Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Scott Wheeler: Toronto Mike'd #1147

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

In this 1147th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with The Athletic's Scott Wheeler about his career in sports media and his new book On the Clock: Behind the Scenes with the Toronto Maple Leafs at the NHL Draft. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Yes, We Are Open, The Advantaged Investor, Canna Cabana, StickerYou, Ridley Funeral Home and Electronic Products Recycling Association.

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Joining me today, making his Toronto Mike debut, is Scott Wheeler. Welcome, Scott. Thank you, thank you. I was thinking as I was driving over here that I'm pretty sure every single one of my colleagues at The Athletic who's based out of Toronto has been on this show. So I was waiting for the invite. Well, look, excited to have you here right off the top because, you know, we got to get things kicked off of a bang. Do you know this song? I'll play a bit of it. Tell me if you know this song. know this song. Because you're a young man.

I was going to say, I'm 27 years old. This might be dirty. So you're 27, and as a 27-year-old, does this song mean anything to you? Because the Gen Xers listening right now are singing along. Yeah, they're rolling in their graves right now. Well, we're almost there. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. Discounts for all Gen Xers ready to go. I'm getting nothing from this. Okay, so

this song is by The Zit Remedy. Okay. It's called Everybody Wants Something. The Zit Remedy, they're not a real band. They were three friends at Degrassi Junior High. Okay. Snake, Joey, and Wheels.

Do people call you Wheels? I have got me and my, I'm the youngest of three, and me and my two brothers, growing up in hockey, we were always, it was always Wheels or Wheelsy. So that's been, I'm actually heading to play Beer League at Mattamy immediately after recording this with some buddies. You could walk there. And I am, I'm Wheels and Wheelsy to all of them as well.

Is that the old Maple Leaf Gardens? Yeah. Okay, okay. At first I was thinking Ford Center of Excellence, which I was going to say you could walk there. We're there most nights. I'm actually surprised we're not there tonight. Because that's right in my backyard here,

so you're in the right spot. So no wheels for you, and shocking to the Gen Xers listening at home, that 27-year-old Scott Wheeler does not know that song, nor does he know the zit remedy. By the way, the actor who played Wheels passed away at a very young age. So, Neil Hope

was his name. Shout out to Ridley Funeral Home. So, let me, okay, where do I want to start with you? Firstly, you're only 27. Sometimes I read somebody, I follow them on Twitter, and I'm not sure what they look like, and I'm not sure of their age. And then I see this kid at the door and I'm like, aren't you supposed to be in high school? What's going on, Scott? So how did you end up at The Athletic at such a young age?

Yeah, that's an interesting story. A little bit of luck, a lot of hard work. I went to Carleton Journalism School out in Ottawa, graduated in 2017. While I was in school, did a ton of sort of freelancing and blogging. So I'd covered the Leafs and covered the Marlies for several years. Do you want to shout out? Like, I like it when people tell me, like, the blogs and the... Sure. Like, oh, hell yeah. And now that I'm your LinkedIn contact, I'm armed with all this information.

So shout it all out. PPP, Pension Plan Puppets. What was that like? I had lunch with the guy, one of the two founders of that before it became like, who bought it? SB Nation? SB Nation, which is owned by Vox Media, which is a huge sort of media conglomerate in the States now. And who are the two guys who started Pension Plan Puppets? Do you remember?

Chemi? Yeah, Chemi um who's the other guy the other guy he goes mlsc he's actually got the twitter handle mlsc which is probably a miracle uh but he goes uh he's kind of in a a little bit of a identity there okay so that guy i thought that guy who had the MLSC handle. He's a lawyer in Toronto. He met me, Down Goes Brown, this guy who was blogging as Bloge Salming.

I never know how to pronounce it. And we all met Jonathan Sinden when he was a social media guy for MLSC. We all met at Wendell Clark's. We called it the Barilco Sphere Summit. This is going way

back. These are the origins of the blogosphere in Toronto as far as the Leafs go. I brokered this thing, brought all these people together. Down Goes Brown wasn't even, he had to tie it to like a trip to visit in-laws or something because he was living in like Ottawa. I think he was working at Corral. He does live

in Ottawa. He's a colleague of mine at The Athletic now, Sean. Oh, I know. Okay. He was an early guest on Toronto Mic. I just thought he was hilarious. And later we'll talk about Wendell Clark, but he's the one who kind of made me aware of the All Heart video. Have you ever heard this?

This is Metallica's Hero of the Day, atop a montage of Wendell Clark hits and fights and big goals and hook it to my veins but okay we'll get to that in a minute it's got me uh in trouble on episodes of pandemic friday we'll get to that in a minute but this summit happened and i was there and i saw jonathan sindon look this guy in the eye at mlse and say you know we could have we could take that handle from you if we wanted to. I witnessed that. Okay. That's outstanding. MLSC. We could take that handle from you if we wanted to. And then this smile. And I know Jonathan quite well. And he wasn't going to do that, but he was just letting him know

we could take that from you if we wanted to. Yeah. So his real name's Julian. Yes. Yeah. Julian's a wonderful, wonderful guy. We've had beers a few times. We used to play in this thing called the Costco Cup, also played at Maple Leaf Gardens, which was kind of a blogosphere slash analytics sphere

slash local sports journalist hockey tournament that would happen every summer. Wow. So yeah, you're going way back there you're going mid 2000s mid to late 2000s it's like sometime between 06 and 08 i have to dig up the date of the baroque so the idea was that we were going to do stuff with emma like anyways it never happened because we all like being independent uh too much so nothing came of it but it was kind of neat to to that summit anyway. But to answer your question, I was sitting next in, in the winter of 2017, I was sitting next to

James Myrtle, my now boss at The Athletic. We were both in the press box at the Centennial Classic at BMO Field, which was the outdoor game played between the Red Wings and the Leafs that year as part of the hundred anniversary. And I was still finishing up fourth year at journalism school. I was blogging. He knew me from my Leafs work and he turned to me in the press boxes. This is very early days, right? Cause this was fall of 2016. It started in terms of the athletic. A few months later is this game. And he turned to me and said, Hey, we need some editing help. So the, the introduction, as far as me and the athletic was, I was early, early 2017 early early 2017 i was on the editing desk

three nights a week while i finished up school and then once i graduated i was hired on full time to cover the leafs and the marlies and it's just kind of crescendoed from there to the current role i'm in now covering the draft so i want to say like you're right i have had a bunch of athletic people over and i'm gonna say i'm gonna say and you'll tell me if i'm wrong and maybe you don't even know but before myrtle gets there because cause Myrtle comes over with, uh, Sean Fitzgerald. Yeah. Who I play beer league with. He's a sweethearts. One of my favorite people on the planet. He's a good guy. Even though he thinks I live in Mimico, uh, he's still a good guy. I don't live in Mimico, but Sean Fitzgerald and Myrtle, James Myrtle came over, I think, January or February, but very early 2017 to talk about the athletic.

But I've also had, I hope I get all my names right, but Joshua Cloak. Yeah. Who's heading down to Qatar at the moment to cover the World Cup for us. Yes. I just read the guy, whoever's in charge of Pickett, said that it was a mistake to go there.

Yeah. Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA president. Yeah. That's it and uh who's um i'm trying to remember uh who's the big u2 fan he's gonna hear this and he's gonna hate me but i'm having a mental block on his name uh even though he's covering leafs right now for sports illustrated you know what i'm talking about beat writer uh why am i why am i david alter you know what david alter and caitlin mcgrath and eric kareen were kind of the ogs at the athletic in toronto i'll fix it in post because of course alter was just here a couple of weeks ago and we had a great chat and i love that guy so i don't know why i'm blanking on his name too much excitement going on here but uh they were

like ogs yeah they were already in place i guess uh when they would they would have been fall 2016 so you got there early. Now that's like five years ago. It's been, yeah, coming up on 16. So you were like 22 years old or something. Yeah, I was fresh out of school. It was kind of my first full-time journalism gig. I'd done internships. I covered the Raptors and the Jays for a summer at the Toronto Sun.

I did work with the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail covering news. But this was sort of my first, The Athletic was my first sports gig. And I always wanted sort of coming into it to be covering the Leafs and the Marlies. And then eventually to parlay that into covering the NHL draft on a national scale full time. And that's sort of exactly how it's played out. So I consider myself pretty blessed.

That's amazing. Because The Athletic has a good reputation. They got good writers there. That's why I keep having them over. And, you know, now you've written a book, so I'm going to shout out the book, even though we'll get into more detail soon. But the book is called On the Clock,

Behind the Scenes with the Toronto Maple Leafs at the NHL Draft. And I've read this book. I read it in a PDF. I now have a hard copy, and you autographed it and everything. So thanks so much for this. No problem.

Is this your dream come true? You're now on Toronto Mic'd. How does it feel? It feels good. No, the book is, both of them were, both of those things are very exciting. The book in particular, I must say. Well, we're going to talk detail here. Yeah, it's a pretty special thing to have it in your hands. And once I finally got it in my hands after two years of putting it together to finally get the hard copy a couple of months ago and then to see it in stores about five weeks ago now it came out in stores. That was a pretty big deal for me. So I've never written a book, but I have thought about it. Like just even writing a book about my 10 plus years hosting this podcast

and having interesting people like you visit me. There's a book in there. How long did it take you to write this book? A year to write and a year to edit. That's a pretty standard process, I think. They reached out to me a little over two years ago now with the idea. Normally, it's obviously the other way around, right?

Normally, it's you reaching out to a literary agent who reaches out to publishers. This was them wanting to do specifically this idea for a book. It was pitched to me originally as kind of a history of the Leafs at the NHL draft, sort of the every pick, every draft, take me through it one by one. And I sort of put it on its head a little bit and went back to them and said, okay, let's do 15, 20 individual stories. Let's speak to people. Let's flesh them out through interviews. And that's what it became. It became 50 plus interviews and conversations, and it became sort of the true nitty gritty behind the scenes, how the decisions were

and weren't made, trades, picks, sitting in that seat as a player, spoke with family members, agents, you name it, former general managers, former scouts, former coaches, just piecing together what that draft process looks like and what that day is like. And for these kids, obviously, it's a pretty formative one. It's, to that point, the biggest day in their lives. And so really mapping that out, whether it's a kid who never made it or whether it's, as you mentioned off the top, speaking with a Wendell Clark.

Right. And this guy on the cover here, Austin something? Yeah. Austin Matthews. Okay, we're going to get there. I will just let people know that if you have a Leaf fan in your life and you need a holiday gift, this is the book, right, Scott? Go out and get yourself a copy or two of On the Clock,

Behind the Scenes with the toronto made beliefs at the nhl draft because there's lots of great stories in here we'll cover a little bit but there's a lot of great uh you know fun facts and mind blows and just interesting stories behind the scenes here good job man i i look is it difficult i mean i mean is it like you need to i guess you need some discipline to write an actual book like you really wrote this this. A lot of people are like, I wrote a book, but really you find out, oh, Jim Lang wrote that book or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, this wasn't ghostwritten. I know my colleague at The Athletic, Dan Robson, has done that on behalf of some other people. This was not that. This was very much me every day after work. I would do my nine to five with The Athletic plus all the travel that I do with my job. They make you work nine to five over there.

They don't make me work nine to five, but I typically do when I'm not on the road. And then I spend about a third of the year on the road, right? So this is when I'm not working. It was every night, late into the evening, and then it was weekends. It was Saturdays and Sundays sitting at a desk or sitting in the Toronto Public Library

near my place on the East End. And that's what it became. It just became a nonstop thing. I probably, truthfully, wouldn't do it the way that I did it again. I think if I were to write a second book, I would take a sabbatical, take some time off, and have the book be it. Can you afford to do that? No. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Not with a first book. Yeah. They're not, again, all due respect, and I really hope this would be a great gift for any hockey fan in your life, but this is not a way to get rich, right? No. This is not a lucrative endeavor. The first book is a pretty standard advance across the board, and then the performance of the first book typically dictates the second book. How much money did they give you?

Do you have any receipts to show me? How much cash did you get? I just got my third advance check in the mail, so that's actually sitting in the car. I deposited it on the way over here from my place. Yeah, you get an app for that, right? Yeah. Just in case it bounces no it was it's it's a it's a monumental it's a monumental thing so it was it was a lot of work we had a baby our house flooded while i was writing this who had a baby my wife and i had a

baby you had a baby while i was writing babies having babies uh congratulations i spent a lot of my seven weeks of leave at the at the. Okay. Scrolling away to find more time. Well, I was going to ask, I didn't know who was going to be at my door because I actually didn't know what you looked like. Believe it or not, that's not often that I'm not sure what this person looks like. You were booked sight unseen.

I just read enough to know I want to talk to this guy. But I was like, oh, if he has a kid, I was going to like see, your kid's too young for this. But when your kid's older and your kid does trick-or-treating on halloween i was gonna ask you like what do you do with the bag of treats because i have two kids i have four kids but i have two that trick-or-treat yeah and i will say like now we're a good week more than a week out now we're like 10 days removed or whatever but

uh every day i just help myself to all the chocolate like i leave the candy for them but if it's chocolate i just take it like i don't even feel guilty like will you will you i don't know it's hard for you to predict but like when your kid is brings home that big bag of chocolate or candy are you going to be like no that's theirs they earn that or are you going to sneak one or two every a couple of hours i i think my wife and I will both be culprits of that. I'm, I'm the big candy guy in the family and she's like candy. Yeah. She's more of the chocolate type. Oh yeah. I'm all, I'm all about the gummies. This was actually our first year for the little guy where we took him out. He's only a year and a half, but we took him out. Oh, you just carry him around or something. We took him out to

four or five sort of neighbor's house and did and did the knocking, and he was loving it. Okay, now if you need some adult gummies, let me know, because Canna Cabana is a proud sponsor of the program, and they've got some great gummies for you, buddy. Over 140 locations across the country. Just let me know. By the way, do you want to crack open your Great Lakes beer? I will, thank you.

Okay, what are you going to crack open? The Canuck Pale Ale or the Lager? The Lager, the Great Lakes premium Lager. Okay, right on the mic there. I will, thank you. Okay, what are you going to crack open? The Canuck Pale Ale or the lager? The lager, the Great Lakes premium lager. Okay, right on the mic. A little lower than, that's not quite right on the mic, but we'll, you know, I'll let the people know

that Scott's cracked open his lager, fresh lager from Great Lakes Beer. Thanks for sending it over. Now, I was going to have one with you, but I drank so much yesterday. Like, I had, do you know gare joyce i'll drop some names and see if you're joyce has written a book about about the nhl draft so we've

done a similar thing now so gare came over but he brought a bunch of hooligans with him he brought mark hebbshire there's a there's a name for you i know mark okay so i've known mark for a few years okay mark hebbshire was here well this is nothing new to me i mean he used to come here every every week but mark hebbshire was here with gare joyce and david schultz yeah i know david a little bit less less so than than mark but he wrote from the globe and mail days from the globe and mail days sure and they had a comic with them named jerry hall no relation to uh mick jagger. But they were recording this, I want to call it a spoken word play.

Is that what it's called? It's called Every Spring, A Parade Down Bay Street. And it's this fantasy world that Gare has written up where the Leafs win the cup every single year. It's every year. And the Leaf players win all the awards. And it's quite year and the Leaf players win all the awards and it's like this quite a fantasy world. And it's quite a funny like romp and you get to hear about like the players

who are winning different awards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Basically every spring a parade down Bay Street. Oh, good for them. So that's fantasy, right? I was going to add, definitely fantasy. We'll see. All right.

I'm going to read you some notes here before we get into it. So Langer, who is 10 for 10 at TMLX appearances, and that gives me a chance to tell the world that you're all, even you, Scott, you're invited to Palma's Kitchen on December 3rd at noon because that's TMLX 11 11 we're going to do a

live recording there we're going to eat some uh fresh pasta from palma pasta do you like lasagna i love lasagna you're leaving here with a large lasagna from palma pasta okay so that'll feed the the family okay it'll feed the beer league team okay it's a bit frozen tell them they're gonna take out you might have to warm that one up first but uh yeah you got a lasagna from palma pasta thank you palma's kitchen for hosting and uh we'll see langer there but langer writes scott wheeler is great one of a handful of sports journalists i still follow on twitter wow thank you Drink that in there. And, uh, do you have any thoughts on, you know, cause you're, you're on Twitter and there's been some, uh, has Twitter been in the

news recently? Some Twitter activity lately. I mean, I read like, I woke up this morning and they're like, okay, you know, you're going to have to pay eight bucks a month to get verified and anyone can do it. And we're not going to actually check that you are anybody. And right. But now we're going to have this thing called what was the word they were using official i think there's going to be a second verification but okay so i wake up to that news and i'm like what's the point of paying eight bucks if that's the new verification is official like that like to me this is all so silly yeah and then elon musk tweeted he was pulling it. Like hours after they launched this official thing, Elon Musk reversed course, and now this official thing is gone.

Like there's just the verified check. I didn't see that part of the story. Yeah, like there's an update to the story. And I think it's all like, at this point, I'm still on Twitter. I'm not one of those guys who's like, I'm going to Mastodon or whatever the name of that woolly mammoth is or whatever like i'm gonna stay put and just pop my popcorn and watch the show and see how this all uh evolves but what are your thoughts on the twitter sphere this past week i just hope it doesn't become more of a cesspool than it already is uh but yeah i mean i'm not i'm

not fleeing the platform twitter has in a lot of ways, made my career. I would not be where I am without social media and without the presence and that community online. So it remains a huge part of our job. I know our new overlords at The Athletic, we've been bought, obviously, by The New York Times. They're thinking about what this means for us and the journalists at the company and how they

want to approach this sort of next chapter on Twitter. So it's definitely something that's become a talking point in the industry amongst journalists. I think a lot of journalists fear that, especially journalists who deal in fact-checking and deal in the political realm more so than folks like me, I think there's just a lot of fear about what could happen and some of the imposters and some of the games that people are going to start playing with their badges and all of that. So yeah, it's tricky because Twitter is in a lot of ways

a place that means a lot to me. It's been a huge part of my life since whenever I joined in, I think it was 2009. The last 13 years of my life, it's consumed thousands of hours, unfortunately. And you don't want to see it sort of disintegrate and fall apart. So yeah, just sort of at the watching stage of the process for me, I think. I'm in the same boat, my friend. And it's, yeah, I'm not going to rush to escape.

I have been noticing now people are like sharing tweets from like celebrities who are like, that's it for me. Like they're tapping out. And it's like, okay, I saw one from Elvira of all people. I guess now that Halloween is over, she's like, I'm out. And David Simon, I saw, he said, this is my last tweet. He's going because, well, David Simon is the guy who created The Wire.

Yeah. Despite what Molly said. An all-time show. Oh, my favorite show of all time. tweet he's going because well david simon is the guy who created the wire yeah despite what all time molly said an all-time show oh my favorite show of all time my favorite show of all time i have i was looking i have the box set somewhere oh it's back here you see there's my uh yeah wire box i don't think you'll find a journalist who doesn't appreciate the wire so oh yeah well season five is all about the baltimore sun so yeah love that Love that show. Molly Johnson's brother is in Season 5 as well. He directed the first four episodes, I think, of The Wire. Shout out to Molly Johnson.

That was Langer. You're one of a handful of sports journalists he still follows on Twitter. I just put a thing like, hey, if you have a question for Scott, let me know. Tom wrote back, how about memorable for the wrong reasons, names like Jeff Ware and Tyler Biggs,

we're going to get back to Tyler in a minute, or when the Leafs drafted Doug Jarvis then traded him for Greg Hubik, which is before my time. I don't even remember that. So we're going to, again, we're going to walk through some highlights and then people have to buy the book

to get the full story. But that was Tom. Yeah, I mean, if we're going to get're gonna walk through some highlights and then people have to buy the book to get the full story but that was tom yeah i mean if we're gonna get a get to some of the books there there are definitely some lowlights in the book the history of the leafs at the draft frankly isn't a particularly glossy one no um you honestly it couldn't be worse right probably the two best players they've ever drafted are two players who are currently on the team in austin matthews and mitch marner right there it just wasn't a very nice history for a long time harold ballard operated one of the smallest scouting departments in the league despite them being the toronto maple leafs he was notoriously cheap right uh and they drafted really poorly there's a chapter in the

book about the belleville bulls draft where they drafted three players in the first round with three first round picks all from the belleville bulls and i spoke with theouts on that team. I spoke with the general manager of that team who made those picks. Was that Gord Stelic? Yeah, that was Gord. Good FOTM like yourself. Yeah. But the, the, the, the crooks of, of that story is that they just drove to Belleville. That's what they did on a Wednesday night. They got in the car, the scouts, all three of them, and they drove to Belleville and they watched the Bulls every week. They weren't watching Timo Solani. They weren't watching Mike Medano. They weren't watching the college players in the States or the guys who were sort of on the rise over in Europe. They were just watching kids in Peterborough and kids in Belleville and that's what they did, right? So

the results, as you would expect out of a strategy like that, weren't pretty for a long time. You'd have to be awfully lucky to do well with a strategy like that weren't uh weren't pretty for a long time you'd have to be awfully lucky to do well with a strategy like that now so bell i have a question about belleville that year like were they accepted they like were they exceptional like uh how did the how were the belleville bulls that year that we could draft three of them they weren't exceptional they had good they had a few good players i mean all three of those kids it's revisionist history but all three of them were very good junior players. Injuries derailed two of them. The other one, Sean Thornton, became a pretty accomplished NHL player.

He just wasn't the kind of player who... Was it Sean or Scott? Is it Sean Thornton? Scott Thornton, excuse me. You're a Scott. You're supposed to know all the Scots. But yeah, Thornton became a good player. Pearson, less so. But it was a tricky thing because they were also friends.

They then got to move into Toronto and settle down in apartments and hotel rooms together. They got to do the first part of their NHL experience together, which was a pretty special thing for them. And then ultimately when things went south and they got traded or moved or didn't make it, it became a very ugly thing for all three of them because they were all attached in those ways. And now today, two of them are still best friends. They still go on fishing trips.

Thornton himself runs a spa up in Collingwood called Scandinave, which is really a huge destination in the province here. So they've all figured it out and they're living happy, healthy lives. But it was one of those ugly stories. It was a Tyler Biggs type story. It was things going south in the biggest market in hockey story, right? Okay. So I promise the listenership, I'm going to get into Tyler Biggs here. I'm going to wrap up a couple of, this is almost like the pre-show, a couple of

questions, then we're going to set the table and talk a little bit about this. But James writes in, he's just talking about the Maple Leafs. He's like, where are they at now? After quite a few disasters, they lucked out and picked some potential superstar players. I'd say you could remove the word potential from there. Pretty established superstars. I think he scored 60 goals.

MVP of the league. Right. But he points out in parentheses, who have done zero. What he means is that they haven't won a playoff round yet. MVP of the league. Right. But he points out in parentheses, who have done zero. What he means is that they haven't won a playoff round yet. And he makes a point there. Do you know we haven't won a playoff round since Pat Quinn was the coach?

Since 2004. Yeah. Have you heard that? Since Joe Neuendijk and Gary Roberts. It is kind of... And Ed Belfort was between the pipes. I feel like he's pushing 70 now. I don't know.

I have to Google him. He is. We're doing this NHL 99 project at the athletic which is a countdown of the 99 greatest players in modern history he just i think ed was in the 80s on the list but he just made an appearance on the list so okay there's a great story on ed belfort at the athletic if you'll allow me to plug it yeah yeah well can you tell me a bit more about it or just yeah just about his his passions in life he was always a guy who's it? Yeah, just about his passions in life. He was always a guy who... He was a guy, right?

Very much about his passions. He was a music guy. He's now into business and real estate and all sorts of other sort of walks of life. And everything he's ever done, including playing goalie, they've consumed him. They've been his everything.

So that's really what it was about. It was about the many passions of Ed Belfort. Love it. No, I really liked Ed Belfort. I like him as a goalie, and it sounds like he might be a decent dude too. But I'm thinking we had that run there where we rode, I'd say, Grant Feer and Curtis Joseph

and Ed Belfort. These kind of veteran goaltenders kind of showed up, and then it all dries up after that. It was the same thing in the roster too, right? It was the players of old. It was Eric Lindros and Brian Leach and all of these guys on the come down of pretty sensational careers.

Yeah, I always forget Brian Leach, absolutely. And yeah, so we'll get to that. Jake writes in here, this is not a draft question, but he would like to know if you have any interest in working for a hockey team. Do you consider going to know if you have any interest in working for a hockey team. Yeah. What do you consider, you know, going to the other side?

Yeah, I get that a lot. Obviously, there's two huge parts of my job. There's the storytelling, spinning a yarn, telling a narrative piece of my job at The Athletic, the journalism piece. And then there's the player evaluation, right? A huge, huge, huge part of what I do is spend a lot of time traveling and watching young hockey players play evaluating them putting them in the context of their team their future of their team draft

rankings all that so the scouting reports piece is a big big piece of it i'm at u18s i'm headed down to the u18 five nations tomorrow um and and that's that's something that is often a question uh i've only ever had one even informal serious semi-serious conversation with an NHL club about doing that. And it just wasn't the right timing, wasn't the right fit. So no, really, other than that one conversation, it's never been at the forefront of my mind because it's not something that I'm thinking about. I'm extremely, extremely happy in my job. I think if I were to do it, it would be a huge challenge and a passion project for me and something that I would love to do. But I would also miss dearly the storytelling and the interviews and getting to know people and the human side of my job that kind of gets removed from the scouting walk of life. Right. Now, I have a question about the traveling you're doing for your work and having the, what, the 18-month-old or the...

Yeah, yeah. Like, I guess when you have no kids, the traveling is a lot easier on your soul. What's it like? Like, do you have that feeling like, oh, you know, you wish you were home a little more often? I'm just curious. Yeah, definitely. It was tough in particular when I started traveling again

after having not done it through the pandemic, right? So the kid was born in March or in May of last year. And through the early months of his life, I wasn't traveling. And then suddenly it started to come back. The World Juniors started to get played again, the Memorial Cup, the Frozen Four, all of those events that are typically on my schedule that I'm gone for, they all came back. And that was a very hard adjustment after spending a year and a half not doing it. But I love, I'd be lying if I said I didn't also love it. I'm going to Switzerland

in April for U18 Worlds. And I've traveled to some pretty amazing places. And that piece of the job, getting into rinks, getting to know these kids, spending time doing my job that way, that human interaction part of being a journalist is what it's all about. That's a big reason I'm in this field and in this industry. So yeah, no, it's definitely conflicting.

I miss him. We do the FaceTimes. We do all that. I'm constantly texting my wife for photos and that kind of a thing. But it's a big part of the traveling is a big part of my job. And we're extremely lucky at The Athletic that we're in a position where we are able to travel because not every journalism outlet, as you know, is doing that these days. No, I mean, not even some of the guys calling the game on the radio aren't doing that.

Yeah, which is crazy. Which is crazy, absolutely. Okay, so we're going to dive in now. We're going to dive into on the clock, behind the scenes with the Toronto Maple Leafs at the NHL Draft. If somebody likes what they hear and they want to get this for somebody they love,

where would you direct them? Do you have a specific place you want them to go, or do you just say, hey, buy it on Amazon, whatever you like? What say you? Well, if you're in Ontario, it's in every Chapters, Coles, Indigo in the province. So you can start there. If there's a local bookstore near you, it's in it. If you're outside of Ontario, it's scattered across all of those same places, Chapters, Coles, Indigo, around Canada, and a few Barnes and Nobles and that kind of a thing in the States, which is obviously the big box store down there.

But Amazon is your default if you need it. Amazon will get that book to you anywhere on the planet these days. Case of emergency, yeah, head over to Amazon. Okay. And off the top, I asked you, like, your journey to The Athletic, because you've been there now over five years, and off the top, I asked you like your journey to the athletic, because you've been there now over five years and the athletic still doing a great job and you dropped a pension plan puppets. And then we went off on our tangent because I talked about the Baroqueosphere Summit. Was there any other outlets or blogs you just wanted to just quickly shout out? Like this is, you know, you're only 27. So, you know, prior to getting to the athletic at 22, cutting your teeth, the PPP and what else?

The scouting side of it started at two places. One's called McKean's Hockey, which was the blog equivalent of a scouting service online. McKean's has been around for 20 years and has led people to the NHL in scouting roles and done some pretty cool things. And the other is Future Considerations, which is similar, just an online scouting roles and done some pretty cool things. And the other is Future Considerations, which is similar, just an online scouting service. I did my schooling, as I mentioned off the top at Carleton in Ottawa. And one of the beauties of that was the proximity, A, to the Ottawa 67s in the OHL and B, 10 minutes from there to the Gatineau Olympiques in the QMJHL. So at both McKean's and Future Considerations, I got to get in the rink and scout hundreds of OHL and QMJHL. So at both McKean's and Future Considerations, I got to get in the rink

and scout hundreds of OHL and QMJHL games across four years. And that was the origins of the evaluation side of the getting to know the ins and outs of the game and how players are playing and the kinds of players that are successful and all of that. So those three places were, those were really, really the origins. Now, you mentioned briefly there the Toronto Sun, but you also did some internship, right, with, is it the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star? Yeah, so the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star were not in, they weren't in sports.

And that was really important to me. I wanted to get that, as a reporter, I wanted to get that experience. I actually left The Athletic after doing that editing that I mentioned off the top. I did that for a few months to finish out my degree at Carleton. And then after that, I actually went to Myrtle at the time and asked him if I could leave the company and come back in the fall. And I fully expected him to say no, that's not how this works. And luckily, he was very supportive of that. So I left for four months and did the internship at the Toronto Star.

I covered crime, the legalization of marijuana, the housing bubble in the city. This is a few years ago. The housing bubble still exists. It's a big bubble. I covered a giant inflatable duck at Waterfront. I covered everything. Crime scenes, the courthouse, Queen's Park politics. And that really did make me a better reporter.

It made me a better researcher, digging for information, the human stories that you have to tell. I try to lead with that now. A lot of the reporting I do and storytelling I do at The Athletic is about humans. It's less about hockey players and more about the people and the rise and fall of of those people so uh that the the work at the that i did at the globe and at the star was was huge for that by the way that

duck uh my most popular tweet of all time are the most shared and rt thing i ever wrote on twitter was about that duck and it had a man it flew around the world it was very popular and uh yeah shout out to the big the big duck yeah popular uh tourist attraction i suppose it was well worth the money spent on that okay so let's just go way back here if we can get in the time machine i have good notes i read your book i learned a great deal one of the things i learned was that we didn't even have an NHL draft until 1963. So like some basic 101 questions, if you will. And I'm just curious, how the heck did we know who belonged to what team before 1963? I mean, this league was like 60 years old at that point.

Yeah, it was ultimately through the same affiliation process that we now see in the AHL with the Toronto Marlies, for example example only teams also had junior clubs so the Toronto Maple Leafs had at any given time two or three junior clubs below their minor league teams that were bringing up 16 17 18 year old players and those players belonged to them they would sign those players to contracts they would develop them in-house and the problem became that the Leafs were too good at that. And that almost all of the great players in the league were from Toronto, which means they didn't always play their full careers in Toronto, but many of them were starting in Toronto because they came up playing for the St. Mike's at St. Mike's. So they came up playing for the Toronto

Marlboros minor league team at the time, or the team in London, the London Nationals. That was just the way that it was. They would have their old coaches and old players coach those teams. Guys like Bill Borilko, you go down the list. All of these guys were Turk Broda. They were the coaches of these sort of junior programs. And then they belonged to those franchises wherever they were locally. So that meant that

virtually all of the players from ontario from the gta belonged to the toronto maple leafs and the draft was instituted partially as a mechanism to prevent that from continuing to happen oh yeah i was gonna say no wonder we were so awesome i mean it sounds like if you're from french canada you're gonna be a montreal canadian and if you're from uh upper canada here you're going to be a Montreal Canadian. And if you're from upper Canada here, you're going to be a Leaf. Like, no wonder we dominated. And there wasn't at that time recruiting over in Europe, right? So we didn't even have the Swedes over here or the Finns over here for teams to compete over. It was just mostly Canadians with a few Americans scattered throughout the league. It almost sounds like, you know, you think, okay, how did Vladdy Guerrero Jr. end up a Blue Jane?

You're like, he wasn't drafted at 18 he was like a a much younger man who belonged to us like there's so it's not it's sort of like that system i guess you you sign these youngsters and you develop them and part of that was also it was really bad for the players that the advent of the draft was in part to prevent what was happening to players which was they couldn't leave. They were never free agents. They were never allowed to sign elsewhere without the permission of their club or being released from their contracts. Their contracts were allowed to be rolled over at the same salary that they originally signed on year over year by the club. So the clubs were

taking advantage of players. Players weren't adequately paid. Players didn't have enough to feed their family. And it got really ugly. then suddenly the alan eaglesons of the world the big giant agents of of that era started popping up and saying whoa whoa whoa this is this isn't right these these contracts they were called a b and c contracts you could only sign one of three deals uh they were manipulative they were exploitative they were taking advantage of these kids at a young age and by the time the players were the true superstars of the league, they still didn't have any control over what they made or where they played. And that rubbed a lot of players the wrong way. And it led to players quitting their teams and all of that was happening in

that era, right? So the draft was a leveling of the playing field, not just for smaller market teams as they expanded, but also just for the players and for giving the players a little more leverage. Wow. Okay. So we talked off the top that the Leafs weren't particularly good at drafts. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, we always, this thing starts in the sixties and I mean, there's a lot more failures and success stories. You know, we'll talk about a few of the success stories, but they're few and far between, really. But it seems like reading your book, it seems like in the early to mid 70s,

there was some success with the draft because Daryl Sittler, he's taken eighth overall in 1970. And Lanny McDonald's taken fourth overall in 1973. And then to add a couple more, you know, Ian Turnbull's taken 15th in 1973 and Dave Tiger Williams. And there was a lot of talk about him recently because Brian Trottier was on this

program and he talked about how important Dave was in his career. But he was taken 31st overall in 74. But it sounds like that's not too shabby. I mean, Sittler and McDonald, these are Hall of Famers. Yeah. And Tiger was a huge, he was the heart and soul of that team. There's a story in like uh that's not too shabby i mean sitler and mcdonald these are hall of famers yeah and and tiger was a huge he was the heart and soul of that team there's a story in the book about him wrestling with harold ballard on the floor of the leafs dressing room at maple leaf gardens after a tough loss to sort of get everybody going harold was infamous for sitting in the hot tub with the players and all of that and he was also infamous for being a bit of a hot fuse and there was a couple of moments in time where players held

him to account for that. They're the owner of their own franchise, holding him, holding him to account in, in a physical way as well. So Tiger was more than a, he was more than a hockey player for that group for a long, long, long time. So yeah, you're absolutely right. The seventies, there were, there were some, some great success stories and then through the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, it's a bit of a different... It goes a bit south here. So that early to mid 70s, we talked about those guys

and, you know, Sittler and McDonald, these are great players drafted by the Leafs in the 70s. But then from 75 to 79, there's only one guy, and I learned this in your book, but there's only one guy

who actually like stuck around for multiple seasons on this hockey team and that's John Anderson. Yeah. And he was 11th overall in 77. I mean, I grew up much older than you, so in the era of Rick Vives scoring 50 goals, and the second best goal scorer when I was a kid was John Anderson.

And John was, as one of the chapters in the book is about the history of coaches and general managers that they drafted. And burger joints, did you tell me that? Many of whom were drafted in very, very quick succession. And John was a member of that group. It was John and Ron Wilson and Bruce Boudreau and Randy Carlisle and Ken Holland and Joel Quenville.

They were all drafted by the Leafs, seven or eight sort of future Hall of Fame coaches, not necessarily as players, were all drafted by the Leafs and came up together. So there's a chapter in the book about that and that coming up together and what that meant for those people and maybe the ideas that they were bouncing off of each other

and that passion for coaching, where did it come from? And a lot of them I spoke with, most of those people for the book, and they all said the same thing which it was really it came from each other ron wilson and bruce boudreau and randy carlisle used to sit around the leafs dressing room and talk tactics and talk the way the game was playing and complain about how their coaches were bad at their jobs and uh that was that was a part of the the culture for a few years with the leafs where all of these kids were coming into the organization with bigger plans than being hockey players.

And now, I mean, Ken Holland's in the Hall of Fame with the Detroit Red Wings. You go down the list, it's a pretty cool group. So there wasn't just hockey players that were being drafted in that era. And Anderson's one of those, right? Anderson has gone on to be a coach at the NHL level with a couple of teams and that kind of thing as well. And also a hugely, hugely impactful player as you kind of alluded to.

So, but yeah, he was a lone wolf there. There were several years where they just drafted nobody. And that was, if you talk to the old general managers and the people who are a part of that front office, a lot of that was just Harold Ballard being cheap and not spending money on those kinds of resources so that when draft day came around, they were ill-equipped.

They weren't prepared. I mean, I'd like to just talk to you about growing up a Leafs fan in the early to mid 80s. Like this was such a bad team. We, I think it's, we'll get to this number 17 in a moment, but I want to say 86. We, there was a best of five back then in the first round and we played

Chicago Blackhawks and we beat them three straight in that best of five. And me and my brothers celebrated like we won the Stanley cup. Like we use diet Coke instead of champagne. We legit, we, we beat the Blackhawks three straight in the first round. We ended up bowing out in the second round. But, you know, that Norris division, man, like, you could be the worst team,

and you get a little lucky, and you're best of five opening round, and you're off to the second round, you know. It was just a terrible, terrible team. And you don't, when you're young, you don't really understand, like, oh, this is a terrible team because this cheapskate owner didn't you know he didn't invest in scouting and drafting the right players and putting and he was bad with people his own employees did not his players whether it was players or staff under him they didn't like him they didn't respect him they didn't think that he was the man he was the elon musk of uh the nhl okay a little

bit i think oh man there is a mike youmentary in the toronto mic feed you can check out on harold ballard just because i do enjoy the stories about harold ballard so i've had people like rick rick vive i almost said rick hodge i don't know if i talked to him about harold ballard although he had a show about oh wait he called rinkside where he covered the uh the oh But Gord Stelic and Rick Vive. Gord was great for my book. His stories. I think I've had him over a few.

He was over this summer with Damien Cox, actually, another guy who's got great Ballard stories. But, man, okay, so Ballard, bad for your hockey team. Something changes in 1980. So we started with that mind blow, if you will, that the NHL draft didn't exist till the 60s, 63. But it doesn't take its modern form until 1980, right? Like they renamed this thing, the NHL entry draft.

And basically, well, I should let you speak to it because I learned all this in your book. But what was the significant change that happened in 1980 there? Well, there was a lot that happened in a very, very short period of time. They started broadcasting it on TV. It expanded to nine rounds.

It's obviously now since shrunk since then to seven rounds. Well, there's a lot more teams now, right? So nine rounds. Expansion was happening quickly. The expansion drafts also started happening. And that was sort of a new invention, a twist on the idea of the draft uh but it started also moving around the big part of it was that for the first

20 years of the drafts history it happened in montreal either at the the hotel there or at the league office which was queen elizabeth hotel yeah or at the league office which was based out of montreal for for half of the league's history. Also, the Melroyal Hotel in 1973. You've got to be specific because Brian Gerstin knows his Montreal. Okay, go ahead. So, yeah, it started moving around. It expanded. But the big thing was this idea of a nine-round draft and it becoming what we know of it today,

which is lots of players, 200, 300 players were getting selected. Europeans started getting selected into the draft. Some players started defecting. There's a chapter, probably my favorite chapter in the book is about the defection of Peter Inacek, and we can maybe touch on that. So I've been saying his surname wrong my whole life. Say it again. I think it's Inacek.

I spoke with the guy on the phone like three times. He would know. He would know. But growing up, we all it in a check like this is this was it we you know this is what you would hear uh bob cole say on a saturday night peter in a check and say it again he he told me he introduced himself as an akacheck okay we i i wish he had corrected us earlier we've been butchering that thing forever but yeah yeah, I'm going to have to ask you about the Inachek brothers in a moment. But yeah, that was a great chapter in your book.

Yeah, it's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard out of the mouth of someone else, right? It's one of those things that you feel like it's out of a movie. You feel like it couldn't have possibly happened that way. And all of the stories about it that were never fully fleshed out and never

really reported as fact back then because people like harold ballard would wink wink and nudge nudge that it happened that way but never actually confirmed it in their interviews and because he couldn't speak english at the time uh yeah i i sat down with him he's now a scout uh in the nhl and he's back in prague where he's from obviously for a long time, he wasn't even allowed in, in it. Well, formerly Czech, Czechoslovakia,

now the Czech Republic or Czechia. Uh, and he, he, he missed his dad's funeral, right? Like it's all of that is true. They took away the passports of his family members.

He didn't get to go home when his dad passed away. When he was over here, he was him and his brother were smuggled out in two different ways. One in the trunk of a car on sleeping pills and the other on a party boat that used to run between, uh, between Finland and Sweden. So it w it was, it was crazy. The Leafs were involved in paying off diplomats to make it happen, right? It was, it was a movie. Yeah. It was a huge undertaking to get the two of them out of out of the east block and over here and this was all before the the velvet revolution right this was before the the fall of the soviet union as it was known then so uh it was a it was

a huge huge thing we hear about alex mcgillney and the russians that did it but the the he was the first one to do it out of Czechoslovakia as well, which was also under KGB authority, et cetera, right? So it was a scary, scary time for him and a big deal at the time. And he came over here and until Austin Matthews broke his record, he had the rookie goals record

for the Leafs for a long time. I remember, I might have this wrong, but Daniel Marawa, maybe? You're the statistician. I'm doing this all off the top of my head, but this wrong, but Daniel Marawa, maybe? You're the statistician. I'm doing this all off the top of my head, but why do I think Daniel Marawa had the goals record 34 or something like that? It was, oh, maybe I'm thinking of the points record. Yeah, I'll Google it in a moment.

Peter had 60 points. Oh, maybe it was a points record. Matthews had, I think, 64. Shout out to Joe from to who bought himself a daniel marowak jersey based on his rookie campaign because he scored those 34 goals and we were so desperate back then we'll talk about uh all heart wendell in just a moment but he might as well have been wayne gretzky so we'll get to that but peter in a check great player and i remember there was a lot of noise being made when miroslav came in not not quite the player his brother was, but yeah, we had the,

and I'm saying the name wrong. I'm sorry. Historically, I've been saying Inacek for like 40 years now. It sounds like it's Inacek. Which is odd that you mentioned Miroslav there. That's odd because just the fact that he didn't become the player his brother did

because it was the reverse when they were with the national team and playing internationally and playing professional hockey in, in Prague, Miroslav was the star. They were both superstars over there, right? They were the leading scorers in the league and that,

that, that whole thing and stars on the national team back when they were winning bronze and silver medals at, at major events. And so they were, they were legit top, top tier players and Miroslav for whatever reason, just never,

never came over and stuck like Peter did. Peter became a perennial sort of 20 players. And Miroslav, for whatever reason, just never came over and stuck like Peter did. Peter became a perennial sort of 20 goal guy and Miroslav played for the minor league team in Newmarket at the time for the Leafs and played a little bit here for the Leafs, but then tried to make it in Detroit after that and it just never, never worked out for him. I do find it interesting though,

Harold Ballard, who was xenophobic. I think I can say that safely. Yet, you know, when you think about this happening under his watch and then you think about his relationship with Salmin, who I heard is making a trip here for the Hall of Fame inductions.

He's going to try to, yeah. Which would be amazing. Now, Bourget, who I used to call Borge Salmin, not to be confused with Blogge Salmin, who was at the Brickelsphere Summit with me. But it's, yeah, you would think a guy like Harold Ballard would be like North Americans or bust. Yeah, but if you can get a damn good hockey player,

I think that might have been his limit. He also got to thump his chest about them, right in his open i i wrote about it in the book but in his opening press conference with peter over here peter had a translator couldn't speak a word of english and he got to thump his chest about anything i can do to get a get a guy away from the commies i'll do it like that was that was the direct quote right So it was also an opportunity for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I truly believe he thought he was doing the equivalent of the John Wayne there, right? Like that was what he was all about. He got to tell the story to all of his buddies

about how he got him out. Okay, it's almost Wendell time. I'm going to give you a couple of gifts before that. But first, a fun fact about the 1980 draft, which is the Leafs actually got, they made a great selection in the first round of the 80 draft in fact they they they drafted a guy who would win three stanley cups man but as you might know if you're a leaf fan we haven't won a stanley cup since 1967 so he's not winning these cups with the maple leaves but we drafted 25th overall

in the first round of the 1980 draft we selected i guess it was the second yeah we had detroit second round pick so this is 25th overall which gets you in the second round because there were 21 teams back then craig muni yeah and craig wasn't alone in terms of great i mean he probably never reached great status great player status but he wasn't alone among players that they drafted who went on to to great success right like it was it was a long list of players they traded the infamously traded the picks of roberto awango and infamously traded the picks of scott niedermeyer like that's different no but we would have screwed it up they picked tuka rask and traded him anyway that's a good example because we thought Justin Pogge was the guy. They've made a lot of those

knee-jerk reaction trades of young kids rather than hanging onto them. Often it was in an effort to get better. It was in an effort to appease the press. It was in an effort to be a contending team and push for the Stanley Cup. And the result was that year after year they were mortgaging their

future a little bit more and more. Well, you know, famously, if you ever listen to Gord Stelic on Toronto Mike, you hear about okay, well, Harold Ballard liked dare I use a Brian Burke term like truculence, but he wanted, you know, he would he'd rather have instead of a Russ

Cortnall, he wanted a brawl at Maple Leaf Gardens. He wanted a John Cordick because he played a rough and tough game and he'd spend uh you know half the game in the penalty box and yeah yeah so that was sort of his style and uh that's that's what he got right that's one of the uh famous trades but we're not talking trades today unless they happened on draft day which we'll get to a big one soon but i wanted to share the craig muni fun fact because he played 19 games for toronto i did not uh see any of those games but he played 19 games for the leafs and then he played 19 games for Toronto. I did not see any of those games, but he played 19 games for the Leafs and then he played 800 more for six

other organizations and he won three cups with the Edmonton Oilers. Okay. There is a Toronto Mike sticker for you. Yes, you got your hand. Okay. Thank you. Sticker you.com.

That's a quality sticker. It's all yours, Scott. Thank you. So thank you. StickerU. People can go there and on the internet and they can upload an image and then they can get great quality stickers

and decals and temporary tattoos and a whole bunch of great stuff and it gets delivered safely to your door. Great people, great product. Thank you, StickerU. There is a wireless speaker for you. Oh, wow. Look at this box and you're getting some goodies buddy so the wireless speaker is courtesy of manaris manaris is giving you that wireless

speaker because with that wireless speaker you can listen to the Yes, We Are Open podcast, a Moneris podcast production. The exciting news is that Al Grego, he hosts this show. He'll be at TMLX 11 on December 3rd at Palmer's Kitchen. He just won an award. I can't wait to get him over here to congratulate him, but there was a Canadian podcast award. I think Best Business Podcast or something like that. He'll tell us all. But he won an award because it's a Canadian podcast award, I think Best Business Podcast or something like that. He'll tell us all.

But he won an award because it's a great podcast. It tells the stories of Canadian small businesses and their perseverance in the face of overwhelming adversity. So you, Scott, are going to listen to Yes, We Are Open. You can count on it. You can count on it. And then you can listen to The Advantaged Investor, which is a podcast from Raymond James Canada, featuring insights from leading professionals.

The Advantaged Investor provides valuable perspective for Canadian investors who wish to remain knowledgeable, informed, and focused on long-term success. Chris Cooksey hosts that show. I said this to Steve Simmons just the other day. Did you listen to Steve Simmons on Toronto Mic, by the way? I did not. Okay. Quite the episode. Okay. But I was telling him, keep your eyes on this young, I think he's about 15 years old, but Chris Cooksey's son, Cole Cooksey is tremendous. Like this kid is great. Cole Cooksey, keep your eyes on him. Maybe one day you'll be covering the NHL draft and you'll hear the name Cole Cooksey being called.

But Chris Cooksey, he's the host of The Advantage Investor and people should listen to that. A fun fact while we're on. Yeah. Broadcasters with kids who. Is it Andy Frost? Well, Andy Frost's son, Morgan, is obviously a Philadelphia Flyer at the moment.

Okay, I'm ready. Morgan's a great kid from my hometown. Another one. What town is that? Aurora, Ontario. Shout out to Aurora. Yeah, another one. Matt Devlin, the play-by-play voice of the Toronto Raptors.

His son Luke is now a seventh round pick of the Boston Hurricanes. Great to hear. I did read that. That's tremendous because Matt Devlin is making his Toronto Mike debut later this year. Love it. You can talk to him about about luke's hockey career for sure now i'm thinking now i gotta leave hockey for this one but uh rod black's kids are great ball players baseball players so uh i know i think at least one of his kids was drafted and i think the another kid will be drafted but anyway yeah rod black's got got some great baseball players in his family. So all these, like, broadcasters,

maybe your child will grow up and get drafted in NHL. I don't think Bo's got the right genetics. You know that already. If he's anything like me, he'll play A.E. hockey his whole life and be an average to below average b division beer leaguer okay i uh can relate only that my my oldest is 20 now because we were watching my eight-year-old play house league at mimico arena and my oldest played at george bell arena and he was we were talking about his career he was always a house leaguer because he just he just liked going

playing house league yeah but you know as he developed he he became pretty good like a pretty good house leaguer like never at a level where people are saying why aren't you playing select man yeah that i i was i was that kid i was the house league hero and then i played select and ae hockey for several years so i was always i was always that level no shame in that game as long as you have a good time. But I got House League heroes in my bloodline as well. Okay. Wendell Clark, where do we begin? This was a big deal for us Leaf fans who remember the mid-80s, but the Leafs were a terrible team, and we were so bad,

we ended up with the first overall pick. Was this the 85 NHL entry draft? It was, and it was the first draft ever held in Toronto. And coincidentally, the Toronto Maple Leafs had the first pick in it. And it was the first time that the Leafs had ever drafted first, which is a crazy thing considering there were a few years where the draft was only six teams. That is amazing.

Okay, that's amazing. I only remember two. Wendell and some guy named austin we'll talk about later but uh there are there are only two yes okay that explains everything so leading up to this draft because when austin was drafted i actually have video my son was a big boy at the time i don't know how old he was at the time like 13 or something but he was a huge you know leaf and who desperately wanted austin matthews And I have footage of us watching, like, I guess it was Shanahan, but whoever was reading the name

or whatever. And we'll get to this, I guess, the whole Austin Matthews thing. But I remember he says to me in the video, he says, oh, I hope they pick Austin. I hope they don't screw it up. And I say to him on the video, I said, there's no chance they're not picking Austin Matthews. Like, it was a consensus number one, no doubt about it,

pick, like, a Connor McDavid. There's always those naysayers, though. There's always the one guy who says it's going to be Patrick Laine, right? Some guy, and that guy was my 13-year-old son. But Wendell Clark, please help me remember.

There were two people, I'm trying to remember, who were the two guys that were, what do you remember from your research? Obviously, you have to know it like you know world war ii history right but well wendell clark wasn't the consensus number one and he was a defenseman wasn't he he he he was a defenseman he became the consensus number one for the leafs he

he was their guy all along he was he was the from top to bottom all of the coaches they all loved him they went out to visit him and that was in a time when players weren't even getting visits from NHL teams. The fascinating part for Wendell, though, is he didn't even know because of what, it wasn't like it is now, right? Right now, there's people like me who do this for a living and cover the NHL draft. There's Bob McKenzie sort of created that entire industry of draft coverage in his time at the hockey news before he was with TSN. And now everybody knows everybody. And back then that wasn't the case.

There was NHL central scouting and NHL central scouting would release their list. And then you'd go, Holy shit, I'm number one. Like that was the, that was how the timeline worked for these players midway through their year. They'd get their first visit from an NHL team. Now kids meet with NHL teams the full year before that in their 16 year old season so the process is just completely different now than it was in wendell clark's era and wendell didn't want to have an agent either the the fascinating piece of wendell's story is that he said screw it i don't need an agent i don't even know if i'm going to get picked and then suddenly he was standing in toronto with that big mustache and a white suit on, walking down the sort of stands at the Toronto Metro Convention Center to shake hands and

go up on stage and be the number one pick. And at that time, as you mentioned, they were terrible, right? The team was terrible and they'd been terrible for a long time and there was sort of no hope. And then suddenly you have this firecracker kid who on the first day of his training camp shows up and looks at the roster sheet and realizes that he's on forward when he's played defense his whole life they didn't even tell him they were drafting him to move him for forward they just they just put it on the sheet and then he becomes a 40 goal scorer for them and one of the most beloved players in the heart of the franchise yeah and just a force out there on the ice, right?

Even through some pretty gruesome back problems and foot problems and injuries. And he just kept performing and performing in big moments, scoring some of the bigger playoff goals of that era, getting them back to the playoffs, all of that. And it wasn't perfect. There were some lean, lean years under Wendell as well. But it really did start to feel like the Toronto Maple Leafs were the

Toronto Maple Leafs again. And a big part of that was him playing that Rock'em Sock'em sort of fireball style and also being a really good player. Hero of the day, often injured though, because I remember there were long stretches with no Wendell in the lineup. But I do,

I remember like, I remember having the thought when he was 29 years old. And I remember thinking to myself, is that the oldest 29-year-old ever? Like, because he seemed like this grizzled old, like 43-year-old veteran or something when he was 29. Well, even the video, right?

That was the first year. It was the first year it was in Toronto. And it was the first year that it was broadcast, the draft was broadcast on the CBC. So as part of the book, after I chatted with Wendell for a, we had a really good conversation. And after that conversation was over, I immediately went to the,

to the tape, to the archives, to, to watch it back. And even at 18 years old, you go back and watch that tape with his mustache and that suit that he was wearing. And he looked like he was 10 years older than all of the other kids that

were getting picked. Unbelievable. Like that happened straight out of Kelvington, Saskatchewan, Wendell Clark, And he looked like he was 10 years older than all of the other kids that were getting picked. Unbelievable. Like that happened straight out of Kelvington, Saskatchewan. Wendell Clark, you know, on a farm where everybody played hockey, right? That was what the family did. They just played hockey and tended to the farm and that was life. That was their life.

Was there somebody taken in the first round that in retrospect would have been a better choice? Like with the, the benefit of hindsight, which is really completely unfair, of course, but I can't remember who else was taken that, that, that round,

but not, not really. That year was, wasn't sort of a superstar. Well, there was no, when there's no Mary Lemieux in that draft. No,

no, no, no. There, yeah, there's no Bobby or there's no Mary. Cause once in a while you do get the, you're right with Sidney C There's no Mary Lemieux. Because once in a while, you're right, with Sidney Crosby and Conor McDavid,

once in a while, you get these drafts where it's like, you know, oh my God, this is like a generational guy. And when I think of the weak drafts, like the wrong times, I get a number one.

I always think, not for Wendell, I always think Andrea Bargnani. Because it's like, we can all crap on Andrea, but then you look at who was available and you realize, oh, what a weak year. Like,'s no lebron james even the morgan riley draft of 2012 everybody joked and laughed when when brian burke said that morgan riley was number

one on their board and i spoke with members of that front office for this book and he was a he was that wasn't a lie he was number one on their board and b if you look back at the 2012 draft morgan riley might be the first or second overall pick, right? It was pretty ugly with Neil Yakupov and Alex Galchenyuk and all those guys at the top. So there have been years where the Leafs have been on both sides of that coin. And thankfully now, obviously, Morgan's a huge part of it. And Morgan, with this eight-year contract that he's on,

is going to retire as one of the greatest Leafs defensemen of all time. Yeah. And in a moment, we'll talk about that great, that great chapter you have in your book about Tyler Biggs and how he ties in with the Morgan Riley draft and everything. But here, so we're going to burn here because I see,

uh, we already kind of talked about the Belleville Bulls draft. That was the Gord Steggs. That was Bancroft, Thornton and Flynn. This is the, we talked about that, but it sounds like it's just,

there's no money to scout beyond the OHL or whatever like if you can drive to it in Ontario you can scout it out and that leads to disaster obviously it also led them to to Tidomi and Peterborough and a few success stories but yeah mostly disaster well listen in my bathroom

you used it before you started you'll see my my picture of ty domey because he's like the we had it was 2002 right after uh quinn came back from uh salt lake city and the uh the the uh ty domey was not on that team don't get me wrong but uh yeah he was one of those heart and soul guys i toronto loves those kind of players like when you think about dave tiger williams you talked earlier about him and then even Wendell Clark, even though Wendell Clark could score. But yeah, Toronto falls in love with these kind of lunch.

Motor City Smitty, waiting for your time there. But yeah, there's something about this city embracing those kind of guys. Yeah, there's no question. I mean, even for me coming up, it was Darcy Tucker. Those were the guys that everybody gravitated towards. Ty, Darcy. Even John Kortick.

I really liked John Kortick as a player. Like he was a guy I was a big fan of. Yeah, and Chris Neal. We just saw last night, Chris Neal's about to get retired in Ottawa. Leafs fans would have loved Chris Neal, right? If the roles were reversed and he was on this side of the equation,

Chris Neal would have been a big, big fan favorite. And I think part of the reason people love Nick Robertson on this current team, obviously he's not going to drop the gloves and fight, but he gives it his all every night out there. And I think Leafs fans have felt for a long, long time like the rest of the team hasn't done that. So anytime there's a guy who clearly wears his heart on his sleeve, like a Robertson or even a Zach Hyman before him,

those are the guys that people in this city gravitate towards. Okay, so before we get to the big draft day trade, the biggest draft day trade in franchise history who involves that old heart Kelvington guy we're talking about. But I just want to shout out Drake Barahowski. So I mentioned last night, I drank a lot yesterday. Yes, we had the recording of every spring a parade down Bay Street street but then i went right after that what happened last night no i recorded with a client and then hammered already no just kidding i was not hammered but then i went out for drinks

with a guy who went to high school with me he's a little older though i actually knew his younger brother at high school but shout out to david forma if you're listening and we were talking about power grads because although we didn't graduate from power brendan shanahan who's going to come up in our story in a minute he went to power i've mentioned that 100 times on this podcast but another guy who went to michael power so it was exciting when he was drafted by the leafs was drake barahowski and drake is guy he's the guy who recovered you you cover this nicely in your book yeah he had that knee injury and recovered drake blew out his knee before hockey players knew what blowing out their knee was right now that the acl and mcl surgeries are very commonplace back then they were not at all he went to the

doctor repeatedly they didn't know what was wrong with his knee they couldn't tell him what was wrong with his knee back then you also wore a cast when you when you got the surgery you would wear a cast that would basically run from your toes up to your armpit, like kind of a full body cast because they didn't know how to recover from knee surgeries properly. So yeah, absolutely. He was a first round pick star D prospect, one of the best young defensemen in the world. Then suddenly he blows out his knee playing junior hockey. The Leafs draft him in the first round anyways, because they liked him so much. I recorded that in VHShs uh i was so high on this guy yeah and he he ultimately made it and had a decent career but became more of the third

pairing defenseman than the true sort of number one number two that you're hoping to get in the first round and a big part of that was because his knee was never it was never right it would it never got to where it needed to get uh but he was a great story because he's a Toronto kid. He was a son of immigrant parents, or a child of immigrant parents, and just sort of made it up in the city at a time when hockey was not what it is with the GTHL now here.

A lot of players were coming from places like London and Stratford, and those were the hockey hotbeds more than the city and he was a hometown he was a hometown yeah brantford he was a hometown kid who suddenly was drafted by the hometown team only he didn't have a functioning leg so uh fascinating story and then at the tail end of the story part of the reason i wanted to tell it was because i've really gotten to know drake over the last several years he has been until recently for a long, long time. He was the head coach of the Orlando Solar Bears,

which was the ECHL farm team before the Newfoundland Growlers came back and returned to Newfoundland. So he went through it at the other end, right? Suddenly here's this guy who was a first round prospect who never really made it. And suddenly he's the coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs of all of the prospects who are probably not going to make it playing in the ECHL. And he's helping them get, get along and helping them navigate that path and

using his own experiences from his time as a prospect with the Leafs to, to guide other prospects of the Leafs. So it became very much a full circle thing for Drake. And he got to see both parts of the draft process, the development piece as a coach, and also trying to make it as a player. And he could relate to both of those things. And lest we forget, Scott, that he's Toronto's original, the OG, the original Drake. Okay. So, you know, he's the original Drake. And it all kind of comes in, you said full circle, but, you know, we started this conversation, me playing the zit remedy.

I think if you're going to work for a team at some point, you're going to have to educate yourself on a little more Degrassi. But, of course, this new Drake, not the great Drake Barahowski, but the new Drake was a Degrassi not not the original direct degrassi but he was a next generation guy that i'm aware of okay no zit remedy in that version though no zit remedy although joey jeremiah was in that version and uh snake was the principal am i right yes snake was the principal because he marries spike yes listen i know what i'm talking about here so i believe you you're gonna have to me. The principal was a member of the zit remedy.

But yeah. Okay. So big draft day trade. I tease this. But and again, we'll burn through these points. I'm going to remind people that on the clock behind the scenes with the Toronto Maple Leafs at the NHL draft is the perfect gift this holiday season for the hockey fan in your life, particularly if they're a Leaf fan.

And I bet you, you know know a couple of those, right? Toronto Mike listeners. So this was the big mind blow trade. Wendell Clark for Matt Sundin. Yeah. What? One of the stories I knew I wanted to tell heading into the book was not just about the picks,

but also what else happens on draft day. And the reality is that the draft day for a long time was the trade deadline before Trade Center existed, right? It was the busiest day of the year is that the draft day for a long time was the trade deadline before trade center existed right it was the busiest day of the year not just for making picks but also for the kinds of blockbusters that can change an organization and obviously i mean it goes without saying the wendell clark for matt sundin swap which included several other pieces and that's what the chapter was about sure the chapter was actually about todd warner and his career as a player who was supposed to be a star player and was supposed to be a top prospect and how he Sure. That trade rocked the hockey world. The Quebec Nordiques were in shambles.

The Canadian dollar was in shambles. Nobody wanted to play for the Quebec Nordiques because the Canadian dollar was in shambles and they didn't have the money. This was a time when the Calgary Flames considered moving, the Ottawa Senators considered moving. Pretty well every team in the country other than Toronto and Montreal

was worried about the health of their franchise. And as a result, Matt Sundin was dealt to Toronto and it became, he became the franchise player for an entire generation. And Wendell Clark, a previous first overall pick was on his way out and did an infamous interview live on air at the draft where he said, I can't believe this is happening, but that's the way things are in this city right now, and basically threw the team under the bus for training him. So it was huge. That's like the Dave Hodge quote. We know when Dave Hodge flips the pen and he goes,

that's the way things are at this network. Wendell had that moment. He basically said the team, the Leafs aren't in a good spot. I talked to Dave Hodge today. I just want to tell people he's coming back later this month, but sorry. Wendell came back too. Yes, he did this month, but sorry. Wendell came back too. Yes, he did. Three twice.

Yeah, Wendell came back. So it was not the end of his Toronto career like maybe he thought when he was hot-headed in that moment that it was going to be. He came back.

He left again. Scored some big goals. But then he came back again because I remember he scores a playoff game, a goal against the Senators in like 2000. In the Air Canada Centre.

Yeah. And that was probably the biggest early goal in the 2000. In the Air Canada Centre. Yeah, and that was probably the biggest early goal in the history of the then Air Canada Centre, now Scotiabank Arena. Right. Yeah, he was, and they chanted him off the ice at the time.

Wow. He was about done with his career then. And you know who had to announce that in the arena and say, goal scored by number 17, Wendell Clark. The father of Morgan Frost, Philadelphia Flyer. That's my mind blowing everywhere. Okay, so we're cooking with gas.

Another guy that gives a lot of detail in this book. People need to read the whole book. Luke Shen, he's a JFJ draft pick. John Ferguson Jr. draft pick. Yeah, spoke with both of those people. JFJ was with the Boston Bruins at the time, is now assistant general manager with the Arizona Coyotes. I was actually probably pretty surprised.

One of the people I was surprised was so eager to say yes to me just because we all know how JFJ has been sort of perceived in this city. But him and Luke were both extremely generous with their time jfj called actually called me back after our conversation because he had a few other things he wanted to talk about um luke was tremendous luke obviously was he was the messiah right he pierre mcguire was jumping up and down and on his seat on the broadcast proclaiming luke shen the heir apparent for the leafs in In Luke's very first press conference, he told me he was asked what he was going to do to fix 1967.

He was the savior. He was the guy. They traded up to get him. It was Brian Burke's sort of big move. Everybody was excited about it. Yeah, so Shen was a Burke pick. Where are we at here? Yeah, because Jake...

Yes. Yeah, so Burke was a president. I'm we at here? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So Burke was a president. I'm trying to get this right. So John Ferguson Jr. Was he the GM? I might have my time. You might have these timelines. It's okay.

It's in the book. You got to write in the book. That's all that matters. Because John Ferguson Jr. in my mind is pre-Burke. Yes. JFJ, Cliff Fletcher were both pre-Burke. Right.

And then it went Burke-Nonis to our current generation, right? Yes, absolutely, yes. And I think the 18-wheeler went off a cliff or something like that. But Luke was great because Luke has been through so much in his career. He's now a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Right. And it all worked out. He got to play with his brother.

Yes. So it became a very beautiful thing. They moved, Brian Burke moved him specifically for James Van Riemsdyk, specifically so that he could get to live out his dream and play with his brother. And it's funny because Van Riemsdyk also has an NHL brother, right? Yes.

Just a fun fact. But Luke also doesn't hold, the beauty I think of Luke Shen's story is there's no resentment there. he doesn't feel like he was done wrong in toronto or he was mistreated he just understands the time and place and when he entered into the fold and who he was at and suddenly they he made the team right he he made the team right away that was a big deal 18 year old he was playing yeah and he was playing 20 minutes a night on a terrible terrible blue line full of sort of old has-been players there was a time where luke shen was several years into his career and the second youngest player on the team other than him was jeff finger who was also a great failure of that organization i feel like he was an accidental uh free agency signing yeah like

we went to the we we accidentally that. That is part of the mythology. Is that not true? I don't think it is a true story. We overpaid for this guy who was a healthy scratch. There were two fingers, right? They thought they were getting the other finger. I also heard a similar... I don't know if this is also fiction, but Moneyball was a big thing

and J.P. Ricciardi was accidentally hired or interviewed or something because he was with the athletics in the Moneyball era. I believe that. Anyways, yeah.

We should write a book about the mythology around Toronto sports and what's true and what's not. Luke was awesome though. That was my big takeaway. We had a great conversation and he was- Seemed like a sweetheart.

Yeah, really one of the good ones in the league i think all right here's a guy uh a question came in about him and i think i don't think we can have this discussion without talking about tyler biggs okay so tell me remind us about for those who are like who's tyler biggs i don't remember him being a big leaf star what are we talking about talk about tyler biggs and then maybe how that leads to a morgan riley and starting to get it right with the draft here yeah it was the biggest failure of the modern era and everybody knew it almost immediately after it was picked he was picked in the season that followed and things went off the rails for him extremely quickly he was the the classic brian burke player he was big he was strong he was athletic when he walked into a

room at the combine everybody knew that holy god this guy is jacked he handles himself he was truculent he told he was the best interview several teams had ever had it was those stories started to come out and good name on top of that he was the son of a longtime nhler don biggs who was very sort of well knownknown in Toronto circles. He was the captain of team USA at the national development program. He'd won you 18 gold medals. He was, he was the poster boy of the hardworking physical power forward.

And this was in the era of the, the Boston Bruins with Milan Lucic, right? Everybody wanted the next Milan and he was supposed to be that. Again, another player that they traded up to get. The Leafs have done that a lot of times and often unsuccessfully over the years. And then it became bad, not just because it went south. He went to the University of Ohio, Miami the following season. He then left the school early. He started with the Oshawa Generals. It didn't go well for him in Oshawa. Then suddenly he's on the Toronto Marlies a lot younger than he should have been, and it's not working for him with the Oshawa Generals it didn't go well for him in Oshawa then suddenly he's on the Toronto Marlies a lot younger than he should have been and it's not working for him

with the Toronto Marlies and he just never got got his NHL opportunity he was never talented enough and it all just completely went off the rails so I actually reached out for the book obviously knew knowing when I wrote the book that there were a few chapters that would have to be in there Wendell Clark had to be in there Austin Matthews had to be in there and Tyler Biggs had to be in there. And as part of that, I wanted to tell originally a very human story, kind of like what we talked about off the top. I wanted to speak with Tyler,

speak with Don, get to know them where they're at. He's now scuba diving for a commercial scuba diving company where they do under underwater repairs on these big ships and still doing a very fit athletic thing in his life, even though he's like me, similar age, right? Late twenties. Um, and it just, it, it didn't work out for him. And ultimately when I reached out, I pitched it to them as, okay, let's tell Tyler's story from his perspective and let's do it that way. Let's do it justice they were both very nice they they texted me back and actually allowed me to use the text in the book and they both just said look it is what it is at this point Tyler's story has been told in a few

different ways and everybody's made up their mind about who Tyler Biggs is and what happened and him being this big bust and we respectfully like to not participate. So where for every other chapter in the book, I was telling each of the stories through the lenses of the people who lived them, through this one, I had to tell it through everybody else, right? So I spoke with people at Miami, Ohio. I spoke with people at the National Program. I spoke with people at the Oshawa Generals. I spoke with members of that front office from the Leafs and the Marlies and really just tried to piece it together from around the edges of how did this happen? Why did they pick him? What went wrong? Where was he at in his career when they did pick him? And how did it

sort of fall apart after that? And what's it really like as a first round pick when things don't go exactly as panned in a market like Toronto. So it became a very fascinating story to tell. And then you mentioned off the top how that sort of led them down a different path. And the truth is, it did. I spoke with those members of that front office. It changed the way that they thought about the game. Brian Burke pivoted before he was fired. And then after that, Dave Nones immediately drafted William Nylander, told William

Nylander in the days before the draft that they were going to draft him. If it wasn't going to be William Nylander, it was going to be Kevin Fiala or Nikolai Ehlers or other highly skilled players who like to have the puck on their stick and maybe players who weren't the physical sort of hardworking types or weren't perceived to be that. And that led them to will to to morgan riley they drafted morgan riley because they were trying after tyler biggs to not look where everybody else was looking i think what led them to tyler in the first place was that they were looking where everybody had always been looking which was for the big physical types and they started to try to do things differently and that led them to drafting overagers it led them to drafting players

from countries they weren't targeting prior and it led them to drafting overagers. It led them to drafting players from countries they weren't targeting prior. And it led them to drafting Morgan Riley, who had just missed his entire draft year. And other teams at the top of that draft, even though they loved Morgan and loved where he came from, he comes from pretty humble beginnings, despite being in a sport like hockey,

which is all about wealth. And they loved, despite the injury, they loved him and they wanted him. And they took a huge risk drafting him fifth overall after he hadn't played hockey so um yeah they the the big story was was the start of that that failure really rocked the organization and changed the way that they wanted to operate as a scouting department and very much william neer and Morgan Riley would not have happened had that failure on bigs happened prior my six-year-old loves Morgan Riley because every time Morgan Riley is on the screen or if he gets a goal or a point uh my my daughter's name is

Morgan and she's very excited to hear you know me tell his name is morgan too so hopefully one day as a leaf fan i've been i feel like charlie brown kicking the football but one day we'll see morgan riley hoist the stanley cup unfortunately it won't be at the leaf it'll be of another team but just like nazem kadri got to hoist the cup but okay let's talk about the the elephant in the room here uh let's talk about the other number one pick he scored 60 goals last year it was a never in doubt we won that lottery uh that's the luck of the irish thank you brendan shanahan former michael power uh trojan austin matthews whoo yeah new again a story i knew had to be told in the book and i knew i wanted to tell different in a different way which when you're telling stories

about the leafs is a very tricky thing because everything has been chronicled. Everything has been written about. There's nothing left to tell in a lot of cases. There's no more juice to pull. And so the idea for that chapter was, okay, let's not tell the story of Austin Matthews in Arizona. Let's tell the story of Brendan Shanahan in that studio. It had never been done that way where they trotted them all out. They'd done it in similar ways where they were on camera, but they were often in the room prior to all of that. So when they were on camera, finding out who'd won the lottery with the rest of the world,

all of those general managers in prior, prior lotteries had typically been in the room when the balls had been pulled and they already knew the result with this lottery for Austin Matthews. They all stood out there and one by one they were told to leave the stage and then they all found out at the same time as we were all found finding out right and brendan shanahan cracked that hilarious smirk on live television in front of millions of people and he couldn't help himself and that moment that smile that he gave uh it became kind of the moment of the Auston Matthews era that started this new generation. They also revealed on the card their new logo, which was a sort of callback to their old logos and the one that's now on jerseys, away from the Microsoft Paint logo that they were using for a long, long time. So it was very much the start of a new era. And

so Brendan was kind enough to sit down with me for the book and really map through what he was thinking in those moments. He's a good guy, right? Yeah, really good guy. Just what he was thinking in the commercial break when they cut to it and there were only three teams left, what he was thinking when they came up their card, and then the process of, okay, now we've got the number one pick after that night in the studio. What, what happened? How did they settle and make sure, okay, it's Austin Matthews. And you'd think that that would be a, okay, we, we dust our hands and it's Austin and it's a simple thing, but it wasn't, it was still, they did. They knew they couldn't screw it up. They couldn't be the Leafs. This couldn't be a talking point 20 years from

now. If Austin Matthews didn't work out, they had to make sure. So there was a lot of due diligence into everybody you could imagine, including Patrick Lyonnet. And they thought about Patrick Lyonnet and all of that. And ultimately, they kept coming back to Austin. So it's kind of the story of that night for Brendan and then how Brendan, as president of the team, navigated a new chapter and prepared for what was to come and it prepared Austin as well Brendan Shanahan was the second overall pick to the New Jersey Devils right Brendan Shanahan had been that been in those shoes obviously in a much smaller market so Brendan also had a role to play in the aftermath once they picked Matthews of guiding him and getting him to where he is today which is I don't know a second or third best player in the aftermath once they picked Matthews of guiding him and getting him to where he is today,

which is, I don't know, a second or third best player in the league. Brendan Shanahan has built an exceptional regular season hockey team that is very entertaining in the regular season. And here's hoping, as you enjoy your Great Lakes beer here, here's hoping there's some translation to post-season success. Because this has nothing to mean we have done. You mentioned some of these. Mitch Marner and Morgan Riley and Austin Matthews. I mean, clearly, this is a different scouting team.

We're drafting some exceptional NHL players. But Dag Nabbitt, I need to see some playoff success. Because how many more years before i'm knocking on the door of ridley funeral home and saying hey there's a pickup here let's go yeah and uh i i think they've got what it takes it's there's only so much time there's only so much patience from the fan base and from ownership there's a lot of patience with this current group yeah but with that patience comes added pressure and i i think i think they're capable i i know fans don't want to hear that at this point but it takes luck it takes goaltending it takes who's the best goalie we've ever drafted is it felix pa fan it might be tukarask oh yes yes it might be tukarask you're probably going to be in the hall of fame someday you You sure he's better than Justin Pogge?

They're still kind of close in my mind here. But no, they're capable. If they stay healthy, if John Tavares doesn't get kneed in the head, you can walk through all the ifs of the recent playoff runs and what could have been. But they've got what it takes, and I expect they'll add it to the deadline again and try to give it another go.

Scott, you hit it out of the park in your Toronto Mike debut. On the clock. You were on the clock. You gave me 90 great minutes on the clock behind the scenes of the Toronto Maple Leafs at the NHL Draft. Continued success. I hope we sell a lot of books because it's great. And yeah, the Athletics, lucky to have you, buddy.

Thank you. Thank buddy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's been great to be on. It's a career highlight for you. I couldn't believe when you were reading off, what was it, 1,181 episodes? Did I remember that right?

No, it's 1,147 is what you are. So that's the tattoo you can get, 1,147. Yeah. Either way, you're right on your way to 2,000. I'll get there. Now, a couple of fun facts on our way out before I tell you. And that! The first ever Maple Leaf draft pick.

We didn't talk about him, but this is a Barroom Trivia answer. Walt McKechnie. Sixth overall in the 1963 amateur draft. Yeah. Currently a town councillor in Halliburton, Ontario, which is now where my parents live and where we cottaged growing up. So he started a restaurant up there called McKeck's, which was the pub in Halliburton, Ontario,

and still is the pub in Halliburton, Ontario. And then he sold it and went into local politics. He's quite the figure in Halliburton. And was a good second, third line centre in the NHL for a long, long time. And it's funny when you say sixth overall, it sounds like, oh, we had an early draft pick. And then you remember there were only six teams. Yeah, they drafted last, in fact. You said you live in the East End right now, right?

We actually just moved in February. We lived in the East End basically from 2017 until February of this year, so about five years, and we just sold and moved to Newmarket, which is closer to home. All right, caught you late because you just moved, but should anybody have any real estate questions whatsoever about the GTA real estate scene, okay? Sammy Cohn, drumming up results.

He's the drummer for The Watchmen, which is a kick-ass Canadian rock band from Winnipeg. But Sammy Cone at ProperlyHomes.ca. And Cone is K-O-H-N. Send him an email. He'd love to hear from any FOTM with any real estate question. And my last fun fact before I say goodbye, before we run out of Lois Nelliloe here.

Steve Dangle wrote the foreword for your book. He did. I'm playing in, if I can plug this as well, because it's a great cause. Steve is a big supporter, big, big, big supporter of Easter Seals. And I'll be playing in the Eric Windross Celebrity Hockey Classic in support of Easter Seals, which supports young people with physical disabilities and getting them involved in sports, doing about as good a work as you can do as a charity.

And yeah, if you're interested in donating, search Rachel's Raiders, which is Steve Dangle's team for the Celebrity Hockey Classic, and you can donate to support Steve and I's efforts. We'll be playing on Friday in this little tournament, and we're probably going to get our asses kicked, but it'll be a lot of fun. Well, Steve Dangle, much like yourself, Scott,

FOTM's Friends of Toronto Mike, so he's been down here. Steve is one of the very best people I know in this industry. And that brings us to the end of our 1147th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm still there, everybody. At Toronto Mike Scott. What should we follow? Scott C. Wheeler?

What was it again? At Scott C. Wheeler on Twitter. And theathletic.com if you haven't subscribed. Or you can find my book on Amazon or at Chapters, etc. You have a book? I do have a book our friends at great lakes brewery are at great lakes beer palma pasta is at palma pasta tmlx 11 is december 3rd at noon come on out it'll be a good time sticker you is that sticker you

manaris is that manaris raymond james canada are at raymond at Moneris. Raymond James Canada are at Raymond James CDN. Recycle My Electronics are at EPRA underscore Canada. Ridley Funeral Home are at Ridley FH. Canna Cabana are at Canna Cabana underscore. And Sammy Cone is at Sammy Cone, K-O-H-N. See you all tomorrow. And my special guest is the Toronto Stars, Edward Keenan. Everything is rosy and everything is rosy and gray.