Robertson-less in Seattle

Summary

32 Thoughts: The Podcast – “Robertson-less in Seattle”

Date: June 26, 2026
Hosts: Elliotte Friedman, Kyle Bukauskas, Dom Luszczyszyn
Guests/Contributors: Jason Bukala, Sam Cosentino, Jarmo Kekäläinen

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Episode Overview

This draft-week episode, recorded in Buffalo with the full panel present, delivers an in-depth look at rapidly developing NHL trade and contract stories. The main focus is the explosive news that Jason Robertson turned down an eye-popping offer to join the Seattle Kraken by way of a pre-draft trade, leaving both the hockey world and Seattle management stunned. Alongside major trade chatter, Elliotte, Kyle, and Dom break down ongoing league intrigue (McTavish, Wawrenski, expansion), preview the upcoming Draft with scouts Jason Bukala and Sam Cosentino, and conduct a revealing interview with Buffalo GM Jarmo Kekäläinen. The show is packed with insight, rumors, and expert-level prospect talk.

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1. The Robertson-to-Seattle Blockbuster: What Happened?

[04:16–12:05]

• The Scoop:
  Jason Robertson, the Dallas Stars' elite RFA forward, was on the verge of being traded to the Seattle Kraken. The Stars and Kraken agreed on a deal (including the #7 overall pick); Seattle was authorized to negotiate an “approx. $15M/year” contract with Robertson over 8 years.
  Robertson said no.
• Why Did Robertson Decline?
  • Dom: “I believe it was the destination. I don’t think he was turning down $15 million. I don’t know anybody that would.” (05:35)
  • Kraken have swung big before (Panarin, Samoskevich, etc.), but cannot land the No. 1 forward they badly need.
  • The deal included structuring big upfront payout to beat tax changes coming to Washington State in 2028.
  • “Seattle did everything right here and it's a kick in the teeth for them and their fans.” (06:42 — Dom)
• Implications for Dallas & Seattle:
  • Dallas likely offered much less ($12–$12.5M).
  • “If you’re the Stars, you’ve basically decided you’re trading him, right?” (08:00 — Dom)
  • There’s shock and hurt feelings on all sides; with the deal dead, the situation “kind of been thrown back to ground zero.” (10:45)
• Player Preferences Getting Narrower:
  • Kyle: “It feels like the blinders have come way in … players really honing in on, ‘I want to go to one place or two.’” (07:14)

Notable Quotes

• “I do feel for them because they're trying to do all the right things here... they've never had anybody like that… They stepped up, they made a huge financial offer.” (06:21 — Dom)
• “Some days I look at this and I go, how did I get through life today? There is really no answer.” (03:18 — Dom)

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2. Trade Winds: Draft Rumors & Player Movement

[12:22–20:20]

Mason McTavish Sweepstakes

• Anaheim’s Choice: Ducks are “in win-now mode”; GM Pat Verbeek weighing offers from St. Louis (pick #11 centerpiece), NYR (player centerpiece).
• Key Point: “They don’t want picks, they want someone who can help them now.” (13:22 — Dom)
• Ottawa was in on McTavish, but St. Louis and Rangers have better offers. If Brady Tkachuk had wanted Anaheim, “might be talking a little bit differently.” (15:00)

Draft Leverage and Chaos

• Multiple teams holding significant draft power:
  • St. Louis: 4 first-rounders
  • San Jose: 2 in top-9
  • Buffalo, Carolina, Columbus all factoring in
  • “It would be better if you just asked me who’s not getting traded, there’s like 25 players in the league…” (15:44 — Dom)
• “Finally, the big return comes your way” – anticipation of an unusually busy trade summer. (16:14 — Kyle)

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3. Toronto Maple Leafs’ Direction: Steaming Toward the Cliff

[16:49–21:39]

• Draft & Roster Philosophy:
  • Have the #1 overall pick, but no interest in tearing it down.
  • “They are on a train heading towards… like steamrolling down the track and they're like, we're going for this the next two years as much as we can.”
  • Do not want to hand high first-rounders (owed to Boston, Philly) to rivals — “makes them physically ill.”
  • Retention of core (e.g. Matthews).
  • “If this doesn't work and they lose Matthews, they're probably going to have to rebuild anyway. So, why not?” (19:50 — Dom)

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4. Blue Jackets Uncertainty: Wawrenski & Marchenko

[21:49–27:32]

• “Wouldn't begrudge Blue Jackets fans for feeling a little queasy right now.” (21:52 — Kyle)
• GM Don Waddell “punting” on Zach Wawrenski situation until after draft — signals unease, teams start to call.
• Marchenko: “A bunch of people…guaranteed 40 goal scorer over the next contract…People want him.” (24:12 — Dom)
• Recent trade for Valerie Nichushkin seen as move to strengthen roster, perhaps to entice key players to stay.

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5. Goaltending and Trade Chatter: Hellebuyck, Carolina

[28:14–32:34]

• Hellebuyck is a sought-after goalie: Carolina believed to have serious interest, as do others (Florida among potential suitors, but “that’s not happening”—Jets want their say).
• Hellebuyck wants a team “that can be consistently good over the next three years.” (28:52 — Dom)
• League-wide, teams are no longer afraid of bold, multi-part moves.
• Potential Carolina–Florida playoff rematch already stoking excitement.

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6. Other Notable Trade, Roster, and Market Musings

• Bo Byram to Chicago: (33:39–39:39)
  • Sabres moved Byram for the #4 overall pick (detailed later in Jarmo Kekäläinen interview).
  • “Byram seems like he legitimately is appreciative of what they’re doing—can’t sign a four-year deal, got to…”
  • Chicago has targeted Byram for years.
  • “There are a lot of defensemen who've been taken around that spot…where it just hasn't worked out.” (36:26 – Dom)
  • Analysis: If this works, maybe it opens up more top-of-draft trades; if not, teams may clamp down.
• On being “in the chair” as GM:
  • Armchair analysis vs. real pressure: “It’s easy for you to say. He's the guy in the chair.” (40:53 — Dom)
• Vancouver’s potential moves:
  • Not eager to alienate Ronick or Pedersen — “They're trying to start a new culture there.” (43:21 — Dom)

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7. Draft Preview – Sam Cosentino & Jason Bukala Join

[57:49–97:58]

Scouting Stories, Draft Trends, Prospects Discussion

• Nine players clear at top, but chaos to follow:
  • Names: McKenna, Stenberg, Malhotra, Reed, Smiths, Bjork, Carl’s, Rudolph, Verhoff (65:59–66:32)
• Debate: “Do you have the stones to defy the owner?”
  • If your owner wants a marquee pick for jerseys/tickets — would a top scout or GM override him to take the “less sexy” but better player? Most panelists say, realistically, no.
• Who are the can’t-miss prospects?
  • McKenna has “potential for 90 or 100 points”; Stenberg “better all-around.”
  • Alex Command a wild card, highly valued by half the league.
• Vancouver (Malhotra) Dilemma:
  • Would they pass over coach’s son? Consensus: “You have to draft the very best player.”
• “Shockers” for round one:
  • Sokolovsky (London, 6’7” defenseman) possibly to Boston or Philly.
  • Rogowski (point per game, late bloomer)
  • Several Swedes in top 40: “They play the game the right way…character and know how to win.”

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8. Interview: Jarmo Kekäläinen, Buffalo Sabres GM

[116:28–141:47]

Context:

Buffalo has a busy week — trades Alex Tuch and Bo Byram, acquires #4 in draft, signs Zach Benson to extension.

Key Insights:

• On recent key moves:
  • “Byram… told us back then already that he wanted to be a number one defenseman and that’s why he didn’t want to sign long term… left us no option but to make the trade, which we did.” (118:37–119:10)
  • “Tuck and Byram did not want to continue here.” (135:10)
• Inside the trade process:
  • “I don't go around like a used car salesman… I always ask for, make your best offer. Don’t kid around here…”
  • Picks valued with numerical chart — drop-off is steep after #2.
• Buffalo Team Philosophy:
  • Remain “draft and develop”—must be a contender without blockbuster external moves.
  • “One player leaving is not going to decide the success of our forward group. One defenseman leaving is not going to decide the success of our D group.” (136:00)
  • Organization focuses on “internal growth, drive, and desire.”
• Unique, direct communication style:
  • On ownership: “I can be blunt… maybe comes from my background of being Finnish… I don’t sugarcoat it.”
• Pickleball revelations:
  • Best exec on the pickleball court? “Chris Draper. …Marty Lapointe is most improved.” (140:09–140:17)

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9. NHL Expansion Watch: Houston or Austin?

[50:43–57:19]

• Bettman open about new expansion possibility:
  • “Houston is the fourth largest market in the United States. How much better is our TV deal if people know Houston’s got a team?”
  • Hefty price tag: $2 billion for expansion, $1.5B+ for new arena.
  • Mention of opposition: some league voices want no further growth—but money and US broadcast deals likely to drive expansion regardless.
  • Austin is given a “legit chance” due to big local money.
  • Other markets (Atlanta, Arizona) not ready yet.
  • “I don’t see this being a 33 team league... I think he sees several [openings].” (57:17 — Dom)
  • 2029–30 is possible timeframe.

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10. Listener Q&A: Thought Line

[99:01–115:27] Questions addressed:

• How trade protection may change in light of players dictating destinations (“there should be some mechanism…” — Dom, 106:39)
• Mechanics of sign-and-trade deals
• Publicizing trade requests — why GMs prefer secrecy (“it just got to be too much…a distraction…” — 111:04)
• Longest NHL award-finalist streaks: Bergeron (12 years, Selkie), Gretzky (10 straight Hart), etc.

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11. Draft Room Banter & Prospect Profiles

[58:10–97:58]

• Real-world considerations in scouting and drafting (chemistry, family dynamics, owner pressure)
• “Off-the-rails” chatter: shoe collections, wine tasting, road stories
• On draft strategy: “All I’m doing is reverse engineering a strategy on the floor.” (88:38 — Jason Bukala)

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Notable & Memorable Moments

• “For a guy who’s so smart, you really are super dumb.” (03:18 – Dom, ribbing Elliotte)
• “You can never criticize them for just being in it for the money” — on players dictating destination over contract size (12:00 – Kyle)
• “It’s as ugly as a pimple on prom night” — Dom, on Vancouver’s year (42:31)
• “I would beat that guy in badminton” saga (140:50) — Jarmo Kekäläinen’s competitive edge.

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Top Timestamps

• [04:16] — Robertson’s nearly-complete trade to Seattle breaks down
• [12:45] — McTavish trade rumors, Anaheim’s “win now” stance
• [16:49] — Toronto’s philosophy with the #1 pick and their window
• [21:49] — Blue Jackets uncertainty: Wawrenski, Marchenko, and Russian player chemistry
• [28:14] — Hellebuyck rumors and Carolina’s Cup ambitions
• [33:39] — Bo Byram to Chicago: rarity of high pick for player trades
• [57:49] — Draft preview: Cosentino & Bukala’s scouting deep dive
• [116:28] — Jarmo Kekäläinen interview: inside Buffalo’s franchise-altering week
• [50:43/54:20] — NHL expansion discussion: Houston, Austin, and the league’s US ambitions

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Tone & Style

Lively, candid, and often tongue-in-cheek—yet brimming with deep connections, expertise, and behind-the-scenes knowledge. The episode reflects both the intensity of the week (absurd trade offers, seismic moves) and the camaraderie of a group that lives and breathes hockey at a high level.

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In Summary

“Robertson-less in Seattle” is a must-listen for hockey fans interested in the high-stakes drama of the 2026 NHL Draft, how modern superstars are reshaping free agency and trades, and what’s next for some of the league’s most fascinating franchises (Seattle, Buffalo, Toronto, etc.). The episode excels at puncturing industry PR—a warts-and-all ride through the inside brain trust power plays of the NHL, complete with laughs, insight, and real revelations.

Transcript

[Kyle]

Get that AMEX Gold Card ready.

[Jason Buchala]

I'm too tired to cook.

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[Dom]

So what's it like driving with Sammy?

[Jason Buchala]

It's. It's. It's. It's aggressive. It's. It's a little bit lower to the ground because I'm in my truck, so everything just seems like it's coming at me a lot quicker when I'm with Sammy.

[Dom]

I respected Sammy.

[Elliot]

I don't believe in amber.

[Dom]

Oh, the color.

[Elliot]

Almost everything is green.

[Kyle]

The color or the commentator?

[Elliot]

Yeah, the commentator.

[Dom]

What about him?

[Elliot]

What is it? The secret voice. What is he?

[Kyle]

Oh, the Anonymous.

[Elliot]

The Anonymous. Yeah, the Anonymous.

[Kyle]

Welcome to 32 Thoughts, the podcast presented by your Canadian Toyota dealers and the 2026 Tacoma. It's time to Toyota from Buffalo. Kyle, Elliot and Dom. We're all together in person. This doesn't happen too often during the year, so we cherish the moments that do. And it's a great time to all be together. Because when you think of what's happened this week already, I think of the scene from Anchorman after the big fight between all the networks, and they're sitting in Burgundy's office, and he goes, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. Here we are. We haven't even gotten to draft it yet. As we record this. You're listening to this, of course, Friday morning, the day of the draft, on late Thursday night.

[Dom]

Dom has freedom to drop this pod late Thursday.

[Kyle]

Oh. So maybe. So our listeners out West.

[Dom]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Staying up late. Are catching this Thursday night. And it was on Thursday night that you reported.

[Dom]

Wait a sec. Before we get to this, I have. I have to dedicate this pod.

[Kyle]

Sorry.

[Dom]

Sorry. I'm violating the Bucha gross rule. Get to the news quick. But I. I have to shout out three people at the top of this pod right away. So I had a snafu this week around the board of Governors meeting in New York City. I had an issue that I had to deal with. Nothing serious, but it's one of those things that you need help to get through. And I needed help from the Canadian Consulate in New York City. I would like to thank Grisha and Melissa. And there was another woman named Jessica, who I believe was the first person I spoke to in the call center, who put me in touch to them. And this week, those three women, Grisha, Melissa and Jessica, saved my existence. So I just wanted to say, you said it was not serious, but it's one of those things you need fixed quickly. And I just want to say thanks. And I hope that whoever is listening at the Canadian Consulate, maybe somebody who's in a position of authority, you should know you have three people there who were outstanding.

[Kyle]

You know, every week I wonder who's helping Elliot this week, who's getting him, who's keeping them upright, who's keeping them afloat. Oftentimes it's Steph and Max. Kathy Broad comes to mind. And the good people, you and me, Dom. Well, you for sure. I probably just drag Elliot down more often than not. But now the Canadian Consulate, they stepped up this week.

[Dom]

Did they ever. Sometimes you're so right, Kyle. There's some days I look at this and I go, how did I get through life today? There is really no answer. As some of my friends say, for a guy who's so smart, you really are super dumb.

[Kyle]

Oh, that's a great way to start this. We've got. There's a lot to get to here. Like you're going to hear in a little bit from Jason Buchan, Sam Constantino, to properly tee up the draft. We got an interview with Jarmo Kekalina and the Thought Line, of course, too. But why don't we start with the news that you reported on here on Thursday night and the Jason Robertson situation. He is about to become an RFA in Dallas. They have not found common ground there. And the opportunity that was given for the Seattle Kraken to talk to Jason Robertson and as you put approximately $15 million per year and he turned it down.

[Jason Buchala]

What?

[Dom]

Yeah. So, like, I haven't spoken any of the particulars yet, but I'm 100% sure on the story. So you just stick to the facts at, at this point in time and from what I understand, sometime either on Wednesday or Thursday, the Dallas Stars and the Seattle Kraken agreed to a trade that would have sent Robertson to the Kraken. I don't know what was all in the trade, but I do know that the seventh overall draft pick in Friday's draft was one of the. Was the key particular, really. I believe at that point, once they agreed to the trade, the Dallas Stars gave Seattle permission to speak to Robertson and they conveyed the offer. Now, I'm saying approximately 15. That is the one thing that I have not gotten confirmed, which is what was the exact number. But, you know, initially I had the story written between 14 and 15. Then I had a number of people say to me that they, it was, they thought it was 15. I just said approximately 15 because I'm safe in believing that that's right. And, and, and he said no. And, you know, I, I, I think it's just that for whatever reason, and I, I don't want to. Look, Jason Robertson at some point in time is going to have to talk about this and he can give the reasons, but I believe it was the destination. I, I don't think he was turning down $15 million. I mean, I, I don't know anybody that would, to be honest. But I think he just made a choice that the destination wasn't what he preferred. So that's, that's why we are where they are. And I, you know, I, I, I feel terribly for the Kraken, I do. It's, you know, it's tough. It, it doesn't benefit them for this to get out. I'm sure they didn't want this to get out. They took a big run at Panarin three times, fourteen and a quarter. They take this big run at Robertson. I liked them trading for Samoskiewicz. I think he's a good depth player. McMahon was a good fit for them, but they wanted that big tent pole stud number one forward, 40 goal scorer. They've never had anybody like that and you can't fault them. They stepped up, they made a huge financial offer. Like, I think the stars are around 12, maybe 12 and a half maybe. I think they might be willing to go there or were willing to go there, but this is significantly ahead what they're willing to do. And obviously it was a trade that the Stars felt was acceptable, including the seventh overall pick. Seattle did everything right here and it's, it's a kick in the teeth for them and their fans. And you know, I do feel for them because they're trying to do all the right things here. They're trying to go after good players who can make a difference for, for your franchise.

[Kyle]

And it really speaks to what we've seen, I mean, drips and drabs over the last couple years, but really over the last few weeks with this whole players that have the right to do so really honing in on, I would like to go to one place or two place. Like it just, it feels like the Blinders have come way in in terms of the scope of what players want to consider in terms of where they would like to be. And for Jason Robinson, clearly that is not Seattle. Do you see any scenario where he remains in Dallas after all of this?

[Dom]

The one thing is, and again, like, I haven't spoken to Jim Nil. I haven't spoken to Jason Botterl, I haven't spoken to Andy Scott, who's the representative for, for, for Robertson.

[Jason Buchala]

So.

[Dom]

But the, the people I did speak to said there's, you know, there's a lot of hard feelings after something like this. Like if you're the stars, you've basically decided you're trading them, right. And if you're the Kraken, you think there's no way he's going to turn down 8 times 15. And now you're sitting here and it's like, well, where do we go from here? Where does everybody go from here? You know, I think, I think Thursday night it was, it was very raw. It was very raw. Obviously I'm not going to tell where I heard this or who I spoke to, but like I reached out to everybody involved here and I could tell by some of the. I'm not going to talk that this is one night where people weren't really that happy to hear from me. So it's a really emotional, emotional night and I think everybody is shocked that this didn't happen. And you know, one of the other things somebody said to me was, so Seattle right now in Washington, the state of Washington is a no tax state and that's changing in a couple of years. In 2028, there is going to be a millionaires tax there. And you know, someone said to me that one of the things they heard was Seattle was prepared to structure it so that the contract was done in a way where as much money as possible would get done before that tax kicks in.

[Kyle]

So like super heavy signing bonuses right at the beginning. Crazy.

[Dom]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

If you're going to.

[Dom]

So you're thinking there's. And again, I don't know that for sure, but you know, that's, I think everybody kind of knew that that was on the table. Right. And so I, I just think people are in shock that this got said no to. So, you know, I don't know how Dallas feels. Like I said, I, I think, you know, ran's their highest contract. Eight times 12, I think, I think they wanted to cut. I, I think they wanted to come in there either 8 times 12 or 8 times 12 in a bit, maybe a bit more for Robertson, but they weren't going to where Seattle was going. And I don't know, like, the other thing too is I'm not sure who else was going to do that either. Like, there are some teams out there that said, no, that doesn't work for us. And, you know, I, I don't know. And the other thing, too, is that Dallas is a. Because it's in a no tax state, and it doesn't have this thing coming. Like, Dallas is 12 or 12 and a half is a significant amount of money more in an, in a tax state. So I think everybody, I think, I think everybody here is kind of wondering, okay, can we get a better idea of what he's looking for? Where does he want to go? And what is a number that works for him in a place that he wants to be in? There's. This one's kind of been thrown back a bit to ground zero, but it's emotional, and we'll see how everybody feels on Friday morning.

[Kyle]

All right. Is there anything else on that one for now?

[Dom]

I, I don't, I don't think so. I, like I said, I, you know, it's, it's, it's tough. Like, the Robertsons are great to deal with. Jason and Nick, like, they're totally,

[Jason Buchala]

like,

[Dom]

you realize, you know, you have a job to do. But there was, as I was writing this, there were a lot of people I kind of really felt for. I, I like talking to the two of them a lot. And I want to see the Seattle, Seattle and their fans. Like, I thought this would be a really good thing for them. I, I, you knew, like, it's one of those stories like, oh, like, this is not going to be good for a lot of people that you want to see do well. So it's, I mean, what are you going to do? But some of the reaction was pretty crazy.

[Kyle]

I suppose you can never criticize them for just being in it for the money.

[Dom]

Yeah, really.

[Kyle]

So, I mean, Elliot, like, that was almost out of nowhere, in a sense, here on Thursday night, I feel if we tried to go back and recap everything that's happened this week, like, the draft will be done and we'll still be recording this podcast.

[Dom]

And you guys are mad at me because I held up the pod recording for an hour.

[Kyle]

No, no, no. We are not mad. We are not mad. I wish our food got here a little quicker. I was more angry at that than anything. I knew you were working on something important, so that's one thing to keep an eye on. How about as we try to run down the list here? I mean, McTavish, there remains a lot of smoke around there.

[Dom]

So as we record this, and this could change by the time you listen to this. But as we record this Thursday night, it is getting a bit late. We're watching what the Americans are losing. I missed it.

[Kyle]

It's.

[Dom]

It's two. One for Turkey. So it's. It's late at night in later night in the east, and it's. But it's still Pacific time. It's much earlier. I think Pat Verbeek, the GM of the Docs, is deciding between an offer between the St. Louis Blues and the New York Rangers. And I think the Blues, one of the key parts of their offer is the 11th overall pick. And the Rangers, it's a player, I believe, and I don't want to guess the name of the player. I. I just. I'm not sure. And don't ruin anyone. I've already ruined enough lives today. Don't need to ruin anyone else's. So one of the things I think there's a play here is I don't think the Ducks want picks. I think they want someone that can help them now. They are in win now mode. They want someone who can help them now. And so I think that one of the things that Pat, first of all, he. He thinks he takes his time. So we're on his timetable. He's not on ours. But secondly, I think with this, if. If I'm right about the St. Louis pick, the 11th overall pick being the key part of their offer, I don't think it was something he necessarily wants to keep. So if he does take the Blues offer, one of the things I think here is that he might be saying, okay, if I have the 11th pick, what can I do with it? So that's part of this. You know, Ottawa, I heard, was in this and I talked that it was believed Ottawa had a lot of interest in Mason McTavish. There's a lot of ties in there. He played for Steve Stales, the American Hockey League. His father works for the organization. But I think that at the end, when it really came down to it, he just felt that the opportunities were better. Verbeek liked what was being offered more from St. Louis and. And the Rangers. Now, if Brady Kachak had wanted to go to Anaheim, we might be talking a little bit differently, right?

[Jason Buchala]

Of course, our.

[Kyle]

The Blues and Doug Armstrong, are they kind of seen as one of the power brokers here heading into Friday night at this juncture with four, I think

[Dom]

there's a lot of them. I mean, you know, Blues. Yes, four first rounders. San Jose has two in the top nine. And they. And we'll talk about Byram. They tried to get Byram, I think. Well, obviously now Seattle and Dallas are really big ones.

[Jason Buchala]

Buffalo.

[Dom]

And we're interviewing Yarmo Kekalan, and they've got 4 and 4 and 20. You know, the one thing that, you know, I was joking with someone, I said to them today, like, who's. Who's up, who's out? Like, are there any more names out there? And he said, it would be better if you just asked me who's not getting traded, because there's like 25 players in the league and. I know. So. You guys are so funny. Like, we say, oh, this could be a big summer. And people go on social and say, these idiots say this every year. At last, we're right. We're like the people predicting the housing bubble. At last we're right. Yes. It's crazy out there.

[Kyle]

Yes, exactly. On the whiteboard, plus 800%. Finally, the big return comes your way.

[Jason Buchala]

So McTavish.

[Kyle]

All right, we'll see. Meanwhile, the first pick, as it stands right now, still belongs to the Toronto Maple Leafs. John Chaika on Thursday said that even at that point, they know who they're taking, that it's unanimous. And we'll get Jason and Sam's thoughts on that here in a little bit. But that was an interesting thing for Chaika to float out there. And then also when it comes to the futures of Matthew Nyes and Morgan Riley with the team, some cold water.

[Dom]

Yeah, he, you know, he did the, the nice thing didn't surprise me so much because I know that they've basically set a very high bar. And, you know, whatever that was with Montreal at the deadline, they weren't doing that again. The bar is higher. And so they set a really high bar. And unless you hit it, they're not doing it. And as we've all talked about in Florida, added Garnet Hathaway on Thursday, nice to me, is the kind of guy, unless you have a good reason, I want that guy playing against the Florida Panthers. You need him. The Raleigh one was really interesting because the thing about Chaika is he's not afraid to deal. He loves to deal. And the fact that he was out there saying, you know, he might be playing for our team next year, it did catch me by surprise because I've heard they're really not that interested in trading McCabe and OEL, and if they come back with a defense next year and their top four is some combination of McCabe, Ekman, Larson, Tanov and Radish, they're going to be fine with that, and so the idea that. So I think what he's saying is that he's not trading people just for the sake of trading people. And secondly, I think that he doesn't want to have to give sweeteners or incentivize at a large price to do things like he'll trade the later pick for Radish. That's okay. That's not. But they don't have a lot and they're not giving up whatever they have just to move off someone. I think that's also what he's sending. So my theory about the Maple Leafs is this. I think they've decided especially they don't have their next two first rounders. Boston and Philly have them. They have Colorado's 20, 27, but who knows when that's going to be. I think between that and Matthews having only two years left, they are on a train heading towards like steamrolling down the track and they're like, we're going for this the next two years as much as we can there is. We're not handing a high first round pick to the Bruins and, or the Flyers. We're just not doing that. And if we, and if we have any chance of keeping Matthews, we can't rebuild. So I think they're like, they're going towards the cliff and either they're going to hurdle over it like the bus and speed and land on all four wheels on the other side, or it's going to work. And because I think they feel if this doesn't work and they lose Matthews, they're probably going to have to rebuild anyway. Right? So why not? And part of me, and I'm not going to lie to any of you about this, part of me is trying to talk myself into this because it's good for ratings. Like, if they decide they're going hard out the next two years, you know, it's, it's better for sportsnet. But I just think that's what they're doing. Like I, I'm going to be. I think they've decided why hand too high picks to the Bruins and the Flyers. Go for it, try to keep Matthews and go for it. So I think they're going to, like, I think they look at it like if there's something we can do that makes sense and ignites us for the next couple years, they're going to do it.

[Kyle]

Right? Because this was an opportunity that if they wanted to, the fact that they stumbled into this first overall pick, I mean, they could have, they could have really decided we are going to completely change our whole.

[Dom]

They could have torn it down to

[Kyle]

completely ripped it down. Hey, San Jose, that number two pick, what if we, you know, and I'm

[Dom]

sure they've asked about it, so they could have. Yeah.

[Kyle]

And it could have been honestly really like where we were 10 years ago, coming in here to Buffalo and they take Auston Matthews at one and it's a brand new era that kind of.

[Dom]

If they had maybe even one of these two picks, maybe. I think it might be a different conversation. If they had two of these picks, I could see it being a completely different conversation. But to me it's A, I think they really do want to keep Matthews. I don't know what the chances are. And B, and who knows where we're going to be in a year. But also B, I think they really. Just the idea of handing those two picks away makes them physically ill.

[Kyle]

Okay, all right. I can see it. I can see why.

[Dom]

And I, I do believe he's. He's tried some, like, big stuff. I, I really do. I just don't know what the likelihood of it is happening.

[Kyle]

All right, so more to come potentially in Toronto. Also officially in person, introducing Jim Hiller as the new head coach of the Leafs Thursday.

[Dom]

Three years, we mentioned. That is the, that is the term.

[Kyle]

Three years. Thank you. Speaking of feeling physically ill, you would not begrudge Blue Jackets fans for feeling a little queasy right now. Just not knowing where things are standing between the Jackets and Zach Warrenski. You reported that they're going to meet after the draft and everyone's going. Well, why are you waiting for after the draft to have a conversation about where your superstar defenseman is at? So what clarity can you provide there?

[Dom]

Well, the thing is, like, Don Waddell, he's been around a long time. He's what we call a KG veteran. Right. And so when I was tipped off the fact they're going to meet after the draft, I think what he was doing was there's one punter in the hall of Fame that's in the NFL hall of Fame.

[Elliot]

I don't.

[Dom]

There's got to be like Dave Cutler in the CFL hall of Fame.

[Kyle]

Lupisaglia.

[Dom]

Louis Basaglia. That's a great call, too. You know what? It's a Canadian podcast. Let's go with Louis Basagl.

[Jason Buchala]

Thank you.

[Dom]

So Don Waddell was like Louis Pasaglia. He punted. And so when I heard and that got back to me that they were going to meet after, I think that was the Blue Jacket's way of punting this one, and. But it also sent up a solar flare. I think teams interpreted that as, Columbus is not sure what's going on here. We better call them. So I think all of a sudden, team started calling them and because, you know, there's. Obviously, there's something going on here. Like, the first guy to report that there was an issue was. Was Pierre lebron. And. And Pierre and I are kind of similar. You know, we don't. We don't throw things out there unless we really have a good idea. So when Pierre wrote that, I was like, he knows. He knows something. And so, you know, I saw his press conference on Thursday, and he said, look, some things are best kept behind the scenes. What that says to me is that Columbus believes that there is an issue here, whether it's a trade request or it's an uncertainty or I'm not committing to extension next year. It's something like that. And he's working his way through that. I believe he's getting calls on Moransky. I think he's. I don't know if he's fielding offers, but I think at the very least, he's finding out what people are willing to do. Like, I gotta think there's. There's a bunch of teams calling and saying, can we do this? And then what can we do? The second thing is, I think there's also something going on with Marchenko. Like, it's another. Like, I heard that name. And Waddell, you know, again, he hasn't admitted to it one way or the other, but it's out there. So it's another one of those situations where I think the Blue Jackets are trying to figure out what exact the guy needs a contract. What exactly is going on here? And I'll say this. Like, Kirill Marchenko, a lot of people don't really know him well, I'll be the first person to admit, like, I don't know him that well. A lot of people really like that guy. Like, there's. There's an. Like, a bunch of people called me said. Or a bunch of people I spoke to were like, that guy scored 30 before, guaranteed 40 goal score over the last. Over the span of his next contract. People want him. I think they've got a bunch of teams calling Iwana. Now. The one interesting thing was they made a trade. They traded for Valerie Nichin.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Dom]

And you know, that is. That is a trade you make for three picks. The highest one you give up is a second. That is a trade you make when you're trying to impress your roster, like Don Whedell's making that deal. So he can say to Oransky and you can say to Marchenko, look what we just got here. We're losing some guys, but we're better with this guy who's under team control, I think, for four more years. So. And the other thing too is I always wonder, do you bring in another Russian player because you're trying to make Marchenko feel more comfortable? And I'm not, I'm not to say, please don't take this out of context. Please don't run with it. I'm not saying Marchenko was uncomfortable or anything like that, but these things are never done in a vacuum. So I'm wondering, does the addition of him for Nichewskin, for draft picks, does that make them feel any better about where Columbus is and where they're going? Like, to me, it's interesting he made that move. That to me is a move to say to Waranski and Marchenko, look, we're better today than we were yesterday.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

And wouldn't you say, I mean, for years in Washington, it was almost like the reverse where that they already had Ovechkin there and they were not hesitant at all about bringing other Russians in either via draft or trade or free agency because they go, we know we have Alex here. We're confident that if we bring in a fellow countryman of his, they'll be very comfortable there. Right. Like, was there not anything to that?

[Dom]

You know what I always think things like that, like, I can't tell you how many times over the years that particularly if you have like a younger Russian teams are like, don't just have one, make sure they have especially if English is something they're dealing with, you know, are you're always going to feel more, feel more comfortable. It's good to break down barriers and it's good to learn about new people, but it's also good to have under to have someone there who understands where you're from and who you are. I, I, I think it's a great hypothesis.

[Kyle]

Yeah. And I think I, I, the bottom

[Dom]

line though, is they're getting him because I think he can really help them.

[Elliot]

For sure.

[Kyle]

That's the big reason. And I mean we saw it and we'll see how much longer the Kean is a member of the Hurricanes. But we saw when he came there, like having Svetchnikov, having Kochov there, you could tell just even when we would go in the room as media, he

[Dom]

really Liked Chadfield too, eh?

[Kyle]

Like yes, always they sit together.

[Dom]

Him and Chadfield always sat together, always talk. That was a legit friendship, it looked like, between those two guys.

[Kyle]

I was amazed how far his English came in a year. Like I talked to him one of the days after the skate and was it perfect? No, but like he had no issue carrying a conversation compared to a year previous where it was full translator mode with Svetchnikov next to him. Anyway, you're trying to play hockey and you got that going on.

[Dom]

So good thing you mentioned Carolina. There's a lot of noise around Nikitian. There's a lot of interest in him. One of the things I've heard is that Carolina prefers a player back for him. I got to think just because it's Carolina, they got to be looking at Warrenski. I think they're definitely looking at Hellbock. You know, I think the thing is there's, it's going to be interesting because the Keyshawn needs a new contract. So, you know, I don't know, like, what is he looking for? That's going to be a big one. Teams are going to want to know that. The other thing I think is this, is that, you know, Carolina's got like obviously a very late first round pick. I think they're very interested in moving that for the right thing and the whole Hellbok thing. As I said earlier this week, I, I, I do believe they're serious about them. I don't know who they would like if they had a choice, Moranski or Hellebok, who they would pick more, but I definitely think they have a shot at hello Buck. I heard he's interested in playing for them because I heard some interesting stuff about hello Buck. That number one that he wants, like he really values the next three years and he wants a team that he thinks can be consistently good over the next three years. And you know, Carolina I think would be one of them. You know, it was interesting I mentioned on the, one of my previous hits, I can't remember if it was the Monday Pod or something earlier about how, you know Florida Bill Zito, like he's such a killer man that you could just see him grinding Winnipeg and saying, you know, just like Brady Kachak eventually went from four teams to one, if he could get Hellobot going four teams to one, then you know, Zito could grind the Jets. But somebody said to me, like, that's not happening. Look up Kevin Shoveldale's penalty minute totals. And he's, he had like a lot of Them when he played in Brandon and in the minors before he got hurt. But I think this deal is too important to the jets to let that happen. You know, one of the things I got kind of told, it was interesting and we'll talk about it a bit more in the thought line is that one of the things I think the jets said was when Hellbuck asked for the trade. And I think the jets realized it's time when hello Buck asked for the trade, That the jets were kind of like, we got to waive the no trade. You can't have it both ways. And I, I heard they pushed back a little bit, like stood up for themselves. And hello Buck. I don't think he was willing. I think hello Buck has. I, I think he was. While he wasn't willing to do that, he did try to be a bit more open minded and say, like, my goal is like someone who's good the next three years. And like, if it is Carolina, they could make a deal for that. You know, I'll say this like another team I kind of wondered about, but they have a really good young goalie. Was Anaheim.

[Elliot]

Right? Right.

[Dom]

You know, they, they have a really good young goalie, but that was another team. Like, although now, you know, I would have thought that McTavish would have been a key part of that. But I have heard he is willing to consider a team that he thinks has some depth to it where they could make a run more than once.

[Kyle]

Defending Stanley cup champions is not a bad place to start.

[Dom]

And by the way, I did have some people say to me that Carolina, they're not sated by one Stanley Cup. Like, like Florida's throwing down the gauntlet here and the Hurricanes are like, you know, now it's. The other thing too is it's really interesting now that the Hurricanes are Stanley cup champions, I would love to see them play the Panthers again. The play.

[Jason Buchala]

Yes. Yes.

[Dom]

Do you understand what I'm saying here?

[Kyle]

Totally. Now that they believe the old narratives are gone.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

It would be a way different feel.

[Dom]

We need that next year.

[Jason Buchala]

Yes.

[Dom]

I don't care what round it's in. Hurricanes, Panthers.

[Jason Buchala]

Yes.

[Kyle]

I, I mean, you're probably looking at the third round. It would be fantastic.

[Elliot]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Round three.

[Dom]

Two confident teams now believing in themselves. Let's go.

[Kyle]

I love it.

[Jason Buchala]

Fre.

[Kyle]

I love it. You want to talk about Buffalo a little bit?

[Dom]

Sure.

[Kyle]

Bo Byram.

[Dom]

Yeah. So the Byram thing, they met the agent, Darren Ferris at the, at the combine and Buffalo really wanted to keep him, really wanted to keep Byron and I heard. So I don't have this confirmed, but I trust the information. I think he was looking for a four year deal because that would allow him to do another big deal and in the double digits and significantly into the double digits. And Kekalainen said, I know the reputation of the Ferris wheel. I do not have six tickets. I am not riding. And he started to. And started to move him. And there was a. Or talk about moving him. There was a lot of interest.

[Jason Buchala]

A lot.

[Kyle]

I believe it.

[Dom]

And so Chicago obviously was really interested and we'll talk more about Chicago and their interest in him in a second. But there were a lot of teams interested. But I heard the Rangers were very serious and I heard that Sharks were very serious. And John but actually said, I think he tweeted out that the sharks offer was 9 and 27. And what I heard was that and the Rangers have the fifth pick. I don't know that I buy that it was in there. But the Rangers were trying and I just don't know, but I know they were trying. I think when Kyle Davidson, the Blackhawks had a decision when they saw Eklund go to Ottawa and the ninth pick came back, they knew what that pick was for. I think that's when he made the call, is that when he saw that pick go to San Jose. He says if we don't put this pick in there, we're not getting the guy. And that's when they got him. Now, I don't think that Byram will do that with Chicago. I think a four year deal, I think it's good. I don't know that it'll be eight, but I don't think it'll be four and because I think when it, when a, when a team makes that kind of stake in the ground for you and Byram seems like he legitimately is appreciative of what they're doing. You can't sign a four year deal. You gotta. Like I said, I don't think it's gonna be eight, but I think it's gonna be a lot. We'll see what this all turns out to be. But the thing that. Before we talk about the fourth overall pick, the one thing I wanna talk about is Byram himself. So there are players who I think could not handle being traded for that pick there. We've all seen it. You get, you're in a big trade and you're. Let you walk in, you're like, oh my God, what did I just step into? This is not for me. That is going to be the Last thing that the Blackhawks and the fans are going to have to worry about here. You know, Byram's dad, you've met him before, really good guy. Bowen Byram is, and he was a player is just like his dad. He is super confident. He believes in himself. If you heard his interview like that was, that was no phoniness. The get together he had with the Chicago media on Thursday, he is like, I am ready for this, I want this and I'm going to justify this. It's not only about like he's played behind Cale Makar, kind of good defenseman. He's played behind Rasmus, Delean, kind of good defenseman. This is his team now.

[Kyle]

Yeah, it's one of his for years.

[Dom]

Yeah. For you, he like that is the biggest, best reason that I think that this can work.

[American Express Announcer]

And

[Dom]

if you're looking for a reason for it to work, it's that now it's a, it's a big, it's a risky thing. I think the Blackhawks look at it as we have a ton of picks, we have a ton of prospects. You know, it's time to get better. They've been out of it for a long time and this year, as you know, they were hugely disappointed with how early they were out of it. Like they just, they have to take a step and you don't take a step until you have like 25 players who have a role and they're ways away from that, but they really feel this. I heard an interesting story about Byram. They could have taken him in his draft year and there are some people who were, who are still there that kind of wanted him and when they didn't take him, they took documents. It's sort of like, you know how I called Jordan Kyro, Moby Kyro, for the Capitals that they chased after him for a year. I heard for some people in Chicago it was like Moby Byram. We didn't get them the first time, but we will get them at some point. And they have targeted this guy and they love this guy. Now there's a reason these picks don't get traded. This is the first time in 20 years there's been a deal like this. One of the reasons I kind of want it to work, Kyle, is that maybe it might happen more in the future. We talked to Yarmo Kikalan, the interview that airs about the draft chart and there's somebody on a non involved team here who called me on Thursday and he said to me by what he values the number four overall Pick and what he believes Byram could do. You could make an argument for this. You absolutely could make an argument for this. There are a lot of defensemen who've been taken around that spot, like Chicago, Cam Barker, third, where it just hasn't worked out. He just says, like, if it works, maybe the whole league starts loosening up on this stuff. If it doesn't, everybody becomes more. Even more careful. But he said to me, and this is a purely analytic thinker, he said to me he could make this case, but he thinks there might be two of 32 general managers right now he could make. And he admitted that if it was him in that seat, he didn't know if he would have the guts to do it. And we'll see.

[Kyle]

When we sit down with Sam and Jason, we talk about having Stones as a general manager, actually being in that seat when it comes to making big decisions, too.

[Jason Buchala]

I was.

[Kyle]

I was a little bit surprised at how much backlash there was on that trade. Like, I know Chicago gave up a lot, but it's like. It's like they reacted that they had, like, traded for me to go play defense for them. I'm like, well, I think.

[Dom]

I think they were a little surprised at. I think there's a. I learned. Like, I've watched Crevier play a little bit. I like him.

[Kyle]

Yep.

[Dom]

And I think there was. And I think there's a. There's a core of Blackhawk fans who really like Crevy, too. Plus, they extended them last year, so I think that caught them by surprise. I just think, like, there's a couple of things. Number one, this trade never happens in the. Like, when was the last one? Ruslan fed a tanko for the number four pick. Like. Like, these trades don't happen. So it's weird. Like, I understand it's weird for people.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

And.

[Dom]

And secondly, I just think there's. I mean, there's also, like, a lot of people in this league wouldn't do it, and. But I'll tell you who might, and that's the guy who just won the Stanley cup in Carolina. And part of me is wondering if. Because, like I said, like, there's an analytics guy in the league who said, you can make a case for this. So I'm. I kind of. Part of me wonders if you look at some of the choices Carolina made and you start to think, okay, is this a decision that the team we know? Like, it's a copycat league. Right. You steal from the best, as you should in any business. I. Part of me thought Is this a Carolina move? But it's just. It's weird. That doesn't happen.

[Elliot]

Right.

[Dom]

I understand why. And then, you know, once it starts, everybody. You can't just disagree with someone on the Internet. You have to pile draw, pile drive them to the center of the earth. Like.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Dom]

You get to that point, I'm like, you know what? Like, I'm. I'm really curious about this. I don't. Like, I, like, I was like, that guy was saying to me, like, he could make a case for it, and he didn't know if he would have the guts, like, in a chair to do it. Like, anything else you want to talk about with Chicago?

[Kyle]

No.

[Dom]

Okay. So, like, the other thing too is like the same thing here. Like, talk about, like, being in the chair. Like stos. Okay, so I. I had a lot of people who said that steos should have made Brady Tkachuk wait. I said, that is so easy for you to say. He's the guy in the chair. He knows. Like, Like, I'll tell you, like, part of me was like, if it was me, I would have said, give me more teams or I'm not doing it. It's easy thing to say until you're in the chair and that BLEEP storm is all around you. I like, like, that story was hours, if not a day away from getting out. And you lived in Ottawa. Like, what would have been like every day that he held onto him after that story got out?

[Kyle]

Such a mess. It was bad enough this past year.

[Dom]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

As it kept the. The flare ups kept happening, especially post Olympics. So you would have had that in the back of your mind.

[Dom]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Going tomorrow's gonna be worse than today was.

[Dom]

Yeah. You know, like, it's like, it's easy. Like, this is what we do for a living. We pontificate on stuff. When you're in that chair, it's. It's a lot hotter. It's a hot chair.

[Kyle]

Right. I mean, geez. Quinn Hughes in Vancouver this year that got going, like, I mean, even the year previous with J.T. miller and everything we've seen recent examples of. If you try to wait around and think it might get better and it doesn't, how ugly it all. It all can get.

[Dom]

Speaking of Vancouver, it's as ugly as a pimple on prom night.

[Kyle]

Oh, and it's prom season too.

[Elliot]

Yeah.

[Dom]

Sorry. Anyone

[Kyle]

speaking of Vancouver? Philip Ronick.

[Dom]

Yeah. You know what? I. I've. I've asked about this, and people keep telling me there's. There's nothing there. You know, I. I think this. So one of the things that's definitely changed is Patterson there. Elias. And I think there's a lot of things the Canucks are willing to do a lot. Not on their.

[Jason Buchala]

Elias.

[Elliot]

Elias. Right.

[Dom]

Talking about the forward.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[Dom]

What did I say?

[Kyle]

You said Elias.

[Dom]

Oh, I always get that wrong.

[Jason Buchala]

I know. It's okay.

[Dom]

Elias. Sorry. That's what we're here for. I think there's a lot of things that the Cox would be willing to do with their veterans with EP40 it's similar. It's. This is more simple for me. As I said earlier this week, when Jim Rutherford was the GM there, he wanted a comparable center. He wasn't trading Pedersen without getting a comparable center. I don't think the Canucks feel that way anymore. I think this is. It's not a shot at Rutherford. I think it's just differing philosophy. If you give them something that can grow and develop with them, whether it's good prospects or good young player or picks, I think they would do that if the player is willing to move. What I've heard about Ronick is, is that like I've heard they've had a conversation with the player. I've heard conversations, they've had conversations with the agent. And there's an understanding that the player who has complete control over the situation would like to stay. I think, and I don't think, I don't think that like this new group going in the Sadie's and, And Ryan Johnson. I don't think that they want to start off with. By alienating an important player. Like they're trying to start a new culture there. Now look like if somebody walked up and said, I'll give you two first rounders of my two best prospects. I think as a general manager you have a responsibility to look at that if you think those picks and prospects are good enough. But I think it's important for the Canucks to show that when you're trying to change the way you do business that you don't actively go out and say, after saying, we understand how you feel, you're not actively going out and saying, yeah, we'll trade this guy. I, I think that's very important to Vancouver here. So, Kyle, let me just go through my six notebooks here and see what else I have written down. You know, I've heard. I've heard Calgary and Winnipeg have been two of the teams that talked about that fourth pick with Buffalo. You know, I think I'm not surprised to hear the Rangers are big in on McTavish because like I said I think they took a big run of Byram. I also think they tried to get in on Brady Tkachuk even though they weren't on the list. I really heard they tried to push.

[Kyle]

The Nemes deal for Calgary. Felt that's the exact type of move at the exact right time for Craig Conray.

[Dom]

No, I, you know what, I, I like that move for them. They have. So again it's another team. So many picks and prospects, so many of them that why wouldn't you take it? The other thing too is you can never have. People were like Perexa, righty and Nemesis are righty. You know, last I heard, you know, having two righties was never a bad thing. Now Conroy told Eric Francis that Parek will start next year on the left side. The first time I've ever believed anything Eric Francis said. But. Cause Conroy told him that. But like I don't understand. And the other thing too is when you look at what Byram went for, that actually made the Nevich price look pretty reasonable for sure. So what it says to me is that New Jersey is going to take some shots. They're going to, they're going to do that and they're going to take some shots with what they can do with those picks. But like to me that is the exact kind of like the other thing too is, you know, Calgary, you're trying to get players who want to stay there. Right. Like now Nemetch is going to be looking and saying, hey, I need a fresh start and this team believes in me. They're giving me a new chance and look what they gave up for me. You know, I know that one of the things that I know they're concerned about Nemec is his body language sometimes. And I'll sure they'll work on that with him. But that is the exact kind of gamble Calgary should be taking.

[Kyle]

Thank you again, Eric, for the no Doubt outing.

[Dom]

By the way, yes, that was a great time.

[Kyle]

Even though Elliot says he doesn't believe anything you say, I do believe we

[Dom]

went to no Doubt together. You know, I recorded Sunday Morning which was their last song. It was. That was a great rendition.

[Kyle]

Yes, beautiful man.

[Dom]

Great rendition.

[Kyle]

Gwen still got it.

[Dom]

Yeah, fantastic. They all do like that. Those guys were good point. Fantastic. But she was powerful. You know, Babcock, I've thought a lot about this this week. You know, as. As I said to you on the pod, there was a time in my life where I was going through a really bad time and Darrell Sutter and Mike Babcock gave me incredible advice. So I'm not afraid to admit that I'm more, I'm pro. I'm probably more forgiving at times of him than most other people are. I. That press conference this week made me very nervous for them. I did not expect him to grovel. I don't think he needs to grovel, but I wasn't expecting that. That had a much harder tone than I expected. And, you know, I'll say something, too. I understand what everybody's doing here. Like, Connor McDavid's coming out, Zach Hyman's coming out. I think now, if I was the Oilers, I'd be saying, okay, let's just let him coach and let us play. You know, I, I, it was, it was just really interesting to me about hearing, like, an hour after Babcock was done in that kind of tone, Gary Bettman says, you know, we have certain expectations of decorum and how this will work. There's a lot of reputations on the line here of some people who I think very highly of, and I was a little concerned after that press conference,

[Jason Buchala]

but that's who he is.

[Kyle]

That's who he's always been like. I, I can only. It would not shock me if that was part of the conversation where, as he said, it's not like he needs this. He was doing pretty well at the retirement thing. And he goes, if.

[Dom]

What is he. He's a coach.

[Kyle]

I understand. But as he himself has said, he's also Mike Babcock. So if you're going to hire Babcock,

[Dom]

I know this is who I am. Look, we, I know.

[Kyle]

And he's talked about, well, me in 2008 versus me in 2002, when he first gets hired in Anaheim, different than who he is now. But a lot, a lot of the same still remains. It's clear. And the Oilers have signed up for it. They have chosen to sign up for it.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Yeah.

[Dom]

And they drove the bus like. And again, like, the one thing I agree with Marty Walsh is players don't hire the coach. Now, in this case, they played a big role. But you know what? I'm glad you brought this up. You know, they're parading the players out there to talk about this. I'd like to hear from the owner, because he drove this bus.

[Kyle]

Okay, well, let's get to the final thought brought to you by your Canadian Toyota dealers. And Elliot.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

At the beginning of this week, you were in New York for the Board of Governors meetings on Tuesday, and it was there that Gary Bettman discussed Amongst a few other things that they were investigating now, the possibility of expansion in Houston or Austin, Texas. And it comes with a hefty price tag. 2 billion for the expansion fee. And they're looking at another billion and a half to get a new arena done, which would be required in both of those markets if the NHL ends up in either one. I mean, Houston is a name that's been out there for a while. It's like almost 10 years. It's kind of been there. But whether it's there or Austin does it, you get the sense of this is a matter of when, not if, if. Now the commissioner's talking about it openly.

[Dom]

What I think it. This is going to do. Well, first of all, the one thing, there's a lot of people out there, and I understand where everybody is coming from. They're like, it's 32. It's enough. And I, and I will say this. I don't think it's just fans and media saying that. I think there's people in the league who feel that. However, this is why I think Bettman thinks like this. 25 of those teams are in the United States. In Major League baseball, what? There's 29 teams in the U.S. and one in Canada. In the NBA, there's 30 one in the U.S. and one in Canada. And the NFL, there's 32 in the U.S. and none in Canada. If I got any of those wrong, I apologize. I did them off the top of my head. In the NHL, there's 25 in the States and seven in Canada. And I think Bettman looks at it like he doesn't see it like we do. Like, are there enough players for this? He looks at it as, there's places for this. So when you're looking at this situation, whether you agree with it or not, you have to understand the prism of how Bettman looks at it. And I'll be honest, I think there is some real opposition to it. Will it matter? I'm not convinced it will, but I think there is some legitimate opposition. This, like, it's, we're too big as it is, or we're big enough as it is. One of the things I hear about a bit is, like, there's. There's a big new Canadian TV deal. Yay, Rogers. Go, team, go. But they were a couple years away from a US TV deal, and people in the States are okay, like, what's this going to be? What's it going to look like? Well, so I heard the commissioner indicated they'd like to have this Houston, Austin team in by 29:30. And I was like, that seems ridiculously fast. And I don't know if that's feasible, but that's the date I heard that was thrown out there. That's around the time a new TV deal would start. So you have to understand, again, this is what he's thinking. Houston is the fourth largest market in the United States. How much better is our TV deal if people know Houston's got a team, for example, and he's going to go back to Arizona. It'll take time and they've got to make it work out. But he left Arizona, you know, he's going to go back to Arizona. That's also a big market, like 10th or something like that. So understand, that's what Bettman thinks. That's why this is happening. Now, there are some people that got annoyed when we said things like, it's about Houston's by Houston, because they, you know, the people who are doing this and it's the freaking group and they're pretty big Texas family. They are saying that they consider it 50, 50. It's going to be one or the other and they will give Austin a legitimate chance. Apparently there is a lot of money in Austin and that's why they're interested. The one thing that someone said to me, by the way, apparently Bettman was also asked, how many teams do you see in this league? Like, 33. Like, then where are we? Where are we going to go? He kind of didn't answer that. I heard 46. Welcome to the 46 team at HL.

[Jason Buchala]

Oh, geez.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

No.

[Dom]

So it was.

[Kyle]

That was too many thoughts.

[Dom]

I heard like, somebody. Yeah, really? Somebody said to me that there's an NBA guy in Houston, Fertitta, and Fertitta is a bar room brawler. He's tough. Now, I'll say this about Fertitta is he's shown some lukewarm interest in the NHL before. They've tried to get him in the league before, but he's never been willing. Like, he would never pay 2 billion. Like, and they basically said here it's three and a half billion between team and arena, not to mention the operating costs. No way he would do that now. So what some people are wondering here is, is this a pressure tactic? If you don't want to be with us, we'll come in to you. And they're very curious to see how he reacts to this because he's. No, I don't know him. I've never met him, but I've heard about him. And he is no shrinking violet. So, like, that's what a few people have said to me that the thing they found most interesting about it was what is the reaction of the NBA incumbent going to be?

[Kyle]

Okay, the other thing I wanted to ask about because there was a few listeners curious about it. And we'll get to the thought line here later on, but this one I'm sliding in early because it's topical. Alex from Atlanta.

[Dom]

Yes.

[Kyle]

Who said finally got the expansion news I'd been waiting for and it wasn't about Atlanta. Be honest. Should I just give up?

[Dom]

I would say no, Alex. I would say no. First of all, you should never give up.

[American Express Announcer]

Take it from me.

[Kyle]

Rick Astley.

[Dom]

That's right. Good job, Kyle. Put in the Rick roll here. But I wouldn't because, you know, the commissioner said Atlanta and Arizona weren't ready yet. But also, I don't see this being a 33 team league. As I said before, Alex. Plus, as we described at the beginning, I don't see. I don't think Bettman sees just one hole. I think he sees several.

[Kyle]

This may take a little more time.

[Dom]

Yep.

[Kyle]

Okay. That was the final thought brought to you by your Canadian Toyota dealers will not take a break just yet. We do have the thought line coming up a little later on. And as mentioned, our interview with Yarmo Kekalainen. But first, checking in with Sam Cosentino and Jason Buchala teeing up the first round of the 2026 NHL Draft Friday night right here in Buffalo. We'll take you there now.

[Jason Buchala]

All right.

[Kyle]

So, Elliot, as you know, one of the many keys to success in life is surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you. Now, that's a low bar for us, but we have come to two of the best here, especially this time of year. Our annual check in. Sam Consentino, prospects guru at sportsnet, and Jason Buchala with the pro hockey group. Been in the scouting business 25 years now, at least.

[Jason Buchala]

Oh, God, yes. That just feels. Makes me feel ancient there.

[Kyle]

And when did you work your first CHL game?

[Elliot]

Oh, geez. That would have been on local Rogers and that would have been probably in 1998.

[Jason Buchala]

Oh, geez.

[Kyle]

So I wanted to start for the two of you. I would love to know what your journeys have been like this season. Which events have you gone to? Where is the road taking you? Ultimately to Buffalo for the draft and follow this year's draft class.

[Jason Buchala]

Oh, let the Godfather go first.

[Elliot]

Oh, yeah, the Godfather. Well, you know, unfortunately. Or unfortunately, I still have a paying job at sportsnet. And so being in the studio and actually getting out to do games, mostly for Ottawa or for Winnipeg. So it's good when I'm doing games in Ottawa because I can sneak into Gatineau and see games there, and I can sneak in and see the 67 game they play at home on Friday night. So that's always fun and that's good. So I saw a number of games in those areas when I was doing NHL games. Got to the world Juniors. That was a blast. And then most of the rest of it's just TV and sneaking out whenever you can to go and see games locally. You know, getting into Brampton, that's close by. And then keeping an eye on video and watching highlight packs and so on and so forth. And, you know, on reading and making calls and emails, I. You know, I tend to lean a little bit more towards the anecdotal side of things because I like to try and tell the back stories. And so since Boogs has come aboard with all of his hockey acumen, he kind of leans in that direction. I lean a little bit more towards the. The anecdotal side so we can tell all sides of the story.

[Jason Buchala]

One of the things we do together, though, I think you would agree, is that if I'm on the tour and I see something that pops and there's a. There's somebody that's on the periphery of Sam's interest level and he's building something in his first round, I'll share some of my video analysis. You know, I'll feed him some files and say, listen, just so you know, this is what I saw out there on the tour. And for me at the pro hockey group, you know, I'm fortunate because I have 16 guys embedded around the world on my staff. So it's really like an NHL hockey operations department. Um, I come into Sportsnet and I, you know, work occasionally on TV and studio, which I love. It's kind of gets me off the road a little bit. But I've seen all the ohl. I've seen the Quebec League. I've seen the Western League. I've been in the States and seen several college weekends down there. World Junior overseas at the U18 World Championships in Slovakia. So all the really big events, I certainly want to make sure that I'm there live and present. The thing about video is that it follows the puck, right, And. And it's a. It's a fantastic tool, but you need to be in the rink and you have to really get down to the brass Tacks of what that prospect is all about. How does he warm up? Does that mean he starts on time in a game? You know, he gets benched for a shift or takes a bad penalty, what's he doing towards the coach or the official or, you know, how is he interacting with his teammates? All that kind of stuff. So it's really important for me. So I was on the road, probably. Why? You know, I don't know how many games I ended up seeing. I can tell you that there's over a thousand game reports this year. So it gives you a little bit of an idea.

[Dom]

Where's the most remote place you guys went this year to see some.

[Jason Buchala]

Well, trench and in Slovakia is probably the most remote this year. I was very close to going out to PG at one point, but I didn't. I didn't take it on.

[Elliot]

Nowhere really remote for me. I mean, we're in Alberta for prospects challenge games. Those are really.

[Dom]

The Godfather doesn't go to locations.

[Jason Buchala]

Last Bridge was a trip that night, though. That was a trip out of Calgary that night.

[Elliot]

Yeah, indeed. But ended up calling the Chipotle All American game for NHL Network. So that was a. That's a pretty big game where you get the best USHL guys in the under 18 team. So that was a really a solid viewing there. World juniors in Minnesota. We were kind of off on our own. We had a book set up, a nice hotel set up over there. Obviously within the confines of the budget, for sure.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

And.

[Elliot]

And it was cool. I had a cool little bar. It stayed open for us. You know, it was. That was a good setup.

[Jason Buchala]

And they reluctantly stayed open the first night. And then as soon as they saw our act, when we came back the second night, it was a no, we're good. It was overtime.

[Dom]

I respect a place like that.

[Elliot]

Yeah, that's nice.

[Dom]

They know they're going to get compensated for it.

[Jason Buchala]

That's true.

[Elliot]

What's the breakfast place there?

[Jason Buchala]

Oh, the one that we. Around the corner there.

[Elliot]

Oh, my gosh.

[Jason Buchala]

You're putting me on the spot. You found it.

[Elliot]

The Minnesota Vikings, like, on Sundays. This place is ramped. It's outstanding.

[Jason Buchala]

It's a hot stove place. It's unbelievable. Every before Vikings games, it's right downtown Minneapolis. And anybody who's been to Minneapolis recently. So 10 years ago, downtown Minneapolis to today's downtown Minneapolis, it's totally different. Animal used to be a real foodie city. Like a lot of theater, great music there, all kinds of stuff. It's kind of changed a little bit, except for that breakfast Place we gotta. We'll follow up with you, Dom, and we'll, we'll. We'll feed it to you. Because this place is packed. Never mind NFL games. Like we were in there that one day. It was like a Wednesday. And it's like 11 o' clock because we didn't get out of the hamper too early. And packed. Packed.

[Elliot]

The Italian restaurant the night before was pretty good. Yeah, that place was good.

[Jason Buchala]

Listen, you guys know when you travel with, with the Godfather, you're eating well. You're eating well. And I don't drink red wine. But it's fascinating to see him go through the whole soliloquy of ordering his box of red. Yeah, it's great.

[Dom]

Is it one of those guys? He swishes it around.

[Elliot]

You gotta aerate the wine.

[Dom]

Do you smell it?

[Jason Buchala]

Sure.

[Dom]

Do you sniff it?

[Kyle]

Of course.

[Dom]

Do you like swish it around your mouth?

[Elliot]

No, because technically what you're supposed to do is spit it out. Is really, is what you're supposed to do into a little spittoon.

[Jason Buchala]

If he starts getting out of control like that, he's gonna wear me out. I'm gonna hit him right in the forehead. Like, come on.

[Dom]

I. I know we want to get to the prospects, but. So one of the recent pods, Kyle was aghast at the idea I could walk on a side street in Vegas while clipping my fingernail.

[Kyle]

I wasn't the only one.

[Dom]

Well, you're all wrong. What, Tell me, what is the most annoying thing about traveling with each other?

[Jason Buchala]

Well, Sammy doesn't drive as well as I do. I'd say I'm a better driver for sure. That one, I would say.

[Dom]

So what's it like driving with Santa?

[Jason Buchala]

It's, it's, it's. It's aggressive. It's. It's a little bit lower to the ground because I'm in my truck. So everything just seems like it's coming at me a lot quicker.

[Dom]

When it was Sammy, I respect it. Sammy.

[Elliot]

I don't believe in amber.

[Dom]

Oh, the color.

[Elliot]

Most everything is green.

[Kyle]

The color or the commentator?

[Elliot]

Yeah, the commentator.

[Dom]

What about him?

[Elliot]

The. What is it? The secret voice. What is he?

[Kyle]

Oh, the. The Anonymous.

[Elliot]

The Anonymous? Yeah, the Anonymous with books. Boox is like a shoe guy. You got to see this shoe collection. It's unbelievable. I put them onto a place. You know, when it comes to your fault, it is my fault. And then next thing you know, like he's doing stuff online. Oh, you should see these shoes I designed. These are amazing. He's got 6, 000 pair of shoes. He's a Marcos. Is it Imelda Marcos?

[Jason Buchala]

I.

[Dom]

That is a flask.

[Jason Buchala]

So when the coup occurs in the Bukala residence, like, they're gonna be taking me away with my shoes just because that happened to Melda back.

[Elliot]

Hey, did you bring those golf shoes? I did. I got them pretty nice.

[Dom]

Let's get to the players. This is my fault.

[Kyle]

Every now and then, you got to

[Dom]

get off the rails.

[Jason Buchala]

Hey, you know, freeze. When we're playing Red Tail, we gotta look good, feel good. It doesn't even matter if we play good. We just gotta look good, feel good.

[Kyle]

So I remember last year, you felt you're pretty confident about at least kind of where or who maybe in the top four was going in the draft. And then after that, it's like anybody's guess, like, where. Where's the tipping point this year where potential chaos could unfold? And who goes where in your mind?

[Elliot]

Well, I think nine names, we can pretty comfortably peg the order.

[Dom]

The first nine, you think? Yeah, I think same for both of you.

[Elliot]

The order of the names is going to be a little bit different. But I. I have nine guys that I feel pretty confidently about.

[Jason Buchala]

I'm dropping it that down to 10 just because I have a wild card in there at 10 that I feel like half the league really, really values. And the other half of the league valleys in the way in the back in the first round.

[Dom]

So who's that?

[Jason Buchala]

Alexander Command from Sweden.

[Elliot]

Yeah. You like him?

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah, I like him a lot. So. But Sam's right. It's. It's just so. It's lines in the sand. You call them tears, whatever you want

[Elliot]

to call them, you can run through it right now. So you're looking at McKenna, Stenberg. Let's call it Malhotra, then let's call it Reed. Let's call it Smiths. Then you got Bjork, then you got Carl's. You got Rudolph Verhoff. There's nine right there. I feel pretty good about those nine names after that. You know, Belchert's, Lynn, some different guys, Command, they start to enter the frame. But I think those nine guys are the first nine guys off the board.

[Dom]

All right, go ahead, Sergeant.

[Jason Buchala]

So for me, when you start throwing out some of those names and the reason why I have them in different orders, like Albert Smith's out of the box. His floor is higher than any of those other defensemen. Okay. And he played more hockey than anybody this year, that kid. It's incredible, really.

[Elliot]

Right?

[Jason Buchala]

For. For listeners who aren't aware he played pro in liga, he played J20 in Finland. He ended up getting loaned out to Munchen in the Dell in the back half of the season. In between World Junior for Latvia and then Olympics for Lafayette and then Men's World Hockey Championship for Lafayette. Nobody played more as a draft eligible. That's insane.

[Elliot]

But the crazy part, if you rewind the tape a couple months, he played for the Under 18 Worlds for Latvia. So think about that. U18, U20 Men's World Olympics for your. For your country. That's crazy. In the course of basically 16 months.

[Jason Buchala]

So more viewings than anybody on different high leverage scenarios. But what I would say in that whole list that we're talking about then, and this is why I put Command at 10 and challenging Smiths at 9 on my list, is because I. I truly believe that Smith's floor is higher. Command ceiling in two to three years could be higher. So that's where I'm kind of at that cut off there. And so that's why I have Smith's nine on my list, too. He's not. He's not in the Reed territory or anything like that, or Verhoff.

[Dom]

All right.

[Elliot]

And I actually, I agree with you with that.

[Kyle]

I don't.

[Elliot]

I don't think the NHL teams think that way, though. I talked to a number of teams that really like Smiths. I don't like him as much, and so it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

[Dom]

All right, so do we have any doubt?

[Jason Buchala]

Let's.

[Dom]

Let's go through this. Do we have any doubt? McKenna is going.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Why?

[Jason Buchala]

I have no doubt.

[Elliot]

No doubt. Okay. You know, for each. So there isn't a general manager in the National Hockey League that has the stones not to take them.

[Jason Buchala]

Oh, God. You know, so this is. This is where we're getting to the end. I know. I understand.

[Elliot]

Yeah.

[Jason Buchala]

I understand what you're saying. For me, my response to that is that you better have the stones to make those decisions on those days for the betterment of the team. Like, one way or the other, you know, like, you have to have. That's why you're there. You're one of the top 32 guys in the league, supposedly at your job, so. Or in the world at the highest

[Elliot]

level, when you have an owner who's heard about this guy for the better part of two years, and you walk in there and you say, nope, this is not the guy. Like, how do you combat that?

[Dom]

Well, can I. Can I ask you something? We interviewed Yarmo Kekalainen today, and One of the things I said to him is I heard that he is good. Terry Pula, I think, is a really good owner. I think he wants to be a great owner. And I think part of the thing is he gets really excited. And they hadn't won a long time. I've heard Kekalan is really good at saying, hey, just let me work this.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah.

[Dom]

You don't think a guy like Kekalainen could tell his owner if, if, if. McKenna, I know I'm having some recency bias here, but that's one guy who jumped into my head right away.

[Elliot]

Put both of those guys in the seat to pick number one and then tell me what happens. He might have pushback, he might not. But when the owner says, hey, tickets, jerseys, and it starts to go beyond the scope of hockey, that becomes a different conversation. So I think if you put him in that seat, I don't, I don't think there's any doubt that he would have pushback. But I also believe that if Terry Bagula said, you're taking this guy, then he's taken him.

[Jason Buchala]

So that's not so much them having the stones as it's a directive from the owner.

[Elliot]

Well, it's. But that. This is the point I'm saying you have to combat the owner. So what general manager is going to stand up to his owner in, in that regard and listen, everyone, every single guy in that spot is going to tell you there's no way I'm on this job 24 7. We have a staff that we're paying millions of dollars to, but at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, I don't think there's a guy in the league that'll do it.

[Jason Buchala]

So my, my, my big picture here is that this whole entire. As everybody knows, trust me, I've had enough people throwing rocks at my glass house since January. I've had iver Stenberg number one on my list for. Since January, okay? And McKenna came on strong in the second half of the year in a bunch of metrics that I qualify him to be, you know, challenging Stenberg. The fact of the matter is Stenberg didn't fall off that perch, so it would be irresponsible of me to, you know, switch it around because there wasn't enough of a gain and there wasn't enough of a fall off. Now, having said that, I think one thing that we're really disrespecting in this process is this. Stenberg plays in Sweden, guys. So he's out of sight, out of mind to the North American market more than anybody else. When I start hearing things and please don't take this the wrong way, Sammy, When I started hearing things like these guys don't have the stones or that it's going to sell jerseys and it's going to do this and that, to me that's disrespectful a bit to Stenberg's value as well because yeah, he might not be as marketable, but his, he's outstanding. He's outstanding. And when you're winning Stanley Cups or you're going deep in playoff runs, does it matter then how many jerseys and hot dogs and beers you sold?

[Dom]

I would give you a thousand percent. Like I remember, remember. I, I hate, I don't like to kick a guy while he's always gone. But that's what happened with Yakopov in the Oilers. Jay got overruled and told to take prank again. Nelly Akopov I like it's been a long time, but that's what I would tell my owner. I think I would hope that a GM would at least have the guts to say to their owner, and I agree with you, if you don't have the guts to say that you shouldn't be a gm, you shouldn't be a gm. But I would hope a GM would have the guts of the owner to say, hey, this is a situation where this happened. Let us do our job and again, yeah, let us.

[Elliot]

I think every GM would have that conversation. I, I fully believe.

[Dom]

Would you take like so let's just.

[Elliot]

Would you take.

[Dom]

So if you were the GM, if you, if you were the least GM, who would you take?

[Elliot]

I would, I would take McKenna.

[Kyle]

You wouldn't.

[Elliot]

Yeah, no, but, but, but part of the reason is like there's potential for a ninety or a hundred point guy and while Stenberg let's.

[Jason Buchala]

How many guys, how many guys had a hundred points in the league this year? Seven.

[Elliot]

Seven guys.

[Dom]

Okay.

[Elliot]

Mitch Marner did. I think when he came in the league he was going to be a perennial 100 point guy. I didn't, I didn't think that he turned out to be, to be pretty. Is this guy Mitch Marner? Well, he doesn't play defensively like Mitch Marner, but the point I'm trying to make is that when, when I look at, at the entire situation and we know this better than anyone, like Rogers is a business guys. And so this has been hyped for

[Kyle]

how, for how long.

[Elliot]

And the thing is, it's not like you're going to take I don't believe this to be a Yakopov situation. I believe that the high end potential of this player is going to speak to someone who is going to give you more on that end than Stedenberg's all around game. Is it going to be a huge gap? No, I don't think so. I think Stenberg is the better all around player and will be the better all around player for, for the length of their careers. But I really feel that the offensive upside that McKenna has is something that I don't want to miss out on.

[Dom]

Who's going to.

[Jason Buchala]

Stemberg.

[Elliot]

Stemberg.

[Dom]

You think so? So I said on the radio the other day on Maddie and, and Mike's show that I think Stemmer is going number two. And someone called me and said don't be so emphatic. So I'm, I'm doubting myself. I'm gaslighting.

[Jason Buchala]

I wouldn't, I wouldn't doubt yourself. I'd be very comfortable with it and I'd actually still stand on that tomorrow if, if it doesn't happen. The reasoning behind it, I would still stand on that. He's the second. Like I've been there.

[Dom]

He's so good.

[Jason Buchala]

I've, you know, I've, I've, I've done this and, and sometimes not very well, but I've tried my very, very best and that's the cutoff guys. There's a drop off to the next guy. So when you start taking a look at the chase reads, let's take a look what Stenberg did. Like I, again, I'll just bring it back and I'm not sitting here to try and justify that. I have a number one because by the way, if I'm the strong Maple Leafs, part of my reasoning, I'll, I'll answer the question. Yeah, Sammy, I'm drafting stenberg, okay. Over McKenna. I'm drafting stenberg. The reason is that I feel like they went through the rest of what you're talking about there, the business and all that. That's not my lane. Right. That's not my lane. If somebody in the business office and marketing can't market our top, the first pick overall, whether he comes from the moon or, or Sweden. That's not, that's not my lane. I'm trying to do what's best for the organization. Okay? So when I look at Stenberg, I feel the Toronto Maple Leafs in their last cycle of the retool. Rebuild, let's call it a rebuild. Here we are in Buffalo. Matthews got drafted. Okay. That's a rebuild. How did they do it, guys? They did it a certain way with a certain type of player. A player type. I think everybody would agree on that. And then they were chasing a different type of player type. They have a unique opportunity in front of them to revisit sort of a same sort of player type that they draft in the past or do it differently. And they're not going to be far off offensively, but they're going to be way better in all the rest of the game. The metrics of the game and what wins the playoffs, the metrics win out. It's not just offense, it's the rest of it that starts to win out. It rises. So that's why I would, I'm sticking like, you know, and people can disagree with me, be kind, I don't care. But you know, that's just my thought process trying to work my way through it. So that's why there's no chance in my mind that Stemberg goes past two. You traded Eklundo. Stember's going to walk right on his Celebrini's flank next year and he's going to go off.

[Elliot]

He's going to produce at an equin level, I believe right away. And the other part is when you look at Kesselring, so, so the way I had it set up was Reed was going to go right shot defenseman, he's going to go second. I think the addition to Kesselring, like he's an underrated guy that I've talked to some people in the league about and they think he's a high, like a high value player who's very, who's undervalued in the market. And so you go get him right shot guy, he's got a bomb from the point. He can, he can manage some of the power play time. Reed to me is going to be a power play one guy, you know, for, for what I believe to be a long time. And so when you get Castle ring, you sort of address that immediately. You got a little bit older, you got some experience, you moved out a guy who was a, you know, decent point producer for you in Eklund. Stenberg fits immediately into that hole next year and I think he's a 50 point guy in his rookie year. I believe that like the thing is sometimes when we look and we're having this conversation, the gap between these two guys, like if I'm taking McKenna one, okay, great. But the gap between him and Stenberg is like it's minimal and there are many parts of the game that right now and probably projectable where Stenberg is going to be the better guy.

[Jason Buchala]

Did you. Do you guys like Demidoff in Montreal?

[Elliot]

I do.

[Jason Buchala]

Stenberg's better than Demidoff out of the box. Right?

[Kyle]

Really?

[Jason Buchala]

Right away? Yeah. Now, the surrounding is going to be a little less mature in San Jose, but it's on the horizon, you know, and celebrity is already punching way above his playing weight. So this is like, look at that power play. If they get Stenberg there, what they could roll out. So time will tell. But he's, he's. Guys, he's really good.

[Elliot]

He's good.

[Kyle]

Well, I mean, that speaks well because I remember two years ago in Vegas and how high you were on Demidov of going, you guys just wait till you see him. So for you to make that comment about Stenberg speaks to how highly you view him.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah. And Montreal's got this other kid, Zarovski, coming. I'll just go off. I'll go off off course here for a sec. God, The Montreal Canadiens embarrassment of riches. It's great.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

So.

[Kyle]

And it also sounds like there's not much doubt that in your two minds that Chase Reed will be the first defenseman to go. You think he's.

[Jason Buchala]

I don't have.

[Kyle]

Wow.

[Jason Buchala]

I don't have. I don't have him going first.

[Kyle]

No.

[Elliot]

We differ a little bit here.

[Jason Buchala]

So my reasoning behind this, again, and this is what's great about it, I think what we really should have answered the question, this is how we can kill a ride from Calgary to Lethbridge. You know, ping ponging back and forth, arguing with each other with different philosophies, different approaches. I have Keaton Verhoff first. Okay.

[Kyle]

Why?

[Jason Buchala]

Well, Keaton Verhoff, if he stays back in June, he had 21 talks a year ago in Victoria. If he stays back this year, they trade him to Everett, let's say at the trade deadline and Everett goes to Memorial Cup. So let's say he gets 30, 35 goals. Daxton Rudolph.

[Elliot]

3,080 for sure.

[Jason Buchala]

Dax. And Rudolph had 37 or 38 total in PA this year. Okay, so Bearhoff's at least that. He's at least that. And he plays in all situations now. He didn't. He challenged himself to go to the ncaa. And his metrics down there, his statistical analysis, fourth highest leading draft eligible defense score in the history of the ncaa. Okay. And I don't, I don't know that the narrative has been lost. It's been gobbled up somewhere along the line Here he's a year younger than Reed. Reed's a late birthday. Verhoff's a straight 17 year old. Okay. You know, all these things matter to me. And that's why, like, Verhoff's got a lot of. If he would have stayed back in his draft year in the dub. He reminds me a lot of Aaron Akba when we drafted him in Florida back in the day. He reminds me a lot of, you know, and actually he's got more bite than a cat at that time when he played in Berry.

[Elliot]

I see a dynamic ability in Reed that has some Makar like qualities. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this guy's Cale McCarr, but the way he transports the puck by himself, the way he passes the puck with accuracy, with pace and being able to bring those things to an NHL level as opposed to the junior level. And no disrespect to the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds and the teammates he has there, but I think he can do things at an even higher rate at that level when you have guys who can accept passes in good areas and off their feet and do some of those other things. But man, this guy, he can wheel and deal. He's. And at times he looks like he's skating and he'll just blow right by. You know, he has that extra gear that's very kind of subtle. His footwork's great, ability to get shots through, can really hit the puck hard as well. So, like, I like some. Really. The dynamic element that he brings to the game, to me, is the best of any of the defensemen.

[Dom]

The Vancouver listeners are probably like, wait, they got one and they got two and then they changed. Come on, give us, give us, give us Vancouver. So there have been some rumors that maybe the Malhotras don't want to be united. It's the not the best thing for everybody involved. Let's just take that out of it for a sec. Forget that. It's a father son thing. Who you think Vancouver's taking third?

[Jason Buchala]

So that's. Who do I think they're taking?

[Dom]

Well, actually, let's put it this way. Do you think they should take.

[Jason Buchala]

Okay, so I can answer it that way. I think they should take Mahalter. And so again, for me, until I'm told otherwise by people above me in the organization, my job is to build out the team with the best assets possible. Build a team, right? Period. And for me, the average NHL coach, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's like two and three quarters years, if you're lucky, and you get fired. I hope that doesn't happen to Manny Mahaltra. Don't get me wrong, but for the longevity of the. Of the good of the group, the good of the organization, you have to draft the very best player. You know, they didn't go into hiring Manny Maltra not knowing that Caleb Ultra was the top settlement available in the draft. They already knew that they'd already done all that work. Right? So it's not perfect. It's an anomaly. It's. It's uneven. We may never, ever see it again. But for the good of the group, you draft the best player.

[Elliot]

Caleb Holter, I think he's the best center available. It's not by a ton. I mean, you know, Viggo Bjork is right there. And if Ego Bjork was six feet tall, they'd be equally in the conversation together. I have thrown this back and forth in my brain a million times. You hire the coach, the first move you make is you bypass the son of the draft. Human nature. What does that tell you? Right. Sure, you're going to be disappointed. Are you going to carry that to your job every day? Probably not. Mandy's a pro. Nine hundred and whatever, 80 games in the. In the National Hockey League. But still, there's. There's a human nature element to all of that, right? And then you think about, okay, what's the flip side of that? What is the dynamic going to be like in the room when three years down the road, he's a regular player in their top six, and dad's coach and the guys are on the bus, they've had a few pops or they're going out for dinner, and now there's some criticism of a coach's move or why didn't he do this, or this guy's an idiot, or whatever. The case might be that when you have a few pops and you're venting, that might come out. How awkward is that going to be? And pretty much everyone that I've talked to that's been in that situation is like, oh, no, you can't have it. Now, that being said, that was a long time ago, and the game was different and people were different and mental health and all of those things were in a much different place than where we are now. But, you know, I love books because he's just true to exactly what the job is, right? So he tells you he's told to build out a team, he's building out with the best asset available. And the best asset there is. Caleb Maltra. I totally agree. The one thing I would say and have caution and my mock draft. I put my whole job there. Okay. The one thing I would have caution of for four straight years in this market, all we've seen is drama and a circus. You are inviting the potential for that to happen. If you draft Caleb Maltra, whether you like it or not, and does a new regime with the Sadie's at the top, Ryan Johnson is the GM and Manny as the coach, do they want to. We're just trying to clear ourselves from that drama. Do you want to get right back into that movie? Do you? When I understand when. And I might say, okay, if I really have that need for a center. Viggo Bjork is like, he's, he is. This guy's unreal. He's only shorter. That's, that's really like if these six foot. We're, we're having a different conversation.

[Jason Buchala]

I, I just, I want to put a bow on it from my end. I think that people have to understand when you're a director of scouting and you're running a scouting staff in the National Hockey League, your job is this. And as soon as you start to invite all these other scenarios, which of yours, which are very factual, they're, they're, they are scenarios that could play out, but I don't know that. And what I know today is this is the best player. And so management and other team psychologists, whoever was running in Harv's meetings and stuff like that, they're going to pipe in and they're going to have other, other. So then what happens is the GM then looks at me and says, okay, Jason, here's the reason why I'm not going to do it. Who's the next best guy? Tell me why. And it's Bego Bjork. And I'm splitting hairs anyways. I'm very close. But understand that you have. Unless you're steadfast in that process and that structure and if you invite all that other stuff in to your process, your meeting will last three years. Because you can, you know, it's, it's sunny now. It could rain in an hour. I don't know that, but I know it's sunny right now.

[Elliot]

It's so true to the process. Like for me, it's been a great learning experience, right? Because I tend to think about all of those anecdotal things and the outside noise because I do believe that they are a real piece of the puzzle. But when Bouc says, this is my job and I'm going to do my job. You guys worry about the other stuff. I'm going to tell you who the best players are and if, and if there's a real impact from ownership, from psychologists, from whatever it is, then please let me know about that.

[Jason Buchala]

I would also say that I have to trust the kids. Like when he comes in and meets with us at the combine and the way he presents himself and the way that he presents. He's a captain of the CHL top prospects game. He's a leader on a Brantford Bulldogs team. He beats out a lot of high end guys, first rounders, first rounder has been drafted. Like all these things add up in my mind. That's all part of it. So I, I, you know, I. We could beat it to death. I'm just trying to.

[Elliot]

No, well, you, you want to present all sides of the story, right?

[Dom]

Who do you think Vancouver's taking? Quick? Do you think they're taking them?

[Jason Buchala]

I think they're taking my ultra.

[Elliot]

I think so too. Yeah, they do. I really do.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah. So I put on my muck. Okay.

[Elliot]

Yeah. Wow. All right.

[Kyle]

Couple of things I wanted to ask. Like the, the Ruck twins, like, yeah, you put on your mock. You've got St. Louis back to back there, right? I do The Sadie's in 99. I mean, do you, do you envision a scenario where. And is it similar to the Sadine twins, where there's a school of thought out there that those two are at their best when they're together as opposed to apart?

[Jason Buchala]

I would. Well, yeah, just the short answer to that is yes, because we don't know any differently. Right. And they've actually come into our room when we've met with them and said, we've only been apart four days in our whole life. They still, they still sleep in the same room, you know, back home. So these kids, they're. They're Siamese twins is what they are. But it's a cool story. It's fascinating. I have them back to back in the middle of the first round. I can tell you why. It's the St. Louis Blues. If they hold all those picks, if they hold all those picks, they're in complete control of how they want to strategize that. So when you're looking at it there, Kyle, they have 11, 15, 16, and then what is it?

[Kyle]

20, 29.

[Jason Buchala]

29. So don't look at it from 1 to 29, look at it from 11 to 29. And what do you got? You got 18 players. 18, okay. You got 18 players. So if they take their top rated guy at 11, but now they're down to 17 and they got three pit now they gotta go through the whole league. Right. There's a strong possibility that out of that list of 17 players they have left on that list that if they step on Marcus, because Liam is kind of stepping on Liam for me, like four or five slots, but it's really stepping on Marcus to get him at 16. I still believe they're gonna have seven or eight guys left from that group of players to draft with their last pick. You understand my process there. So it's a strategy. You're taking control of not having to trade another asset if you want to try and marry the two of them

[Dom]

the way you're thinking.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah, you, you're trying.

[Elliot]

I learned everything.

[Dom]

We have worked together for almost 12 years. That's the first time I've ever said yeah, and so.

[Jason Buchala]

And I didn't have to go to Western to, to come up with these analysis, believe me.

[Dom]

You went to Western?

[Jason Buchala]

I wouldn't have thought I went to the university of the seeps and Barneys,

[Dom]

but so did I.

[Jason Buchala]

But I'm trying to. As I'm sitting there on the floor, that's how I'm thinking about it. I think that I'm pretty comfortable. One of my eight guys are going to be there with my last pick. So yeah, I'm going to step here and people are going to say, well, you step. But all I'm doing is reverse engineering a strategy on the floor.

[Elliot]

Amazing. I've talked to a number of teams and they believe like I do very strongly that they're better together. So, you know, what does that look like for me? I think Liam is a first round guy. I don't believe Marcus is. And so the Calgary Flames look like the scenario which that can make that happen. Now the, the flip side of that is some people are saying, well, between Calgary's, I think it's 30th, right. They got Vegas's pick 30.

[Jason Buchala]

Yes.

[Elliot]

If they take Liam there, if Liam's still available. And then they pick early in round number two, within the first five picks around number two. And so someone said to me, well, someone's going to run in there and block them and they're going to hold Marcus hostage because they know that they're better together. And I'm thinking to myself, if someone wants to spend their draft capital to block somebody from. From this happening. What are you doing? Aren't you not. Are you not defeating the purpose of your job. But if you truly believe Marcus is the guy, then fine, you justify it and move along. The way I look at it is Calgary. You know, you get the medicine hat thing. They're from a soils. I think Calgary would have the best opportunity to do it. And the fallback that I would look at is if I take Liam at 30 and he's available there, I still have a player I really, really like, and I will if I have to take the chance of separating them. Although I don't believe that's the best pass, best path forward for either one of them, I still believe Marcus is going to be there at 36. And if he's not good, I'll sit in my fallback position. I'll have the Liam, the shooter, the goal scorer. And then I will work maybe later in life to secure that player. And if Marcus is a guy that may never play in the national hockey league or if he becomes something different than what we expect him to be, then maybe as an organization I can go out and get him and bring him in. At the very least, bring him into my organization at a later date. I wouldn't want to spend draft capital to make that happen. And you and I have talked about this. But in the event that that happens, Calgary also has the draft capital. So from a strategy perspective, I can see it. I can see it working out, and I can see it working out even if they happen to get split. And that's why I picked Calgary at 30.

[Jason Buchala]

The team that I'd be worried about there on the floor, it would be the Pittsburgh Penguins if that were the scenario, because Pittsburgh's at 23. I believe Kyle. And then. And then they got 39, I believe 22. 22 and 39. I just.

[Elliot]

22 is a spot for Liam. I think that's.

[Jason Buchala]

22 is a spot for Liam. So now that you know, I'm just. I'm trying to think, okay, who, if they go. If he got past. If he got past Pitt, I'd feel more comfortable. Yeah, but when I'm knowing the Pittsburgh guys, way I know the Pittsburgh guys, I see them thinking Liam, you know, I just see that as a fit.

[Elliot]

But the other part of is. And Kyle Dubes has been known to work some magic on the floor is like, okay, we got 22. If we don't pick till 39, I'm going to find a way to upgrade that 39 and get it a little closer where I think I'm going to be able to get Marcus as Well,

[Jason Buchala]

see how Sammy just said that right there. To do that, you're going to have to invest another asset to make that happen. And that's why I present the St. Louis strategy the way I played it. Because you don't have to invest another asset later on. You're using your four picks instead of having to invest a fifth to make something creative happen. It all matters.

[Dom]

We were talking briefly about Calgary and that Bjork kid. Someone said to me, they won't be surprised if Calgary takes it.

[Jason Buchala]

Oh, he's not getting past Calgary. For I. I firmly believe he would not get past Calgary.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Okay.

[Elliot]

For sure. He is so good, guys. Like, oh my gosh, he is in the fight. Like men's world. She's playing top line, top power play. Lucas Raymond, no problem. Like Stenberg had no problem. He is. This guy's unbelievable. And the one thing that I was a little bit. I'm not taking it back, but just sort of surprised by is when we met him at the combine, he's a little bit stockier than I thought. And the way he presented himself, nicely dressed, completely confident. He did himself a lot of favors at the combine because if you look at a smaller guy and you're finding. Trying to find a reason not to take him aside from just the size, you're not going to find it with this guy. And so when you meet him in person, he shakes your hand, he looks you in the eye like he checks all of those boxes. So there is no other reason. And the size, to me, it's not going to be an issue. If you watch him play against men all year, there's not an area in the ice he won't go to, and there's not a battle he won't try and win. And he wins a lot of them because he's ridiculously smart. This guy is so good. He's so good.

[Jason Buchala]

He. He's like. He can play the flank on the power play. He can play the bumper on the power play. He can kill penalties. He can play with speed. He'll slow it down off the rush. He's really the one thing. There's going to be a lot of Swedes drafted in the first 40 picks tomorrow. And that group that just came through, Sweden, and you guys have seen it with like the US national team development program over the years. Whole get drafted really high. This group of Swedes, they play the game the right way. They have skill, but they have character and they know how to win like they are. They're dialed in. This kid has a Cole Coffield like personality. When he came into our room for his interview, he just like you walk out of there, it's like I want to just go have dinner with this kid or something. I just want to hang out with him. Right.

[Dom]

He's really great except he doesn't want to have dinner with you. Okay, so he did he.

[Jason Buchala]

No. But you know what he did say to me? He goes, I like your shoes, Jason.

[Dom]

How many more pairs do you have? So what is the biggest round one shocker?

[Jason Buchala]

Okay, who's going to go first? First round is going to be.

[Dom]

What is the biggest first round shocker this weekend?

[Jason Buchala]

If. Yeah, if you were Maxim Sokolovsky gets drafted by the Boston Bruins will be a shocker to some. Not to me. That's so Sokolovsky's the six foot seven and a quarter 240 pound left shot defenseman for from the London Knights. And Boston always finds a way to surprise me. Trent Frederick back in the day, 29th overall. Dean Letourno, you know, Dean Letourneau, you know, cost me a lot of money that picked it. A lot of wagyu went out the door. But this is a situation that I see him being a. They think that he could be the next coming of like I don't want to get carried away but Zano Char like, you know what I mean? Like that tree of a guy that plays a certain way and you know he's. And he's. He beat up a few people in the back half of the year too.

[Elliot]

Zadorov is a name that comes to mind too. I think, you know, we got the London thing, you got the. He's born in Kazakhstan but essentially he's Russian.

[Jason Buchala]

Can I throw one other one out at you guys? You don't mind the other guy that I think has fallen in some rankings. He's kind of in the muddy middle for me is I think Mathis Preston. I think somebody still believes in Mathis Preston a lot more than. Than other teams.

[Elliot]

Sokolovsky, I actually have him going two picks ahead of that at 21 to Philadelphia. Oh, Philadelphia went to totally makes sense what two years ago on the draft at 22. I think the London thing always plays no matter what you say. And if you saw the growth of this player from the start of the year to the end of the year, you're looking at two different players. And so I think he would fit the Philly bill. You know, you're talking about beating up people. He'd fit the bill there in Philadelphia. So I Have.

[Jason Buchala]

I don't want people in Ms. To understand. This guy's not like. That's not all he does.

[Elliot]

No, he's not a good guy.

[Jason Buchala]

He's a big, big physical guy.

[Elliot]

Yeah, yeah. And there's a good story we're going to tell on draft night about him and how he ended up in London, but we'll save that for me. Brooks Rogowski is a, is a fascinating guy. Now I have him going 32 to Ottawa, and I think that's going to be a bit of a shocker. And I even shocked myself when I actually wrote it down. Six, seven. Guy who's a baseball player. He's got baseball in his family bloodlines, but he's really lightly played. Like, he just sort of decided on hockey last year and all of a sudden like here he is a point per game, he's playing center. He skates really well. He's got good hands for a big guy. So I, I think he's really just at the start of his developmental cycle when a lot of these players are probably from the back end of their minor careers to two years in their respective leagues are really starting to make it happen. So when it comes to Rogowski, I just see the room for improvement is, is huge. I don't know what that ceiling is going to look like, but there's a lot of room to make it happen. And the other part about him is I don't think he's realized just how big and strong he is and can be. And once he gets into a situation where he has to learn to apply that on a regular basis, I'm not saying he's going to be a menace or be a tough guy like the Sokolovsky, but I do think he's going to have to add some pushback in his game more than what we're seeing now. But it's just a matter of getting used to your body type and understanding what you can do and how much of an advantage you can have if you use your body to, you know, to its best advantages.

[Jason Buchala]

NHL players are very, very crafty smart. When you're a big, strong kid like Rogowski, raw, six foot seven, whatever you weigh, and if you don't push back physically enough at that size, you're going to get punched in the nose and they're going to will you out of your game. You know what I mean? So he's going to have to absolutely develop that.

[Elliot]

Dan Boyle is the comparison that some people have talked about with this guy. Okay, Well, a pretty Good Career boiler. Yeah.

[Kyle]

Wow. All right. Anything else?

[Dom]

No, I think I'm good.

[Kyle]

Awesome.

[Elliot]

Any trades?

[Dom]

I'm working on something I like to hear.

[Kyle]

Busy day tomorrow. Busy two days for you gentlemen. So appreciate the time here and rest up for.

[Jason Buchala]

Thanks, Travis. Thanks to.

[Elliot]

We could do it for hours.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah, we could. For sure. We already have.

[Elliot]

Thanks, buddy. Nice to see you live and in person.

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[Kyle]

All right, welcome back. Time now for the thigh line presented by BetMGM. Make it legendary. And Elliot, for those interested in the life and times of David Amber, a new story has come across the timeline.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

No way.

[Dom]

Oh, I cannot wait to hear this.

[Kyle]

A doozy.

[Dom]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

So earlier this week, we all travel into Buffalo and Dave's telling me the story that he gets to the hotel, he checks in, unpacks, decides to relax and throw on the Canada Switzerland football game from the World Cup. And so he's just lying on his bed and next thing you know, he hears the door start to open to his hotel room. And the way the room is configured, from the door, you can see kind of the foot of the bed, but like from where Dave is sitting, he can't see the door. He just hears it. So the door opens and he's like, like, you know how jumpy Dave can get.

[Dom]

It's like someone's in here.

[Kyle]

And then he hears this woman's voice going, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. He's like, oh, someone's in here. And then they leave. So, like you can imagine, like Dave's now a wreck from this whole ordeal.

[Dom]

Wait, wait, wait. Was Dave clothed at the time?

[Kyle]

He was, I think he was under the comforter. He was like relaxed, borderline, going into like an afternoon nap, a siesta. So we are fast forward to dinner. Him, myself and Sam Cosetino are sitting, having some food, and he recounts the story for Sam and he tells it and Sam suddenly jerks forward in his chair and he goes, eilish. And we're like, what? He goes, eilish, that was the girl that walked in on your hotel room. She was texting us earlier about, oh my God. I got to the hotel and checked in. They gave me the key to a room that somebody was already in. And I opened the door, and someone was like, someone's in here.

[Jason Buchala]

Someone's in here.

[Kyle]

And I panicked and left.

[Dom]

And Dave is like, are you?

[Kyle]

We both are beside ourselves. So he humorously messages the group that Alish was in, saying that he was the guy. And we later go link up with her and a few others from our team here, and she's, like, mortified. And the best part was she goes, the sound of the voice from that guy in that hotel room. I thought if I had taken another step in that room, I was not getting out. I was so terrified because of how

[Dom]

jumpy Dave was, of going, someone's in here. Someone's in here. She was mortified.

[Kyle]

So in a roundabout way, it's brought our team closer together. Now I will say I got Ailish's blessing. Before telling the story on the pod. I was like, are you sure you're okay with it? She's like, absolutely.

[Dom]

Did you ask Dave for permission?

[Kyle]

No, of course not.

[Dom]

Good. Excellent. Excellent.

[Kyle]

Why would I.

[Dom]

Outstanding.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Dom]

I know. I'd taken a fight between the two of them, and it's not Dave.

[Elliot]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Anything for you. Before we get to the.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah.

[Dom]

I wanted to show to a couple of people. When I was flying home from New York the other day, I. I saw. I ran into Griffin Loose at the airport. Griffin Loose played overseas in Scotland this year, and he said now he's retiring, he's going into business. He was headed to a wedding. He said that the groom forgot his suit, and Griffin was bringing it with him to Dallas, where the wedding was. So Griffin's dad is Scott Luce, who was a student at Guelph at the same time I was at Western. He was the starting goaltender for the hated Guelph Griffins, the school outfit that looks like they work at McDonald's. And Scott is now a scout for the Vegas Golden Knights. And the one thing I always remember Scott for, and we haven't spoken in a long time, I didn't even know that he'd moved. But the one thing I remember Scott for was he won the argument at the Florida Panther draft table to take Alexander Barkoff like he should probably. Scott should probably go to the scouting hall of Fame for that reason alone. The other person I wanted to shout out, and it's a bit of a controversial one in the sporting world right now, the new head coach of the Portland Trailblazers is a guy by the name of Micah Norrie. And you know, there's some controversy because Micah signed a one year deal with a couple of team options and there's some people upset about that. I think people make their own decisions. They have to do what makes them happy. But I remember Mike and Nori broke in on Butch Carter's coaching staff with the Toronto Raptors about 25 years ago. And I was a young reporter covering the Raptors at the time and Micah was just starting his career. You know, we lost touch over the years, but what a tremendous, tremendous guy. And I remember like he was everywhere, like, whatever. It's one of those things like when you're starting out in any business, you need to do this, I'll do that, even if it's not my expertise. But I, I would see him out on the court long after practice, well before games, helping players work on their shots. You need someone to grab the rebound or pass it back to them. And he just wanted to see everything. And like, I think a lot of people who are very successful in life, you start at the bottom, you work your way up and you do everything you can to be like a sponge, so you eventually get that opportunity. So I hope Micah knocks it out of the park because I know he's been interviewed before and this is a big opportunity for him and I hope it's great for him. Good luck. Micah, you're a smart, sharp guy and I have no doubt you'll do great.

[Kyle]

Excellent. Good stuff. Okay. As you can imagine, there were a few submissions over the last few days with regards to trade protection and the inner workings of various contracts. So we'll begin with Liam. Hey guys. Really enjoy listening to the show. Here's an idea regarding players strong arming their teams into trades to their preferred destinations as within their rights. Could you see a world where GMs begin using player initiated trade clauses? For example, a player could have a full no move clause. However, if the player initiates a move by requesting a trade or failing to show up for camp, for example, that no move clause would then be turned into a previously submitted, say 15 to 20 team trade list. They are basically selecting to be traded over the ability to be extremely picky about where they end up. This gives both parties security, but also flexibility. If the players want a fresh start and the team does not want to lose value either way, I'm sure those darn southern teams would find a way to exploit it and require a whole new section of the cba, as is a weekly occurrence.

[Dom]

You know, I think that's a great question. I I just don't know contractually if you're allowed to do something like that. And what I'll do is I'll follow it up and I'll ask, like, you know, there are people around the NHL who are contract experts. Could you do something like that? Like, one thing I heard, for example, and we're recording this before the news segment, so if I mention this in the news segment, it's been a long day. Okay. I heard that one of the things Winnipeg said was to Conor Hellebock was, if you're going to ask for a trade, then you've got to waive your no trade protection, where we want you to go. And he was like, no, I'm not doing that. For obvious reasons. But I've said before that leading into the last cba, I heard there were a couple of teams that said when they. Because before the CBA gets negotiated, Bettman meets with each team at least once and they say, I'm not guaranteeing you're going to get what you want, but what are your concerns? And I heard a couple teams brought up no trade clauses. And, you know, this was a peacetime cba. They wanted to extend their goods. They weren't fighting, but I could see a situation where in the next one, they start fighting this kind of thing. Now, if you're the players, you would do whatever you can to keep it. Who knows where it'll go? It's a negotiation. But one of the things someone talked to me about this week was if you have a no trade clause and you demand a trade, there should be some mechanism like that where the team has a defense. And, and I, you know, I think like, like the Brady Tkachuk thing, even though he submitted four teams, as you heard everybody talk about, it became pretty clear he wanted to go to one. I can see a situation where the teams are going to say, we don't want that anymore and we have to have. They don't want a player to have a no trade. Like years ago when Curt Schilling demanded a trade from the Philadelphia Phillies, the GM at the time, Ed Wade, gave a press conference I never forgot, said he doesn't have a trade me clause. He has a no trade clause. And I think that that is something I could see the team saying. No, we're. We deserve. If you're going to say you want to be traded, we deserve some power over it. More power over it.

[Jason Buchala]

Right.

[Kyle]

Okay, Tevin. Up next, Elliot, Kyle and the Domfather. Can y' all explain how a sign and trade actually Works since Darren Radish is the latest big sign and trade example. We also had Alex Tuck, of course, too. I'm trying to understand what happens behind the scenes. Does Radish's agent negotiate the contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs first and then Toronto calls up the Tampa Bay Lightning and says, good news, we've done all the paperwork for you, or is the process way more complicated than that? I need answers. My off season productivity depends on it.

[Dom]

Well, I don't want to ruin your off season productivity, even though it's the off season and therefore you should not be working. Basically, assuming there's no tampering here in any situation, basically the way it works is that a team will give permission to another team, like the Sabers and Tuck's case, or the Lightning and Radish's case, will give permission to someone to say, okay, you can talk to this player. You remember we did a report earlier this spring about basically there was a time where teams were saying like The Chicago gave McKayev the permission to talk to everybody in the league, said, no, that's not the way that this should be working. And so basically you have to give permission to one team and then they negotiate the contract. And then actually Tuck signs with the Sabres first because Washington can't give him an eight year deal. Radish had to sign with the Lightning first because the Maple Leafs couldn't give him an eight year deal. So you sign with that player, you sign with that player with that team, the league approves the contract and then the player is traded. Basically you have to say, we're doing this and we're trading them right away and the league has to approve it. You basically have to schedule the call to approve the deal and then the call to make the trade.

[Kyle]

Right. Because it's at the deadline where that eight year for a team acquiring them goes away. That extra year.

[Dom]

Yes.

[Kyle]

Soon to be now, I guess seven starting.

[Dom]

Yes, starting September 15th. It's seven and six.

[Jason Buchala]

Awesome.

[Kyle]

All right, we have a voicemail. Up next. This is courtesy of Alex in Calgary.

[Elliot]

I just had a question regarding trade talks and them being private and public knowledge. So in the recent podcast, when speaking about Steve Staios making a trade for Brady to Chuck, you mentioned that he wanted to get the deal done before it got out and before it became public knowledge. What is the benefit in doing so? And additionally in recent podcasts, you have, Elliot, you have mentioned that there's been certain, you know, private dealings that GMs have been wanting to keep private. What are the pitfalls of that getting out and what kind of negative effects can come out of a team,

[Jason Buchala]

news

[Elliot]

coming out about players wanting to be traded and stuff like that? Why might that be a negative thing for trade talks?

[Jason Buchala]

Thanks.

[Dom]

I think in that particular case, if you ask any Sanders fan, after the Olympics in particular last year, Tkachuk's future became an enormous distraction. And as we talked about in the last pod, as you mentioned, you listened a player said to me and I think they said it to other media members, too. It just got to be too much. It took too much air up in your dressing room. And I think that Stales believed. And I heard some people say that Steve Stales could have said, no, we're not doing it because you're only giving us one team and we're just not doing it. We're not going to help you. I think that's an easy thing to say when you're not in the middle of the maelstrom like Steve Stales and Mike An Lauer and Travis Green. They are the three people best to decide from a hockey point of view, if we let. If this gets out, is it going to just be really bad for us? And I think they decided it was, and it was not going to be much longer before it got out.

[Elliot]

So

[Dom]

I think it's simply a position, a situation where there's so many rumors, especially at this time of year. Like, look at this week. You know, Columbus was pretty quiet about Orensky and Marchenko and what their futures are. And eventually it gets out. Dallas want or Detroit wanted to be quiet about Larkin. It got out. Edmonton wanted to be quiet about Nurse. It got out. Some things stay quiet, but. And you know, like for example, Katargoce, Philadelphia. That one stayed quiet right up until the end. Eventually it. And that's rare. Like it didn't break until the trade. A lot of other. That's rare. Most things don't happen like that. And it can become such a distraction that you. You just want to say, you know what? We're taking control over this and we're not letting go of it.

[Kyle]

Okay. And lastly, Elliot, from Mark the Ref. Hi, guys. Longtime listener since the 30ths days. Though it wasn't a podcast in the 30 thoughts days. That was just written form, right?

[Dom]

That's right.

[Kyle]

Podcast was 31 with Patrice Bergeron going into the Hockey hall of Fame. There's been a lot of discussion about his lengthy run as a Selkie finalist for so many consecutive years. So I was thinking about other recent players who may have similar streaks with Being at least a finalist for league awards, I thought McDavid for the heart, of course. Lidstrom for the Norris. Etc. Going back further, obviously guys like Lemieux, Gretzky, and. Or I'm sure also had long streaks. So the question is, who has the longest streaks of being a finalist for any of the league awards? Thanks for all the work that you do.

[Dom]

So that has to be Gretzky.

[Kyle]

Yeah. So I went and I. Or Lidstrom for the heart trophy. The Vesna, the Norris, and the Selkie. Who has the longest consecutive streaks of being a finalist.

[Dom]

So for those awards, Calder. It's only one year. Just everybody. So everybody knows.

[American Express Announcer]

Yes.

[Dom]

For the. For the heart, I would have to say Gretzky.

[Kyle]

Correct.

[Dom]

For the Norris, it's Lidstrom.

[Kyle]

No.

[Dom]

Is it Bobby Orr?

[Jason Buchala]

It is.

[Dom]

Okay. That was the. It was only one of those two for the Vesna. Would it be Brodure?

[Kyle]

It would be.

[Dom]

Okay. And what was the Selkie? I have to say it's either Kopitar or Bergeron.

[Kyle]

It is Patrice Bergeron.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Yeah.

[Dom]

Because Bob Gainey won the first four, I think. But it came late in his career, so I don't know how many he would have won. He would have been lined up for at that time.

[Kyle]

Bergeron was a finalist for 12 straight years.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Wow.

[Kyle]

And won six of them. Gretzky, 10 straight. Nine wins. Broder five. With four wins of the Vesna and Bobby Orr, eight Norris trophies in nine years.

[Dom]

I'm actually surprised that Lidstrom didn't get to nine in a row. But you know what? Maybe he just didn't.

[Kyle]

Right.

[Dom]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Anyway, it's. That's a good question. I know.

[Dom]

That's a great question.

[Kyle]

Never thought I would.

[Dom]

I did better on that one than I thought I would.

[Kyle]

No, that was like, easy peasy. Dom doesn't even have to cinch up the. The guest time.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

There was none.

[Kyle]

This is an easy edit.

[Dom]

See, Dom, it's a busy day. I'm here to make life really easy on you.

[Elliot]

You're welcome.

[Kyle]

Oh, great. All right, that'll do it. For the latest edition of the Thought line, presented by BetMGM, make it legendary. You can send in your own submission to 32thoughSportsNet.ca or you can leave a voicemail at 1-833-31-101-3232. Take another break and come back with our conversation with Jarmo Kekalainen, general manager of the Buffalo Sabres. On the other side. You're listening to 32 Thoughts, the podcast. Get that Amex gold card ready.

[Jason Buchala]

I'M too tired to cook.

[American Express Announcer]

We feeling Five Guys or the Cheesecake Factory? Both earn up to $120 a year in statement credits of participating partners, up to $10 each month when you pay with the AMEX Gold Card. Learn@american express.com Explore Gold enrollment required terms apply.

[Kyle]

So Jarmo Kekalainen takes over as general manager of the Buffalo Sabres in the middle of December. After another disappointing start to the season for the Sabres. He comes out right away and says the Sabres he believes could be a playoff team. It was balked at by many at the time. Not only did the team back up what he believed, then they won the division this year and got to Game seven of the second round of the Stanley cup playoffs. He is unafraid to be bold and unafraid to make tough decisions, as evidenced this week alone. He and the Sabres, of course, are the hosts of the draft this year, with round one beginning later tonight and with everything that had been going on, he was kind enough to carve out a few minutes for us back on Thursday afternoon. So we'll get to all of that, the week, the season for him and what's ahead in Buffalo. Jarmo Kekalainen on 32 Thoughts the podcast so Yarmo, first of all, thanks so much for joining us. I wonder with the week that you have had already and what is still to come in hosting the draft on Friday, I mean, did Nicole Hendricks with the PR group here, did they have to pry you out of the office just to come sit with us? Or has it been a little more quieter today? Like, what's where's your head at right now?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Well, when we agreed to it, I didn't know how busy it would be.

[Dom]

Did you try to cancel? That's my question.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

I did not try to cancel. Out of respect to you guys. I promise to do this and I always keep my promise. So yeah, it's been pretty busy few days and it stays busy, I'm sure, until the time we get to the draft and maybe throughout the first round at least. But it's been exciting as well.

[Jason Buchala]

There's been.

[Kyle]

Exactly. And it's not just been a bunch of little things. I mean, Alex Tuck is now in Washington. You obtained the fourth overall pick for Bowen Byram. And last night, you know, we learned that Zach Benson signed to a seven year deal and I imagine none of this all happens in a vacuum. So how do you prioritize what to focus on at any given time as you're going through all these big decisions the organization's making In a relatively short period.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Yeah, I don't think the decision, the timing of the decision really shows how much work we put into arriving at the decision. So we talked pretty much for a year about possibility to extend the contract. And even before I started as a gm, we had made offers when Kevin Adams was here and continued to do that throughout the year. We had a dialogue open and then, and at some point we decided that let's go back at it after the season. And we did. And it didn't work out and he wanted to get a change of scenery. So then we got what we could as compensation for the sign and trade Bo Byron. Same thing last year when he signed a two year contract. We were under the impression that that's all he wanted and that would take him to the unrestricted free agency. He had told us back then already that he wanted to be a number one defenseman and that's why he didn't want to sign long term. Tried to convince him all year to reconsider getting into the July 1st here now that we could have extended him and would have and wanted to extend him, but he didn't want to do that. So that left us no option but to make the trade, which we did. And we're happy with the return right now. And Benson, obviously a huge part of our future and present, played great for us all year, was phenomenal in the playoffs. So we had talked to, talked to him about the extension for a long time as well. We ran into a problem when we signed Josh Doane. We should have signed Josh Doane and Zach Benson at the same time, but we didn't have enough tagging room if we wanted to still sign Alex stuck. So all those things tie together and then when you get through all of them and it needs to be in certain order and before a certain date and so forth. And, and we obviously didn't want to risk of, of getting anybody silly with an offer sheet for Zach Benson, who we want to keep here for a long time.

[Dom]

Okay, just one thing. We'll explain to the audience what yarmo means by tagging room is. The simple way to describe it is you can't commit $300 million in salaries for the next season. So basically there's an NHL rule that says you can't have more money on your team next season than the cap will allow you. That's the easiest way to explain what he's discussing.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Thank you.

[Dom]

No problem. Because like, sometimes I have trouble understanding it. So there's a lot of things I want to ask you here, but we got some really interesting questions last night as you were doing all this. And number one, I think people know, like, in a moment like this, you've got Tuck, you've got Byram, you've got Benson. And even though, as you mentioned, you've been dealing with it for a long time, in a moment where you're making three big deals like that for 24 hours, do you delegate or is it all you?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

No, it's. I have a very group of people around me, and that's why I made a couple of key hires in bringing Mark Bergevin in and Josh Flynn, who I work with in Columbus for years and years. We have great people in place here with Jerry Fortin, Sam Ventura, the analytics guru, and Mark Jakubowski. A lot of people around me that I lean on to make those decisions. You know, Mark Bergevin, I wanted him here because he' sat in my seat so he can put. Put himself into my shoes. When we're making big decisions like that with. With players that we like, who are popular, who we would like to keep, it's hard to. To make that decision. But at the same time, you got to think of the future of the club and, and, you know, the. The whole team as. As what we have to take out of the team to keep all of these guys that require a certain amount of money and take certain amount of space under the salary cap, it doesn't all fit. There's a limit to it. When good players get better, they get more money, and then you always have to give up something to make room under the salary cap or stay under the salary cap.

[Dom]

But you have final say on everything, Right? Or do you give guidelines and say, like Mark, if you're going to talk, let's say Mark is in charge of Byron. Do you say this is what you're allowed to do, or how does it all work? So you make sure that nothing happens that comes back to you, and you say, wait a second, that's not what I envisioned.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

No, I may. I'll make the final decision on each of them, but I do listen very carefully. I take everybody's opinion into consideration before making the decision, and I'd like to arrive at a consensus. And very rarely, we don't. Whereas I decide against the majority of the group. I don't think that's happened too many times in my career because I hire those people for reason, and I let them do their job, and I appreciate and respect their opinion.

[Dom]

Okay. The other thing I was curious about is so the other night, you're making the Byram deal, and San Jose is very interested, and Chicago's very interested, and I heard the Rangers were very interested, and there were a bunch of teams that were very interested. I know you don't want to give away specifics, and I understand that, but what I'm curious about is in those moments, you've got three or four teams coming after your player, and how does it work? Do you say. Does a team say, I'll give you this, and do you shop it to other teams? Or do you say, if you get do this, you've got a deal? Are you constantly saying, well, I've got this from someone else? Like, how does that work in those moments?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

I think you sort of have a price set in your mind, thinking that, okay, this is something that they have for assets. This is what could get a deal done. And then you keep pushing, obviously, a very good situation when you have several teams competing for the same player, and then they realize that there's competition. I'm sure they're all looking at the who might be after a player, a certain player, let's say, who might be after Bo Byram. You know, they. Those teams that were in it probably knew the other teams that were in it, too. They know the assets that the other teams hold that they might or might not be willing to put in the trade. So they have to weigh in. I don't go around like a used car salesman saying that this is what I got offered. Now you got to do better. This what I got up. I don't do that. I don't like to do. To operate that way. But they all are sort of guessing, and I'm always asking for, make your best offer. Don't kid around here and try to come back with another and another little, little bit more. Just make your best offer, and. And then we'll weigh against each other. And sometimes somebody didn't understand what I meant with the best offer, and then they make a better offer. So I'll have to listen to that, too, obviously. But, you know, I try to keep it fair for everybody, understanding with their homework that what the marketplace looks like and who might be competing against their. And then when we get our comfort level to our comfort level, then we'll make the deal.

[Dom]

So you decide, hey, you hit my target, it's over. Yeah.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Like with Chicago, they. When they made their final offer, we felt that that was the best offer. We weighed the best two offers against each other, and we decided to make the deal with Chicago.

[Dom]

When San Jose traded for the number nine pick, did you do a fist pump?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Well, you know, sometimes, you know, you. You have those talks even when. Before they get the ninth pick or who.

[Dom]

If.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

If somebody else is, you know, that they might be in and getting a pick, number seven, whatever it may be. So you're kind of already in that process, knowing that they might acquire that, and what will that do now if they put that in the deal? And so, yeah, there's a lot going on in the background that never comes to the surface.

[Elliot]

Right.

[Kyle]

But some of your colleagues are better at listening than others. You say when it comes to. When you go, give me your best offer and we'll. We'll go from there.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Yeah, you know, because, you know, the final offer to me sounds like too final. So I keep asking for the best offer because, you know, I kind of take the best offer. It's like, okay, I'm going to be my best offer, and this is the best offer, and that's it. Yeah, but, you know, there's. There's a little wiggle room, always for negotiation.

[Kyle]

But these weeks are. I mean, they're memorable ones for hockey fans that love the transaction and the news. And when this stuff hits the timeline, it feels like, chaotic, and everyone's reacting to it. Is it chaos in your offices? Is it calm throughout? Like, what's, what's it like on the inside when. Not just what the business you're doing, but you're keeping track of everything else going on around the league, too?

[American Express Announcer]

Yeah.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

When we arrive at the decision to make a deal, we don't look back. We're okay, we made a deal, we're happy with it, we're moving forward. And then the outside noise, we try to block it. Sometimes it's impossible with the. With the phones and the social media, everybody's on it, and every. I. I got out of it. So that.

[Dom]

You don't even have a burner or anything.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

No, no, I don't need the aggravation, Nicole. Tell me if there's something that I need to know, and there's plenty of other guys on our staff that. That will tell me if there's something that I need to see or read. So I. I'm. I'm staying off of it. And. And it's. It's a lot. A lot less headaches for me. But. But yeah, we just move forward. And I think that. I don't think you should make a decision or sign something unless you're happy and satisfied with it and ready to move on it's.

[Dom]

1:15pm as we tape this on Thursday afternoon. What are the odds that you are drafting fourth overall on Friday night?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

I don't know if I want to put odds on it, but I've told everybody that we're open for business. We'd like to improve our team. So pick number four for the right price could be available. Pick number 20 could be available for the right price or a combination of the two if there's a player that we value that much. But it would take a lot for us to move from pick number four in particular. But we're looking to get stronger. We're really excited about our group and where we're heading and, and we're still young and we're going to get better just by improving with experience and age. And I think last year's playoff experience is going to be huge for our group. But we also want to make sure that we get better. So if there's a player that will help our group grow and get better and stronger, we're ready to make a deal and a big one, too.

[Dom]

You mentioned Josh Flynn before. I remember, a long time ago, I think before you even got to Columbus, Josh Flynn put together a chart that was sort of like the draft value chart, what each pick was worth to trade. So I assume he still has.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

We still have it.

[Dom]

It's an up. Oh, yeah. So what is the number four pick worth on a chart?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

There's certain number value that's, that's put in place for any pick. And, and you know, we look at it as if somebody wants to move up from. If they have picked number 10, 11, whatever it may be, and another first round pick, is it worth enough with those values to equal the value of the pick four? So that's a simple way to put it. If it's just picks for picks and then obviously if there's a player, then it's a whole different story. But yes, there's a numerical value for each pick. And it goes down pretty fast after number one.

[Dom]

Yeah, I've heard it goes like one, very high, two pretty high. And then I heard it really drops

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

before it starts dropping pretty quickly. I don't remember off the top of my head, but if I ask Josh, he'll know right away that.

[Dom]

But that's true, right? Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

[Elliot]

Yeah.

[Dom]

Interesting.

[Kyle]

Really, Even from year to year where maybe some draft classes are viewed as deeper than others or.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

I think that's a little bit of a flaw. The value chart, too, and we've discussed that, but that's an average of all the years that I understand you assess that number to end the value for different picks.

[Dom]

It's just, you know, Yarmo, it's been like, did you watch the playoffs after Buffalo was out?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Did you keep watching almost every game? Yeah.

[Dom]

So when you like it was such like we were lucky enough to be part of that second round series. Buffalo, Montreal, just great hockey. The excitement in Montreal, the excitement in Buffalo, you could see like these fans deserved what they got. A playoff round win and almost a second one. So when you watch Carolina move on and win the cup and you watch Vegas, but particularly the Carolina because it's in the east, like, what did you, what did you see as the difference between them and the Sabres?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Well, I think experience is one with Carolina. They've gone through it and disappointed several times and I think it teaches you what it takes to get through four playoff series and everybody who's all over Carolina, yeah, you can make it to the conference final, but you can't make it any further. Well, now they're Stanley cup champions and I think that if you look at any Stanley cup champion, they've gone through that process. It doesn't happen where you, you all of a sudden make the playoffs and then the next year you win the Cup. I can't remember if that's ever happened. And even some of the dynasties like Edmonton, I've seen the documentaries on how they lost the Islanders and they saw how banged up they were after winning the cup and understanding what it takes to win. So I think that experience is big part of it. And we just got a taste of it now this year and I think understand how hard it is to win the Stanley Cup. You know, obviously when you watching the teams, that's one reason why I watch the playoffs every year and I watch the finals to see what makes a championship team. And you know, we have a lot of those qualities. We have good depth, we have good center ice, strong center ice. We have excellent defensemen and we've gotten good goaltending this year too. It's easy position scrutinize and, and criticized. And upl had.910 save percentage this year and Alex Lyon won a lot of games for us and even Colton Ellis played some excellent hockey this year. So I don't think goaltending by any means is a weakness of our team. I think it's a strength of our team and the depth of our goaltending as well. So I think we have a lot of those elements. Do we need to improve? Absolutely. Can we get something maybe from the outside to improve our chances? Yes. The answer is yes to that too. And that's why we're looking what, what there may be available for pick 4, pick 20 or any other type of trade. But I think that when we have to be a draft and develop team and we are, and our staff is drafted with excellent results, especially some of the players that are like the young centers that I just mentioned. Oslo and Helenius picked in the mid first, Kuli picked in the second round. They're all going to be really, really good NHL players. They already are, but they' going to get better. So I think the, the, the internal growth, the drive and desire of those players to get to the next level and the work ethic to do it, that's going to be the real key. And I think that's a huge part of the culture in Carolina. I think it starts from their coach and, and the, the standards that he sets just with his own work ethic to, to show the players that okay, here's, here's what it takes to be a champion. He's done it as a player and now hasn't done it as a coach. But what I've heard is that every player there is in excellent condition. I think we took a huge step last season with that, with Brian Gallavance joining us from the U.S. national Development Team program and he's an excellent strength and conditioning guy. And I think some of our young players took huge steps into the right direction last season with him and continue to do that in this off season. But I think those are the key things that we need to improve on and we intend to do so.

[Kyle]

So you mentioned the experience of Carolina and now, I mean Tuck is elsewhere, Byram's elsewhere, two experienced guys you mentioned all the guys that are either already here or still coming and just getting started within the organization. So what's the priority this summer in terms of you and where you want to go next?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Yeah, the two players that you mentioned did not want to continue here. So we left us no option to do anything else but to make a trade with Bo and sign and trade with Alex Tuck. And now we either need to look for something from the outside through a trade to replace him and also have our own projections internally who can replace and I have a lot of faith in some of the young players that we have in our group to really take it to the next level. I'll mention one with after those three young players that I mentioned, I think Jack Quinn grew a lot last year and he was kind of snake bitten a little bit throughout the season. Got a lot of chances, didn't shoot with a high percentage, but has an excellent shot. I've said it before, I think he can get 30, maybe 40 goals a year when he gets into the prime of his career. And he's got excellent offensive instinct, he's fast, he's got great one on one skill taste. Thompson gets 40 goals every year and you know he continues here for long term. So we have a lot of players that will now get a little bit more of added responsibility, added opportunity, whether it's first power play, second power play, or just ice time in general. So one player leaving is not going to decide the success of our forward group. One defenseman leaving is not going to decide the success of our D group. And the one thing that was our strength last year was our depth and the other strength of our team was that they were together in the battle. They really got glued together on many different occasions when we had some of the hard fought battles with the teams that were kind of testing if we're tough enough, gritty enough, and you know, I think they grew an inch or two just going through those battles.

[Dom]

When you go through the state of Florida next year, will you dress the Hansen brothers?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

It certainly looks like teams are angling that way now with some of the trades, but you know, hockey is still hockey and that's why they count the goals. And whoever gets to more goals at the end of the game wins the game. But it's a hard fought battle and I've said it all along, the physicality is big part of the game. Sometimes intimidation can be a little part of the game too. And that's hockey. That's why we love the game.

[Dom]

I wanted to ask you, so Columbus and Buffalo, are there many similarities between living there or working for the organizations? Yeah, yeah.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

You know, I was fortunate enough to be in Columbus for 11 years and work with the great management group and ownership there. And what I've gotten to know about Terry Bugula and Kim Bakula here, unbelievable owners. You know, right from the first day that I've joined here and the first day as a gm, they've said to me that anything you need to win will support you. And I don't think you can ask for anything more as a general manager because we don't do this job for any other reason but to lift that cup at the end of the season. That's the main reason that I keep doing this. And we'll try to keep doing it as long as I don't have that cup. And if I have the cup, then we'll see again how old I am. That's the goal. That's the dream.

[Dom]

You know, you mentioned Terry McGula. I asked. Somebody doesn't work for the Savers, but they're very connected in sports in Buffalo. I asked them about you, like, what they've learned about you, and they said that you are very good at saying, terry, just let me work with this. Like, because they say he's a great owner, he's super passionate. He wants to win yesterday, but sometimes he needs someone to say, just let me work with this. And they said, you are very skilled at that. Well, I. I can be blunt with

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

my opinions, and, you know, it's maybe comes from my background of being finished, but. But I just always tell you what my opinion is and what I think of a thing and. And I. I don't sugarcoat it. And that's what I get paid for.

[Kyle]

How's your pickleball game?

[Dom]

Oh, I was gonna ask that.

[Kyle]

Great question.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

It's bad now because I injured my calf, so I'm on.

[Kyle]

Oh, no.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

I'm on the ir.

[Dom]

Oh, no.

[Kyle]

What's the timeline look like?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Four to five weeks, I think the initial.

[Jason Buchala]

Oh, geez.

[Dom]

That's gonna be a big part of the summer.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

That's heartbreaking now.

[Dom]

Okay, so I've heard, like, I heard Julian Breezeball is a good pickleball player. Who is the top executive level at the executive level in the NHL.

[Jason Buchala]

Who are.

[Dom]

Who's the best?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Chris Draper.

[Dom]

He is.

[Jason Buchala]

Really?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Yeah. Yeah. Marty Lapointe is his most improved player.

[Dom]

Does he play in one of his fantastic suits or does he play.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

I actually play with Marty Lapointe during the playoffs, and he's the most improved player on the NHL executive circuit. But Chris Draper is the most consistent. And Justin Williams, I don't know if he's in the executive level yet.

[Dom]

He's close enough.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

He probably should be with his. His career and everything, but he's an excellent player as well.

[Kyle]

Awesome. You're a busy man.

[Dom]

We really appreciate it. Hold on one second. Who's your biggest rival?

[Kyle]

Okay, who's my biggest.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

I would always want to rival the best guys.

[Elliot]

That's.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

That's the. That. That's the passion I have for the game.

[Dom]

So I was told a story about you once, and I actually, with Pierre Dorian, used to be the GF in Ottawa, that somebody told you that Pierre Dorian was like an Olympic level badminton player and you were so, like, you were like I could beat that guy in badminton. There's no way he's. Is that story true?

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

I don't think so. We never worked together with Pierre and I don't think I've but I, I have challenged a few guys that have said because I played racket sports all my life. So I played squash.

[Elliot]

Yeah.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Played badminton, played tennis and so, so I've had one TV guy in Finland said to me that he was top of Finnish, Finnish junior level squash and we played squash at the world Juniors in Ottawa and I beat him,

[Dom]

but

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

only because I could move better than him. He hit the ball better than me, but he's a little, he had a

[Dom]

little extra, couldn't move.

[Jason Buchala]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Not a playing weight. Anyway, thanks very much, Jarmo.

[Dom]

Thanks for having pleasure.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Thanks guys.

[Kyle]

Our thanks to Jarmo Kekalainen and Nicole Hendricks and Chris Durkin with the Sabers for making that conversation happen amidst a very busy week. One final reminder, the draft tonight pre show on the air at 6:30 Eastern, 3:30 Pacific Time. The draft itself a little after 7. Our crew live on the scene in Buffalo will have you covered. David, Amber, Jason Buchala, Sam Cosetino, who you heard from in today's edition. Colby Armstrong as well, myself, Elliot will be part of the show. Ayla Shforfar as well, and a special guest Sportsnet correspondent that you want to see and hear from as well. Looking forward to a fun night at Keybank Center. All right, taking us out today, a track from Gizmo Charlottetown rockers inspired by the guitar damage pop of the 1990s, American slacker bands and their contemporaries on Canada's East Coast, a 120 minute span for the Gen Z set. They breathe new life into their vintage influences with a distinctive songwriting style and frenetic live show. The new single Celestial picks up right where 2023's EP left off without skipping a beat. The new material finds the band mining similar sources but reaching new heights, imbuing their carefully considered structurally ambitious power pop songwriting with more unexpected twists and turns. Their debut full length album all your Warships will be released in October later this year. Some upcoming shows that you can catch them at in July that will be at the Hillside Festival in Guelph Ontari next month in August at the Paris Drinks Festival in Paris, Ontario. Here is Gizmo and Celestial on 32 Thoughts, the podcast,

[Dom]

Singing along with the dust bunnies living in a tank of sheep.

[Kyle]

I seem to know every word but they make no sense to me.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

But.

[Dom]

There's a grown man headed for the trees and unexpectedly, I lost my sense of sauce.

[Kyle]

There are better things on a late

[Dom]

night TV screen, if you know what I mean.

[Kyle]

If you come with you. When I lose my sense of fear.

[Jarmo Kekalainen]

Sam,

[Kyle]

Get that Amex Gold Card ready. I'm way too tired to cook tonight.

[American Express Announcer]

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[Kyle]

Yes.

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Which one? Both pay with the Gold Card to receive up to $10 a month in statement credits at participating Partners uncover more ways to reward [e-mail] explored. Gold enrollment required terms apply.