Ep. 379 - Underachieving

(upbeat music) - The sound of the wild and all Minnesota wild podcasts, episode three, '79, we're calling this one the Brad Richards episode, why are we calling it that, John? - I don't think Brad Richards ever played for the Minnesota wild. - Now, he probably played against them at some point. - Yeah, something tells me he did. - He did take 379 face-offs during the 2024, excuse me, '20, '04, Stanley Cup playoffs. - '20, '04. - The 2004, yeah. - Okay. - I was looking at 2023. - That messed up my brain. - Yeah. - John. - Well, so Brad Richards, I figured playoff time, we gotta talk about him. He's one of eight players who played eight game sevens in his career, and he's won all eight of them. - Wow. - Yeah. - Who was Justin Williams, right? - He was that who they called Mr. Game Seven? - Yep. - So was it Brad Richards before that? - Brad Richards wasn't like-- - No, for it. - No, he didn't score the game winners, right? - Right, right, right. He just played in them and won every game. - Yeah. - Well, that's still pretty good, though. - He's not a bad player. - Mm-hmm. - Okay, well, this is not actually sound of the wild. This is Sound of Hockey. I'm Darren Browne at Darren Fun Browne on platforms joined as always by John Barr. Hello, John. - Hello, everybody. I'm NHL Osietta on platforms. - And Curtis Isaac, hello, Curtis. - Hello, one deep sea hockey on the platforms. - What are you laughing at? - Your rotation of the game. - All right, so we're back in bar down studios after one week break, and we are trying the video thing again. We got some good feedback on the video last week. We did end up publishing it to YouTube. It was a few days later, we had to play with some things to make it work, but yeah, so for those of you that are listening entirely on audio format, I'm seated in the middle with John to my right, and Curtis to my left. And because of that, I do feel the need to rotate around the microphones, make icons. - It's very respectful, if he asks me. - Very what? - Respectful. - Respectful. - Yeah, because you're addressing me when you're not just talking out to the either side or the crowd. - Right. - But yeah, we're happy to be back in studios. I am going to see, okay, my bit about Sound of the Wild. I don't know if you guys know this, but the Minnesota Wilder and the playoffs. - And apparently, and I don't know if you know this. - Mm-hmm. - But Carilla Capriceoff and Matt Bouldie were the first set of teammates to get square 40 goals in the same period of the same game. - Did you know that? - I did know that from a podcast that I listened to. - Was it Sound of the Wild? - Yeah, Sound of the Wild, yeah. Great show. - Great, great show. - I'll team the Minnesota Wilder. - That's right. But we will talk mostly cracking on this one, because that's what people want to hear about is, you know, the last two games. - The last two games. We're going to spend the next hour talking about the last two games of the season against Vegas and Colorado. - Very inspiring. - Offside challenges, young goalies, et cetera. - Yeah, Victor Ossman. - Yeah. - People want to hear about Victor Ossman. - You mean legend, Victor Ossman. - He did play pretty well. - He did. - He did. - I mean, he did a little bit better, I think. - Yeah, he did. I like, he wasn't getting much help there for a couple periods. And he really, really kept them in the, you know, also a stellar offside challenge, which we can break down for 20, 25 minutes. - Yeah, yeah. Let's, we'll make sure to splice in the video of that, because we're, you know, doing a lot on the edit here. But we did comment though that little by little, we want to make small improvements to the studio, little additions, change things up a little bit. Our big change this one is we added some additional lighting. So hopefully this one already looks a little bit better than the last one, right? I don't know why I'm saying that to you, John. - Yeah. - But before we really get the episode started in earnest, I have a food for thought for you, gentlemen. This is, now I know that we had a conversation back after the, the prospects game and Everett at the beginning of the season about peanuts at an arena. - Sure. - Because I bought peanuts at that event. - Okay. - I was carrying peanuts in the, oh no, that might have been, that might have been the Vancouver game. - I think it was the Vancouver game. - Because I was eating the peanuts on the way home and throwing the shells on the ground. - Aircar. - No, walking. - You were lying in Vancouver. - When I say home, I mean back to the hotel. - Yeah. - When I was walking from Roger's arena back to the hotel, I was eating peanuts and throwing the shells on the ground. And that felt, felt bad, but also they were biodegradable. - Right. - You would hold. - Anyway, that's not the point of this, but it is somewhat related. I went to a Mariners game. I think it was actually the last weekend of now. So, but a conversation, a similar conversation was sparked because I had peanuts. I was throwing the shells on the ground. Then I had a beer or two and I placed those on the ground under my seat. Wasn't even thinking about it. And my wife was like, man, you're the cleaning crew's nightmare. And it didn't even cross my mind that what I was doing was like inappropriate for me to put my garbage on the ground in the stadium. And what it made me realize is this is the only place in the world, the only setting that I would just take my trash and throw it on the ground and not think twice about it. - Okay. - And I'm wondering where you guys stand in this. So, food for thought is, do you throw your trash on the ground at games? - No, you're a terrible person. - Okay, John. - I think moving on. - Well, I used to go to baseball games, particularly as a kid. I thought that was pretty normal. So, you think that would be something that was ingrained with my parents, my dad, who I'd go to games with. - Only in an outdoor setting. - Yeah. - Was this at the Coliseum? - Yeah. - I mean, you can't really tell there. I mean, it's not the nice place to work. - So, it's the Oakland, Alameda Coliseum is what Curtis is referring to. - No, I'm with notorious with rats and anyways. - So, you're just feeding the locals. But I do associate it with going to minor league baseball games and my childhood version of this and throwing them on the ground. Something about doing it in and then closed arena feels a little different to me. I don't know why, but it just, it feels different. But it's, I mean, it's pretty common to have traction on the ground in climate pledge too. - Yeah, what I was gonna say though is that if you're at an outdoor stadium, then the trash just flies away. So then it's fine. - Yeah, pigeons and what not. - Well, at Candlestick Park is where the giants played when I grew up watching them. And there'd be a lot of wind there in the summer and it would swirl and it seemed like it would take traction. - Out to the bay, out to the bay. - So this is truly the first time that I've ever put thought into, oh, should I be just throwing my trash on the ground? And one other thing I think of is when I was a kid, I feel like it was very common to leave your trash on the ground in movie theaters. But now I feel like that's totally inappropriate to leave your trash. - Oh, yeah, that's pronged by. - To your point on climate pledge, I often do my stand in talks or my walk in talks in the arena well after people have left. And yeah, there's a lot of trash in there. Like it is filthy. They also have a, they do have a full cleaning crew that comes through. So here's the devil's advocate part is, if I stop throwing my trash on the ground. - Well, you put people out of jobs. - That's, I don't know about that. - I can go, John, I can go. - I'd say let's not just throw trash will we nearly to create jobs? - Okay. - Then we need to come up with better ways to create jobs. I agree with John on that one. And I think, but I think to pivot back to something a little topical, the crack and exit interviews. - So speaking of trash. - A thing, well, no. But a theme that we heard from a lot of the day was there you go. - That's good. - And also looking in the mirror at yourself. And what you can improve on, I feel like that's what you're doing right now. You're looking in the mirror and you're like, should Darren really be throwing his trash on the ground? And I think we've come down on, no, you should not be throwing your trash on the ground. All right, just try to improve on that. - But what about peanut shells? - We got a long off season in. Peanut shells. - It's plenty of time to work on it. And that is tough because at a baseball game, there's no doubt I am throwing them on the ground. - And they don't give you like a trade to put them in. - I know. - So what am I gonna put in my pocket? Like, here's another question. When you eat, this might have been the conversation that we had actually. When you open the peanuts, how do you do that? - Oh, interesting. Are there multiple ways? - What do you mean? What are you talking about? - Just walk me through your process. You have a fully-shelled peanut. What do you do with that? - Assuming there's two peanuts inside. Probably a break in half and then class the ends to break them open. - All right, I made a note of how, go ahead, Curtis. - Yeah, I would say, yeah, you have it in your hand, maybe a pinch in the middle or a break. - Interesting. - Yeah, so we don't have any mouthbiteers in here. - No, it's gonna say, are you using your mouth? (laughing) - I like the salt. What can I say? - That's true. - I enjoy the saltiness. - What about some fire seeds? - Oh, I'll use in the mouth. - Okay, right. - You can't crack those with your hands. - Yeah. - You could, it just would take a while. - Just wouldn't recommend that. - Yeah, yeah. So some things did happen with the Minnesota Wild this week. Should we just dive in? - No, no, no, no. We'll be touching that a little bit later. We'll start with the crack and-- - Okay, fine. - But yeah, anyway, it got my wheels turning quite a bit and the point I made was, like, they wouldn't sell you peanuts if they didn't expect you to throw those on the ground. - So, yeah, that's fair. - I mean, I'm coming around to the peanuts inside. - Yeah. - I mean, I've probably eaten peanuts inside before. - Like I had thrown them on the ground. - Yeah. - I mean, man, I don't know, that's a tough. I think it's probably, I don't know. - So, but so I made that point and then my buddy was like, yeah, and they probably wouldn't give you cups if they didn't expect you to throw those on the ground, right? And I was like, oh, that's a pretty good point. And so that was, yeah, anyway, that was an ongoing conversation that we had and it continues obviously. So the Seattle Kraken, we alluded to the fact that they had two more games since we last spoke to you, which that last episode was in bar down or deal with its studios, not on video, right, two weeks ago we were on video in bar down studios. But since that deal with its studios episode last week, they had two more games, both were relatively meaningless, I would say. The Kraken ended up with position six in the NHL draft lottery, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. I don't think there's anything else I want to talk about from these two games other than Victor Ossman was fun to watch. Indeed, Victor Ossman, pride of you, Maine. Had a pretty good game. You mentioned that, actually. Pretty good. Yeah, well, to me, as many times as we can talk about, did I mention he went to the University of Maine? Yeah, we got it. Okay, yeah. Yeah, pretty good couple periods there. Nique Coco. Had a couple good starts, I thought. I thought Vegas, they actually played reasonably well defensively. The Kraken did. The Kraken did. Not so much in Colorado, but Shane Wright came back from injury, got a couple games in. And scored. And scored. They're only goal in these two games. Yeah. I thought his line actually looked pretty good against Vegas. Now I had a couple of thoughts here that, you know, Jared McCann missed those last couple games. He ended up telling us a clean out day that he had had another procedure, which everything that he said he dealt with this year was related to the procedure he had last year. Last year he came in and said, I need to go have a procedure in the next couple of days. Then did he, was he late for camp? I feel like he was, right? Or he came to camp on time and then was taking multiple maintenance days. That's right. Yeah, yeah. And miss like a week worth of. Yeah, but it was maintenance. And we were trying to parse what maintenance days meant in Lane Lambert speak at the time like you were trying to figure it all out. Or as we might have called it, Laintonence. Did we? We did not. But that would have been good. That would have been good. Yeah. So anyway, he didn't end up playing. Jaden Schwartz missed, I think, the last three games maybe. And he said that I don't think whatever he, he was dealing with was too severe, but he was obviously sitting out in a precautionary matter, I suppose or a man or I suppose. My question is, will we see, well, I guess Jaden Schwartz, the answer is probably we will not see him in a crack in Jersey again. What about Jared McCann? I think he's a prime candidate to be traded, to be moved. We love McCann and it's a bummer we didn't get to see a fully operational McCann this last couple years. Yeah, last season really. You're right. Because he is scored 40 goals for the crack in one season. He is, in my opinion, probably their best goal scorer right now. But if you need to change things up and it sounds like they are going to, and we probably all agree that they need to, he's a prime candidate. So him and Vince Dunn, I think I'm circling us like the non-expiring players, not players that are not on the expiring deals to potentially be moved because they can bring value, right? If you want to get some value in return, you want to change things up. Those are kind of the guys you need to kind of offer up. Yeah, Curtis? I mean, I thought it was interesting, even though John Forza Lin, it was very clear that he was just using Jared McCann as an example that he brought up Jared McCann. Someone unprompted him, right? I mean, I did ask him, if you go back and watch that or listen to that and do it if you haven't already. I think that that's one of the more honest, right? Is that a good way? I thought he was very honest and forthcoming and although he doesn't work in the hockey ops department, he's a guy that's been around a long time. He knows people in every department very well. And so I thought that that was, yeah, you're right. I think you're exactly right. I did ask him sort of a prodding question, sort of a prodding question, but it wasn't specifically like, who are you trading? No, absolutely. He brought up Jared McCann and I did think it was interesting. John Forza also brought up a need for a little bit more snarl, a little bit more grit in the lineup. Lane Lambert didn't go that far, but he did hint in that direction as well. In response to another question, I can't remember. It might have been one of yours, but he talked about, we got a little bit of that from Jacob Mollanson, but it's a conversation I want to have with Jason Votterall about the types of players we want to have on this team. Now Jared McCann, I, I, I, he's in my opinion, I think probably the best player in crack in history. And I think he's only potentially a piece you move because he has value. And so you're not, if you're just moving him to get a future's return or something like that, then it's because the team is taking a step back next season. You know, that's, yeah. I think it would be more you move him because he's a player, another, you know, team that also wants to contend with value, but you could get maybe another piece that fits your lineup back better. I've always liked Jared McCann. I'd like to see him retain, but I'm with you. My, my spidey sense is a little bit like maybe, maybe he could be moved. Anyway, that was kind of a big question that I had as I was watching these last couple of games. And those guys weren't suited up. I was like, huh, we may not see these guys play again. In the, for the crack and so. Anyway, we wanted to have kind of a big discussion here around what did go wrong, what went right, who overachieved, who underachieved, et cetera, things like that. Curtis, this was kind of your idea. So do you want to take the lead on this one, even though I already just told everyone what we're about to do? Sure. All right. So you take the lead. Well, I think let's start big picture. Yeah. Like kind of team wide. And then I think maybe we just kind of run down the players. It's interesting. We talk for an hour plus every week if you're on the Patreon and thank you. If you are, we're talking to you even more than that every week. And we'll go the whole season and might mention someone like Josh Mahara once, right? And so I think it's just a good opportunity to kind of run through the team and talk about the players. But let's start big picture first. And I think a good jumping off point. Let's start positive. Guys is our want here. You know, John had an article on a website, which was that again? What was that site again? Yeah. He's asking you what site did you post it on, John? Sound of hockey. Sound of the wild. Doc. Sound of the wild. So TW love that site. You got to get that domain now. Yeah. But it definitely sounds like dog food. But anyway. John, you put an article up. I assume there's another one coming. Maybe even by the time that this podcast is up about what might have not gone so well. But let's start positive. What are some things from big picture? What went right this year? Well, I mean, the one big thing is goal tending was outstanding. It's probably best it's been in group hour in particular was pretty stellar and I don't question about that. Was it goal tending was outstanding? Like we're talking about it on the whole of the season, right? It was good as like a tandem. Correct. Yeah. Okay. That's all you. I just I think there was another there's Matt Murray actually play pretty well against couple games. Yeah. What do we talk about Victor Ospin? Hard anything about Matt Murray, by the way. We don't know what's going to I hope everything's all right. I know. I'm a little worried. Yeah. I actually, I mean, Joey, I thought was great for a lot of the season, but not the whole season. He was great up until the Olympic break. Yeah. I should say pretty good. And I in the article I mentioned that I think the crack and we're like third or fourth in goal tending. Oh, yeah. By say percentage, right? So that's not everything. But it's it's a pretty good indicator before the Olympic break. There were third or fourth in the league and then things kind of went off the rails. I think Joey tailed off down the stretch, but when you look at the season as a whole, he was not he was not a negative. He was at least par at least average, you know, in the goal tending department and grew power had this large bounce back. And even in these last couple of games, the rookies looked reasonably good. So I agree with that. The goal tending, I remember in our like kind of preview podcast, we were like, what are the things that need to happen for this team to contend or for them to like hit their ceiling? And one of those things was like average backup goalie plan. That's like all we were asking for. And that we definitely got that. So I think it's right to call it out. I mean, you know, and I think we can get into coaching and system a bit in a minute, but it's all part of the stew there. But the goal is definitely performed. All right. What else went right? It's just my statement. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, it's your article. I mean, it was pretty incredible to look at, but the power play was actually really good at the beginning of the year or the first half of the season. Much like everything else went off the rails after the Olympics. Yeah. If you take that out, they were, they were actually, I mean, I remember us talking about it kind of in January. Yes. It's like, who knew we actually have a decent power play. Like it was, it was like top 10 in the league, which is outstanding for Seattle. Yeah. And what even, even down the stretch when they weren't scoring this year's, particularly the first unit, which was getting the bulk of the time, you know, a lot of the time, they were able to get in the zone and keep possession for just like long periods. Yeah. You know, they could like grind a penalty kill down. with like a minute of in-zone time. And it might not always end towards the end of the season. It was frustrating because they wouldn't really get a good look after all that. But just their ability to gain the zone with control and then to be able to manipulate the defense and hold it in zone for a long periods of time. I mean, in just my mind's eye in previous years, it was a lot of like get it in, maybe get a chance and go back and retrieve it. And how many times did they get well, they always lost the face off and just started in their own ends, right? And that still happened quite a bit this season. But how many times you get to the end of the of the power play and you'd see them just try to rim it around and they're like, well, they're out of ideas. They can't they can't figure out how to get in the zone even. You know, that wasn't so much the case for much of this season. They you're absolutely right. They were able to get into the zone and get set up for most of the season. Yeah. And not to skew into negatives, but down the stretch. I feel like there were some things they were doing earlier that they didn't do as much like, for example, you remember earlier in the season, they would like get the puck below the goal line and then hit hit the bumper, you know, for a shot. And I feel like they did that maybe like once or twice like after the Olympic break. I don't remember them doing that much at all. I do remember Coco down there, but that might have been more five on five. Coco, when it was happening, it was Coco. Yeah. For sure. All right. No, anything else? No, anything else? This is a positive segment. Yeah. Anything else? Go right. Just quick call out to the back to backs. Sure. And the second game of back to back from zero points last season to 12 points this season. Zero points. Zero. I mean, zero points is still insane. It's another thing we called out before the season though. We were like, let's regress to the mean on back to backs and we should be right there. Right. They were over 500 at one time then lost the last two, kind of toward the end. Yeah. Surprise, surprise, after the Olympic break. So yeah. All right. So now, I know that the next thing that we're supposed to do here is what went wrong. But let's fast forward what four months, five months, when does the season start again? Where I may earlier this year early on. So like, yeah, five little over five months, John. How do you feel about that? You have a lot of time. Yeah. That'll hold me over for a bit. And then you have the draft and then you have the development camp and then you have free agency. And then basically we're right back in it. I love Dev Camp. Yeah, you get one month off August. Yeah. Okay. So so here's my here's my question. You're looking into your crystal ball. What are the things that we're going to say in five months where the things like this last year? We're like, well, we got to have we got to have good backup goal tending, right? We got to have a better power play. What are some of the things that we're going to say for next year? I have one. But how about you go first? Yeah. The penalty kill was trash for unbelievably bad. Almost the entire season. They had like a little stretch where they were good when they switched formations. And then they went back in the toilet after that. There there was two major periods where they were awful, right? Yeah. It was like Edmonton. They were it was like a stretch of three games where they were like, yeah, killed one out of nine. Yeah, something allowed eight power play goals. It was insane. And then they did that toward the end as well. There were stretches where it was actually pretty good. Where it was hot. Yeah. Kind of competent like passes. But yes, I agree that needs to improve. And so what was interesting about that when Lane Lambert was prompted about it at his exit interview, he talked about, you know, their save percentage on the on the penalty kill was worse than they would have liked to have seen. And then he brought up face offs as well, which I know we've talked about that, you know, they have Chandler Stephenson out there to win face offs. And on the penalty kill, he wasn't really winning face offs. So it was interesting to me that those are the two things that Lambert brought up and didn't really the players were more the ones to talk about. Well, we were doing the system that really didn't fit us. And then we switched it and things got a little better. I just found that. Remember when they first rolled that out at the beginning of season? Yeah. And we were like, Oh, no, because we saw that under hack stall. The triangle one. Yeah. And it never it never worked for them then. And it didn't. Yeah. Anyway, I can't care. No, no, no. You know, and so they switched back to like more of, you know, a kind of hybrid, like more like a diamond in the second half. And it was just it was curious. It was bizarre to me that they couldn't get the results that they were getting last season. I mean, the goal tending on the whole was as good or better than last season. And you know, you have Lane Lambert. It's like penalty killing is his, that's like his baby, his specialty. It's what he did in Toronto. That's what he focused on. And, you know, he cares a lot about it. And the fact that they couldn't figure it out. You know, for me, I wonder about big picture concern. Can we get more defensive production out of the defensive defenseman on this team? Like your Adam Larson, your Ryan Lingerie, Ryan Lingerin, is Jamie Alexiac going to be here? Probably not. He's been a fixture on your penalty kill for the entire existence of this team. So I kind of look at the defensive defenseman too, because there was just a lot of net front stuff going on on the penalty kill. And whether that was a system issue to begin with, but again, it's not like the triangle and one is some unknown foreign system that no one's ever heard of. It's like one of the two systems that teams use. So the fact that they weren't able to dig themselves out of that, I think you're right. I mean, it's just got to be, it's got to be closer to leak average if they're going to have a chance. What else? What else are we going to be looking at next year? So I have the penalty kill. Oh, I mean, broadly speaking, scoring. Okay. It's like, so that hasn't changed. I think we said that last year. How about, I mean, scoring take was better last year. Yeah. Scoring takes a lot of different forms. But how about, how about just to look at one category where we need more from the young players, right? We need like Shane Wright took a big step back in goal production this year. Berkeley, Katyn had chances, but didn't convert many of them. You know, you're your other young players, Yani Newman, we thought before the year, could this be a 20 goal score? We all didn't happen. Practically put them in the lineup before the season. Yeah, well, he was in the lineup. Yeah. Well, I know, but like, that wasn't the one we were rooting out. Yeah. Yeah. No, with Yani Newman, I mean, we saw it in the Colorado game once, but he was finally out there on a power play and he got to rip one of those one timers, which you've seen if you've seen Coach, all the valley, like that's how he scores half his goals, right? And they just didn't use him on the power play. So, you know, maybe he can find his groove that way, but, you know, those guys need to take a step forward on Shane Wright. I will just say that at around the same age, remember, Maddie Beneers took a step back. You know, he had he had his calder winning rookie season and then took a step back. Yeah. And now he's back. You know, he's he's not lighting the world on fire, but he's had a couple 20 goal seasons. But I liked his game a lot this season. You know, like I who had a shane. Oh, no, Maddie. If Maddie is obviously I want him to take another step, become a 25 to 30 goal score, of course. But like if he ends up being this really reliable kind of team leader, two way player that consistently is in the 20 to 25 goal range, I think he's got a higher potential than that. But like if that's what he ends up being, I don't hate that. I think he's I think is a really reliable player and I appreciate it. I agree with that completely. My only point is that with Shane Wright, I think we need to remember he's younger than Maddie Beneers. And like, Maddie Beneers' trajectory to where we're like confident in his play right now has not he did take a step back. Yeah. When we were questioning. Yes. Yes. Yes. You know, as he is he committed to doing the things he needs to do to be the player we want him to be. And so it wouldn't it would not surprise me at all. Shane writes another one. Do we see him in a in a crack in sweater season is is something I think we'll talk about a lot this off season. But would it surprise me at all if he has 22 24 goals next season? It would not. No. And it especially wouldn't surprise me if he ends up in a different sweater next season. So well, we'd have 35 goals if he was in a different we've settled that we don't need to discuss it anymore. Speaking of Shane Wright, Lane Lambert did have some interesting commentary about him at clean out day. And we're going to get to clean out day in a little bit. But basically he said you should ask Shane Wright. And ironically, we didn't have Shane Wright as one of the people that we requested to talk to you probably should have in retrospect. But Lambert said if you asked Shane Wright if he thinks he's a better player now than at the beginning of the season, I think he absolutely would say yes, he thinks that. Which is interesting because he didn't have the point production. That is true. So who knows maybe maybe this is one of those things where Lane Lambert came in and said these are the the building blocks that we need from you from a defensive standpoint. You've been playing under Dan Biosma for your whole professional career to this point basically. And it didn't work. And remember Shane Wright, Shane Wright struggled also, let's see his first year. It was still hack stall, right? When he first came up. And that just didn't work at all. He looked completely lost. Well, yeah, he was very young. He needed to add some speed and things like that too. But yeah, what was he 19 at the time? Yeah. So yeah, I don't know. I just I think that this was one of those things where like he finally had the this is what it's like to play defensive hockey under a defensive minded NHL head coach. So yes. And I think that if you while the scoring production wasn't there and by the eye test, I feel like just looking at Shane Wright sometimes it just felt like I don't know. I don't want to play armchair psychologist, but like no, no, no, no, we can't. It looked like we did not expect that. - No, no, no, we don't do that. - It looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders sometimes. It looked like he was feeling the stress of not producing the way he would want. But, I mean, it needs to be said, favorable deployment or not. He's the only, well, he's one of two players on this team that at 5 on 5 had both a positive goals, four percentage and expected goals, four percentage. It was just him and one other person. You know who the other person was? - Chandler Stevenson. (laughs) - You're just gasoline me now. - Yeah. - Think about deployments. - This is a player that John likes a lot. Oscar Fischer Muck. - Do you know how many games Moldgard played? This actually surprised me. How many games do you think you played? - 13. (laughs) - Is that correct? - It's precisely correct. - 13 guests. - Did you guess that or did you see that? - I know it. - Yeah, okay. - Yeah, well, again, he's John's guy. But anyway, I, 'cause I looked, one of my highlights was the rivals, some of the kids. - Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. - And we will get to that. But anyway, so I mean, the on ice results weren't terrible when he was out there. He was put in favorable contexts a lot. But again, it's, that was among all the comments that stood out. I mean, of course, he's trying to build up his young player, right, but that comment from Lane about Shane did stand out to me as well. - All right. You also notes about your leading this obviously. So I'll let you read. - Oh, I know it's player level. What did you want to know? - Oh, yeah. Well, I think let's just like kind of scan through them. I know John wanted to talk about some of the young players and we've started talking about Shane. Any other, I'll let John maybe talk about which-- - Overachieved and underachieved. - Yeah, yeah, so we're gonna talk about, I think that's maybe the excuse for the exercise. - Okay. - You know, did this player overachieve your expectations or underachieved, but it's really just an excuse to talk about these players on a more individual basis here. - Okay. - All right, so you wanna go through the kids. - Yeah, let's start with the kids. Go through the kids. - Okay, let's talk about Shane. We don't need to talk about Shane. - Yeah, I think we got Shane. Well, I think we had all agreed. Underachieved. - Yes, yeah. - What was possible there. - Ryan Winserton. - There was debate if he was even gonna make the team, right? And so I think the fact that he played 68 games is a pretty incredible feat based on where we saw him at the beginning of the year. - I don't mean Lambert loves him. - Yeah, but he loves him. - Offensively, he didn't contribute that much. So that's the only reason I'm saying he did not overachieve. I think he met expectations for making the lineup. I think it's pretty remarkable that he's in the lineup. And I love his game. I think he played well, but met expectations, basically, pretty much a fourth liner, right? Fourth liner stats, that's kind of what you're getting. - And he overachieved. - Yeah, I'm gonna go with Darren. So you lose, John. - Yeah, overachieved this year. - Yes, suck it, John. - Because I think when he was on the fourth line, I think the fourth line worked. Like the middle of the season, when he was on the fourth line, it worked when they needed to, when he was, you know, away from the team, unfortunately, for a while, or they needed to use him on the third line, the fourth line started looking pretty bad again and had those games where it was like on the ice for three or four goals against, right? - Yeah, the minus three in one period. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I mean, that was-- - I remember that at all. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they were also, which game was it? It was Colorado. I think the fourth line was out there for both the goals against the last game of the season. - I'm not bad at it. - Yeah, who cares? But I think Winterton has, I think he's precisely how Lane wants a winger to play. Like, you know, he gets back, you know, he plays fast, he'll counter strike, you know, he does those things. So anyway, next player up. - Riker Evans. - Riker Evans? - Darren's taking control of this. I mean, I think he's kind of moved on to being, he's more middle class, not a kid anymore. - No, I mean, I think he played pretty well for the opportunity he was given. - I don't know if I loved his game all the time. - We have another debate on our hands. - I don't know, just feel like there are, kind of like, you know, how Vince Dunn, at times you'd have all these like, this stretch where he's like, all right, who screwed that one up? I'm like, oh, it was Vince Dunn. Who screwed that one up? Oh, it was Vince Dunn. I kind of feel like there are a number of stretches like that with Riker Evans. - I didn't think, I would get a-- - No, I noticed Vince way more because he was out there more, right? - We could have greeted his agree on that one. - I, Berkeley Catten. - Oh, we're just not gonna decide on Riker Evans. We're just gonna do that. - Go ahead, be the deciding vote. - I think Riker Evans was pretty solid this year. - So overachieved. - Overachieved. - Suck it, Darren. (laughing) - All right, no, I mean, he's, this game is called Suck it. (laughing) - I did not agree to that. - No, it is not. No, it is not. But, but but but but but it was, Evans is a confounding one for me. I wanna watch more of him because I kind of agree. I feel like there are mistakes you see, but also the on-ice results when he was out there were pretty solid. So next question. - I do wonder though, I mean, kind of parling this into our earlier discussion that with the Vince, if Vince Dunn is a candidate to get traded, like it's because Riker could step in to not quite Vince's role, but-- - 'Cause Montor would take that role, but then maybe Riker Evans could take more, like the second unit power play type role. - Yeah, so. Okay, Berkeley-Catten. - Okay, controversial take here. - Ooh. - Really, Impressity made, I think he looks like he belongs, but at the end of the day, he did not contribute that much offensively. And I think he overachieved just for the sake he looked like he belongs and then HL and I do believe, he'll, I do believe he belongs and then HL. I do wonder if the option to put him in HL. - Next year? - Well, it is next year, but you could, if you could have put him in this year, if that he might have been-- - I think they would have done that. - I think they would have put him in the HL. - So, and unfortunately, you know, you put this combination of Shane, Berkeley, Winterton, and I know they don't all play together, but you collectively put their goals. That's not a lot of goals from three-regions. - No, it's a lineup, kind of. - Yeah, people. And even like if you wanna add Freddie in there, 'cause he's kind of in the same space, right? Kind of, that's where the production really lacked. Like the middle to bottom of the Ford lineup. And unfortunately, you know, Berkeley was given a lot of opportunity and that's for the long term, I think it's gonna be fine, but I say he overachieved for games played with the underachieved production, 'cause we need more from him from that. - I agree with that. I think it's kind of incomplete. Like, can he leverage this to being farther along next season? Right? Can he use this as a springboard? That's what the exit interview-- That's what it was kind of the theme of the exit interviews, right? It's like, can he, well, he'd be farther ahead next season because he had this experience. I guess I just have to say overachieved because I thought he was gonna go back to junior this year. - I think we all had it at the beginning. - I was certain he was going back to junior. - But. - But John, what you're saying is totally right. I mean, the goal production needed to be more from him. And I feel like, again, you'd have a couple passes of game that would be like, oh, he just set up a chance and then it just so rarely ever turned into anything. - Right. - Yeah, he talks about making his shot better. This off season, he's like, that's obvious, right? Is what he said. - Yeah. - But. And I don't think that it's necessarily like shooting it harder. I just felt like every time he got himself into a prime scoring position, it was almost like he got too excited that he was about to score. And he just like shoot it right into the goal he's chest. - Well, I thought the way he described it was actually really interesting. - That's my own take. - The way I thought what he was trying to say was kind of like, at the NHL level, you need to have like a game plan for every shot. Every shot needs to be purposeful. It can't just be like, well, I'm just gonna put it on there. - I'm just gonna put it on there. - Yeah. - I'm just gonna put it on in the corner, 'cause I'm good. And I'm just, you know, it's like everything needs to be connected. Like, you know, your game plan for the shot needs to be connected with how you're playing elsewise. And I thought his answer on that was good. It's kind of like what we've heard, like, like I've loved Jagger Ferkis's answers to questions like this in the past. It's like, okay, he gets it. Like he understands what he needs to do. Now, can he take that next step? Is why I think I still gotta give him an overachieve, but it is, I think the grade is really dependent on, is he a contributor next year or not? - And I'm really curious if he ends up needing a little time in the AHL next year. I know that that's a weird way to do it. And people are gonna be like, oh my God, I can't believe they're putting it, but it might be good for him to dominate at the pro level and score some goals. - I will be honest, I am a little surprised, at the beginning of the year, they didn't try that, you know, kind of the loophole. - The loophole to get him two weeks in the AHL. - I mean, I think the problem with the timing is, somebody got hurt. - There was an injury. - I think they were working towards that. It seemed like nobody confirmed that, but it seemed like they were working towards it. And then somebody got hurt and all of a sudden he was back in the lineup. - Yep, yeah, that's right. - Okay, you guys can each pick one more 'cause we're rang really long on this. - Jacob Molanson. - No, do you wanna play overachieve underachieve or AKA, suck it? - You don't play suck it. - So it's Jacob Molanson just an overachieve. (laughing) - Jacob Molanson's just an overachieve and we're moving on. - Yeah. - Okay, so a controversial one. All right, do you have a controversial one, John? Any controversial takes? - Yeah, I'm a woman. - No, it doesn't have to all be kids though. - Oh, I thought we were talking kids. - We are, but we should move on. - Okay. - Because we're rang long. - Y'all know humans are an underachieve. I think it's, we have to say that. I mean, it goes back to the AHL and lights the world on fire and couldn't get anything done here. - Yeah, let's pick a veteran. Each of you choose a veteran that you wanna determine. if he overachieved or underachieved. - This is an easy one, I think. Ben Myers overachieved, definitely. - Huge overachieved. - Or just like his contract. - Going out that somebody completely off our radar played really well. - He played Ticarte off the roster. He took Ticarte's spot and he was put in challenge. They used the fourth line as a fourth line this year with like defensive zone assignments and he's still, the fourth line still produced when he was in the list. - I love it. - Yeah. - All right, I'm gonna throw it out. - Go for it. - Technically not a veteran veteran, kind of sort of veteran, Capocaco. - Two different seasons. - Yeah, so like pre-Olympic's post. He went in the opposite direction as the rest of the team. - Yep, I agree. - I know. - Right, like he played really well I thought down the stretch and said that he was feeling really confident too. - And I think it was called out during the, during the clean out day and his exit interview was the-- - You're very far from your microphone. - No, without the camera, what I would do is when he would sit back like that and talk like this and now you can't hear me very well, I would just motion to him to come sit closer to the microphone. But now I'm gonna get caught because it's on camera. - Well, he gets still motion, okay. - I could, but it's gonna be weird if I'm like, "Hey, all right, you know." - All right, so I feel the need to explain it to the camera. - Yeah, I apologize. - Yeah, you don't need to apologize. - Just, I don't know. - Just explaining. - But Kaka talked about, you know, starting the season injured, right? A broke his hand and didn't seem like he got his groove back for a while and, but coming out of Olympics, I thought probably the best player on the crackin other than Bobby McMahon. - So did he-- - So did he get to receive the season or underachieve? - I said two different seasons, underachieve. - Oh no, come on. That's not how suck it works. (laughing) - I think we gotta think of a new name for this game. (laughing) - Yes we do. - We wanna maintain that clean rating on Apple Podcasts. - Yeah. - I'm gonna say, over cheeks. - Okay. - He's like the middleist middle for me. If he's actually, I think the hardest case on the entire roster. - I'm just really excited for him next season, I guess. - Well, yeah. - I'm optimistic about him next season. - Right, the most recent sample is good. - Yes. - In contrast with the rest of the team. But I don't know, I really cannot decide. - He's like the exact average player on the team. - All right, I'm gonna go, yeah, I'm gonna go with underachieve because more of the season was disappointing. Part of that is injury driven for sure. But I'm going to-- - The only reason I went overachieve is 'cause when it was disappointing, the team was doing well. So they kinda made up for it, so it didn't really matter. But I support your-- - All right. I also think that we should maybe go through this more. This is good offseason content. - I'm not gonna get a player. I don't get one. - Yeah, you can, just hear me out. - Okay, yeah. - I think we should do more of this because there's good offseason content. I ran into somebody today that was curious about your grades on every single player on the team. So this kind of accomplishes that. I'm looking at Curtis for those of you who are listening. - Yeah. - But I think this is a complicated seven point scale. - So we can play underachieve, overachieve, underachieve more. But we've talked through the young players now, and also who did we talk about? We did Kappokako and who did you pick as your one player to talk about? I forgot. - Youngy Newman or no? - No, he's Ben Myers. - Ben Myers, right? - Yeah, okay. So we'll cross all those off, and then we'll add some more for this one. - Yeah, and we'll do it next week. But mine is Ellie Tolvenin. And I don't know that this is necessary. I would assume we'll all end up in the same place on this one, but Ellie, Tolvenin and Jaden Schwartz, were another place where the goal scoring that was there last year was not there this year. And Jaden Schwartz was out of the lineup for a little bit, but even when you look out at per game basis, it wasn't as good. But Ellie Tolvenin is an interesting one 'cause he's a younger player, right? And he was a great waiver claim, right? They're very proud of that and how far he's come. But he had a down season, and he's going into unrestricted free agency. So I think he's a really interesting case for me, it's an underachievement. The goal scoring wasn't there. - Agreed. - You wonder if they could bring him back at a pretty reasonable deal because of that. - So one thing to note is he also is kind of a tale of two seasons because at the beginning of the year, he was one of the few guys that Lane Lambert like really seemed to trust. He was putting him in every situation. Panely kill, power play. Like, his time on ice is up this year. - Yes. And the goal scoring was not. - But it wasn't just the goal scoring, like as the season went on, it was like he became really ineffective towards the end of the year. And I'm not really sure what happened there. But he was retrospective and this is a good segue into the clean out. He was not retrospective. Interrespective is the word I'm looking for at clean out day. And he did get scratched down the, down the, the scratch and I asked Lane Lambert, you know, what, what are you looking to accomplish basically with scratching these guys? And he said something along the lines of, well, these players like need to leave no doubt that they belong in the lineup. Like the fact that Ellie Tovenin is leaving a doubt in your mind that he belongs in the lineup, I mean, he had to be better and he seemed to know it too. It didn't, you know, he wasn't in his ex interview. He wasn't talking about like, I'm upset that they scratched me. It was more like, I'm upset that I didn't play better. Was how he kind of mentioned it. So I thought that was interesting. Some other big themes, we frequently heard them talk about how it was a failure. They are all disappointed that they didn't make it, of course. And it made me think about like when we got back from the break and I remember going around the room and asking people how they were, you know, how they were feeling about it. And they were all like, we're a playoff team. We're, you know, and they sounded so confident. And I almost wonder if it was like a cockiness. And then they got punched in the mouth a little bit there coming out of the break. And they just like couldn't figure it out again. Lambert talked about, you know, how the team very much runs on confidence. I thought this was interesting. It's a team that runs on confidence. And this was in response to my question about why do they have these really long ruts that they've gone through throughout their history. And he said, yeah, once that confidence is gone, it's really, really gone with this team. Use the word fragile at one point. So yeah, I just thought that that line of thinking was pretty interesting. And it's also, you know, I just, I think it just all points to like the character in that room. And the ability to look at each other and be like, here's how we're going to get out of this and get out of it. And they just can't seem to do it. Like when the, when, when things start going wrong and Jordan, I really talked about trust, trusting that, you know, if you, if you make a mistake, somebody's going to be there to do what they're supposed to do. Yeah, I don't know. I just, I feel like there's, there's got to be like a actual culture shift with this team. Well, I think there were questions to a number of the players and coach Lambert about, you know, about the dressing room. And is there a culture issue or a ship that needs to happen there? And, you know, both Lambert and the players were talking about this is a professional room, but it's a quiet room, right? And, you know, Montourne in particular is like, I'm one of the more vocal guys. There are a couple others, but on the whole, it's pretty, pretty quiet room. That's, and you know, he says, it's not necessarily mean it's a bad room. It's just, you know, that kind of, I don't know, the emotion to kind of get in your face when things are going down or, or, or to have that resilience. Do they need more of that in the room? You know, to me, to be quiet doesn't necessarily mean, like when things are bad, what conversations are they having? To me, it means like just having it, have a good, vibrant feel to it. Yeah. And I get it. I mean, it is quiet in there. Like there's not a guy, there's not a lot of guys with big personalities. Yeah. And the younger ones that do have big personalities seem to like compress that down a little bit because that's not how the veterans are. You know, the leaders are pretty stoic. Where are we talking about Jacob Molanson? No, I think about like Maddie Beneers, right? Like when he first arrived, I think that, you know, he was, he was like a pretty like bubbly guy. And then over time, you saw his demeanor change a little bit. Now I think it's coming back a little bit. Yeah, I think he's, he's getting back to how he was early on in his career. But I think he's trying to like follow the lead of the Jordan Abelie's and the, you know, who's a very stoic level headed quiet guy. I mean, I personally love how Jordan Abelie interacts with the media, the messages he delivers. I love everything about it. But I could understand if there is just one of the kind of things they think about, you know, in your exercise of what needs to be better next season. Is there a way of organizing the leadership to have more, you know, more of a vocal, like lead by, lead by, I'm grabbing you by the neck, come follow me rather than just Jordan Abelie was highly productive on the ice. He's highly respected. So follow him for that reason, you know. A couple other things that I wanted to mention here from this clean out day. Jared McCann speaking of yelling. I want to talk about this one. There are a couple of interesting comments he made referencing the younger players on the team. So it was sometimes you need to, it feels like you need to start screaming, but that's not always the answer, especially with the younger generation. I thought that was actually the more interesting kind that he made. So one of them, more play was the other one. The other one was that the kids need to take it. and I'm paraphrasing a little, but it's close. The kids need to take it more seriously or things change basically. - Young players need to learn that things change if you don't win. - Yeah. - Something to that effect. And but that one was in response to a question, I think from Curtis Prime about how, - Sorry, what? Curtis Grabtree, he's Curtis Prime. - Okay. - Curtis number two. - Got it, okay. - Yeah, I do. - But I know that. (laughing) - No offense. - Yeah, no, it's fair. But about how there's changes in the front office coming. And I think what Jared was trying to say is that there's a certain responsibility that comes with playing the NHL. If you don't perform like changes get made, people lose their jobs. - Yeah. - And I think that's what he was trying to say. And then the young players need to learn that as everyone does. - Yeah, and it came across as I'm blaming the young players for not- - I don't think it was fine too. - And I doubt he meant it that way too. And that was what I wrote. 'Cause when it happened, it kind of like, breezed past and then he left the room and I kind of was like, what did he say about that? You know, like I kind of went back and I was like, huh, what does he say in there? And I wish I would have followed up on it a little bit, but it didn't like register as I was listening to it of like how that came across. So I doubt that that's what he meant, but I was- - What do you think, John? - I don't know, it was curious. - It was a very odd comment. He might have had something specific in mind for a specific scenario, a specific person. And at the end of the day, if he meant it, like people are gonna lose their jobs, like, I mean, in a way, like, I don't think that should be the primary concern of the player. I think the player needs to be concerned with losing his job. - Absolutely. - And so I guess I'm with you guys. I'm not totally sure. I also didn't take it overly serious either. I think sometimes we, I'm guilty as anybody, parsing words and, you know, like, we've done it for five years now, that sometimes it just doesn't come out what they intended and, you know, we throw microphones in front of their faces and who knows what they say. - I thought the other comment where he's talking about, how do you, do you shout more or is that not how you relate to younger players these days? I think might be a reflective of, again, like the kind of Jordan Eberley leadership in the sense of, let's try to do the right thing. Let's get like the veterans together and try and, like, think this out. Think our way to the solution, whereas maybe a different type of leaders, just like, I don't care what the young players want. I'm just gonna lead by the power of my personality, right? And that's, that's just, I don't think how the leadership works on this team. I think they try to do the right things. And I think that's what maybe Jeremy came was processing out there. It's like, what is the best way to lead this team? I don't know. - Philip Groobauer also, when I asked if he made any technical changes, he said, not really, I was maybe just a little bit less aggressive because I didn't have to be because last year, you know, what system were we playing? Did we even have a system? - Yeah, I mean, he said that and, and, (laughing) he led off his answer by, I mean, the positive spin on all this, is he led off his answer, you know, to the question of what do you attribute, you could see your better season to, he said, coach, and I think he meant goalie coach, but coach and an unbelievable system. So he's clearly bought in on what Lane Lambert is doing. - Well, and let's, let's expand that a bit because I thought that was a theme, pretty consistent from the players that it was not a coaching issue. It certainly wasn't. - They did not put it at the feet of Lambert at all. - And I don't know if they would. - No. - At the same time, like, - It was all abusive in your praise. - Yeah, they were almost defending, like making sure we knew that, no, we believe in the system, we believe in the coach. Like, yeah. I mean, I think the players made it pretty clear that they perceive a difference this year versus last year in terms of the position they were put in, and now they talked about failing down the stretch and all these things and being very disappointed, but they did not put it at the feet of the coaching at all. - Yeah. And I guess the last note was, Brandon Montour was the winner of the Andy Iad Memorial Sticktaps award. So that was pretty cool. I, what? - I just thought it was really cute him getting it. Like, he's awesome. - Yeah. - Well, it was well deserved to. - And I don't want them at all. - I've never talked to them. - He just was so great to deal with, and I felt like he, he would like go out of his way to be like, "Hey, how's it going?" You know, and they don't, they don't all do that. It's like-- - They don't need to, right? - They don't need to, and that's totally fine, but it's just like, it's almost like he prefers to have a bit of a relationship with the media, like just, and-- - Or probably just people, right? - Yeah. But I mean, when you think about what he went through this year, with his brother passing away, he had multiple surgeries this season. Yeah, it just, I think the way that he carried himself, and then down the stretch, it was like, he was doing media like every day for a while. - Yep. You know? So-- - I wouldn't be surprised if he, you know, if Jaden Schwartz is not back, there's another A available there. He seems like a candidate. I mean, we've talked about him as a candidate in the past and it hasn't happened. So I don't know. But he's definitely, he's a version of, whether he has a letter or not, he's a version of a leader in there. And my only last thing I'll say is that, in terms of the players that were wearing the disappointment of the season, like, very visibly, I thought Montour was like wearing how disappointed he was. And I think that's kind of what, personally, I like to see that, you know, that they're as frustrated as the fan base is. I thought Maddie Beneers was really wearing it too. I thought he, you could tell he was not happy. Like, there was a question about, are you gonna watch the playoffs? And he's like, I just can't bring myself to do that. Unless I've got a friend playing or something, I'm just not gonna do that. - All right, Jon, you have something written here called the pin. - You know what, let's push that. - You wanna pin it for next week. - Pin the pin. - All right, we're pinning it. It's been pinned. Let's go down on the farm. Moo. I didn't know that was, I thought you were doing that with your mouth all the time. - This? Yeah, yeah, that. - No, this is a noise maker. - Oh, well, there you go. We learn something every day. - But those of you at home can see, it's a-- - Secrets out. - It's a little plastic canister. - We got that, we got that from a listener. - Jon, oh, that's right. - Yeah, well, it's called a cup playoffs time. Woohoo! - That was a-- (laughing) - I enjoy the golf. - Oh yeah, yeah. - I'm excited. - So, fireworks, I think maybe the fourth seed in the Pacific, I wanna say something like that. Anyway, they have a three game series this weekend, pretty much against Bakersfield. - Yeah, so. - And Furcus is back. - Furcus is back. - Furcus is back in the last game and everybody's healthy, right? - They have some price and drag a Sevick. I don't think have come back, but they are reasonably healthy, finally. So, yeah, Morison is back, Furcus is back. So, yeah, we can hope that they make it through the, three game series is anything can happen, right? So, make it through that, but hoping for another good run from them. I think a couple rounds would be a good performance for this team. And the CHL playoffs? - Indeed, we got a few prospects still in the mix. And on the WHO side, we have a prospect in both for both of the teams in the Western Conference Finals. Julius Miettenin for the Silver Tips and Ryden Evers for the Pintikton Vs. So, one of those players is gonna be in the WHO Championship game, so that's cool. OHL, we still got Jacob Ryan and Jacob Fibiger. - And Nathan Villanov. - Nathan Villanov, they're still kicking around there. And then in the queue. - Villan, yeah. Fibiger's having a pretty good, he seems like he's like going on a lot more. - Like squashing a lot. - And then Bernier is still alive in the queue. So, lots of prospects still to follow. - All right. John, we have a torrent update. Oh, just that they have officially been eliminated. Which is a good thing. - It's a good thing because they're on the gold plan. - And the sooner the better, right? For getting, 'cause then they can theoretically rack up more points. - That's right. So, they're earlier, you can accumulate, the more you can accumulate. - Versus if somebody were to get eliminated tomorrow, their clock starts from then. - The next, the following day, yes. - Yeah. - You know, it's interesting I was wondering about, and it, should we maybe back it up and explain what the gold plan is? - Yeah, that's, I was planning on doing that. - Okay. - Gold plan is once the team is eliminated, you start accumulating any points you get in the standings are actually applied to like what essentially your draft position and the more points you get by the end of the year, then that determines where you place in the draft. So, - Too late, tanking. - Yeah. - Down the stretch. - Yeah. Now, it was, I happened to go to Vancouver last Tuesday to see the torrent play, the Golden Eyes, which is pretty fun, it was pretty awesome. I am eager to do that next season. I think the arena is pretty cool and it's pretty, pretty rowdy. Lots of singing. It's pretty cool, I had a great time. And then they played Saturday, you didn't go to the game on Saturday, did you? - No, I'll be there tomorrow though. - But the, it was insane. So they have, they're now kind of fully engaged in the gold plan. old plan so that when every point is important and they were playing against Vancouver who had not been eliminated at the time, but were right in front of them. So if they could get three points like a regulation win, they would have three points on Vancouver who would have been eliminated with that game. So there was actually a lot at stake here. They were up by two with I think less than two minutes left. They were indeed. But gold and ice would end up scoring two goals, including like this insane tip with like seconds remaining. Torrent would eventually win in overtime, but they would only get two points, not the three, hoping for. Actually, excuse me, they lost in overtime. So they only got one point of the three that we were hoping for. So that's only a one point buffer on Vancouver. So who's now eliminated? So now they're all accumulating points. So it certainly could have been like the most important game of the season, technically, because there's some pretty big prospects that they could draft. So now on your walk from the arena to your hotel, did you throw any peanut shells? Where the gold and ice play is pretty far away. Okay. So it's not walkable. Yeah. All right. A quick NHL playoffs, almost at NFL, but let's talk NHL playoffs. That's very, very briefly. I know in the past, we've said, especially early on, we won't get too deep into the weeds because by the time you hear this, it all kind of goes stale. But I will just say very quickly that the current setup is as we're recording this. Let me refresh in case anything's changed here. Utah one tonight. Utah one. So that makes it one to one in that series. Colorado's up one zero. They're playing tonight also. Yep. Yeah. Zero zero. Okay. Dallas and Minnesota are tied one to one. Edmonton is up one zero on Anaheim. Philadelphia is up to zero on Pittsburgh, Carolina up to zero on Ottawa, Tampa Bay, and Montreal are tied one to one and Buffalo and Boston are tied one to one. Which my question for you guys is which is the most interesting series? You know, I haven't been able to see as much of the Dallas, Minnesota because they played Saturday when the tournament were playing. And then they were playing when I was playing hockey. Last night. Yes. I'm sure that's probably pretty interesting. But it is my pick. Yeah. It is my pick. But I will say Tampa Bay Montreal has been pretty exciting. Yeah. And then I'm excited about Utah, Vegas. I've been I found myself aside from Minnesota Dallas, which I have loved watching so far. And game one Minnesota ran up the score game two. I would have loved to see Minnesota win again. But they played a pretty good game. And Jake Ottinger was like awesome. Anyway, this is sound of the wild. The one that I also find myself gravitating towards a you're right Tampa Bay and Montreal has been good, but Buffalo, Boston. You have a feeling that's the one that you're going to mention as your favorite. Yeah. It's an interesting one so far. Boston was up big in game one and then Buffalo and Buffalo was but you're rooting for Buffalo, right? You have to. Well, but you not root for Buffalo in that scenario. Idiot. If you're rooting for anybody. I was pretty sympathetic to Buffalo though. I mean, it's their first playup home game and like a bajillion years, right? And they're at risk a couple minutes away from getting shut out, right? And they're starting to get booed. They're starting to get booed. It was like all kind of like, oh, this doesn't, this isn't great. And then they come back and win, which I did not enjoy. Let's just be clear. But good series. Working geeky has a couple goals. He flipped one in from the neutral zone. I didn't even know you're allowed to do that. But okay. So anyway, it's a good series. And in tonight's game, it got to 4 0. Yes, it did. But then Buffalo started to rally back again. I know. So I actually was not watching much of that game because it was 4 0. And then it was 4 2. And I was like, I got to flip over and watch this and it seemed like the atmosphere is incredible. I'm happy for Buffalo fans to get to experience this. It could go, it could go, you know, six or seven. I think Buffalo is the better team. They should, I mean, I and our, it's not a hockey bracket. I picked Buffalo. Yeah. So I think Buffalo should win. Yeah. It's honestly, I think that game, those games have been relatively boring. Yes, except for the crazy intensity of like 10 minutes each game. So yeah. And it's more just Buffalo fans. I'm just that whole experience. Yeah. Looks great. Yeah. They're beating up a mass array of mannequin out in front for some reason. Yeah. Like the thing you use for like karate practice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on to do you have your clicker? This is for the people at home or watching on YouTube. Let's move on to weekly one timers. Oh, time it. Time it. Weekly one timers. Not bad. Yeah. That's pretty good. Pretty good. All right. Cool. We have a prop for the light up sign, which last week I described even for the people on video. Remember that. It was like too bright. You can tell. I know. I know. Maybe the new lighting will help with that. And you'll be able to actually see it. So the first weekly one timer. The blue jacket signed Rick bonus to a one year extension. Now this was interesting because they completely collapsed in the last few weeks of the season to end up missing the playoffs. And he went on like his end of your press conference was amazing. He just if I have to hear next year things are going to change. Yeah. Although maybe it wasn't his end of yours after the last game. Yeah. He was just like so embarrassed at how they played. But somebody called out that it was like imagine having that be what happens at the end of the season. And you somehow like make everyone believe that you had nothing to do with it. Yeah. Yeah. None of this was me. I'm here to change the culture, which we're going to do next year. Yeah. Which you are now going to sign me. Yes. Okay. I will say if you if you keep me around. I don't know. I mean, obviously we need to change the culture here. So yeah. Thought it was interesting that he pulled that off. So yeah. I'm now very curious to watch the blue jackets next year. Okay. They do. All right. I wonder if they already have the extension in place before that. So probably. All right. Next weekly one timer. No. That wasn't timed quite right. Did you turn it off? No. Is it a timer? It's like one. Okay. Let's try it one more. Oh, wow. Much brighter. This is bad for the audio people. Yeah. I said we wouldn't do this. We'll keep it moving. Okay. All right. Go ahead, John. Just whoa. That one. All right. That's we're still working workshop in this. Alexander Barclay is going to play at the World Championships. He's back. Well, it's nice that he, you know, remember he got a train camp. Yeah. So he's good note to play. So that's good. I guess. I mean, would you want him to play? I think it's good to get him some reps. Yeah. I mean, Jordan, I really spoke about how it was good for him to come back at the end of last year because you go into the offseason thinking competent. Yeah. That you can play. Yeah. Yeah. Aren't actually one timer. The devils after they fired Fitzgerald as their general manager named Sonny Metta as their general manager. He was previously AGM in Florida. And he has ties New Jersey, I think. Doesn't he work for the devils? And he's a big big analytics guy. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, it's really blinking aggressively. The cool. I have a friend that worked with him in New Jersey. And I mean, nice guy. Okay. But he doesn't come from hockey, which is probably a good thing. Right. So it's almost like a Tulski type of hire. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He. I think he's going to really. He was a professional poker player for the hit and stuff like that. So yeah. Our final weekly one timer. And speaking of general managers, getting fired, Patrick Alvin has been fired by the Vancouver Conox. Who would have seen that coming? Yeah. Seems like they handled the Quinn J.J.T. Miller thing very well. Oh boy. Yeah. I wonder what's going to happen with that. That team felt like felt like they were getting pretty close to being a pretty good team. And then all of a sudden it was like, nope, not anymore. Like the roggers got pulled out. Yeah. I just. I just remember when I wonder if it was when Quinn used first arrived. And they had Bessar in Pederson. And it was like, oh my gosh. These guys are going to be insane. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Things things went awry. Well, and it's just to remind her how quickly things can change. Right. I'm not trying to be like Pauliana about Seattle. Yeah. But I also, you know, when in context of Bobby Rickman and him wanting to kind of like win is an important piece like. We just talk about that. Did we? No. No, we didn't. But those things can change really quick. Right. And I'm not saying Florida is on the downward swing. But they they were like 20 points out of a playoff spot this year. Right. And they'll probably be fine next year. But they are old. So it's kind of interesting how quickly things can change. So okay. So in that case, let's bring it full circle. That's our those are our weekly one-timers. Will you please turn off the aggressively blinking light now? So just to close things out here before we do a what's good. And I don't actually have a what's good on my mind. So I hope you get to. I don't either. Well, then let's not do it. I just do some what's good. Go ahead. Some what's. Go ahead and do it. Okay Curtis. I am real deep in my pre-draft stuff at the moment great and But the fun part of that is the U18s are coming up, which are which are fun to watch I don't know if anyone else out there is excited for that, but I don't sometimes the NHL play off teams They're like the last pre-draft event, right and So anyway, those are coming up. You need NHL network for that. So it's the annual if you're a court cutter How do you get any NHL network? But I don't know if we talked about this last week, but another what's good Tyson jugnauth was named first team All rookie in the HL. So you do like that John. Do you have a what's good? See here's another thing Okay, here's nothing the camera ruins for me. Yes We record this relatively late at night. Oh, yeah, and although I'm able to I'm I'm a late night guy I'm very old. I am not yeah, but I do get the yons Okay, yeah, and you I saw you just suppress a yarn. It looked very unpleasant. It's a painful. It's like a This kind of a thing. So if you see those muscles Streaming in my face. That's me trying not to show a yarn Yeah, but now now that I'm thinking about you do you yeah, you're just thinking about the U18s anyway, John Well So what was the U20 kind of Friendly series that that was going on more last so I must miss that last week look crans had like three goals Oh, did he? Yeah, and he was and he's plying in these uh, I mean that it's kind of like a precursor to the world juniors So yeah, you should expect him. So that's my you know crans had a couple goals They didn't play like us or Canada, but um, they played like Czechia and Finland and so it was coming across my feed. That's all I know All right, so those are what's good. I have oh, I don't have anything that's good. Sorry. I got one more. Okay. I promised this last week The sound of hockey player of the week of the year award. Oh, yeah, yeah goes to What is that? No, there's nothing to do with prospects. Close thing. I had to assemble. Yeah, fair enough. Uh, Maddie baneers Um, he was the player of the week four times which was more than anyone else. Mm-hmm second place fill up group hour with three hellia So there you go. At that last That one time that there was a player of the week after the break Maddie baneers won and that put him over the edge so That winning that little winning streak mattered So our closing topic normally we'd close the show with what's good, but our closing topic is Bobby man's future with the crackin because I can please get over this when you're talking about clean out day This is some substantive stuff. Yeah, so uh on the count of three we're gonna say Uh, staying or going okay, and then we'll actually realize it some other time. No, we can analyze it all right We have um Yeah, we've only been here for an hour and 15 minutes. Yeah, we don't turn into a pumpkin for at least another couple months I wonder I've been yawning Okay, uh staying or going staying means he's returning. Maybe we said yeah, he got it Yep going means he's not gonna return. Thank you. Yeah, I got it. Yeah ready One two three going all three of us. Yeah, great for the Yeah, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world. I don't think so either because I think they well If they bring him back, I'll be happy with that. I think he he showed Nothing but success and whatever and I think he's got a great role and a good fit here But uh, they're gonna have to pay him a lot. I think to keep him Yeah, and probably and it feels very risky. Yes, give him time. It's a risky deal And if he's your big quote-unquote edition of the offseason if he's the solution to getting this team to the next level It's just that's just not good enough as we saw down the stretch. I would agree. So um, I mean and you know You might be taking a step back on the blue line without Jamie Alexiak. I mean, I know he's taking a beating here But you know who are you replacing him with? It's not a sure thing. So um, I think he's not back because he'll get a bigger deal Somewhere else um, but I like the player obviously he was good here All right, that wraps up episode 379 of the we are the sound of hockey podcast I joked that we were the sound of the wild right right Actually the sound of hockey and we are a crack in centric podcast I think they I think I think the listener's got some crack and talk. Oh, I think they got some crack and touch We mix it in next to the wild talk. Yeah, I mean after yeah after the wild talk uh subscribe on Spotify subscribing up a podcast. Thanks for watching on YouTube subscribing. Yeah, you can hit that hit that subscribe button Like and subscribe like and subscribe leave a comment. Yeah Really helps our algorithm or whatever Next week we're thinking about hooking up this bc art or something. Yeah We're gonna and the PlayStation and we're gonna rethink that we're gonna rethink the name of that game that we were playing tonight Yeah, that's so yeah because I do think yeah, let's pick up the players we didn't talk about I like that. Okay, without a name Oh yeah, yeah, because we were briefly calling it suck it and we decided that's not on brand for Yeah, you didn't have to say it again. So over it I did not just say it again. You're right Uh, but overachieve underachieve so we can we can rethink I mean, that's not a terrible name for the game over achieve underachieve We could probably do better. Let us know. We need a third star review I think yeah over achieve underachieve or No, the third expectation is just a it's uh mix too easy Yeah, yeah, I like I like saying this side of the fence or that because I got very uncomfortable with the kappa kakao situation Good if there was the middle path it would have been easy good. So anyway All right, well, thank you for listening. Thank you for watching We'll talk to you all very soon for episode three 80 cheers (upbeat music)