Catch up on all the action at Boston Pizza Canada's favorite sports bar. It's time to bring the cup home. Yeah. Now, we lost a Canadian team last night. We did. We're trying to get all the Canadian teams together and power our way to a cup.

That's not doom and gloom enough. We lost 25% of the Canadian teams in these playouts last night.

So that means we got to fold the Winnipeg fans into the rest of us. Go to Boston Pizza, get some of their payoff menu. Lots of shareables on it.

You're all cheering for your favorite teams, the Leifs, the Knucks, and the Oilers.

We're not saying it won't be hard. This year, Canada is taking back our nation's game, and Boston Pizza will be the host of it all. The beer will be flowing, the atmosphere will be electric, and we can't wait to host you. Let's come together and cheer for the win. We want this thing to come home to Canada, and it's Canada's biggest sports bar, Boston Pizza. Let's start the show.

Ready?

S-d-p-p.

The Steve Dangle podcast with your host, Steve Dangle, Adam Wild and Jesse Blake.

Let's go. I can't remember if we mentioned that If you didn't catch the Saturday podcast that we were at a Boston Pizza in Bowmanville, home of the Bowmanville Bruits.

Yes. It was confusing. And their colors are blue and white.

That's really confusing.

It was like the dude with the leaf on top of the Bruin's logo. Right.

It's upsetting. It is. And you're not sure what to do with yourself, but it was delicious food. So you get over it. All right. So today, I fully expected this to be a funeral, and it isn't.

Is that why we wear black?

Yeah, I think that's what it is. I also think I find it slimming. That's why I'm wearing my black. But guys. It looks hot. Guys, the Toronto Maple leaves are alive.

It's So they're so back.

You think they're back?

They're so back. No. You know what? It was over. It was very jover. But now I think we've never been more back.

Simply the backest we've ever been.

The backest we've ever been. Baby got back. In the series. That's right. Matthew Nies, who was frigging awesome. All game, all game. And I think there's a couple of teams looking to shake their reputation as playoff chokers. The great thing is that one of them has to win and one of them has to lose.

Are you talking about the Bruins shaking themselves as a playoff choker?

How many consecutive games where they could eliminate an opponent have they lost?

Is that five now?

Well, three against the Panthers. Okay, four. One against Ali. So four. And then I don't know how 2022-Yeah, you got to go back to the previous playoff.

Can we go look?

Yeah, I'll do it. No, Jesse's going to go look. He's on a laptop. Who did they even play in 2022? Trying to remember.

I can't remember either, but they- I bet they choked, though.

I bet they choked. That's all they do is joke.

They did it again.

They did it again. They could have wrapped it in five.

Yeah, just like everybody thought, the Bruins are the ones we're talking about choking.

100%. They could have wrapped it in game five in overtime in Boston, but they blew it. But enough about last year's series against the Panthers. Matthew Nize with the winner in this one.

What do you got, Jess? Bruins Panthers, it was in 2022. Oh, again? No, Bruins Carolina. Sorry, that was 2023. Bruins Carolina's 2022. They lost in seven games.

Were they the team who was up three, too.

But either way, Steve, a seventh game is an eliminated.

Yeah, there's at least one. So five. Bruins Hurricanes. The Bruins had to win game six.

Five straight. Five straight games where they could have won a series, and they've lost all of them. There's a team that I believe is near and dear to our hearts, who we often criticize for things of that nature, and And the Bruins, I mean, the Leaps have won an elimination game a lot more recently than that.

Stop it. I don't remember that series at all. I don't either. Bruins: Hurrican 2022. Wow.

Not a single thing.

No. No. No. Sorry.

I mean, I don't remember every series ever.

The last Bruins' playoff series win is 2021. They beat the Caps in the first round. It's the 2021-2021 season.

Wow. Wait, they haven't made it to-The second round since 2021.

If you include this year, they haven't made it yet. So it's two consecutive seasons they lost in the first round.

Man, I can't imagine what that's like.

No, not us.

Can you imagine? The Leaps have been in the second round more recently than the Bruins. Listen, let us talk our shit.

We deserve to.

Well, okay. I do want to say this. No, no, no. You You can talk, you can enjoy. But I think that this game was the reason why people were so upset after game 4, because you know that the talent is there and you know that they weren't bringing It happens so often.

They're like, Oh, guess we got to buckle down. Their record, they posted it during the broadcast. Their record without Matthews is stupid. One of the things they always do so well, even though Matthews is an extremely good defensive forward, is they lock it down. They start paying attention to details. They miss details once in this damn game, and it cost them a goal.

Yeah, that Trent-Freder goal. Was that the first or second shot of the game for the Bruins?

It was their second shot of the game. Second shot. Wall had as many. He was arguably the least first star, and heading into the second period He had as many saves as he had goals allowed.

Wow.

They got some saves. They played tidy defense. Max Domi really elevated his game, going from not playing center, really, to-Centering the top line.First-line center is pretty difficult.

I like Minch's game. Here's what Max Domi said, Playing for our lives, we weren't going to be denied. I love that quote.

That's a good quote. Come on.

Come on. Are you going through the game? Are we doing the normal thing?

Do you want to go through it, period by period?

Nope. Knuxpreds.

I think the first thing is that, obviously, you get that initial jump in the first period. The way that the leaves come out, again, this is why leaf fans get so upset. I know. That's why it's so frustrating when Sheldon keeps like, You can't question the effort, because this game is proof that you can question the effort.

I will kick you down the stairs.

It's proof. They came out and they were shot out of a cannon and they were awesome. When you play like that, when you create turnovers, when you create opportunities, you get weird goals.

Dude, you know what they did to lead to the first goal for the first time this damn series? Drove the net.

Well, not just that, both goals. But you get weird goals. You get Jake McCabe with a floater and somehow it gets-That shouldn't go in. That shouldn't go in. But there are goals like that in the NHL because it's a flying disk that are going to go in.

The Leaps were so good at taking away Andre Vasilevski's eyes last year, and they haven't done a lick of that. It's the same coach. It's mostly the same personnel. If anything, the Leifs team this year is better built, especially in the top six, to do what they did last year. And there's just been none of it. None of it. They've been winning face offs all series. How ironic is it that Mitch Marner helped? He assisted on a goal off a set play off a draw.

I guess they work sometimes.

I guess they work sometimes. Maybe he was right. Maybe he was right, and it was William Neylander who was wrong.

The thing I think about that first goal that I think about the most is Max Domi's first period face off stats. That's how they got that first goal. He wins that face off. I think it was nine and one. It was nine for eleven or something like that. That's crazy. It was that. He was unreal in the face-off. That was a face-off win. Mitch Marner passes it back right to McCabe, and it goes in. Seeing everybody step up in place of Matthews just so early on was incredible to see. You saw there was with a sense of urgency, and you come out playing with that. The Bruins looked nervous very early on. If we get to the next part after that, it's the Trent-Fredrick goal, I don't blame Glees for that goal at all. It hit off a heel. The heel of a skate.

Robert Johnson was doing a lot of standing around.

He was, but I feel like everybody was in position. I get you want to go up the boards, but if a guy, they said it on the broadcast, if a guy's open in the middle of the ice and you pass the fuck, you take that pass every single time.

How about this? Stop going up the boards. It keeps costing you. Stop it.

We're talking about a random little disk that's floating on ice, hit off the back of a skate heel, and it went in the net after a shot.

That's okay. But I'll give Trent Frederick credit. He was in front of the net. And the least We're not sending people to the front of the net most of this series.

Maybe they're most offensively dangerous player through five games. He should have had two last night, but Joseph Wall said, No.

The other thing that was absent from the first period for the least were stupid penalties. You had one penalty called in the first period, and it was against Boston. The least power plate still didn't look great.

No, it was horrendous.

Throughout the game, it didn't look great.

Someone posted a stat in the chat last night during the stream. Shout out to everyone who watched the stream, by the way. That the least were only getting outscored five on five, seven to six in the series. They were getting outscored five, one on special teams. That is such Much bad news for the Bruins, especially losing game five, because next game is game six. If you don't win that, it's game seven. You're going to get arbitrarily assigned some referee, a crew of guys. You're not going to get one of the new guys. You're not going to get Garret Rank or any of that. Who? Well, exactly. He's not getting game seven. He might. I don't think so. Watch. He's going to get assigned in something.

Something's going to happen. Okay, but I don't know who this is. Who is Garret Rank? Is he new?

He's one of the younger reps. There you go. You're going to get Steve Cazari last night, who I thought did a great job. Did anyone else? Steve Cazari did a great job. A brave job is what he did. Oh, God. That's what you're going to get in game 5, and that's what you're going to get in game 6, and that's what you're going to get in game 7. The whistle's going away for the first time in years is music to the leaf's ears. Don't even look at the ref. Someone slashes you. Don't even look. They're not calling it, and don't ask them to call it because then you're going to get it. Don't even look at them. You don't want to be on the power play. It sucks. You don't want them to put you on the penalty kill. It sucks. Oh, the Bruins, they're doing a lot of chiming, a lot of shaking, and they're falling deeper and deeper into that quicksand.

It's delicious. The Bruins have trailed for a grand total of 20 minutes and 42 seconds through five games this series.

I'm surprised it's that much.

It's pretty wild. But they did trail in the first. And obviously in the second period, it was a bit of a penalty peluza. And the Bruins did start to claw back. The Leaps had outshot them so much in the first period. You started to see a little bit more Boston Bruins' hockey, although they took I mean, really, it was... I'm looking at the penalties here. Nylander, Maroon in the first couple of minutes, the two of them, and then Coyle, Edmondson, Marshan all at the same time. Somehow, the Leaps ended up. I figured... I understood why Boston Bruins fans were booing that.

I didn't.

I got why they were upset about that.

Are you going to take that? Nhl head office, are you going to take that? Listen, I could never.

You could never?

I could never. Toronto, put yourself in that position. I could never. I could absolutely never treat an official like that. Shocking behavior.

You mean Brad Marshan screaming at the official?

The way he attacked that official and the official defended themselves?

I thought Brad Marshan got clobbered. According to Jack Edwards.

It was Joe Bowen, wasn't it?

No, no, no. Was Jack Edwards? He said the official's clobbered.

There were so many great calls last night that I don't remember them call, but Jack Edwards calling Steve Cazari a coward after the second period was hilarious. Listen, a lot of people are like, That's really funny. A lot of people got way too high up on their high horse, and how could you... Okay, all right, relax. But that's going to play so poorly internally in the NHL.

What do you mean, the call? Or Brad Marshan yelling at the ref? Because I don't think... I think Brad Marshan has got enough bank notes at the Bank of Goodwill.

No, the call. The call from Jack Edwards. But he's doing what every person who's retiring should do.

Burning every bridge on the way out?

Forget it. Forget it. What are you going to do? Fire me? Here we go. Here we go. No, every Lee fan...

It's like a painting. Look at that.

Look at... Oh, that's beautiful.

For everybody listening, the shot of the official holding Brad Marshan on the ice. He saw a red mist when he hit the ice, and he realized that it was an official who grabbed him and threw him down. I thought he was going to snap in that moment. He, for a split second, he realized, Oh, I can't. I can't punch this guy in the face. That's not a leaf.

A lot of people calling him a diver for this. I'm not sure.

No, he was falling. The official came in and swooped him right to the ground. Just whacked him. Yeah.

The other great thing about everyone- The big head. Yeah, he eat shit.

Yeah, he was trying to get him away from Nye's there.

Well, you know what? Everyone had to step up. A lot of people were like, Oh, Marsha and the officials. Oh, look at them. They're focusing too much on Marsha, and I'm like, Pontus Holmberg? Like the other penalty. Yeah, but that's I love Pontus. Thank you. I'll take that trade. Good trade. That's a fucking awesome trade. Hey, we'll trade you Pontus Holmberg for Brad Marshan, one for one. Welcome aboard, Brad. Welcome aboard. Here's your Jersey 63s available. Here you go. Are you kidding me?

I said Nye, it's Humbert.

Yeah, no. I'll take that trade, too, even though I love Nye last night. It is Humbert all over him. I am just really quietly starting to... Well, I'm not quiet about it at all, but he is quietly putting together some really good games. You want more from his game? Man, some more offense would be great.

I'm just going to say a few more goals.

It'd be great. But this guy has just a gritty pain in the ass. I think he needs, and you can't address this until next season, really. I want him to have bigger line mates. I think if they had Bobby McMahon, who we haven't heard that name in a while, they talked about him potentially coming back for game 6 earlier this series. Guess what tomorrow is? Game 6. I would love one of Nye's or McMahon with Holmberg because I think a little bit more size on that line and keep the speed of Yarn Croke could make it really effective.

We are jumping ahead here, but one of the things you talked about Nye is right off the top, and I think it's important that we highlight him. David Pasternack, in a Scrum, was going after Morgan Reilly. Matthew Nye, who's a big boy, stepped in and he said, No, you're not going to go him. Go me. That's what I thought. And then when Pasternack doesn't want to do it, he pushes him and goes, That's what I thought. I think That's the Bruins' playbook. That's the Bruins' playbook used against them. That's what... It's awesome. Also, I can't see Pasternack fighting because I think that's a stupid trade for the Bruins. You need Pasternack on the ice. Yeah.

If you're Nye, you know that and you ignore that very obvious fact, and talk your shit. Talk your shit. It's awesome. It's hilarious. Also, I don't care who you are. You can go me. Bo Horvack got into a fight with the leaf this season. Do you remember who it was? No. Simone Benoît. Oh, there you go. What? Pardon? Yeah.

Gretsky had fights. You won't do it.

You won't do it. You didn't do it. Yeah, talk your shit. It's the playoffs.

I don't know how much it did for the game. I don't know if it was like... Because there are times when Brad Marshan, especially at the height of the Bergeron era and the Charra era, where he could go in and he could change a game by doing something like that. I don't know if this changed the game, but it certainly gave Matthew Nye a bit of a pep.

He The team fired up. His pep was from opening whistle. All that stuff about the college lungs, or he doesn't have the stamina for this. Not last night. No, last night, he was awesome. Last night, he was going. And earlier in the series, we talked about John Tavares playing pretty well. And you know, Mitch not having the best game on his line. I mean, Matthew Nies was part of that. And we found that he has another gear. And how about this ridiculousness? It's the last four or five. Actually, no. Every single overtime winner, the Leaps have scored since signing Matthew Nies to an NHL contract he was on the ice for. He scored last night. They didn't win any in overtime against the Panthers. Game 6 against the Lightning. He was on the ice. He helped set up to Varas. He might have gotten a system. I'm not sure. The Kerfoot goal, he was on with the second power play unit who scored. And the Reilly goal, he was on the ice. O'reilly went it back to Reilly. Dude, this guy is clutch. It's awesome. I love this kid. It's crazy. They go, Oh, yeah, and he's 21.

I go, Sometimes you forget.

Yeah, you forget. A precious boy.

In the ramp up to the playoffs, you forget. Because it's all about now, now, now, now, now When he's at his best, guys, I would say that he creates space and creates chaos, and he's a big body and skates well, and all the things that you would want from a power forward, right?

Yes. That's a great archetype for what a power forward should be. He was a factor in the Florida Panthers series last year until, again, he was intentionally concussed. I will stick to my guns on that one. There's no doubt about it. Watch the play. How do we feel... We're going into the third period here. I know we jumped ahead, jumped around a little bit. But I want to ask how you guys felt between second intermission and the start of the third period. How did you feel about it?

I don't think the play changed that much from what happened in the first. It was tilted towards the Leifs' ice. The thing about all those opportunities on the power play is that they never capitalized on them. That was the most frustrating thing. It felt like a game where the Lefs were going to outplay Boston and have all of the chances, and then they're going to get burned on a Boston goal. But thank God they got Joseph Wall, who stood in there and was consistently throughout the game, not just in the overtime where he started and he literally saved their season. I thought in the second there, he was huge. And thank goodness he's there to save them because if they continue to not capitalize on all of those power plays, they were going to lose that season. And they got the timely goal in OT. But heading into third, it felt like if they don't get one here, it's going to be a disaster.

To your point about Joseph Wall, did you guys feel like this team just played? I mean, first off, they played with urgency and they actually came out and, Hey, by the way, that is how you're supposed to play playoff hockey every game. I want to reiterate that. That can't be like playoff hockey, every game is like that, fighting for every puck, doing it. That's what the Leaps did last night. We need to see that consistently. But I do want to say when they needed a save, they got one. Some really tricky ones, ones that were not easy and ones that you're like, sometimes it's like the play breaks down, the mistake happens, you need to save.

They cleared some rebounds, too.

They did.

It's almost like defense is like, you ever think about walking while you're walking? No, just me.

No, I don't think about it.

Oh, well, some weird people like me are listening right now. Messes you up. Start thinking too much about how your legs are moving.

What your gait is.

Yeah, you start feeling stupid. Are my hips aligned? You start feeling dumb. I almost wonder if that's how the leaves play defense in front of Samsonoff. They think so much about it that they do it shitty. They think so much about it that they do it poorly. Last night just felt a lot more natural. Really, they only missed the one assignment. Everything that the Bruins got that led to a big save, I generally felt was their doing. You know what I mean? Like the Bruins earned it rather than... So much of the first four games of the series felt like the Leifs just gave it to them.

Oh, yeah.

Here you go. The Lefs had to work so... The Calories spent per goal for Toronto versus Boston. The difference is wild. What the Leifs had to do to get something, anything on Swayman, let alone past him, versus what the Bruins had to do to score. We were talking about it. Assuming the Bruins one and five, they're going to play against Florida, and they're going to be fresh as a daisy. They haven't had to work for anything, and they had to work last night. It's nice.

I think you're still a little too hard on Robertson on the Trent-Fedrick goal. He was in position, the pocket off escape. Yeah. He was very much in position. He was in front of the net. But with the chances that the Bruins had, or the least had, sorry, that they didn't capitalize on, the max Domi two on one. Where he literally did not look shoot at any point during his 30-second just glide up the ice. It was ridiculous. William Neylander coming out of the box, having a break away that hit off the post. Then Bertuzzi fed Mitch in front of the net. He had a one-timer that he whiffed on. Then Mitch Marner drifting across the middle of the whole zone, trying to make a pass. It goes off of Bruins' player, getting the punk back, and then making another pass, cross the entire zone to Calleigh Yarncroke, who whiffs on the one-timer. They had all of these opportunities. It felt like they needed to capitalize it and they wouldn't get one. They were going to lose, but then they held for it. It was good.

Here, watch Coach Dangle here. Max, you got a two on one next time? Go blocker. It's going in. It's 100% going.

Well, you're going anti-gunner stall. Gunner Stahl. Gunner Stahl went... He was too fancy. He went glove side. He's fancy.

He'll go glove. No, because glove is on the side that Tyler Bertuzzi was on. And Swayman's like, Yeah, nice try, Max. And he just cheated that way. Maybe you'll get five hole, maybe.

Max has a good little snapshot, too.

This is a tidy goal. Well, when he did that little leg kick, I'm like, That's a shootout move. He's going to shoot.

It would never even look. Even when he tried to fake, he was faking to the path. It was awful.

So his body was cheated towards to Bertuzzi the whole time.

And he's looking at him in the eye.

Yeah, dude, I'm telling you, you shoot that and you shoot it towards the not Tyler Bertuzzi side of the net. It's going in.

It's going in. He never had that thought in his mind. Max, shoot it.

So throughout the third period, it's a bit of a shoving match, bit of a tight arm wrestle. You're just holding on, right? I have to say I was pretty Zen throughout the third period just because the My heart rate was down because the stupid chances per 60 were so down in this game. Like you said, Boston earned the chances that they got. The Leaps didn't give it to them. We didn't get anything like Marshawn, Pastr with T. J. Brodie making a dive at the blue line to try to break up the play. None of that. And T. J. Brodie notably was out of the lineup again. And I think rightfully so. Lilligran, I think, was hurt, but his back.

I don't think he was.

He downplayed that he was injured, but Evander Cain did the same thing a few weeks ago, and then we find out, Oh, he's got a sports hernia.

But I feel like Lilligran felt like he could have played through it.

Yeah?

Yeah, well, I guess- That's based on his comments. I guess the argument is like, All right, you got 100% of TJ Brody or like, I don't know, 60, 70, 80% of Lilligran, but I think we've landed on the injured Lilligran's better.

Yeah, and I think this game proved that it was weird that Brody went in in retrospect.

I understand it, but- Well, it's weird because it was weird when they took 68 games before they scratched them.

I think that's the coaches. That was the new Justin Hall, where it's like you're putting a player in a position where maybe at one point they had the ability to succeed in the positions you're putting them in, but they don't right now.

Coaching staff had a really good game. They did. Really good game. Like the deployment, Lilligren, I thought had a really good game.

Hold on. Let's focus on the coaching staff here.

What I'm saying is Lilligren being in there, moving the Puck helped generate off. You need to find offense elsewhere. If Matthews isn't frigging playing, you also just need to find it in general in the series. Lilligran did a good job of that. Go look at Morgan Reilly's Ice Time. The forward group, it's not like the leaves rolled four lines, but it's also not like they completely leaned on Marner. Marner was third in ice time or something like that. A lot of the offense and Puck moving came from Reilly, who just had green light. And there was a ridiculous stat from Kevin Pipetty. Elia Labushkin hasn't been on the ice for a five on five goal against, and he's second on the team in, wait for it, scoring. He has three assists, which ties him for second on the team in scoring.

It's madness. Marner, yes, third on the team in time on ice. Jt, Willy Marner Top three. Wow. Yeah. This is amongst forwards. If you add defenseman, Reilly played 26. He led the team.

26.

Look how much he bloody played.

But that was the best Morgan Reilly game of the series. He was so good last year in the playoffs against Tampa and against Florida. After a rough year of fighting injuries and that thing. It was something that I was looking for going into this series was how good was Morgan Reilly going to be. I felt like a lot of the plays have gone through Mitch Marner. Seeing them go through Morgan Reilly last night, what I liked about it is they set up faster.

Oh, yeah.

It's just that Morgan Reilly doesn't need the time to think. I think when you give Mitch a chance along the half board, he can cycle pucks very, very quickly on the offensive zone. But when he's getting set up, it's almost like it's the second quarter of a basketball game, but it's game 43, where people are just getting in a position or whatever. Morgan Reilly doesn't do that. He speeds up the play. He doesn't force it, but he speeds it up.

I thought the the Mitch Marner missed one-timer to Calleigh Yarnker was a good example of how his game doesn't translate to playoff hockey. I feel like in the regular season, you get so much time, you get an opportunity to try those plays a bunch of times during a game. He's still trying to do those things in the playoffs. You just need to be quicker with the park. You don't have the opportunity every single possession to drift across the entire zone and have two attempts at a pass. He fanned on one time or two. Yeah. The one where Batuzzi tried to feed it out in front to him. I wish he would just play quicker and not just hold on to it and make the perfect pass every time. Simple.

Yeah. He doesn't play that way. Because he can. If he simplifies his game, he's better playing a simple game than the average player. He doesn't We know he's great. You're right, Jesse, you can do all those things in the regular season. But when you simplify your game, his simplified game is going to be better than, I don't know, nick Robertson's simplified game. Do you know what I'm saying?

He just computes hockey faster than everybody else. What that line needed a little bit more. They had the puck a lot, which is really solid. But in the offensive zone, there were so many times where they had the fuck and they have time, and they have space, and no one's in front. I'm like, go to the net If Bertuzzi wasn't there, Domi wasn't there and Marner wasn't there. No one was there. Someone's got to go to the net.

I don't think, as Jesse said, I'm not sure Mitch is that guy for going to the net, and Domi is a playmaker. Domi would be better in front of them. He's a tougher player.

He has a goal in the series. Guess where it's from?Go to the net.Go to the net.

Obviously, still issues on the power play. I didn't hate the penalty kill, but I'm not confident in it.

I will say this. If Matthews or McMahon comes back for game 6, I think it's time. Reevo has got to come out.

Over, you keep Robertson in?

To me, it's tough. It's either Robertson or Reevo. Doer has got to stay in.

Yes. I don't know what... At this point, what does Ryan Reeves bring to the table?

Yeah, you need offense too much, I think, to take Robertson out. Reeves Last night, there were games in the series where I'm like, Yeah, he's banging, he's crashing, he's generating a bit. He had a couple of nice stick plays in this game. He doesn't play enough to keep someone like McMahon, if he's healthy enough, Definitely not Matthews out of the lineup, and they need the offense too badly to take Robertson.

Yeah, I feel. When the fourth line was out there, they didn't have a good game. Usually, the in-game would have been four. I was like, Oh, that was a good fourth-line game. When they were out there, they were effective and everything. It's wishy-washy game to game. You don't really know what you're going to get. Last night wasn't a good enough fourth-line game to justify having Ryan Reeves in the lineup. No.

You know what Keef is going to do. He's late in the game. He's going to go to Doer camp Yarn Croke. He's going to take Reeves off that line. Come on, man. It's too late in the series. You can't have passenger minutes here. He's got to come out. He wasn't effective enough in We know what's going to happen. In the first two periods, he's going to bang, bang, bang, crash, crash.

And then they can't play him in the third.

And then you can't play him in the third. In years past, I do think you've needed him out there. I just don't know if it's that type of series right now. I don't know if it's that type of series right now. The Bruins were playing a little bit not to lose, and they tried on a lot of occasions to be on their best behavior. I just don't know if you're going to need that big bad enforcer out there in game 6 and then hopefully game 7.

Well, they're not. The thing about it is that Reeves, and he's done this, first off, he brings the vibes. We love the vibes. Sure. Second thing is he has thrown the body and did set the tone early for a team that refused to be tough.

But you're starting- He's an early game and early series guy.

Sure, and that's fine. And I look at this and I go, Okay, the guys that are playing tough throughout the lineup, defense, it's Benwa, McCabe, Edmondson, Labushkin. And then on the forwards, you've got Bertuzzi, you've got Domi, you've got Nye, you've got all these guys guys that can bang and crash a little bit. Again, I'd like to see the leaves through the body a little bit more. But I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, Okay, to me, the only thing I will say is that nick Robertson, that goal aside, has made, again, some questionable decisions. Sure. My question is, if you're going to keep him in the lineup, which I agree you should, are you doing fourth-line all defense? So it's like, Kompf, Duhre, Yarncroke, or is Conf moving up? How do you deploy this line?

And that was, to Steve's point, at eight minutes, was around eight minutes left. That was Ryan Rees' last shift. Yes. But the fourth line had three more shifts after that. He went to his Conf, yarn, croke, doer line. And if that's going to be your fourth line when the games matter, when the game matters, why not just make that your fourth line?

I don't understand. So Robertson, Holmberg, McMahon, maybe, or do you put McMahon back with Tavares? See, I wouldn't do that right away because he's just coming back, right?

No, I'd probably do what I said a little earlier, McMahon with Holmberg and Yarn Crook. Then you have Robertson maybe on the right of Kampf and Doer.

See, I like what Jesse said. Put If they aren't crooking on the fourth line, make that your all defense line.

That's his fourth line.

I guess it's totally based on how the coaching staff deploys them. I mean, based on pay, Kampf should probably be paying a little bit more than Holmberg.

Well, it It doesn't matter now. It doesn't matter now.

I think as Leifs fans, we're just not familiar enough with this guy, but Conor Duhre can score. Sure. He hasn't really done it here, but he came to the least with double-digit goals.

Well, and I liked when... I do like the Lefs' line matchup against the Bruins. I don't mind that. I think they do well. I've been watching, obviously, a lot of the Knux series. And one line that stuck out to me is the Bluger D Giuseppe line, where they come out and they're a factor. And all they do, their whole job, is they get an offensive zone start, keep the fuck in the offensive zone. Four check, four check, four check, and then come off the ice.

The Bruins' fourth line, I feel like, isn't your typical fourth line. Your fourth line is typically chip it in and bang and crash and try to keep the fuck there and try to generate offense. The Bruin's fourth line is Boquist carries it in because he can. And then you start all the fourth line things and digging and battling.

But he's-Ferzó had a couple of good shots last night.

Yeah, but Boquist isn't chipping it in. What for? I'm to go around you. I'm frigging good. I shouldn't be here. It's all right to have a fourth-liner who's like, I don't belong here.

Yeah. So then let's get to overtime here because I thought I knew that I'm sitting here waiting for Steve's stream to finish so I can start mine. And I'm like, Well, I might be sitting for a few periods. And Drew's like, Get comfortable. It's going to be a while. And sure enough, it wasn't. It was a very, very quick overtime that could have ended, and nobody's paying attention to it today. The Bruins almost ended it.

Oh, yes. Yes, yes. Joseph Wall was just spectacular. He was... That's a hard game. The Leifs tried to get him acclimated by having him play the third period on game four. He faces two shots in the first period, and one of them bloody goes in. You get busier in the second, even He was a bit busier in the third, and then it's just a shooting gallery to begin over time. The fact that this season isn't over right now is owed nearly exclusively to Joseph Wall, other than it's difficult for him to score. Right.

Not impossible. And then the put goes the other way. And John Tavares, who deserves some credit because he had some real pep in his step. There's been questions about his speed in this period.

He was all over that. You just beat a guy wide with speed.

And he did. But what John Tavares did that we have been talking about for a few months, actually, we talked about it last year, too. He drove the net. The Lefs stopped driving the net in the play for some reason. And John Tavares just said, I'm going to use my big, thick kombucha legs, and I'm going to push into the net. And it created a rebound that Matthew Nies could bury.

Grislik was way too flat-footed on that. And I think if the whole team was healthy, he might not even play game six. But that is not the case. Right.

Well, Laura is already... Yeah, he didn't...

Laura is in there. Wotherspoon is in there. I think it's Peek who's injured.

Yeah. And Shattenkirk They pulled Shattenkirke. He wasn't playing last night.

Someone left the game. Didn't someone take a look to the face?

It was Carlo. Yeah. What I read this morning is that he may not be back. It might be worse. It might be something worse. I don't know. Nobody seems to know, but there might have been... He did not return for overtime.

The problem with streaming the games, at least for me, is if you miss it, you miss it.

Sure. It's gone.

If you can't find a clip, it's gone. It's gone forever. You don't get to read all the discourse about it. No one even explains it to you. I'm sure I'll catch up after the show. It's literally, do the stream, shoot the LFR, go to bed, wake up, drive to the podcast. I haven't had a time to watch anything since.

Yeah, that's fair. With John Tavares, he's establishing himself as an absolute clutch player. If he's the one who ended the non-second-round streak at the OT winner in Tampa, and now he's the one who saves the season with a drive to the net, I feel like, are we not giving John Tavares credit for showing up in the big moments? Plays the most minutes out of any forward, Matthews is out.

People can't get past the number.11 Mills is-The contract? Yeah, they can't get past the number. I saw someone say, I was like, Oh, Tavares was invisible before that goal. I'm like, What game are you watching? I think he's been great all series. I'm serious. Even the games where his line has been caved in, I'm like, Okay, but out of the three, he's the best. It's the other guys are not matching him. Matthew Nye and Mitch Marner matched him last night, I thought. Marner was big when he had to be, and Matthew Nye stepped it up.

How about that Matthew Nye celebration when that goal went in? Just got to roll. Yeah. Yeah. That is...

Dude, you're 21. You scored a playoff winner in the show.

To keep your team alive.

Come on.

In Boston.

He's not even as old as I was when I graduated. Get out of here. That's got to be an unreal feeling.

I don't know if you saw it, but I loved when they all jumped in and hugged each other and the birds fans in the first row were like, double bird.

No, the best one was the guy with his hat. He took it off and he whipped it against the glass and then went, he folded his arms. That one was my favorite. Double Birds was great on national TV. Love that.

That comes all after Joseph Wall saved the season. Yes. There's two clear goals that Boston should have had on that He was the worst five minutes OT, and he saved the season. It was awesome. I don't know. I don't like doing the revisionist history because a lot of people are like, You should have started Joseph Wall from the get-go. No, he didn't hurt it. From February onwards, since he came back, he was not good. No. And Samy, that was his net, and he was established in there. But now you see that Samy couldn't hold it, now it's Joseph Wall's turn. That's fair. It's okay that it played out this way.

It's very frustrating that it did play out this way. Wole was the starter. He was set up to be the starter. And he goes down, and Sammie played really, really well.

Yeah.

And he became the pace car. And Wole came back, and he couldn't keep up. He couldn't keep up. And then the last two games of the season, second last game, you're like, Sammie was pretty bad tonight. Last game of the season, you're like, he was bad again. And he wasn't very good through four games of the series. And it's like, this is why I'm so frustrated and done with that player is the decision going into the playoffs went as it should have gone. If they give Wolf the Net, it'd be like, Why?

It would be disrespectful to Elias Amstinov and everything he did that season.

Yes, it would be Wold backing into the job.

Do you not play the games to earn your spot and establish the lineup and everything?

You could argue, Samy played his way out of the job. You couldn't argue Wul played his way into it. He has now. I mean, a little bit of both happened. Wolf played his way into it, and Sammie 100% played his way out of it. I wouldn't have done it differently. The only thing you You could ask is, Hey, Sammie, if you're going to turn into a pumpkin, can you do it a little sooner? That's why I'm done there, because how are you supposed to make plans? If this goes seven and they can't or even if the leaves get eliminated, in this series. I think that's the biggest... Well, a lot of people are going to point to what ifs, like what if Nylander played the first half of the series? What if Matthews wasn't sick or hurt?

No, this year, the result is the only thing that matters.

The result is the only thing that matters. But people are going to ask those questions. To me, the biggest one is, what if they had a goalie for the first four games of the series?

Well, it's something certainly that they're going to have to solve this offseason, but it's for this offseason. Joseph Wall came in last year and was very, very good. He came in yesterday and he was very, very good. In fact, I thought he was really good when Jesse and I were sitting in Boston Pizza, drowning our sorrows in Boston Pizza. He was good in third period of Game 4.

He was.

He made some sales. That's the gig. Here's the question. You got a couple of things. We talked about Bobby McMahon, but obviously, the thing that we haven't talked about is the absence of Austin Matthews. Really, that's why we all thought it was funeral planning time because this is a big player for them. But what I believe that I saw, and you guys could tell me if I'm wrong here, was a team previously that was expecting Austin Matthews to do a lot of the goal scoring. When he's not there, they were like, Oh, well, it better be one of us then.

Well, They won their only game without him, seven, nothing this year.

They just dial in. If Austin's not 100%, do you roll the same lines?

Right. This is what I was thinking. I don't know his injury.

He may not be 100%, let's say 80%.

If he's 50%, do you play him sparingly on your fourth line? Game seven is when you throw Everything. I was going to say out the window, that's when you throw the kitchen sink onto the ice. What's his name? Fittoric? Robbie Fittoric, just throw the bench onto the ice. You just do everything. And you know how we're talking about, should nick Robertson play on the fourth line? Or do you do this or do... Matthews, if 10 minutes is all he can give you, put him out there.

Yeah, but it's 10 minutes of Matthews at 30% better than 100% of nick Robertson.

It's better than going home.

No, but that's not the question.

I understand what you're asking.

I think I would rather have nick Robertson in the lineup than Matthews just trying to limp out there. Because what they showed last night, the thing is, when you take somebody off of a professional team, the other guys are still there. No, I know. It's like when an NBA team is missing their star player, the team doesn't go out there and score 30 points in a game. When every star is out in a hockey game, the team still scores goals. I feel like they're playing a different style of game, obviously, because when you have Matthews, he's such a lightning rod that you have to play in a certain way when he's on the ice. He's going to try and get his goals. When he's not out there, the team is still good. They showed that. If he's 50% Matthews, I don't think you use him because you play this style that you played last night, and you perfectly find you're capable of beating this Bruins team that I think on paper, you should be able to beat regardless of if you have Matthews or not. So if he's too injured, don't play him.

Jesse, adding to that, you're committing 20 minutes to Matthews if he's playing. There's no world that he's not playing 10. This is the problem. Or that he's playing 10.

Coaches don't look at it like, Oh, %. Is he 50? They look at it as cleared and not cleared.

If you're on the ice, you are playing. Matthews isn't playing a fourth-line role. Then who knows if he goes out there, he plays the first period, he's dehydrated again, and then you're playing with 11 forwards? You're You're going to put yourself in that position again? I don't like that.

I do wish people would stop trying to guess.

Yeah, I think that's human nature, man.

I know it's human nature, but he's not playing because he has a tummy ache. Are you thick?

Just let it go. Who cares? Yeah, I don't really. Who cares? Like you said, what do you always say about the internet? You could find anybody saying anything on the internet. That's true. Right? So don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it. A witch put a spell on him. Right.

I mean, Listen, I think people took my comments about the William Neylander thing the wrong way. I got a couple of emails from people going, Migraines are not a joke. I wasn't saying that migraines were a joke. I wasn't calling him... What I said was, I don't believe teams when they tell me it's a head injury that's a non-concussion. That's what I'm saying. I could see a player sitting out because of migraines. I just have the right to question it. I have the right to say, it's not that I don't believe you on the migraines thing. Actually, it is that I don't believe you on the migraines thing. The NHL has a pretty sorted history with ignoring concussions. That's how I feel about that. It doesn't mean that I'm diminishing anybody's migraines. Specifically, I was asking producer Drew because he gets them about what it's like. I think producer nick gets them, too. It's like they vomit and they get sick.

Yeah, I don't... It's brutal. I don't know. You always hear like, Oh, I got a migraine, or whatever. I think people misdiagnose themselves with migraines because the way people describe them, I'm convinced now that I've never had one.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I get lots of headaches, but...

I've never had one. I know I haven't. Thank God. Knock on wood. I don't know. Now, the last thing I think we should hit is So we did them, Austin Matthews. We did the Bobby McMahon. Now, looking forward to game six, the Leaps have lost seven straight on home ice.Not that that matters.Are you serious? Yeah, in the playoffs. As I told you, Keefe's home record in the playoffs as a Leaps coach is 4-12.

That's unbelievable.

How do they shift the narrative on that? How do they change that?

You need some... I think it's a bit overblown.

You wouldn't say it's nothing, though.

It's not nothing. They played a very composed game in Boston in game five. Don't be rattled by the moment. Stick to the things that were going well. Don't take any stupid penalties. An advantage to you, it's game six. There are going to be fewer. Refs, they don't want to call it. Yes. Refs don't want to be West Macaulay. They don't want to be-They don't want to be brave.

Well-it was brave refereies.

The call on Justin Hall, whether you think it was the right one or the wrong one, let's say 100% it was the right one. It was the story coming out of that game in 2022. Nobody wants that, right? So that's to the least advantage. Stay out of the box, get some saves from your goalie. And I think it's that simple. I don't think you have to grossly change your game. I think the guy who needs to screw his head on the tightest is Sheldon Keeve. Don't get overly obsessed with last change.

Oh, his line matching stinks anyway. It doesn't matter.

Just play the players. Do what you did last time, man. And trust your guys. Trust your guys. When you hardcore a line match like that, I feel like it shows a lack of trust in the other guys. Yeah. And those guys are going to... I think it creates anxiety.

Well, you feel like you're playing on the backfoot because you're focused on who's out there rather than playing the game. Yes.

You're focused on, All right, I got my matchup. I got my matchup. When the situation arises where Jim Montgomery catches you or the Bruins cycle it for a little bit and they get to you, you're going, No, no, no, no, no, Hiring somebody who can run a power play.

I don't think we can bank on Sheldon Keefe not doing something wonky with the fourth line.

That's an indictment. That's rough. He's not good at line changes. He's not. That's true.

He'll double shift guys when they don't need to, and they'll lead to a goal because they're tired. He'll play the fourth line when he doesn't have to. He'll change up the lines late in game to lines he hasn't played with all season long. He's not good at line changes.

I think the key to winning at home is keeping it simple. What do you do on the road? You play the cards you dealt. Oh, these guys are out there. Better adapt. You know what I mean? Jeez, watch some game tape from the road.

Who's more nervous in your mind? Boston, blowing it again, or Toronto, nervous in front of the home crowd?

Boston. The Leaps are already dead. They're already dead. I was asked a spectacular question by Tugie. He does a lot of-He's great.NHL 24 content.Tugie..

He, unfortunately, cheers for the wrong team. Over the last few days before Game 5 or leading in the Game 5, we were talking about Tread Marner, Fire Shanehan, Fire Keef.

How far would the Leifs have to get to undo all of that?

Third round.

That was my answer. That was my answer, and it still might not be enough. Last year, we were like, They did it. They did it. Then they got knocked out in five in the second round, and we realized how not close to winning the Stanley Cup five playoff wins is. You need 16.

You need to get to 9 or 10 before I'm willing to entertain no changes.

Oilers in 2022 went all the way to the Western Conference final. They still only managed eight. They got swept by the avalanche. They got halfway there. Sixteen wins is so hard. If you don't get at least halfway there, I think everything is set in motion. The Bruins, they were set to fire. Oh, my God. What's his name? What's his name? The GM? The coach who they won with in 2011.

Oh, oh, my God. Gassidy?

No, no. In 2011.

2011, sorry.

No, they won the Cup with him. His name escapes me. Claude Julian. Claude Julian. Thank you. Jeez. They were down 2-0 to Montreal in the first round. No, you know what? I told this story yesterday, and I got it wrong. It was 2013 against the Leifs. They blow that series. They blow that 3-1 lead. I remember all the stories heading into game seven were, If the Bruins blow this, he He's fired. He's gone. And why not? You blew a three-one lead in the first round. You stink. What happens? They win with a historical comeback, an historic comeback. You go all the way to the Stanley Cup final. Game six, he kept his job for a couple more years, riding on that. They were about to fire the guy, but that's how far he had to get. So the Leifs, they're dead already. We have nothing to lose. That's how they should be looking at this. Sheldon Keef is like, I'm a fired guy who just happens to be on the bench for this game. Shana Khan, I'm just along for the ride. Hopefully, they win. I guess we'll see. Marner? I like it here. I grew up here.

I'd like to continue winning here. That'd be cool. Maybe even 4-7, buy myself a couple more days. So many Any of these guys, their fate is basically carved in the stone with the caveat that they got to get at least three rounds deep. You were down 3-1 in the first round, you're already dead. Go zombie mode and drag these guys into the grave with you.

I like that. And if you're the Bruins, and you could see it from Bruins' fans' reactions last night, Jim Montgomery, for as great as he's been as a coach in this series, if they lost If they lost the next game, they're going to be questions. If they lost H7, they're going to be very loud questions. Brad Marshan, as captain, this is his first full season. Is he able to do this without Chara and Bergeron and all the other great players? These questions start to pop up. Is the defense strong enough? Is it deep enough?

Go look at Bruce Boudreau's career record as a head coach. Crazy good. He should never be without a job, ever. You know why he is? Playoffs. He's like 0 for 8 in game sevens. That's crazy. That's insane. It matters.

It matters big time. Interesting. Ladies and gentlemen, Tim Hortons Hockey's Greatest duos. Let's go. Let's go. Let's open this pack up, and I can hand you guys a card.

I can't open it. I already opened mine. Oh, okay. But so we can do two. Steve, you don't get one today. What? I got Dylan Genter Gunther, and Lawson Kraus of the Utah team. They are still wearing their coyotes uniforms, and they are in their defunct franchise, but they are soon to be of Utah. I got Emily Clarke and Kendall Coyne-Scofield. Emily Clarke, who was on Noxie & Cax. That is right. That is a fun one. Then I also have Brianne Jenner and Hannah Brandt. That's awesome.

Love that. Here's what I got. I got Stephen Stamkos with Braden Point.

How are they connected?

They are both Canadian. Braden Point is the cool alternate jersey on there. We got a Columbus Blue Jackets card. We got Kiryl Marcinko and Johnny Goodro.Nice..

All the goals and all the assists.

Linked by numbers, this is Cole Caulfield and Kevin Fjala. In common, they wear the number 22.

I like that. Now, don't forget to pick up Tim Hortons' greatest duo's booklet so you can put all the cards in the booklet. We are, look. See? You see? It looks good, doesn't it? So Steve?Put those in. Put those in. Grab them at Tim Hortons right now. We're talking about two icons on every card, rivals, teammates, family, and more connected like never before. It's the new Tim's Hockey, Greatest Duos trading cards. Check them out right now. Well, we're going to have another stream tomorrow night and announced on Steve's stream last night, Hockey Rants and Raves, out October the 15th. So the manuscript is submitted. How do you feel?

Please buy this book. It almost killed me. Yeah, no, it's in editing with Harper Collins. Copy editing, which is a late editing process. They'll send the manuscript back to me. I'll look at it, do a little bit of this, do a little bit of that. They'll look at it, make sure it's not shitty, and then it'll go to print.

We got a couple of inquiries about signed books. People were like, I'm hesitant to buy it because I want a signed copy. Can you explain how you'll get signed copies into people's hands?

Yes. We're obviously down the line here. It is May first. This doesn't come out until October 15th.

It hasn't gone to print yet.

Yeah, there are no physical copies.

There are no physical copies of the book.

Wait a second.

This is all theoretical.

This is a It's a hypothetical book. No, no.

But if you buy a copy, you can always bring it to a live event. Oh, 100%. It's okay.

Yes. And will we sell some on the store? I imagine so. I think one of the... Well, the biggest issue is they don't exist yet. The second biggest issue is we are not a big enough shop to accommodate a lot of sales. We sold a bunch of my first book. We still have some in the lobby here, and that took so much effort.

It takes hours of man hours from us personally doing things.

Yeah. Which we're happy to do, but it's very difficult.

We can't commit time to that all the time.

But it's hard cover, which the first one wasn't. You can pre-order it on Amazon, pre-order it on Indigo, Local. What is this store that it's on?

This is the publisher's website. This is Harper Collins.

Harper Collins. Interesting. Okay.

What's wrong?

No, because they saw the price and I'm Is this not who's publishing the book? Oh, no, it is. It is. No, this has been a complete whirlwind.

They should have the book on their site. No, they do. And then the links to wherever you want to buy it.

I'm surprised they don't have your face on it yelling, The Puck, The Puck, The Puck.

If you go to where this is, it has the links to where you can buy it.

Sorry. If it sounds like this is news to me, it's because it is. No, because yesterday, I didn't see these options. All I saw was Amazon and Indigo. No, no, Amazon, Burns & Noble, Books a Million. I don't even know what that is. Bookshop, Target, and Walmart. I didn't know we were in Target and Walmart. Let's frigging go. Hooray for a big publisher.

If you go to the link in the description right now, whether you're listening on YouTube or you're watching on YouTube or listening on podcasts, there'll be the link to the Harper Collins website. From there, you can go to wherever you want to purchase the book.

There you go. Yeah, several mental breakdowns in the process of writing this book. It is not a biography like the last one, and there is decidedly less zoo content.

Is there zoo content, though?

I think it's mentioned.

I would expect that very least.

I don't remember. I honestly don't remember. I got to read it again. But what they told me is at the beginning of it, they're like, We'd like you to basically do a bunch of short essays. I go, You mean like rants? They're like, Yep. Cool. I go off And some of it is chastising of hockey. Some of it is a love letter to hockey. It's a real good book. It comes out on the same day as Nazem Kaderi's.

Fuck. Obviously, you announced that during the stream last night, Yeah, that's okay. You get both. Maybe they'll bundle them.

Yeah, but get my heart for- A Harper Collins bundle. No, he's with a different publisher. Boo. Boo.

Boo. It's too bad he picked the wrong publisher.

Who even likes him? Who even likes him?

No, I'm kidding. He We definitely can't sit at our lunch table. Not now. Not now. No. Now they didn't go HC.

You believe he wrote it? He broke his thumb.

No way. Oh, he's a Penguin, random.

How do you press the space bar?

Get out of here. 320 pages. That's a lot of pages. That's pretty good. Mine? Yeah. I'm on Books a Million now because I wanted to find out what it is.

What's Books A Million? Bam. Bam. Bam.

Books A Million. Bam. They have your book, so you can pre order it from Books A Million.

It must have freeed me right out when you said Bam.

They must have I think it's time to increase the font size.

Anyways. That's 300 pages.

I don't remember it being that long. 320 pages.

That's quite a bit.

Times New Roman font 16.

Is it one of those things where you're writing an essay and you double space? It's supposed to be like 12 font and you did 12.5..

This is interesting because, well, you would say that a lot of people find it interesting.

In regards. In regards, yeah. Just add those words in.

There was a class presentation in the sixth grade that I still remember where this kid said, he set up every sentence with, There are lots of many... First time he said it, teacher cut him off and goes, You don't say lots of many. You just say, There are many or there are lots of. That's it. Then he said it again, and the teacher interrupted him again. You just see him sweating because he's like, This is my whole fucking presentation.

Oh, no.

I still remember it. That poor kid was 12. Oh, no. So was I. But, yeah.

So they got syntax at that point.

Oh, yeah. It's a lot of the idea I had in mind with the book, and I wrote a lot of it in pubs and bars. I was that jerk, just loser, bringing a laptop into a pub and a bar.

That family guy's kid, it's like, Oh, are you writing your script? Yeah. Starbucks?

You got your novel? No, but the reason I did that is to bring myself into back when I used to go to all the time, and it would always inevitably come back to hockey. Unless Adam was there, then it would be World War II. But it was usually about hockey. World War I. World War I, my bad. Who's the greatest player of all time? Who's on the Mount Rushmore of great players? Who's on the Mount Rushmore of goalies? And how do you have that conversation? So not all of it was, If you don't believe this, you're stupid. Not all of it was me throwing it going, This is the beginning, middle, and end of this argument once and for all. A lot of it was, here's how you have the argument. Here's the etiquette behind it. If you are trying to build a deeper relationship with your friends, your cousin, your uncle, your dad, your grandpa, I tried to write a book that you can share across generations and understand each other. It's unfair to make this argument. Have you tried this? There's some things about officiating in there. What are the other things? There's some things about video games.

Did you answer Adam's question about the zoo stories?

Yes. There's no zoo stories, but I believe it is mentioned that I work with.

Which animal has the most Riz?

You did get in there?

Probably the lion tailed macac.

It's mentioned in there that you worked at the zoo.

Why? I'm pretty sure. I don't remember. I straight up don't remember. Why? Well, here's another thing. When I agreed to write this book, my wife was not yet pregnant. When she told me, I was like, Yeah. Oh, did some math, and I went, Oh, fuck. Because if I don't finish the editing in time, I am going to be triple whamied with Newborn Playoffs book.

And that's what you did.

And the last month of my life has been fucked. So please pre-order this book. It's been so hard. Writing a book is so hard. I can't emphasize it enough. It's really, really hard. And I wrote the thing.

Who told him to wait a year?

Oh, Adam did.

We're just writing in August.

No, he tried to. I tried, but he couldn't get it done.

Last August, you were just free.

We weren't podcast. I was writing.

You had four weeks.

Dude, there was one day I wrote, I think it was 7,000 words in a day. Oh, yeah. And It's just not enough. Oh, yeah. When was the last time you wrote 7,000 words in a day? Yesterday.

Yeah? Yeah.

That's crazy. Big writer, Jesse Blanch. Big time. Big writer.

He wrote about his friend who works at the zoo.

I want to know how far of the 320 we got to get into to see zoo written.

I will check the manuscript tonight and find you a page. Thank you.

Yes, I will-Yeah, hit Command F and just type in zoo.

Is that how you do it? I don't know. Dude, whenever I hear about people with ghost writers or they say written with, I'm like, God, that seems nice. Maybe I'll try that next time because I wrote two whole-ass books, my damn self, and it was really hard.

What do you think a guy like Stephen King who pumps out 42 books in a month. Psychopath.

And they're scary, too. Psychopath. Yeah, they're good.

I did some research on that.

Hearing him talk about, I get up in the morning and I don't stop writing until I've hit 2000 words. There are days where it just tumbles right out of your head and onto the page, and it's the easiest, most effortless thing in the world. On days where you don't have anything, I think I'd have an easier time running a half marathon.

Marathon. I think it's so hard. Don't laugh at me. Stephen King is an author. I am a floorball champion.

I'm an athlete.

You could not run.

How long is a half marathon?

Twenty-one, isn't it? Twenty-one and a half, I think it is. Okay. Marathon is 52.

Maybe that like, Spartan 42. It's like 5 kilometers. 42. Yeah, no, I could have a half marathon. That actually sounds pretty good.

My whole thing here is...

That sounds hard.

My point here is that the reality is that Stephen King is an author full-time, and you're an author once every half decade. So it's a little bit different. And the reason he gets up and he does 2000 words, it's like it'd be asking him to do LFRs. Not easy because you do it all the time. How How much time do we spend on air? Especially when our careers were like, we had other jobs outside of Sdpn, think about the three of us, how much time we'd spend on the air every day. Especially you. There would be days where you're just not good. I'm sure Stephen King has days like that, too. But you're just like, whatever. You had a bad sleep. You had a fight with somebody. Something's off. You know what I mean?

Adam, there was one day I listened to you on the way in to record the podcast. Then we recorded a podcast together. Then we spoke to each other on the phone. When I turned on the TV, you were on channel one, and I out loud went, Go away.

That's enough.

Adam, too much.

Last night, I was doing a stream, and it was for the Vancouver Knucks and the Nashville Predators. There were people complaining on that stream that they couldn't watch the game. Really? Yes. What would you do if you can't watch the game?

Well, what What are my options?

I think your only option.

Is to have a very pleasant nature.

Go to nordVPN. Com/dangle. Not only are you going to be able to unlock content, so if you're bored of streaming services or you can't get what you want. With over 5,000 server options, no show and no game is out of reach. But there's also this, threat protection. They've doubled down on keeping you safe with the new threat protection feature. You can say goodbye to intrusive website ads and malware. Even if you download an infected file, threat protection kicks in and deletes it before it makes a mess of your computer.

You need to shut down demand. That's right.

Absolutely. Risk-free. There's a 30-day money-back guarantee. Literally no risk to you. 30-day money-back guarantee. Give it a try. If you like it, great. If you don't, they'll refund it, and you can pretend the entire situation never happened. Check out nordvpn. Com/dangle to get your subscription started today. Grab your exclusive NordVPN deal by going to nordvpn. Com/dangle to get a huge discount off your NordVPN plan plus four months for free. You see? So it's again, NordVPN-A lot of months.

Sorry? A lot of months free.

It's a lot of months. It's four months for free. That's a quarter in a month of a year.

You go to four bases, you get a home run.

They should call it the Nord Home Run deal. Nordvpn. We just got something. No, they got to hire us in their marketing Department.

Home run if the moon was a baseball.

Nordvpn. Com com/dangle. Again, it's completely risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. Get that exclusive deal, and you can check it out in the description of this episode. The Winnipeg Jets were reverse swept by the Colorado Avalanche last night. We've lost the Winnipeg Jets. And in two playoff appearances, the Winnipeg Jets have won two games, one against the Golden Nights, one against the Colorado Avalanche. Now, listen, Colorado Avalanche. I just want to say that I picked the Colorado Avalanche to beat the Jets.

Good I think you were the only one.

I had Winnipeg.

So did I. The Winnipeg Jets looked so much stronger this year in the regular season than they did last year. So much stronger. Like the Vegas series, they were the clear underdogs. This one felt evenly matched. Why, guys, did it end up not being so?

The best defense in the NHL, and arguably the best goalie in the NHL, got frigging shelled. It was complete, unstable force meets entirely entirely fragile and breakable object, apparently. They were just a battering ram. Their ads at the deadline came up big.

Middle stat, big.

Valeriy Natchushkin is such a ridiculous playoff performer, and the Avalanche missed him so much. Kael Mccar is a superstar. And after a really bad game one, Alexander Georgiev settled in.

Yes, he did.

It became obvious early in the series, we've misread this a little bit. If If the Avalanche get at least equal goal tending to the Winnipeg Jets, they'll win the series for sure.

And they got more than that. So guys, let me throw something at you. How many regular season games has Connor Hallibuck played in the last three seasons combined? Take a guess.

Not enough. Sorry, Martin Brodur possessed me for a moment there. A hundred and 75.

Jesse.

Three seasons combined? Yeah. So if it was 60, it'd be 60, 60, 60. It'd be like 180. I would say 180.

190. He regularly gets between 3500 and 4000 minutes on the ice. God damn. How about that there, Martin? How about that? And Connor Halebuck is 30 years old, and he's been a fantastic goal tender. He plays the bro der, 60 games, whatever, and he's been amazing for Winnipeg. But to me in this series, Nice. That is like, Winnipeg lives and dies by Hunter, Connor Hellebuck, and they should. But at some point, you got to sit down and talk to your goalie and say, Listen, we have a good backup.

La Ron is-François is real good.

La Ron is really good. Why can't we have you at 50 and him at 32, ideally?

You couldn't have taken 10 games off his plate? Like, even 10.

I know that they were in a race for the top of the division, but even so, okay, top of the division, they would have played Vegas. Home Ice didn't help.

You did it.

No, it didn't.

You had Home Ice in the series. It didn't help. I think it's a little revisionist, obviously, heading into the series where they have two really good goalies and the best one and a really good defense. They're going to be fine. They added an offense, and their offensive contributors who they got were good.

Well, here are Connor Hela Bucks numbers in the last three years combined. For a save percentage. Playoffs? Playoff save percentage. Playoffs, okay. Regular season save percentage is 9-10, 9-20, and 921. So very, very good. Vesna. Vesna. 2021, Jets, 931 save percentage.Unbeatable.Unbeatable. The fact that they only got eight games into that playoff is crazy. Number two, Sorry, 2022, '23, 886.

Horrendous.

This year, 870. Oh. So listen, is it revisionist or is it a trend? And after the season ends, you have to get a little bit like, Well, where are the trends? Teams.

Well, and also I think the key here is you look at how poorly he did in these playoffs and how poorly he did in the last playout. Those are two completely different Jets teams.

Yes, without question. The Jets are way better this year.

Way better. Well, just in terms of personnel and roster construction, completely different teams. And it was near identical result. That's frightening if you're the Jets.

The big difference is Rick Bowness didn't get on the microphone right after the game ago. Our efforts sucked. That was terrible. I think they were just overmatched. So I'm going to spotlight Casey Middlestat and Tyler Toffoli. Okay. Tyler Toffoli started this game on the fourth line. He was not playing great. He did score.

He sure did. Well, you give stars a fourth line opportunity. Sometimes they do things for you.

Okay. Let's pretend we're all Jesse in NHL 24. All right. So we're We're losing. Who are we going after first? Are we going after Casey Middlestat or are we going after Tyler Toffoli? I think the answer 10 out of 10 times is probably went Tyler Toffoli.

Well, you know what I think. Sorry. Yeah, definitely. Right.

And yet Casey Middlestad fit the lineup.

They needed a second-line center, and they got a real good one. You replaced Ryan Johansson, who went to Lehigh Valley, actually, I don't even think he played, with Casey Middlestad, who's having a great season. That's a pretty big upgrade.

I can't believe Ryan Johansson is back under the tord system. That is weirdly funny because they can't stand each other.

I'm sure he won't be there long.

I'm sure they'll come to an agreement. Yeah, they'll figure something out. So we'll start there. Then the Canucks.

Not the Canucks, sorry.

Jets, I meant to say.

Yeah, with the Jets, there's a good argument to make that they had the worst defensive performance of any playoff team in the history of the National Hockey League.

Sorry?

What? The history of the NHL? They set a record.

Oh, that's unbelievable. I saw this.

This was from Sportsnet stats. The Jets are the first team in NHL history to allow five plus goals in each of their first five games to begin a postseason. Nobody has ever done that.

No one in the '80s?

Nobody ever has allowed five goals or more in five straight games to begin a playoffs. And on top of that, they allowed the second most even strength goals in the first five games of a postseason ever.

You know why they set a record? Because most teams who allow five goals don't get to five games. Yes.

Wow. Yeah. And it's a breakdown defensively. I wonder if this should... I get Connor Halebuck struggled and all that stuff, but I wonder if this falls on Rick Bones and his system there because it clearly hasn't worked in the playoffs two times in a row. And going back to his Dallas days in '22, because he was with the Jets in '23. So 2022, they lost in the first round.

Completely different horses.

They lost in the first round and they got smoked. I wonder if it's him and the way he has these guys playing defense works great in the regular season. But when it comes to the playoffs, it turns your team into the worst postseason defensive team of all time.

Once again, for the second time this show, I'm going to bring up Bruce Boudreau, who should absolutely never be without a job if you go and look at his record. If you look at his playoff record, though, and his record in game sevens, it follows you around. It doesn't take long to develop that reputation. How old is Rick Bones?

He's in his late '50s, early '60s, I would say.

No, Rick Bones is 69 years old.Oh.

Wow.wow. He's far more energetic and young for somebody I would think is 69.

So he's got to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest coach in the NHL.

Got to be one of the oldest, yeah.

Is it getting near time? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, he coached. He was a head coach of the Jets in '88, '89. He was an assistant in '84, '85. His first run with the Jets.

He was with the Kings. Yeah.

He played for- I was with diapers. That was our first year on the planet.

Rick Bones played for the Atlanta Flames in 1975, 1976. He's been around the block.

Wait, what was his first coaching gig?

The Jets.

The head coach?

His first gig? Assistant of the Jets. But he only did that for three seasons, and then he moved over to the Moncton Hawks of the AHL. I'll bring it up here. And then the Jets brought him back to be the head coach of their team in '88, '89.

For an interim state?

Yeah. And then- He even, in '82, '83, was with the Sherbrooke Jets.

This dude has been coaching longer than anyone in this room has been alive.

Boston Bruins, he was the head coach, got all the way to the third round, and then the next year had to go to the Senator's. I forgot he was the Senator's first head coach. I forgot.

Dude, that- He's been, yeah, coaching forever.

That resume's tough.

That playoff resume is tough. There's not a lot of success outside That is the 2020 Dallas Stars run.

And maybe the third round with the Damp of the Lightning, 17, 18. I forgot they got that deep.

Oh, lost in the final. The Vancouver one. I forgot he was head coach in 2011 or associate coach. Yeah, he's not in head coach. I'm not giving him credit for that. Interim. Yeah. Associate coach in the-2, 12, and 3 with the coyote.

I'm bringing this up, Jesse. Talk about fallible defense. Part of this has to be coaching because It takes more than one person subtracted from a blue line, in theory, for a blue line to be bad. But Brett and Dylan being out, they didn't seem to react too well to him not playing. And they were bad before.

If one player makes your whole house of cards fall down, then you didn't have a solid foundation.

They were also missing Vlad Namesnikoff, too.

With the fuck to the head, yeah. Yeah. Two just really unlucky and unfortunate. I mean, you got a guy who was slashed by a skate in a Scrum and a guy who took a fuck to the head. But that's what happens. That's what happens. Freakish stuff like that happens. You got to be able to adapt.

It's going to be fascinating to see what the Winnipeg Jets do because they've been... I Honestly, I think it was... What's the GM's name again? It's just Kevin Shevilday off. Shevilday off was a GM there for five years and didn't make a trade. I know. They've been far more aggressive lately, especially the last three or four years. They've made some good moves. The way forward, though, I think is going to be interesting. We'll talk about the abs in a second because you've made your bet. Hellebuck is your goalie. Shifley is your main guy. Those guys are sticking around. That's awesome. Nothing wrong with that. You had trouble selling tickets, though, this year. Sure. Economy is probably a part of that.

This is not going to help.

This is not going to help. You need, what I saw with Colorado is their top-end guys are just so much better. You could say that Colorado matches up pretty well against any team in the NHL. I was about to say- But you've got Dallas, you've got potentially Vegas, you've got Colorado. These teams that you're going to have to play, like the Leaps always have to play. Is it Florida? Is it Tampa? Or is it Boston? Which one is it? They all suck. Which one do I have to play? It's going to suck. What can Winnipeg do? I think they tried to get some top end scoring on a DeFuil. It didn't work out. Is that a coaching thing? Who knows? What do they do now? It's a tough place to get people to sign sometimes. What do you do?

Oh, boy.

Do you just keep going? Just keep running it back? No. It's a good team. I don't hear that. Real good team.

I'm struggling to find what other choice they have, but besides run it back again and hope you don't collapse.

Can you move off of like, Piank? Would that help?

Which I think a puck banked off him and went in the net. There were two own goals last night for the Jets, which is stuck.

He shot it right into the net. It went into the bank. It was right in the net. It was a one-timer.

A lot of mystifying lineup decisions, too. Their treatment of Nikolai Eelers is strange.

Very strange. Yeah.

Kyle Conner's just total lack of interest in the defensive zone, not playing Cole Perfetti every game.

Bones does not like Perfetti.

It's weird. Maybe it's as simple as, you know what? Let's get another Other set of eyes here.

And maybe you can sit your goalie down and go, You can't play this much anymore.

I know you struggle to... Listen, in the NHL, there's 800, 900 jobs. It's not a lot, but it's a lot. Head coach, 32. You will have an easier time recruiting a head coach.

The Vancouver Knucks, in my estimation, and I've watched the series very closely, really blew it against the Nashville Predators last night. I say that because I think the Knucks played their best game of the series and didn't win. And the reason they didn't win is it's one thing. It's penalties. They came out in the first and the third period, shot out of a cannon. Nashville had been limiting them. I'm talking total game shots, both teams combined. It was right around 40 most games. And I'm talking, Vancouver, there was a game where they won. They got 12 shots. And Nashville got 32.

I can't believe Nashville has done dominated the Canucks like this, and they're down 3-1.

Or were. They can't score.

I think for me, the series is the correct score because there's no way Vancouver should have won game number 4. No. Yeah, you're right. You Add the empty net right there. You hit the post. Vancouver scores two empty net goals. They pulled goalie goals in that game. They win in overtime. That should have been Nashville's game. Last night, I think Adam's right in that Vancouver dominated. They should have that. It's right, the universe. It's three, two.

I'm going to go through the penalties because if you're a Leaves fan, specifically, you will be able to relate to this. You'll be able to relate to the frustration of watching this. They're out. They're fired up to start the game in the first period, and they get a bunch of chances, and then JT Miller gets two minutes for hooking. And you go, Nothing happens. Fine. Oh, good.

That's a good penalty killer for them, too.

Pretty even in the second period, Nikita Zdorow goes for cross-checking. What he should have done, he cross-checked player in the back, should have just let the player come to him and then push off. Yeah, they'll call-Because they're going to call it an in the air.

They call it impact cross-checks, not the push ones.

Ian Cole got his stick up underneath somebody's visor to end the second period.

They're going to call it every time.

This is the thing that killed them. They were playing so well in the third period, 651 in, Dakota Joshua, two minutes for boarding. What did you think? It wasn't a good board. No, it's a... The ref has to call it every day. That just stopped their momentum dead. You have to remember that at that time, they had scored. They were coming off the Nikita Zdorow end-to-end.

That was unreal.

Corner-to-corner in the net. It was an unbelievable shot. Yosef Sarras was super deep in his net. Didn't understand that.

Well, he's probably... You know what it remind me of, ironically, is Marty Mareńschen going end-to-end against the the Knux a few years ago. I think part of the reason it was allowed to happen, the Knucks just let him come because they're like, Well, it's Marty Mareńschen. You're not expecting Nikita Zdorow to go end-to-end. How many goals he have this season?

I don't even know, but he's like one of their top score. I think he's doing really, really well.

According to Julian McKenzie, this is something he saw in Calgary a bunch of times. This is an unfamiliar territory from Zdorow, so you should be expecting. Really? Yeah.

Not based on the player that I know him to be, but I think that that's something he does.

Not in your imagination of who Nikita is.

It's in the name. Zdor, as in or, Bobby Or, you see? I didn't know where that was from. Roman Yosey, then on the Dakota Joshua power play. Vancouver did a good job killing penalties. But then, of course, as soon as they take that penalty in the third, Yosey scores. And then you get the reverse of what happened in the Leaps game with Jake McCabe. That Jake McCabe goal just floats in. Alex Alexander Kari just floated one in.

No, that was a great shot.

It was a great shot, but a body could have stopped it. Somebody lays down, that's not getting through.

Is that one of those ones where you go, if only we had our starter. Who was it, by the way? Again, I was doing my own thing. It was Silofs. Silofs. Oh, boy.

I mean, jeez.

I know they're up 3-1. You're digging deep.

Well, that's why you needed to finish it last I was thinking there's going to be dancing in the streets of Vancouver tonight. And so now you got to go back to Nashville and play Friday night in a tough barn.

In a building they dominated you in and you won a game with... I think I saw they had a 0.4% chance of winning.

Yes, with a rookie goal tender.

Wow. I wanted the angle up top from the UC Soros looking down on the ice, from the other ice of that Carrier shot, because you can really see the amount of traffic in front. Okay, here it is. Perfect. I want to pause it right here. So Carrier hits... I think Carrier nailed this shot exactly where he wanted it to go because it's seeing eye, it goes right to the bottom left corner there on the screen. And if you see Svila, the Nashville players, they drift right to the middle of the ice, and even his own players right in front of him blocking out his view. And it's a fantastic shot, and it's a credit to play off hockey when you just got to get people in front and you just created Create chaos in front of the goalie, and you can get these slappers in from way, way far out.

If you scroll it forward a little bit, Jesse, watch Ryan O'Reilly. No, no, no.

Here, before you do, credit to Carrier. Look how he's walking the line. Oh, yeah. Look at his skate. Look how close the puck is to the blue. Look at all that. Look at that. Yeah. Talk about maximizing his space.

Look at that. Watch O'Reilly. Watch where O'Reilly goes.

He comes right there, right in front. Pushes him. Quinn Hughes his eyes away. Then he can't see it. No, he doesn't. It goes right in. Even on this angle up top, you see the puck just go straight. Look how he's trying to see around the guys right there. Quinn Hughes is blocking him out. Ryan O'Reilly is pushing him right in front of where the puck's coming. It's a CNI shot. I loved it. It's beautiful hockey. Credit to Nashville for playing this hockey where... Adam, we've been talking about how he's been streaming the worst series of the world because both of these teams are not giving anybody anything. They're just playing defensive shell hockey. When you're playing this hockey and the zone is clogged up, that middle of the ice is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 guys right all there, these are the shots that go in, and you're not going to get a whole bunch of goals, and these games are ending 2-1 every time.

Nashville wanted a goal so bad that they were like, Okay, fine. We'll dress Tyson Berry.

Hey, he was injured. Was he not? Oh, really? This was his first game back. I was like, Wait a second.

Hasn't he been good in Nashville?

No, he's been good. He's been good. I was making the jokes. No, I think Tyson Berry is good. He's actually perfect for a team like that because everybody else can play defense, so he doesn't have to. That's true. Their power play moved a little bit.

He's been good since he got there, dating back to the tree.

He was good in Edminton. Yeah. It's about how he's deployed. It's about how he's deployed, completely down to that. It's like-They got better when they got Echel. Yeah.

Dude, it's a good trade. It's a good trade. For Edmundson.

And for Nashville. I think if Nashville wants to be a leader in the West, It's not going to take much.

But I do think, ideally, Ryan O'Reilly is your second-line center in a perfect world. You find your all-star center at the front.

It's going to be really good when they have Steven Stamko. Oh, man. Because that's the piece they're missing. That's exactly the player they're needing to take another step.

It's like a younger Pavelski signing when he signed with Dallas out of San Jose, right?

Man, that trade at the time, I was like, You are out of your mind.

Wait, it was a trade? I thought it was a signing.

No, sorry. Signing. I thought Dallas were out of their minds. That's too much money for a player who's too old, and here he is still completely kicking ass. He's awesome. By the way, this is such a Nashville-ass trade. Tyson Berry traded from the Edmondson Oilers with Reid Schafer, who was a first-round pick, 32nd overall in 2022, and a first-round pick in the 2023 draft, which was Tanner Molendiek, who was 24th Both overall last year and a fourth-round pick in the 2024 draft to the preds for Matias Hacom in a sixth-round pick. It's just Nashville having their cake and eating it, too. Yep. Like two a tea. Yep.

We have lost most of the East. Most of the East is finished, except for Toronto and Boston. Hilarious. We only have one team officially through in the West. It's a bit more of a war, but we could get one tonight with Edmonton and Los Angeles.

Hey, do we want to take some time to not talk about the Rangers?

Well, we'll talk about the Rangers later. No, I don't. Why don't you want to talk about the Rangers?

Because Rangers fans like the bit.

They like the bit that we don't talk about them?

Yeah, they like the bit. I'm missing this. What's going on? No one talks about them.

No one talks about the Rangers?

I feel like we did.

No.

What are the Rangers?

What Rancher's fans are you listening to? Is New York sneaking under the radar? I don't have a Ranchers jersey two episodes ago.

You know who always sneaks under the radar? New York.

Yo, there wasn't anything to talk about. You were going to get a 4-0 sleep like we know.

I said five to be nice.

Here's the story. If Washington wins a game, that's the story. Yes. Everything went as it should have gone.

After Game 2, I made a video about the Matt Rempe show. I don't know what more we're covering.

Rempe mania is so fun. It's awesome. And also dangerous.

Hold on. You got to stop talking about the Rangers, though. Oh, sorry. We don't talk about the Rangers. It's like fight club. Oh, yeah.

Shut up.

Let's talk about the Caps offseason.

Yeah, let's talk about the Caps. I don't know what they're going to do. Edmonton, Los Angeles. Listen, Edmonton has been overpowering most of the time in this series. Is there any way LA plays extraordinarily desperate and find some goal tending and extends this series, or does it go the way that it should and wrap up in the next game or two?

It's been pretty low-key violent.

Yeah, they don't like each other.

No. So injuries and wear and tear could go in LA's favor. But I mean, here's what it is. Did you see the miced up segment of Hyman.

No. A piece of it.

It's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen if I'm a LA Kings fan. He goes, Hey, Nuggie. He's talking to Nuge, and they're setting up a play. Hyman gets a puck, taps it in. He goes, See? Got it. Yeah, good job. Then they go out, Nuggie, and they do it again. They basically go, They can't defend it. They can't defend it in the most friendly serial killer type ever. Then the Kings go, All right, enough of that. We're not letting that happen again. We are going to lock it down. They locked it down so much that Dave Riddich played an actual Stanley Cup playoff game against the the oilers and only allowed one goal. They lost because they didn't score one. That is as good a defensive performance as you could possibly hope for, especially the Oilers, and you lost.

If I threw you a hole and you weren't allowed to watch any of these games. You're throwing me in a hole. And then I pulled you out of the hole and I said- What if I just calmly walked into a room that you shut? No, it's got to be a hole.

And you have to throw us.

Yeah, it's got to be like a toss. Big toss into a deep hole.

It's even higher because he picks you up above his head.

That's right. Yeah, like the big show throwing you over the top row. Royal Rumbel. I throw you over the Royal Rumbel into a giant hole, and I tell you, one team, one game, four, one nothing, and they had 13 shots on goal. You would tell me- Good for the LA Kings winning that hockey game. That was the Edmonton Oilers. Their ability to win that game. I was like, there's no shot for the King. No. That's the King's game that they should have won. They had 33 shots on goal to 13, and they dominated the play. Stuart Skinner was great, and Dave Riddish was great, too. The War of Attrition and Defensive Battle was won by the Edmondson Oilers, the team we expect the complete opposite from. I don't know. I'm at a loss for words for the King and what they could do.

I'm begging the oilers to finish it up, and I'm begging Vancouver to finish it up so they play each other. Because here's the thing, if Nashville wins the series, then it's going to be Unstoppable Forest and movable object. It's going to be the Nashville defense versus the Edmondson offense, and I don't like Nashville's chances.

Who did you pick in your brackets, Steve?

For who?

Euler? Vancouver, Nashville.

The Kooves.

Okay. So I'm the only one to pick Nashville.

So I'm going to- Listen, you might have been Nostradamus on that because it's- No.

It's Colton Sizzons. Fucking me up.

Yes.

Islanders, that's the last time I show faith in you.

Oh, man, that was brutal.

Yeah. Whoops. Oh, dude, from game one, I'm like, Pick might have been a mistake.

Oh, well. Carolina crushed them. I was actually surprised, and we haven't really talked too much about it because a lot's happened since we last did our show on Sunday. The Florida-Tampa Bay series was a lot less close than I thought.

Yeah.

I was asking you guys before the playoff started, are we seeing a changing of the guard in Florida? I think we just saw it.

I mean, so much respect goes to the brand name of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Boy, it just wasn't there. It's just not the same Magic, and the Florida Panthers are really frigging good. I don't remember what % of the series that Sam Bennett missed. They're without Sam Bennett. I'm like, jeez, that's a huge loss. It's really going to reduce a lot of what the Panthers are. That's going to screw up their forecheck. It's going to screw up their offense. It's going to screw up the intimidation factor. And they just continue to steamroll the damn lightning, man.

I forget on Twitter who called the Lightning Kutcherow merchants. But I thought, you know what? It's not a bad depiction of how the season went because they were able to put up a whole bunch of offense during the regular season on the back of Kutcherow and being a Kutcherow merchant. Florida takes that away, and they're beatable, and they're fine. I feel like Florida is just a better team at this point. I think we should play this fun game of how injured were they and how many minutes did they play? Because Julian Bresua gave the report.

Oh, let's go.

Was that released today? Yeah. So this morning at 9:22, Tampa Bay Lightning beat writer Chris Crenn, tweeted out the list of injuries. He's a good follow. That the Tampa Bay Lightning have. So we're going to go through and we're going to say the injury that the player had, and then we're going to look at how many minutes they played in game number 5. First up on the list, what are you looking up?

I'm looking up what an AC joint is.

That's in your D. Churnak played with an AC joint sprain, game number 2. He played in the series from game number 2 with an AC joint sprain.

What is the AC joint? The acromiumiumiumiumiumiumiumium It's your shoulder. It's your shoulder. The joint where your shoulder... The shoulder where two bones meet.

So Churnak, game 2, has that AC joint sprain. In game number 5, he played 20 minutes and 52 seconds. Wow.

Second on the lightning amongst defense.

Let's go back. Glenn Denning dislocated his shoulder and laboral tear on April 15th.

The labrum keeps your shoulder in place, by the way.

That's like what? Three games left in the season? Something like that?

And in game Five, Glenn Denning played 10 minutes and 24 seconds. With that in.

Right in line with what he did. Two hits. Two hits with a busted shoulder.

Hagle, glute strain in game Three. So he played through game four and 5.

Hockey is nearly exclusively played with your ass.

Yes, that is the main function of skating around. Hagle, 23 minutes and 52 seconds, the most amongst four Four words for the light.

With a strained ass.

With a strained ass.

It could have been a leaf.

The other thing there, and I don't know if I'm going to earn points or lose them with the kinesiology doctor community that listens to the show, glute It's very vague. Are we talking glute mead, glute max? What are we talking? No, because it affects different movements, right?

Anyway.johansson.degoli? Quad tear, March 30th.

Quad tear is extremely serious, and if it requires surgery, that's a very long recovery.

Mott, broken ankle, October 11th.

How many games did he play? I got to know.

If you want to look that up. I'm going back and forth. Death with this. But Tyler Mott played 11 minutes and 32 seconds in game number five.

Broken ankle?

Is that October 11th game one?

No, that's still preseason, right?

No, I don't think it was preseason.

He played 44.

44 games this season. Broke his ankle to begin the year.

That's a solid start. What?

So the breezewalk continued. Purbix, AC joint, spraying, game one. That's the second guy with an AC joint.

First two games of the series, I think that's two of your right-handed defensemen. I want to say Purbix is right.

Purbix was not in the lineup for game number five.

Well, there you go.

Oh, shit. Last two, Taylor Radish, abdominal and left Pip, I lack- Ileac. Ileac, sorry. Crest contusion from a cross check in game three.

So it's a big bruise. Big, scary, ugly-looking bruise.

Difficult to pivot and turn your Okay.

And Taylor Radish, let's see, was not in.

I don't see- Pretty sure another right-hand D, for the very least another D.

Yeah, no. Radish isn't in the lineup there. Okay. We don't have a Radish. Wait, which Radish?

Darren Radish.

Oh, Darren Radish.

My- Taylor Radish is the guy on the Black Hawks, right?

I keep saying Taylor Radish. Or he was on the Black Hawks.

I don't know where he is.

But Radish not in the lineup.

And what happened to him?

That was the one I just read. A Comenal and left.

Oh, sorry. I was looking at Connor Sherry. My bad.

Connor Sherry is the last one on the list. Sorry for calling you Taylor Darren. Sherry ruptured tendon infinger on December 30th.

You know what word makes me mad uncomfortable? Ruptured.

Yeah.

That sounds so fucking painful.

He played 57 games, by the way.

Oh, my God. And none in game number 5.

Yeah, that's a depleted lineup, man.

Yeah, but every team is dealing with this stuff, and It says a lot about the NHL that all these guys are playing with all of these injuries, and we don't know it. Then at the end of the season, they tell you about the lungs that are punctured and the joints that are sprained.

You can tell by my reaction how just completely typical this is. I hear someone's got a busted shoulder. I'm like, Yeah, they're a hockey player. Dude, all their shoulders are fucked up. What are you talking about? Yeah. Didn't Gary Robertson need double shoulder shoulder surgery, after the Leifs 2002 run?

I don't remember, but I know that when he... Because he retired midway through his career and then came back. That was his neck. He had so much nerve damage in his neck. He couldn't move his arm above this. He couldn't move his arm above his head.

That'll screw up your shoulders as well.

Exactly.

Dude. Exactly. The biggest question out of the series, though, is where does Stamkos go? Does he stay in Tampa? Does he go somewhere else? Do they figure out the deal? What's going to happen there?

As far as we know, they haven't spoke to him. They're speaking to him through the media. John Cooper going, Oh, he belongs here.

Yeah, I think that Brieswell was pretty serious about the fact that they weren't going to talk in season. And I would not be surprised if they don't resign him. And I wouldn't be surprised if he thought, You know what? He was hanging out on the bench. I think this might be it. And I don't know that that's necessarily the wrong thing for both parties. Okay, so you bring Stan to post back and get more of the same. I don't think the lightning played up to the lightning standards. You said Jesse Kutcheroff merchants, right? I think, by the way, I was saying that this is Nathan McKinnon's revenant year, where he's going to get the MVP because he's just never got one.

But That's the best season he's ever had.

If anything supports Kutcheroff getting the heart trophy, it's the fact that when the Panthers isolated him, Tampa Bay disappeared.

The craziest stat, Jesse, can you pull up the box score again?

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, that's... Dude, playoff, nick Paul.

Are you looking at minutes?

Dude, well, 12 minutes and 35 seconds, which is nothing. Dick all for nick Paul. He was a Minus three.

It's rough.

He was a minus every four minutes. Nick Paul?

Yeah. We're talking about the same one? Probably every third shift. What? And a 44 in the face off.

That dude buried the leaves by himself in '22.

Yeah, he was good.

What are you talking about? Panthers with another big second period out shooting the lightning 23 to 12. Where have we seen that before? Jeez.

Eventually, Steve, I'm going to expect the video from you about the Tana Jeanot. I was just about to say. And in that video, I expect you to rank Tana Jeunot to the Lightning as one of the worst trades in NHL history. Has to be.

So I tried to...

There's some trade content in the By the way, just a quick question for you. Where does Tana Jeunot play? Where did he play in the lineup last night?

I would assume fourth line.

Fourth line.

Dude.

List of players who played less minutes than Tana Jeunot.

Luke Glendani.

I'm going to go with none.

I was silent because there is none. The least amount in terms of four words on the.

How many minutes did he play?

Seven minutes. I shouldn't even say four. It's just everybody on the lineup. He played seven minutes and 14 Nobody played less minutes than Tanar Jindal.

And he was minus one. Just throwing that out there, too. What did you want to say?

Well, I wanted to say... In my book, there's some trade content, and I look at some of the worst trades. I wanted to I'm going to talk about this one. Here's the bad news for Lightning Sands. It's going to get so much worse. It's going to get so much worse because almost every piece of it hasn't happened yet. So Tanr Junaal traded from Nashville to Tampa for Cal Foot. I wonder why the lightning wanted to get rid of him. A third-round pick in 2023, that was Dylan McKinnon. The batter McKinnon.

Yes.

Fourth-round pick in 2023, a fifth round pick in 2023, second round pick in 2024, and a first round pick in 2025.

That could slide to 2026, I believe. Because it's conditional top 10.

Jesse's actually got more details. I was reading off HockeyDB, this is CapFriendly. Dylan McKinnon, Jason Shagabe, Kevin Bicker, and a guy who was going to get picked this year, and a guy who was going to get picked next year, top 10 protected. That is a shitty-ass trade.

Yeah, Julian Brieswell better hope and pray that Dylan, Jason, or Kevin don't turn into anything, and especially that first round pick in 2025.

And the preds are good at it.

And that second round pick, there's so much.

Remember we were talking about should or shouldn't the Jets rebuild? Dude, we just got a full draft class for a depth player. He had eight goals when that trade was made, dude.

I don't know why. But they thought he was the next haggle.

I got to know. Yeah, that has to be it. And I would be taking a good hard look at my pro scouting staff because Listen, no, no, no, no.

Well, yes, yes.

Because you had a really, really good run. You had a really incredible, almost dynasty-of overpaying for guys where everyone went, What?

And then you won.

Yeah.

There was a moment, again, in my book, you're going to hear a lot of this over the next little while, I wrote that the Lightning got 91 playoff games out of Blake Coleman and Bark Goodrich. Wow. And the editor who wrote the book, there's this little tab at the side where they put notes and questions and suggestions and stuff, and he goes, typo? And he was serious. He thought I meant 19. No. Those guys combined for 91 Stanley Cup playoff games en route to back-to-back cups. They had a good run. Tanner Janot was a frigging animal as a rookie. And when the lightning got him, I went, Oh, you got to be frigging kidding me. And then I saw the price. And he was hurt last year. And I go, Okay, well, maybe he was hurt. And then this season rolled around. Nope, he's just not very good.

Rookey season, you're mentioning. He played 15 games in the 2020-2021 season, but the full rookie season in '21-22, 81 games, 24 goals, 17 assists, 130 penalty minutes.

Yeah, because he hit and fought everybody.

And now his contract expires at the end of next He gave up an entire draft class for this guy.

Career playoff goals.

Zero.

Sorry, pulling a Jesse Blake.

Zero. You've said how many there are.

Whoa. Okay. How about... Let's word it like this. Tana Jeanot not only doesn't have a Stanley Cup playoff goal, he does not have a professional playoff goal. His last playoff goal was when he scored three goals in 13 games with the Moose jaw warriors of the WHL in 2018. He went to Milwaukee, nothing in three games. Went to Nashville, nothing in 16 games. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Also minus nine in those 16 games. We're going to go ahead and give that a good old oof, my own.

Yeah, They swung big, and they really missed on this one. And what was the good side of this? You give up all of those picking every single round through one through five, and you get, Okay, you got an established player. Let's say he's Brandon Hagle. Is that even worth all of those picks?

He wouldn't be Brandon Hagle. What you're hoping for is you acquire the rookie, Tana Jeanot, who plays hockey the way animal from the Muppets plays the drums. Just a monster just banging into everything, scoring. You are getting, I mean, I don't know, Dollar Tree Alexander Ovechkin. Just a dude who is going to score goals. Dollar tree. Dollar tree. I mean, I don't know.

Man, the Caps got Dollar Tree Alexander Ovechkin this afternoon. He was bad. Sorry, I didn't attract.

No, but a dude who's going to hit everything and can... If you got a dude who's going to lead you in hits and can score 20 goals, you go and get that player. Especially when you have the skill that the Lightning have.

But lead you in hits and score 20 goals. I hear that and I'm like, That's not even worth everything you gave up.

But you're the Lightning, and you're like, if you look at your recent track record, you're like, Well, we got Barclay Goodro, who was not really anybody, and we won. We went and got Blake Coleman, who was fine.

Fine.

And we won. If you're the lightning, and I Maybe this is why no one's won three straight in the Cap era. How do you not think you're right?

You got to trust your staff.

Whenever you make a decision, after a while, you're going to be like, You know what? I think we're Yeah, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And when you put your hand up to give them that little finger, like the, Excuse me, you have two rings taking up your entire rest of your knuckles.

I have my rings plug in both my ear.

I have my... Yeah, if you got real big Dumbo ears because they're the size of fist now, those rings, it's just a spectacular whiff.

Yeah, undrafted player, too. So it's not even like you got a... He was scout great going into his draft here, and this was a first-round pick that you're swapping all these pics for because you're like, We're getting the first-round pick, and we know what we got. No, he's undrafted.

But again, if you're the lightning, you're like, No, we know undrafted players. We're really smart about them. They are. They are. But we got Yanny Gord. We found him. You also found Jonathan Marches. Someone gave him up for nothing. They whift on this one. It's weird It's almost like watching Superman walking down the sidewalk and he trips and spills his coffee. It's just you can't... Even if you see it happen in front of you, you're like, Did Superman just trip and spill his coffee? That's the equivalent. We all respect the Tampa Bay Lightning so much because of what they've done. They made an enormous mistake.

I think your point is very important that they have a history of nailing everything. So the one doesn't discredit their entire history of building an incredible roster multiple times over. But this is the one where they whiff.

I'm wondering what they do. This will be a very fascinating offseason for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Shall we? Oh, I do want to mention this. There was a lot made of the two goals that were disallowed in the final Panthers' Lightning game. And then after the game, John Cooper made a comment about, should we just put the goalies in skirts? He has since come out and apologize. That was the first thing he did at the podium today. He said it bothered him that he made that comment more than losing the series. I thought it was an important thing to mention. Came out and apologized and owned it.

It says something about his reputation that he said that, and I didn't really see anyone go, F in John Cooper. There was a lot of frustration, but a lot of people use the big D word disappointed. A lot of people said, I assume he'll apologize, and then he did. We're all going to mess up. We got to watch the way we talk. That goes for everybody. It was an unforeced error. I mean, that's the right thing to say. It bothered me more that I said that than we lost the series.

There you go. I think people are just surprised when it's him. Now, should we do a press conference?

Let's Sure.

The Presser S-D-P. The Steve Dangle Press Conference.

Oh, you know what? One thing I forgot to ask you guys about in the Winnipeg Jets series, Connor But Conor Halebuck, I guess it's his own decision, but also the Winnipeg Jets PR, they did not make Halebuck available postgame. And Conor Halebuck- After the series lost. After the series lost. And Conor Halebuck was not made available in any game except for game number one.

That's weird. That's weird.

The people covering that series have to make a bigger stink about that. I remember Norm Rumack, Stomenom Rumack, the fan 590. He used to get pissed off because the Js would make it so difficult to interview Roy Halley. And Roy Halley was this dialed-in ace of a pitcher. And you could understand why he would want his privacy. But the argument, which is a valid one, is, Dude, this is your team's star.

Yeah.

You're the Js. You're not very good. I don't know if you noticed that. Like, back then? Holy shit. They were awful. Like, 2009? But Roy Halley was worth watching. Be real nice to hear from Connor Halibuck there. I I guess the only argument is, well, I'll talk to you at locker cleanup, but for him to not be available. The only game... Wait, sorry. Let me get this straight. The only game they made him available after was the one that they won?

That's right.

Yes. Conor Halebuck was available after game one and was not available after any game after that.

That's pretty weak.

Yeah. That's weak. You got to be accountable to the fans. You do. You We do. We would be on players in Toronto for sure for not being on that. We're not coming out, especially in a series last. You come in here, we are paying customers. This is what you want. You signed here long term. You got to come out and talk.

We want to hear from you.

Yeah.

That was from, by the way, you should mention who said that Eric Engels had that report. Connor Halebuck was requested again but didn't come out to speak following series last. The only time he spoke was day after game one. Not even after the game on game one, it was day after game one.

So he didn't speak after any of the games then? I know. I mean, if you're Connor Hellebuck, it'd probably be nice to get in front of a microphone because otherwise, what does the talking for you? The numbers and the performances which were not good. God, at least sugarcoated a bit.

We're running up on two hours here. Okay, I'll just get this in. This is from koh_34. Not a question, but more of a side note. Noted, former leaf, Dennis Maugen just became champion in the Swiss Hockey League. Amazing. Let me get a play of MVP. The Maugenhive is going crazy today.

It's crazy because isn't that where the leaves plucked him out of?

Maugenhive. Maugenhive. No, they plucked him away from the Florida Panthers.

No, they plucked. Then he went to Europe for a bit. Where did he go?

Switzerland.

They didn't have to go back.

No. So he played with the Zurich Lions, and then he went to the Florida Panthers, and then he went to the Leaps. And then after the Leifs, or in between the Stint of the Leaps, he played in the Zurich Lions, and then he played Colorado, and then now he's back in Zurich. I'm going to beat you up.

It's freaking 11 goals in 42 games with the abs. Get out of my face.

Look at his playoff numbers.

Those are solid.

6 goals, 8 assists, 14 points in 15 games. Damn. I I want to play who he play with. Can you click on Zurich?

You're obsessed with this.

I love who he play with.

Rudolf Balcers.

Rudolf Balcers, former NHLer, Derek Grant, former NHLer.

Miko Letton.

The other one.

Sven, Andrew Guetto. Andrew Guetto. Who did- Scott Harrington.

Yeah. Oh, Scott Harrington. Former leaf.

Former leaf, leaf legend. I recognize a bunch of these names. Yannick Webber. Oh, Wow. Yeah, dude, there's a lot of- former Fred. Now, there are a couple of names I recognize, but I don't remember why. Can you click on You Ho Lamaco?

Where's that?

Oh, there he is. He did play in the NHL. He was a Panther and a Knuck. I do remember this person.

Seventy-five games with the Knucks. That's a good NHL.

Two seasons ago.

Nhl career, 159 games. It's not bad.

Here, go back.

I want to know- Third round draft pick.

This is important.

What do you want?

This is the most important part of this episode. No, scroll down a little bit. Who's Simon Hrübeck? I want to say he's a high draft pick. No, he is not. He is 32 and undrafted.

That is somebody who played his whole career over in Europe.

Not even right. So he's the goalie. Who's the other one?

I don't know that.

Robin. Zumbul. I don't think it's pronounced Zumbi there, Matty.

Zoom-ba.

Zoom-bi. Zoom-ba.

All right. Chick-chic-boon.

That's enough of that.

All right.

No, that was fun.

Let's wrap it up. Hey. Smarten up. I'm so excited. We're Chris Ratsenberger's playing these days. So pumped.

Yay. Was that one of his teammates?

Baltisberger. He said Ratzberger.

Ratzberger. Ratzberger. That's what I thought I saw on the screen.

Valtisberger. Game six. The Steve Dangle podcast.

Follow the guys on Twitter @steve_dangle.

Com.de, and @jesseblake.

Connection complete.