didn't.

Stop the count. It's a... It's funny. You never want to be the really good team that hasn't faced some sort of adversity. Like, I would rather be on a team with one loss than zero. does that make sense yes i know what you mean i know what you mean and so canada it was funny there was a lot of talk going into this game and this i cannot stand this kind of talk because they hadn't won anything yet but the talk was this could be one of the greatest canadian

teams of all time with an enormous asterisk that they have to win gold right and and so the first of all for me the conversation can't begin until they've at least faced one test and if you watched any of the games they didn't face a test not a single team was that good uh against them and i mean russia beat the united states but obviously uh russia was not not great against canada so it's not really much of a test horrible against canada and horrible in the bronze medal game did you watch the bronze yeah oh no i didn't see the bronze that was sad was that they didn't want it they didn't want it the fins did slava fatisov who was the head of the the russian sports federation Like basically the head of their sport basically said that none of the Russian team players could have made Team Canada.

And that's pretty, I mean, I know Europeans are known for being a little bit more frank and a little bit more emotional in their quotes. That's pretty intense and pretty telling. And I don't necessarily think I would agree with that. I think there's probably three or four guys on there that maybe would have been on Team Canada. But even three or four. Right. That's it? Russia?

Yeah. that's so that's wild that's why i don't know i said i think four and like even like that's that's wild for a country that's supposed to be that good does that speak to where canada's going or where russia's going i would say where russia's going because it's been like an even race right or roughly um they've sort of been neck and neck it's four or five countries canada's usually in there sometimes at the front sometimes trailing behind a little bit um but russia's taking a little bit of a step backwards uh developmentally um oh god i retweeted a a thread last night but basically there's i remember hearing a lot about this back when i covered the khl there's so much

politics in russian hockey and even more so than canada you know a lot of nepotism and stuff like that but it's um it's a lot of who you know it's a lot of who you know and a lot of who is good now and not who's going to be late uh good later it's not not a good emphasis on development um i heard i listened to part of the canada russia game in the car and they made a great point on the radio Yaroslav Askarov has had, I think, five coaches this year. Wow. This year. In a season where a lot of players haven't even played.

And this is the most hyped goalie prospect since, like, Carey Price. And he looked terrible. He did. He did. You're allowed to have a bad game. You're allowed to have a bad game. You look terrible versus Canada. Yeah, he was okay in the bronze game.

He was okay. He's a weird. He's a very. He's not an aesthetically pleasing goalie to watch. He's really jittery on his feet and everything. Also the right-handed. I used to be used to that. That's so weird, right?

When I was younger, but now no one does it. Yeah, it's really weird. Yeah, so Canada, Russia, there's no real challenge for Canada. And that was my big problem going into this game was like, okay, so we're going to call this one of the best Canadian teams of all time because they've had no challenge. And it's not that they weren't very, very good. And maybe the reason they had, quote, unquote, no challenger

is because they were so good. But let's be honest, they got the luck of the draw on that one. They got an easier round rob in the United States that they just did yeah and then you um and you look at the way the United States came out especially in the first period of this game I felt like I was watching another team with a leaf on their sweater the the Canada it was watching the Maple Leafs the it's just the the United States came out and they set the tone and that was it it was sort of like they they you know Canada came back at the end as the Leafs often try to do but it's that first 10 minutes that really kind of set

them up i think what okay so what i was talking about in my videos is identity so when you play the fins what do you expect well skill a lot of skill and and good defensive two-way players that kind of thing right for me it's annoying players bunch of annoying koi booze yeah they're not going to give up yeah uh russian skilled uh canadians kind of hard knocks heavier which i thought was the identity of this team the states over the last few years to me have developed this identity as the fastest team in hockey and they just canada was not ready for it they hadn't faced anything like it uh they couldn't get anything going they couldn't get they couldn't get out of their own zone even when they had the puck um and they never really figured it out until the states

sort of got back on their heels heels a little bit a little bit in the final 10 minutes that's that's when spencer knight was actually tested right and if you give a goalie who's that good only half a period's worth of dangerous looking shots i mean you're really leaving a lot up the chance you are 100 you play that game again canada might win but but you play it once that's the tournament and yeah and they hit a post too at the end but even then you know are you convinced even if that goes in right and you're gonna hit posts in the game that's what happens and like That went in if Kirby Dykes play, you know what I mean? Like it's sort of, it's, it's a, it's, there's a lot of there's a lot of

what about is I'm going on with Canadian fans right now. It's almost embarrassing. Like on Twitter, don't play that game. Don't do that. It's such a waste of time. Great way in United States. You, we weren't even playing our best players. Yeah.

They didn't have Nick Robertson. Exactly. Like, and you can do that every year, every year, every year. They didn't have or Lafrenier. Yeah. But, but they didn't know Robertson. it's the best that you can put out on the ice at that moment yeah that's what it's about and if canada is this deep and then then we should be winning and and obviously the united states have

put together a really really tough program to play against my question is um is this canadian team as good as we thought they were going in meaning that there was a lot made about how good they are are they actually that good even though they lost the game my thing with the team was that the americans showed up with the attitude it took to win uh winner take all gold medal game like what i saw from trevor like pre-game is what you want to see from the canadians you know you want you want the guys to come in with all the confidence in the world and know that they're gonna they're gonna take it and that's what it felt like the americans had going in they had the nobody believes in us also they had the we're going to dominate these trash can canadians

you know and by the way it reminded me of can i just say quickly steve 10 out of 10 troll job 10 out of 10 like they took a picture with the trash can beautiful yeah well we'll talk about that because supposedly they walked they walked it back after but coming in that's that's the energy they had that was that was going behind them and that's that's what you want to see from the canadian kids and i feel like they didn't have that so they can't be regarded as this great team if they don't do it at the gold medal game i think that's that's it point blank right the state's confidence going in reminded me so much of the russians in 2011 i think it was because 20 yeah 2011 when they beat canada usa yeah yeah so canada's up three nothing heading into the third

i'm sitting behind zach cassian's family we're talking about like oh you know so when are you gonna go down and take a picture with them and stuff like that after the game um but russia scores to make a 3-1 and we all go oh okay okay it's fine they're still up to russia gets another one quick i can't remember if it was kuznetsov or tarasenko but they literally are skating by canada's bench taunting them like bro you're losing but that was the energy they had and then it was bang bang bang canada never even had a shot after that never had a shot not even close and you know why the state sort of came in because it's amazing no and and they're 18 like yeah yes even you're you're a dick to people like it's so much it's so much more powerful

because you're 18 yeah you genuinely don't care you know yeah if i was that good at anything when i was 18 i'd have i'd have been that too yeah i wasn't yeah jesse do you mind sending jesse just this is a show note but do you mind sending chris johnston our resume link because he's ready to rock and roll whenever we are so you might be sending that to you want to do the trash cans or you want to let's do the trash cans and we'll bring chris on so they they take a picture with this trash bin that has the team canada logo on it and after the game they said no no it's it's actually our team motto one barrel at a time to which most of the internet responded bullshit yeah uh even i want to say it was greg wischinski's like they're good at hockey not so good at making

it things on the spot so then i got texts this morning though or text tweets apparently it is a saying but i got a great response that is it's a great saying it's a great sentiment it's basically take the tournament one shift at a time don't don't look at the whole tournament just win each shift right so it's a great sentiment but then they admit it they're like the optics are horrible because yeah even if if you're if it means the world to you and you're like it's about this barrel one barrel at a time you get on the ice bro it looks like you slapped team canada the logo on a trash can it's not like they couldn't had a barrel shipped in from amazon like they could uh you know they could have got a barrel they just didn't and and i like a wooden barrel

yeah like a pirate yeah 100 they could have dropped at the arena for them yeah but they had this plastic like rain thing it's i don't know whatever i think i think it's kind of cool and i'll tell you why just because there's no way that these two teams ever go head to head as they're constructed ever again so it's the heartbreaking thing for these kids eh well but that's what i love about it is that it's sort of remember how like and i hate to bring this up this way but don cherry used to be like don't embarrass your opponent blah blah blah something i don't get in hockey at all embarrass the hell out of your opponent if they're playing like shit make them feel it and then be ready to play them the next time when they try to come after you it's like oh

you know back off the gas pedal we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings except for when we punch their brains out it's it's such a bizarre hockey thing i think the americans played it perfectly but you know put the put the hockey canada logo on a trash can bring it on the ice take a picture with that you're with your your gold medals and everything like that and you never have to play them again there is no redemption no even like connor mcmichael in a few years is going to be lining up you know against trevor zegras in the nhl yeah and you know zegras is gonna be able to hold that over him until mcmichael finds something else even if we if he finds something else hey i want a cup you haven't yeah well gold medal they're a trash bag one of the biggest winners

out of the whole gold medal game was the florida panthers because that was both their goalie prospects that's like how wild is that how bad does the Bobrovsky contract oh yeah you got these two guys just waiting there and then you got Bobrovsky but they could be unnecessary you could be you could be one good and two bad Bobrovsky seasons away from that right oh yeah because remember he's hot one year and he's awful the next that's the rules he'll be LTIR'd within four years watch right right 100% in two of those years will be Vezna's and the other two will be awful himself right out of the league and welcoming on here very soon we just see his uh we're seeing his camera pop up oh look who it is outside the leafs practice arena that he's not allowed in

because he's a security risk there is there's things happening in here we're covering a training cap i'm gonna get my car it's gonna be a little bit uh cooler warmer rather yeah i would imagine i would imagine so uh strangely enough uh so chris has got to go to the practice area to shoot his hits for sports net but chris you are not allowed in which i think is pretty rare isn't it yeah the leafs uh at least the start training camp are one of seven teams where there there wasn't uh local allowances to have reporters in so 24 teams reporters are in right now watching practice and covering it as normal and here in ontario the leafs and the senators aren't able to do it because the provincial lockdown is preventing that.

So in Florida, you get to breathe on all the players. Yeah. Because they're just like, we don't care. Yeah, Texas. You know, basically all the places that are allowed to have fans at the start of the season, you know, a lot of those governments aren't as concerned about this stuff. We've heard about the Panthers being allowed,

but do you know who else is allowed to have fans right away? yeah i i think nashville is planning to the short answer is i don't know 100 i think nashville and vegas are able to pretty soon if not off the beginning uh i expect tampa will because they've been having about 3 000 fans at the roster games played out of amelie arena and i don't know if there'll be many more beyond that i mean initially it's not going to be a lot but you know the hope from the nhl is you don't have the the playoffs starting till may so they go through may june and into july uh vaccines get rolled out maybe these lockdowns stop and and there'll be more and more as the season goes along um chris we we did want to bring you on to there's a story i want

you to tell and i don't think steve knows the anniversary of what today is but it's a very special anniversary we'll get to that in a second because this is going to be a great story but i i do want to know you know what your initial thoughts on training camp are with the Leafs given given the access that you guys have had I'm not even sure if they're streaming anything um and you know the question periods what have you what have you found out what's been surprising and what's been kind of routine I think the biggest surprise probably to start camp is the fact that Travis Dermott is outside the Leafs top six at this point and you know the one thing the one thing i haven't been able to glean entirely is is that just is you know are they trying to light a

fire on him a little bit you know have him compete for his job or you know is he really in danger of not playing many games this season i think it's it's too soon to say and let's face it we can get all bent out of shape about this line or that line but this is a sport that tends to include a lot of injuries at the best of times there's even more uncertainty this year with covid you know we've seen the other sports uh you know teams have had to deal with whether it's the nfl or even the nba some positive tests and things of that nature so you know i i don't know how this is going to shake out but i'd say that's the biggest surprise that you know if if game one was today it doesn't look like travis would be addressing for that game just because he played all 56 games he was healthy in

last year um you know beyond that the joe thornton on the top line news made some waves that that's kind of interesting um and i just get the feeling in general there's maybe a bit of a different vibe from Sheldon Keefe. I mean, it was a bit of a kumbaya kind of deal when he took over from Mike Babcock, you know, back in November 2019. You know, the team was in a tough spot at that time. He pumped music in their practices and had all these skill sessions, whereas it sounds like this has far been more like what you might expect

from an old-school training camp, lots of drills without pucks, lots of skating and conditioning, and, you know, maybe a little bit of a tougher edge from the head coach than we saw in his first half season here in Toronto. I mean I didn't cover the Marlies a ton but like that's what I expected out of Sheldon Keefe he was kind of prickly you know so this this to me is just a return to normalcy yeah and I think you know what's interesting is he said that he just felt like he this wasn't even an option for him when he took over the Leafs he said you know the energy and morale

around the team was low he felt like he had to kind of pump them up and you know not in motivational speech sort of way but I think you know try to bring in some some positive flow I guess in the work situation for his players so you know this is a chance for him I think to put a different spin on things you know obviously it's a different team too they've added you know six new faces since the the loss to Columbus and so it's a bit of a different looking team and he had a role in in you know helping lure those free agents here and what have you so you know it's there definitely is a different vibe and it's just it's it's tougher for me to put my finger on it compared to normal just because I haven't been able to watch the skates and get the same feel

for for how things are going that's got to be tough as a reporter to to not even be able to see it it is but i mean if that's my sacrifice in a pandemic then i'm living a pretty good life you know what i'm saying like fair enough like we there's lots of people out there doing stuff and and and that is much different than what's normal and so you know i don't want to come off the wrong way so i'm complaining because i certainly understand why this is the way it is look it's not even in the nhl's hands or the leafs hands i mean the government's setting which stores can be open and which ones can and which workplaces can be open under what conditions and right now those conditions don't allow the media to be in um I do want to ask you uh about there

is a quote that Sheldon Keefe said that he hopes this two-week period will be the hardest of the season um do you think that the Leafs do you sense any I mean it's it's hard but you talk to people every day and I guess you can get a sense of motivation and I like we we talked at the end the last season which was a few months ago um about you know how mitch marner came into last season kind of feeling a little bit off new contract but a lot of you know some bitter feelings i would say uh surprise on his end about you know uh how leaf fans reacted to what was going on this or that past summer and and the darren ferris negotiations and all of that um do you get the sense that everybody's sort of like okay contract stuff's over for the next two

two three years um the core is here uh we're ready to go or is it just sort of like business as usual no i i think everyone understands it's a pretty unique opportunity because you know obviously there's lots of hype around the canadian division itself but let's extrapolate that one further one of the seven canadian teams is going to play in the conference final you know that's guaranteed as of today and i think you know the the bookmakers you know people that do the the statistical analysis and i think even the leafs themselves believe they're the team to beat in the division and so i'm not going to sit here before games are played and say the leafs are you know there's a clear path to the conference final for them but look there's there's this is a really

good opportunity i mean they had boston and tampa in their division the last three years you know where the leafs were on the rise but those were two of the top five teams in the league each of those years basically and you know boston could have won the cup two years ago they got the game seven and tampa wanted in the bubble so you know they had to go through two pretty formidable opponents and it's not to say that this the north division is full of soft touches by any means obviously there's star players right across this division i think there's there's lots of reason for optimism in many of the canadian markets but you know i think the leafs understand a that just it's getting late early here it's time to that they have a playoff run it's time that they

become what they're supposed to become a and b that this is such a unique season a great opportunity for them i mean most of the team has been skating here for two months i mean this is i'm only staking at the parking lot because it's training camp officially but you know most of the guys most of the guys have been here and so i i get the feeling there is a different vibe around all of this because look if this year doesn't go well i i think the pressure for change will be hide i'm not saying everyone gets traded out of town everyone gets fired but you know this is this is all they got so to speak and so you know i i don't know that anyone really has to tell them what it means i think that they understand intuitively that there's a lot riding

on the next 56 games plus however they play after that okay now it's story time chris because i'm dying to know your time okay i want to ask you more questions but i'm dying to know yeah we'll We'll bug you again, Chris. I know that there'll be lots to talk about in the coming weeks. But in the meantime, a friend of the show, Julian McKenzie out of Montreal, tweeted that today is the anniversary of one special particular interview. It also coincides with a coach being let go six years ago. Can you speak to the particular exchange I'm talking about and the famous picture where you're actually in it? And we we've never asked you about this, but we should have.

oh okay there's there's a lot to unpack here first of all how does julian know that this was the anniversary i don't know i don't know is it like the day you get married or like when your partner has a birthday and you got to remember the date like how how he had any idea that this was the anniversary of that i i would love to know maybe that's the thing he remembers most about randy carlisle being fired right i think randy was fired maybe a couple days or a day before or maybe it was today but certainly i remember very well it's actually in the building that i'm sitting outside of and tensions were very high that season around the team i mean we don't have to go through the the nine to two nashville stuff you know i remember one of the

players was really mad they played a game in buffalo that same week and they they said a leaf fan actually threw a beer onto the bench during the game in buffalo oh but they were just they were just annoyed that like that one of their own fans is tossing beer at them during a game like it's kind of insane right so yeah yeah and so naturally whenever you're covering a good team or sorry a big team like the leafs and there's lots of media not a good team at that point well they weren't a good team correction yeah that's the point but when you're covering a team where there's a lot of interest in what they're doing and what they're doing isn't going well and there's lots of media it gets very tense and so on this particular day six years ago

uh dave festruck a columnist for the toronto star still covers the team and phil kessel had some words in the dressing room and awkwardly and it's so awkward if you watch the video i was literally between them like physically so what did dave ask that prompted phil's answer oh i should have watched the scrum before story time well i know the spirit i know the spirit of the question was about paraphrase wasn't it about like getting coaches fired basically yeah basically inferred that he might be uncoachable and what did he have to say about that this guy's such an idiot or something like that this guy's such an idiot right here and it was so tense like i wasn't between them because i was breaking up a fight i just happened

to be standing at the wrong place i mean i'm not the biggest guy so usually in those big scrums i got to be close to the player because to get my microphone in right i also like asking questions so i don't like being behind all the cameras but i got caught right between these two and there's some hilarious pictures like in modern day times that would have been a meme in a minute yes just we just weren't quite there six years ago so thankfully i was mostly spared that except for julian uh has reintroduced it to the world you guys want me to play it here yeah play it play sure can i see it uh no i can't have it up on screen but i can just play the audio you got after we got it we'll put the link in uh in the in the youtube link so you guys can see it and

you can see chris a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves um i'm embarrassed for them you know you know what i'm i'm disappointed well there's been suggestions with the new organization you're a difficult guy to coach is there any to that i don't think so you know that's a weird question for you to ask. So on a day like that, you know, you're coaching. You're the best player on the team, and if the coaches got fired. You think it's my fault? Is that what you're saying?

Is that what you're saying? People are saying that you're difficult to coach. Is that what you're saying? I'm asking a question. Are you difficult to coach, do you think? I don't think so. Okay. I play, hey?

Thanks, Bill. This guy's such an idiot here. He's always been like this, yeah. Yeah. It's not me saying it's not me. Yeah. How many bad articles have you had? I don't see many of these guys disrespecting players like you are.

You know, I've never seen someone disrespect players in this organization. I didn't know it went on this long, too. Oh, yeah, because Phil was walking to the back, like where the players go to change and that, and he was still having the words as he was walking out. So what do you do in that situation? Do you, like, does anyone say anything to Dave? Does anyone say anything to Phil?

Or do you just kind of pile out and go, okay, well, I guess that happened? Well, in this case, Phil was gone. like we never and we who knows we might not have talked to him for six weeks after that like literally you know he wasn't that quotable around the team so we didn't see him a lot I'm sure we talked to Dave this feels like a lifetime ago I mean that's what's kind of hilarious and it's only six years you know six years in your life passes relatively quick especially as you get older but six years around a sports team like all the personnel changes the coach changes twice you know we're on two gms since then like it's crazy how how much warp speed gets applied in the pro

sports context but you know look the truth is is that kind of thing and now that one's really notable because it was captured it was a big day it went everywhere but that sort of exchange used to happen when i was a younger reporter way more than it does now nowadays i mean i just maybe because i've been around the leafs a lot and they've they've been pretty good but there just hasn't been that many tense exchanges in most of the six years since but at that particular point in time there was there was a number of tough scrums like that one and for anybody that's a leaf fan that is bemoaning the fact and i'm one of them that that you know they haven't won a round since i was in grade eight uh grade 10 no grade eight man grade eight 2002 2004 they went around

in 2000 oh they did win a round in 2004 that's right because it was philly philly was the one that knocked him out right sure we're Ottawa they won okay all right fair enough so 2007 Joe Neuendijk two right through Lilleam oh the beach balls that was so good uh if only we'd known that was it uh but the the long and short of it is you know Nick Robertson hadn't even played hockey yet by that point it was half our lives ago Adam 100 it's crazy but you know what it's amazing how much at least we don't have that going on we've had a lot of heartbreak since but at least in the past six years we've moved past that and chris uh if you were to if you were to cap it right now who is the leafs biggest challenger and then we'll let you go in the uh in the canadian division

which which fan bases do i want to piss off most edmonton for sure well i i actually think montreal might be sneaky good this year honestly uh but i would say the number two challenger to the leafs is edmonton yeah i actually i actually do think it's edmonton And, look, every team has flaws in this division. And so that's what's sort of interesting. All the teams are kind of relatively unproven. And it's a weird year, 56 games, and you only play the six teams that you're competing for playoff spot against.

I mean, what a strange season. I just don't like Vancouver's offseason in a lot of ways. You know, adding Nate Schmidt, I assume they're going to get Hamannik signed, who's in camp on a tryout right now. You know, that does help. But I just think losing Markstrom could be really big for them. They have a lot of money tied up in their bottom six, and they don't have a lot of room to maneuver.

You know, Calgary is probably lurking in the weeds a little bit, especially if Markstrom plays well for the Flames. You know, Winnipeg, I'm not sure about their blue line and just some of the natural chaos that goes on with, like, the Line A and Jack Roslevic trade talks. That's why I think Montreal is kind of lurking in the weeds because they have a bit of a mature team, but they have a couple of young centers in Suzuki and Kotkaniemi

that could make or break their season. I'd like the Josh Anderson acquisition. I don't know if I like the seven-year contract that came with it, but getting him on their team this season I think is going to improve them. This is going to be so much fun. So I didn't give you a great answer, but I'm going to stick with Edmonton, but I'm not saying it with a whole lot of conviction because I can just as easily make a case for four of the other teams.

I said Edmonton in my video yesterday. They asked me to predict the whole season. Just because – like Montreal, I think they improved this offseason. They had the nice little playoff win against Pittsburgh. They went in 24. I'm counting it, but like they went in 24. And they didn't win a playoff round. They won a play-in round, right?

Yeah. Like they looked good against Philly. Like whatever. The Leafs can look good against the team and lose in a playoff series. I've seen it. Yeah, they looked good against Boston. I've seen it four times. Yeah.

Like, yeah. Yeah, 100%. Okay. All right, fair enough. Well, listen, Chris, I know that you've got to get back to work, and we've already taken up too much of your time, but thank you for coming on and celebrating the sixth anniversary

of Dave Feschuk v. Phil Kessel. My God, what a world. I mean, I don't know how you guys view this. You're sort of more fans in this context, but I kind of wish there was a bit more of that sometimes. I don't know why. I'm not necessarily a confrontational guy, but it's all entertainment, right?

I find the whole thing funny. I bet Phil would laugh about it now, too, if you had him on. Yeah, I think he probably would. He probably would. He's probably, he's kind of moved on and won a couple of Stanley Cups since. So I think he's okay.

This is a guy who put hot dogs in the cup on his cup day because of that whole Steve Simmons article. So, I mean, like, it's clear Phil can laugh at himself under the right circumstances. Absolutely. Absolutely. Chris Johnson, our favorite and the fourth member of the show.

Thank you for coming on for the first episode of 2021, sir. Love it. Be well. Enjoy the season, everyone. Thanks, buddy. See you, sir. See you, man. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement

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Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle total registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. so uh that is uh i i had when i saw it come up steve and i didn't this is why i didn't i didn't tell steve about this what we were doing beforehand because i wanted him to be you know to be a little surprised by it i was um i it's amazing how much and how little can happen in six years do you know what i mean by what like you think about six years ago that phil kessel thing still feels like yesterday to me no it feels it's weird it feels like a lifetime ago and i remember everything about it because we we talked about it on the show i'm pretty sure you and i spent new year's

eve together that year and the leafs won that night and i want to say it was over boston and they were good they looked all right like they weren't they still had all their flaws but like they were in a playoff position looked like they might make it again it was the leafs who i think they lost two or three straight and then they pulled the shoot um and i remember we this this bad luck that we have with news happening just after the show we had that like seven years ago six years ago even and right before we were about to start recording carlisle got fired and this was at your place we used to record in my spare bedroom which was four places ago for you yes minimum minimum might even be five who knows yeah and that bedroom uh recording in the winter

was great because it would get so bloody hot in the summer we made justin bourne melt adam that fan behind him i had a tower fan and he had we delayed the recording of the show we delayed the recording of the show by like 45 minutes because you had to put together yeah yeah that place was brittle because it was um it was 35 years old or something like that so it was really well built they used to make condos a lot better than they do now uh but the problem was it had an undersized air conditioner so while it was great and you couldn't hear anybody or anything through the walls it was amazing uh the air conditioner was was like super undersized and i would come home and for some reason my temperature gauges were in fahrenheit and it

would be 90 degrees inside 90 uh it was all windows it was all windows it was just it was hot you lived on an ant farm yeah a hundred percent and it was uh it was gonna be like five grand to fix the air conditioner to put a new one in i'm like i don't have five thousand dollars like where would i get five grand to do that so i guess i'm gonna be hot like i guess it's just gonna be five thousand dollars i will be hot for five grand for sure that's for a couple of weeks it's canada most of the time it's cold i uh the video i still remember the video i made when randy carlisle got extended um i'm pretty sure the thumbnail for the video is just me drinking straight out of a bottle of whiskey well and you remember when

they did that it was because they didn't want the uh the the kids to run the school right it was sort of like the they wanted to show these these guys i think it was lupo cadre for enough castle all those guys hey you're not gonna you're not gonna fire every coach that comes in here you're not gonna ron wilson this guy and uh i wondered uh i have heard since that the whole salute gate thing which i thought at the time was do you remember when they when they refused to salute the fans i thought that happened that season as well and i thought that that was a misrepresented situation meaning that i thought the Leafs were just like we're not feeling good let's not let's not do it uh apparently that was real and it was a shot across the bow at the fans and i've heard

that since from several reporters were like oh no they meant it and it's like imagine they were they were they were mad at the coach they're mad at each other they're mad at the fans they're yelling at each other on the power play and getting pissed off and it was just everything was bad and you look at the leafs logo from that year it was awful why did we like that logo for so long for several decades that real thing it was an that's an ugly logo yes it is anyway sorry and i I've had it on every thing I owned for many years. Okay, which Leafs moment from that era-ish is the most infamous? Waffles on the ice, Toastergate, or Phil Kessel hot dogs?

If you're ranking three, though. What's one, two, and three? Okay, so Wafflegate, I think, is most remembered by fans of other Canadian teams because it's like their go-to chirp before zamboni driver it was all about waffles and i'm like not my dog not no not about no you're i've never put that together wow um it's like me naming naming iggy airs airsy or something like that but um no like it was so long ago that you know that famous picture of uh the green men in vancouver throwing the waffles at the leaf who's in the penalty box the leaf in the penalty box is tim brent like that's how long ago it was it was

forever ago but the hot dog thing was just this phenomenon and it was after kessel was traded that simmons wrote that article and then it caused the pension plan puppets to back when they were in their more cantankerous days boy were they that was crazy they did like this whole investigative thing like he that is impossible because we know that phil kessel lives here and there was no hot dog stand near there he would have had to walk several kilometers and you're telling me phil kessel walked eight kilometers to go get a hot dog every day justin bourne who was on that with us that that time said big fucking deal like he eats a hot dog so what they burn like 8 000 calories a day who cares like really who cares and and so i remember i remember this next article

was Michael Phelps eats an entire pizza. Burns it in two laps. Is shaped like a flying squirrel. The article on him eating so much pasta just to get enough carbs to burn off.

Right. That's the infamous Michael Phelps story. Like if you ate what Michael Phelps ate, you'd be sick. You'd be sick. It's crazy.

I do want to say too, I lived in a building adjacent to where Phil Kessel lived back in the day. So, and the only reason I know this is because our parking garages, by the way, I was in the extremely not wealthy section. I was in a one bedroom, 300 square foot apartment that the only room there was in, sorry, it wasn't a one bedroom. It was a bachelor. The only room there was in the apartment was the bathroom. So that's the only other walled off area. Everything

else was just, it was, here's the stove. You're sleeping beside it on your bed. But Phil Kessel drove in one night and i i think it was like a porsche suv or something like that and i saw the outline of his head and i knew it was him and i was like that's phil kessel and uh and then i looked up when because i'm nerdy like this when uh his apartment went on sale there was a bunch of articles published about it and i was like it is in that building and i felt really good i was like i knew i saw him i knew it that's that's my phil kessel story that's that's great man thank you appreciate that you you met him once right you met him at the all-star game in columbus yeah justin right and he had already blocked me on twitter and he had no idea who i was

he had absolutely no idea and he was very nice he was very nice and we took a picture and it was great that's great does he still have you blocked he let me check he must uh you guys have yet to answer my question what is it i just wanted you to rank those three hot dogs oh hot dogs hot dog number one yeah oh number one the other two other two were what uh waffle gate and i'm throwing the waffle and uh the toaster okay so i'm gonna say waffle three toaster two because the toaster is substantial like how do you get a toaster into an arena uh like waffles i can understand you can sneak that into your pants like that's easy well the toaster is uh carlisle's right oh man oh that was a i thought someone threw a toaster on this no no oh yeah the toast no the toaster thing's

just hilarious the good one randy i can't even find a castle yeah number two bozak is bozy 42 right yeah yeah i can't even find bill was p p kessel 81 for a long time maybe he deleted his twitter p kessel yeah i doubt he's tweeting much these days so p kessel yeah i'm still blocked that's so great well listen uh we do have to get on to some other things here although we've had a ton uh in that first hour there with with chris johnson um i do want to do a quick shout out Cause we were in world juniors talk Trevor's egress with that tournament tournament, MVP, seven goals and 11 assists. Pretty amazing. And although I want to throw this out there,

this is a tweet that was sent to me by a podcast listener, Jamie, but it's written by Steven at D T S B underscore nine, eight defenseman in the Maple Leafs organization, KHL D man of the year, 2020 OHL D man of the year, 2020 QMJHL finalist, D man of the year, 2020 world junior championship, best D man, 2020 world, junior championship best d-man 2021 oh muzzin riley and bode as well so that's letnan hoffenmeyer villeneuve sandin and namia it's namia right uh nyamala nyamala sorry excuse me i've heard nimala nyamala um i think it's nyamala nyamala okay i defer to you on that because you know

finnish name's much better than i do but pretty great future looks good oh yeah and i mean if you look at the um let me let me bring up the kevin pipetti tweet so you know being named who's that who's that loser something right no so being named the best defenseman at the world junior like so what everyone's always like you know it's it's seven games or whatever it's a small sample size it doesn't mean anything that that's often the case but best defenseman it's a very good group uh since 2008 uh 2008 doughty carlson petrangelo ryan ellis brandon gormley we played in the nhl though a bit of a bust um jacob truba rasmus ristolainen uh gavrikov i forget his first name zach warensky thomas shabbat rasmus dalin alexander romanov who habs fans are drooling over

Rasmus Sandin last year and Toby Niemela this year it's a good list man it's they're very very very very likely to have a long NHL career if not be a star if you're named the best defenseman in this tournament that's pretty great yeah that's pretty great not bad eh not bad not bad for team that really hasn't had a first round pick either right I mean well they did this year thankfully but they you know they've they traded some guys away or they've been low first rounders i mean this is this is like sandin was practically a second basically yeah i mean like what is it after born said what's the difference between what's the big freaking difference between 20 and 40 it's basically after 15 it's the the difference between the 16th pick and a seventh

it's it's not huge not huge yeah devin levi was the seventh round pick this year wow he he says he's not a chl player he's a cchl player i think that's canadian junior a i'm not totally sure i love that um did you see the alex colorn tweet by the way about devin levi no what he said oh he needs to take shots on him yeah when he was 14 and somehow he has a picture of it um and i told a story in a video i want to say i did after the russian game and i'll tell i'll tell it here so i went to the naming of the canadian world junior team i think it was 2012 in calgary um and i was setting up for an interview i think it was with brendan gallagher who's on that team mark shifley and i want to say brayden shin and there was a guy who i was there

with for nike he was a former ohl player i think he had a cup of coffee in pro hockey and he would work out with his junior b team and then he realizes one of the players being named a team canada was one of the junior beat players who he worked out with and it was tanner pearson that's and he goes he literally goes like weren't you on that junior b team like what happened and pearson's response was basically just i don't know i got better i just i love that story i love that because he went from i want to say he went from junior b to 40 points in the ohl as like a 19 year old undrafted and then 37 goals like 90 something points he had such a good first half of his 20 year old season that canada was like i guess we

gotta invite him yeah now he's got like several 20 goal seasons under his belt uh you know hundreds of nhl games over 100 nhl goals like never give up kids pretty great now uh we've got to get into a couple of things so first off we do want to do a couple previews today and then a couple previews next episode uh discussing the new alignment of the nhl and what our predictions for each team in that new alignment will be but before we get to that we need to talk about the fact that the new alignment as in the north division west division central division and east division all have sponsors all of them pretty crazy what's next they're gonna rename the teams it's pretty funny to see the reaction to this because first off you got to understand

more 15 or more of nhl teams if you don't know this uh in a good year like say 2019 okay that was the last good year no uh for revenue 15 plus teams not only do they not make a dollar would not make it without equalization payments would not make it without equalization to the shock of no one so when yeah so when they lose money free rev share yes yes when brian burke talks about that gary betman's done a great job helping this league survive he's not wrong he's absolutely correct and from a revenue perspective you can talk about players deserving more whatever salary cap all those things and i would agree with you on a lot of those things the revenue share in this league is keeping it afloat because it's a gate driven league and

frankly outside a gate in a lot of markets the sponsorship dollars just are not there So the bigger teams, the teams that garner more attention are helping to pay for the smaller teams. And that's okay because we're trying to develop this sport elsewhere. We like that idea. Now, there are probably 10 teams who even after revenue share lose money. So some teams will break even with the rev share. Other teams will just flat out lose money anyway. And there are Canadian teams in that.

I think even the Jets are $25, $30 million in the hole every year, but they're owned by one of the top 50 richest families in the world, so it doesn't matter. They can just light that money on fire. Who cares? But the reality is not great in the best of times for a lot of these teams. These are not profitable franchises in a lot of cases. There might be good tax havens. There might be good things, but the reality is revenue is not there the way it needs to be. And this doesn't mean that the league isn't profitable.

No, that doesn't mean that at all. these leagues make billions and billions of dollars, but the individual teams on the lower ends are just burning cash. And billionaires don't hate to lose money on some of their assets because it shields their money. It's not the worst thing in the world. The equity goes up, they lose money every year, but the equity of the team goes up. Now, getting out of that for a second, if you have an issue with the NHL selling sponsorships on their division, knowing what I just told you really you gotta understand the necessary evil and by the way everybody even calling this a necessary evil it's not a necessary evil it's not evil no it is necessary but they're

just what what part of this of the people like at least it's not the smith division division being besmirched well you know con smith did made money that's what con smith's whole thing was if you actually go into the history of con smith he had no money he got investors he brought them in and he saved the leafs and that's amazing and super cool but con smith's whole thing was how do we make this profitable con smith were alive today he'd be totally for this and that is that is something that we need to discuss because the the outrage that people have about honda daring to sponsor a division scotia bank daring to sponsor the canadian division why do you care it doesn't change anything and the helmet adds adam oh how will i know who i'm cheering for if i can't see

the number on their helmet the flames i want to say it's the flames and the least both have scotia it's gonna be freaking pandemonium how am i supposed to know they're both just s's they're just different colored s's flying around the ice and i have no idea what's going on and you know what the problem steve already existed the flames and leafs logos were they're already so similar I'm always like whoa why do you think I like Jerome McGinley so much you thought he was a leaf half my childhood I thought he was a leaf and then he'd go to the Olympics and actually

wear one and it's like Jerome what are you doing how am I supposed to know how am I supposed to understand what is happening Jerome seven names or whatever it is look up his Wikipedia he's got seven names the argument you hear

so often is where does it stop right that's not an argument by the way that's not a valid argument that's you yelling somebody please think of the children yes but logic and reasoning that's called a what is it the slumping the sleeping the slope or something the slope argument whatever slippery slope not a valid argument not a valid argument where does it stop i don't know so where does it stop so you got advertisements on helmets advertisements on the division so soon it's going to be advertisements on the team name and advertisements on the jerseys and blah blah okay so let's ask a

different question where does it start so okay you want to get you want to get rid of helmet ads and you want to get rid of the division names let's go a step further let's take away scotiabank arena and we just call it Toronto building. Iceplex. Iceplex. No. Because Plex is too close to Cineplex. Oh. And that's another

corporation. Corporations are bad. Alright? So then why not? We don't have the arena names. What? Let's take out commercials. I want to watch the games with other commercials. Boards? You gotta do the boards? Yeah, I want the white boards back.

Give me the white boards. It really bothers me when I pro line up on there very upsetting takes away from the game it's it's all like listen i'm gonna like we're gonna sound like bootleggers here like he's saying all this but no we're not like dude they gotta they gotta make money what do you what do you how do you think this works yeah this is how the sausage is made guys eat it or don't but it's what's on your plate well and and the thing is is that everybody who's upset about and i think it was was it i forget who it was in leaf's twitter and I apologize for ripping this off. I think it was, oh God, I can't remember.

Anyway, one of Leaf's vaunted Twitter, one of the best followers on Leaf's Twitter tweeted out about the fact that, oh, you're upset about advertising on jerseys and then puts the Austin Matthews crest and the Adidas logo above it, which is on every jersey. Every jersey has an Adidas logo on it.

And you're upset about advertising? So where does it stop? Where does it stop? Where does it stop? Like, listen, I think we can all agree that the Spengler cup looks a little ridiculous. You just put stickers on you. There you go. So what?

You literally look like a parent who just gave up and let their kid put dollar store stickers all over your jersey. Like, listen, I understand that they're, yeah, maybe we should put a couple barriers up. You don't want to look like a dictator from, you know, from a cartoon. You know what I mean? It looks like they have a bunch of medals just on the side of their jersey. There's no NHL bylaw officer who's going to come and arrest you if you don't call it the Honda East Division or whatever it is. They just have to do it on the broadcast.

It doesn't affect anything. Yeah, that's because they're broadcast partners. Yes. I don't know. I still, you know what? It does remind me of that time. I did three days in prison for calling it Air Canada Center after it clearly was not that anymore.

Remember when people were upset? i remember when when the scotia bank deal was signed people were like but air canada center like that's just a classic name no it's not it was a sponsor it's a sponsor it's it's an airline that sponsored a building that's that upset me so much because i didn't understand why people care like whenever i walk into pearson airport i i shed a tear because i'm just like god it's beautiful air canada oh those sponsor rights they really they really got me in the feels the best part was air canada didn't even shed a tear they were like they were like well listen you know we had a great run yeah let's go shout this yeah i mean it's what happens they're a bank they have more

money weird uh fans don't go oh this is bullshit they're like i'm gonna go to td garden watch the bruins fucking beat the leafs toronto dominion garden to you toronto dominion garden that's right with roger and phil i wouldn't i was wondering about this and i think this is actually like i wonder if the nhl itself the nhl brought to you by blank is up for sale like how much would you have to pay i'm like listen everybody's got a price you could have a human like chase bank and a norm or wells fargo one of those huge american banks come in and go listen we'll give you x amount of dollars but every time the nhl logo comes up so does ours i bet the nhl would sell that but one thing i think they should sell which is much

more likely is the playoffs as a whole or sell it round by round so the let's for argument's sake the scotia bank first round the honda conference finals one why not one thing one precedent that's already been set is the nba finals are brought to you by youtube this year so the nba finals brought to you by youtube and like every anything that came up it was like oh it's brought to you by i think it's youtube tv they're actually advertising so the nba finals brought to you by youtube tv so it's definitely a thing like it's been done if there's anything i've learned from the nba it's that the fans stopped watching as soon as that happened right nobody watched lebron nobody likes nobody likes the nba nobody there are no stars in the nba it makes no money

so no no it's ridiculous yeah it's ridiculous now so so putting that aside for a second it's not like north south east and west are such great beautiful names either for the divisions i prefer honda and scotia bank at least they have some color to them we're going to start with the mass mutual nhl east division that includes oh i got it wrong boston buffalo new jersey new york islanders new york rangers philly pittsburgh and washington if you're gonna pick three teams to come out of this division guys three teams not four okay take four well because four is the playoffs right i know but three is just easier to remember but yeah four take four you're right well first just take four take four three it's four it's four okay um so i love this division

and i'm probably going to be doing a lot of outside of watching the canadian games this is probably the division i think i'll watch the most just because there's the most rivalries the most hatred there because it's essentially the metropolitan division yeah plus the bruins and sabers now the sabers most of those teams don't care about the bruins have played most of those teams in the playoffs in recent memory and it was not a good time because the bruins were involved philly pittsburgh in the conference final washington they had a at least one seven game series in there and you know what i didn't even realize until i started shooting my sportsnet video yesterday Zdeno Chara has to play the Bruins like nine times this year oh I think the

Bruins have to play Zdeno Chara nine times this year yes they do and I hope he treats them just as nice as he treats every other team get on a ladder and lick that there Brad that that'd be fun oh I can't wait to see that I can't wait to see that I'm sort of upset and this might sound terrible and maybe he would have never signed a deal here but wouldn't it have been great to see Zdeno in a Leafs jersey? No. No? You guys are wrong.

I want him cross-checking everyone. Let's go. Like, come on. Bring him in. Not everyone should be a Leaf. Oh, Zdeno should have. It was like Jager at the end of his career. Don't you want him to be a Leaf?

And I was like, no. There's still something. Okay, fair enough. So, okay. So let's make our way through here so we can make this a succinct YouTube clip, you guys, later on. This is very important.

we're going to the mass mutual east division your team choices are boston buffalo new jersey new york islanders new york rangers philly pittsburgh and washington who are the four teams you were picking to come out of that division starting with you jesse blake this is an easy one the islanders too hot to handle you can't sleep on the islanders coming off eastern conference finals uh birth last season they're only going to get better especially with matt martin re-signed for four years i believe in lou lamorello next up jesse your first mistake it was it's actually the duncan donuts eastern conference that's right that's paying matt martin's salary by the way so we're just calling that out there but but okay matt

martin by the way locked up to a five four-year deal 1.5 million per season and that'll bring him at the end of his career. Lou Lamorello has given Matt Martin eight years and $16 million. I don't understand. I even less understand GM of the year last year. Like I get it when he was winning cups, but the GM of the year thing did not make sense to me.

And also when you've got Matt Barzal sitting on the sidelines and you've got four and a half million in cap space, why are you signing Matt Martin? Prove a point or because you just legitimately think that's the right thing to do jesse your next choice um next up boston definitely see them still being a cup contender i don't think they'll go too far in the playoffs but i definitely think they're going to make it so we got the islanders we got boston we got up and coming philadelphia

flyers i have carter hart hot a hot uh stealing a couple games in there definitely bring them to the player playoffs say carter hart in boston steve go ahead kind of hot there it is sorry jesse have you also been watching bridgerton i might have checked it out yeah and then good man it's good show so we got new york we got boston we got philly and lastly the new york rangers i have pittsburgh missing the playoffs i got washington missing the playoffs i got new jersey and buffalo i think the rangers are going to surprise a lot of people they've made too many nice moves and having the first overall pick this past season having lafreniere on that team is definitely going to help i think it's going to jump start them and have them sneaking in as a

surprise team because there's always that surprise team that comes out of nowhere and my bet this year is that it's going to be new york steve who are your four teams i got i do have pittsburgh actually now eventually their playoff run is going to end eventually they're going to miss uh i just feel like they did so poorly in the bubble and even though i don't really agree with a lot of the moves they've been their off season like sydney crosby just has this ability to will his team um and evgeny malkin too so i just don't see them missing i got pittsburgh making it i have zidano chara's washington capitals making the playoffs as well another team that really disappointed in the bubble but they're gonna get there a bit of a different situation in net but

they're just again there's still too much skill there i think they're gonna be good um i have also the up-and-coming philadelphia flyers uh i had them go into the stanley cup final i was a little surprised to see they didn't do so hot in the second and a half round um but carter hart just another year better they're amazing and boston even though they took the hit of losing chara and losing krug both on the left um they have an identity and no matter who they plug into that roster they're gonna play like boston bruins the islanders i have on the outside because they're currently without their best player and until they get him back it's kind of an x factor and they lose thomas grice uh and the rangers i could easily see

them making it but i just feel like maybe one more year okay now i'm gonna sorry devils and uh sabers yeah so process of elimination is how i'm going to approach this division who are your 100 percent going to miss the playoffs buffalo new jersey 100 100 they're bad teams and i know buffalo sabers fans are excited and i know eric stall looks cool with his long hair um and yeah like he looks pretty badass it's wicked right it looks like a viking like cool man like i'm happy yeah i think my favorite interview from st louis great guy so but sorry buffalo does not have it when you compare it to what other teams in this division have um i also we also know new jersey stinks but they're trying to they're trying to turn it around it's a development year so be it

They're going to have goaltending, though. Yeah, sure. They still stand. Okay. Yeah. Now, who are your maybes? In this division? Who are your maybes in this division for the playoffs?

Because I'm going to say Islanders and Rangers are in the maybe discussion. And I put the Rangers in there because they're on the up, and I put the Islanders in there because they're on the down if Matt Barzell does not sign. As of this recording, he has not signed. so to me the islanders are not a playoff team this is a team that already struggled to score goals and i think they're on the down no matter what well they lost they lost haves for picks and didn't really replace them they're losing boy chuck as well um did they lose any green or no

they kept them thank god they kept them but i want to say didn't they replace thomas grice with cory schneider that's another guy well it is tough and and i wouldn't the one thing with the islanders is goaltenders do well there the trot system is good for goaltenders and they've got a brilliant goaltending coach this is the team that revived robin lander and simeon varlamov in consecutive years so you can't count them out right if your body's busted like what are you gonna do about that if yeah his his hips brutal and by the way oh they got elia sorokin the the guy from the KHL we okay so that's a pretty big difference over Corey Schneider but we still still don't know what he looks like in North America it does it is an it is a question mark

yes so I would say um for me as long as Barzal is not in the lineup the Islanders are not a playoff team it's not going to happen so from my vantage point right now the maybe that is the islanders no way now I also look at the Pittsburgh Penguins as a maybe now I lean them towards the playoffs as well because I don't think you ever bet against Sidney Crosby and Evgeny Malkin I'm wondering Tristan Jari has been very very good is Tristan Jari going to be enough is their defense going to be enough is he just there anymore re-entering that uh that equation yeah boy I really hope let me just say I really hope Kasperi Kapanen didn't blow it because supposedly he's got some sort of visa issue or whatever I don't know if it's his fault

or whatever but I've asked around and apparently team's not upset with him about it so I guess it's it's things do seem to happen around Kasperi Kapanen but this might not be one of those things that happened it's I mean it's a pandemic and there's continents involved What's ever happened to Kasperi Kapanen? I don't know. Oh, things just happen. The way he just happens to be there when they do. Nah, that's never happened.

It's quite cheeky. Right, yeah, and apparently he's a lot of fun. I'm not taking shots. Oh, totally. Some people are accident prone, am I right? But he's, yes. But we're talking about a guy who's got an opportunity to play with Sidney Crosby.

Yes. And let's say he's a week late to the season and whoever Crosby starts with is hot as a pistol. All of a sudden, you maybe never get that chance. Yeah, and you got to play with Gino. shit if maybe if you're lucky no oh come on if you're lucky they gave up a first round pick and hollander for him he's playing in the top six yeah yeah you're probably right they don't have anyone who else is going to take his spot jake gensel is even there anymore no gensel's

there no who am i think jason zucker who i forgot they completely that's right oh yeah i don't have hornquist anymore no more hornquist is gone yeah so so i'm gonna say buffalo new jersey islander not in. Pittsburgh's a maybe, and the New York Rangers are a maybe. Boston, Philly, and Washington, to me, are locks. I'm trying to decide between Pittsburgh and New York who I like the best. Pick your four. What is this?

I think based on this... List the rest of the teams, too. Oh, you're going to list New Jersey again, Adam? We're breaking down the divisions. I'm trying to talk about players. Break down the rest of them. I'm thinking that because Artemi Panarin is coming off an MVP caliber season,

then I'm going to go with the Rangers on this one i think they've got the goaltending i think they've got the young stars i think lafreniere is good for 40 points in 56 games i think the new the new york rangers are going to make it and i'm calling for the pittsburgh penguins not to i don't mind eating my words later on but i think the new york rangers are going to be scary good in a couple years i will say this with lafreniere um the more because people are uh releasing their models oh here's how many points we think this team is going to get or these players or whatever the least predictable are the guys who have not played nhl games yet right and lafreniere i think is maybe

the biggest x factor potentially in the league um because how do you properly calculate that he's never set foot in the nhl can i just say that those models are garbage you can say it i'm not whatever you want man okay that's how i feel like i don't i don't believe your computer is generating how how these guys are going to play together of course of a seat and you're guessing well obviously but it's like educated guess right okay but it's not based on anything yeah because there's no knowledge of the future like you're not a time machine i know they use information and educated guesses for the guys who have never played before but i just feel like those are the teams that always oh where did this come from what do you mean where did it come from

all the rookies but it's also how do you predict the leafs if half the roster is turned over right what is what is your computer going to say that how this line's going to play together how is Thornton going to play on the first line well you got to say something right and you got to say something and this is your opinion on the matter based on like the history and not hey this this computer says Thornton scored this many points over his career and this is how many points the Leafs are going to get I don't think anyone's model says Thornton on the first line is a good idea mine doesn't mine up here but who knows i've been wrong about nick robertson's afford in toronto every arrival is a statement and nothing says it better than this

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feeling you get when west jet welcomes you on board here's to west jetting since 96 travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years uh all right next division you guys ready no okay well you're gonna find a new way the discover nhl central division featuring the teams carolina chicago and columbus also dallas detroit florida nashville and tampa bay ah yes the central division featuring five eastern conference teams two of which touch the ocean the atlantic ocean yes yes yes but uh anyway long story short let's get into it jesse who are you picking a couple of them are super easy don't really need explanation tampa and dallas uh the stanley cup final i'm gonna pick those teams to return to the

playoffs uh next up we have the carolina hurricanes this podcast has been huge on the hurricanes for the last uh like half decade i'm so hot for the hurricanes man so hot for those hurricanes just spinning in there so i definitely think that they're going to make it back to the playoffs especially with that decor you can't um bet against those guys and last uh spot in the division is kind of the one that's up in the air for me so you have columbus you got nashville you got florida you got chicago detroit detroit chicago i gotta say florida are all out for me it's kind of in between columbus and nashville and everything that i saw out of columbus uh last playoffs versus the leafs i believe that even if they're an underskilled team that they can find a way to

play a system that'll win them enough points to make them into the playoffs my four teams are columbus tampa dallas and carolina good picks jesse steven uh tampa dallas is super easy when was the last time the two stanley cup finalists got to play in the same division uh tampa is not gonna have kucherov cool they won an entire cup without steven stamp goes like they're good uh and you know arguably the best goalie in the league dallas stars wicked tandem we know they can get all the way to the stanley cup final with their backup um so that's obviously good Haskin ends a year better and he's the most important one in that equation I got Carolina too I want to see them finally get over the hump yeah you know they just seem doomed to be this

really good regular season team that San Jose East yeah but even San Jose like they made the finals conference finals and a final you know like come on Carolina we need you to get over the hump there play james reimer more um and number four i'm with jesse on columbus being good but i don't think they make it um people have been citing oh well they were they were able to get past bobrovsky leaving and and that weird season and they were able to get past panarin panarin leaving and in that weird season okay this is the third time now pierre luke dubois his teammates pretty openly mad at him uh about all this can i ask you steve to interrupt you for just a second what's been the reason we know that he asked for a trade and we're gonna get into this

later nobody knows right i can't tell no and it's i've been reading i can't find a thing he's essentially asked for like a sign-in trade which i'm trying to remember the last time we really saw in the nhl where he's like thank you for my extension and trade me now like i've never never really seen that or I can't remember the last we'll dive deeper into that later on in the episode by the way yeah it's and he's such an important part of that team I know Panarin was I know Bobrovsky was how many more times like this has got to be getting exhausting uh for the Blue Jackets who were by the way a fringe playoff team anyway they were in a play on uh play-in series with the Leafs it was eight and nine um so I have a team that I think is probably on the way

down but they're not down enough to miss the playoffs entirely the preds i got the preds um i don't think they're gonna do a thing but they're there and they're gonna be there for maybe a year or two more unless david poiled does something big uh in order for me to take them seriously okay i'm gonna go with like you compared carolina to the sharks a bit more like the preds okay you know okay all right i like it it's it's a compliment it's an insult it's both accomplice assault accomplice assault okay so i'm gonna make in this particular prediction uh a very unpopular choice that i'll probably get burned for but i'm okay with that so we look at this again the discoverer nhl central division who are the locks not to make it well detroit and chicago right

yeah who are the locks to make it tampa dallas right i can't believe chicago without tase man chicago did make the playoffs last year right they made the play-in nah nah nah nah and you know who was a rock star in that in that play-in taves yeah true true so you've got chicago and detroit not making it tampa and dallas for sure making it then carolina it's hard to see how you could count them out nashville for me has felt stale for a long long time they don't feel great about that pick well they've gotten progressively worse right they've gotten really really bad kind of a slow death yeah and it's funny because they've got some talent there but you know the the johansson contract which at the time to me anyway looked good looks not good and they also

have, and I can't remember his name right now, the Ottawa Senators trade that was a part of the trade. Adam, you know what? I totally forgot. They don't have tourists. They don't. They bought him out and he's on the Oilers now. Kyle Turris is an Oiler. Weird. There's going to be a few of those, man.

Wow. Holy. Hornquist on the Panthers. Turris is on the Oilers. There's some really weird ones, man. And it's funny that you bring up the Florida Panthers, Stephen, because if we are paying attention, we know that Sergei Bobrovsky has a good year and then a bad year and then a good year and a bad year his bad years are terrible

his good years are Vesna he wins the Vesna every time he's good he single-handedly got Todd Richards fired and gave John Tortorella the Jack Adams basically in the same year this is the game breaker for the Florida Panthers Sergei Bobrovsky I believe is going to have an unbelievable year it may be the last great year of his career but I think Sergei Bobrovsky is back this year and You're going to think I'm crazy, but then let's go through the rest of the Florida Panthers lineup. Not so bad. Huberto Barkov,

Duclair. Don't hate that as a first line, but Trano Wenberg Hornquist, second line, not so bad. And then you get, you know, Noel Achari,

Vinny, Vinny, Henestrosa, not so bad for depth. Carter Verhage, like long time leaf prospect, a long time ago. I forgot about all these moves.

Mackenzie Weger and Aaron Eckblad is your top two. And then you got Yandel and Nudy Vara. And then, you know, Anton Strahlman's on that team. What do they think they're doing? this is not a bad hockey team and they're only spending 76 million dollars if my if what i'm reading is correct this year so they got room to make them make a move if they need to and

to your point about bob by the way so he had a 900 save percentage last year i'm surprised it was that good because it was like an 860 or whatever at some point he had a 913 the year before that's okay like that's on i would say the upper half of average league average for starters yeah like it's i mean it's not 10 million bucks if he throws up a 913 that team's in the class no problem yes and that's why i think nashville is not as good i mean pecorine is another guy who has a great year and then a terrible year i think i think pecorine and the nashville predators are not going to make the playoffs this year as much as it pains me because i love the preds but the Florida Panthers will make it in at least according to me.

Now I might really regret that one because betting on the Panthers is very risky. Now I do want to quickly talk about Patrick Laine and Pierre-Luc Dubois. Patrick Laine, we know as long documented history with the Jets, tough negotiations with Kevin Cheval Dayoff, believes he should be paying with Mark Shifley, but did really gel with Stasny when, when they went to the conference finals against the Golden Knights. Stasny is now back.

And, you know, Laine came in with a good attitude and obviously he had the press conference and everybody was talking about that. The Pierre-Luc Dubois situation, as we said earlier, seems a bit strange, mostly because we don't know why. Normally it's like, well, the player doesn't like the coach or, you know, you hear whispers of anything. This was a shock. And it seems to have started when he was a restricted free agent and other teams were allowed to talk to him. and Jarmo Kekalainen is a guy, and Pierre Lebrun mentioned this in his athletic article about this,

Jarmo Kekalainen drops the hammer on restricted free agents. He is tough, notoriously tough on restricted free agents. You start with Johansson, which turned into Seth Jones' great trade. Then you had the Josh Anderson stuff, but, you know, Darren Ferris is his agent,

and no negotiation is going to be pleasant with Darren Ferris. No. Then you have Pierre-Luc Dubois, who was a Leaf killer. Leaf killer. he was unbelievable in that series and they are and and frankly pierre luke dubois is a part of should be their their their number one guy going forward and that's the guy if you're going to

spend money you spend it on pierre luke dubois but they didn't what a great pick by the way by kekeleinen a lot of people were making fun of him because he was a he had like a half season of center in the qmjhl and they picked him ahead of jesse pulley rv who was supposed to be slam dunk number three and they got dubois there and a lot of i remember being there and being like that's a stupid pick good geniuses but stupid handling of it you've alienated now your number one guy the best guy on the team right well the future now and it's and it's you know you get your reputation for how you deal with things and you know we've talked about how the blue jackets dealt with panarin and how they dealt with babrowski well those were two different things because they

were ufas so okay he handled josh anderson this way and he handled it this way and this way and this way you know what happened in the middle of all that that might have changed things might have changed the perception of how things should go in restricted free agency for the blue jackets The Leafs? They tried to offer Sheet Marner. Oh, yeah. They did. The Blue Jacket.

If I'm DuPont, I'm like, what'd you offer Mitch? All right. What'd you offer Mitch? I wanted that. Send that over here. What'd you offer Mitch? Okay, I got 75% of what Mitch got. Give me that.

Oh, you're not even going to give me that? You're going to give me less than half. There's going to be a lot of... How do I say this? there's going to be a lot of players who have to decide how personally they want to take things over the next year or two, because, you know, Yarmulke Kalina might be notoriously heavy-handed with restricted free agents, but we're in a pandemic, man. Like everyone, they're selling the helmets and the division names. And by God, before you know it, the underwear and the jock

straps, we don't know, but you know, teams are in a very difficult spot financially and no one who thought they were going to get paid this off season did you know you can look at alex petrangelo and go well i'd trade spots with him and yeah i bet you would but under normal circumstances petrangelo might be getting 10 million bucks a year and this was anything but normal right this this off season so there are going to be a lot of hurt feelings and they're not wrong and they're not right either like it's you got to get what you're worth and for a lot of guys it's just not available right the money's just not there the money's disappeared because the world's changed uh and that's why you want to get your money as soon as you can right um but for

pierre luke dubois and patrick linea it seems like there's an instant swap there for the jets and uh for the blue jackets you know i mean they did go out and get stastny uh the jets did um specifically to play with line a and you know that line they can score 50 goals if he's set up with the right guy the problem is um it doesn't seem like the jets are in any hurry to move them and it doesn't seem like the blue jackets are in any hurry to move pierre luke dubois we do know that yarmulke kalani has been very interested in patrick aline for a couple of seasons now does it not make sense that this eventually happens you know it's the nhl they'll drag it out till it's absolutely dead in the water and then they'll make a move and we'll all be so

bored of it by that point that it that it will barely pass as news but you know chances are this swap happens right no well it's if Dubois wants to go to Winnipeg I'd be curious to know why and it's nothing against Winnipeg he wants out of Columbus that's all he gets right but like okay remember so we've talked to CJ now and Brian Burke and I think a few others about this a lot of players even canadians have all seven canadian canadian markets on their no trade list so you're dubois you've already signed an extraordinarily you've signed a modest deal compared to what you thought you would get compared to your market value in terms of term and aav and then you're going to go to canada and get even less are you sure well i don't think that's that's the thing

is it's not his choice steve you're no but like you can if you withdraw if if it's obvious that you're going to winnipeg you withdraw your trade request well but then your trade request is i would like to be traded to please keep me here but they could still trade you they could yeah so do you want to request i mean i just get it's not like you're getting nothing back if you're yarmulke line you're getting a guy who could score 40 goals with his eyes closed oh i know why kekalainen does it i don't know why dubois will want it but i don't think it matt and what i'm saying is i don't think it matters what he wants he doesn't have any out well no i don't where again i think once you okay so he's got no trade protection i just checked his contract

right so that means that when you request request a trade that means i would rather be anybody or anywhere else but here because they can ship you anywhere they can ship you anywhere yeah that's Also, a fun fact from 31 Thoughts this week. Dubois' dad, Eric, coaches in the Winnipeg organization. He's the assistant coach for the Moose. I think it is. Really? So Eric Dubois is already in the Winnipeg organization.

Maybe Pierre wants to come over. That is quite interesting. The Jets would have Dubois. yep Steve's Angle podcast with Adam Loudon oh god it's

can you imagine Patrick Laine I'm finally free from the shackles of Paul Maurice and you go to Columbus to be with John Tortorella okay Patrick you're going to play shorthand and I expect you to dive in front of pucks please let's go he he said do claire could not play because he didn't like

how he was defensively how do you think now it's hot liner on florida yeah how do you think he's gonna treat you there patty you think that's gonna be great oh my god john tortorella he doesn't care he'll take you off both power plays if he doesn't like you yeah oh he doesn't care he doesn't care uh he does not care and plus john tortorella's made enough money in his coaching career where he is like, he's got, he's got fuck you money. It's like, I don't really, I could, I could take or leave this. I want to be a coach and I'm going to do what I need to do to be the coach because I've got enough money where I could retire tomorrow. It doesn't matter. Adam for John Tortorella, $5 is fuck you money. That's true. He just, his name could easily be fuck and you

very, very, very true on the attendance. It would be you fuck. Um, so let's, let's talk to just a couple of things here uh well obviously uh we know that dallas will probably be allowed to uh we talked to chris about this uh allow fans in the building we know the panthers will be allowed up to 25 capacity which for those keeping track is about 5 000 people now that's about what panthers the panthers draw every game anyway so it's not like it's a huge change but um the i'm kidding the panthers draw they draw 14 000 a game so it's not bad uh but the it's it's very interesting you know, from their perspective, you have to understand if you're if you're not listening from Canada right now, specifically from Ontario, or Quebec, which is currently considering a

lockdown in a curfew, we are all locked down. And our case levels are, you know, in Ontario, I think it's about 3000 a day, Texas had 12,000 yesterday, new COVID cases, and people are out. And it's just, I mean, it's two fundamentally opposed ways of looking at this pandemic. but it is sort of shocking as a Canadian to see that based on the perspective that we have, which is I can't even go to the local hardware store because it's not allowed to be open. You know,

that's the, that's how crazy different this is. A lot of differences. Be glad you guys haven't had Twitter open this whole show. Oh yeah. I have, I've seen what's happening. I've seen what's happening.

We're not talking about it. No, but the, I think the, I think it's very, very interesting and it will be very interesting to see who, at the beginning of the season allows it and who by the end of the season will allow it as i said to you before i think that if you have the right protocols in place because we're just looking at

a blanket tweet the panthers will allow 5 000 people in okay well we know that florida is a bit of a mess always they're using at a hospital they're using event bright uh to put out the vaccine. Eventbrite is the same program we used when we used to do our little cinema things where we'd play a game and host the night. Remember that? We used Eventbrite with Panago. You made that up. Nope, that's a real story.

At the review cinema, we used Eventbrite to send out free tickets to SGP listeners so they could come down to review and watch Saturday Night Hockey with us. And that is how hospitals in Florida are handling the vaccine rollout. What a bunch of weirdos. Why can't they just let it sit in the freezer

for weeks on end like us? Like us, yeah. our vaccines are here they're just like you know what we just don't we haven't planned bro like you had a year you had a year we tried nothing and we're all out of ideas here's a cheesecake you fucks anyway sorry so um anyway long story short uh it's going to be interesting who allows it at the beginning and who by the end will allow it and i think given what we know about the sanitary conditions about other places i don't see any reason why and especially because there could be lawsuits and that sort of thing. If the NHL isn't careful,

I don't see any reason why you couldn't given the vaccine, maybe, maybe 25% of the population's vaccinated. If you have a vaccine passport, which they're talking about here in Canada, and you could prove you've been vaccinated and you come in with a mask on. Why not?

I think we're still at least a few months away from that, but no, I agree with you. If I'm not saying yet, I'm not saying yet I'm talking, I'm talking three, four months down the road, but by the playoffs,

it's conceivable is it not it is it can change fast in both directions right so i remember man it's crazy when we were talking about uh the eric lindros uh tournament for easter seals there were 80 85 cases in the province wow and we were talking about playing we were talking about playing hockey and we were talking about the protocols for how to still do the tournament there are the last i checked there were 3300 now it could if the cases in the province are let's say under 500 and a lot of people have been vaccinated and you can prove you've been vaccinated and you're wearing a mask and it's i don't know what 10 capacity 20 why not right why not no i do agree with you i'm just for me it's um it's all barney the dinosaur imagination

it's uh yes i agree with the theory of course i do of course but i'm just uh i'm having a real hard time picturing it yeah i feel like even if there was like a concrete oh on june 1st the world is back to normal and kovat's gone away i think right now that's so hard for people who are living in lockdown situations like ours to look at you know that's the mood it feels like right now where it's like i can't even see the light at the end of the tunnel right now i'm not even far enough down the tunnel to see a little speckle it's just all darkness so yeah when you propose that it's like yeah that's great but i i don't even i can't even concept that's not a concept in my mind i'm looking forward to getting back to this you see that behind me that's a

picture of us at a live show together i have a picture of you two in my room and we shook hands with people and we hugged yeah but you and i after everyone left we kissed on the mouth for hours until the sun came up it was great it happened a lot of people they're not allowed in their workplaces like i think that's that's a reality for most people and they're like i'd like to leave my house before i even think about going to a game right my bet uh the hockey arenas and basketball uh arenas open up before the workplaces do that's my bet money guys money just saying money oh yeah uh so with all that in mind uh good good luck to everybody down there uh anybody going through this uh this is you know hopefully the beginning of the end and uh you know with the

vaccine roll like like you said steve at least the floridians are vaccine vaccinating people ontario it's like well we just we need a plan before we need to plan the plan before we roll out the plan that we've planned yeah i i'm just so fucking mad man i just i know i know i know no we don't need that let's not let's not we're not we're not getting into specifics all right all right oh you're right you're just we'll uh we'll just drop it um elliot said that uh the The pitch to Thornton to bring him to Toronto was to play on the first line. And why not?

So he's going to get to start the season with Matthews and Marner. When they inevitably take him off, he's going to get taken off. Yeah, but I think he's 41. Yeah, I think you manage his time with Hyman. I think they're going to flip back and forth. And if he plays 10 minutes a night on the first line

and plays 15 minutes total, what's the harm in that? He can do that. if you can't do that line please like that well I don't know what I mean trying stuff man they don't manage Bergeron Pasternak Marchand they go have fun we well that one of the things that I read James Myrtle put this in in his article uh about this is it may allow them to start the Matthews line in offensive zones like they do with Marchand Bergeron and Pasternak those guys get It's 61% of their starts in the O zone.

So if you can have Matthews and Marner and Thornton in the O zone, 60% of the time, not only their stats go through the roof, but Thornton doesn't have to skate end to end. Yeah. Right. And if you've got Riley and Bodie back there. Yeah.

Yeah. Marner and Matthews carry that defensive load in terms of forwards. Yes, they have to. And they have to, and they should. If you've got Riley Bodie or you've got Muzzin Hall, I think it's manageable on the back end.

I do. Adam. I love you. It's Brody. Brody. Sorry, Brody. Sorry, you said it 19 times. I know.

What the hell's wrong with me? I know it's Brody. Why did I say that? Because you miss Troy Brody. I do. I do. He was a big fan. Big fan.

Also a big fan of Olympic skier Brody Miller. Anyway, long story short, there's a lot more wheeling back there than there would have been before. Now, Muzzin is not the fastest guy in the world, but he manages his ice properly. And it'll be a few more letting in plays, too. letton's a huge x factor on this team and he's a great example of well how do you predict his impact on the team he's like a 20 he's a 26 year old guy who spent his whole career in the khl the computer can do it stop it then there's the factor of jesse will get zero angry tweets after this by the way

there's also the factor of like in 2013 there are players who have literally played zero games and players who have played many and then there's letnan who has played many but has not played for so long that does it even matter you know what i mean he played from i want to say september till the end of november and now he hasn't played for over a month i think it matters yeah but like how much like so how do you how do you predict his impact but uh with the roster decision well so far everything can change uh vc with tavaris and kneelander i think donate really really work don't hate it i like it i like it a lot yeah this is a guy vc is a 15 goal guy up until the sabers and the sabers are awful and were awful last year um so like nobody was good

on the sabers last year except for jack eichel right fair he's got it yes and he's got to know his job on that line goals you're the worker yeah you're the worker and you take advantage of the puck when everyone else is focused on the other guys making $17 million. Well, because Nylander's going to be wheeling around the zone holding on to the puck. Net front. Tavares is going to be net front. I would think Tavares is

net front. No, Nylander, net front. He is a net front guy. He is. That whole season. He did. He did. Right. That line to me is the line you park in front of the net. And Vesey's like a relatively big guy. That line could wreak havoc.

I really like it. Big fan. I think it'd be a lot of fun. So there's lots of that to go through, and we'll do a full Leafs season preview next episode when we know a little bit more about what's going on. As Chris said, we can't even get in. We don't know what they're doing. And Wayne Simmons, and I know this is the time of year

that everybody's like, I feel great. The shape of my life. Every team's undefeated. Every player's Stanley Cup ready. I do want to say, though, that for guys like Thornton and Simmons who have battled long-term injuries, I think Thornton's had both legs replaced at this point. knees uh the uh the fact that they've had this much time simmons for sure needed it um probably

is to their benefit he probably does he said he feels better than he has in three or four years i can believe that seven or eight months off to heal those injuries yeah i think the reason i don't think players are liars i think they come to camp and they say they're in the best shape uh they've been in in a long time they haven't taken a body check in nine months it's a great feeling i gotta imagine yeah exactly imagine doing that for a living and then you haven't been hit by another human for like almost a year when was the last time you were hit by another human like actually like on purpose yeah like physically crushed uh at hockey a couple years ago by accident did we see that we saw that on uh didn't we didn't you put them

wearing the blue jersey is that the video where you got crushed yeah i have a spot it's something that connects it's something that connects your like chest to your shoulder or something like that it clicks like permanently now because i just got fucking destroyed one hit one hit one in my entire life or no i've been hit adult life i've had two really bad hits in hockey both were complete accidents but like and both times i'm just like how do people live this way right right holy shit anyway we'll get into the press conference now because we are running out of time jesse uh i don't have questions today oh he doesn't have any questions i didn't solicit for them give me some answers then we had a jam-packed show we do have one note the the podcast can now

be found at a new location adam do you want to take this over yeah that's right uh so you're going to be able to find the podcast on the athletic app uh you can check it out ad free uh if you're a subscriber to the athletic and you can find it in all the normal places as well um i do know jesse that the hosting has changed a little bit too uh yes but that won't change for anybody that won't change for anybody yeah that nobody will see where it's hosted now okay well but is it available on soundcloud because i know there are people that were yes on soundcloud okay Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay.

Your host, nothing will change. It'll just be found in a brand new location, also on the Athletic app. Amazing. So if you want to listen to this show ad-free at any time, you can by checking it out through the Athletic app, and you can subscribe there. And that is all we got for today, guys, I think.

Can I have one more note? What's the note? So I just got sent a tweet by Berkshire. Oh. So it's a tweet from Josh Yohi, who covers the Penguins. Sidney Crosby leaves the scrimmage and heads to the locker room received a big hit earlier

and his skates have been driving him nuts today not sure if his departure is health or equipment related and then Ryan Wilson aka Gunnar Stahl on Hockey Twitter responds with three words in a quote tweet by Cody Ceci

he was hit by Cody Ceci supposedly why is Cody Ceci hitting anyone in practice what like especially sid dude i saw a clip of uh i can't remember who it was on the oilers hitting connor mcdavid and mcdavid barreled into the net just like he did when he snapped his bcl and i'm like oh my god do not just have non-contacts until the season you don't need to do this you don't need to do this before you don't need to do this oh oh sorry i know you

wanted to end the show there but it's that was just too too unbelievable feeling a little better about my non-Penguins playoff thing. Feeling a little better about that. Not good for Sid, though. We don't like that. So we'll monitor that situation. We will be back next Wednesday. And then as of the start of the season,

two weeks from now, we will be switching our schedule to Mondays and Thursdays. So you will get us at the beginning of the week and the end of the week. And we will be back to two episodes a week, probably until, I don't know, late August? Like, when the heck is this season ending anyway?

Who the hell knows? It's supposed to be done by the end of July. Sure. Okay. Well, if that's what it is. then that's what it'll be so we got we got a big long uh stretch of double episode weeks ahead of us and we're very very excited to get back on track all of 2020 there was only five and a half months of actual hockey that's crazy unbelievable thank you for if you're listening to this right now and you've been here the whole time my god i love you like you've been listening to this hockey

podcast the whole time and for there's been hockey for less than half the time right in the in in 2020 so this year alone and then by may of this year may 15th of this year we'll have surpassed basically the amount of hockey that we had all of us or i guess it's june 1st even so uh we're very very lucky and very fortunate to be through uh i think the worst of it and uh and so excited to get rolling uh some exciting stuff on the way for the show as well so we'll be getting into that in the coming weeks. And in the meantime, we love you and we will see you next Wednesday.