Transcript of Old Coach, New Coach | The Steve Dangle Podcast

Well, for some reason, I just forgot to put the Red Wings news in the show. So we're going to start the show with the Red Wings news.

In a few minutes, you're going to hear us go, Oh, yeah, Lucas Raymond, Mo Cider. But we'll get to that. And then we didn't.

No, I don't even know if we teased it. I will say this. I am extraordinarily frustrated by both contracts because they're very, very good contracts. Mo Cider, 23 years old. Yeah, 23. Lucas Raymond, 22. Lucas Raymond got 64.6 million dollars on an eight-year deal, and Cider got a seven-year contract worth just about $60 million. It's just over eight for Cider, just under eight for Lucas Raymond. Guys, just on a leaf fan scale of hate, let's say it's- It does matter. Five Kyle Dubas heads out of... It is our thing because he signed all the RFA deals, and I feel bad for Kyle. It's not exactly his fault, but it's partially his fault. How How many Kyle Duba's heads out of five do you give this on the hate scale?

Six because I don't understand the scale.

Five, I hate it.

You also said it weird. You said under eight and over eight?

Yeah, because Lucas Raymond's like, what is it? No, no.

They're both over eight. Raymond's 8.7 0.75. 8.075. Not Cider. Raymond? Raymond is, yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. And then Cider is 8.5..

There you go. How much do you hate it?

A lot, a lot, a lot. I mean, which means they're incredible Double deals for Detroit. Yes. Raymond, he's still... He's an extraordinary player, but he has to grow into the deal.

You're making a bet?

Yeah. He hasn't performed an $8 million player yet.

Seventy-two points last year, though.

Yeah. Okay. So maybe last year was the first one where you go maybe... Tim Stutzela, when he signed his contract, we all were like, Yeah, he's going to grow into that. I think it's the same for Lucas Raymond. He's going to grow into that. Mo Cider.

What are we doing here?

There's no reason, no justification for Mo Cider to be making less than, for some reason, the name I keep going with is Charlie McAvoy. If you look at McAvoy when he signed his contract, which was years ago.

Was he an RFA?

He was an RFA, roughly the same age. If you look at his accomplishments heading into RFA, and Mo Cider. Mo Cider is He is huge. He is a right-handed shot. He will frigging kill you. He can score goals and set up points. He's attached to Ben Sherratt, and he's still performing the way he's performing. He has played three consecutive 82 game seasons to start his career. They didn't want to pay a player more than Dylan Larkin, who makes It's $8.7 million. There's looking at comparables around the league, there's no rational numbers-wise reason that Mo Cider should be making less than Dylan Larkin on this contract. But he's an RFA, and he didn't get the full eight years. So there's one additional UFA year you're not buying.

But the RFA thing, even if you're an RFA, you should get more than this at this moment in his career. The hate scale, I like it, Adam, because as every other... The 31 fan bases should hate this deal in the negotiation that Iserman has conducted here. I don't know what information he has on Mosider to get him to sign this contract, but it makes no sense for this talent to get this little money.

You know who should hate it? Every right-handed defenseman in the NHL.

The comparisons. There aren't 12 defensemen in this NHL League that are better than Mosider, but there's 12 of them that have bigger- Are going to be. There's 12 of them right now who have bigger contracts than him. That includes Zack Warenzky at 9:05. On that list is Darnell Ners at 9:25. Kael McCar's makes makes nine.

Okay, that's Kael.

Petro makes 8:8. Okay. Dougie Hamilton makes nine. Adam Fox is 95. Seth Jones is 95. Drew Dautie is 11. Daulene is 11. Carlson is 11.5. That Daulene number, I think, is very important. Eleven, it begins this year. It was signed a year ago. That's a guy who's one year older, hasn't played even close to a prominent role as Maureet Cider, who's been on more competitive teams in a bigger role, I would say, since his rookie year. Probably equal, if anything. If we want to thread needles here. And he got 11. Even if you think- And the other guy got an 8,5 Five.

Even if you think Cider is a step behind Dauleen, do you want to see why they should be making the same amount of money? Here, wait. Oh, right-handed.

They were both RFAs at the time, both expire in UFA time. It's way too little money for this talent.

Listen, we've been talking smack about Steve Heisman. He straight up hasn't done a very good job at a lot of things.

Justin Hall, Ben Chirac. Yeah. Eight goalies on the roster. Jake Willman. All signed to NHL I mean, if you think Petrie, Hall, and Sherrod are all overpaid by millions of dollars, don't worry.

You just got all that in savings with Mo Cider. In a few years, that's going to be one of the better contracts in the league if he keeps getting better.

Mo Cider walked so Ben Sherrod could run when it comes to those contracts. The reason Mo is not making that is it's just not available.

No, Mo Cider walked so Ben Sherrod could still walk.

It's crazy. I look at it and I go, I look at this and think, okay, Obviously, these guys want to play hockey. Obviously, it starts to really suck, especially now for an RFA, when contract isn't done. This is when it sucks. But I am just blown away that they got him for seven years on that. Lucas Raymond, that deal makes complete sense. That is a great deal. That's a fair deal. Yeah. Yeah. Great deal. Mo Cider for me, is a head scratcher on Mo Cider.

At this term per year, AAV, it should have been six.

I think I think so.

Oh, six years? Max year, six. I don't know why you give them the seventh year at this AAV.

I might even go five.

I was about to say I would even look at this. It was five. Five times eight, five. I was like, Yeah, that's such a discount. Only five.

Man, it's a really, really good deal for me.

Never in Toronto. Never.

No, of course not. Why would you?

Why would a good thing ever happen? Man, I want to say Claude Lemieux, his agent, had signed some monster deals recently. The one I'm looking at, specifically, Timo Meyer with the Devils. It's not like Claude Lemieux, some slouch. Hampus Lindholm, everybody was like, Oh, that's a lot of money for Hampus Lindholm when he resigned with Boston, and it's a fucking steal at this point.

If this isn't the first time Claude Lemieux got his ass kicked by Detroit.

Oh, I'm going to start the show there? Yeah, let's start the show. The Steve Dangle podcast with your host, Steve Adam Wild and Jesse Blake. The reason that I held my Agent Provocateur mug up.

Kevin Gates the Vult.

Got it. My Agent Provocateur mug is up because there's a new AP out. I actually thought it was great because it was beautiful. We had a mixture of Alan's story time, which I always love. It's his 30th year as an agent in the NHL. Damn. Jesse and I got to find out not only who his first contract was, that he signed, and who the first general manager was. Who was it? Spoil it. Well, I'll spoil it. I think it was a spoiler, right, Jess? Yeah. It's former Leaps Assistant, Dean Chenowth.

Oh, the guy who someone thought was you? Yeah. Having lunch with Austin Matthews.

No wonder Alan likes me. He thought I was Dean, too. I've been doing the show with Dean for four years.

We also called Chenowth Chenowith for two weeks.

Two years. You got to pick one, though. Yeah. I said that in a lead video that I have coming out. I'm like, Grbanken, Grbanken. We'll find out soon. No one's really just come out and said it.

Camp? Compf?

Compf.

It took a while.

Who What was this David Camp?

I asked the fucking guy, and he said his name was Kaleman.

Then I also found out that the contract was with the Boston Brewans in the mid '90s. That meant that legendary Brewans general manager and 1972 Team Canada Head Coach Harry Sindin, was the guy he did the deal with, which is pretty neat. There's some really cool stuff in there. There's a guy named Big Dan who messaged me in June. Big Dan said, Hey, I got a question for you guys. The question actually went into how the show- Have you seen Little Dan? No, I have not seen Little Dan. Just Big Dan has reached out. I meant to ask this in June, but I finally got this on here, and I wanted to give Big Dan a bit of a shout-up because he's decided to go to law school. He's in law school right now First semester at Toronto Metropolitan University. Your alma mater, Steven Jesse. Yes. I guess technically mine, too.

No, you got to graduate.

Oh, you got to graduate? Yeah. I went there. I've been inside. There you go.

You can't be a quitting quitter Baylor.

That's true. Anyway, he's becoming a lawyer because of agent provocateur and wants to be an agent.

I love that a lot.

Isn't that cool? That's great. I thought that was neat. So he asked a really good question, so we're going to get to all that. I just thought, damn, that's really neat.

That is really neat. It's not going to make me listen to the damn show, though.

No.

I got a lot of catching up to do.

Big Dan actually started a Twitter account. He started yelling about the salary cap recently. It was really weird.

It's called triple hard, fuck this. What? Triple hard cap.Yeah, no.

No, I like it.

It was just really aggressive.

Oh, sorry. Was it too much? All right, Jessie.

Too much for this early?

Is that what it is? I don't know.

Put that on a notebook.

Triple hard, fuck.

This is the LFR notebook that you can find in the stpnshop. Ca. No, you have to lift it up. Steve's very excited about it. Yeah, you couldn't see it.

I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I didn't realize that you couldn't see it.

If you were to review this, this is like Amazon reviews in the comments, what are you going to-Unbox it. What would you say?

Man, I tried to write things down in it and my pen exploded. It slipped right out of my hand and exploded. So zero out of 10.

What? No, it's great. You could have sold that like, I wrote stuff down and my takes got better.Oh, shit.You should have said that. Okay, here, wait.

Here, wait. Okay. No.

Hard cam.

Hard cam. I wrote things down and my takes got better.

There you go. How's that? You're also wearing a noted Alan Walsh client T-shirt, which is very nice.

I'm a merch guy. Which means your legal takes got better, too.

Yeah. And also I said, triple hard gap, fuck this.

Jesse, I sent you a video, and this quote was making the rounds, and it It has a lot to do with what we talked about on the show. And it's so funny. It seemed like everybody that covers the least, at least, had the same idea at the same time. Hey, you're trying Nielander at center. Marmer played center a lot, too. Apparently, it was at one point the plan to have him be a center, too.

Yeah, he split it with Christian Dvorak in Junior.

Yeah, you could. Anyway, so this is Nielander's take.

I specifically said on last show, why won't CJ or Mark Masters or anybody down there ask Willy the damn question about why he wasn't center? And then it happened. So here we go.

I think that I told Chief that, I mean, the most important thing He's like, Yeah, just play one game if you want to try center. So we're on. We agree on that and give it a go and hopefully it goes well. Why do you think the experiment didn't last very long at last camp? It seemed like you were-What did I play one game? Two. Two, I think. Yeah, I don't know. I have to ask my own coach about that. That is such a Willy answer. Man, it's not, though, because it's interesting. Willy is a boy. We know he's fun, but he's a boring quote.

But he's gotten a little better.

This is the guy that went on Swedish television in a tank top. Oh, I know. With his hat, McAfee, and was just half in the bag and just having fun.

No, Willy likes sprinkling a little on it and then giving a little Mona Lisa smile. Yeah. Because he knows he said something.

Yeah, he does. By the way, for anybody that doesn't know, he said, I told Chief. Chief is Craig Berube's nickname. Just for anybody that doesn't know. So if we say Chief during the year now, this is a new coach. Oh, no.

A lot of lead The hands are like, Pardon?

Who's chief? Who is that? Anyway, long story short, I think with Neilander there, he says what we all thought, which is you need to try this and make it work. It can't be a couple of weeks. It can't even really be a couple of months, right, guys.

The date I threw out last show was at least Halloween. At least Halloween. Halloween, I think, is if it's going mediocre, like you keep going. If it's going dreadfully, it's obvious, Okay, he can't do this. All right, maybe bail then. I'm thinking, I'm going to go American Thanksgiving.

That's the end of November. Jesse, thoughts?

Got to go to at least that.

Yeah, that's what we've been asking for. You don't just try these things all You mentioned them a million times. Hey, look at that one.

He's Friday. He's on fire.

Let's go. You don't-Play the extra.

You don't try it randomly on an elimination day in a bubble playoff. Just throw them at center. You don't try it for two weeks at training camp and then abandon it two preseason games in. You give it some length, you see if it actually works. I'm excited to see it now just take place.

Sheldon Keef, A, A, oh, I just got here when it came to the 2020 playoffs. I think it was a combination of, Hey, oh, I just got here, and also it was COVID, and it just wasn't a priority. Why were Weren't we all louder about, hey, why the fuck did you do that? It's game five, which is essentially game seven. You decide to play Andreas Janssen for his first game in six months?

And he's still clearly injured. Yeah. But we need to get him his last game in a leafier.

And Willy's going to play his first game at center of the season?

Who told you to do that? By the way, wasn't that the rationale for addressing Andreas Janssen? It's like, This might be his last game. I don't give a shit. I remember. I'm going to talk to CJ about that because there was something to that. And it wasn't. Yeah, it was.

It did end up being. But like, Robertson. So it's funny. Robertson played the first six games against the Bruins, and then he was sat in game seven. That was more justifiable this year because he went zeros across the board than it was in 2020 when he actually had the team's last five-on-five goal, which came in game three of that five-game series. It seems to suck.

I think It's fun to have a new coach in there because we're going to see new things with the Lefs. There's probably going to be some growing pains. I don't know if they're going to get off to the hottest start here, but having Willy play center. I think JT will technically be three or two C, but they're not I'm going to move JT the wing and mess it up. It's going to actually be three dominant centers. If Willy can live up to expectations, then I'm excited to see it.

It's going to be fun. I got a lot of shit from Habs fans on the last episode. You deserved it. Because I said-Wait, what did you say? I said, well, they're like, You could clearly tell that they don't watch Montreal Hockey because Max Paturetti being fast is laughable. And I'm like, Bro, I was comparing him to James Van Riemsteijk.

Are you kidding me? We had this conversation, though. I I think the floor for James Van Riemsteijk as an NHL player is higher than Max Paturetti's floor. Sure. I think Max Paturetti's ceiling is higher than JBR's ceiling.

And is Max Paturetti probably faster than Tavares? Yeah, that's what the lineup means.

But it's not a given. He could be the slowest player on the team because his legs are busted. Or he's frigging flying out there. But as there's only been one practice so far, I don't frigging know.

Hard to tell. Hard Itself. Now, the lines- Wait till the games start. The lines were interesting. Obviously, we got our first look at the Toronto Maple Lefs lines in practice. And again, don't put too much into these because there are some notable omissions. So Nye's Matthews Marner.

That was pretty obvious.

Domi, Neylander, Yarncroke.

Not nearly as obvious.

Now, I thought they'd go full wee and put Robertson up in Yarncroke spot. But I think Yarncroke, first off, he can play there. Second, he's the defensively responsible one, I think more than the other two.

Is that fair? I don't love this line. Yes, he's the designated babysitter on that line. I don't love it. Less because of Neylander and more because I think those players should be playing opposite wings.

Steve, what do you think about Max's defense?

It's awful. It's terrible. But incredibly dynamic offensive player. I actually watched a bunch of video on Max yesterday, ahead of another leaves video that I shot for my channel, and that should be coming out, I don't know, soon. Where does he generate offense from? What I was trying to find out, what I was trying to figure out is, does he generate more offense from the right side than the left?

When he's playing wing?

Yeah, when he's playing wing. Well, when he's playing nettle, right? Because things happen throughout the game and you got to change where you are and whatever. He's all over the place. He can generate from anywhere. So it could work out there. It's just he was so successful on the right wing. He played on the right wing of Austin Matthews and did pretty damn well.

Well, I'd say he was most successful as a centerman. I feel like that's where he's most-Domi? Yeah.

He was least successful as a left wing.

Right.

Really. I don't love that.

It could work. At center, I guess it's a little unfair because my vision of Domi at center, Jesse, is whatever that weird third line they had him on to start the year last year. You got 11 straight with that boy.

You got 11 straight with that boy to erase the first three months of Domi's tenure. That was irrelevant. I feel like towards the end when he was playing a bit of center because he's such a pass first player. He's never looking to score himself. It worked out when he was in the middle.

They put his left shot on the left of two righties, which I think he could potentially feast on. That could be a lot of fun. Go to the net. If you're on that line, go to the net. It could be fun, but I think it is the least likelihood of sticking together.

Line three, McMahon, Tavares, which they had some really good chemistry last year. Yes, they did. And Nicholas Robertson. Steve, you were talking about your season preview video. When does that come out?

I think today.

Okay. I'm not sure. But you were saying that maybe we focused a little too much on the left side, and we maybe should have focused on both sides because they're a little weak, but that players like a nick Robertson can play both sides.

I mean, Domi, we didn't consider in the conversation motivation. Robertson can play both sides. I do find it funny that we were talking about, Man, the opportunity at left wing is there, Robbie. And then day one of camp, and He's on the right. But what an opportunity. All he wants is an opportunity, and he's on the wing of John Tavares.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay. That'll do. That should be okay. Don't look at it as third line. These are just different looks. Right. These are just different looks. And Robertson got a bunch of his points last year with Tavares. He got a bunch of his points with Domi, so there could be a switch there. I don't know how much he played with McMahon. Good for him. Really, really, really good opportunity. If anyone has taken off of that line, I think it's him. And McMahon and Tavares, I think, is going to be a pairing that they try to stick to.

A couple other notable things, because I'm going to leave the fourth lines. We still don't... They're all all over the place.

I did want to mention one thing.

What? Lawrence Camp Reeves?

Well, Lawrence Camp Reeves. I saw that and I'm like, oh, Lawrence's chances of making the team skyrocketed, and then he got frigging hurt. So real bummer for him.

It's just day to day, though, right? Yeah. It's still being injured in training camp is so much more detrimental when you're on a PTO and you're chasing a spot. Yes.

And today, he's being replaced by Roni Hirvinen and not Pontus Humberg, which I thought was odd. So it seems like they're committed to Homberg at center.

We still don't know if Benwa and McKay will be back together, although they were a great force on the second pair last year when they got things going. Benwa's wife had a baby.

Today, he was on the ice with Lologren.

Oh, okay. There you go. The reporters asked him actually earlier this morning, What are you going to name the baby? And they were like, We haven't decided yet. Oh, really? Yeah, that's what he says. I mean, listen, he's probably just being like, I'm not telling you shit. The kid's not even 24 hours old. Go away. But the one I thought was interesting, so we obviously have Riley Tanev. I think that was obvious. Ekman Larson, Mekabe.

Yeah. I am interested by it?

I am interested by it, too, because the drawback of a Mekabe Benoît thing is neither of them are like world beaters when it comes to handling the fuck. Mekabe is tough. They're the bash brothers. Yeah. You could put them together if you need a bash line. But ideally, the reason they signed Klingberg last year, which was not great, and they got out of it, is they needed more fuck movement on the back end. Oliver Ackman-Lawson is supposed to solve that. It makes sense to put them together.

Of course it does. And Lilligran can move the Puck. I still don't understand. Okay, Yany Hockenpa is not skating right now. Yeah. But I look at that group and I go, he's first out. He might be first out. It's not a given. You could split up McCabe and Ekman Larson, put all the lefties on the left and have Lilligran and Hockenpah there take out Benwa. Could be part of the plan, but man, 3 million bucks sitting on the sideline. I'm not a huge fan of that prospect. Could happen.

Cade Webber slotted in next to Timothée Lilligren yesterday. He had an impressive rookie camp. But I feel like with Cade Webber, guys, it might just make a lot of sense to put him in the AHL on the top line as a top line defender, and then see what he does. And if you need him midway through the season, you can call him up.

Today, he was slotted with Nicolas Montinen, who they just dragged out of Europe after drafting him and then letting his rights expire. One thing, when I was looking at those lines, I think the This could be really good. Their decor is as good as I've seen it since they won the Calder Cup in 2018, which meant something to me. Dakota Mermis, Philippe Myers, if both clear waivers, that could be your top pair. Refai Vilinov, Koken and Nyamala. Chadwick is going to be playing his first pro hockey this year. And then to have Webber and Matinen.

That is a pretty competitive... Some of those guys are going to the cyclones.

Puck moving outside of Nyamala, huge. That could be a really not fun decore to play against.

Matinen, by the way, who you said they did drag him out. He's 26 now, was in the DEL last year, and he had 46 points in 52 games.

Very good. Who on his team had more points than him? Go ahead.

From the Straubling tigers. Nobody. Nobody. Mike Connolly, who is not a A draft pick of anybody, I don't think, but he did play two games for the Avalanche at one point had 45 points.

I love going through just random European hockey DBs and being like, Hey.

Hey, that guy played.

I know that guy. That guy played. No, big right-hand defenseman who can score. Yeah, no. Anyone's going to want to take a chance on that.

Right. Yeah. I mean, listen, it was relatively, with the exception of the Lawrence injury and Ben Juana being there, relatively normal start. It was just interesting It's interesting to see the leaves on the ice. I think it was Mark Masters that posted a video. It's like, First practice is underway, or it was David Alter, one of the guys. It's like all theirs. They all probably did.

To be honest, they all probably took the same photo and posted it.

It's like some way far back picture with like, and here they are.

I wonder if one of them, and I'm going to ask. We'll have to ask David this. Okay, if one of you reaches for your phone and starts to take a picture, all of you do it. You know what I mean? Because human Dead Beings do that. You know what? I should tweet this. It was cool to see Greg Berube out there, like a whole new era.

I spent so much time focusing on the roster. I almost went, oh, that guy. It's that freaking time of year. We've been going through all the rosters. I was like, When did Alec Martínez join the Black Hawks?

Yeah. It's just... Yeah. King's great.

Yes. Vegas legend. Vegas legend.

But he won the King's playoff legend.

King's great.

Then I guess the last thing I want to say is Max Patcheready is in fact wearing '67.

Yeah, as he should.

Good.

He should.

I think he should. Does it mean anything?

No.

Every year, Aleph should have to wear 67. So they feel bad.

He said, I hope it's a good luck charm.

Yeah. With a 67 on the team. That makes more sense than, Oh, avoid the magic spooky number.

What the fuck?

Grow He's not even the first leaf to... Like, leaves have worn it in recent memory. Brandon Cozen, I think, was the last. Robert Zvela.

Oh, yeah. I liked Robert Zvela. Why did he have to be good?

Who didn't like Robert Zvela?

He was really good. And then he was like, I just don't feel like playing in North America. Yeah, whatever.

Play good hockey. I don't care what number you were. You were 6,999.

You do care, though, if it's in the Jersey number. I do. Or if it's in the salary number.

Well, if he signs for 6.7 mil, I'll be So I want to say that I asked Alan about that yesterday, and that's when I will not blow.

But I said Steve has a hatred of this. What do you think?

I don't think his clients do it, do they?

You'll have to just watch the episode of it.

So you're telling me he's going to sign for 967 grand?

I have no idea what Max Pacheere is going to sign for. I'm not an insider.

1.967. It was a ruse from the former Habs captain all along. I like that.

I like that a lot. This episode is brought to you in part by Better Help. Hey, have you ever had your heart broken by a team? Year after year after year.

These ads are getting very targeted.

Do you know it's a good ad? Have you? You know it's a good ad when it hits you right in the chest.

Yeah.

You think it's targeted to you? This guy's sitting next to me.

That should hit you in the chest like a game seven loss by one goal, maybe from behind.

Adam, get to the point.

All I'm saying is people might have suggested that you need therapy, and if you do, better help is the place for you. Better help actually is really great because you can get matched with the therapist in 48 hours or less. So when that game seven loss happens, bang. A couple of days later, while it's still fresh, you can be matched with the therapist. And you can also text with them You can type with them. You can do a phone call. You can do a video call. Whatever works for you, betterhelp is there. And we want you to give their promo code a little bit of a shot. Excuse me, our promo code with them. We can give you 10% off your first month at betterhelp. Com. Go to betterhelp. Com better. H-e-l-p. Com. The promo code is three simple letters. S-d-p. Again, it's sdpbetterhelp. Com. If you had your heart broken multiple times and you need to talk about it, give it a shot. Obviously, the Rodgers buyout thing of the Leaps, we're not going to spend-Are you moving on from the players?

Did you have something else? We didn't get to Mitch Marner. He made the biggest news of trading.

All right. Did he? Yeah. I disagree. I don't know if it's That's the biggest news.

I thought it was Willy. But yeah, sure.

Yeah, no, no. Willy's quote, yeah, for sure. But Mitch, Maddie, what's up?

That's a horrible still of him.

That is a horrible still.

The bad pause.

Yeah. Atta boy, Jesse.

Marner started off his first training camp avail by saying this.

Hey, everyone. Good to see you all again.

Hope your summer was good. Obviously, I know there's going to be some contract questions, but not here to talk about that.

Like I said, in the Capsy media availability, very happy to be in Mapleleaf. It's an unbelievable privilege, but I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about the season and getting going. Well, there you go.

I don't blame him. He's going to be a pain in his ass until this thing's wrapped up. He seems stoked.

I don't know. I listened to the CJ show yesterday. I thought he had the most interesting perspective on it because he was in the room for this. He sat down and Mitch did this, and he was like, Okay, it started off a little contentious, obviously. You come out right away and you say this. This is very stiff. Yeah, it was very... But then by the end of it, he warmed up and answered all the questions. Everything was fun from that point on. It's just you I didn't ask anything about the contract.

Sometimes you got to set boundaries.

That's okay. I don't have a problem with that.

Like I said, he could have Steven Stamkoast it.

Yes, which is not great. These guys are all obviously very trained. Marner said this, Tavares said this. Robertson said something very similar. He's like, No, I'm not here to blah, blah, blah. And I respect and understand that. I wouldn't want to talk about it.

No.

I totally understand.

One thing that did come up from that, too, is that apparently in a Luke Fox one-on-one, there is an admission from Marner that his camp is or his agent will be open to negotiating the contract throughout the year. And A lot of players don't do this, or they say they don't do it. They might just be like, Okay, Mr. Agent, you go ahead and do it. Don't tell me about it, because you don't want to be distracted. And I get that. I don't believe a lot of players are like, We're not negotiating in season. Actually, don't, because if somebody comes to you and goes, We'll give you an infinity billion dollars, you're going to be opened in a minute.

No, I'm a man of principle.

You're going to be open to it. So I think- They were using an old phone. I think that's interesting enough. And Jesse, in one of our group chats, is like, Well, he wants to stay here, so that's not that surprising.

I don't think-Didn't you say that? No, that wasn't me.

Somebody else said it. Anyway, I thought it was you that said it. But the reality of it is, if they do talk throughout the year, I get the sense that this time versus what was going on last time when you have essentially a sophomore/rooky general manager in Kyle Dubas, I think that this negotiation might go different. Last time, if you remember, the negotiation really started the day that Austin Matthews extension was announced because Mitch Marner's agent went to the Toronto Star and shot off about how it was a bad contract and Mitch was going to get his money and whatever. That was not well received by the fans. It continued. That was early January. It continued all the way to two days before training camp when he signed, and fans were pissed. They To be honest- And then he started poorly. Fans to this day, have not forgotten it. A lot of fans have been like, didn't like that, didn't appreciate that. It's not because you don't want Mitch to get paid, good luck, go get your money. But it was this whole cat and mouse thing where they seemed... There seemed to be, Oh, we're going to go.

You have reporters going unironically telling you that, Well, they're open to playing in Zurich. We're a team that literally cannot afford it. I think this time, what this has signaled to me is this is Mitch sitting down in front of the media going, I don't want to talk about it. I want to talk about the season. And then he tells Luke Fox, Yeah, we'll be open to negotiating throughout the year. It's signaling to me this is not going to be done through the media this time, which I think is better for team and player.

So this is a quote-I'm going to hold you to that. I could be completely wrong on that, but that's what I believe.

That is what I believe.

If the history of his agent is negotiating through the media. Sure.

Absolutely.

So from Jonas Joe Siegel, to maintain the integrity of ongoing negotiations, this is from Darren Paris. It is essential that these discussions remain confidential and are conducted in a constructive manner. As such, we will not be providing public updates on their status at this time. This isn't a Mitch thing. This is very much a Darren Farris thing. He doesn't conduct himself this way with any of his clients, any of them. They all hold out. They all were going to go play in Europe. He was Broberg's agent when he requested a trade, but then didn't. Remember that last season? You got to have a long memory for these things. Another big issue with that Marner contract is it was frigging huge, and there were a lot of pending RFAs of future stars at the time. And what we said in 2019, again, yes, it's 2024. You got to remember the context of the time. We're like, okay, but watch, these guys are going to sign for similar numbers. And then they frigging didn't. No. Miko Rantanen was the big one. He was the name where it's like, watch, he's going to sign for in and around Marner.

And he signed for, I think it was nine, something like that. Who's been better? Over the last five years. Regular season in playoffs.

It's not close. One of them has a cup.

Yeah, it's not particularly close. It hasn't gone well. You know, Mitch is this consistent 100 point. When? He hasn't hit 100.

Yeah, but he's at 997. I don't give a damn. I don't give a damn.

You got to hit 100. So listen, all of these things are just context, right? That being said about Mitch, I've said it on the show and I'll say it again. I think he's gunning for Dougie's record. Dude, it's a contract here, and he's playing with Austin Matthews. Dougie's record is 127 points. Over the last two seasons, guys have regularly been cracking 120, the biggest scorer in the league. I think he could do it.

I think he can. I think no question. Like I said, I think he's your A1 fantasy pick, this guy, assuming no injuries.

Depending on how your pool waits points, if goals are worth more than assists, then you probably don't pick them. If goals are worth the same as points, he might be the first leaf you pick.

Seriously. It appears today, by the way, they're From yesterday, it appears Morgan Reilly will be sharing... Marner and Reilly will be sharing assistant captain duties this year, and Tavares will be the full-time assistant because you remember how Matthews and Marner split it for the last four or five years? That tracks.

They're all leaders. See, just on the contract thing, you go down the list of the guys who still make less than Mitch Marner from when he signed that contract. It's like, Okay, Eichel signed his deal seven years ago. It was less than Mitch Marner. It's the The Sagan deal was less than Marner's. Aho signed this past season. It's less than Marner's.

It's wildly less than Marner's.

Yeah, it's 975. Oh, I thought you meant the offer sheet one that he signed. Oh, the one before. No, I'm talking about the most recent one is still a million dollars less than Marner. So, yeah, that contract, it wasn't precedent setting at all amongst the big name players. And we all thought it would be with the cap going up and everything. It's never turned out that way.

It was twofold. The cap was going up at the time, but players like Rantan, who was due at the same time, did not follow suit. Then the world stopped and the cap stayed flat and the leaves were boned and didn't adjust. And April jar, There you go.

And even if you compare it to the contracts that some RFAs have signed recently, if we go two days ago and Lucas Raymond signing for eight something, that's in comparison for where, okay, we're an upstart RFA who's going to be a star one day. Getting eight in this climate is still fantastic. And back then signing it for 10,9. The more history goes on, the context of that contract just appears more and more crazy.

Well, 10-9 when Austin Matthews was scoring 40 every single season and making 11-6-3-4. What? Pardon? No, you're not that close. Anyway, sorry. This is all, again, it is relevant for the time, but he's going to turn the page, play the best hockey- And I like that we don't have to talk about this all the time.

I really do. Because what it does become is it is cat and mouse, and that's the way they played it last time. And I really did not enjoy that. I did enjoy the Nylander saga. No, it was terrible. It was terrible. I really didn't enjoy the Marner one. And it's not because of Mitch. Because at the end of the day, you just want to watch these guys play hockey because you're a fan. I do love this player. My daughter's first jersey was a Mitch Marner jersey. I think that's where I want it to go. I do think when Morgan Stanley says, and you guys will laugh, if we don't win the Stanley Cup this year, if we don't get to the finals this year, and this is what he said yesterday, we have to look at this season as a failure. That is what I want them to be looking at. That is what I want to be talking about. That's the I don't want to talk about April. I want to talk about May. I want to talk about June. Yes, for the first time. For the first time. We have talked about July.

Hey. You get it?

It was dark.

We had that quote on Wednesday, but we didn't have the audio, so I feel like it was important to expand on it, so to play it. Cj said the same thing about the negotiations now moving forward. He shut it down. We're not going to have a conversation about it. As soon as the leaves get rolling and as long as they're at the bar that everybody expects to be during the regular season, we're probably going to not talk about it as much. Just like how the Willy negotiations were just fine. Everything went along. He dominated. Then it became a topic conversation of like, You need to get him signed because he's so good. But it was level. It wasn't contentious. So hopefully we can reach that point with Marner.

Or if it was contentious, we didn't hear about it.

Exactly.

This was annoying about the last time. Hey, I'm blocking out the noise. I'm blocking out the noise. And all his agent did was bang pots and pans together and make so much frigging noise. This time around, it's nice. It's better for everybody. It's better for everyone, especially, Mitch. Let's keep it this way.

And let the guy play. Blow the doors off. Make them pay you a fortune. I mean, if Marner goes out and-Wins the heart trophy. Wins the Heart Trophy. Wins the selky, because remember, Gilmore couldn't win the heart. It had to go to Greta. He got nominated. Yeah, but no, he got Secondary Heart, which he got selky, didn't he? Yeah.

No, no. Gilmore won the selky, but Mitch was nominated. Oh, Mitch was nominated.

Which year?

No, he was nominated for the Selke. Two years ago.

What are you talking about?

Heart? Yeah.

Dude, Aleef has been nominated for the Selke. I was confused. Each of the last two seasons, no one gives a shit because of how it's ended up.

Okay. Yeah. My point is, make them go pay you $100 million, man. I'm great with that. Go do it. That's awesome because that means you'll be doing that for my team, and I like that. Now, one thing I wanted to correct from... I was talking a lot about the corporate governance shit with Mabley Sports and Entertainment last episode. I thought it was It's important for context, but one spot I really got wrong, which doesn't throw the story at all. I was still on with the rest of it, is the BCE debt, Bell Communications. When they sell for 4.7 billion, you're like, wow, that's a company that just had an influx of $4.7 billion in cash. I thought a company like Bell was running regular debt.

Well, there was a meme that I sent you where it's like, Oh, they If they have all these TV properties and $4.7 billion. They could expand, buy an NHL team, throw all their games on, but it's not that easy.

But everybody's like, well, they're just going to go and use it to buy the national rights. No, they're not. Because the national rights will be more than $5 billion, and it'll be a 10-year contract or a 12-year contract like it was last time. And beyond all that, and this is the key, Bell BCE is worth $32 billion. That's a lot of money. $32 billion. That's a big company, right? 32 is a big number.

Their debt- Less than Sdpn.

Yeah, I mean- Take that.

Alexander Graham Bell. We don't need to we don't need to brag. We don't have to.

We don't want to brag. I don't want to make them look small and bad. But Yeah, $32 billion dollars is approximate. Their approximate value. Their company debt is $40 billion.

Oh, $40 is bigger than $32.

Yes. Now, that's not unheard of for companies to be leveraged beyond their value for certain periods of time. But this is a company trying to change itself from a telecommunications giant to a tech giant, and I don't know how. So that's what they're saying. Nobody's quite sure how that works. And there's been in the news earlier this year, they were going to lay off 5,000 people. It's starting to make a lot of sense why this happened. You're laying off a bunch of people. You have this great asset that you've made a ton of money on. You've quadrupled your value, sell it and try to pay down some of your debt. But what's crazy about that is even if they took that $4.7 billion dollar payment, subject to governance, it's not fully approved yet, and then they put it against their debt, they'd still owe $35 billion.

So it's just poof?

It could be poof.

Imagine getting $4.7 billion dollars and it's just poof.

Well, I think they've got a lot of work to do. Anyway, I just wanted to correct that about the story. A lot of you reached out and we're very kind about that because I think some people care and some people don't. But let's get back to the hockey. I wanted to read you this quote about Easton Kowan. And this is Easton Kowan on how growing up on a farm has shaped him as a player. I love quotes like this. Josh Chloe did a great piece for the Athletic. He went to Easton in Cauen's family's house.

God, hockey loves the story.

Yeah. Now, he said, You can always be tough in different ways. People talk about hockey being physical, but having a good mental game is huge. With farming, there are going to be times when equipment breaks down and my My dad is going to have to improvise. You've got to stay in the moment and just keep going. And on the ice, I have to be just as relentless. Keep going. Even when the buck is bouncing on me, I've got to keep working hard. And I've always believed that when you work hard, good things will come. Now, great quote. You just were like, Yeah, freaking love this kid. I forgot this, but didn't Wendell Clarke grow up on a farm in Saskatchewan?

I believe he did, yes. The next Wendell.

Could it There he is.

You know what? We got to go full circle, switch him to defense.

Because Wendell was the defenseman.

They drafted him first overall as a defenseman and was like, You're a forward. Imagine that happened now. The Sabers just took Rasmus Dahlene and went, Go off the middle.

Wendell grew up on a farm in Kelvin, Saskatchewan. The first chapter of his book, Growing Up in Kelvinton, says, You can't get much more a small town or rural than Kelvinton, Saskatchewan.

That's not true. You know what I know about Kelvinton? What? That's where Wendell Clarke's from. That's about it.

All right, dad.

I thought it was very funny. I lulled, I knee-slapped.

Shut up. Interestingly, I didn't know this, but this popped up on my TikTok. Craig Simpson of Hockey Broadcasting Fame. Also Edminton Oilers, Stanley Cup winner, and very high draft pick. Second overall pick in the 1985 draft.

I did not know that.

Second overall to Wendell Clark. Now, what's interesting about Craig Simpson is you go, Okay, wait a second. He was playing at Michigan State University. He had 84 points in 42 games. Wendell Clark was playing for the Blades. He had, as a defenseman, 87 points in 64 games. Love that. But you go, why did the Leifs pick Wendell over Craig? Apparently, and I would love to ask Craig Simpson about this, there was a guy named Craig Redman. Have you heard of Craig Redman? No, I have not.

No.

So Craig Redman, apparently, was a high round draft pick, number 6 overall in 1984 to the Los Angeles Kings. Toronto really wanted Craig Redman, and Craig Redman said, No, thanks, because Toronto was a dysfunctional, shitty organization at that point. It had good people working for it, but the owner was horrible and everybody hated him.

They didn't get the first overall pick that year by being crafty. That's right.

So they picked, the Leaps picked. Actually, it was a really good top six. Lemieux went first, Mullen, second, Eddie Old Chuck, third. Toronto took Ally Afredi. Oh, wow.

This was which year?

84. 84, okay. And then Montreal took Peter Svaboda, who I loved when he was playing. And then Craig Redman went sixth. Craig Redman did not want to go to Toronto, and it a storyline because the next year, apparently, Craig Simpson said he wouldn't play for the Leaps. Now, that has been disputed, but in the Toronto newspapers at the time, there was a first meeting with Craig Simpson and the Toronto Maple Leaps. And according to the papers at the time, from the Simpson side, it didn't go well, as in they were not impressed. Then it became a big thing in Toronto newspapers, and then they went and they had another meeting, and then that went better. But the leaf still ended up going with Wendell Clarke. And so that's how you ended up with Wendell Clarke as a Toronto Maple leaf. And I just thought you guys would find that interesting. Side story from the '80s, the forgotten decade of hockey in Toronto.

Now, what were we talking about?

It doesn't matter. No, I wanted to talk about this. Day one, training camp, Buffalo Saber, Rasmus Daulein is already injured.

Oh, dude. How bad?

Like, what happened? Well, we don't fully know yet, but he sustained an injury, literally He's right away in practice. It's tough to be a Saber.

Is it bad? Is he out for a while?

I think they're holding him out from practice today. I'm just having a look here.

Wait, when was he first on the ice?

Today or yesterday? Yesterday. This is yesterday, and it was right away.

This is less than 24 hours old. Yeah. Oh, dude. Yeah.

Rasmusdaleen.

I'm thinking about my Saber season preview and everything, and I'm like, You know what? With that decor?

No? Oh, dude. Rasmusdaleen, according to Jason Moser from puckluck. Com, is not on the ice.

Saber's head coach, Lindy Ruff announced that Daleen will miss a few days of practice ever getting hurt during the team's first practice session in training camp on Wednesday. Daline was injured at the start of the season while attempting a pass. The Swedish Blue Liner has developed into the top defenseman in the NHL, blah, blah, blah. That's from nhl. Com. There you go. So yeah, miss a few days of practice at least.

That sucks.

He was attempting a pass.

Yeah, that seems like- That's like when Steve comes in and complaints about something, you're like, Steve, what were you doing?

He's like, I was getting out of bed.

Oh, yeah. That's a hard thing.

Pulled a whatever.

It's a hard thing to do, get out of bed. It's my least favorite thing to do.

Is it really?

Getting out of bed?

The least favorite?

It's the thing I have the most difficulty with.

That bed's awesome. I thought it was for sure.

Bed is so awesome.

Bed is awesome. I just thought the most difficult thing for you was showing up to meetings on time.

That is also difficult. Dude, I was on time today.

I know. And yesterday. Gosh, darn it.

How dare you? How dare you? No, now I have an alarm that knows how to open doors, and he runs into my room and smacks me.

Is that... Yeah? What time do you get up? What time do your kids smack you awake? It depends.

A good day is quarter after seven.

Okay.

A not great day is about six o'clock, and he tells me I stink and I'm old. Have I told that story on the podcast?

That you're stink and you're old? Yeah. No.

Yeah. I got out of bed because he woke me up. So I was going to help him. And I get out of bed, not in my Sunday's best, I'm in my frigging underwear. And he goes, Daddy, you smell. And I go, Thanks, buddy. And he goes, Yeah, sometimes when you get old, you smell.

Wow. He's four.

Great kid. Great kid. Love him very much.

Yeah. I just feel like, See that pool out there? Looks pretty cold.

Yeah, I'm filling it with cement.

You're not going to get to enjoy that pool anymore. Okay, I wanted to play you this clip. A few people sent this to me, and it is from Philadelphia Flyers Training Camp. And it is all they write is...

John Torterella banned happiness.

All they write is The Rope.

Yes.

Hockey's Hardest Skate Test returns with the start of the 2024 Flyers Training Camp. You say yes. What do you about The Rope?

All I know is I watched a really vague video about what The Rope is and every player hated it and dying.

What I love about the Philadelphia Flyers is for the last couple of years, John Torterella has been their star player. Yes. Their identity. They do have marketable guys like Connecti and that thing. But he sat the captain and a lot of guys have been traded and whatever. So John is... He is Mr. Philadelphia right now.

John Cattoria is not the captain. Yeah. He's not.

John is. John Torterella is. So John Torterella is in this video. And how about that? It seems like he's actually enjoying being on camera for once.

Well, he gets to talk about torturing his players. That's right.

So let's have a watch.

Is there music in this?

I don't believe there is. If there is, then we'll stop. There's music. There it is.

Did you play it before you sent it out? I did play it.

I don't know. I'm not listening to the music. I'm watching John Torterella Bella. Man, okay, here's what NHL teams need to do. It has to be license-free music. No. Must play not license-free music.

It might be, but we could test it if you want. God, that's fine. We could play it and we could see if it'll-First off, what I love is that in the video, they drop a flipper rope in front of it.

It's like, It's the rope. And they get a bunch of players and they're like, I hate the rope. I hate the rope. How does the rope work?

Are you asking me? Yeah.

Do you know how the rope works?

You know what's funny is I don't think it matters how the rope works. The answer is I don't know, but it doesn't matter how the rope works. What matters is it's the hardest physical test John Torterell puts his players through. And he says in this video that players don't... They want to minimize the pain when they have to do this bloody exercise. And so they're thinking about it throughout the offseason. Every party you go to, now I'm extrapolating, but every party you go to, every burger and fries you get, every beer you drink is going to make the rope harder. You know what I mean?

You know your whole life is going to go. It's like one of those points of life where everything leads to this. Yeah.

It's like If I told you in February, we got to run 10K.

Oh, fuck. I jog a few times.

You're going to think about that. You're going to at least go and try a few times to run 10K and train a little bit. Him putting this at the at the beginning of your training camp, say, Hey, when we get back to Philly and you're back here, you're going to do the rope test. That makes you think. It's such good coaching. It's great stuff.

A big fan of this. No, it's very smart. I mean, players show up to camp out of shape. No.

I can't believe- You will not start a season for my team slow. I can't believe that even in this day and age, the players would show up out of shape. I know what happens. You're an athlete.

What's the matter with you? It's an I don't think there's a lot of players doing that these days, but there's some. It's not like the '80s. You'd be surprised.

It's not like the '80s where they're drinking beer after practice.

It used to be a mentality where training camp would get you into shape. You could play yourself into shape. James Harden is probably the biggest name example of that ever, where every season he shows up to camp the largest he's ever been. And then throughout the season, he gets up to the speed that he needs to be at. But I don't think a lot of guys in hockey think that way.

No. I have I've heard a story where there was a player, very important player to their team, and the team beg this player at the beginning of the offseason. They're like, Please stay behind in insert city. Please stay behind in our city. And work out with our staff. And this player told them, don't worry, I'm going to go home and I'm going to work out with my guys. And he showed up to camp out of shape. And this a team that could not afford to have him that way. They were not deep on this player in his position. Dude, it's a big deal. It's a very, very big deal.

My favorite quote- Most players are not Marc Messier. My favorite quote from the video is, There are a lot of great athletes in this league. No one wants to be embarrassed. Because that's the thing is that it would reveal you to your teammates immediately.

Yes. Forget getting embarrassed in front of the fans. Or your coach or an opposing team, the guy sitting next to you, the guys you share the bus and the plane with, know you were dogging it. Some of them might not care. Some of them are going to care. You know what? They're going to care the first time you make them look like shit because you were a step behind.

So the flyers have a camp notebook that they have on their site, and day one is obviously the rope day. So I can read some of the quotes from day one of the camp notebook. The rope has returned. Flyers players hit the ice at Flyers Training Camp Center in Voorheys, the first day of NHL Training Camp, as he has done throughout his NHL coaching career. Torterella set aside the first day of camp for the ultra-grueling Skating Test. Three sets of eight laps a piece. So three sets of eight laps. That's the test. Yeah. This year, three, as Flyers' head coach, Torterella said, adding about the Skating Test that he doesn't care about the player's finishing times, but the competitive to push through fatigue and discomfort. There are a lot of great athletes in this league. No one wants to be embarrassed. There you go. They had the skating test group. You can see who everybody skated with. Then we have some quotes. This is what veteran defenseman Johnson said, It's a physical test, but even more mental. Goaltenders did not participate in the Skating Test. Instead, they tested on stationary bikes. That makes sense. Samuel Ersson and Sam Hillebrandt.

Hillebrandt? Hillebrandt. Hillebrandt were in group one, and then the group. I hope it's Hillebrand. Yeah, Hillebrand is a lot more fun. News and Now is nearly all the players pushed through to complete their skating test. That does not mean, however, that there weren't quite a few players who were feeling the effects of skating lap after lap I want to know who failed because they said, Nearly all. Somebody failed, though. They said, Nearly all. Who's the, Nearly? Oh, my gosh. Sean Couturier-Get ready to learn Lehigh Valley ease, buddy. No kidding. They talk about Sean Couturier's offseason surgery, and I think... Oh, Travis Kinectny gave Couturier a little push to help him generate forward momentum during their skating test, much as line mates sometimes do to give a teammate a boost before skating up. The Ice. Yep, I got a little helping hand there from TK, Couturier said with a grin. It seems like everybody's taking this in stride. They all have a lot of fun with it. Driesdale added 18 pounds of muscle over the summer. Wow. That's a lot.

Can I pause on that? No, he didn't. What are you talking about? You know how much 18 pounds of muscle is?

He reported a camp at a hundred and 96 pounds.

Yeah, I assume he was probably like 160, 170 before and a lot of muscle and a little bit of fat.

How do you do No, he didn't. In three, four months. He showed up, and by the way, he said-18 pounds heavier, not all of its muscle. He stayed in Voorheys all summer to rehab. So he's coming off surgery and gained 18 pounds of just muscle? I don't know. Yeah, I believe. That seems like a favorite. Put it this way. What are you talking about.

If he does, take, smash the over on everything.

Maddie, go to the full cam. Everybody, look at the two gentlemen who are telling you that a professional athlete can't add muscle over the course of a summer.

Add muscle. Yeah. Holy shit, Adam.

Oh, no.

I didn't know you can make that fish. I'm really strong. You look like a mad TV sketch.

Hey, what is wrong with you guys? Do you know how much 18 pounds of muscle is?

18 pounds of muscle is insane. He's a pro athlete. Okay. That's why it's so hard.

He's not a freaking weightlifter.

That's his job.

No, his job is playing hockey.

It's different. It's part of his job.

It seems like everybody was taking this first day of training camp in Stride. It seems like there's a great culture being built in Philadelphia, and these little things and having a camp report and everybody filming the rope video. It's really cool. I love what they're building in Philly. It's awesome.

It's That was the thing when torts took over. It's like, We have a bad culture. Yeah.

And starting from him down. Yeah.

He's like, Well, we're going to have a different culture now. I'm here.

Not worrying about your time, but worrying about your compete level is a very hockey workout mentality, and it has been for a long time. I was at the World Junior summer training camp in Newfoundland in 2010. I was at a Nike combine, and they did a different version of the beep test.

Oh, the beep test.

It was 14 years ago. I can't remember exactly how it was different, but most of you have done the beep test in high school, and it frigging was awful. You could fail one, two, or three times. I can't remember. They would give you like, okay, you didn't make it to the beep, but they'll give you an opportunity to make it to the next beep. Right. Part of the reason they do that is is, all right, you failed. Make up for it. But one of the other things they did was if you were having too easy of a time with it and you just dogged it, they'd give you a warning, and then they ding you. So you would lose one of your fails. Because I don't care if this is easy for you. I need your full effort. The point of the workout wasn't to win. The point of the effort was to try your absolute hardest for as long as possible.

Go to the max. Wow. That's a good one. I like that. That's fun.

Tyler Sagan set the record in heat one, and then he had it broken in heat two. I can't remember the name of the guy who did it, but I walked over to Sagan with a camera and a mic, and he said, Are you fucking kidding me?

He couldn't breathe.

It was hard, man.

It was hard. I know that in Ottawa, Travis Thomas Green is known for kicking off camp with just bagskating. Remember there was that really famous picture of Oliver Ackman-Larson just on the ground? I think he had been coming off an injury. Everyone was like, Oh, he's fat and out of shape. It's like, Well, I think he had been injured. Oh, yeah. O-e-l. Famously-fat and out of shape. But I just thought there are certain coaches where I think that's in your fucking brain. When you go through a coach change, too, if you knew Sheldon Keef two, three times, you're like, I get what this guy is going to do. With Berube, with the Lefs, specifically, you have no idea. You can ask your buddies in St. Louis, Hey, is there a new boss at work?

You're like, Oh, I got to press the new boss.

I'm trying to figure out how many guys even In the Leifs organization even played under Berube. I can't think of any. I don't know. They have any former Blues, former flyers?

I know that Ryan O'Reilly came through town, so if any of the Leaps are still texting him, they can be like, Hey, Ryan, what's the name?

Yeah, I guess. But that's the best you can do.

Nola Yeah, like those guys. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think they all know. Nhl players all know each other anyway. But it's something where it's like, oh, yeah. It doesn't even matter that someone tells you that. You still need to be like, I got to come and make a good first impression. It is in your head.

I love that. Not just to the coach, but to your teammates.

Andy Strickland, along with many others, are reporting that the owners are going to meet on the expansion process in Atlanta and Houston. And I talked to Alan about it yesterday on the Agent Provocator. Sorry, I keep bringing it up, but obviously it came up in the thing. Alan's takes on it were very interesting. But Atlanta and Houston seem to be the two teams that are going to happen. One of the things that I think is fascinating about this is if it gets approved this year, let's say, it's still going to be about four years before either these teams show up, arenas and everything else. Houston has a pretty good history with hockey, specifically, I don't know if you know this, the Houston Arrows with Gordie Howe, Mark Howe, and Marty Howe, won the AVCO Cup of the WHA three times in a row before the league folded.

It's a big deal.

The Have Coke Cup was a big deal. And then beyond that, the Atlanta group seems to be the one everybody's super-pumped about. And Alan mentioned in the show, it was mind-blowing, the presentation, apparently. The NHL Houston? For Atlanta. For Atlanta? They are blown away with what this arena, entertainment park, whatever is going to be.

Do they have really good renderings of what the NHL could look like in Atlanta?

They might actually have some stock photos. But I asked them the question, and I think you should go and listen to his answer of it. But it's so funny to hear people's reaction online. You get the Drew take, the producer Drew take, which is, Well, we got focus on making the league better before we expand. That's a bar, Drew. What? That's such a... Man, how old are you, Drew?

Sorry. How old are you? Can you do that Drew impression again?

Well, we got to make sure that the league's better. The 32 that we have.

Why did you go on Texas first?

Today, I learned a producer, Drew, is Fat Albert.

That's what that sounded like. I was like, Drew, listen, I know when he's trolling, and there's a lot of creativity that goes in the way. But I was like, Drew, what 85-year-old fucking man is tweeting that shit?

No, Adam, this is different. This is different than Vegas. This is different than Seattle. More people are saying that. Wow.

Does it make it good? No.

I'm just saying more people are saying it.

Here's how I know you don't watch any hockey outside of the NHL. You tweet shit like that.

Okay.

There are tons-How many people watch non-NHL hockey? There are tons of good hockey players all around the world. There are more now than ever have been before, more now than ever. They're better trained, they're ready. We're talking about five years from now. Come on, guys. Come on. If you're going to have a take about it, Drew, specifically, I'm talking to you.

Put a little effort in.

Listen, I'm fine. Listen, what is the pro-expansion? Because I want Atlanta to come back. I think it's going to work great. Their ownership situation was garbage last time. Team got no promotion. Alan tells a great story about it. I'm I'm going to leave it for the show because I'm going to blow everything, but it's hilarious. It was a fucking clown show when the thrashers were there. There's no other way to describe it. They were a horrible heart. The Atlanta Flames from a bazillion years ago, who even knows what that was like? The NHL was essentially the Wurz family and whatever they wanted at that point. And so now you've got a real owner with a real district with a real plan that's going in. Then you look at a market like Houston. Atlanta is a top 10 television market. This is key. Houston, I think, is bigger than Atlanta. They're both top 10 markets.

I believe you're right, because in recent years, in terms of Metropolitan area, Toronto passed Houston to enter the top five or something like that.

I'm pretty sure it's the Rockets owner.

New York, LA, Chicago, Philly, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Boston, Washington, San Francisco.

In terms of the state.

So just based on television market- Just America, yeah.

Just based on television market alone, you can't have a serious league without markets five and six.

Six and seven.

Or six and seven. Sixty-seven.

Can I pose a theory for why Atlanta didn't work?

Because their ownership was a clown show.

342 wins, 437 losses, and then 45, I guess that's overtime losses, and 78 shootout losses. I forgot that they used to have the records like that.

Holy shit. That's rough. It's really, really bad. Can you look up how many playoff wins the organization? Zero.

I know for a fact.

No, I'm not talking about... They never had a win in the playoff. It's like one win, not a series.

They made the playoff as the three-seed against the six-seeded New York Rangers. That's when Sean Avery drove Ilya Kovalechuk out of in mind, and the rangers swept them. Wow. They never won a play-off game.

No wonder they couldn't market to fans.

They never want to play off game.

They made it once and they never won. The point Adam's hammering on about the market size, you're doing a disservice to your business if you're in a market that That's 30 rungs below on the largest markets in America when the six and seven are right there. If you're trying to build a business where you're trying to make money, you should be in places where there's people and there's corporate dollars, there's fans. The NHL would be smart to go into these markets.

It seems like a lot right now because we've just had... I mean, people think, oh, Vegas is a new team. Vegas is seven or eight years old now, guys. It's not that new. Seattle. And they've done well. Yes, and they've done well.

Seattle- Which is very important to the success of franchises.

Atlanta has so many more wins than the Atlanta Thrasher did in the playoffs.

Atlanta had two 90 or more points Seasons. Two Seasons of 90 points or more. Two. Two. Out of 11, they had one season where they won more than half of their games.

Okay, so here's my point to Drew is, One. How many hockey games, how many HL games do you watch in a year when you go, Man, I'm not entertained?

Are you asking about his Dazzin? His Dazzin? Account where he can watch the KHL?

Hey, I have a Dazzin account, and you can't throw on the KHL.

I have one that I borrow from my father-in-law. Yeah?

What? No, that doesn't happen. You don't share. No. Sharing is not caring. Especially not the Brits. I think that it's... Obviously, it makes business sense, but we're talking about five years from now, too. I think This is too much too soon for the average person because Seattle just came in.

This is happening tomorrow.

Yes. We're talking 2030 here, guys. It's a long time.

Wait, tomorrow?

Tomorrow is 2030.

This is happening tomorrow?

They approved it, Steve. That means they got to get a team to get on the ice. Real shit? Utah couldn't even pick a fucking name. It takes time to do stuff.

It's going to be at least till after the new CBA is negotiated because they want the language in the new CBA about these expansion franchises that are coming in. Then once that happens, then you start the expansion process, and that takes a couple of years. So, yeah, it's 2030.

What I'm going to be curious about, guys, is not whether these teams are coming because they are. The NHL needs to get in those markets full stop. I'm curious about whether they come in at the same time, because if you remember back in the day, the NHL had Nashville, Atlanta, Columbus, and Minnesota to all come back.

I feel like this is better.

But they came one at a time. And I believe they came back all at the same time. Yes, they did. And they also had extremely oppressive expansion draft rules. And same with the Ottawa senators and Tampa Bay Lightning when they came in in the early days. They all stunk. They were all bad for years, and they couldn't recover for years. Whereas obviously, so if these two teams-Munnesota was probably the quickest. If these two teams come in together, it's going to make a chaotic offseason.

I would like them to come together just for the sake of conference alignment and scheduling because nothing may be more up and at.

You run a content company.

No, for the game.

No, content, it would be better to spread it out.

Yeah, for content, you want just content coming all the time. Two years of expansion draughts, that's all fun. Content spread it out. But for the sake of the game, nothing made me more upset when one division had seven teams and another one had eight.

I know, and we just fixed it. We just got to-We were like, Hey, let's ruin it.

We got to 16, 16 17, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8. Everything's perfect across the board and everything's symmetrical. Then if we go 34, it's like, Okay, we can make 17, 17 work. We may have to rejig the divisions a little. But at least it's even.

This is Gary Bedman's plan. Oh, no, it's uneven, which means we got to put two more.

Oh, no.

Derry will not be around. You will not be around for that, but I do think the NHL will go to 36. In the next 10 years. That's got to be… In At some point, you got to be like, All right. I don't think you do.

No, you just have 60 teams.

No, I think you just play. You're not going to play every team every year.

No, you would. With 36? Yeah. I just don't know how you would do that because you have the divisional play, too, right? Yeah, but you would play every team at least once. You wouldn't- NHL goes to 100-game regular season. You probably wouldn't go to each market twice.

Okay, so it's just like a one-timer. One year, you play this team at home, and then-Yeah, maybe you work it out like that, but you'll play every team.

I don't think the scheduling part of it is the biggest concern, but I just like the balanced nature of the schedule.

The business side of it is number one. Fairness of competition is number two.

Oh, yeah. But what I want to get at was, what do you say to the Drew who say that there aren't enough players to do this?

Do you watch an NHL game ever and you're like, Man, I really We hated that. The lack of talent in that game was astounding.

You think there's enough- There are boring players.

Watch the preds in the playoff versus Vancouver last year. Boring. But nobody's going to look at that game and go, Man, we're lacking talent.

Those are playoff teams, though. Thirteen to the bottom.

Okay. We're talking ducks.

We're not talking about teams that intentionally said, Fuck your talent, get off my team, which is what the ducks, the coyotes, the Blackhawks, Blackhawks less so because they did have Bedard.

You know what I'm talking about? I'm not talking about teams that are like, Yeah, we're trying to dive, take a dive for Celibrine and Bedard. I'm talking about every team outside of the four or five teams every year that do that. That's a lot of teams.

Now, I don't think Drew said there's not enough talent. I think he said there's not enough star talent, and he might have a point there.

I don't think so. The high-end talent. I don't think so. I don't hate that. More opportunity.

Because how many stars? I'm not talking McDavid superstars. How many stars should a team have? Here's Did we set the number at four?

Let me throw an expansion example at you. How many goals did William Carlson have for the Columbus Blue Jackets?

I think the answer is like six or eleven or something.

I remember actually when William Carlson... It's probably not one of his favorite tweets, but Justin Bourne said, Man, whoever let William Carlson be taken in the expansion draft should be fired. And the guy that made the decision-Tweeted him? Tweeted Adam angrily. Carlson played 18 Eighteen games for the Ducks, he had two goals. He played one, two, three seasons, two full seasons with the Blue Jackets. And an 81 plus 81 plus three, however many games that is, he had like 15 goals the entire time. Then he goes to Vegas and has 43. And since then, has been pretty good. Like last year, especially, was a nice comeback year for him. 30 goals, 30 assists. Guys like that exist in the NHL, and the opportunities aren't there. You got to find them. And you're telling me with these insane... Look at these kids coming up from high school now with the insane... The American academies that are going to get you in the NCAA. These kids are like soccer kids. They're picked at eight years old. It's like, That kid might have it. We're going to put him in Crazy Academy in Florida.

There's kids on the WIPI Wildcats doing the Michigan. Yes.

I think there's going to be enough talent, everybody. I don't think that's the problem. Steve, you said something really interesting. I know. You said in the NHL, business comes first, competition, second. And that has to be the way it is, because if the business sucks, there can be no competition. Damn. And so all I'm saying is, you should be pro-expansion. You should be pro-expansion. And if you're like, you remember the family guy bit where it's like, remember, guys, who's going to pay your bills? That's right. Hollywood kid. I don't remember that. If you're one of the most experienced, you should be thrilled about it. There's more jobs.

He was probably thrilled about it. Hockey fans in the Atlanta and Houston area.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

It's not a bad thing.

It's a good thing.

Also build an arena, Arizona, and we'll be back.

Exactly.

Oh, right. Will as in the royal will of the game of hockey.

I forgot about that. Jarmer Jagger will officially retire. He's full of poop. Sad. At the end of the season. Should have kept playing. I know. I know. Just to just... He looks good. You were right. We saw the clips from the Czech League. He looks good. At 52, Jarmer Jagger, the This is from Chris Johnson, Jarmer Jagger, picked up an assist on the first goal scored by his team in the Czech League this season. His pending entry into the Hockey Hall of Fame will be pushed to 2028 at the earliest. Now, no.

So here's what-That's pooh.

Here's what bothers me about this. When Gretzky retired, he got a pass right into the Hall of Fame. Instant. They're like, Oh, yeah. Because the whole customary thing is you got to wait three years. Three years after retirement. And the idea behind the three-year rule, which made sense a long time ago, was we want to make sure you don't make a comeback like Guy Lafleur, who retired and was like, You know what? I do want to play for the Rangers a few years later. And he was pretty good. I think in this particular case, I don't know that you can have a Mount Rushmore of Hockey, or at least maybe even a top five, I guess, and not have Yeramir Yager on it. We're talking about not one of the best players to have existed in his era. We're talking about one of the best players to have existed ever. If you make the concession for Gretsky and Lemieux, you make the concession for Yager. You put them in as soon as you can. You know why you do it? What did they do with Orr? It's good for marketing.

I want to know what they did with Orr.

Let's find out. Bobby Orr, There's been a number of players in NHL history who've had the waiting period wait for them.

It not only includes Wayne Gretzky, but also Dick Klapper in '47, Maurice Richard in '61, Ted Lindsay in '66, Red Kelly in '69, Terry Sochuk in '71, posthumously. Jean Belliveau in '72, Gordie Howe in '72, Bobby Orr in '79, Mario in '97, and Gretsky in '99. That's the fullest.

For a lot of those guys, you're acknowledging you're the best player of your time, or you died. And Jarmer Jagger has not played an NHL game since 2018. It has been a very long time since you could consider him in the conversation for best player ever. They're not going to waive it for him.

That's bullshit. There was something- Where did he finish in total points in NHL history?

He second. I don't even have to look it up.

And that's with missing some seasons, by the way. He went and played in Russia.

So this is the thing with Jarmer Jagger, and I was going to write about it in my book, but it was something I left behind because I was like, this is too much work. And also you have to put rules on it. So Who has the most points in NHL history? Gretzky. Wayne Gretzky by a Country Mile. Who has the most professional points?

That British guy.

Ever. Well, Tony Hand is his name.

Adam hates Tony Hand.

I don't know why. I've heard the story a million times. It's like, wow, do you guys know the story? It's like every meme account out there, it's like, Oh, I'm going to put a slideshow together. Do you know the Tony Hand story? And there's always a billion people who are like, Never heard the Tony Hand story before. This is insane. And I'm like, Okay, I don't know how you haven't heard it.

When do you... Because new people are born all the time.

People learn things every day.

I don't know why you-Not the Tony Hand one.

I don't know why you can't get a word back that people learn things. I'm looking it up.

No, I'm not telling the goddamn Tony Hans to write it.

Okay. What I wanted to look up is the all-time leading games played and points scored professionally. But then I was like, okay, you got to put guardrails on At some point, you got to be like, I'm not counting this league, right? So for Tony Hand, and this is going to offend a lot of Brits, I'm sorry, but do you count the British League? No.

In the '80s? No.

Okay. Do you count the Czech League?

Sure.

When? Well, it's good now. How good was it back then? Do you count second-tier Czech League? No. Do you count Germany in 94, 95? Do you count Italy? I mean, these are one game stints that he played there. It's an interesting conversation, but he scored 1921 NHL points, and then in all other league, you probably tack on at least another 500.

I think what it comes down to is we know what Jogger is to the game of hockey. And everybody else who's on that list I just read of who you made an exception for with the a three-year waiting period, and also the guys who were in the Hall of Fame and also active NHL players like How, Lafleur, and Lemieux, who played while Hall of Famers, there were exceptions. These rules aren't set in stone because you've bent them a dozen times over the years.

No, but you got to get Colin Campbell in there.

Oh, my God. We don't need to talk about that again.

Joggers never tried to make the league up there.

No.

If you've made all of these exceptions over the years and there's one very obvious person you could make another exception for, just do it. Your rules are made up by you and you change them willy-nilly all the time.

Yeah, it's like, what? I mean, all right, well, we can't just go bend in the rules for everyone. Well, who is it? It's Jarmer Jagger.

He's on the second leading score all time.

The guy who's not everyone. Yeah. Oh, that's crazy. I don't know.

Maybe we should change the rule. Also, let's just say this, a Jagger Hall of Fame ceremony, it's going to do more numbers than Pierre Turgeon. I'm sorry. Who the hell went in last year? Was it it was Terjean? I don't think you need to disparage it.

I'm not disparaging.

I'm saying there's a bit of a fucking difference. It's a good marketing play. Are you kidding me?

I understand.

I understand what you're saying.

No, you're right. Pierre Terjean would disagree with that.

I understand what you're saying, but it didn't- I am not integrating Pierre Terjean's career. It didn't need to be said to help the argument.

What other Hall of Famers Let's go through the list.

One of those, we were like, Come on, guys. Put them in the Hall of Fame.

Paul Dria, I'm not sure. I'm just not sure.

Listen, they all- Dino, he never won.

Deno never won.

Matt, we're going to have a conversation. There are people that will make that agreement. There are There's a lot of people that would make that argument, and I think they're full of shit.

It's ridiculous to make this man wait for his Hall of Fame induction.

It's my point.

Just to look back on... And again, we got to explain Tony Hand because new people come into the world. Let's explain Jarmer Jaggard.

Okay, please.

Let's explain Jarmer Jaggard. I'm interested. Some people are just going to know him as the old guy who played forever. He won a Stanley Cup in 1991 in his first year in the League. He won a Stanley Cup in 1992 in his second season in the League. 1995, Art Ross is leading score, 1998. Art Ross is leading score, 1999. Art Ross is leading score, 1999. Hart as MVP, 1999. Lester B. Pearson as MVP voted by the players, 2000. Art Ross is leading score, 2000. Lester B. Pearson, MVP as voted voted by the players, 2001. Art Ross is the NHL's leading score, 2006. Lester B. Pearson, best player as voted by the players, and 2016, Bill Masterton trophy that he got for just being there. Dude, if Jarmer or Jauger, there was a time where I think it was a 20-year stretch, where no human being won a scoring title who wasn't named Gretsky, Lemieux, or Jauger. He's up there.

He needs to be.

He belongs in the conversation, and making him wait another three years is funny, but I think it's also unnecessary.

So no disrespect to the Turgeon family. I just want to say that.

I was a big fan of Turgeon.

Where did the family get a Turgeon family?

I don't know. Maybe one of the members of the Tershon family.They're.

Taking a hole.I'm.

Not taking a hole. I think they would agree, Jogger will do better numbers. Just throwing that out there.

In 1986, '87. Oh, I don't care. I'm not going to scream. No. Tony Hand had 105 goals in 35 games. He's been great, man. He's the greatest hockey player to ever live.

Ever. Scottish Gretsky, baby.

Man. He had 81 goals in the year after his 105 goal season, 212 points in the '88, '89 season for the Murrayfield Racers.212 points in 35 years. Does the camera have to be on me throughout this, Patty? Yes. 93, 94.

I can be so upset if you change.

222 points in a single season.

That's more than Gretsky with the His record 150 assists that season, 93, 94.

That's a lot. Added 72 goals. Tony Hand, 123 points, 95, 96.

I am not dedicating Tony Hand, by the way. Why haven't we done a segment?

As recently as 2010, 2011, he had 133 points for the Manchester Phoenix of the EPL.

But how many championships did he win, Jess?

A couple, I assume.

It doesn't say on HockeyDB either because he didn't win any because they don't keep track of the one DHL.

I don't think they keep track of the BHL playoff stats in the championship.

No, I think we got to ask the question, was Tony Hand a flop in the playoffs, right? If he doesn't have any stats.

Oh, yeah. We definitely have to ask that question. Look at that.

Lost the first round, that's coaching. When he was a coach? Yeah.

He didn't have a good stint in the EIHL in terms of playoffs, I guess, based on that.

That's basically what the British League became.

So it was B-I-S-L and then B-N-L.

B-h-l.

Just assume the B stands for Britain.

His rookie year, he had 95 points in 30 games. Quite remarkable.

One thing I am interested in is what did 1980's British Hockey pay?

I guess, I'm assuming not a lot.

Zero. I assume he had another job.

Because NHL didn't pay all that. It paid okay, but it didn't pay that great.

Go to his team in the 94, 95 season. I want to see if anyone played there during the lockout. With the Edinburgh What team is that? I don't have my glasses on.

Racers.

Racers. Hell, yeah.

I don't recognize them. Yeah, not a lot of big names.

This isn't as fun as I thought it would be.

Paul Hand, I assume his brother.

You don't know that.

Can you imagine the advertising for that? Catch these hands, come see the Racers.

Love that. Nice.

Or Edinburgh Racers, wherever they are. Does anybody have an Edinburgh Racers Jersey at home?

Tony Hand.

I must know.

It's a guy named Murf. Murf is an old-timey name. It is.

They had a guy from Peterborough. Gee, I wonder what the first line was. The fourth scorer has 79 points. The top three have 162, 167, and 207.

Holy shit. That's what's in the point of playing. If your team is Tony Hand, you're going to win. What's the point?

I wonder what the first line was. Chris Palmer, who was on that first line, the closest he got to the NHL was the AHL for the Rochester Americans. That's for him. In near 2000. Wow. But yeah, no NHL experience there. Aren't you glad? Tony Hand, everybody.

I'm so glad. Tony Hand.

Hey, Mike Ware was an Edmondson oiler for five years.

Put your hands together for Tony Hand.

You know what?

It's nothing against Tony, personally. I think those numbers are impressive. It's just I've heard.

Let's talk to sales. New sponsor segment.

What did Tony Hand do?

Tony Hand and Tourism Scotland.

Get them on board. Do we have NHL Car Watch today?

We'll save it for Monday.

We are going to save it for Monday. Okay. I know we've been accumulating.

We have a couple of really good ones. And a complaint.

And a complaint.

Yeah, I'll tease them for Monday. I can't wait. Nhl Car Watch on Monday is going to be must watch because we have a leaf, a hab, and a complaint. Oh, shucks. Stay tuned.

I do want to say this. There's an official update coming this afternoon. The Ottawa senators have a new arena deal in the La Breton Flat.

That's all we know. The arena is going be where people are. Can you believe that?

The NHL is expanding to Ottawa, honestly, in some ways. They weren't previously there.

They're moving it away from the cows and to the people.

Well, it's not cows anymore. It used to be cows. It's now very mediocre hotels.

They demolished the cows and they put hotels.

Good luck to those hotels, tugs on collar.

Yeah. I wonder what they do with that arena. I don't know.

Anyway, tough.

Maybe you make it into condos like you do everything else. Yeah, that'll be great. From what I'm seeing, and again, this just happened. Yeah, we still don't know anything. I'm sure we'll cover it on Monday. I don't know. Let's do the press conference. All right. I don't know. I was trying to find some detail.

The Steve Dangle Press Conference. First question, have you ever heard of Tony Hand, Scottish gretsky?

Thoughts on Tony Hand.

Adam, what do you think?

Joel Pavelski. Joel Pavelski is at Penguin's Training Camp today talking to Kyle Dubas and Jason Spetsa. Is he to play or is he to manage?

No, coach. That would be... You think he's going to coach? Yeah, because he's retired.

I think that's interesting. Big shout out to Court for DMing me that. I would have missed it.

Court?

Yeah, her name's Court, on Courtney, on My DMs are open on X/Twitter. She sent me some panguin stuff. Hey, Joe. She also is like, Hey, can you fuck off and stop riping panguits of Ben's pants?

We just like to needle them.

Exactly. Every once in a while, you pick a team and you go, You know what?

I wanted to bring this up because we touched on it last show and we got more conversation out of it from the peoples. So we asked, we had a question in the press conference. It was, What's Steve Dangle's best rant?

And Steve- Scratching my back with a pencil.

Yeah, he's scratching his back with a pencil. And you went with the Montreal game. We talked a lot about the Zambooney driver game as well. But there's a lot of comments and people given you other suggestions for your best rants. So I wanted to go through some of them. What do we got? If you just give me a second here. It's taking me a little bit to bring it up. Some people commented on the Zambooney driver rant. We got this comment from Rick Mobile. Whenever I'm feeling down, a nice Zamboanie rant does the trick. It's almost as good as a Faulty Towers Marathon. Wow.

That's cool. It's some people's comfort food. I like that.

Especially in the summer when I'm not making nearly as much content. I get to see what the top five videos are on my channel for the month. And it's usually top five. It's unreal for four years.

Payreedocs made their own list. They said Ayres, one, Boston, 19, two.

Boston in 2019. I don't remember what I said. They all blend together.

Montreal, 21, 3. Yeah. 3. Wow. Nashville, 14, number 4. Yeah. Number five, Tampa, 22.

The Fog, when they came out of it and did nothing. And then Eulogy, the next year or two years later when they did nothing. It's It's unbelievable. It's not justifiable.

You're running out of names.

It's not justifiable. Number 6 on their list was Phil Kessel, 15.

Oh, that was a good one. Is that the era lost at the beginning?

An era wasted. No, he was an excellent player.

Was that a rant, though? I thought so. I thought it was more of an informative. This is sad. Isn't the video- You didn't hit the rant heights that you normally hit, though, right?

No, the thumbnail, I'm pretty sure, is me biting my hand.

I I don't watch it. I don't remember it being that spicy. It was great, but I don't remember it being like, yell.

No, it was APC. It was APC. What I said in that video was, Penguin fans, you're on the frigging clock because you got Phil Kessel. Littang is getting up there. It's hilarious because this was 10 years ago. Littang is getting up there. Crosby is getting up there. Malkin is getting up there. You have to win now. And then they rattle off back to back cups.

Let's get to a couple more. This It was from Roger Beneste. If not the greatest, definitely the funniest. The LFR video of the 92-year-old man from Newfoundland who went to his first NHL/Leafs game in Vancouver, and the Lefs stunk it up. Steve demanded that MLS C, Do Right for pops. It was LFR 16, Game 63. I remember that. Yeah.

I remember that, too.

Do you remember Do Right for pops?

I do remember that.

Do Right for pops. I do vaguely remember that. I hate that story when it's Oh, I finally made it. Or that poor child, he has a sign that it says, I'm at my first Sharks game. And at the bottom of the sign, it says, And it's my birthday. And then the score bug is next to him and it says, 8-0 for the other day- I remember- And they allowed another two goals.

When I was in Calgary, the Flames were bad and the Lees were bad. And I talk so much shit that day at work. I'm going to be like, I'm going to leave here tonight. They're going to kick the flames out, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And six nothing flames. The least were like, Why did you even show? Just plant the white flag in the middle of the night or in the middle of the ice and leave. They were so fucking bad.

Rock beers on the bench. Maddie Mike. Maddie has something to say.

No, I just wanted to add.

Is it about Tony Hand? No, unfortunately not. First ever Leaps game was an 8-0 loss against the Bruins. I know exactly what game you're talking about, and I was going to bring it up, and then I didn't, but now I will. In 2011? Yes. So I was a dickhead. So I got invited to a Saber Sends game in Ottawa, and I was a dickhead, and I wore a Leaps jersey to that game. And everyone just kept telling me the out-of-town score. Sagan had a hat trick, and they got pumped eight-nothing. I made a Bozac sign.

It was devastating.

What did you do with it? I said Bozac attack. Oh, God. I worked so hard on it. You throw it in the garbage? No, I still kept it.

I hate this stupid team.

I would have done that. Oh, man, this stupid These guys, man.

I'll do a couple more. This one was from the Discord. Gen, Dr. God, Ninja Coach said, I think my favorite rant is his game seven one from this past season. It's a culmination of years of results, not up to the expected standard and his assumption, expectation that there would be changes this off-season. And what they do. Of course, there hasn't been any significant changes yet, so that remains to be seen. The Yele/Screamy Rants are always entertaining for sure, but I find the ones where he's really reflective, more fascinating.

One thing that I know I'm good at is I remember things about this team and the moments that they happened in. I pride myself on trying to remember the context of the time. Like, okay, they made this stupid decision. Why did they make it? And was the logic... You can make a bad trade, but was the logic good at the time? If the logic was bad at the time and it turned out bad, then, yeah, take your lumps, you big bunny.

But sometimes the logic is there and it just doesn't work out. That's pro-sports. But most of the time with the leaves, the logic isn't there and it also doesn't work out.

I did a chapter on, and I'm not going to spoil it, on the worst trades ever. And it's not just, Oh, this trade worked out really bad. It's, No, this trade was really stupid from the moment the idea popped in your head.

And here's why. Last two, Cherps Golden said, My fave, Steve Rant, is definitely when he went off on the Minnesota Wild. Do you remember that?

Oh, yeah.

Where you went for 20 minutes on them being the worst franchise and destroying the NHL with the amount of bad contracts that they gave out.

I remember Wild fans tweeting us going, Hey, man, what did we do?

It did come out of nowhere.

Jesse and I were flabbergasted. We never heard even a hint of this. We'd been doing the show for six or seven years. Then all of a sudden it was like, Fuck those guys. They caused the lockout. We were all like, What?

No, dude.

Chuck Fletcher, Craig Leepold, all of you.

You went after It was family.

No, man, the 2012 lockout was really hard for me. It was really hard. Yeah. I had aspirations of moving out of my parents house, and it just felt like I had graduated. It I felt like I was going backwards and heading into a lockout where they're like, We have no money. They gave two players $196 million, and I wanted all involved to fuck themselves.

And they're still paying those contracts. Good.

I'm glad. Fuck you.

Yes, Maddie. And then you know what happened years later? Adam made their promo video. That's right. 2023 play-ups? I think it It was 2023. I said I really like their system and what they were doing, and they used me in their hype video.

Yeah, we made it to the good side of a hype video. Not finally.

Not fucking to their fans or the players.

No, you said, I hate their fans, too. To the owners?

It looks good on you.

Set money on fire, assholes. Red Neck writes, Does smart insider man count as a rant? That's an all-timeer.

Sure.

Yeah. That could be... Yeah, man, that's an old-Put it in the pantheon. Smart Insider Man is when I became a fake insider, not the MLH stuff.

That was different. No, that was also when you became a fake insider. Yes. Just different. And finally, to end the show, we have somebody from the Capitals who works for the Capitals, reached out about sending us a case of Capetale. We're working on that. We can't do a taste test in front of the camera. Yes, we can. No, you can't. We can do it off the camera. Yeah, So wait, in theory, could we have it right here?

I walk over there, take a sip, and then I come back and I go, Yeah, that's it.

Or just bend down under there. Take a sip. But so hopefully we can procure a case of Capetale. Procure. Oaker. That's what I tried to say.

Isn't it procure?

Oaker. That he got. Tony has. Thank you. Oaker.

Oh, Cardi B. Yes. All right. And no regrets on Discord. I love that. So to clarify, there are actually two. Capitale is an American IPA that has been around for some time, going back to 2019. This is a 50th anniversary special of Golden IPA. So they have to be specific about which one you want. Apparently, there's actually a Capitale that's been around for a while. But yes, obviously, we want the one that has the capital.

Yes, that would be our preference.

They put a laughing emoji there.

No offense to the other Capetail. Yeah, no offense.

The shit Capuch ale. We want the-No, no, no, no, no.

I want that one. Don't listen to these clowns. I want that one.

Maybe we should get both.

Yes. And now we got to do a comparison and see who wins.

Molson sent us the Molson dry, like Leon drysidal in the spring, which I thought was cool. Like a really good little promotion.

They were down three nothing when I got mine, and I was like, Oh, I don't think this promo is going as well as they thought.

But I think a company like-And then they came back. A company like Strongbo is missing out on a perfect marketing opportunity. How has nobody done Leon dry Cider?

Oh, dry Cider?

I love Cider, by the way. My Cider, low-key, Cider is amazing. I love one Eatsider per month. They're so good. Or Mo Cider, like more eat Cider. How have they not jumped on the NHL bandwagon for that yet? I'm just given these amazing ideas away for free. Just million dollar check.

We had a whole bit for a week where we would come up with food names for NHL players. Do you remember that?

Yeah, we did. We did that. Remember we had a restaurant idea for more eat Cider?

It was more eat insider. More eat Cider. That was a good little week.

I think the Colorado Avalanche need to come up with an India pale kale.

All right, so if anybody can get us a case of the O-G Capita Ale, we will do a taste test comparison if we can get our hands on the Capitals' Capitaale.

I'm not sure if the O. G. One's better.

I don't know. We'll find out, hopefully.

I'll have to DM Ted Leonsis and be like, Ted, are you going to stand for this?

India kale ale was right there, and I went with India pale kale. I suck.

It's okay.

What's wrong with you? Tony Hand would never. No.

He would score 222 points with both these hands.

More on Tony Hand next week.

The Steve Dangle podcast.

Follow the guys on Twitter at Steve_Dangle@AdamWYLD. Com. @jesseblake. Connection complete.