Transcript of How Do You Feel Watching Team Canada Play At The 4 Nations Face-Off? | SDP

Started off with a goal pretty quickly. And I have to say, Crosby on the first goal is insane. Watching Nathan McKinnon and cheering for Nathan McKinnon, Steve, Jesse. New experience. Pretty cool.

Well, Jesse didn't cheer for Canada.

I did. No, I cheered for Canada. I was supporting my-You know what? I was supporting my boy William Neelander. You know what?

Jesse should I have to play this.

I was supporting my boy William Neelander because Fanatics was nice enough to send me a Fanatics William Neelander Team Sweden Jersey, which was awesome. But yes, it's cool. It's cool rooting for Crosby. Having McDavid on your side is awesome. You imagine.

Jesse, I'm going to save that. I'm going to save that for later. Jesse had the Sweden Jersey on the entire time. It looks so good. He sat in the middle of the bar at Boston Pizza with that Jersey on. But let's bring it back to Nathan McKinnon for a second. Cheering just for him. Forget Crosby for a second. Just seeing Nathan McKinnon rushing the fuck in towards the goalie. What feelings does that evoke in your soul?

I haven't watched the stream back yet, but I'm pretty sure I spent most of the opening 10 minutes laughing. Just giggling. That is such an unbelievable... I'm used to watching these players with dread on account of almost all of them play for not my team. Every time the leaves play the oilers, you can't look for 97. You look at the blur that looks like it might be a 97 if it were standing still. And you just go, No, no, no, no, no, Hopefully, it ends with him going to the bench and not you fishing the pocket in the back of your net, and then you go, and then the rest of the game happens, right? Time stands still when he's on the ice against your team. Same with McKinnon, same with Crosby, same with Mekar. Maybe not to the same degree, but damn, Sam Reinhardt is pretty good, man. Oh, man. And that's your top power play unit. Lmao. That first goal was McDade David to Crosby to McKinnon. They're all first overall picks.

Top line centers on their teams.

Canada's top power play unit is first overall pick, first overall pick, first overall pick, fourth overall pick, second overall pick.

That's great. There's no one out of the top four.

That's great.

That's so, so, so, so silly. I think a lot of our goal My concerns were confirmed by this game, but I think some of what we saw in that game showed that we might have overblown it a little bit. The rest of the team is still pretty damn good. You asked a great question, or someone in the audience asked a great question during our live show in Stoville. Forwards, defense, goalies. Rank Canada in the tournament. Goalies is the easy four. Four, unfortunately. Fourwards? I give them one. I think. I think it's two at worst.

Especially the way Crosby played.

Yeah.

I mean, He had- On the wing? He had that first set up goal, guys. That was, for me, like vintage Crosby in tight with the net making something of nothing. And just the fuck just flowed through him like it was a creek, like a river. Just nothing. Set it up, score his goal. It's beautiful. And I think it's crazy. And I saw a lot of social... And I'm sorry, Penns fan. I do have to bring this up. There are a lot of people like, please get Cindy Crosby Pittsburgh. Oh, my God.

Play him with good players. Holy shit. It shouldn't be this difficult.

Yeah. I mean, the payroll of Team Canada is $182 million. It's insane. It is a little difficult to get that many players together.

The one I had trouble with, and this is obviously a different conversation now that Shay Theodore is hurt and Kil Mekar is sick in both ways. Canada's defense. I said, you could convince me they're one. You could also convince me they're three, which is why I'm going to cop out and say two.

Right.

If your forwards in D are, let's say two and two out of four. Yeah, I think you're doing okay. You could argue they're one and one and four. They're a really, really, really good team. They have as good a shot to win as anyone.

Jesse, your thoughts on... I guess we can talk about the whole game because I'm not going to go goal by goal necessarily like do with the Leaps in the playoffs. But Crosby on this night, McKinnon on this night, cheering for McDavid. Getting all those guys on one team and going, Yeah, that's my team.

No, Crosby has got to be the focus for me to start because no disrespect to the other 600 players in the National Hockey League. But seeing these teams put together where there's no bad players on the ice, and yet Crosby is still out there being one of the best out of any of them. It just shows the level he's at. That first goal, you're talking about the one he assisted on where he's backwards doing a blind pass. Then he does the same thing in overtime where he has a blind pass to Mitch Marner. It feels like he's out there showing off. It feels like he's out there being like, Hey, Maybe I forgot. I'm still sitting across me and I still have it. I'm still at the top of my game. It was really special. It's cool to see him have that moment to start the tournament.

That overtime winner to me was just him being the smartest player on the ice. There's so many goals in his career where he's able to be the facilitator by sucking up so much energy. All the Americans converged on him. At this point in his career, even though he's still a ridiculously good skater, he still has some of the best edges in the league. He's not even going to really try to beat you with just outright overwhelming speed. Guys have gotten too fast. Mcdavid's insane. Mckinnon's insane. Other guys, even Marner, is It's just insane. But Crosby sucks up that energy. And once he hands it off, Mitch has already read what's going on. I don't know if they talked about it beforehand because it seemed too perfectly executed for them to not know exactly what was going on. Crosby's got one job, stay on-side or get on side. That's it. That's it. Then Mitch is just frigging leading the charge. If anything, that play felt like it was designed to get a line change in. I don't I don't know if they meant to call game that way.

Yeah, but the genius of it is like, Crosby started playing with Mitch Marner that day. It's not like they've been playing together for five years, for 10 years, for 20 years. They met each other on Monday, and he's making blind classes in overtime to him in the middle.

Now, Jessie, you're forgetting something. You're forgetting something. They trained together in the summer.

Right.

They trained together in the summer, and we got conflicting messages about it like, Oh, you're making it sound like they've been training together for weeks and weeks. It was only a couple of days. It seemed to help.

Nathan McKinnon and Crosby, they have their camp out in Denver. Vail? Yeah, Vail. There it is. Yeah, Vail, Colorado. Every summer in this year, Mitch Marner was there hanging out for a little bit.

Worked?

Yeah. This is the view of Crosby's first pass. Everybody's hyping up the blind one in OT, but this one is also blind to Nathan McKinnon across the ice. The the awareness to know that, Hey, yeah, he's over there. I'm going to go not look at where I'm passing the buck, and it's going to go through three defenders and pass the goalie, and McKinnon is going to bury it.

By the way, that was on a William Neylander penalty for a high stick to the face of McKinnon.

Yes, this is on the power play. And yeah, Neylander had a poor start to the game. But he looked dangerous in the middle. He did. William Neylander was coming back. He did. William Neylander was coming back.

Now, I think was To fast forward, after that first period, Canada being, I think they were up 2: 00, and then it was 3: 00 at the beginning of the second or something. 3: 1.

It never got to 3: 0.

Oh, 3: 1. Okay. It seemed for the first half of that game that Canada was very much in control.

Well, they didn't allow shots, you see.

Yeah. Well, what was it? Ten minutes without a shot first week? Fifteen.

Sweden ended up getting, I think, three by the end of the first, but that's it. And they were muffins.

That's wild. Now, Then what happens, and this is where it gets a little wild, is that Sweden starts to inch back. Oh, yeah. The first one- It should be mentioned that that started with Shay Theodore going down.

Yes.

I was missing a defenseman.

Pretty damn good.

It didn't help them for sure.

No, it didn't help them. But that goal, I think it was the second goal, where the Swedish player cut across the ice. I believe it couldn't have been. I don't think it was Brodine. Maybe it was Kempi. First goal was Brodine.

Brodine.

Is that the one where he cut across and in and it just went through Jordan Binnington?

Yeah, you're talking about the Adrian Kempi in goal where he was just in the slot and he took a shot at the wrist there? Yeah.

This is where Saturday night, Bell Center, Montreal. I have to question if this is the guy. All the team could talk about like, oh, he's so prepared in the preparation. Man, the preparation. Even after the game, they're like, oh, preparation. Preparation, Jay.

I don't know if it was on the broadcast or if I could hear people from the bar, but that puck goes in and everyone went, oh. It was not your typical Damn, we got scored on. It was Jordan. That's pretty bad, man.

Now, that is true, and it was bad. I do think that even though Sweden tied it up again, Kepe and Erikson Ep tied it up in the third. I do think that towards the end of the game, Jordan Bittington turned it on.

He did. He made some key saves, including overtime.

You saw the goal tender that we saw win the Cup in '19.

A little bit. He's chaos a little bit.

Yeah. Let's talk about it a little bit.

Well, there's no much to it.

Is he starting? Is he starting Saturday?

No, the plan was always to go Binnington Hill. Both of them getting the chance. Yeah. So for me, it's He played well enough and they got the win. You probably like that one back. The Brodian one's not very great either, but it's from a disgusting angle. I don't blame Bennington really on it too much. I think there's also a bit of a deflection there when it goes in. But The Kempe one, yeah, you want that back, but it's one goal, and they won. He was good when it mattered in terms of overtime in the end of the game there.

He was. And end of the game, frigging. It's an odd man rush for Sweden. Who's the defender back? It's not a defender. It's Mitch Marner. Mitch, help prevent it at one end, stymying his buddy, Willy, and then he ends it at the other end. Listen, so you were laughing. You guys were both laughing really hard because you kept hearing me every time you walked by me doing the stream, it sounded like I was bashing Marner the whole time. Well, there were people bashing. Because the comment section, I was reading it and everyone was all over him.

And you were fueling it because you don't like it. I was not fueling it. He said, Hey, screw you, Mitch. Get off of Team Canada.

Steve kept saying, weirdly, Hey, what do you think of that Mitch Marner shit, guys?

That was Jesse going, What happened to Nate there? What happened to Nate?

I heard Steve yell a couple of times, We're 16. Whoa. He's 16 out there on the ice.

How dare you. Listen, I don't think he had a bad game. The first half of it was maybe quiet, but that falls on the whole line. Reinhardt, McDavid, Marner, it didn't really feel like that did a whole hell of a lot. It didn't work. No, it didn't work for me. It felt like the only time I got out of my chair, even though I stood the whole time, was McDavid just going, I'm going to do it all myself.

I don't think McDavid Why didn't Marner's games complement each other. No. I don't think they should be on the same line.

No, it's a good point.

It sounds like a massive demotion, but it depends on how your coach manages the bench.

Look at the players.

I know. Look at the players. I I love the idea of Marner-Cirelli-Hagle because that, to me, is a line with a clear purpose. They're going to skate you into the dirt. They got good defensive ability, and they can score on you, too, at will, pretty much. Who do you put up with McDavid then?

You're taking off point, right?

No, because points with Marchand-No, because they were running the Cirelli point, like the all-Tampa line.

Were they not for a little?

Maybe for a little. They didn't start the game with that.

No, they didn't start the game.

Either way, it looks like Connectny is probably not going to play. So he's the odd man out. So I thought the way that line started, if I'm not mistaken, was Hagle, Cirelli, Connectny. So Connectny, to He is easy. You just take him off, throw Marner in. So who gets the bump to McDavid's line? Is it Seth Jarvis? I don't know. It's an interesting It's an odd exercise because you look at who McDavid always plays with. It's like, usually, insane goal scorer and grinder type. Who can also score? Hyman, right? Perry at times this season. So So playing the role of Leon Dreisaitl tonight is his understudy, Sam Reinhardt, right? Okay, that's easy. Mitch? I don't know.

It feels like you got... What are those little emoticons or whatever they put next to players' names in NHL.

Oh, like the early 2000s ones, the hammer and the stick.

And the fire and the whatever. If they're fast, it feels like you got two passers.

Mcdavid scored 60.

Yeah.

He's deceptive like that.

No, I know what you mean. Yeah, he scored 60. How many assists he had that year? 110 or something like that?

100? He probably had more assists than goals, which is psycho.

Of course he did. Yeah. And that's my point, right? Is Look, here.

Here. You're a nut job. What an alien from outer space.

To say, what did he have? He had 72 assists last year. He had 100 assists two years ago. When we talk about McDavid and we talk... Oh, no, it was last year, he had 100 assists. The year before, he had 89. Boom. I know that Connor McDavid can score goals. My point is that he also racks up a lot of assists. Until overtime, and as a lead fan, you know this, Mitch Mitch doesn't love to shoot. Reinhardt does.

I'm less surprised that the shot went in than I am that he took it.

Because he has a great shot, and it's deceptive, and doesn't use it enough.

He charged in one on three alone. Who did he even have with him?

Crosby passed it to him, but that was it. Crosby was heading off. He was going for a train of change.

I don't even know who the other player on the ice was. So Listen, it's Team Canada. They're frigging ridiculously stacked up front. They're going to be fine. That line just didn't do it for me. And it has nothing to do with any one player having a bad game. Right. Now. Nothing to do with with.