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All right, I was told by management to actually give a name to this goddamn show. I was given a suggestion by said management, which was Puck Boys. It's P-U-C-K-B-O-I-S, and I'll be damned.

If.

I allow that to happen.

Then management may have been trolling us a.

Little bit. Yeah, I think so. I'm trying to cut my legs from under me over here. But yeah, the name of this new show, ladies and gentlemen, is...

Drumroll.

The Hockey Show.

I love it. Thank you. That's very appropriate.

Thank you. The Hockey Show. My name is Roy Bellamy. I work for the Dan Levitar Show with Stu Gidestat. It's David Dworak, he works for The Hockey News. The Panthers on Wednesday defeated the Dallas Stars 5-4. It was a really good game. They beat a very good Dallas Stars team who is currently chasing the Colorado Avalanche. The way they did that was basically through their first line, David.

Yeah, that first line is on fire right now. It's really cool to see Sasha Barkov and Sam Ryan Hart clicking because it's something they've tried each year that they've been together now. While they both put up good numbers, it's never really worked on the same line, but that obviously is not the case this year. They're going bonkers. Sam, Ryan Hart, he's up there. He's second, I think, in the lead in goals right now with 17. You have to talk about him as a possible Marius Reachard winner at this point just because we're more than a quarter into the season. And Reinhardt's always been such a streaky guy where he'll go a 10-game span where he'll score 15 or 20 points, he'll put up 10 goals, and then he'll go 10 games where he'll put up two points. But that's not really the case this year. This year, it's all coming in big bunches. He's got, I think, almost half of his games. He's got multi-point games. Yeah, that first line, I don't want to say he's carrying the team because this team is so well up and down defensively, and they've been getting contributions, whether it's from the defense, whether it's from the bottom six.

But that first line is scary good.

Right now. Yeah, and Evan Rodriguez right now, on Wednesday, he got four points. He scored twice and had to assist.

Second time this year, he's had four points.

I mean, jeez. Yeah, that first line is really coming together. And the second line, pretty good, too.

Well, now that Sam Bennett is back healthy because he's just that secret sauce that really just makes it work with that line. Because you've got Carter for Haiti. Last year's 40-goal score, you know he's a sniper. You got Matthew Kachuk, who's off to a pretty slow start this year with only four goals through 24 games, whatever it is. But he's still doing everything else that he brings to the table well, including facilitating the plug. I think he's got 15 assists at this point. But still, that second line does so much good, all 200 feet of the ice. That's really the whole team. That's their persona at this point, is they play great defensive hockey. That's why last night's game, as we're recording this on a Thursday against the Dallas Stars, was so much fun because it was so back and forth.

Yeah, and you look at that second line with Sam Bennett and Matthew Kachuk, I mean, there are a lot of pissed-off hockey players out there because of those two.

Yeah, it's funny. Every time I tweet about Sam Bennett, there's always at least one or two fan bases. Honestly, it's Make-Belief's fans hate Sam Bennett. Oh, of course. Oh, my God. They do not like. But yeah, it's funny. Those two players, you've got Kachuk, everybody in Western Canada, I think, other than people in Calgary don't like Matthew Kachuk. They just go out there with a big smile and they don't really feed into it, per se, but they don't shy away from it either. I think it's just who they are and it's their personas. It takes me back, always, Roy, it takes me back to this room that the Panthers have built because they've got all high character, great guys. Yeah, there are some guys on the ice who you hate. Even going before this year, the guy was like Radcoe Gudis, but you got you're Matthew Kachuk and the Sam Bennett. Jonah Gatovich is kicking everybody's butt this year. Ryan Longberg. Ryan Longberg gets under everybody's skin. Tampa fans hate Ryan Longberg. Oh, my God. But again, these are all great guys that just do the right things on the ice. Bill Zito has just done a hell of a job.

I talked about Sam Bennett, and I'm going to mention random on to our Aaron Echman here. The Panthers, especially Sam Bennett, who came back from injury twice. Twice. Twice. We saw the difference with him and the lineup during the Boston game, with him in and out of lineup during that game in particular, the Panthers are starting to get healthy, fully healthy.

Well, the fact that they were able to come out of not being healthy while still being second in the Atlantic Division and still playing this great team brand of hockey. And then you just sprinkle in a few All-Star type caliber players in Aaronet, Blad, Brendan, Montore, and Sam Bennett. And yeah, it gives you a lot of excitement, I guess, if you're a Florida Panthers fan, just when you see how good the team was playing a team collective game, and then you add such elite, high caliber players to the lineup. And we see the Panther fans have seen how important Sam Bennett particularly is to that lineup because of what happened last year before and during the playoffs. So now it's all coming together. They're just coming off of a Stanley Cup final appearance. Yeah, it's very exciting. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but this Panthers team, they could really be on the cusp of doing something special.

Yeah, I mean, think about it. With the players out of the lineup and the Panthers, they just survived it. They thrived and was able to get themselves off to a good start.

And.

Now everybody's back and now the entire team can play as a collective unit now.

Yep, it's a great time. As we've talked about many times, the Panthers are a team that has been notorious to getting off to bad starts and having to collect themselves and work really hard the second half of the year just to get into the playoffs little and making any damage there. Now it's a bit different. They're starting the season well. You know, Okay, this season is probably going to end with a playoff, so what's next? First, it was winning that first playoff round. They did that two years ago against Washington. Last year it was okay. They've been learning this new brand of hockey that's supposed to be good in the playoffs, so let's see if it happens. Well, it happened. The Panthers became maybe the best team in the League when they were full healthy at the end of last season and in the playoffs. Now you're seeing it all happening collectively over this course of time. Like I said before, without getting too ahead of myself, it's cool to think what this team could really accomplish based on A, how much talent they brought together, and B, the way that they're playing this great team brand of hockey.

Let's talk about the special teams for a second. The Panthas scored a power play goal on Wednesday, but they gave up two power play goals against the Stars. Now, up until that point, the penalty kill has been pretty decent.

Penalty kill has been great. I think it was the third or fourth best in the League all of November. Dallas is a team with a lot of firepower, and I think both of their power play goals, I remember the last one for sure came right off of face-offs. So it wasn't necessarily where the Penalty Kills had a chance to set up and do their damage. But yeah, even so, the penalty kill for Florida has been probably the most consistent element of their special teams the last six weeks. The power play, they just went back to the very successful power play that they used last year of Brennan Montore being the only defenseman, and then Kachuk, Reinhardt, Barkob, and Sam Bennett. That unit is back together. I think three or four games now. You're starting to see that cohesiveness come together. Again, with Montore, he spoke, I think, after practice on Tuesday, the day before the game, and he said it's taking him some time to get the comfort level to just really feel himself back in. Because remember, these guys are only eight games in, nine games in, Montore and Edel to their seasons, so it's going to take some time.

The power play, I'd be really surprised if it doesn't start clicking at some point just because they've got so much power and so much talent on that power play.

How about the second power play line?

You've got a lot of residual talent, whether it's Carter for Haiti, whether it's Anton Lendell, Aaron Edel is going to be on that, Oliver Reckman-Larsen, they could both be on that and have two defensemen on a very potent power play. So, yeah, you would think, and that's the power play that's stored. But Devin Rodd-Ridaz getting the power play goal against the Dallas Stars last night. So, yeah, that's the unit that when you talk about the depth of the Panthers, that power play is really deep, too.

We have George Richards coming up later in this show, but I am going to play a game, and we're going to play this game with him as well, of tiers. We have four tiers.

Love the tier game.

Yeah, love the tier game because we love sorting these things out into compartments. We have elite teams, the good teams, the average teams, and the ass of the league. Let's start with the Eastern Conference. We're going to go with the Metro. The New York Rangers are currently leading the Metropolitan Division by a lot. Let's start with them.

All-day elite. That's the only Metro team I've got in elite right now. I was pretty specific. When you sent me these tears the other day and you literally sent me elite, good, average ass, and that's what I had to work with.

Ass was in all caps, by.

The way. Of course, it was. Yeah. I've only got five teams right now in the entire League that I consider elite just because I think that's a high honor.

Yeah, go ahead and name them.

The Rangers, got the Boston Bruins, the Colorado Avalanche, the Vegas Golden Kites, and the Los Angeles Kings scare the bejeezy out of me right now with how well they're playing. Yeah, that makes sense. That's a team that plays good playoff hockey. Those are my elite teams. Now, I was telling you before we got started that I had to split good and average into a couple of minor tiers or whatever you want to call them, sub-tiers, because you got Florida, Carolina, and Dallas, right? And Winnipeg. Those are teams that I feel like are right on the cusp of the elite to good border. That was the upper echelon of good. Beyond that, and this is where you really start getting into the fun, because Vancouver, they got this amazing start. How real are they? Right, yeah. But they're good. Detroit, who I know we're going to be talking about this year because they were already a decent team, now they got Patrick Cain. Yeah. I've got Toronto in there. I don't have Toronto with the elite teams because Toronto's just can't keep the buck out of the net. I was going to say Edmonton, but Edmonton's come around.

Edmonton, who's towards the bottom of the standings, they're in the same category. They're in the good category, as is Arizona. I've got Arizona in the good category.

That's actually not surprising to me. Right? Yeah. And then playing at a 9,000 seat arena for Arizona State, it's very intimate. I guess, feeding off of the electricity of that.

They're just playing good, solid, defensive hockey. They can put the buck in the net and they're being consistent. And really, what more can you ask for from a team like Arizona who's really got zero respect across the league? And then rounding out good, I got Nashville and Tampa. Nashville has been on fire lately. They've got great goaltending. Tampa, I'm not sleeping on it at all.

Okay, we got two minutes left. Let's go through the average before we get to the big old asses of the week.

Okay, the average, but good. So the top tier of average. I've got the Devils, who we saw last year how good they could be. Same thing with the Minnesota Wilde. I'm surprised that they've been as bad as they've been. Washington Capital, they probably should be above with the good teams. I'm just not sold that they're going to be consistent yet. They've had a very decent start to the season, as have the Philadelphia Flyers, surprisingly. They survived the Carter-Heart injury. He's back. They're playing well under torts. Those are the better average teams. Then below them, you got the Blues, European wings, the Islanders, Calgary, Montreal, San Jose, who I don't have in the ass of the lead because I think they've been playing a lot better. Good for them. And Ottawa who also, despite being at the bottom of the standings, they haven't played that many games. Ottawa is a decent team, and they could be a potential playoff caliber type, sneaky team.

As well. That makes me happy that the Sharks are not in the ass.

Sharks have been playing some good hockey the last couple of weeks.

Good for them. Yes. Good for Giovanni Smith and good for Andy Decler. Let's go with the ass.

The ass. Well, at the top of the ass is Seattle, who was a playoff team last year. They just have not figured it out this year. Buffalo, who cannot get out of their own way. They've dealt with a lot of injuries this year. Columbus is Columbus. Yeah. Anaheim with an amazing start to this year just totally fell off a cliff. Anaheim is now what they were last year. And the Chicago Blackcox, the Connerbidard, the shine of that, the fun start, I think that's worn off a bit. And Chicago's fallen into their own issues as well.

All right. It's the 10-minute misconduct. We got a guy coming in the Pony Box with us by the name of George Richards from Florida Hockey Now and the NHL. Com. This guy has been covering the Florida Panthers for a very, very long time, almost two decades, and it doesn't show on his face. Hey, George, how are you doing?

Well, that was his kind. That was as nice an intro as I've ever gotten.

Hey, listen, what.

Professional is he doing? He's an old guy. He doesn't look like it.

Come on. Well, I'm an old guy and I don't look like it.

No.

You really don't. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

Very much. You're a good looking man.

I appreciate that. I think I got shaved and everything. You look good, brother. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very nice.

There's a lot of love in this room.

Yeah, a lot of love. I mean, need the love around here. The Florida Panthays are having a pretty incredible season considering how they started with a quarter of the roster not being there, but they're having a very good season. In fact, you look at Wednesday's game against Dallas, you look at their first line and you saw how they played. It was amazing. We look at the trophies at the end of the season, it pretty much seemed like Alexander Barclays is going to win the Silky trophy. Don't you agree?

Well, I think he's going to be right in it. I mean, it's a little early. We're about a quarter of the way through the season. But yeah, I think any time you talk about top defensive forwards, Sasha Barkav is right there. He won the award a couple of years ago. And last year, he would have been in the running for it had he not had the injuries. And thus far this season, he hasn't been hurt. Now he's absolutely terrific. I talked to Paul Marise just on the side. We were talking about Sam Reinhardt. And he was just raving about Sasha Barkov and how while Reinhardt's got all the goals and stuff, Barkov does so much stuff that nobody really pays any attention to. And so does Reinhardt. I mean, those guys go against their opposition's best, and they're still producing. Yeah, I mean, like you said, I think he's a favorite for it, especially with the attention that the Panthers are getting, no doubt.

Speaking of saying, Reinhardt obviously has all the goals this season. All the goals. I mean, he's gone all of those doggone goals. The Marisa, the Rashad trophy. Do you think he's a candidate for that? And is there a possibility, a slim possibility that if he continues this through the All-Star break, that he could be considered for the Harttrophy?

Well, perhaps. I mean, you'd have to... The Rocket-Rashard trophy goes to the player who scores the most goals. So yeah, he's definitely in the running for it because he is right up there at the top of the League right now. He's on pace to score 55 goals, 56 goals. His career high is 33. So he is having an absolute blistering start to his season. As far as heart trophy stuff goes, I mean, a little early for that talk, but we'll see how the Panthers do. If he's able to carry this a season through, if he has anywhere near 50 and the Florida Panthers end up winning the Atlantic or something, yeah, I think a guy like that would be right in that mix. But then again, so what a player like barclays and let's see what Matthew Kachuk ends up doing. He's off to a slow start. But if he was able to pick it up here in this final two-thirds of the season, who knows?

Yeah, that's what we were talking about before the show, George, was that this time last year, nobody was talking about Matthew Kachuk as a heart trophy guy and look at the second half that he had. So a lot's going to change.

A lot can change, yeah. Because Florida, look at the position Florida was in first half of the year, they didn't even have a three-game winning streak. So vast change from last year.

So when you look at this forward group for the Florida Panthers, George, obviously, we've talked a lot, even just now we've talked a lot about the top line, the Barkov, Reinhardt, and Evan Rodridez, and the chemistry that they're growing. But just overall, the way that the Florida Panthers, now that they're healthy, are able to throw four pretty consistent four lines at you, whether you got your top six, which are great on both ends of the ice. You've got a third line centered by Anton Lundell that's showing up great defensively. And then you've got this fourth line that just smacks you in the face every time they're on the ice. The fourth is had to be one of, if not the deepest, four groups in the NHL.

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that, especially when you talk about that fourth line that just seems to enjoy going out there to create some havoc, right? I mean, you've got Kevin Stenland, who's just he seems like the sane guy out there. And then you've got Lamberg and Gadkavich just running around like crazy people. They're having a lot of fun out there. But they play a responsible game. They don't take dumb penalties, really. I think that was the knock on the fourth line in years past, and maybe they ran people a little too much. But they've been playing smart and they've been playing effective. So when you talk about a deep forward group, yeah, I think you start with the Panthers because you look at that center line, you're going Barkov, Bennett, Anton Lundell, and who is a very under-the-radar signing on July 1, that, listen, this is the guy that Bill Zito picked to replace Eric Stahl. I talked to him at the draft just before Free Agency, and he was like, We have a number of positions we want to upgrade. One of those was the fourth line center position. They let Eric Stahl walk.

They thought Kevin Stenlin was going to be an upgrade at that position. So far, he has been.

We, as humans, like to sort things out and put things into cabinets, right? We're going to do that with the National Hockey League. We have four tiers that we like to put out there for you so we can sort these hockey teams out. We have the elite tier, we have good, we have average, and we have ass. So let's start with the Atlantic Division and the Florida Panthers. Where are they in those four tiers?

I think they're on the bottom side of elite because this is a team that went to the Stanley Cup final. They're in second place in the Atlantic right now. They could be battling for first place. I think, is Boston going to be able to carry through their start through the whole season. I don't think they will. So I think the Atlantic is still going to be up for grabs. So I would say the bottom end of the elite to very good.

Oh, wow. Okay. And the Boston Bruins are obviously in the elites, the elite tier, right?

Sure. Right. But I could see them dropping down. Absolutely.

Okay. The Detroit Red Rings are in third place in the Atlantic Division. Patrick Cain is in the fold now. And it looks like they're on the rise. What tier do you have them in?

I have them at the very good. I mean, I think that that's the team. When you talked about the Atlantic Division coming into this season, the teams you knew were good, Florida, Boston, Tampa Bay, Toronto. Then you had the young group, Buffalo, Detroit, Ottawa, which one of those teams would make the jump. It's been Detroit. They've been absolutely terrific. I love the way they play. I love their coach. I like the way they're built. And now they get Patrick Cain last night. That's a great move for them. I mean, that absolutely is. He's a veteran player. He can do a lot of things. We'll see how this season treats him with that hip surgery. That's a major surgery. We saw him last night make his debut with the Red Wings. But let's see how it goes through the season. He picked Detroit because the travel is not really that bad. A lot of their games are our flights, so it's not that bad for him. It's going to be interesting. I think he was a real good pickup. A lot of people down here were like, Florida Panthers don't need Patrick Cain. Yeah, you could definitely use a guy like that.

You put him on the right side of that third line, you got something. You put him on that first power play, you've got something. So good for him. He went to Detroit. That's where he wanted to go. But I think the Florida Panthers are right in that mix, and I think he would have been a good addition.

Before we wrap up talking about the other teams in the Eastern Conference, I did just want to ask you, Georgie, as you consider the Panthers one of the elite teams out there, who do you think is their biggest competition in the Eastern Conference right now?

I think it comes from within the Atlantic, right? Because that's where they're going to be. Last year they were the second wildcard, so they could have played the top Metro team, but they ended up staying in the Atlantic against Boston. So it's going to be Toronto, Boston, Tampa Bay. Unless Florida wins the Atlantic and gets one of the wildcards out of the Metro. I think you just look within your division and that's your competition. And again, you worry about what's at the end. At the end, last year was the Carolina Huricans. This year could be the New York Rangers waiting on the other side or someone else. Maybe Pittsburgh makes a run. Who knows what's going to happen in the Metro? But it'll be interesting, just like last year was. Sure.

You look at the attendance at the Florida Panthas Games now at Emerant Bank Arena, and yes, they named it Emerant Bank Arena. Thank God somebody gave them a name and they could pay for the arena. But anyway, the attendance has gone up. The season tickets in the lower bowl has.

Effectively.

-almost gone, yeah. It's basically gone. And you look in the upper deck, I mean, that's filled, too. I mean, Wednesday's game, that was great attendance for a game versus the Dallas Stars on a Wednesday night. I mean, the games on Thanksgiving week were filled. This is a stark change between now and when you started Covering the Panthers a long, long, long time ago, right?

It was so long ago. My goodness, it was so long. It's been a long time. Yeah, it's unbelievable. I told Pete DeBore yesterday, or when Dallas was here, we were talking. I was like, Tonight is going to be the biggest crowd you've seen in this building since the 2012 playoffs when he was here with New Jersey. Just because every time one of his team comes here, whether it's Vegas or San Jose or Dallas, that's not a game that really draws. Sometimes there's been 10,000 people in the building, and this place is a ghost town. It's a 20,000 seat barn, and when 14,000 seems empty here. Wednesday night they had 18,500. Like you said, Roy, those last four rows are always the last to sell. Those were packed on our side. So it really is... On a Monday night against Columbus, they had 18-7. That's just unbelievable for this market. So it has been something that's been building. We always said, not only do the Panthers have to win, but they have to win consistently because you can't just all of a sudden go from last place to being a contender and sell a bunch of tickets.

It takes a couple of years to build that up. Now we've seen this team in the playoffs three straight years. You saw last year this team able to sell season tickets during a long postseason run where they guaranteed them playoff tickets. So people bought season tickets for this year. You're seeing that manifest itself. So they've definitely moved back into the top four here in South Florida into the pecking order because for a while there they were below their race at homestead.

Oh, man.

But that leads me to what I wanted to ask you, George, as Roy has alluded to you've been covering this team for a while, but how nice has it been or how different, I guess, has it been covering them the last couple of years with so much winning and so much positivity? Because you've covered it through some dark times, the dark ages that we don't really refer to that much, some up and downs times. But how just nice has it been from a journalist standpoint of covering a team that's had so much success?

Well, I covered the Panthers when I first started. It was the Major League years, right? I mean, you tell people you covered the Florida Panthers and they still have a team. I'm like, Yeah, we've.

Got uniforms and everything.

Yeah, uniforms and everything. It's really neat. That's when you walk into the sandwich shop across the street and there was a stack of tickets like that. Randy Mohler had a stack in his pocket. He was like, George, go get 18 of your friends and make sure they scan the ticket so we get credit for the attendance. I mean, it was bad and things have slowly built. But let's not forget, a couple of years ago, they were averaging 14,000 here. So it's taken a while. It's taken a while for this organization to build into a winner. I think that's the biggest thing because, David, you remember 2016, this team wins the Atlantic. They've got Yager and Equad, and Barkov, and all this great feeling. And then they have the 2016-17 season where they're back out of the playoffs. They don't make it back again until 2021. This organization sometimes couldn't get out of its own way, and now you're seeing this pretty sustained success. Like I tell people, you talk about the good old days, these are them for the Florida Panthers. This team's never been to the playoffs this many years in a row. And that's sad to say when you look at teams around the league, this is the first time this team has ever been to the playoffs three straight years.

They're going on four. They've been to the Stanley Cup finals now twice. We'll see where they go from here, but it's a pretty good little run they're on and they're built to keep it going.

Covering the Florida Panthas for Florida Hockey Now and the National Hockey League for NHL. Com is George Richards. George, please stop. Make sure that Kobe guy stops walking... Can you get me a camera shot, please? Can you tell him to be a professional?

He don't know what's going on. This is a media work group, my friends.

Oh, yeah, sure.

There's media work. I thought that was just the background. I thought that was just your Zoom background.

Yeah, I thought that was your bedroom for a second.

With these lights?

Recess lighting. Thank you, George.

Thank you, guys. See you later.