Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - James Mirtle: Toronto Mike'd #119

Episode Date: April 22, 2015

Mike chats with Globe and Mail hockey reporter James Mirtle about covering the Leafs, his use of Twitter, analytics in hockey and why he doesn't ask questions at press conferences.

Welcome to episode 119 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything, often with a distinctly Toronto flavour. I'm Mike from torontomic.com and joining me this week is hockey journalist James Myrtle. Welcome, James. Thanks for having me. You're my first James and I'm right off the bat, I love the name. It's the name of my firstborn. You're my first James, and I'm right off the bat. I love the name. It's the name of my firstborn, James. Okay.

It was actually my mom's last name, her maiden name, so they just kind of passed it on to me. So I've got all these uncles and cousins and everything. Their last name is James, so it's a big part of my family. Yeah, James is one of those names. It works both ways, first name, last name. Yeah. It's one of those.

Can I ask you, like, do you always go by James, or do you ever want to go by, like,my or anything always you know what the problem with jim is that it kind of runs into myrtle so it sounds like one terrible name so yeah no i'd never been i when i was a kid i was uh i was jamie when i was really young oh yeah but james since you didn't get like i called my boy jamesy wamesy for a while that's. You're a little old for that one now. Yeah. You know, I love that shirt. That's the Atlanta Flames shirt. Yeah, I got an Atlanta Flames shirt on.

Yeah, yeah. It's the playoffs. So, you know, the Leafs season, I wear a suit a lot of the time. Now I've been sitting on the couch watching a lot of hockey, so I'm not wearing the suit anymore. Cool. Jimbo, you never went by Jimbo? No. You know what?

When I named him James, my son, in my head, I was thinking he's going to love this. I had a cool guy in high school named Jimmy, and I love that Beastie Boys track, Jimmy James. And I was thinking like, ah, he's going to love it. He's going to be Jimmy James or whatever. And he only goes by James, like his choice. I just want to call him Jimmy. I think it's a cool name. It's actually good because a lot of people are Jim, right? So if you just go by James, it makes it more unique. It's like Michael. Everyone's a Mike. I'm going to mix it up and just go by Michael. That's what I should do. Did you grow up in Toronto?

No, no. I'm from BC. I'm from Camelot, BC. So like the heart of hockey, I think. And we grew up with season tickets to the Camelot Blazers, which was the best junior team in, in, uh, in Canada. And it was, um, that that's what we did. You know, we went to junior hockey games twice a week in the middle of winter. And I just grew up with, that was, that was our life. And I just loved it so much. How did you, uh, end up here in the big smoke? Uh, I came here for grad school at Ryerson. I did the grad program in journalism and, um, got hired at the Globe and Mail. You know, I, I've been at the Globe and Mail for 10 years now, uh, next month. And it's been, uh, it's been terrific. You know, I started as an intern there, basically working on the desk, laying out pages and doing that kind of stuff. And

to be where I am now, it's, uh, it's, it's been, it's been quite a ride. You know, I moved to Toronto as a guy from small town BC with, uh, a degree in literature. And I had, I had no idea that this is what was going to happen. So that's, I guess I'm always interested. So, uh, did you grow up wanting to be like a journalist? Was this the plan or you just fell into it? No, no, no. I mean, no. When I was in, in school and high school, math was always what i did that was always my best subject and i thought i was going to be a math professor or uh something like that i thought you know that gig might pay better than this one i don't know i thought and the globe mail's okay i

mean i'm not i'm not complaining you know yeah i always thought i was going to be like an academic or something i always did really well in school and i thought that I was going to do something like that. And I got to grade 12 and just like, you know what? I don't I don't want to do this. I don't want to crunch numbers all day. I don't want to do physics and chemistry and equations. And which is kind of funny because now as a hockey writer, I'm doing that kind of stuff sometimes to a to a lesser degree. And I decided just to go to go and do do an English degree and read books and find myself and that kind of thing.

do an English degree and read books and find myself and that kind of thing. You know, watching you now, and I gave you the stay on the mic speech and watching you now, I realize these mics aren't ideal for a guy your height. You're my tallest guest yet. So you said you were 6'5"? Yeah, I'm a little bit over 6'5". Okay. So this is uncharted territory. So you're like the guinea pig here. I've learned, and if you're listening, if my friend Andrew Stokely is listening, these mics are like, I think 6'3 might be the max. And it's funny because I had no idea you were a tall guy.

I've only seen your Twitter picture. And I have Roz Weston coming in Friday. And I've actually been in like a box watching a Leaf game of Roz. And I think he lists himself as 6'3. And I was thinking, I hope these mics and ceilings are okay for a 6'3 guy. these mics and ceilings are okay for a 6'3 guy but clearly i need to either put the microphone on like a phone book or get those swinging uh the things you get in professional radio stations yeah there you go swinging arm that's the next step i gotta find out what those cost it's funny in toronto trying to buy a house with a basement where i could stand up was like well this is a

hundred year old home and if you're gonna get yeah most of those ours yeah but we had to find one that was completely like they had spent whatever, 30 grand to dig out. To dig down? To dig down, yeah. Oh, yeah. Which people are doing more and more in the city, so. Yeah, that's right. You got to dig down.

Yeah, like, I'm not 6'5", so I'm okay down here. I'm just going to, I got to see where my James ends up and see if I'm digging down in a couple of years. Well, I can, I don't know how tall you are, but my dad's about 5'9", and I'm 6'5". So, like, you know, it can happen. It can happen. His grandpa, his mom's dad is a tall guy, so I'm thinking it could happen. Yeah, we'll see.

Okay, so you ended up in Toronto for Rye High, and then you got the internship at Globe. So, first of all, hearing you were at the Globe for 10 years surprises me, only because you look like you're 25 years old. Yeah, I look a bit young. I'm not though. I'm 34. Is that why you grow the beard just so guys don't hurt you? This is like my dad beard, I think. You run out of time to do a lot of things. So tell me, you have a two-month-old and this is your first kid?

Yeah. That's crazy time, man. No, it's been crazy yeah you learn to function i you know because i i'm guessing you have two kids three you have three oh i know my poor daughter gets next to them she's at a i have new respect for people that have done this before you know i was expecting it to be hard i was not expecting it to be this hard because our guy is is big he wants to eat like every hour and he we're just not getting any sleep so it's been two and a half months of not sleeping.

Tell me if this is the too much information section, but he's breastfeeding this kid? Yeah. So your wife's got to, because it's difficult for you to breastfeed. So you have to pass that on. Yeah, yeah. So you're kind of a bystander.

And so it's still at that, I remember this, it's all the time at first and then you kind of get to that four month age where you kind of get a routine at like four months. But the first four months is like going to war, you're in battle yeah yeah and so yeah and i'm working nights now staying up and watching the games last night triple overtime so did you stay up for that oh yeah that's awesome i i can't go to bed when i go you know what time of the day was that when uh when it ended like was that 2 30 i think yeah and then i went and then i went to bed and then the baby's crying

so i was up to like 3 30 and it's like okay i'm gonna go to the basement and at least get like whatever five maybe six hours and then yeah so i'm not functioning at the highest level that's how i like i like you guys uh coming in here a little off your game it kind of i can go in and kind of sure yeah i'm vulnerable so that's that's the plan, man. So I'm fascinated. You got just an intern at the Globe. But how do you sort of turn that internship into a full time gig? Can you just give me some of the boring details on how you end up being a full time reporter for Canada's national newspaper? is probably different than most people because yeah so I started on the desk uh they ended up they they liked me that first summer they wanted to hire me they gave me a part-time job working nights on the sports and the news desk so I was editing stories for for news and sport I did a lot of stuff on the the Toronto news side and um so because I was part-time and I was working nights I had a lot of time during the day a lot of time on you, when I had weekends or whatever. And I was running my own website

and it was a hockey website and it was called the Hockey Journalist Blog. And when I started it, 2004 was during the lockout. It was when there were like basically no hockey blogs. There was no Puck Daddy. There was nothing like that. Was the Pension Plan Puppets up yet? Because that's the first one I remember.

Yeah, I think that that, I think those guys, I can't remember what year they started, but it was early 2000s. I would have started before that probably like there was there was just nothing. Tyler Dello had his site around then. And that's how it started. And that site just got more and more and more popular. It eventually ended up getting bought by Sports Blog Nation, which is which is what runs Pension Plan Puppets. Right, right. And I actually ran all of the hockey websites at Sports Blog Nation back, it was like 2008 or something like that. That's like the glory days of blogging. Right, it was.

It totally was. Yeah, I mean, they came to me and they said, they made me an offer. And I was like, I don't think so. And then they doubled their offer. And then they more than doubled their offer. And it's like, okay, I guess I'm going to do this. I guess I'm going to go work for it. So would you ever give me a ballpark?

You know, no one's ever wanted to buy a torontomike. i'm wondering what i'm i need to get it more niche i need to target well initially they said something like five hundred dollars a month and i was like there's no way like i'm i'm busy the site made money on its own i was getting like little back then you could get text ads and i was making whatever like three or four hundred dollars a month i still sell those yeah so i was making three four hundred dollars a month on text ad just because the traffic was picking up and up. Well, they want the SEO value. They're buying it for SEO.

They're not buying it for clicks. Right, right. I sell them still. Yeah. So anyway, I was like, no, I'm not going to do $500. And then the offer got so much bigger. I was like, okay, sure. So what SB Nation wanted is they wanted someone to come in

and recruit other bloggers to give them sort of a voice. And what we did is we went from, we had pension plan puppets. We had about five teams represented. Leafs were one of them. By the time I left, I was there a little over a year. By the time I left, we had every team represented. So, you know. What was the last team you got? Like what was the, you know? We had a hard time with Anaheim and LA, I think, where it was. I don't know why. That's surprising about LA because, you know, Gretzky's been there. You'd think somebody...

It's just, there are people doing it. It's just, you have to negotiate with them. You got to move your blog, which you've had and you love, over to this platform and, you know, we'll give you a little tiny bit of money. It's like your baby

because I had this chat with Julian, I think. I had, there was a, we called it the Barilco Sphere Summit, but MLSE, John Sen at mlse took me and down goes brown and bloge salming and uh one of the cats from pension plan puppets out to to wendell clerks at like 407 for for dinner cool just for a powwow on how we could work together when was that uh this was like oh nine I want to say right so yeah the glory days those were the glory days yeah like I couldn't imagine trying to do what i did back then now but so anyway like that was a huge part of

that was i think that was everything i mean if i was just a guy working part-time on the news desk or whatever there's no way i would have become a hockey reporter it was just it was grinding out hours and hours i mean i was working like 78 or 80 hours a week because i was working all these nights and then and then i would come home at midnight and I would just blog all night. And I would go to bed and I'd get up and I'd go to the gym and then I'd come back and I'd blog some. And then I'd go to work again. And it was just, it was crazy. So I didn't have the life I have now.

I just, I had endless free time. I love doing it. And I just dedicated my life to doing that. And that, okay, so this is getting, we're leading to how you ended up full time at the globe. That's, uh, yeah, I mean, they liked me there. Uh, other places were trying to hire me because they saw I, I had this voice and they liked what I was writing. And you know, I think the, it came to a point where the globe there, there were opportunities there, there were jobs opening up. There were, you know, at one point the job in Vancouver opened up,

the job in Montreal opened up and then the, then the eventually the leafs job opened up and uh every time i was there standing at the front line saying let me in let me in i want it this is what i've always wanted to do is cover an nhl team and uh eventually it worked out and the crazy thing is that i would have moved anywhere i would have went anywhere to do this i would have went to columbus or whatever to cover an nhl team it just worked out that it happened to be the Leafs job. Tim Warnsby went to CBC, took that job. He was the Leafs beat guy. They decided to put me on that part-time covering a couple of games or whatever. They really liked what I did and eventually I ended up getting the job. You do realize this is the center of the hockey universe. Yeah. You know what? I mean, you couldn't do better. Yeah.

And I know I'm very biased. Okay. Born and raised here, diehard Leaf fan through thick and thin. But, I mean, if you step back objectively, this is the place to be if you're a hockey writer. The great thing is the audience, yeah. Yeah. I think it's actually helped me being from somewhere else because I didn't grow up with kind of the mythology and the mystique. And I think I can see through a little bit of the BS sometimes that's there, you know, I think. Sure. mystique and I think I can see through a little bit of the BS sometimes that's there you know I think sure that that's that's I'm like an outsider kind of looking at this organization and saying

here's what's wrong with it here's what's working here's not and and as a journalist that's kind of what you should be right you shouldn't be someone that grew up you know some people are and they do it well but you know I think it works for me not being someone that grew up with with them being the Maple Leafs quote I know you're you're 100 right I can it's got to not being someone that grew up with them being the Maple Leafs quote-unquote. No, you're 100% right. It's got to be tough to kind of lose the fandom. Yeah, the guy who had the Wendell Clark jersey on has trouble seeing things objectively. Yeah, I always loved the NHL. I always watched everybody.

That's why I got the Atlanta Flames. I was always watching the Hartford Whalers when I was growing up. And when we were playing hockey in the driveway, it wasn't we were Trevor Linden or whatever. It was we were Robert Krohn or just some random random yeah but i i watched a lot of the leafs i mean those pat quinn leafs teams those that was some entertaining well see i'm you're probably i don't do you even remember the run in 92 and 93 like is this uh i'm trying to gauge your age here but i'm 34 so yeah like a little bit like you know i was i remember those years i really remember the pittsburgh penguins, those teams.

Yeah, Mario? I remember well. I remember, well, 94 was Vancouver. I mean, the Canucks just took over. So I remember that series really, really well. I know Leafs fans don't live and die with the 94 team, right? No. So my memory is, so I'm older than you.

That's a first disclosure. So I remember the 80s, and it was like a wasteland. But we got excited over little things. Like at 86, we'd sweep the Blackhawks in three in the Norris Division semifinal or whatever.

So we lived off these little morsels and we had Wendell and it was like, you know, looking back, it's like, holy smokes,

we were like starved. We were happy to have like a little meal or whatever. But then we had the, you know, the Gilmore trade, which was fantastic

and you had Anderchuk in town and Felix Potvin coming into his own and we have this first wave of glory days for guys my age, which is the Pat Burns era and the Cliff Fletcher years. And we had the two final four appearances in a row.

Everyone remembers the LA Kings game seven in 93. But we had two final fours in a row. 94 was a little more disappointing in the... What was it? Campbell Conference? So Wales, yeah, so the Campbell Conference final. But then we had the second wave coming with Pat Quinn, where we had not in a row, but two Final Four appearances.

So we have these two little waves, but never a finals appearance. Like, we wouldn't know what that felt like. Right, yeah. So I wasn't like a diehard Canucks fan, but when they went on that run and no one expected it, it was amazing to be 13, 14 years old in BC and see the way that even my city, you know, three hours away from Vancouver reacted. I mean, the whole province just went insane. And it was hard not to love that team. That was such a scrappy underdog team. People in Toronto probably don't care about the 94 Canucks, but that was just, that run really was something. Yeah, you had, Jeff Cortnall was on that team, right? Oh, yeah. Because I met Russ Cortnall when I was a kid at Jane and Annette.

That's my Cortnall story. Yeah. And we traded him for John Cortnall. I was just listening to Leafs Lunch on the way here, and they were talking, they had all these Russ Cortnall stories. Oh, yeah? Yeah, they weren't as fit for radio as probably the one that you, they were great, yeah. Those are good.

I want to hear those stories. But funny thing is, Down Goes Brown, just to be like a dink, he wrote this piece about how the, we trade, so we trade a Russ Cordnell

for John Cordick and it's historically one of the worst Leafs trades in history. But he wrote this piece basically saying it was a good trade for Toronto, like trolling essentially.

And then I responded, this is back in the glory days of blogging when it was kind of more interesting to do all that. But that's like one of these trades everybody remembers in this city was the cordic cordinal thing right but uh you know this used to happen that happened to the canucks

traded a guy named alex stoyanov to pittsburgh for marcus nasland who became one of the most beloved players you know it's that used to happen goon goon for a guy that turns out to be yeah yeah it happens unfortunately uh hey i know that're going to have a lot of good chat here about good things, but can I read something that I wrote about back in 2010, I think it was, but it's something William Houston wrote. Do you remember William Houston? Yeah, I do.

Do you know where I'm going here? Yeah, probably, yeah. Why do you have your hands around my neck right now? No, he's not people. He's being a good boy. So let me just read it, and then we'll just have a quick chat about this, just because this is fascinating to me, that William Houston put this on his blog, by the way. So he wasn't employed at this time. I believe he was not employed by mainstream media. He was independent, as they say.

unfortunately, was the spectacle of James Myrtle attempting to function as a globe and mail hockey writer. A statistics wonk with limited journalist skills, poor James struggled, to say the least. Consider his gruesome effort on April 12, in which he reports, reports is in quotes, by the way, on Leaf coach Ron Wilson's assessment of the season. All right, all right.

No, no, a bit more, because this is honestly, people want to hear this, and we all know William Houston is a crazy nut bar, so don't worry there. You'll have a fair response, but can I just read a bit more? Is that okay? Just a little bit more.

Myrtle wanted us to know that some ex-Leafs felt the players in the room had given up playing for Wilson. He wrote, and while at least one of those traded had quietly told friends around the league that Leafs coach had lost the room, it's now crystal clear Burke came down on the side of Wilson, shutting out nearly 40% of his roster in a span of five weeks in a bid to clear

out the malcontents. Okay, so who's the player quietly telling friends around the league that Wilson lost the room? Either James didn't know or he didn't have the guts to report his name. It was just cheap gossip and a cowardly bit of work. And didn't you love the term crystal clear? My God, that hackneyed piece of twaddle was worn out and overused decades ago. Okay, so that's William Houston on James Myrtle back in 09, 10, I guess it was 2010. Yeah, unsurprisingly, William Houston

was forced out of the globe with a buyout and was not very happy about it. And I was one of the people that was hired when he left. So he's a bitter ex-employee who doesn't like this young guy coming up and taking his. Didn't like the sports editor that had promoted me, was probably sitting at home reading the paper. And, you know, you know what the thing is, is that I do things differently than than most people that

cover hockey i think i've got a different voice you know the thing using using the stats you know just talking about the game i think differently especially than a lot of really old school reporters which is which is what william houston would have been i mean he was in his 60s when when he left the globe i had always had a very good relationship with bill houston before that that was that that piece when you saw that because this is on his blog and then people idiots like me start linking to it okay i know i wrote about it uh and were you hurt or just disappointed or it's pretty frustrating particularly it was very frustrating because i had worked kind of my whole career up until that point to to get that job and then even at that point i think i was a part-time i was only i was still on the desk and i was getting to write a couple leafs articles and

what's you know it was like my start yeah yeah yeah and then what happened ended up happening i don't know people probably don't remember it because this is so long ago but deadspin ended up picking up that piece and having and having some a lot of digs at Houston. The commenters were so angry that they filled the comments of Bill Houston's website. Eventually, he decided to pull it down. He put up a response post that was even more nasty. He decided to delete that, and eventually he ended up taking the entire site.

He took the entire site down and said, I'm going fishing or something. He never came back, and we've never heard from him again. It was a result of that piece. This is the same piece where he went at Chris Zelkovich, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's the piece.

I remember, yeah. He had a bad day, I think, Mr. Houston here. He just, you know, you got to have that sober second read before you click publish, I think. Yeah. Well, that's one of the things

you learn when you self-publish, for sure. Now, he mentions you as a, I want to guess it's an exciting quote. I want to get it right. Was it a stats? What does he call you? A, where? Oh, this is exciting radio here.

Stats wonk. So you're a statistics wonk. You mentioned earlier that math was your thing. Like you were big on math. In high school. In high school. It was always my best subject, yeah. So tell me, because today, like, I follow follow you on twitter and i watched some of the engagements and analytics

okay hockey analytics and i had this chat recently with uh i think elliot friedman and damian cox i had this like a long chat about analytics uh you were sort of um at the bleeding edge of this uh analytics i want to call it a trend but that doesn't do it justice it's not a trend just this way of looking at the game right so do you tell me about like uh the what you think of the nhl's foray into analytics and uh analytics in general you know what i think that what people need to keep in mind is that we're at the very very beginning of it it's very very simple it's very basic the stuff we're talking about and when we talk about possession stats and stuff like that, it's just about adding another layer on the very limited layer of statistics that we have in hockey. So I think people get their backup about, oh, this stuff doesn't make any sense. Or it's about adding more to the conversation statistically about the game.

And I think that that's a great thing. It's badly needed in hockey. And it gives you, the deeper I go into it, the further down the rabbit hole I go and learning about it, it changes the way you look at hockey. It changes what you think hockey is, which is remarkable to me. And, you know, I, I, there's been great buy-in in the last year, year and a half from the audience. And we've gotten tremendous response on our articles at the Globe and Mail. And, you know, my bosses are very excited about us covering analytics. I went to the Sloan Analytics Conference and spoke there this year. I mean, I think this is, it's like you said, I mean, it's not a trend. It's here to stay. And this is just the very, very beginning of it. I mean, we're where baseball was 15 years ago or more. Oh, Moneyball. Probably, yeah, probably

even before that. Like we don't even have yeah probably even before that like we don't even have at least not publicly we don't even have our moneyball hockey team yet right that that's that's had a small budget and they've been able to compete and right there may have been one we just don't know who it is so okay so when the nhl added as i remember you wrote a piece that basically nhl they didn't do it right is that fair to say like they're foray into analytics right uh sort of half-assed. Well, they just, they're doing it in stages.

The first stage wasn't really very, wasn't very impressive. You know, basically the hobbyist kind of guys that have built their own sites like War on Ice and Behind the Net, those sites are far superior to what the NHL had introduced. On that note,

we recently lost Cap Geek. Yeah. Very young. Yeah. Very sad. And that site, was recently lost CapGeek. Very young, very sad. And that site, was that one of your favorites? Or what did you think of the CapGeek? Oh, yeah. No, it was vital.

It was vital. Yeah. Especially with, you know, I think now in the NHL team building and being a GM, that kind of, you know, I'm trying to think of what to, that kind of smart perspective, that's what wins you a Stanley Cup now. It's not the one player. If you want to get really deep into what's winning teams championships right now, it's having smart management. are where they are or the Leafs are where they are is because they've had all these years of trying to have quick fixes and poor management and not thinking of the game this way that that Capgeek allowed us to really look at really closely you know they had this I don't know if you ever used it the armchair GM feature no but I mean people swear by it like people I trust tell me that was yeah I could spend especially in the offseason I would spend hours on that thing

just moving things around and if if if if I if the Ducks traded Beauchemin and they brought this guy in and they did that you know you could just rebuild the roster and you could see what can fit where it what if Chicago hadn't signed Corey Crawford to the six million dollar deal and they would have spent that on Nick Letty and change their blue line then what would the team look like then and you know especially with covering a team like the Leafs I would be on there all the the time saying, OK, how badly does this Clarkson contract hurt them? Where could they if they would have put that money into onto the blue line? Right. You know, there's just there's so many ramifications. And like I said, I think that that's what wins you championships.

Now, you've got to make the best use of that sixty nine million dollars that you can. And the teams that do that typically win. Is there a site out there that has come close to replicating what cap geek was doing no i mean what what mad built with that site was it was ridiculous like it was that was the kind of like his what do we call it with our websites like like his his personal passion project his passion project like he put his heart and soul into that thing he was a website developer it was it was it was beautiful i mean from like a perspective of developing a website it was looked so professional it had all these extra features it didn't need to

have it updated like by the minute like if a guy signed it was there like it was just that site was ridiculous no one will ever do that again unless the league decides to build something like that and hire a full-time person to do it we should probably fill in those who are unaware but very very suddenly we got a notice that capek was shut down and we knew it was for personal reasons and he didn't disclose at that time what it was, but we, we all knew it was likely something very serious because, uh,

you know, you don't shut down your passion project so suddenly like that unless it's very serious. And then I guess only months later, am I right? Uh, not very long later we found out he, uh,

he died of cancer. Right. And he was like like he's about your age right yeah i think 35 36 yeah it's terrible cancer sucks man yeah no kidding yeah no i didn't know i knew matt well online i'd never actually met him in person but we had talked for years and years uh on email and just trading information if he needed to know something or if i wanted to know something we would talk and he was And he was a great guy. It's really unfortunate. For sure. You mentioned William Houston being one of those old school reporter guys. Another guy who's kind of old school is Steve Simmons. And Steve Simmons,

and I only know this because I watch the Twitter show sometimes. I'll get my popcorn and watch it go. But Steve Simmons, I don't want to call him an analytics denier, but he seems to... Would you call him an analytics denier, Steve Simmons? I think some people are... Slow to warm up to it? No, I think some people will never warm up to it. They're just not interested. Well, math is hard, man. They're not interested in learning. I'm not sure. That's been that that's been, been my perspective. You know, people come and talk to me, the press box about this stuff all the time. And sometimes they just

come to, to make fun of it. You know, I don't think that there's this resistance to, to knowledge, which is kind of frustrating with the whole thing, but you know, baseball went through it. You talk to people in other sports and they say, Oh yeah, I remember that 10 years ago or whatever, you know, that that'll go away. You know, hockey, though, what happened in baseball is that they added four or five of these statistics. They became just part of the lexicon. Everyone accepted that, yeah, they have the value. They can tell you these certain things. That's what's going to happen in hockey. You know, I think 10 years from now, people will be, will laugh to think that we, there was such animosity over

something as simple as which team had the puck more than the other team see my theory is most you being an exception here but most guys you know enter the world of sports journalism and follow hockey and stuff they pretty much fell in there mainly because they hated mathematics like this is my theory like guys like steve smith they don't want to do math math at work it's like i you, I went into this job not to have to worry about math. And I think the stats stuff can be intimidating to somebody who struggles with that side of the brain. I think that...

Or you've embraced it because of your natural passion. Very early on, when I was at Ryerson, there was always the jokes. Anytime math came up or statistics or whatever at Ryerson Journalism School, it was always like, oh, I don't know anything about math. I was like the only one that seemed to have any interest or understood some of the concepts that we'll be talking about.

And then you get to the Globe and Mail, and you're writing for engineers, you're writing for professors, you're writing for business people especially. Our other sections are guys that are very, very smart at this stuff. We have tools where we can build all kinds of charts. I mean, it's a big part of what we do, and rise of big data, not just in hockey, but in the world has become such a huge story. So, you know, I think that we should be trying to to reflect the world and explain it to people, not not be afraid of it. That's a good point that we shouldn't overlook, which is that Steve Simmons writes for Sun readers and you write for Globe Mail readers.

look, which is that Steve Simmons writes for Sun readers and you write for Globe Mail readers. And I don't even know if someone's done a test on this, but I'd guess one's writing at like a fourth grade level and one's like an 11th grade level type of difference. Like to me, it's a completely different target audience in terms of education. And what I know, what I can say is that the response that we've gotten from our audience has been highly positive. You know, I hear from people all the time that, you know, and especially with what happened with the Leafs last year, a lot of people said, I thought you were wrong. And then the more I watched the team and the more their season went on,

I saw what you were talking about. And people became very, very interested in the idea that we could predict, not with certainty, but with probability that this probably isn't going to work. Sure. And that's a good example. So the Leafs, is this two years? I'm trying to remember. Last season.

So basically in December, let's say early December, I think we were 11-1-1 during a period. And Steve Simmons might have sent a tweet, something like, I don't know, in your face kind of tweet, like, look, your analytics are wrong or something. I can't remember the exact. Can you remind me this beef of Simmons that you had?

I remember, all I remember is Myrtle and Simmons had something, and I can't remember the details. Yeah, I don't really want to get too. Aw, come on. He doesn't listen to this podcast. You know what? That whole thing has gone away, and I think that that's good. Did you guys shake hands on this and disagree?

No, we didn't. It's too bad that it has to become something personal personal because I want it to be about the ideas. I want it to be about the debate about, you know, the different ideas and the different concepts. That's totally fine. But I think some people make it personal and it goes even further than that. And it's unfortunate. So when you see Simmons in like, I don't know, press box or something, do you guys say hi or do you ignore each other? Not really. No, that's too bad. Yeah. Cause I'm thinking, uh, I don't know. You guys must bump into each other a lot no that's too bad yeah because i'm thinking uh i don't know you guys must bump into each other a lot am i am i crazy to think that or does he sure yeah i mean there's

lots of people in the press box but you know it's it's not open animosity i think this is this is a rivalry that you're digging up from you know a year and a half ago or whatever i mean it's not like an ongoing all right and i think that that's good you know it feels more recent than that but it could be. The way, the way I look at it, I mean, I don't want to be involved in these spats all the time. I don't want this to define my career that, that I'm only this one guy that only defends numbers and that's all I can do. I mean, that's, that seems very limiting to me. And, you know, being the foil for these other guys to, to have, have their say is not, I don't know. It's not,

it's not, it's not an intelligent enough. It's not an intelligent debate. It's not an interesting debate. We're not putting forward hockey. We're not, you know, it's, I don't know. It's just, I don't want that. Like I said, I don't want that to define my career that I've got these old guys attacking me and I have to be, the way that when I grew up,

I was always taught that you defend yourself. You know, if someone's bullying you or someone's coming after you, you defend yourself. So that's what people see on Twitter is I'm trying to stick up for myself and what I believe in. But, you know, at some point it's just counterproductive to just spend all your time doing that. I mean, it's good for the media to have people with different voices. And what the audience should do is support the people that they like to read. I mean, if you like reading what I do, then support it.

You know, buy a Globe and Mail or go to our website or follow me on Twitter or whatever. that they like to read. I mean, if you like reading what I do, then support it. You know, buy a Globe and Mail or go to our website or follow me on Twitter or whatever. And if you like these other guys, then do the same for them. And if you don't like people, if you think they're trolls or whatever, don't follow them.

Don't support them. Don't click on their stuff. You know, the audience has great power. And I think that one of the reasons I've been successful in my career is that the audience has supported what I do. And my bosses have seen, wow, there's a lot of people that want to read what James is doing. Let's send him to more places.

Let's give him more prominence in the paper. Let's talk about, you know. So it speaks to the people in charge when the audience, you know, follows, uses their clicks, right? They talk about speaking with your wallet. I mean, it's the same thing in journalism. Absolutely. Let's talk about Twitter a little bit. I'm always interested in how you guys use Twitter.

Too much. So let me ask you, because you do tweet a lot, and I just, Twitter to me, especially with yourself, like having met you, and I only just met you for the first time, but in person, for example,

you're a lot warmer in person than you are on Twitter. Okay. And Twitter is such that, you know, it's very short by nature, by nature, the beast, and it can come across like sometimes it,

cause you're not a particularly on Twitter anyways, you're not particularly, I don't know, humorous or jovial. Yeah. Did you see what I tweeted last night? Remind me, please.

Last night during the triple overtime game, I was tweeting pictures of cats that were sleeping. Were you? See, I do that all the time. I was asleep too. That was the problem. I think I'm silly on Twitter. Okay, so I just wondered if you find Twitter's more trouble than it's worth. Everyone's got a voice and there's so many critics out there. No, I think it's fantastic.

I think that's why I'm on there all the time because I love it. I mean, it gives you instant access to your audience there's great debate that happens there unfortunately there's you know the reality is i don't know how many followers i have 70 something thousand i mean unfortunately there's like a group of two to three percent of people that are complete idiots that try and ruin it for everybody but if you i found in the last year if you mute those people and you don't hear from them anymore or you block them if they're calling in. Do you block people on Twitter? Yeah. Because Wilner was blocking

lots of people for a while and he told me he's slow, and Damien Cox too. So those two are two of the guests that have been here recently that talked about how for a while they just blocked anybody who would like

swear at them or, you know, unfairly attack them. So what's your policy for blocking Twitter? When will you block a guy? You have to set a line. If anyone calls you a name or an insult or whatever, it's like goodbye.

So if someone calls you stupid, is that enough to kind of get blocked? Probably, yeah. I mean, it's not a forum for people to come yell at you. That's not what it is. It's like people picking up the phone and yelling at you every day. I mean, it's going to wear you down if you hear that over and over and over again. But like I said, that's like the 1% or 2% of people. And then you get the other interactions. I mean, I've met some of the people that, and I follow a lot of fans on Twitter. I follow, you know, and these guys are lawyers or, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're just like, you get to interact with all these really smart people that they might not be sports reporters, but they have interesting perspectives on hockey or they see things in the game and they ask you questions and you can respond to them. And it's, it's much more a give and take relationship as, as a journalist than the old way where you stood on a hill and shouted down to everybody

and they had to listen to what you say. I mean, I want to hear what they have to say back. And I've always done that on my website. And I think that that's, I think the audience appreciates that. And I appreciate hearing from them. So the good on Twitter outweighs the bad, you know, 100 to 1. It's just you have to be willing to deal with the bad. And that's why you block and you mute people because you want to spend more time talking to the good people instead of listening to these idiots. So you do block people, but not a lot of people, just when they cross this line. Right.

Is that like just a personal attack that's right okay yeah because i think once you do that i mean there's not gonna be any reasoning with that person and a lot of i think a lot what what people forget is a lot of those people are in my experience are 14 15 years old or younger you know and it's i got a lot of people that follow me that look like they're in high school or not even in high school and you know some of the stuff you get from them is just unbelievable. Oh, I can imagine. Twitter. Yeah. Twitter. You nailed it, though. Like it gives everyone a voice, which is good and bad. Like it's good and it's bad because everyone's got a voice. But the good is like, like I said, I was really good. Yeah. I've met I talked to people on DM or email or whatever that

I've met on there and I've talked to them for years. I've met them in person for drinks. And it's like, it makes your life better knowing these. When you meet these guys for drinks, you do, you have a bodyguard nearby kind of keeping an eye on things, right? I'm not that worried. Because you're 6'5"? Because guns don't care if you're 6'5". Come on, you got to be careful out there.

No, I'm just kidding. No, I don't. I don't know. After you've talked to them for a while, I think you got a good read on them. You can feel them out if they're a quack bot or not. Don't meet William Houston for drinks, though. I'm just worried for you. I don't know if he's stable.

That was the last we ever heard from him. That was it. I got to track him down and get him in here. We're going to have some chats about him. No, I don't think you do. No. The Globe is owned by Bell, right? This is a Bell Globe media.

Okay, tell me who owns the Globe and Mail. Why do I think Bell's got it? It's owned by David Thompson who owns it. Oh, Bell's got like 20% or something like that. I think it's 10 now. Yeah, they divested and then they're back in as like a really small. Bell has a very limited. I mean, I've been there 10 years.

I haven't seen any kind of influence from Bell really. David Schultz writes for The Globe. And did you know that? Yeah, I knew that. And sometimes he'll write something. I'm going to give a recent example. But he'll write, like, the Dean Blundell show is struggling on the Fan 590. And all the Rogers people I follow, a lot of them will say,

no wonder the Bill guy is trashing TSN's competitor. They try to make it like it's some kind of bias there. So you don't have any interference from Bell because Bell's got the small percentage and you don't hear from Bell. So I guess my question is, have you ever been urged to praise something Bell owns and not praise something Rogers owns.

That's not how it works. I mean, I think it's good for the audience to kind of look for, for biases with that kind of thing, but no, no, there's no, there's no way that would ever happen.

That is totally insane. Like Dave Schultz is writing his opinion and what he's learned from, I mean, like some of the things he's written about Rogers, about, about ratings and revenue being down. I mean, I'm not sure he, is he supposed to spin that into a positive story? No, right.

The thing too is that Dave has appeared on Primetime Sports on Fan 590. I mean, like he's been on Rodgers shows quite a bit. I mean, he doesn't have a bias against these people. I'm sure he's friends with a lot of people on that side. I'm sure he's friends with people on the TSN side. You know, you'd have to get him in here to talk about it. You know, that's a hard job what he's doing now. He's sort of taken on the TSN side. You'd have to get him in here to talk about it. That's a hard job, what he's doing now. He's sort of taken on the media critic kind of job.

I'm glad. Actually, I felt like nobody was doing it in mainstream media for a long time. It's actually nice to see somebody like Dave Schultz actually, because this is stuff I cover a lot, but I'm not a journalist. I don't have the time and the energy to actually do it. I need a proper journalist to do. And with this change with Hockey Night in Canada, moving from CBC to Rogers,

there's been incredible interest. I mean, the stuff that he's written about Ron McLean or whatever, you know, it's like the interest from the audience is unbelievable. Like the traffic that those stories get, it's just like, people are so interested in what's happening with Hockey Night in Canada. And I think that I understand

whether Rogers people are upset with getting this criticism, but I think what Dave's trying to do is reflect what's happening with Hockey Night in Canada. And I think that I understand whether Rodgers people are upset with getting this criticism, but I think what Dave's trying to do is reflect what's actually happening. I don't think he's trying to be unfair. Do you, back to the Dean Blandell thing, you ever listen to the Dean Blandell show? I haven't heard it yet, no.

I'm not really a morning radio. I listen to a lot of sports radio, but the morning shows I don't tend to hear that much. Who's your favorite sports radio host in this city? I like Brian Hayes, to be honest. I think he does a really good job. Bill told you to say that, didn't he? Yeah.

Well, I do some work at TSN Radio, so I know those people fairly well. I mean, I think Bob McCown does a good job. I like having, you know, some of his co-hosts are great. Steve Brunt's a guy I worked with at The Globe for a long time. I mean... He's good, eh? Yeah. Because I listen to sometimes guy I worked with at the Globe for a long time. I mean, he's good, eh? Yeah. Because I listen to sometimes, I do listen to that show.

And that show is way better when Steven Brunt is on it. He's a brilliant guy. I mean, he's someone that was a mentor for me at the Globe and Mail. I had some good ones. And I mean, that's the kind of guy that you want to emulate his career because it's been totally, it's been unbelievable. I mean, some of the books that he's written are fantastic. The way he does, you know, he, he, he's doing things with, uh, uh, he's doing kind of like, um, trying to think what they are like, like video.

Essays or something. Video essays, right. Like he did the Olympics one and yeah, he does that voiceover. Yes. That was part of why Rogers wanted to, so wanted to hire him from the Globe and Mail is because they, they were so good. The ones that he did during, I think it was during the Vancouver Olympics. And that's right. He left us soon after that. And it's because they want to hire him from the Globe and Mail is because they, they were so good. The ones that he did during, I think it was during the Vancouver Olympics.

And that's right. He left us soon after that. And it's because they want to use them to do that. And they're, they're great, you know? And that's, that's the kind of like an older school guy who is doing a newer school kind

of idea. Do you, uh, real quick, last couple of thoughts on Twitter. So you, you don't ever get, uh,

you never get asked to praise something or to trash something. You tweet completely independently. Those tweets belong to James Myrtle. Yeah, as much as possible. I mean, I've been at the Globe 10 years. I try and be a good soldier. If the Globe has a story that I like or that I think is good, I try and promote it or whatever.

But it's not, no, I don't get it. But you're not going to be, just because you work there, you're not going to tweet something like, you know, the TSN hockey coverage kicks the Rogers hockey coverage's ass. No, never, never. Unless you truly, sincerely believed it. I got a lot of respect for TSN. It's been great working with the radio station the last couple of years.

But, you know, I think that the fighting between Sportsnet and TSN, it's the same thing as the stuff with Simmons and whoever. It's counterproductive. I mean, that's not, we shouldn't be in these little spats all the time to entertain people. I mean, I'd rather be writing an intelligent story than doing that. There's analytics to cover. Come on. One last Twitter thing and then we'll move on.

But just wondering about lessons learned because you, when Steve Montador was found dead, I know you were actually on vacation when this happened, but you sent a tweet about linking it to suicide because of depression. Right, right. And actually, a lot of people, of course, when they see a Globe and Mail writer tweet something like that,

they take that as like a sword. Now you're a source that it was a suicide, but there was no other corroboration on that as far as I know. No, it was a mistake that I made. Yeah, and I wasn't on vacation. My son was born, I think, three days before that. That's a vacation.

Yeah, no, it's like the opposite of a vacation. That's right. I just, I made a mistake. I had sources telling me something that they said they knew, which it turned out they didn't know. And there was, unfortunately, that's the worst mistake I've ever made

in the 10 years at the Globe, is that, that tweet. And I wish, you know, I think if I'd been thinking a the 10 years at the Globe is that, that tweet. And I wish, you know, I think if I'd been thinking a bit more clearly, I would have never sent that out. Did anyone talk to you about that? Any of the bosses talk to you about that? Or just say, please don't do that again? Well, yeah. I mean, we have policies on reporting things like that.

And I've reported suicides before and things like that before. And I don't know. I don't know why I did that. You know, it's one of those things where you look back and you're like, well, what't know i don't know why i did that you know it's one of those things where you look back and like well you know what were you doing i understand why you did it but of course um when you have that kind of globe and mail title i understand you have you you can't do that so you lesson learned it has to be right you won't you wouldn't do that again then yeah etc do you ever would you ever tweet like when you drink i don't know

do you drink like at night sometimes you have a couple of beers would you ever uh when you drink? I don't know. Do you drink at night sometimes? Do you have a couple of beers? Would you ever? Yeah. I don't drink a lot, though. I mean, yeah. I mean, a lot of times I'll have like one or two. Yeah. And then I just wonder if the tweets get more interesting after a couple of pops.

Anything like that. I don't think so. Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Some people think so. Some people think my tweets late at night. I think it's more the sleep deprivation that's made them interesting.

You've got to go back and look at what I was tweeting last night during the triple overtime game. I'm going to catch up. I don't follow a lot of active tweeters, if that makes sense. I actually follow a lot of people who are in my address book but never tweet. I've got hundreds of people I follow who never send a tweet.

There's only a small number of people I follow that actually regularly tweet and you're on that esteemed list well my apologies if it's that's i hear from people sometimes they're like it was uh i think it was jason stredwick the the former player he dm'd me the other day and he's like i feel like i i talked i hear from you as much as my wife or something like that because you're it's like sorry sorry i've been home. No, I don't apologize. That's what it, that's, that's, that works like that.

So let's move on from a Twitter. You enjoy Twitter. I enjoy Twitter. Keep tweeting. Don't, don't stop. Okay. Well,

I just, I guess what I'm saying is that how much is too much, right? Like how, how much, how many, you know, if you,

if you tweeted 10 times a minute or whatever, everyone would start on following you. And you see that like you can, if you, Norm Macdonald does it. So I like Norm Macdonald a whole lot. Like I think he's hilarious and he's he's a great canadian comedian but sometimes during a like i'm not a big golf guy so there'll be some tournaments i don't give a shit about i don't care about golf but he is the minutiae of his tweets so it'll literally

be 10 tweets a minute about the golf and i have to i know you can mute him but i'll i'll unfollow him and then i'll forget to follow him again and i'll basically months later i'll remember to follow him again and it'll be the same same thing over and over again he when he does tweet about something like that he just does it to the extreme well i'm into like leafs minutiae all the time like you know i like leaves minutiae that's the difference yeah but some people don't right i have a lot i think half my followers are for are american and i've got a bunch of europeans and so it's it's you know some of them don't some of them put up with the Leafs minutiae, but there's a limit that they'll put up with.

Okay, quick, a couple, I see the, I'm just checking the clock here. So I'm going to be quick and just ask you a few quick Leaf questions. Nothing too heavy, but what did you think of Shanahan's speech? I thought he did a good job. Yeah.

You know, he went to my high school. Can I just throw it out there? Oh, yeah. He's a Mimico guy and he went to Michael Power. Same grade or? No, he's about like five years older than me, I think. But his siblings were teaching there. Recently?

Yeah. I think his roots in Mimico are... We're in Mimico right now in your house. No, you're not, actually. You're in New Toronto, which is... Yeah, once you hit First Street, you're in New Toronto. Oh, okay. Right, right.

But you're close. You can throw a rock and hit Mimico from here. The Leafs practice in Mimico, so I spent a lot of time there. When we looked at buying a house, we were looking at potentially moving to Mimico. I mean, it's a great area, and that's where Shanahan's from, and he's still got his roots there.

I thought he did a good job. You know, it's not an easy situation. A lot of the fans were angry, but I think people have to realize that he's the new regime. I mean, he didn't create a lot of this mess. The only thing you can hold against Shanahan is that he didn't clean it up fast enough. You know, I think that he could have cleared house if he was better informed right when he first took over. I think

he could have got rid of Randy Carlisle and Dave Nones, uh, not doing so basically wasted a year, but the benefit of wasting the year is they're going to get a very good draft pick. So it's hard to complain about that. Marner or Strom, like if you, cause it's going to be those two guys we're going to pick. Probably. Probably. Yeah.

I would take Strom. Big, big centerman. Yeah. Led the OHL. I felt that way too. And then somebody sold me on Marner and now I don't care. I think,

I think it's, you know, like you're going to, well, the good news, I mean, coming out of the lottery is that they're going to be four and they're going to get a fantastic player. Either of those guys would be a great addition lottery, is that they're going to be four, and they're going to get a fantastic player.

Either of those guys would be a great addition to... We'll figure a way to ruin them, I'm sure, but a great addition. They're lucky that this is one of those drafts where there's not really a miss in the top five. So, you know, they were going to be one, four, or five going into the lottery. They ended up four, which was the second best result. They're going to get a great player. I don't know if they're going to get Strom.

Like, I kind of think Arizona's going to want him. Oh, because he played with... No, that's... Who played with Domi? It was Marner who played with Domi. Marner did, yeah, right. But I think that the Coyotes aren't going to take Hannafin, the defenseman.

So it's going to come down to... It's probably, in my opinion, it's going to come down to Marner and Hannafin for the Leafs. And who would you pick of those two? Hannafin, right? I don't know. I don't know, because I only know what the analysts write, but I read a lot of it, and almost all of them have hannifin like three i think that that'll

be that that's the kind of question the leafs are trying to answer right now is what do we do there and they're spending a lot of time on that other late later first oh yeah yeah right right they're spending a lot of time on that they want to get a home run there on that that nashville pick so whatever if it's 22nd or 23rd or whatever it is it looks like chicago's going to knock them out in the first round which is good good for the pick right um and then they're going to have a very high second round pick as well so they're going to have three picks basically in the top 35 in in the in the draft um they're trying to hit on all three of those not just that first one good i think what shanahan what he said that where he nailed it i think is that it's not having a strategy that's been a problem with this team.

It's sticking to it. Like, it just seems like over and over again, whether it's Burke coming in or whatever, like, here's the plan. And we don't actually stick to the plan. And I think that's why we live in that space between playoffs and lottery pick. Like, that's our, like, sweet spot. Yeah, well, although Burke's plan, I think, was super flawed, too, in the way that he was trying to not do a rebuild.

He said, I'm not here for a five-year rebuild. I'm going to kickstart it right away. I'm going to trade first-round picks for Kessel. I mean, I think that Burke was a guy... People always talk about Shanahan doesn't have experience. Well, Burke had plenty of experience, and it didn't work. I mean, the key isn't experience. The key is making the right decisions, hiring smart people. And I think that so far, Shanahan has hired some really smart people in Hunter and Dubas. Right. Speaking of Kessel, so I'm going to ask you a few questions from readers.

So real quick here. One of them asks, why do guys like Feschuk, Feschuk? I'm not going to say his name right. Simmons and Cox have clear agendas against Kessel. Is it just because he doesn't do interviews with them? So do you think the media,

because Kessel went off on the media in this town fairly recently. He didn't like how they were treating Phaneuf, as I remember. Right after the trade deadline. He has a point, or what do you think of the media's relationship with Phil Kessel? I wrote about it after that. I mean, I think that he has a point in that I think Kessel and Phaneuf get

picked on a lot. Number one, because they're the names. They're the most identifiable players. You write about those guys, it's going to get read more often. So typically people want to write about those guys more often. I mean, they're going to be and I'm not commenting on the specific guys that you mentioned because I don't want to get into media

commentary or whatever. But just in general, you write about Kessel, you're going to get more attention than if you write about Eric Brewer or whatever. So those guys get written about more often. And I think part of what those guys struggle with, neither of them is very good with the media. I mean, Dion is not very good with the media. Phil is not very good with the media, and it hurts them.

I mean, if they were more like a Lupo or, you know, I'm trying to, like a Luke Shen. Like, Luke Shen really struggled in Toronto, but he was so personable and very good with the media, so he got less criticism. Kessel and FNF are not like that. Dion is true. They are not media friendly.

There's two. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's just who they are. Is this, you know, that I think that I said this right when they got FNUF that his personality,

his persona that he kind of puts on in the media, which turned against him in Calgary was not going to work in Toronto, you know, as the captain, he wants to kind of put out this face that's kind of fake. It's not who he actually is because, you know, I can see in the dressing room that that's not who he is. He's kind of like a fun loving guy who jokes around

and there's a lot more depth there to Dion. And you hear great stories about him from other people. The media never sees it. You see him on camera and you hear it from the fans. You know, He's a cave man and all this stuff. I don't think that that's actually who Dion Phaneuf is. I don't know why he presents that as who he is to the media, but he does. And I think it's hurt him in Toronto because he's perceived as more unlikable than he probably actually is.

You know, Jeff Merrick came on the show and tells an amazing story of the moment when Brian Burke decided to slap the sea on Dion Phaneuf. And basically it's because Dion dropped his gloves in some game. And he said, that's the kind of leader we need here. But Dion, I don't, I think that was a great disservice to Dion Phaneuf was, was giving him the sea at that point. Yeah.

Just, I think that was, I think that worked against him. He's, he struggled with it. I mean, you don't want to say that you have to be media savvy to succeed here, but it helps. I mean, it's an unfortunate reality of Toronto that you put a guy that struggles in the media in the spotlight every day like that. I mean, they're going to get more criticism. It's not fair.

It's not the way that it should be. It's just that's unfortunately the way that it is. So this is a Jack Blacker 99, by the way, who wants to know, uh, what's a juicy tidbit from the Leafs locker room behind the scenes that you can share with the audience. Anything there? Try and think of something. Something you can say at a school as they say. Boy. Like who likes Nickelback in that room? Dion, right? He's a Nickelback. You know what they're, I feel old now in the dressing room. When I started covering the Leafs, I felt like I was the same

age as them, and now I feel old. I just found out there's one NHLer left older than me. You know who it is. It's Jaromir Jagr. That's it. That's it, eh? Yeah. He's not even in the playoffs. There's only one player 40 or older playing in the entire

NHL playoffs. He's not playing. It's he's not playing, right? It's Kimo Timonen. Oh, yeah. The game went to triple overtime last night. I think he played 12 minutes. How old's Timonen, though? 40.

Is he? He's the only player 40-plus that has played so far in the playoffs, but I can't think of a... Just what you were saying with the music. I mean, I'm stuck in late 90s, early 2000s music, you know, like heavy metal.

That's kind of like what I like. These guys aren't into that at all. They're into like indie stuff. Why do I think Dion's a heavy metal guy? I don't think so. I don't know if any of the guys... For a while, Miley Cyrus' You Can't Stop was like the song in the dressing room.

They like pop music. We saw the great footage of Morgan Rielly singing the... What's her name? Anyway, Kleiza. Kleiza. There's a pop song by a Calgarian, I think, named Kleiza that he sang.

It's super top 40 pop. Right, yeah. I know the song you're talking about. I'm trying to think of it. I'll sing it for you if you want. I won't do that to you. Okay, so no tidbits for this guy. I can't think of anything.

If you think of one, just spit it out. You have to give me something to go off of on that, I think. Okay, at Murphy Brown. Murphy Brown, what the hell am I talking about?

Murphy Bruno. See, I saw Murphy. I just decided it was Murphy Brown. You're dating yourself with Murphy Brown. I know. I used to watch Murphy Brown.

The guy who used to paint her house died. Okay, so every episode, there's a guy who just lived in Murphy Brown's house painting all the time. you're really dating yourself.

Yeah, he died. Why is Myrtle afraid to ask questions at press conferences or dressing room scrums? Is this true? Are you afraid to ask questions in this environment? No. You know what I find?

I mean, it's true. I'm not the most vocal guy. I'm typically a pretty quiet guy in general. But the thing I don't like about the scrums is that if you have a really good idea or a story that you're writing about and you put out there what your what your question is then if the whole scrum knows what you're writing about and the whole scrum gets the same quote back that you that you do yeah a lot of the time I try and get players one-on-one or if I can't wait until the camera's gone and talk to the coach or you know but they're right I mean I'm not the guy that's at the front of the scrum you know shouting things at them I I like to be not the guy that's at the front of the scrum, you know, shouting things at them.

I, I, I like to be the tall guy at the back, the observer, you know, look at, let's see what's going on. And the reality is, I mean,

if you read my work this year, I've used quotes a lot less than I have in the past. And I think that, you know, in general quotes have become kind of a crutch for us in the profession. And a lot of the quotes aren't very good. So. No,

because they've all got media training now, right? There's nobody speaking off script. And if there's a great quote, it'll be out on Twitter and it'll be everywhere by the time your story comes out. So I've tried to make my stories more about my voice and less about their voice. And there are times when, you know,

I sit down with a player for 15 or 20 minutes, did a profile on Leo Komarov this year. I mean, I think that there's certainly value to that, but going in the coach's scrum when there's 10 cameras there and shouting over top of everybody, I just just don't maybe i'm missing what the value to to what i'm trying to do is there who is your favorite quote right now on the leafs is it like a loophole he's yeah loophole's been i mean he's kind of but he's talking like he's out of town like he's he talks now when i hear him tweet or whatever like he knows this summer he's going. Well, I mean, how would he not feel that way?

But he's not high. I mean, normally these guys, they aren't as open and transparent. Well, that's why we like Lou Bowles because you can kind of... Oh, sure. He's the opposite of a Dion Phaneuf. You can kind of see into who he actually is. He gives that to you and you can ask him... My wife finds him very handsome too.

She's told me we call him superman so didn't you please yeah i think he was on tv i don't know what i want to i don't want to get into oh the 24 7 dog he was uh spending christmas in new york i don't know if you caught that the the hbo anyways remember when we had the uh right series right anyways so he just seemed like uh ladies man if you will uh Good time in New York. Yeah, okay. Well, here's a tidbit. I mean, I used to live right downtown near where the Globe and Mail is, and I would see Lupo out in some of the little bars there in the watering holes, and he was often with a lady. So, yeah, I think he does okay.

But sweet Lou Williams has two attractive girlfriends right now. Lupo probably has one at a time. So until he's like sweet Lou styles, like they know about each other too. I don't, we don't hear much about their, their, the personal life of the Leafs players. And I think they like it that way.

Uh, okay. One more here from at rookie Dave and he wants, and actually we already covered this, but he wants to know is Twitter a love hate thing for you? Uh, seemed you seem to spend 90% of your time defending your opinions. Negative interactions abound.

So it's not a love-hate thing. It's a love thing. You enjoy it. I don't think that that's true at all. I mean, it's unfortunate. That rookie Dave is wrong here. It's unfortunate if it comes across that way. Because like I said, I'd love it if it wasn't about spats and defending yourself.

I'd love it if it was about, like, let's make it about the ideas. I think that debate is one of the reasons why I love hockey. And, you know, when I was growing up and going to junior games, you listen to the sports talk radio after, and it's like they're debating, should this guy have been on the first pair? Should it be on the third pair? I mean, that's why I love doing what I do.

I mean, it should be about debate and conversation. It shouldn't be about you're an idiot or whatever. I mean, make it about the idea. Remember this, like the majority of your, I mean, the nature of the beast is that most of us caring what you say or actually care about the Leafs okay this is the nature of the position and we're all very cranky like we're all just miserable sobs right now i'm sorry if you're i can we're all just snapping at you like we need somebody to like beat up because we're just so disgruntled and

dismayed and disheartened i get that a lot it's like why don't why aren't you yelling at shanahan for me and it's like i just that's just not that not who I am. And I don't think that that helps me do my job. Do you find he looks a bit like John Cusack? A little bit, right? Like in the speech, I tweeted out that it was like John Cusack. Like the bigger, younger brother or something? Well, definitely old. I don't know how much older, but he's just, yeah, definitely a brother of John Cusack. You get a little vibe like that off of Shani. Yeah, I think that could be a True Detective season three or something like that. You know what? Absolutely. And you're wearing the Flames jersey. I always get envious.

Imagine you were a Flames fan right now. They're up 3-1. Hey, it's Atlanta Flames. I'm not wearing it. Same difference. There's no bias here. There's no bias. I had a bunch of shirts and I was like, okay, I can't wear these other teams. You can't show a bias. I had a bunch of shirts, and it's like, okay, I can't wear these other teams. You can't show a bias.

Only folded teams. Could you wear like a – so that doesn't count. So if you wear a Nordique shirt, that's not an Appalachian. Yeah, I've got a Jets one. But I do have some from other teams. And sometimes I wear them out, and people are like, oh, I didn't think you were a Canucks fan. It's like, well, I don't know. My mom's in BC.

She buys me Canucks stuff. Here's a pro tip for you, man. You can't go wrong with the Kansas City Scouts, man. It's a cool logo and it's like... I'm big on Hartford. I want to get actually like a full Whalers jersey. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Like Dineen? Get like a name on it. Ron Francis or Kevin Dineen? Yeah, yeah. Get a name on the back and yeah. Cool. All right. Last, this is for me.

I think I saw you tweet, I don't know if it was an email or what with me, but you mentioned The Wire. Is it safe to say you're a fan of The Wire? Or did I dream that up and take a bad note? The TV show? Yeah. Yeah, I love that show. It's a place of prominence here, right on the desk. Here's the thing, though.

They have it in HD now. I've been through it a couple of times, but I want to go through it a third time with my son. I have the DVDs, but I don't want to go through... I have the DVDs, but I don't want to go through the standard definition DVDs because now HBO put out the HD version. That's a fan.

So I need like... Now I need... I don't want to buy the DVDs again. I got to figure a way to stream it. And this thing... And I heard Crave TV's got this thing. Speaking of Bell, maybe you can hook me up, Mr. Bell,

but Crave TV's got this streaming service with the HD version of The Wire. And it's like $4 a month. Honestly, I'd open my wallet and give it to them in a heartbeat. They told me, I can't subscribe to Crave TV because I have Rogers cable. And it's a Bell service? Yeah, but it's a Bell service only if you're on it. Yeah, Bell owns it.

Yeah, unfortunately, there's like this splitting that's happening with the cable services. You've got to pick one or the other. And we're on Rogers. My wife used to work there, so we used to or the other. And we're on Rogers and my wife used to work there. So we used to get a discount. So we're still on Rogers and it's good because I get all this hockey, all this extra hockey stuff. You know,

I can watch any game anywhere I want on my phone or whatever. And I have been doing that. But you can't get creative TV with the wire. Right. Who's your favorite character? Oh man. And it's a hard question with the wire. Everyone always says Omar,

but I wouldn't pick Omar. I would pick like, like bunk or something or I'm trying to, it's been a while question with the wire. Everyone always says Omar, but I wouldn't pick Omar. I would pick like Bunk or something. It's been a while since I watched that. Bunk's a good answer. That's a good answer. The other, Jimmy. Jimmy McNulty is a common answer, but there's so many great characters.

The name is escaping. Who's the... Lester. Lester's great. Lester Freeman. Yeah, Lester. All the pieces matter. Absolutely.

Lester Freeman, man. He's a great Freeman. All the pieces matter. Absolutely. Lester Freeman, man. There's so many good characters. Yeah. I mean, I don't watch a lot of TV, but that stuff like that is just like, I could watch that anytime. You know, it's usually what we just like, just like download that stuff and just go through it. I love hearing this, man. Strombo and I had just broke into

a whole wire discussion because he, the guy who plays Omar, he spent like time with him, had dinner with him and then he came over to his house and I'm like, Michael K. Williams,

that's his name. I'm like, I want Omar on my freaking podcast. Get this category. Where's he from? It's Brooklyn. Okay.

In fact, last year, remember when the Raptors played Brooklyn in game one? I think he came out and did some of the announcements or whatever before the game.

I remember getting a little disappointed. By the way, be glad the fucking Raptors, and this is quick, because it only happened last night. This team is, I don't know this team. You can't lose two games at home to start an NBA series. This is the NBA. We're done.

Dude, that's it. We've won one series in the franchise history. So, you know, I know they only came around in 95, but the Leafs, you know, yeah, there's trouble there. But Raptors ain't much better. Like, there's not a lot of hope here in Toronto. I think, unfortunately, the Raptors set expectations super high with the kind of the first half of the season they had,

and then they weren't actually that good, and they were able to coast into the playoffs. No, you're absolutely right. We did coast because we won that division. We could have stopped winning in February, and we would have won that division and i think where i worked against this too yeah which is yeah the raptors have taken some awesome steps but they're just they're not there yet not there yet not ready for prime time players hey did you have a good time yeah no it's great yeah anything else you want to say or cover before i play us out what's your favorite band

tool okay yeah you know them of course course. I saw A Perfect Circle once. I never got to see them. I don't know if they're going to tour again or whatever. But yeah, no, I'm like a huge Tool nerd. And they haven't put out an album since 2006. So it's like they got one coming here soon. It's like, come on, guys. No, and I used to listen to a lot of 102.1 when they were playing a lot of Tools.

Oh, man. The station's called The Edge, and then you listen to it and it's like there's no edge to anything. Oh yeah, that's a whole, you should come back for that discussion. Absolutely, they've lost their edge. But they're appealing now to guys younger than you. You're too old for them now. I know, the kind of music I like is dying. It's so

sad. It is sad, but the Leafs are sad. There's no hope. By the way, you have what was my dream job like 30 years ago. I would have said this was my dream job to cover the Leafs. But now as an adult looking at it, I think it would be a tough gig to have to cover that team. How did you cover the Leafs over the last few months? On Twitter, you'd be like beating a dead horse. But that's exactly what it is.

What are you going to say about this team? Yeah, it was difficult. It was hard. It was hard. You want the audience to care about what you're writing. And they just didn't care anymore. I mean, the players, you want the audience to care about what you're writing and they just didn't care anymore. I mean, the players know.

Yeah. And I'm all my life. Cause we usually don't miss out on the playoffs till there's like one or two or three games left in the season. So I would tune in all year. I stopped tuning in. I don't know what it was February or something, but I just stopped tuning in cause I couldn't do it anymore.

My son would sometimes want to watch with me and I would do it to have father son bonding, but I'm like anything but this, I can't handle this, but that's how bad it was. So thank you for covering my Leafs. Hopefully things get better.

And that brings us to the end of our 119th show. You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike and James is at Myrtle.

M-I-R-T-L-E. Anyone ever call you the turtle? Like, was this popular in grade school? In high school, I got that a little bit, yeah. That's a natural. Myrtle the turtle

wears a girdle. Myrtle the turtle wears a girdle. I love it. See you all next week. It's just like mine and it won't go away Cause everything is rosy and green Well you've been under my skin for more than eight years