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Welcome to The Talking Hockey While Nobody's Here Show. My name is Roy Bellamy. David Dworak from The Hockey News is joining me here. We are talking hockey because nobody can stop us because again, nobody is here. Let's talk about the Florida Panthers. We start locally here for a little bit. The Panthers are 3-3 and zero with six points so far. Second and last in the division. A bit of a slow start, but we do see some promising returns from this team right now. Currently, Alexander Barkov is ill. We saw that Dimitri Kulikov is also caught a little bit of the bug, so they didn't make practice today. But a good sign here, Sam Bennett has joined the Panthers in practice.

David, what have you got? Yeah, looks like Sam Bennett is trending toward playing in Florida's game on Saturday against the Seattle Kraken. Paul Marise said last week that Bennett was getting closer. He started skating on his own, and that he wanted him to get into two good practices before he put him into a game. That would be today tomorrow's practice, lining him up for Saturday, which would be good.

The Panthers coming off of a win versus San Jose Sharks. They are the worst team in the League. Unfortunately for Anthony de Clair, who we did get to see, they gave him a tribute video, which was also great to see. We did see the Panthers control the puck mostly during that game. That was a good sign there as well. Goaltender is held up. You're a goaltender, so you've seen you know what's going on down there in the crease.

What have you got for that? I've been really happy with the goaltending so far. I think if you look at my track record over the last few years, I've been fairly critical of Serge Bobrovsky, deservedly so, in my opinion. I think Bob has been great. He's a goalie that usually does not start the season well. It takes him a while to get going. I think he's been really much better than I would have expected early in the year, which is a great sign. And then the backup, Anthony Stolar, is this massive tank of a man. He's like 6'6, 250, and yet somehow he's moving out there with the ebb and flows and ease and beauty of a goaltender. So looks like the Panthers are really set well in their goal tiny. And eventually, Spencer Knight will be back, and he looked great during camp as well. Florida is pretty well set up in the crease.

Well, team defense did not look good versus the Winnipeg Jets and that disappointing loss versus the Vancouver Knucks. That didn't look great as well. But Minnesota, they look good, and they look good versus San Jose, where you see with the defense.

I think overall the defense is going to be okay. You mentioned it before. They're missing two of their key players in Aaronet, Blad, and Brendan Montore. So that's obviously going to set you back. But the guys they brought in, the Oliver Edmund-Larison, Nico Mikola, Uves Balinskias, who's been a great find basically out of nowhere as they pulled him out of the Czech extra League. And he's over here looking like a starting NHL defense and playing quite well. So I think the Panthers are set up pretty good with defense when the big guys get back. It could just be an embarrassment of Richard situation where the Panthers could make some moves and maybe bring in some more depth, maybe bolster that team for a playoff run.

Very quickly, let's talk about the Atlantic Division. What surprises have you seen out of this division right now?

Detroit just coming out like gangbusters. I mean, it's all Alex DeBrinquette, not all, but it's Alex DeBrinquette and Dylan Larkin, just spectacular. They've done what we've expected Ottawa to do the last few years, which is be that next good team. And granted, we're just a few games into the season. But yeah, Detroit looks great.

And League-wide, there has been one huge disappointment, and that's been the Edmonton Allays. Granted, small injury of a con of McDavid, but he seems to be returning for Sunday's Heritage Classic. What do you got on that?

Yeah, it looks like McDavid will be back in the line. They're not saying for sure yet, but you know that they want to get him out there for the big game outdoors, Edmonton Calgary. Conor McDavid, they're going to do everything they can to get him in the lineup. But overall, Edmonton, I don't know what's going on. I guess if you were going to tell me that Edmonton would be one of the worst teams in the league and had given up the most goals in the league, that's not terribly surprising because it's always the question is, is their goal tending going to hold up similar to Toronto? But yeah, you would think that Edmonton, with all that firepower, the McDavid to Dryidal, they'd be better. You think they're going to turn it around, but yeah, not the greatest start.

All right, the penalty box door has opened. We got somebody to serve a five-minute major, and that person is Greg Ratinsky. He's the senior NHL writer for ESPN. Com. He's also the co-host for The Drop. Now we had some news come in and recording this on a Thursday, some major news coming from the NHL. We have a big-time suspension for the first time in League history. Well, maybe not even League history, but for the first time in League history during this online sports betting era, somebody has been suspended. Shane Pinto, who is currently a restrictive free agent for the Ottawa senators, has been suspended 41 games of violating the NHL sports betting policy. Greg, give us some information on this.

Yeah, it's a bummer. That's 41 games. We won't get to see Shane Pinto with a gambling advertisement on his helmet for the Ottawa senators. Oh, my God. Because they were the first team to wear one when it became a coacher in the NHL. But now, again, the thing we have to stress here is that Shane Pinto did not bet on hockey. The NHL was very explicit in that. Had he bet on hockey, Commissioner Gary Betman probably would have banned him for a year or more. That is the one thing you cannot do in this league, is bet on hockey. They have it posted in all the locker rooms to not do that. In this case, the NHL's betting integrity partner found something anomalous on apparently a US online account associated with Pinto, brought it to the league, and it was enough for them to suspend the guy. Look, the bottom line is whoever was going to get suspended first since the NHL started to really partner with these sportsbooks was going to get the hammer. They were going to get the bandhammer pretty hard. Forty-one games is a lot for whatever Pinto did, but it is a clear signal from the NHL that they're not going to humor anything that looks untoward or challenges the integrity of these games.

Pinto is not appealing, so it apparently is going to be something he'll serve out until January.

From what I saw, the suspension officially starts the first game of the season for Ottawa. Him being a restricted free agent, he can very well sign with the team, play with the team, and go on from there, right?

Yeah. He's going to be free to sign with them in January. He's a different restricted free agent. Normally, restricted free agents have to sign with their team by December first. He's in a different category, so he's able to go and sign with them in January past that deadline. And again, it's funny. There's been all this reporting about why is Shane Pinto playing? He's a good player. He's entering his fourth season, good young offensive player for Ottawa. People were like, Why has he signed a contract? Why is he in the lineup? And now we understand why, which is that they had an ongoing investigation into this gambling stuff. So expect him to rejoin the team in January, but obviously, 41 games into the season at the very least.

Right, shifting gears but staying north of the border. I wanted to ask you about what's happening in Calgary right now. Nikita Zodov came out recently, just a couple of days ago, and really gave it to his teammates up there. Just basically called them out saying there was no excuses for the team's poor start. We know what they've gone through in Calgary, the players, I mean, going from Darryl Sutter to maybe a more soft coach now. But I just wanted to get your take on what's going on in Calgary, because I really feel bad for some of the former Fort the Panthers that are up there right now.

Yeah, I mean, reading between the lines, I think Zorov was basically saying, Look, you guys didn't want Darryl Sutter to be the coach. You all called him out. You all said he was the problem. They get rid of him. And now we still think. So what's going on here with you guys? Look, the problem with the Calgary Flames is pretty simple. They are a supporting cast in Search of a star, right? They are a team that clearly has a lot of talent surrounding what should be there, but is not there in the fact that Johnny Goodrow and Matthew Kachuk left two years ago, and then you had Tyler Tifoli traded to The Devils last season or last offseason, I should say. They're a good team, but there just seems to be a hole in that lineup that they simply can't fill. I think that's one of the reasons why they're going to struggle this year.

Going to the Pride Tape situation and the theme nights, the NHL has changed its mind about players using any tape, I guess, at this point for these theme nights. And all it took was one player, Tyler DeMont, for the Arizona Coyotes. Why don't you give us some more information about that?

Yeah, the Pride Tate thing was related to the ban on specialty jerseys the NHL had during the offseason. So if you remember last year, you had guys that were boycotting wearing Pride Night jerseys and warmups because of their personal beliefs, usually religious beliefs. The NHL decided to address this by banning all specialty jerseys, be it military appreciation, hockey fights, cancer, whatever, from warmups and games and things like that. So then they went one step further and said that players weren't allowed to use the rainbow-colored Pride tape on their sticks to support the gay community either. And that resulted in a huge backlash that went well outside the hockey bubble. You had social media accounts that are usually who Ariana Grande is dating and writing about Pride Tape all of a sudden. So a really bad look for the League. The NHL has what's called the Players Coalition inside their organization. It's co-chaired by PK, Sue-Ban, and Anson Carter. And that coalition really got the ball rolling internally to say, Hey, look, the Pride Tape thing was one step too far. We should address this. The NHL PA and the coalition all met. And then about a week later, Dermot wrapped his stick with Pride Tape during a Coyote's game.

And so the combination of those two things led to the reversal of this policy. And look, it only makes sense if you're going to protect the personal beliefs of a minority of your players based on their religion or what have you, you should also respect the majority of your players' beliefs and wanted to support some of these causes, including the gay community. So it was the right thing to do, and I'm glad that it took a while, but they finally got there.

Before we let you out of the penalty box, Greg, I did wanted to talk to you about something that ESPN did this week that I thought was awesome as a hockey fan, and that was the frozen frenzy. We had every single team, if you guys didn't realize this, we had every single NHL team playing on the same day, staggered starts. What I really loved was you guys had whiparound coverage, like the NFL Red Zone with John Bouchardros and Kevin Wheat. And it was just amazing. But from your side of it, I just wanted to get how was it received from the production side? How was ESB N guys seeing this?

It was awesome. The numbers were good. And I think what it did was create a moment for hockey fans to all congregate and have that shared experience. Shared experiences in the current media landscape are very few and far between. You got the Super Bowl and the Game of Thrones finale, right? That's it. But for hockey fans, it was a night for everybody to just watch these games, comment on them on social media. The start times were all staggered, and it went throughout the night. And the biggest thing from our perspective, I think, was the reaction. Hockey fans, I don't know if you know this guy, is a little cynical. A little cynical when it comes to liking things, usually, especially new things or changes to things. But universally, there was a lot of praise for the frozen frenzy, not only in its conception, but it's an execution. So I'd be surprised if we don't do it again. And I think the most fulfilling thing again was the fact that we were able to create something that hockey fans really dug, and that's not an easy thing to do.

And my notes on this is this: do it in April and have the game start earlier. Please, for the love.

Of God. Look, man, I think in a perfect world, we do one of these in October, get everybody's appetite wet for hockey. Then the weekend after the Super Bowl, we do another one of them, because the weekend after the Super Bowl is the official start of the NHL season in many people's minds. We do one early, we do one late, and we do it like twice a year. Again, I couldn't be happier with the way the thing came off and everybody digging it. So it was fun to see.

Greg Rosinsky, Senior NHL writer of ESPN. Com and co-host to the job. Thank you for joining us.

Anytime.