The Steve Dangle Podcast - The Paywall | May 19, 2021

Episode Date: May 20, 2021

Today on The Steve Dangle Podcast, James Mirtle of The Athletic joins the show to preview the Toronto Maple Leafs versus the Montreal Canadiens (00:00), Steve, Adam, & Jesse discuss pre-playoff jitters (33:45), game 2 of the Bruins vs Caps (52:00), the Pens vs Isles (57:00), the Panthers vs Lightning (1:02:00), the Wild vs Golden Knights (1:10:00), the Avalanche vs Blues (1:16:00), Jim Benning is sticking around in Vancouver (1:24:00), and T'was the night before playoffs (1:37:00). Originally aired: May 19, 2021 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/ZMRv-oQyEHQ Visit https://sdpn.ca for merch and more. We've joined The Athletic and you can too! Hit the link to subscribe: https://theathletic.com/sdp Visit this episode's sponsors: https://helixsleep.com/sdp https://ca.manscaped.com/​ https://betmgm.com/dangle 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 well it's the night before the big game ladies and gentlemen james myrtle joining us from the athletic um my to this yeah oh yeah yeah you can it's the it's the background as Steve likes to call it the paywall. Well, I like to call James the paywall because he's my EASHL goalie. And he's, it started, I think, kind of kidding, but like, you're good. Like you just got straight up good one day. I don't know about good.

I'm like, I'm passable. When no one else wants to be the goalie, I'm like, yeah, okay, I can do that. Is there like a tier system that you guys play in? Like, do you guys, can you get into a next level? You guys still div one? Yeah, we're div one. yeah we seems like we lose a lot right are we down in two now well it seems like we lose a lot of games recently steve we might be down in two i mean i mean the captain's been slacking you know

i went and had a kid and screwed everything up you guys got into div one well we were last year nhl 20 we were in div one like the whole i mean from when i joined until we were there a long time but this year we're just not playing as much and they're doing things stupid things like putting me in goal and we haven't been as effective i don't know about you steve but they changed the game somehow and i haven't been able to figure it out like i just i was better at the last year's game than i am at this year so well so it was unplayable for a while for me and then i figured out that i had no pass assist on and i'm and as soon as i put it on i'm like oh well there we go there's there's like it was like learning an entirely new game um maybe that's what's happening

when i'm the goalie and i'm handling the puck and i pass it to the other team and then you know what that would explain um a great deal i'm kind of a wandering goalie and and i kind of i like to make some acrobatic saves so the team gets a little bit anxious sometimes when i'm way out of the crease or high broder yeah or hype when you actually make them with gingerbread pads oh yeah yeah my pads are a gingerbread house yeah i love when you're in that it's like and your Kamloops Blazers mask we get it you're from Kamloops we get it so James can we talk about Riley Nash for 10 minutes he's from Kamloops yeah oh okay well there you go well now they're winning now I know all right Jonas Jonas on our podcast is so tired of hearing me talk about Riley Nash

and all this Kamloops stuff so hey he's gonna play right oh yeah yeah yeah I mean they got him on the third line the third line center is he an upgrade he is he fills the role that Sheldon Keefe wants filled like he he wants um he wants his lines to have like a real purpose and you know they you guys know this they tried this out of training camp they were thinking oh you know maybe Alex Kerfoot can be like our shutdown center on the third line and it'll be like a defensive unit and Sheldon Keefe wants a unit that he can play with all the defensive zone starts and he can trust against any line to play well defensively get the puck out of their zone get it down to the offensive zone and then you roll out the big guys you roll up matthews marner nailander taveras

hyman and and start them in the offensive zone and they haven't really had that because it didn't work with kerfoot in in that spot to start the year they weren't happy with how that was so they went out and acquired riley nash and that's what they've been looking for for i think ever since shell and keep became coach they've been looking for a defensive third or fourth line center that can really eat those defensive zone starts and riley nash can do that he's not going to produce a lot of offense but he can certainly play tough defensive minutes against anybody i was kind of looking at that in my playoff preview video like the least first line should at least cancel out the habs first line if not beat them same with the second line it's the third

like they haven't had uh a line with the identity of being a shutdown line and it's actually been accurate because you'll remember a couple years ago that uh that hyman tavaris marner line it shut down the perfection line of the bruins and i'm like that's like 25 million dollars worth of let's shut down lines on 25 million dollars with a 47 goal scorer and a 90 point guy on it that's just a really good line now now these guys give you an option of sort of negating the best montreal has to offer yeah and what they want to do too steve is they want to open up so i think a lot of people think of line combinations and like first line plays first line and second line plays second line and third line plays third line but I think what Sheldon Keefe wants to do I know what

he wants to do is he wants to play that third line with Riley Nash against either the first or the second line and then that frees up Tavares and Nylander to play against I don't want to I don't want to call them the scrubs but like to play for like the depth guys right and then if you can roll Tavares and Nylander in the offensive zone out against another team's fourth line and third deep air that's a scary proposition for the other team so that's what it allows them to do and it also allows them to not have to play austin matthews in the defensive zone as much as they have been this year you know austin matthews and marner have been fantastic defensively but you don't want them playing defense as much as they have been you want them doing damage at the other

end of the ice so they want to be able to trust one of the third of the fourth lines with with defensive minutes and i think now they probably can um you know i mean obviously uh as of this recording the game against montreal is tomorrow night james the the thing about um the thing about this you know you look at even dom decisions predictions right which you know he kind of does a little bit of uh does that for every playoff series the leafs have an according to him an over 80 chance of winning this series and in fact their highest percentage is somewhere between game five and game six is what dom's predictions model says but as leaf fans um the higher that percentage gets the more nervous we get because the leafs have this uncanny incredible ability to um

snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and i wondered when you watch this team is it a whole lot different than last year's team and if so why should we be confident about it well i i will answer that let me throw this at you when's the last time in a playoff series the leafs have been favored this heavily against their opponent oh that's a good question i guess that's couldn't tell you no idea it's not an easy one you think so who do they well that was auto on the first round right not heavily not heavily um i mean even like i mean that first year with kujo was philly and then philly philly was favored and then i forget who with the second round pittsburgh was favored and then buffalo was favored you'd basically have to go back to

93 or 94 being i think so being a really heavy favorite is a different it's a different meatball right like in the the leafs haven't been there like everyone's talking about you know the leafs are choked in the playoffs can't win in the first round whatever i mean for the longest time when i covered this team they didn't even make the first round they didn't make the playoffs and then when they did they had no business winning like 2013 boston was a way better team than they were like that that series shouldn't have even gone seven games but some of those games were ridiculous game one in that series was ridiculous i remember writing my post game like this is gonna be a short series like i think they were outshot like 45 to 18 or something and

it was it was anyway it was bad and then you know they 2017 they get washington heavy underdogs 2018 Boston they're still underdogs 2019 it's closer but they still weren't the favorite I mean they were the favorite I guess against Columbus last year but even then Columbus had the same number of points in the same number of games as the Leafs did because the Leafs had such a disappointing year last year and this is the this is the first time since I've covered the team I've covered the team for 14 years this is the first time where they've been the favorite in a playoff series so it's it's it's new territory I think for a lot of fans especially younger fans and um i think that that's that's where you know the nerves are well placed because

fans haven't seen this team have a lot of success especially in the playoffs and the fan base isn't used to the team being in this position but to answer your question going way back to the beginning yes this is different this team is different this team is better this is the best leaves team we've seen in a long long time they've earned that favorite spot they've earned that i mean i think they were 18 19 points ahead of montreal during the regular season or in a shortened season you extrapolate that over 82 games they would have been you know 30 35 38 points ahead of them over 82 games so you know i i do think that this is real i do think they should win this series but you guys i mean in the nhl there's always i don't know if there's

such thing as an 82 favorite in a playoff series in the nhl i don't know if that's like i don't know if that's i know i know i believe in dom's model and everything and i do think the leafs going to win the series but that's that seems like pretty steep odds for me well it's just for me like if we if we get out like some sort of time machine and we play the series 100 times they're going to win it 82 times and i just i just don't believe that what universe are we in now steve are we in one of the 82 are we in one of the 18 right this is uh well we gotta ask the marvel universe we'll find out what the Leafs end game is you see because

it's very good who's Thanos in this equation oh god I think it's the entire Montreal Canadiens fan base if the Leafs lose man it's going to be ugly on Hockey Twitter that's for sure I mean I can already tell it's going to be ugly on Hockey Twitter

like it's ugly now some of the stuff I'm getting is just and I'm getting stuff from Leafs fans too people are just people are losing it already and the games haven't even started If the Leafs lose game one, it's going to be a very long 48 hours until game two. I know that. So I imagine.

Oh, sorry, Jesse, go ahead. I was going to say one of the questions we had last show was the 3-4 game because they're back to back. Is that where Anderson gets his playoff start? I think if he gets one, then yeah. I don't think it's a given. I think if you're the Leafs and you're up 2-1 or you're up 3-0 in a series and Campbell's been fantastic.

and if you win that fourth game you get a break i might just put campbell out there again for the back-to-back i mean i like why mess with something right like why not just close it out although i mean i guess then if you lose the game then you i goalies can play the back-to-back like i know we've moved away from that and i know statistically there's slightly better performance for goalies not playing the back-to-back but it's not unheard of especially in the playoffs for goaltenders to play the back-to-back like one of those boston series was a was a back-to-back game six and game seven i think it was the uh the it was for one game that was that was a back-to-back right i'm pretty sure game seven they had to fly there i remember covering it and just like doing it on

like no sleep and traveling and there was a i think game six and game seven are back-to-back and i think maybe in multiple of those leafs boston series that was the case um in the in the same goalie played for both teams in both those games so it's not out of the i i think it's going to depend on the comfort level with with frederick anderson where the series is at And I think you just evaluate that when you get to game three and game four. And the one thing that Jonas brought up the other day was maybe you play Anderson in game three, you know, maybe that's, maybe you feel like that's the game you put them in.

If you've won the first two and you feel pretty comfortable, like you've got the series in hand, then maybe that makes sense to do that. But I don't write about 2013, by the way, back to back. Yeah. I remember traveling in it. It was just, it was a nightmare. Yeah. Do you have to plan? No, I don't. That's what I'm saying. That was my whole spiel was like, you know, most series where there's a back to back, the same, the starter plays both the games, you know,

Cause I just wasn't blown. Like the, the Marley's performance, the three of them that he had weren't, weren't great. I don't think he was particularly great when he came back to the Leafs. You know, if you win the first two games to me, it's like, Oh man, keep Jack in. What are we messing with? What are we messing with this for? And, and does Franny Anderson, if, if Jack Campbell stays healthy and I mean, we've seen, you know, what happened to Washington when you hope your goaltender stays healthy,

their goalie tries to make one save makes an awkward move. And now all of a sudden Craig Anderson's in that. I, I, I just, you know, i i'm actually i'm not a frederick anderson in the playoffs believer there i said it and the reason i say that is because i've seen him in in when he is fully healthy play in the playoffs and there's been six nothing games and i i do i i am concerned about that and so here you know here he is with it's is it a knee or a hip that's really bugging him his knee yeah his knee yeah and it's not going to be healthy well i mean he had he had like two months to get to get it better like i think he took like more than enough time to recover from the injury that he had so he should

be 100 but i this is one of those ones where it's like there's there's it's between the years for him right now and like i don't know where he's at with that i don't think his confidence level is not very high he struggled i mean like let's face it he struggled going back to a lot of last season too right i mean he had injuries last year he was really really up and down you know i i don't think he's the same goaltender that he was in in probably years two and three were probably his best in toronto right i just yeah i'm in the same place and i don't know if it's because he doesn't have a contract or because he's getting pushed by jack campbell which he wasn't getting pushed by another goalie in those previous years he was he was clearly the number one and and and

the coaching staff made a point to to build him up as the number one that wasn't the case coming into this year you know you talk to people in the least organization and there was a lot of people talking about jack campbell and how they believed in him and how they thought potentially he could really battle for the starting job and that's the way that it's played out so i i'm not a believer in frederick anderson at this point either i think in the organization there are doubters and it wouldn't shock me if he actually doesn't play in this series so i'm a jack campbell believer now um but throughout the course of the season people were talking about the idea of him becoming the starter and i over and over again said well that that's ridiculous he's never done it and

he's in his late 20s now like i know goalies take a little while to develop what what did they see in this guy that let them think he could do something that would frankly be irregular based on most NHL careers? Well, the interesting thing is, you know, when I did a deep dive on Jack Campbell earlier this year too, where I kind of like spent six weeks just calling everyone on earth that knew Jack Campbell and talking to people in his past. And there's a lot of people that believe in Jack Campbell. There's a lot of people that have seen him be a very, very good goalie for a long period of time. And it was really only when he was 20 years old and he was with the Dallas Stars organization he was in the AHL that he really kind of struggled and fell off

the map other than that like I don't know four season stretch maybe where he kind of lost his game he's been a pretty good goalie you know when he's played in the AHL he's been pretty good when he's been healthy he's been pretty good he's also battled a lot of injuries which I don't think has been talked about a ton I know it's been talked about with the injuries he's had with the Leafs but even before he came to the Leafs he had some injuries that would probably be my biggest concern with him being your number one and trying to start him every game in the playoffs is that his health has been a concern if you go back over the years and you don't want to get in a situation where he breaks down and then you have no choice but to play anderson all your games right so

you know that would be probably why i would look and start anderson in the back-to-back because you want to preserve campbell but you know you look at what he did going back to when he was with the u.s program what he did internationally when he was really really young you look at what he did when he was in the la kings organization he was the starter uh with the ontario reign in the ahl he was then the starter with the la kings a couple of years later when jonathan quick got hurt he played 31 games he had crazy numbers i don't know if you have it in front of you yeah they're there we've talked about that before but he had great numbers with a really bad team that year yes and much better numbers than jonathan quick so like there

are and his save percentage as an nhl goalie playing in the nhl i know he hasn't played a lot of games it's very very good so those are the kind of indicators i look for in a goalie is that even if they've only played 50 or I think he's at 88 games played or something like that in the NHL, all you can do is look at his body of work and judge off that. And I would say that Jack Campbell's body of work going back to 2016 is really, really good. And it indicates that he potentially is a starting goalie.

He had a nine 28, by the way, in 31 games with now losing record, but I don't think the Kings could score that season. Yeah. That team was terrible. It was terrible, but he was, you talked to people around the team at that point. They said we could see it, that he was going to be a starter. And the only reason that LA traded Jack Campbell is they couldn't trade Jonathan quick. They tried,

they couldn't trade them. And they had Cal Peterson who is younger than Jack Campbell and who they think is going to be just as good. It wasn't that they didn't believe in Jack Campbell. So it was a really, really smart scouting eye by the Leafs to see this guy who probably shouldn't have been on the trade block and was for, because the team had three goalies and identifying him as someone who could

potentially be a starting goalie. I mean, Jack Campbell is going to be the Leafs starter next year and he's making 1.6 million. That puts them in a really good position cap wise next season. well that is so that's that's been an interesting thing for me is we're we're always so focused on the next season it's been much less so this season and and i've been doing my best to just sort of put those blinders on but you you really do think he's going to be the starter next year

they're not going to go out and try to get someone else well i think they're going to add somebody yeah i look at their cap situation i think they're going to try and bring zach hyman back His number is obviously going to go up from two to five that eats into some of your cap space. I think what you end up doing, Steve is you end up spending some of the money that Anderson's making this year. Some of that 5 million in other places on the roster,

you know, they're probably going to need another center. You know, I don't, I mean, unless they, maybe they bring Riley Nash back, but I doubt that that's the Jack.

I think, I think you can't shut down guy. I've tried making the math work on that as a biz, pretty tough. Like, I don't know where you're going to find the 10 million, but you know, Hey, maybe basically I'm being too long winded with this.

They're going to have 5 million from Anderson. That's freed up. I don't think the goalie that they bring in to play with Jack Campbell is going to be making 5 million. It's going to be like a two or a $3 million guy that there's going to be a tandem. So it's not like it's going to be just Campbell without any kind of a fail safe, but they're also not going to go out and spend another 5 million on a number

one goalie to play instead of Jack Campbell. How about big save Dave? I mean, we haven't seen a lot of the big saves. So no save day for the Leafs. Oh, James, obviously, I mean, we got to because we have limited time with you. I know we got about 15 minutes here remaining. We've got to talk to you about, I mean, the way the Leafs play defensively. And then I want us to get into the Habs.

So quickly on what you've seen the Leafs team defensive play. And I'm not just talking about the defensemen and the talent back there, which is deeper than it's ever been. um how do you think this team has changed the way it's played defensively to fit uh to fit the system that Sheldon Keefe wants to play do you think he's been successful in getting them to be maybe a little bit more like Tampa yes okay I mean and how I guess how is probably the better question Sheldon Keefe spent the whole training camp in January trying to change the mindset of his team i don't know if i want to call it to play safer but to make better decisions when the puck's in the offensive zone and to not be so aggressive on the forecheck that you leave yourself

open coming back the other way and if you look at some of the advanced stats that sport logic and some of the other companies put out the leafs have made huge gains in things like not allowing odd man rushes in preventing uh uncontested shots from the slot you know all of those kinds of things that that you that were problematic for them in previous years they've been able to cut those down now the Leafs aren't the best defensive team in the league but they've gone from I would say last year they were probably middle of the pack lower middle of the pack like they were probably 18th 19th in terms of their defensive ability to to cut down the quality of of chances against and this year they're up right into that kind of like eighth ninth tenth group in the league and that's

really been the system change from Sheldon Keefe and it's been the personnel change that you've talked about it's been bringing in TJ Brody uh it's been frankly moving out some players that don't really have as good a defensive acumen getting rid of the Tyson Berry, Kasperi Kapanen to some extent Andreas Janssen changing the look of of both the blue line get Boghossian in there who I think's played really well and has been kind of a really safe option for them on the third pair they've just they upgraded both the roster and they upgraded kind of the hockey IQ of their players and they really went to Tavares and and Marner and and Nylander and said let's make the right decision when the puck's in a contested area let's put ourselves in a position where we're not

going to be giving up an odd man rush the other way if it doesn't go our way we know that you're really skilled we know that you're probably going to be able to win that puck back but what happens if you don't and what are different ways that we can approach that situation that's that's really what Sheldon keep worked on with his team um what has this season been like for you like not being able to go to any games for the first time and i assume a decade and a half yeah it's i mean it's weird it's weird i you know i i went you know i haven't even been going to practice because you know it there's mostly only been one person covering practice per outlet um it's been very strange and as everyone knows i'm sure there's lots of people listening it's been

it's been tough as a parent you know i got two kids and there have been times where the schools have been closed and you know, my son's in kindergarten. Uh, there've been times when the daycares haven't been open. I've got a two-year-old like to have a kindergartner and a two-year-old running around, um, while you're trying to cover things on zoom calls. And it's, it's, it's been a challenge. I know it's been a challenge for people, you know, all over the world. And my family's all really far away. My family all lives in Western Canada. I haven't seen, like, uh, I haven't seen my dad in almost two years. My kids haven't seen their grandfather in almost two years like there's it's it's it's been uh it's been crazy and it's been

it's been a challenge for us in the media too because the way that we do our job i mean most of the time when i'm going to a game or i'm going to practice it's not to watch necessarily what happens on the ice because now with tv and replays and pvrs and everything you can see it pretty well really what you miss is i like going in that dressing room and you sit next to a guy and you have a conversation and you learn something and that's we don't have that right now so you know we've had to really change the way that we do our job and you know telling a story like the austin master matthew story about how he shoots the puck it's been a lot more challenging than it would in a normal year because in a normal year you could go talk to every single guy in

the dressing room about what they're doing and all those kinds of things so it's um that's uh that's kind of like a long answer but it's i'm hopeful that this will be a year unlike any other and we can move towards normalcy here really soon. Well, it's looking like we are. The premier in Quebec just today had fully announced, or was it yesterday, announced that should there be a game six, it would be in Montreal, and they'd allow, I think it was, was it 2,500 or 5,000 fans in?

2,500. 2,500, yeah. Which is, I mean, that would be a first in Canada in over 16, 17 months. So that's a huge deal. Hopefully it doesn't get that far in the leagues. We've already got them wrapped up by then. But it's still nice to be able to even mention it and talk about it.

James, I do want to get to Montreal here for the last 10 minutes. You know, if they are going to threaten the Leafs, where is the biggest threat coming from? What are the Leafs looking at right now in their video room to say, this is how we got to beat them. Otherwise they might surprise us. Well, Montreal does have some talent. I mean, Toffoli had a great year.

Gallagher is going to be back and healthy and he's a great player. You know, Deneau is a, the Leafs are, I'm sorry, that Montreal is a pretty good five on five team you know they've been a good five on five team for years so I think the fear if you're the Leafs organization or the Leafs fan base is that this series looks like the one against Columbus where you know Columbus was the was a lesser skilled team but they found a way to neutralize the Leafs weapons they found a way to get good goaltending they found a way to win the series and that's what Montreal like if I'm Montreal I'm going back and I'm watching that Leafs Columbus series and I'm looking at all the

ways that Columbus neutralized Toronto and I'm trying to duplicate that and I don't know you know Montreal is probably going to be outpossessed in the series they're probably going to give up more chances they're probably going to be outshot they're just they're gonna have to try and find a way to to keep the games close I think they're probably going to want to have the a lot of the games be 2-1 and come down to bounces and things like that and then you just hope that it's a long series it's a war of attrition you know I know Montreal is going to come out and try and be as physical as they possibly can they're going to try and hang in there and and and make things interesting and they've got the personnel where they might be able to do that they might be able

to plant the seed of doubt in the Leafs minds and make some of their star players think back to that Columbus series where they just couldn't buy a goal what do you expect from Carey Price we saw his meltdown at practice today where he broke the stick and we saw him in the in the AHL on what was monday warming up so what do you expect from him from this series you know it's really funny i know this is one of the things i've seen on hockey twitter the last whatever five days you get like leafs fans saying like why are people talking about carrie price being able to steal this series and then you talk to people in montreal like like arpin basu who covers montreal for us at the athletic and he says well like we think that carrie price might steal a series because he's done that

before like they watched montreal go into that series against pittsburgh last year no one picked montreal in that series no one they were they were probably as much of i mean they finished 24th in the standings yeah and they only made the playoffs or the play-in series because of the the goofy format in the shortened season like they shouldn't have even been there and if you look at the numbers i mean carrie price last year i think he had a 931 save percentage in the playoffs 936 there's a pattern there too if you look at it carrie price has had a number of seasons where he's had a poor regular season and i'll be the first one to say that he's had a lot of poor regular seasons lately and all of a sudden in the playoffs he flips a switch and he's like

carrie price of five or six years ago so that's why people in montreal and media in montreal are talking about him that way because they know that he has that ability you ask what am i expecting from him i don't know i don't know what he's gonna do i mean like it's like trying to predict what i don't know what jack campbell's gonna do in this series i mean i think with goalies you're really really guessing and the number of guesses you could make with kerry price that makes sense and are a logical argument it's there's a very very wide range there he's had a better save percentage in the playoffs than the regular season in each of his last two playoff appearances he had a 936 versus a 909 last year and in 2017 he had a 933 uh over a 923 playoff price man it could be

a thing i don't know why people listen in the regular season yes like you said he's those are very mediocre numbers but it's playoff price man they don't pay him for the regular season think about this guys like columbus's goalies last year in the regular season didn't have other worldly numbers like it was corpus allo that that frustrated and drove the leafs crazy in that plan series right like he didn't have great numbers no one was coming to that series and being like all corpus allo is going to shut down the leafs and i'm worried about him but who knows right like you go into a five game series that that series with columbus the the scoring if you take out the empty net goals it was 10 to 9 like that's how many goals were in five games like if

i'm montreal that's what i try and do here is i have a series that's you know you're you're averaging three goals a game like that's where you want to be if you're down i don't know if they're going to be able to do that i'm not saying they're going to be able to do that i'm just saying the concern or the strategy from montreal that's what it should be now toronto's got so much firepower they're probably going to be able to make it so that doesn't happen that's going to be the battle here and that and that's what you hope for right is that that's the the overwhelming skill and then you know the fact that the the bottom two lines are built a lot differently than they have been in years past now James I think that you did

mention Montreal's been a good team on 515 for a long time if the Leafs are going to capitalize obviously special teams are going to have to be a part of it the Leafs playoff or sorry power play has struggled what about Montreal's special team are struggling I mean they just they don't have the top end talent that the Leafs do they don't have an Austin Matthews you know if you look at dom's preview that he had on our site yesterday i mean it's very very clear that the talent advantage that the leafs have in the top six and really like their top you know four or five forwards is it's glaring it's glaring like i believe you know using dom statistics that zach hyman waits out as pretty well close to the montreal's best forward on the team so like if

you don't have that high-end skill it impacts your power play so the leafs have to be feeling pretty good i think their penalty kill has been decent of late it's recovered their their their personnel on the penalty kill is good once you get right riley nash is a very good penalty killer felino is a really good penalty killer bogosian looks like he's going to be healthy for this series the leafs should be pretty good on the penalty kill montreal is not the greatest power play team you know and i mean even penalty kill in montreal's penalty kill is not going to scare anybody but the fact of the matter is the leafs power play has been at eight percent for 30 games Like the Leafs power play is not, I don't think the Leafs can be counting on that to

win them this series. Um, and do you think lastly here, as we wrap up, do you think the Leafs are happy with the way Foligno has worked out given what they gave up to get them? So far, but I mean, you know, everyone in the organization that you talk to, they all say like, none of this matters unless they went in the playoffs. They know that everyone in the organization realizes that they realize the pressure that's on them. So the success or failure of the Foligno trade is like not with, I mean, how many games has he even played? Five? Like he was hurt and like, he's looked good. Like, and he's fit in well with the skill players and he's a guy whose personality has fit in extremely well. And I know the players are all speak super highly of him. None of that matters. They give up a first pit round pick and two fourth round picks to get him to make the cap work and everything. That's a lot. And it's too much if you lose in the first round.

you know part of why they got a guy like that is to play in a series like this against montreal where the other team's going to try and be physical and to grind some goals into the net so that's what he's here to do it's not enough if they win the cup so they didn't get nick felino for a single game that he's played so far i don't mind fair okay that's a good way to put it i like that none of this has all just been warm it's exhibition for felino yeah when did i turn into the positive guy i know like i know it's a little weird every conversation i've had about this series comes down to oh yeah montreal is pretty good there are no slouches and also the leaf should win i mean that is that is what it is well it's like it's like the fifth best team in the

nhl and i don't i don't want to get into all this like weak division crap crap like we've debated that for a whole whatever five months or whatever and I'm tired of it but the Leafs are like I mean they're like the fifth or sixth best team in the league Montreal's wide like the 18th best team 17th I mean like like they're they're on the fringe of the playoff race for a reason you know like they they had to worry about Calgary coming up behind them there you know and they struggled and they had a lot of injuries and and all that is fair but the Leafs should win if you're the fifth best team in the league you should beat the 16th best team in a best of seven you know maybe it's close maybe it goes six or seven games you should win so we'll see if they do it's a radical

idea i don't know about that oh james myrtle of the athletic thank you so much for coming back on the show and obviously james you know we're we're up to three episodes a week now so we're just desperate for content we hope you'll come back anytime you know like we just you know you got a standing invitation anyway i hope it's like the old days adam where we would drink a beer and do the podcast at one of our houses and you know i think we're gonna get there it's like things are you know i'm an optimist now i feel i can see i work for an american company i deal with americans all the time and the way i'm talking to them they're like they're talking like everything's back to normal down there so hopefully that happens for us here in the next couple of months

too fingers crossed that's what we're all hoping for too james thank you so much for your time as always and your insights as always looking forward to it you can follow him at myrtle on twitter and obviously subscribe to the athletic and yeah, of course you got to, we got to point that out, James. Thanks so much, buddy. Appreciate it. Thanks guys. I didn't want to ask a stupid question like this when James is on, because you know, we want his insights more than us talking, but I did want to ask you guys,

are you feeling any sort of nerves for tomorrow? Cause I always get a little nervous. I'm nervous. I think we haven't hammered away this point enough. and James brought it up that this is probably the first time since like forever that the Leafs are actually the favorites in a series and we shouldn't be concerned about them going to the series because they haven't lost yet in this little era a series that they should have won this era you could argue Columbus but then again there were it was an eight seed versus nine seed so who knows if they should have or shouldn't have won that but this is the first time they're

going to play a series they should win and we should go into it believing that they will win because they should so i'm not worried i don't remember who brought it up but there was a point about the separation between montreal and calgary now at the time we're recording this calgary unfathomably still has a game left to play um they're playing against the canucks moronic moronic but it doesn't matter what happens in this game they already have more wins than the Montreal Canadiens they have 25 versus the Canadiens 24 uh the six point gap between them is Montreal's 11 overtime loss points versus Calgary's three now I know some Habs fans are gonna be rolling their eyes and they say hey you want to play that game look at the Leafs and Oilers

okay fine let's play that game if you uh the the difference in points between the leafs and oilers is five the difference in overtime loss points between the leafs and oilers is five so if you want to leave it at that the oilers and leafs are evenly matched they have 35 wins each but if we're going to do that with the leafs dude the flames based on wins alone should be playing the leafs in the first round instead of the habs i think actually the team that i uh wrongly rooted for the dallas stars i think they had like 15 overtime losses this year it's an insane number like it's crazy uh why am i holy mackerel how is that even possible so they are they went to eight shootouts this year lost six of them and that that cost you a playoff spot right there

they were only four back in nashville um but they only had 23 wins that's dismal that's really bad man compared to that puts them near the bottom of the league let me see here that that ties them with the sens ties them with the canucks the canucks could pass them tonight and it's barely ahead of like the bottom feeders like the california teams detroit and the buffaloes way are you nervous well you asked the questions so i think i think the question i think i should have contextualized the question a little bit more even going into a match that you should win like like for me when i when i uh get uh when i wake up in the morning and i show up at virgin radio for the morning show i'm still nervous i'm nervous every morning not like in a not like in a

debilitating sort of way but there's like that nervous excitement you get a little bit you know game timing and i'm starting and i and i always didn't hockey as well when i played maybe it's that's the reason i sucked probably isn't uh but i i wondered not if you're worried about the series but if you get any sort of pre-playoff jitters like as in just because you know anything can happen you know that so is there anything that you're like i just like are you or you guys sailing into this series feeling completely comfortable you don't give a shit i'm mentally in a completely different spot than i've been uh ever uh 2013 17 17 was house money 13 and 17 felt like house money they were just exciting it was like great we're here thank god yeah isn't this

neat and then 18 19 i lived and died with every shift it was genuinely unhealthy i did damage to my life like i shortened it um blue jackets i mean i i barely have physical memories of that almost none too and it's because it's such a it's you want to just sweep it under the rug and make it go away forever well it was just such a weird thing and i genuinely did not like that team like i i that that season they were they were just pulling teeth and then we had to wait months and months and i'm like you are fully gonna go five games and you're definitely gonna lose and i'm gonna hate you for it um plus i had a like month old baby and was just angry all the time because i had not slept it sucks let's be honest but this old baby thing sucks they

every conversation that the cry i don't know you guys make sound sound uh having a kid sound awesome newborn baby hard rest of it pretty fun yeah okay even leo could tear stuff down and break stuff and that kid at like at least at least once a day will like kids have a way of just cutting through all your insecurities i have a mole on my eyelid leo will grab it with his fingernails once a day and after about five seconds i go and i love him because he sleeps 12 and a half hours a night okay that's the thing i'll take 40 meltdowns if it means i don't have to wake up at 2 a.m to put someone back to bed for an hour i'll get cosmetic surgery from my 10 month old son every day if it means he sleeps 12 and a half hours a night versus what he was in the cry potato phase

oh god but there's there's no every conversation leads back to it's hockey anything can happen but based on the percentages there's there's no real reason to think the leafs will lose here there isn't and and like the more i tell myself that the more i i actually believe it and it's calming me down like even if they were to lose game one yeah game two and then i'm nervous but they should win they should freaking win but like even the game one thing we just saw over the weekend like three favorites lose game one like if if if that how many one game two and then and then all of them went out in one game too exactly so yeah but i just wonder what's what okay what steve and jesse am i gonna get if the leaps lose tomorrow night what am i gonna get on friday for

our very first friday show it's gonna be you better you better win game two it's you you better going to get better like still okay it's one game you're still the favorite go win game two you better win it and i expect them to do that i agree but it's also like the least could get their ass kicked and depending on how heavy they get their ass kicked will dictate how nervous i am but like you look at uh leafs bruins 2019 the least kicked their ass in game one they did they kicked their ass awesome remember game two was a completely different game in terms of style flavor cadre got kicked out and the Bruins completely turned it around they completely flipped the series on its head you know so it's it's every game is different in these playoffs the only thing

that gives me pause and this year helps erase it with what we saw you know three favorites losing three favorites coming back but uh cj talked about game one between the lightning and blue jackets in the bubble and if you're the lightning i would love to know what it was like mentally to go through that entire game because it's like was that the ot one the quintuple ot game so it's like staring your worst nightmare in the face too because they had just they were getting over their president's trophy win lost to the columbus blue jackets next year they get them in the first real round of the playoffs non-playing round of the playoffs and the first game goes to quintuple overtime and their goalie made what 70 saves something like they matched his jersey

number good for you there eunice like but they won yeah so that's that's what cj comes back to or came back to, I remember when we were talking about it, he's like, if they lose that first game, who knows? Will they win the Cup? I don't know. Will they win that series even? I don't know. So mentally, I think the

first game, it matters. It matters. But this year, and it was so nice to hear Austin Matthews say he's been watching the playoff action. You know that's an enormous pet peeve of mine when NHL players tell me they don't watch the nhl cool um to to to hear that he's actually been watching gives gives me comfort like again

they should win watching series watching pittsburgh new york on saturday in game one i came out not like i'm not a pittsburgh fan but i picked them to win the series and i want to be right so i'm cheering for pittsburgh so watching and that coming out of it i'm like okay they lost in overtime but pittsburgh was the better team and they just didn't capitalize on x y and z and then going into the game on monday it was such a low event hockey like the islanders they played the exact same game they they they played the exact game they wanted to play and they lost the game because coming out of game one pittsburgh was still that better team and then going into game two there was still that better team and everything went right their way in game two so like looking

at that i'm like okay everything can go right for the leafs in game one and they can still lose but there's all that confidence going into game two and then everything can go right in game two and they can come out with the victory. It's like that's how I'm looking at it. I like that the numbers aren't treating the Leafs like they're them. I do appreciate that because every Leaf fan in their head, every Leaf fan who even like believes in them hardcore

is probably saying Leafs in six because they have to give Montreal two. Yeah. You know what I mean? Mentally and the numbers say no, five, five. I'm like least in seven, you know, uh, money pucks model has the Leafs going to the final. Uh, I think, uh, I think it did. I don't want to speak out of school here, but, um, Don decisions model has them going

to the final. I'm pretty sure. Um, I, I want to sit against the Colorado avalanche. I've never killed a man, but producer drew, come on down. Um, you know, it's, they, there it is. They should, they should. i i'm i'm far more comfortable than i've been maybe it's the may weather you know maybe it's the fact that it's been sunny for like a week straight and i can accomplish anything when the

sun's out you got vitamin d in you i got vitamin d and like how much vitamin d steven there hey you see i take four a day because i live in canada and it's depressing um everyone's like bagosian's back even uh hyman is back bagosian being back by the way is oddly comforting isn't it i i cannot believe this player i really only cup champion zach bagosian yeah like it's just oh yeah and it's it's great from a strategic standpoint too because when the habs posted their lines like everyone was focusing on cockney emmy doesn't look like he's going to play game one romanov and uh um not to know caulfield so and as a leaf and i'm like oh caulfield's kind of scary so that's cool and romanov's not a bad player at all uh and cockney i mean i think is okay he's

just been struggling but then they showed the lines and they showed that third line of perry stall and uh anderson and i'm like gosh i wonder what they're supposed to do i wonder what their plan is and it was the only that line made me look at the Leafs lineup and I went it'd be nice to have back I want to see Joe Thornton and

Corey Perry fight they might get your wish I want to see the old man war I hope it happens it's like two lines that would be first lines in 2012 even with like a 14 year old Josh Anderson

or whatever it's an olympic team yeah and like simmons and perry i think fought in 2012 someone posted it and like i'm sure like uh perry and thornton played in california together for like a decade i'm sure they hate each other's guts and they're like a decade and a half forever those teams you know it's uh i'm very excited i don't think the habs are gonna make it easy um they never do like there haven't really been i can't think of an ass kicking between these two teams like winning by more than two goals the leafs tend not to win that way at least anymore not what game this year did they win by that much ever against anyone the one game against the

canucks and that was game five of the year or something like that it was early wasn't it it was it was very early and the canucks were very trash um like this the current canucks are better than that sure that iteration of the Canucks um it's I'm excited and also I was thinking about this today so all of you if you want to actually see how I react during a Leaf playoff game you can check it out on the Sportsnet YouTube channel because we're going to be live streaming me watching each game of this series the whole game oh yeah you're gonna sit there live on camera for the whole game it's uh it escalated very fast we talked about doing game four then we talked about doing game one and within 10 minutes it was every game in the series is this a good idea adam i don't

think so no why why every game couldn't you take taken like games four and seven or something like that listen when this becomes a patreon show because i got fired uh i mean yeah like you're not allowed to swear are you there's just gonna have to be steve dangle sports net i might say fuck i might say fuck and then you what is jordan banks gonna be okay with that i don't know okay well good luck steve i have so many questions it's okay is the next one will you say shit i'm more likely to say shit yeah is are your dogs gonna make our dog are you gonna make it you jesse that still hurts sorry is iggy gonna make an appearance probably he made i don't know how slender the the screen is on this podcast but iggy might have made an appearance earlier we saw

him we saw him yeah his butt we saw his butt is leo gonna be in the live stream leo will be asleep okay well until until something goes wrong no he's got a noise machine he can sleep through an earthquake no he's until carrie price stops 40 shots and you're screaming you know it's i the reason i the reason i brought it up is like i can sense and i and i can identify with saying some anxiety within leafs nation like montreal it's sort of like you know they if they beat the leafs this year they got everything to gain if they lose hey they made the playoffs good for them you know there's nothing to lose for montreal and that's always a position where you're Now, for Marc Bergevin, there's something to lose, which we can talk about after the season.

But the players themselves, who are the ones, you know, who play the game, they're the ones who are like, yeah, this is great. And you know what? We'll keep it together next year, no matter who's our coach and who's our general manager. And we'll be we'll be fine. I liked I like the playoffs for the miniature, subtle mind games, the just the little jabs. and they know you're watching the footage. Like Carey Price breaking his stick at practice today. I would love to know how much of that is he was actually angry

versus he just wants to throw that footage into the universe. Because half the responses I saw from Habs fans were this means Carey Price is indestructible. And the other half were, uh-oh, he's gone full Civ mode. And what are you going to do? It's just throwing it into the universe. But the Sheldon Keefe little, like the little ninja star that he threw was, I don't have the exact quote, but it was basically, no,

there's no illusion here. This year's Montreal Canadiens team was built to win this year. Steve, I got a question for you. I have an answer. Are you in NHL 2021? No. Okay, because there's a picture floating around of you that I've been tweeted several times of a fan holding up a sign in 2021,

and it says, when is Steve Dangle bobblehead night? Is that photoshopped? I think it's, you can create a character and then they just put that name. So you could put like Pooh Bum and it'll say, when's Pooh Bum bobblehead night? If you have just a player on a team, the game will auto-generate signs

and the fans will hold it up and they'll put the name in there. So if you create a player named Steve Dangle, the fan will hold up a Steve Dangle sign. Okay, that's cool. All right. ray ferraro saying dangle is in the game and that's because i dm'd rammer one day i was like yo put me in and he said okay much to my surprise he did so i was like whoa man that's great i love

creating my player and going uh scroll down and oh look it's my youtube name oh look that's pretty cool that my youtube name is in there that is pretty cool i'd like them to put glenn in there Is it not? As a last name you could say? Glynn? Yeah. I haven't checked because Daniel's there. Maybe I should. All the Brits. I'm a firsty-firsty in Britain.

I've never met a Glynn here, but it's a first name over there. I'm sure there's an NHL player with that last name in history, you know? Oh, there is. Brian Glynn. There you go. So then I would assume it's in the game. Hmm. I'm interested. When I got a Brian Glynn card, I was like, are we related?

am i related to an nhl player and the answer is no it is very unlikely that we are related uh so let's roll through the the other playoff series for a little bit here obviously with the leafs you know waiting and waiting and waiting we've got the chance to watch uh things like the caps bruins which honestly could you have expected or hoped this series to go any different i feel like this is going seven marsh and getting the game winner is just you know if you hate Washington you love it if you love Washington you hate it and and vice versa you know Tom Wilson scoring the first goal of the series if you love Washington you love it if you hate Washington or if you if you love Boston you absolutely hate it this series is tough bruising and I think it's

going seven right and and there's no you can't make a mistake it's a it's got to be a mistakeless series Charlie McAvoy stick breaks it's not even a mistake that's God going haha and and then Tom wilson turns it into a ridiculous tic-tac-toe play um the overtime winner brendan dylan makes one slip up one slip up passes the puck to the point no one's there bruins bing bang boom three passes it's in the net within five seconds it's just two really good really experienced really playoff hardened teams just completely smashing their heads together um in the first round it's a great uh i'd say it's a great pace car but i say that having not seen game two of colorado st louis which was also pretty goddamn intense i don't remember who it was uh was it justin born

he was talking about the landis cog braden shen fight um just landis cog trying to punch brayden shen's head off of his neck first period first period of the game like just listen i know not everyone loves fighting but holy shit that was something i want to shout out everybody who um sent me the results of the nashville carolina game after the second period there were a lot of preds fans in my mentions going oh what do you think's gonna happen it's tied 2-2 well um uh carolina won five why did why the preds fan base oh i love i love the preds do you know that i don't know i don't know i feel like you spent all season shitting on that i did i didn't spend all season shitting on the press i'm shitting on their management and i love david

poyle too i think he's done a great job but but this team except this team should have sold team should have sold it's not a it's not a well-constructed team go through their top three centers and tell me you're like yeah i'm happy with that it's not a good team man you know what any team that has fans in the building right now should not have sold it's just it's so goddamn cool it's so cool did you see the pictures of the nashville strip when it opened no no oh my goodness listen those things can people be patient with each other like okay it still gives me anxiety looking at that right and you and you go i i agree i agree get over that there's lots of things that give me anxiety i should simply get over but i can't because my brain is just meat floating

inside my head doesn't work that way doesn't always use logic it's literally electrified meat attached to a spine that's not even good terrible spine especially at the bottom it's garbage it's but then there's also uh never mind just have patience with each other it is i i i'm enjoying watching fans back in the stands because half of my brain goes that friggin rocks and the other half of my brain goes what about the panini how about this if you wouldn't go just say that wouldn't be me and if you would go go i'm a little jealous and if you're a little bit of both be a little bit of both i but i don't think there's a need to um to question people's morality i think you just you just worry about yourself and uh and and understand that there are cultural and

uh national differences between two countries and i and that there are uh there are differences in opinion and differences in rollout and differences in anxiety levels and you just i just feel like you know the last year has been shitty enough i don't want to be mad at fans going and enjoying themselves it's the last thing i want to be upset i'm tired of being mad tired of being upset dude i went through a pandemic and a divorce i don't want to be mad at anything you know it's just a lot so i feel like to me it's like i let people do their thing uh if it bugs you then don't go right like when when if you're in montreal and it bugs you the fans are gonna be in the building don't go to the building yeah i if the leafs open up games i would go wearing two masks as if i'm in

my car there you go you see because like the simp you are um now uh when we're talking about pittsburgh and the islanders i mean uh again another tight series there's nothing about this there's no breathing room here pittsburgh kind of ekes one out against new york uh in game two but this is i mean pittsburgh was incredible in the regular season and i know that they got up to nothing and i know that it was just basically josh bailey and then no scoring for the rest of the game but it is it's it's one of those things where when you have a series that's this tight it really doesn't matter how great you were during the regular season the games if it's a one goal game it could go either way and i know that's like well it's obvious but especially with

a division winning division winning team that has sydney crosby on it for it to be this tight is really interesting islanders fans i got it i figured it out you your team plays bad brain off hockey okay like when i want to be entertained i like to turn my brain off okay there are uh vegas minnesota boo you turn that right off because even though it's still low scoring it ain't low event yeah boo i can turn that off have a lot of fun washington boston boo st louis colorado boo um islanders penguins any islanders game and this is going back to tampa last year too because i watched that series well if you're not dialed it's a tough watch if you're dialed you can appreciate what the islanders are doing and every islanders fan is

going to be dialed into every islanders game of course of course they're your team that just makes sense but man if they're not my team i just want to go boo and they don't let you do that and sometimes it didn't work like in the third period i thought on what was it monday night or i think game two was monday it didn't work for them you know like varlamov wasn't the best and jari was back on his game after struggling and it just pittsburgh still dominated the kind of the puck battles in the corner and the low event game that the islanders were playing and if the other team is just like keeping up with your battling for the puck game then like then and you're not scoring yourself then the game is so like you said steve it's very it's very brain off hockey

because there's nothing going on at all because you're not trying to score and the other team just keeping up with you're not trying to score. I wonder how Pittsburgh would react to Trotz just letting his horses run because I don't know if they would. Would they know how?

Well, you know what? If you're down two in the third period of an elimination game, you figure it out pretty quick. But like, you know, Beauvillier can fly and uh you know komarov was an all-star sorry i just threw that name out there but like barzal um they got a they got a pretty mobile defense like you know we talk about the islanders like

they're a bunch of metapods like like i keep saying but no no they got some electric pokemon in there and they got some guys who know flamethrower and ice beam and all that fun pokemon stuff um it if it's clearly not working and i mean they're tied to two through or sorry one one through two games it's too early to say but if they're down say three one in the series and it's clearly not working i'd be really interested to see how they look going into that uh fifth game well i wonder too if is it is it a crazy prediction to think that the seven goals that were scored in the first game that's the last time that's going to happen yeah it's they are an interesting team they turn into it's like it's like and i mean combined the seven goals

combined like i don't think there'll be a high scoring game like that again in this series no i know they they do know how to play opportunistic hockey though so if all of a sudden and this is the this is the nightmare of the islanders right so we we call them boa instructor hockey but if you if you if they're crushing you and you find a way to break through break free you know i i used to work at the zoo folks the thing about snakes is they got fangs too and so do the islanders so if you do find a way to break uh break free and run and gun i like pittsburgh's odds in run and gun hockey versus the islanders however they're not they're not pushovers they're they're not completely incapable um a lot of this is going to come down to

goaltending isn't it like yeah jari was not good enough in game one didn't matter who outplayed who and varlamov was not good enough in game two didn't matter who played against two so that's what it is yeah it seems like the islanders get like three scoring chances every game and then josh bailey buries like two of them yeah you know like every any opportunity they get they bury it but they get so few of them, but they capitalize on every chance they get. So it's been a very good series so far. Moving on to Tampa and Florida.

Forgive me for saying this, but do the Florida Panthers not remind you a little of the 17 Maple Leafs? Like, you're there, it's great, but there's just that experience that Tampa has. It's just an... Because the first game, Florida could have won the game. The second game, Florida could have won the game.

brofsky played uh great uh i always script his name driger treasure whatever trigger uh he played great but it just seems like it's sort of there's still a little bit of we're here what do we do they're in over their heads a little bit yeah despite finishing higher than tampa and i mean kucherov helps but yeah but like i mean the leafs were taken on the 2017 leafs were taken on the washington capitals who were known at the time for playoff failure. So that's a different challenge for them. Leafs scored the first goal of that series,

and you felt from miles and miles away through the television, the air gets sucked out of the building. Now, they won that game, but let's not forget, they were down two games to one. Five games went to overtime, six periods worth of overtime. and then the Caps go to Game 7 in the second round against the Penguins. You can't tell me that first round

against a team that didn't even belong in the playoffs that exhausted the Capitals. You can't tell me it didn't ruin the rest of their entire playoff run. Right? The Panthers, who are miles better than the 2017 Leafs, are taking on the holy shitting

Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning. Yeah. it life is not fair and i had this series going seven from an entertainment standpoint i hope it goes seven for the love of god but my my that's that's one that my brain should have overrode my heart and gone bro it's tampa it's tampa like he goes five i generously gave tampa the win in seven for experience and and then the games i watched the games and i'm like oh they're relying on like mason marchman for offense like and that's no insult to the guy but i mean he shouldn't be on a second place in a division that's like the leafs relying on wayne simmons to score most

their goals against montreal right it's not it's not the role he plays right that's not what he's supposed and obviously panthers are missing at blad which sucks and it was uh suspended yep yeah that matters it does both those things uh matter a great deal and underrated from game one um you know people were talking about how that game brought fans to hockey and underrated story because i think there were nine goals in that game is the first goal of that game did not count and it was the panthers it was the uh the goalie interference call and because he pushed the pad right i mean a bit it's uh but i i tell you what that that call is the i think it was the first goalie interference call of the playoffs and now it's the precedent for the playoffs

and i love oilers fans in the comment section of every goalie interference video ever because the standard for what's allowable for them is what happened to them and i think it was game five against the ducks just cory perry and ryan kessler mauling cam talbot kessler straight up holding his pad down and it's fine this this is vasilevsky's pad gets a little nudge he slips because i don't know if you know this but ice hockey is played on ice and it doesn't count and it's in it's in florida it's in sunrise they're the home team they score the first goal roof blows off the place goal doesn't count but then again they come out of that with a 2-1 lead like tampa goes on to score the next goal but then the panthers come back and they score the next two

and it's 2-1 uh florida and then you lose the game and then you lose game two like they had their opportunities i just think like like adam said tampa is just this experienced juggernaut um shout out chris johnston they're the juggernaut here but um the panthers just don't seem to just be able to keep up a little bit you know it's the first time in this big mistake florida made too is they made a decision with their wallet sergey bobrovsky's not your starting goaltender yeah i don't i don't care what you pay him he's not your starting goaltender he wasn't your starting goaltender last year he's not your starting goaltender now and he won't be going forward i don't care what you pay him buy him out spencer knight is better chris dreger is better

I don't even know if you can buy him out Your mission every year Is to find a cheap Starting goaltender To play with your extraordinarily expensive backup It's For such a good team That has done such a good job at finding inefficiencies

It's a nightmare scenario It is It's a lot of money I don't know what you do there Your options We've talked about this before remember dustin brown yeah how he was unsalvageable they salvaged him right so your number one option for an expensive yet busted player is to rehabilitate them somehow that's got to be the

panthers job moving forward they're good enough they're good enough to win with the other two goalies they have who knows maybe they irk out this series with bobrowski but i'm just i'm not a believer in this goalie right now man uh and why would you we don't give enough credit to andre vasikovsky who's just been the most consistent goalie throughout the entire regular season and then he has a great game too where it's like i think it was like 30 plus saves on and one goal allowed like he's been he's been so rock solid that we don't even give him credit for it he'll be in the hall of fame he's going to be a hall of fame goalie he's he's henrik lundqvist with hardware like there were i don't know how many trophies lungquist won but there was a stretch

of like at least eight years where even if he didn't win the vesna or whatever lungquist was the best goalie consistently over that stretch that's vasilevsky except he's actually being recognized for it with the vesnas and i don't know if he has a jennings in there and he oh yeah a stanley cup andre vasilevsky it's rare you could look at someone so young in their career and look at their resume and just go oh that's the hockey hall of fame player yeah how old's he 25 it's a hockey hall of fame player enjoy it enjoy it while he's uh while he's playing because one day you'll be watching his ceremony speech it's gonna be cool 100 um i want to move on quickly to the last two series we haven't talked about yet uh obviously vegas and

minnesota everybody's talking about how much minnesota could score and in the first two games they get two goals but they do eke out a win uh you know we did sort of talk about you know mark andre fleury's incredible game one game two again it seems like with tampa and florida game two felt anyway to me like it's it's the eastern sorry the western conference version of of of what's happening with with tampa and the panthers um vegas has been there and it's weird to say because vegas is four seasons old but they've been there a lot and they've got an experienced roster and they've got some absolute superstars on that roster and the minnesota wild who have been super fun for half of a season because really that's where it all began right um i feel like this

this is going to be like a learning curve moment for them they can still surprise the golden knights but I do feel like Vegas that the table sort of tilted in their favor. Yes. I, the tiebreaker is always experience, isn't it? It normally, I mean, God, the wild could, you know, win the next three games and what the hell do I know? And then blow it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, well, they have one, one, so that would end the series if they won the next three, but it's a, the, the, again, it's a tighter series,

But I wonder now, now that they're one and one, if Vegas doesn't start to kind of walk away with it. Sorry. Sorry. Can I beat the comment section to it? Yes. I was calling for them to blow a 4-1 lead. Okay. Sorry. Continue. There it is. The one series that does not. Just on the wild in Vegas before we move on. Marcus Johansson had two terrible games. who is directly responsible for um the game winner uh the last night their last game and

zach parise their most expensive their highly their most highly paid forward is a healthy scratch and has been for the first two games and the minnesota wild fans are calling for parise to get in the lineup do you know why like parise is not playing and what the hell going on between the years of marcus johansson well with johansson i'm not totally sure with parise i've heard strange rumors about the wild room for a while interesting what have you heard uh just a lot of just a lot of different opinions you know what i mean and you're gonna get that with every team but i don't know how well received it always is there was something earlier this season with parise where i want to say he blew it in overtime and he issued an

explanation for it and it made it worse i remember talking about that on the show yeah i don't remember exactly what happened wasn't he gonna sit the next game or something there was something there was some sort of thing yeah he was healthy scratch but i'm looking at him through the years And we talked about experience being the tiebreaker here. Admittedly, not having watched very much of Zach Parise this year. Looking at his last three playoffs, okay? We won't even include his entire career. 2017, in five games, he had two goals, three points.

2018, in three games, he had three goals, three points. Last year, four games, zero goals, but three points. zachary's they should probably be playing in the playoffs he should probably be game one you know what i mean he doesn't have to play every game uh you know he had 18 points in 45 games like he's he's far past his best um but this is also a strangely bad year i mean even last year he had 46 points 25 goals in 69 games that's certainly good even if he's overpaid he should be he should be in game one unless he's hurt to me well he's not hurt it's a healthy scratch well then that's that's not good enough he was healthy scratched i think versus anaheim

uh a couple games to close out the year and then with their coaches dave evanson dean evanson or something yeah evanson yeah um yeah i don't know i don't know if he has an issue with parise and i'm sure he does yeah i'm sure there's gonna be a michael russo exclusive on this at the end of the season like we saw with Paul Fenton. You know what's going to happen. He's already working on it. I'd love to if we get like at the end of this, if there's time for Russo to pick his brain about what's

going on. There's drama there because Marcus Johansson, he's a turnover machine. He had I think it was I saw the tweet. It was the third worst game score out of anybody on the ice last night. And you have a guy who's your highest paid player sitting in the press box. It's an odd situation. I don't

know what Dean's doing over there so okay i'm looking at the wild then and like because if you're going to say someone should go in you got to say who comes out greenways had a great season erickson act got the overtime winner felinos had a great season caprizov's had a great season don't know a ton about hartman but i didn't they just extend him mad zuccarello's had a great season fiala's had a great season then then it gets interesting i don't know enough about victor rask i believe he's had a bounce back year Johansson was brutal the first two games the fourth line's great but Nino

Nico Sturm has been a pretty interesting young guy for them and Nick Bugstad Parise can play over at least one of those guys for God's sake and maybe it's Johansson I don't think anybody's been impressed with Bugstad either no

not great it's an example of a player who you probably don't even really think of if it wasn't for the cap it right that's like funny man i i get your money but like you know there are definitely situations where you sign that one contract and all of a sudden it's your last you know like i i would love to know if it costs you money long term interesting well um and lastly and this series

doesn't seem i you know i could be wrong here but the colorado st louis series just doesn't seem close and i i'm sorry to say that but i i call it's nothing against st louis colorado is so good and so good it's a they're a great example of how i think the leafs can win and okay don't roll your eyes don't roll your eyes like this is i'm not trying to make it about the leafs it's just an observation uh you know if you can't beat them in the alley you can't beat them on the ice uh colorado proves that's not true if in a in a jets versus uh sharks gang fight i choose the saint louis blues but colorado's a much better team and they're not afraid they're not afraid their captain is willing to fight in the first period of game one hilarious uh gabriel landis

cog uh cadre is certainly not afraid belmar's not afraid they have a bunch of uh graves is not afraid they have a bunch of guys who will at very least stick up for themselves and when you're able to cancel out the blues toughness enough then they have to rely on hockey and you're better at that than them so you win right so it i've talked to a few people like are the leafs tougher than montreal i don't know look at their blue line and i'm like well they don't have to be they got to be tough enough and and you know the leafs didn't need to be tougher than the bruins the past few years but they were not tough enough that was the issue even if they were more skilled which i don't even know if they were that that i think ruins our brains those bruins series because the least

were not better than them ever no even even the 2019 series they played better did you notice where game seven was like they the least were the lower seed in all of them yeah i think i think what it is is that if if we had been swept it would have been better uh mentally yeah oh and then it would just be brooms memes instead of it was four one memes it was four zero yeah uh you know that's it doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well lots of teams have gotten swept before but um it's a it's a nasty series um and colorado needs to watch out because the end of the game though even though i just said they were tough enough the end of the game should be an indicator for what game two is going to be like the blues are going to try to run you out of the building

right that well i i you know i have a bit of disdain for this player but i i was like oh yeah robert bertuzzo out there last shift i'm sure it was just a coincidence you know what i mean They're a very rough and ornery team, and they're going to do their best to run Colorado out of the building. Interesting. I didn't even mention Bennington trying to get into a scrap. He's always trying. I know.

Somebody fight him, for God's sakes. Out of all the Bennington almost fights, I actually kind of mind that one the least, because at least Grubauer did something. I'm over it. I'm over Mr. Bennington. he needs to take a chill pill Jordan next time you do it

take off the helmet blocker and gloves then we'll be like oh shit it's about to go down how do you get into a goalie fight he doesn't want to fight how do you get into a goalie fight anymore because if your helmet comes off they're going to do their best to stop the fight

right that's what they do with skaters that's why they don't have goalie fights anymore right like did we see one this year it's bullshit uh good question anyway with that before we get into the press conference i would just like to remind you guys of one quick thing this time last year we were about halfway through five months of no hockey and having conversations about maybe it could come back in july or august so i just want to say to everybody happy days it's already way better than it was last year when i think about

those may june shows that we put on um and not knowing what was going on i gotta tell you it's it fills me with that little bit of i remember how the pandemic felt like i remember mentally how it was so um you know i know we're coming to the end here i know everybody's antsy to get finished especially in canada but think of how far we are ahead versus where we were last year and we're actually watching legitimate playoff hockey not playing hockey and there are fans in the building in a lot of american buildings and potentially one in canada too so that's pretty great yay us yay world let's do the press conference the steve dangle press conference adam you're gonna make me friggin cry can you can you can

we get out of here with that um oh go ahead i do sorry there was something we forgot to highlight last show and there's been some actually really cool not women's hockey news women in hockey news uh so from the leafs this is one of their tweets dr hayley wickenheiser has been elevated to the role of senior director of player development and danielle goyette has been hired as the club's director of player development um and also the new jersey devils uh this is five hours ago as of us uh recording this megan duggan of the american program has been hired for the newly created role of manager player development within our hockey operations

team. So I just wanted to highlight those things. Those are extremely cool. And I did actually sort of predict this in a video many months ago. Because the way the hierarchy worked within the Leafs, I promise I'll

shut up in a minute. Hey, Adam, did you know that this news is about Steve? Wow! Wow! You know, Jesse, it was through sheer will that steve allowed hayley wilkin wickenheiser another white man taking credit for women's work oh let's not forget who deserves credit a man here we go all right everybody

no joe rogan disciples steve dangle pay your peace don't insult the man like that come on Hey, hey, not all of us half-Italians are the same, goddammit. So, no, what did you actually sort of guess at? Okay, so when Hayley Wickenheiser was promoted to her previous role, which I forget what the exact title was, I said, hey, this is actually kind of interesting because the last few people who have gotten that role went on to get promoted to what Scott Pellerin's role was.

As soon as Scott Pellerin leaves the team, guess what? Hayley Wickenheiser gets promoted to that role. So there you go. Just wanted to point that out. Interesting. Okay. Well, good catch. Jesse, do we have any?

I thought so. Originally. We had to give you a hard time on that one. Do we have any questions, Jess? Yeah. So first note on the fans in the stands conversation, Chris Johnston tweeted out that the highest attendance for the first weekend of playoffs

was the Canes, who had 12,000 fans. Wow. Shout out Carolina. That's pretty cool to see that back. Did I show you what they sent me? Yes, you did. Yeah, you showed us. Yeah.

Tell the listeners, though, because they don't know. I will be back in 10 seconds. Oh, you're going to get it. Adam, I'll preview Friday's. We're going to have a history corner. Oh, okay. Ready for our first Friday show.

I also got a zoo corner. Here you go. Are you excited for Zoo Corner? Oh, it's a James Reimer blanket. He actually looks pretty badass in that. Yeah, for anybody listening, Steve's holding up a James Reimer Carolina Hurricanes blanket. I thought it was very cool.

So, Jesse, what did you want to preview? You've got a Zoo Corner and a History Corner on Friday. Yeah, we're coming with that on Friday. And then first question, do you guys have any thoughts on Vancouver announcing that Jim Benning will be back? i know adam mild you are a big not jim benning fan so what do you think first i think uh you know um good start if you keep doing the same thing you should expect the same result

i mean you know what the good thing that that canucks fans can look forward to is jim benning doesn't have a nickel to spend uh in free agency so um and he's got to resign yeah because he's got to resign a bunch of his own actually good players so at least he'll look really good when he signs petterson and quinn hughes and all those guys um i just i here's the problem with the canucks is that unless they stay like insanely healthy i don't see a path for them petterson's got to play more obviously he had a really injury-plagued season i get that i don't see the path for them to becoming it's not that they couldn't make the playoffs it's just i don't see them becoming the dominant team that they should with a guy like him on the roster and he was on

the roster etc etc does that make sense yes extrapolating on what we learned about the Canucks so I and I oh I keep coming back to this clip it's it's a little bit of bad luck but it also comes from poor decision making right so the the the free agency woes of the Vancouver Canucks are well documented um they're drafting quite good quite good like let's just call it what it is. Quinn Hughes, Elias Pettersson, several. Oh, Hoglander. That's a great pick. Great player for them.

Demko's been great for them. I don't remember where they drafted him. And Holtby, I don't think has proven to be a particularly bad signing. But I remember listening to 31 Thoughts like three weeks ahead of the deadline, let's say.

The Canucks don't have Pettersson and they're actually hot. They're actually quite hot so what kind of message does it send to take this team that doesn't have their best player who's playing hot and then you pull the chute i agree that mentally it doesn't you know for the room i it doesn't send a great message okay well then the whole team gets covid which nobody asked for but then they can't even sell at the deadline and now you're in this funny position where the team has failed to make the playoffs again

and you're just making up in your head where you think they would have finished if everything went okay if pedersen was in the lineup the whole time if he um if he didn't go through a slump at the beginning of the season which he did um you know if we're not mid-pandemic x y and z i still i don't see it making them better than like a middle of the pack team like the canucks are a team right now where every year you go yeah they can make the playoffs but you don't talk about them as winning what you got to look at the elite young players that they have and you got to look at the next steps for the organization because i think with a new mind in there who can make some creative moves help shed some of the free agency fat you've acquired over

the years they could be something really special yep they could yeah they could i mean but but you know it's got a i mean this this offseason alone quinn hughes and and pedersen need to be re-signed already and if i am them i'm calling the seattle krakenists quickly and as many times as i can to say how can i how can i offload tyler myers on you and they're going to rob you blind like vegas did to how many teams yeah you need a different mind in there it's it's not even jim benning sucks it's not even about that although adam listen there's certainly an argument that he sucks but we know he's good at x you know at a few things the best parts of the canucks are because of jim benning but he's also been there seven years they ought to be you know so so yeah if

you're making that argument the worst parts are him too yeah dude the the both ways it's so hard for a GM in Canada to get fired. Oh, yeah. They've all been there forever. Dubas is like one of the most recent ones. Shovel Dayoff, have the Jets had another one? I don't think so. Bergevin's been there forever.

Treleving's been there forever. Benning's been there forever. I think the newest one is in Edmonton. Why can't I say his name right now? he's the true was detroit's general manager for 80 million years oh ken holland yeah that's right yeah i think he's the newest i think he's the newest and then it's either dubas or dorian and then the other ones have been there forever i think it's dubas and then dorian and what has a team in canada done over the last decade nothing you know what i mean like the the

sins i mean they made it to the conference final that's not nothing um the canucks made it the game seven of the second round last year and that's like up that in terms of the past decade like that might make the podium in canada yeah like that that's not okay hey hey the oilers made it to the second round and lost in what six and seven six or seven yeah i think that about it yeah but it was maybe they're tied for bronze the point is for every shit it's for every jt miller trade there's two j beagle moves there's it's j beagle it's russell it's it's uh oh god i mean tyler myers toffoli toffoli uh letting toffoli go brandon sutter tanner pearson uh getting re-signed because they had to because they can't look that bad and by the way russell

and beagle both have another year left on their deal so toffoli so important right so we we've talked about kekalina right and getting line a and how poorly line is worked out we all know and dubois in winnipeg too that hasn't really worked out we all agree that the jets need to either rehabilitate dubois or get a lot for him and the blue jackets either need to rehabilitate line a or get a lot for him no one's like oh yeah i'd be acceptable if they lost them for nothing that's what happened like yesterday and he's gonna be back it's not okay it's not okay and the Canucks are probably gonna be better next year and we're gonna be like see look at Jim Benning look at look at Jim Benning go this is all Jim Benning oh I they'd be better off with

somebody else according to Elliott Friedman by the way they're not fighting hard or doing anything to keep travis green so uh that's accordingly i believe this week unless it's some fake twitter account um which like mr booth or something i was about to say did you maybe i got boothed maybe maybe maybe but um i don't know interesting because like i don't think travis green has done a bad job with what he's been given i think he's been pretty good i mean listen if they were going to keep travis green if they were thrilled with travis green you would think they would have re-signed travis green yeah that's the thing like forget if i got boothed on that one the reality is they still would have right if you're happy with him you offer him

an extension somewhere in the middle of the season because you know how the season is going to play out you know like they're going to miss the playoffs kind of we knew this about a month now the leafs played the canucks 10 times and in each game there was some point like early in the third period where i went oh tyler myers tyler myers by the way it's six million dollars a year for another five years oh my god it's a hunk of shit contract it's horrible it's they need another brain in there sorry i i did not get mr booths i'm sorry to interrupt it was rick uh dolly wall yeah friedman on travis green they're not acting like they want the coach back they're not fighting to keep them so you know i mean there are good coaches out there bruce boudreaux sat

sat around for a little while probably ready to go but i just you know it's it's it's not like you can't find a good coach it's just this guy is a really good coach um there are there there seems to be too many good coaches as free agents right now so if there was a time to fire a coach it'd be now or let him go because it's john tortorella welcome back no uh it's they would man they'd be crazy like that for sure if we're looking at the canucks and going yeah well you know it's a it was a really challenging year and you can't blame them okay well then why is green gone then right like if that's the i just don't understand most teams you can at least understand the way they think i don't understand how the canucks think i'd like to know at the end

of the season at the end of the playoffs maybe if somebody can write an article on how the covid situation played out internally in vancouver because i don't know if that plays into it but that couldn't have been good on anybody like just we all know in our personal lives going through covid when you have this outbreak in this team and you have those breaks like i wonder if some of that fell on the coach and how um the players handled it and like them coming back to play and then the mutiny in the media like that whole situation i wonder if it was just okay it's time to move on and just reset here that's pure speculation from one guy from what i'm reading by the way part of the issue with the canucks and travis green would be yeah and i'm assuming

that they have not really done much other than ask what his number is is the number oh the canucks don't want to pay their coach a lot of money which is weird because he was a bottom six guy for a lot of his career what i don't know i don't know if i get it they love overpaying depth oh that's true that's true good point good point i mean i don't know i it seems like an odd thing but who knows maybe maybe jim benning in year eight becomes the genius that we all doubted him like i can't wait for the canucks to get on a tear in the first 20 games next year and all the Canucks fans see, see, we told you, we told you. And, and, you know, Jim Benning, wow, God, he's great.

So we'll see what happens there. I would like to finish the show if I might with a little poem from Leafs Reddit. Would that be okay? A poem? Oh yeah. Okay. This was sent to me. Can I shout out our sponsor for this episode?

Sorry. Yes, please do. Yes. Okay. So today the press conference was sponsored by Brennan. uh brennan donated to the colorado healing fund which sends donations less resources to families of victims of mass shootings in colorado more specifically the recent mass shooting at a king uh supers in boulder uh he said he loves the podcast keep up the great work please still

tell steve i love nazim kadri go abs go thanks me too me too great okay so this is um a little playoff ode to the leafs twas the night before playoffs are you guys ready i knew it it's from smitty leaves have you read this no i just knew it was going to be twas the night okay now it's a bit long so bear with me are you ready do your thing twas the night before playoffs went all through the rink not a player was stirring not even matthews to wink the jerseys were hung by the lockers with care in hopes that lord stanley might someday be there while forwards were nestled at home in their beds while visions of clap bombs danced in their heads and keith with his playbook and malhotra all stressed settled down for a sleep

but got little to no rest when out of the studios there arose such a clatter that fans finally looked out to see what was the matter away to the r leafs we flew like a flash that's the reddit Leafs uh sorted sorted by new and refreshed and refreshed it seemed like Leafs hockey had been so long ago and it made us wonder if we'd ever get to the show when what to our wondering eyes should appear but Joe Bowen with a holy mackinaw coming so near with big hits and no whistles would we all survive I knew in that moment playoff hockey had arrived more slowly than chara skating it had finally came as soon the leafs would be skating oh what a game now matthews now marner now hyman and brody on tavaris on willie spezza and riley to the top of the

division to the top of the wall now score away score away score away all as dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly when they meet with an obstacle mount with the sky so up to the corners the goals they flew with hatties for me and hatties for you and then in a twinkling i read on our hockey the leafs were nothing they sucked like a donkey i didn't know donkeys as i went to respond i caught myself in a flurry and i realized i'd say nothing let hockey tell the story now the playoffs were dressed in now the playoffs were dressed in sparkling jerseys soon to be beaten with oh so much fury. Four rounds of hockey, the playoffs held on its back as it wondered how many game sevens it would fit in its sack. Oh, keep his eyes how they twinkled and glowed. He looked

like a man with something to show. His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow and the whiteboard was ready as white as the snow. A tablet in hand, he'd come up with plays. He'd drawn them up good. He'd been planning for days. He stared over at Manny and gave him a glance. Perhaps for Manny, this was his last chance. The players themselves would take the ice, and I laughed when I saw them. This team would suffice. A wink of the eye and a twist of the head. Oh, the other teams now had something to dread. Matthews spoke not a word, but went straight to his work and filled all the nets, then turned with a jerk. And pointing his hand down the ice he pointed to the goal oh wasn't that nice the players all jumped when the final

when the final whistle uh sorry the players all jumped when the final whistle game they flew to their goalie to congratulate the saves and i heard them exclaim with lord sandley in sight happy playoffs to all and to all a good night and i just want to say a big shout out to uh smitty leafs on uh leafs reddit for that and i believe it was smitty that sent me that and if it wasn't smitty i apologize i had a few people uh send me that that link so really really appreciate it and man we excited yeah it just it reminded me of a post i saw about a rapper who rhymed mansion with wisconsin that's t-pain was the t-pain yeah yeah it was t-pain it was t-pain Okay, well, that's it for us until Friday

when we'll be back for our third episode of the week, ladies and gentlemen. Wow, wow. Oilers Jets tonight. Watch that. It's going to be good hockey. Is the contest closed, my friend? 8 p.m. tonight it closes.

Okay, so probably. Oh, yeah, by the time you hear this. So be looking out for messages from Jesse. Thank you so much for following and for commenting. Good luck. We will have more giveaways in the future, and we will see you Friday. the steve dangle podcast follow the guys on twitter at steve underscore dangle

at adam w y l d e and at jesse blake connection complete