
Hello! It’s the podcast that’s supporting Megan Thee Stallion AND public broadcasting. Today, Katie and the Casualties discuss Ray J and Wilt Chamberlain, Brendan Sorsby and the problem with even the slightest changes to the national perspective on gambling in sports, the Florida baseball team that skipped a playoff game for prom, and the incredible story of Younghoe Koo saving a horse pimp’s life. Then, Lily Shimbashi of Sportsish stops by [42:02] to talk about her platform and the effort to make sports talk available for everyone, running a half marathon, her early sports fandom, the Stanley Cup playoffs and the post-Heated Rivalry bump in attention, the thrill of each series so far, riding the Zammoth, the legacy of Sidney Crosby, Gritty is the infallible icon he is, the Ducks, the Tkachuks, the Sabres and the postseason’s worst chug, the best WAG jackets of the year, the PWHL’s potential expansion into Utah, what we’ve learned from the saga of Megan and Klay, the WNBA’s return ...
Loading summary
Katie Nolan
You know that feeling when there's a spark building inside of you that you were meant for more? That's your own drive pushing you towards what's next. Capella University gets that with their Flex path learning format. You can set the pace and earn your degree without putting life on pause. You've built experience and know what you're capable of. Now this is your time to turn that momentum into more. The only real question is what? What can't you do? Learn more at Capella Edu this year.
SiriusXM Ad Announcer
Experience the NHL playoffs your way. Want to watch a single do or die game 7? A full week of a heavy hitting back and forth series. Then check out Sling's 1, 3 and 7 day passes. Watch the Chase for the cup on ESPN and TNT starting as low as $4.99. No long term contracts or overpaying. Just live hockey at home or when you want it. Sling lets you do that. Visit sling.com to learn more.
Katie Nolan
Hey Isabella, did you see that? Ray J. Do you know who Ray. Are you too young? Do you know who Ray J is?
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Jackie (Voicemail Caller)
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Where do you actually. Let me do this. Where do you know him from?
Isabella
We don't have to do this.
Katie Nolan
So the tape. You know him from the tape? Okay. He claims that he has outperformed Wilt Chamberlain by 25%. The 45 year old singer told 2015 NFL MVP Cam Newton.
Isabella
The guy with the hat.
Katie Nolan
The guy with the hat. That's exactly right. Well, now the guy with the hat I think has a podcast or it's a TV show. Where is it? Brady Podcast.
Brady
I believe the TV show's done.
Katie Nolan
So we're Same same. He told him that he has slept with 12,500 women in his life.
Jackie (Voicemail Caller)
Huh?
Katie Nolan
12,500 women he has slept with in his life.
Isabella
Wait, so how many has Cam Newton slept with that he outperformed?
Katie Nolan
Wait, oh, he told Chamberlain. Chamberlain. Can you. Brady, when you do these references to sports for Isabella in the Cold Open, she needs the context of Wilt Chamberlain.
Brady
Fair. Wilt Chamberlain, one of the greatest NBA players of all time, very famously said he had slept with 10,000 women in his life, which. That seemed like a large number.
Katie Nolan
Wow. And just not to be outdone, Ray J says that he slept with 12,500 women, which would be 1.37 women per day for the last 25 years.
Isabella
Oh man. Where do you get 37 of a woman?
Katie Nolan
I think you just have to take a whole second one.
Isabella
Okay.
Katie Nolan
He also said he's slowing down and that he only has a Thousand more. Only a thousand in him. Where do you get the time to do.
Isabella
I mean, I'm surprised by Wilt Chamberlain, even though it's only 10,000. You're an NBA player. Where do you have time to do this?
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Brady
There are 15 countries in the world with populations below 12,500.
Katie Nolan
What are they?
Brady
Nauru, Tuvalu.
Katie Nolan
I know all these capitals. Believe it or not, Nauru is Yaren.
Isabella
Oh, God, stop.
Brady
Oh, you do know the Falkland Islands. Ray J has wiped through their entire population.
Katie Nolan
My God. And we've really only ever seen one. Crazy. To do it 12,500 times and only record it once, you know, you'd think.
Isabella
You never know.
Katie Nolan
He could do it like a workout tape. Show us how it's done. Clearly. What? You must have learned something. You put in your 10,000 hours. Hello, and welcome to Casuals, the sports podcast. It doesn't care what you know. We're just happy that you're here. I'm Katie Nolan, your host, here to break down everything going on in sports for you. We got a great guest coming up today. But first, here at the top of the podcast, joined by my casualties, the production crew here at SiriusXM, we have Isabella, our sports newbie.
Lily Shambashi
Woof.
Katie Nolan
Chris, our master editor.
Chris
What's up?
Katie Nolan
You didn't want to meow?
Chris
No, I didn't. I really didn't.
Katie Nolan
And berate.
Brady
Hey, I can't follow.
Katie Nolan
It's like, you guys, you guys should start working together on a theme. I don't know what led to the wolf. Isabella, just in the most, I was
Isabella
thinking about Mad Dog
Katie Nolan
as one does.
Brady
That is how he opens every show. That's great.
Katie Nolan
He starts barking casuals@katienolanmail.com is our email. 646-801-0043 is our voicemail on IG and TikTok. We are at CasualsThePodcast. Coming up today, we're gonna talk about prom in Florida. We're gonna talk about an NFL kicker having a. A terrible moment in his career, but saving a man's life miraculously. And we've got Lily Shambashi from Sports Ish, who's going to sit here with me. We talk about the Stanley Cup. We're going to talk about newest developments in the Megan and Clay of it all. And we talk about Diana and Mike's Spotify mixtape. But first, here at the top of the show, we're going to focus on really the coolest thing about sports right now. Maybe everybody's favorite thing about sports and sports media, the gambling of it all. I will remind you we don't really do gambling here on Casuals. It's just if the concept of the podcast is to be believed, which is that I want to bring people in and make people feel more. More welcomed into sports, it felt really irresponsible to me to then give them a direct pipeline to an addiction that can really be crippling. It can hamper your life in a number of ways. That being said, this story about gambling is sort of breaking now over these last few days and this feels kind of like a big pivotal moment in this ever evolving timeline of gambling's relationship with sports. Brady Was it 10 years ago that we made it not illegal to gamble or was that five years ago the way it feels like it was?
Brady
I feel like it was right pre Covid it was in stages. So state by state by state.
Katie Nolan
Right.
Brady
So they've been 10 years.
Katie Nolan
They took away the like the federal level of it being not allowed and sort of left it up to states individually. And then over the last however many years we've seen states come into it and say, you can do it here, you can do it here, you can do it here. Recently, the most recent chapter in this horror story has been trying to figure out what prediction markets are the calshi and what's the other one poly market of it all where they advertise on social media and on TV as basically being like, you may not be able to sports gamble where you are, but you can sports predict. Like that's something different. And so now we've got that gray area. But basically gambling went from being illegal, something you did behind closed doors or offshore or in Vegas, to now being like every league's number one partner. Watching a lot of the NHL postseason and seeing not one, not two, but at least three different, if not sports books in like Kalshi DraftKings, FanDuel every night on the boards. So the relationship there has been a murky one. Obviously we see athletes in commercials for gambling, which at first I remember feeling very off put by. I still am. But once somebody explained to me that if the leagues are going to get in bed with these companies and make more money off the backs of athletes and the things they do well, then it's actually unfair to tell athletes that they can't and it may actually drive more athletes to gamble if they can't make money from the own. One of the only companies spending money in the sports media space, things have become very complicated, very murky very quickly. The most recent story that we're Watching develop now is Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby. So he was the. The hottest, if not one of the hottest, the actual hottest Brady guy on the in the transfer portal this, I
Brady
mean decent looking dude, but he was number one most sought after quarterback.
Katie Nolan
And you're right, it is important to specify, but I didn't mean boy, that college kid sure is sexy.
Brady
I meant threw that one to me like you were.
Katie Nolan
I meant that he was the top. One of college football's top returning players. Okay. He was in. He transferred from Cincinnati to Texas Tech. So he has not yet played a snap right. At Texas Tech.
Chris
Right.
Katie Nolan
But he transferred this recent most recently on a $5 million nil deal. ESPN's number one ranked transfer player this year, projected first round NFL draft pick. If not, it could be because of this, but it also could be because that's a really crowded class at his position. So it's possible he slips to the second. But it he, this guy is a. He's doing well in college football. And announced this week that he is checking into a residential treatment program for a gambling addiction. Announced by the school on Monday. SBE reportedly made more than 10,000 online bets. Okay. Wilt Chamberlain on a variety of sports via a gambling app which jeopardizes his eligibility with Texas Tech. Can we zoom in on that sentence for a second? Just in our brains? Because number one, I love that the only time you don't name which app is when we're talking about the bad side. Because it would be.
Brady
It's because it was all of them.
Katie Nolan
Oh, good. Okay. I was gonna say the other thing is because you don't wanna say that. It was on FanDuel and this segment brought to you by FanDuel. So it's a tough, tough thing to sort of, you know, again, murky is the word I think I'm comfortable using for the ethics of all of this, but also jeopardizes his eligibility with Texas Tech. What do jeopardizes? I thought this was like once somebody admits to gambling on sports because when he was. Let's go through the timeline. He was a red shirt on the Indiana roster in 2022. Which means for all intents and purposes, Isabella, he like wasn't very good. Nobody was talking about him. It wasn't like the focus of things.
Brady
It doesn't count against your eligibility. You get one year where you can be a used to be one year. Now there's options. You get one year where you can be a red shirt and it doesn't count for your eligibility. But I believe you can't appear in more than three, three games. Like if you go onto the field, you, you can't red shirt. But basically like if you're a freshman and you're not going to play, they're like, all right, you can sit there, only practice and it won't count as one of your eligibility years.
Katie Nolan
So he was doing that in for Indiana in 2022 and he bet on Indiana games. Now the number, the two follow up questions you always get from that, did he bet for them to win or did he bet for them to lose? He bet for them to win and he did not bet on games he played in. So I guess if you're checking down the ethics, that's the best way to bet on the team you play for is to not participate in the game and not throw the game. But I still thought we were holding the line on if you bet for the team you play for, you can't play. Um, I want to also leave room and be sensitive to the fact that like, addiction is addiction. A gambling addiction, much like an alcohol addiction, much like any other type of addiction, is a sickness that you suffer that needs treatment and requires treatment. And I believe we haven't done a good job as a society of being empathetic to and try to understand more understanding of the struggle that people have with addiction and all of the ripple effects that it has in your life. I just don't think we've been good as a society about that. And I don't. Not encouraging us to attack this guy, but I do feel like, what do you mean it might jeopardize his future? Can you just. Are we living in a world where you go to rehab for gambling addiction and then you come back and play for Texas Tech? How's that possible? How do we. How do you maintain the integrity of a sport? I will also say this is the first time we're dealing with it like this. It's certainly not going to be the last time. This is the, you know, he makes a lot of money now. At the time that he was making these bets, he wasn't making a lot of money. And I. It is kind of scary to think that you've developed a gambling addiction when you weren't good at sports or not, you know, on anybody's radar. You get good, you make this huge amount and all of a sudden you've got all this money coming in. If you've got a gambling addiction, giving you a bunch of money at once, probably not the best thing for it. So I'M very confused by this story and I'm not sure I trust sports media to cover it. I want to go back to when I could just go like, okay, and then somebody, they'll talk about this on outside the lines and we'll understand what's going on and the implications. But it's like every other commercial is for a sports book. So what network is going to possibly cover this in a critical way?
Brady
This used to be the cardinal sin, like the one thing you couldn't.
Katie Nolan
I thought it still was.
Brady
And apparently we have hit some sort of gray area, because gambling on the sport you play, and especially on games that you are anyway tangentially attached to, including being on the team in any capacity used to nuke your career into oblivion immediately. It's an addiction. Yeah. And that's why he's doing it, because this is so easily feeding his addiction. It's like if you were an alcoholic and you can just press a button on your phone and it would just feed it into your bloodstream. But the counterpoint to that is that if you're an alcoholic, you still face maximum accountability for if you get into a car while drinking, if you are doing it inappropriately, if you're crossing that line. He is crossing the goddamn line and needs to be held completely accountable. Like this needs to still have the most disastrous outcome for his career possible. Yeah, we seem to be using the softest language we can find here.
Katie Nolan
Well, what I find is often a stopping point on the mental health awareness of it all is that a lot of people will start to become aware of the terms and the way that these struggles should be discussed, and then they use those as sort of shield for any accountability or any sort of actual treatment and fixing and addressing of the problem. So just because we better understand addiction and because we become better at knowing the ways in which to help those who struggle with addiction does not mean that, well, he's an addict, so we can't hold him to the same standard as a guy that we told ourselves was just doing it because he wanted the money. The, the, the addiction of this all is important in terms of his treatment and is important in terms of the way that we look to address this moving forward as a sport. But I don't think that you just get to go, well, it wasn' his fault. He was addicted to doing it. It's like, yeah, and can we talk about the ways we're all acting that would fuel someone's addiction to such a thing? Can we talk about how difficult it has become to be somebody that is susceptible to an addiction, but who also happens to be very talented athletically to enter into a sport without bumping into the gambling of it all. Because we've certainly not made it easier for athletes if they were to have gambling, gambling additions, addictions. I don't know what's going on with my mouth. We haven't made it easier for them to avoid it. It's in their face. So at some point, someone here has to take some accountability. And I just find this story so interesting the way we're not saying, okay, so he's out, and is it. Is it because they've spent $5 million on him and there's some sort of a, we better be able to get our money's worth, because that would really send me through the roof to here.
Brady
That feels like you're going through the roof.
Katie Nolan
Okay.
Brady
It's not like these nil deals have any regulation or anything. Like, Cincinnati has already sued Brendan Sorsby for breach of contract on his last nil deal when he went to Texas Tech. It's not like these things have any sort of safety net where they're saying, well, if you get busted gambling, we're going to have to take. There's. There's so little regulation on any of this.
Katie Nolan
And part of this, I mean, they're going to figure it out as the years go on of like, okay, well, we can't do that because that's a. But you kind of go ncaa. What have you been doing this whole time? They never really. How did you not see this era coming and plan for it and get out ahead of this and figure out what the stance is? I don't. Look, I. I wish nothing but the best for Brendan Sorsby. This has to be very difficult for him to be dealing with. At the same time, we cannot set the precedent that you can just gamble in while you're playing technically in the sport for a team you play for and then go on to make $5 million from the sport just a couple short years later? We. I don't think we can, because then we're gonna. They're all gonna do it. Why wouldn't anybody not. I'm starting to get really annoyed at, like, the things we don't hold the line for. We were supposed to hold the line for this. Like, that was the whole Pete Roosevelt. Like, this was the. You're not supposed to do this. This is bad. And I think it's getting way too blurry, way too fast. The secure the bag. The like, get yours, get Your money. We make excuses for everybody to do anything as long as it's in pursuit of more money. And at some point you have to go like, hey, don't do that. Yes, it would be profitable. Don't do it. You can't do it. Because if we can't trust that the people on the field want the game to go their way or are playing to the best of their abilities in order to win a game, then the. Then, then the whole thing's lost. Then it's all wwe. As soon as the integrity of the game is called into question, then it's like, well, they scripted that. I know people say that now, and they're usually just people who are mad that the refs made a call. It will become that. If you go like, well, that Guy offered him $11 million to pitch a bad game, would you say no? Your family would use $11 million. You say no, say no. You gotta say, hold the line. The point of sports are that we protect them from this shit. And it's like, I just seeing like so many comments from people going, yeah, well, there's nowhere in sports that isn't touched by gambling. And it's such a silly thing to go. This podcast, I know it's just a poc, but this podcast isn't. It's doable. It's just. It costs a little for a little, but it's doable. Also. This comes on the heels of. Let me just rip through these. The NCAA announced their findings that two Fordham players did take part in a point shaving scheme with Betters in February of 2024. Also this week, former NBA player and coach Damon Jones pleads guilty in federal court to giving inside information to Betters and to helping to organize rigged poker games. Also this week, the Toronto Tempo announced their partnership with FanDuel as their first official IGaming partner, which led to a. I hear a voicemail that we got.
Chris
We did. We got a voicemail from Danielle that I can play for. That sort of goes through her feelings about this.
Isabella
Let's have a listen.
Katie Nolan
Let's listen to Danielle.
Danielle (Voicemail Caller)
Hi, Katie and the Casualties. My name is Danielle and I am a super casual sports fan in the sense that I'm mostly a Katie Nolan fan who really likes listening to the show. But then I got excited about the WNBA and now I live in Toronto and the Tempo are coming and I'm so excited. My fandom has hit like a thousand and I'm just inhaling everything I can before the season starts. But unfortunately that means that the algorithm Today fed me a new story from the gist celebrating the fact that FanDuel has signed on as, like, an official sponsor and partner for the Toronto Tempo. There's this, like, really ridiculous video of the chief revenue officer for the team Talking about how FanDuel shares their values and is, like, totally aligned and full of integrity. And I just really had a moment where it's the first time as a fan of this team and this sport where I've been like, that's gross, though. And I'm just trying to sit with understanding that. Like, I'm stoked about the sport, but also, I hate the gambling stuff, and I usually get to avoid it because WNBA courtside pass means I don't have ads. And it's just so annoying to have this break in. And I thought that you guys would be the only ones who understood the, like, level of excited, masked with the level of like, ugh, I can't believe this ridiculous sports app has invaded my sport. How dare. Okay, thanks, Katie. The casualties. Love you mean it.
Katie Nolan
Oh, love you mean it. Danielle, first and foremost, what phone are you calling from? Quality Shout out. Danielle, that is. That sounded like she was a fifth host, please. Or just us every week. And. And let us know that you sounded so clear, so crisp. And we appreciate the point that you made, which is a good one. This is the quote pulled from FanDuel's VP of Marketing in their press release. Quote, as a company that shares the same passion for a community and empowering women's sports, we are proud to support a new franchise that will celebrate fans and elevate women's professional sports in Canada. And listen, then you have to do this. This is the unfun math. You have to then go, well, if they don't partner with these leagues, I mean, with these apps, they'll fall behind. It's like you. It's like you're either in or you're out. And it's like, I'd like them all to be out. I'd like them all to be out. I also would have liked to go to that Liberty game last season and not have the giveaway be a coinb or whatever the hell that is. But it's like the. You take the money, you take the investment where you can. So, like, I see the side of, like, well, the other leagues are doing it. Why can't we do it? We're a new team. We need the money. We need the. I see the argument, and I also just go, like, okay, so at no point is anyone ever going to so this is just what it is. Now we're just going to teach kids that liking sports means putting money on sports. Instead of going like, you can gamble and you can like sports. And they aren't necessarily the same. Like, I had a, I took a flight on my flight to Chicago, sat next to somebody who, we both sat down in our seats and immediately started trying to tap the seat back. This was when like the Sox were playing the Yankees. There was like two. The. It was like game two of Pistons, Magic and Orlando had won the first one. There was another, it was a, A Flyers, Penguins game on. And so I'm like trying to get to that. And he's tapping his TV in a way that I'm like, this guy's got a game he's trying to watch. Finally they turn the TVs on. It took forever. We get to the games and he looks at me and he goes, you got money on it? And I was like, no, I just like it. And he was like, oh, I got a, a six game, a six way parlay on this. Or he said like, yeah. I said, are you a Pistons fan? And he was like, no, I got a six way parlay.
Brady
I was like, that guy lost.
Katie Nolan
He did.
Brady
I'll cut to the chase.
Katie Nolan
He let me know, he let me know at the end of the. He only lost one leg of the five of them hit. He showed me the screen because I think he had observed I was clearly a sports fan. I'd been watching sports the whole flight. He shows me the screen and he goes, look what happened. Not like you care. And I go, I can't read this. I don't even know what I'm looking at. I see a little like a bunch of green and a little red. And he's like, the red is that I, I don't win. And I was like, and I don't care. I, it's. They aren't one in the same. I. And I sometimes gamblers go like, wow, you idiot. You don't know how gambling works. You just don't appreciate our culture. I know plenty of people who gamble on sp, friends and family who gamble on sports. I pray every day it's responsibly. It's none of my business. It's just, it doesn't have to be both. I, I just, I think about like when fantasy football first came out and everybody was talking about how it was affecting children in the sense that kids used to be raised. You root for your parents, teams, or if you're an only child and you Want to rebel against your family, you pick your own teams. It doesn't matter. It was team based. And then there was all these think pieces about fantasy football's ruining sports for kids because the kids are all player based. They like certain players because those are the players on their team, but none of them actually like existing teams. But now no one's doing any of the think pieces about how this is going to ruin how kids interact with sports because they'll like money. They won't like teams or players. They'll like winning bets because winning bets makes them money. And from what I understand about the job market, there aren't a lot of other ways to do that right now. And so I just feel like we should be being a little bit more mindful about marrying together. Something that, like, a lot of people get into when they're younger, either to bond with their parents and their family or to play and grow socially. Youth sports. Tying that so directly to something that is known to be a pretty crippling addiction that's very hard to get out from underneath, that has a lot of ties to dangerous outcomes. Because if you get to a point where you are financially in a hole that you cannot see any way out of, there's a way that a lot of people resort to that they shouldn't. And it just makes me. I know it's doom and gloom. I know it's like slippery slope, but I just go, like, why aren't there more people going, these are two separate things. You can like one and not the other. Because I bet there are people who like using gambling apps and then don't even watch the games. I know this because one of my. One of the more misogynistic people I've ever met in my life bets on WNBA games. I know he's not watching them. I just know it's about the gambling. And so I just. I don't know. The whole. All of it exhausts me. And I was hoping casualties. You could say words that made me feel better and solve the problem. Go ahead, your turn.
Brady
I was gonna say way more depressing words. What do you got, Chris?
Chris
I got nothing good either.
Isabella
Is that as a person who's not interested in gambling, every single time I see those companies, like, at games or wherever, whether it's on someone's shirt or like in somewhere in the arena, my. I. I guess my vision just automatically blurs it because.
Katie Nolan
Beautiful. We're raising her right. I'm so proud of our girl. I don't care.
Isabella
I. Yeah, I just. All of it is like the adults and Charlie Brown, you know,
Katie Nolan
parlay. I mean, like, what a leg. What's going on over there? Thirteen legs. What kind of animal is that? Yeah.
Brady
DraftKings is too patriarchal. Get out of here.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. So I. Honestly, Danielle, first of all, what a perfect voicemail. Second of all, what a perfect audio quality you had there. And then third of all, my unfortunate but most practical advice to you is to pull in Isabella and just sort of blur that out from your eyes. Because we would all love our sports teams to be built in an ethical and beautiful way and avoid all of this. But for a league like the W that is growing and needs the money and the backing and the. We just have to go like, okay, so that's fine. And you're. I'm not saying don't have an opinion about it. It's just if you want to continue rooting for the tempo, you're just gonna have to put your head down and power through, I guess. You know, but you can like sports and not gamble. And we will continue to do that. Hey, can we talk about high school?
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
High school prom. We talked about this on the radio show. But there was a high school in Florida, West Nassau, which up until this morning, Brady was pronouncing in an insane way. Let me hear it.
Brady
Nassau.
Katie Nolan
Nassau.
Brady
Nassau.
Katie Nolan
Like Walter Mathau, I feel like exactly it. Yeah, but that's an. Isn't that I, E, U.
Brady
No, no, no. That was T W, M, A T, T, H, A U, I think.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. Well, it's not exactly where it came from. West Nassau High School lost 12 to 1 to Sawanee High School in the Florida 3A state playoffs on Saturday. All five seniors on the West Nassau roster. This is baseball. Missed the game and instead attended the school's prom, leaving the Warriors. That's them. With just three juniors and a team of freshmen and sophomores. So they got. We used to say Mercied. We don't say that anymore. Or do we say. I feel like they say the 10 run rule now.
Brady
I believe it was listed as 10 run rule. I wrote in Mercy.
Katie Nolan
Why does nobody call it. Is there a reason, Is it offensive that I'm missing? I always thought it was like, Mercy.
Brady
Not cool anymore.
Katie Nolan
I guess. I guess.
Isabella
Oh, my God. You guys ever play Mercy?
Katie Nolan
What's that?
Isabella
It's like, the one where. I think it's the one where you, like, hold hands like this and then, like, you guys, like, you, like, compete on, like, strength.
Katie Nolan
Oh.
Isabella
And then, like, whoever's, like. It's kind of like almost like, like armrest.
Chris
I remember that game.
Katie Nolan
And then you go like you say
Isabella
like mercy when you're. When you can't take it anymore.
Katie Nolan
This feels abusive. Oh maybe I think you say mercy when you can't take it anymore. It's crazy. Which is the reason we named the rule that it's like hey, hey, go easy on us. We don't have our seniors. So they lose. They were the sixth seed this school. So I think Brady said it was likely they were going to lose anyway. He really risked getting put on a list somewhere.
Brady
Brady did so much research.
Katie Nolan
He spent a lot of time researching. Yeah. And so what did we find? Did they. Because Dan told. When I came home and I told Dan this story and I said I think it's crazy they would put the game on the same day as the prom. That's not fair to make those kids choose. Especially after 2020. Do we not learn that taking away these kids social experiences like prom is bad for them social wise and they need to be able to live their lives. And Dan was like. Our prom was the day of a championship game and we went to the game in our suits, watched the team win. Then we went to prom. Then the baseball team went home, showered and came a little late to prom. Is that what this is Brady?
Brady
So this game and the prom Both started at 7pm that's great. This was at Sewanee High School and West Nassau was the away team.
Jackie (Voicemail Caller)
Yeah.
Brady
West Nassau's prom was at the Hyatt Regency in Jacksonville. So this was going to be an hour and 23 minute drive between the two. There is no way that the players could have played the game and gone to prom. But the fact that this was at Sewanee High School means they could have started this thing early in the day. Sawanee. Why would they not be able to? This is the varsity baseball team on the home baseball field which I Google mapped. It is at their. They could have played this thing at home earlier in the day. Did not these five kids had to choose. They would. There was no way for them to do. For them to do both. They took prom and it seemed like
Katie Nolan
it was a big deal.
Brady
You know. Hundred dollar tickets to prom at the Hyatt Regency. The theme Meet me at midnight.
Katie Nolan
Oh my God. How do you know this? Honestly, I have to ask. How do you know this?
Brady
Prom core. They looked fantastic. Shout out to senior catcher Braden Goff. Braden was named to promcord. Did not quite make prom king but was named a prom court. Did not catch that game. But at least he got something out of it.
Katie Nolan
Oh, my God. Why do you know this?
Brady
It's called a deep dive.
Katie Nolan
He's like, I DM'd them all on Facebook. I reached out. I asked who won Prom Court. Look, I know the. The. The usual sports take on this is like, somebody even called into fan service earlier this week to say this. They were like, you learn early that you make sacrifices for sports. You make sacrifices for greatness. Like, okay, I think the school needs to learn early that, like, schedule properly so that kids in high school who are not. I mean, unless this school that Brady didn't even know how to pronounce, and I think he would if this were the case, is a direct.
Brady
You look up their prom theme.
Katie Nolan
But I'm saying, if this is a. If this school is a known direct pipeline to Major League Baseball, then sure, skip prom to play your game. But if they were, Brady would know how to say the name because he knows everything about baseball. And so there's no way they were the six seed. Go to your prom. Like, go to your prom and. And. And be with this, your last chance.
Brady
Unless Perfect Game profile listed him at 57140, he's not going to the majors. Let the guy go. Win Prom Court.
Katie Nolan
Listen, Diego Pavia just did a lot for short people, okay? Now, none of it's guaranteed the contract that he signed, I believe three years with the Ravens. But, Isabel, did you hear that he got a job? Diego Cavia, your little. Your little friend? Sure, yeah.
Brady
Oh, God. I'm terrified of what he would wear to prom.
Katie Nolan
Oh, Jesus.
Brady
Speaking of, the man is doing turtleneck and chain to the Heisman ceremony.
Katie Nolan
Speaking of football. What, my love?
Isabella
Cam Scatter Boo was at the Knicks game last night.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Isabella
Everybody identify.
Katie Nolan
I feel like. Oh, you did? Yeah, I knew him, and my boyfriend did it. Shut up. What did your boyfriend say? Were you like, that's.
Isabella
He's not into football, so. But when he went on the screen, I was like, is that Kim Scatter Boo? And then the. And then he didn't say anything. And then the announcer was like, cam, Scatter me.
Katie Nolan
How did it feel?
Lily Shambashi
That was cool.
Katie Nolan
Oh, my God. That's. That's one of my favorite.
Lily Shambashi
He's the hot dog.
Isabella
No, taco guy. Was he the guy that was, like, ate the taco?
Brady
Ate the taco sideways.
Katie Nolan
That's one way to remember him.
Brady
I don't know if anything could surprise me, but what did he do when they put the camera on?
Isabella
Nothing. He was just staring.
Katie Nolan
And that's Kind of a monkey was
Chris
just playing the symbols in his head.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Brady
He was very confused by what this thing was with the lens.
Katie Nolan
Kind of what he. He does.
Isabella
No, he wasn't looking into the camera. He was looking away.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Crazy. All right.
Lily Shambashi
Prom. Yay.
Katie Nolan
Yay, prom. Okay, this is. This story. I almost want Isabella to power rank the weirdest things about this story, but there was a story in the Associated Press yesterday. I tracked this down. I saw the headline get tweeted out by all those, like, sports keita, and I'm like, is this a real story? What is this? It's from the apartment. Okay, so this is a real story. Remember, Isabella, when we talked about the Giants played the Patriots and young Wei Koo went to kick a field goal, or was it an extra point? A field goal.
Isabella
He kicked the grass, right?
Katie Nolan
Yes, he kicked the grass in front of the ball. And it was, like, really embarrassing. And everybody was like, oh, what up? The headline for this story I'm about to read, you, man says young Wei Koo accidentally saved his life after a missed kick against the New England Patriots. Had him laughing so hard he went into a seizure, which sent him to the hospital where they found a tumor in his brain.
Lily Shambashi
What?
Katie Nolan
Okay, first wild thing about this story, the guy's name, Mark Toothaker, that I've never heard as a last name.
Isabella
And that's how you pronounce it, Toothacher.
Brady
I went and listened to him doing a podcast today about horse racing. Yes, that is how he pronounced his own name.
Lily Shambashi
Wow.
Katie Nolan
Go so deep. Missed. Mark Toothaker. Just an ordinary day in December for him. He was working at the farm. He went to the gym. Then he goes home to Lexington. Lexington, Connecticut. What is happening with my mouth? He goes home to Lexington, Kentucky to watch the Giants play the Patriots. It was Monday Night Football. He's with his wife, Mallory. She's reading a book. Young Way KU whiffs on the field goal. It makes him think of Charlie Brown and Lucy in the Peanuts cartoon. He goes back and watches the replay and he says he starts laughing so hard that it triggers a seizure. What? Because it was so funny to him that it triggered a seizure. He said, I've never felt anything like this in my life. I felt like I got electrocuted. Whoa. So his wife is. Is or was. A nurse recognized some sort of symptoms, sent him. They were. They rushed him to the hospital from his house. And then following a CT scan, they found a tennis ball sized tumor on the side of his brain. They took it out surgically, and he has no long term damage. According to the AP on Saturday.
Isabella
Hold on. Okay, keep going.
Katie Nolan
Right? I mean, already ranking the amount of things, then come to find out on Saturday he's going to be at Churchill Downs because the farm that he works at owns a horse named Further Ado who's gonna run in the Kentucky Derby. What the fuck? So Young Waku missing a field goal saved this guy's life. I mean, this guy travels all the time because he's going around with the horse. The weekend before that happened, I think he was like with the horse at some race. So like he is always moving and could have. He says right after he got that taken, he's like, I could have been behind the wheel of a car when this happened. I could have like put somebody. I could have been on an airpl when this happened. But because I laughed so hard at this stupid kick and triggered the. He saved my life. That's crazy.
Isabella
Okay. Shout out.
Katie Nolan
Coo. He's a stallion season manager, which Brady. Does that just mean he watches the horses have sex?
Brady
I think he has to watch them. Yeah. Make sure it's all going accordingly. Like he organizes the sessions and selects the. I think it's the stallion and the mayor and, you know, Love island pairs them up and gives them their space.
Katie Nolan
It gives them their space.
Brady
Well, they have to have a certain space.
Katie Nolan
Sure, sure.
Brady
There's a whole, like there's a couple holes.
Katie Nolan
Oh, sorry.
Lily Shambashi
I'm sorry.
Brady
One of them necessary. Okay.
Katie Nolan
All right. You know, there's a. Isabelle, you ever heard of a stud fee?
Isabella
No.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. People pay. When a horse does well, they pay money for its seed, essentially. Right. And they get. And it just gets to be. Because they want a horse from the bloodline because it means it's a strong horse. And so they'll just like put them in a farm and then have people just come and I think, aren't. Isn't it usually girl horses that race? I thought maybe. I don't know. I just know that they'll stick him in a. Sometimes they'll stick him in a farm and just let you know, other horses
Isabella
come through and let them figure it
Katie Nolan
out, make a deposit.
Brady
When you hear the phrase put out to stud, meaning like retirement, that means like the horse has retired and all it does is get paid to make smaller horses.
Isabella
Yeah, that's really depressing.
Katie Nolan
Or not for the horse. I recommend you look into it as little as possible. I've spent a lot of time in the horse. I spent a lot of time researching horse racing one year for a show I was on and I was like this. I need to know less immediately.
Isabella
I do love watching horses hooves get tripped.
Katie Nolan
Me too. I do love when they cut out the rot inside of the. It's very satisfying for me. Different from this. And I don't want to watch this. Let's be clear.
Brady
You ever see the video of like the iguana getting like the dry skin pulled out of its nostril? You just know how good it feels.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Brady
Like that's, that's been. Been sitting there for years and this iguana had no way to remedy it.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, this is a lot like that. Oh, the hooves. Okay. Apparently, toothacher said he would love for the 31 year old coup, once the most accurate kicker in league history, to be his guest at the derby, recognizing that the miss is not exactly a career highlight. So he has invited Young Wu, who saved his life, to be his guest at the derby. Sweet. Coup, who was released two weeks after the game, did not respond to messages from the AP for the story. I imagine he's like, please forget that this ever happened. I'm sorry that it's. I mean, I'm happy that it saved your life, but it sort of ruined mine in a way. So maybe we could all just move on from it.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah, he'll be there.
Brady
I feel like he'll be there. He's got to be there.
Katie Nolan
You think?
Brady
So after this story,
Katie Nolan
what else does
Brady
he have going on? Not kicking somewhere?
Katie Nolan
Okay.
Brady
You saved a man's life. Go to the horse race.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, he can always come back.
Brady
He has not been put out to stud.
Katie Nolan
You never know. But the Kentucky Derby, don't Forget this Saturday, 6:57pm Eastern on NBC or Peacock and you better be on time because it goes pretty quick. Same with the making of a horse. From What I heard, $3.1 million to the winning horse, 10% of that to the jockey. Just something to remember. And then, Chris, I. Look, we don't have a ton of time, but I did see a headline today that the NBA has put out, not finalized. But like, this is the leader in the ClubHouse how the NBA is going to solve tanking. And so I'm just going to ask you, can you sum up their solution to tanking in like one sentence?
Chris
No is the short answer.
Katie Nolan
Okay, so then let's just go ahead. We'll wait until they vote on it and then have you try. So it's complicated. Needlessly.
Chris
Yeah. Again, we, we brought this up earlier this week. I don't know why they just don't do something as simple as what the PWHL are doing. Instead, they have this rule that's going to take 30 seconds for me to explain to you all the minutiae of it.
Katie Nolan
Like, we just don't have time for the minutiae. And that's how they say it in Australia. They say minutia. It's just a different place. Nassau, it's just a different place. So we'll have, we'll have more for you on that when we get it, when we understand it, because it's. Who wants to spend their time figuring out the business of the NBA?
Chris
Yeah, we have until May 28th to find that because that's when the final vote will be for this reform. So we'll see if that ends up happening. And if it does, we'll talk about it the show after whatever May 28th is.
Katie Nolan
All right, so on that note, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we'll be joined by Lily Shimbashi. She is the creator of Sports Ish. It is tagline is not your boyfriend Sports News. We love her. We talked to her about Megan and Clay. We talk all about NHL in the postseason as well as we can because, you know, we're recording this the day before it comes out. We talk about all the action in the NHL and then we, we swing over to Spotify to take a look at a playlist we found quite interesting. So all of that with Lili Shambashi on the other side of a break. When we come back, it's casuals. We'll be right back. When you're choosing dinner, you want to know it's worth it every time. Gorton's Seafood has been providing quality seafood for the whole family since 1849. Gorton's is the easy, dependable choice that takes the stress out of mealtime, and it has been for over 175 years. You know the fisherman God in the yellow coat? Yeah. That's Gorton's. Gorton's products are great for the main meal, for snacks, or for appetizers from classics like coconut shrimp. I mean, who doesn't love coconut shrimp? To new innovative options like taco tenders. Choose Gorton's for uncompromising quality and reliable fresh taste. I love Gorton's because it's so easy. I can toss some shrimp or a filet right into my air fryer and it's ready in minutes. It feels elevated because it's seafood. And honestly, it reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom would make me some fish sticks after school. Visit gortons.com to learn more. Find a store and get recipe inspiration Ladies Tired of sunglasses ripping your hair out? I know I am. Meet Shady Ray's Tangle Free Sunglasses because once the weather warms up and you're outside for those park days and beach trips, the last thing you want is your sunglasses ruining your hair. These are designed with smooth smooth no snag nose pieces that glide through your hair, not yank, not pull, and definitely not ruin your fresh blowout. They're lightweight, polarized, so you're not squinting in the bright sun and cute enough to wear with everything. Plus, every pair is backed by lost and broken protection. Leave them at the beach, drop them in a parking lot after a long day out, or sit on them in the car. They'll replace them. So as you're getting into spring and summer plans, upgrade your sunglasses. Today we've teamed up with Shady Rays to bring you a limited time offer. Head to shady rays.com and use code CASUITS for 50% off two or more polarized sunglasses. Try for yourself the shades rated five stars by over 300,000 people. Shady rays.com use code CASUALS the road to the playoffs is here. Catch every NBA matchup on ESPN and every NHL showdown on ESPN and TNT with Sling. Sling is great. You customize a channel lineup and only pay for what actually gets watched. So no more wondering why random channels are there. No contracts, just flexibility. Choose a one day pass starting at 4.99 for a big game, a seven day pass for playoff series, or you can go monthly for more. Pause anytime with no penalties and still enjoy over 600 free channels. You can even stream instantly on all devices at home or on the go with Sling. I know for me what I love about Sling is that on my phone when I'm on the road, maybe in like a green room that doesn't have any tv, I can watch on my phone and easily go between a hockey game that's that's on ESPN and then I can switch over to an NBA matchup. So choose and customize your channel lineup or pause and watch for free. Sling lets you do that. Visit sling.com to learn more. If you're trying to be more intentional about what you wear day to day, Quints can help with that. They've got pieces that feel easy, comfortable and yet still put together. Quince uses premium materials like 100% European linen, organic cotton and ultra soft denim. Everything at Quint is priced 50 to 80% less than than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories, they cut out the middlemen. So you are paying for quality and craftsmanship, not brand markup. I just recently got some jeans. Quint has all of the cuts that I was looking for, from wide leg to like a more boot cut. And they're all so affordable, the price on them cannot be beat. So refresh your everyday with luxury. You'll actually use head to quint.comcasuals for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.comcasuals free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comcasuals. all right, you guys joining me now, an esteemed guest, somebody I believe if this all goes well today, I think we could be seeing a lot of her around these parts because I've, I've, we've met before so briefly at an event the way you do. It's Lily Shambashi, the creator of Sportsish. Thank you for being here.
Lily Shambashi
Thank you for having me.
Katie Nolan
Let's start by introducing anybody who might not know in the casuals audience about sports. Ish. What it does, what the goal for it was when you started it in 2021.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. So a lot of it is kind of your same ethos at casuals.
Katie Nolan
You just did it first.
Lily Shambashi
No, no, no. But I did feel my job out of college, you know, pursuing a broadcasting degree, I worked for an NBA team and I felt like everything we did was so stat heavy and it was so catered to men. Like, you know, not to be anti man here, but everything starting out strong. Starting out.
Katie Nolan
No, but it's the, it's like one type of person that they speak to and they do a fantastic job of speaking to that person and that fan. But like, I feel like we have that similar feeling of like there are other types of fans out there that need other stuff.
Lily Shambashi
Right. Or there could be other types of fans if you speak to them the right way. And so I would record my little podcast after these NBA games and like equate the game to pop culture or like movies. And I remember getting an email from a fan that said, I feel like I'm into basketball for the first time. I think I had probably five listeners on this podcast, but I just thought to myself, there's gotta be more people like me that like the game this way, that want to know who the players are. They want to know storylines over stat lines. That's my big thing. And a lot of them are women who, who could be sports fans, but have felt gate kept their entire life.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. And it's not like they didn't have an entry point because I've heard my favorite piece of feedback that I got early in my career was people being like, I can I watch sports with my husband now? And it's a thing we do together.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
And I. And I was like, oh, that's so. Or their husbands would be like, you got my wife to want to watch the game with me. And I'm like, that's all it is is just shifting the focus a little to go like. Like bring in something other than self referential sports stats.
Lily Shambashi
Totally.
Katie Nolan
Instead of staying within that world because, you know, you'll listen to like a pop culture podcast that says it covers everything and it barely touches sports, and you'll listen to a sports podcast and they'll work in, you know, their little pop culture stuff. But it's. It just felt like nobody was making sure that you could just vaguely keep up with sports the way you vaguely keep up with all the other little things that people keep tabs and.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
And so sports ish has been a huge help, I think, in broadening that audience in the same way that casuals hopes to. It's sportsish on all socials, Right? Yep, Exactly. All that. Also. How dare you? You recently ran a half marathon.
Lily Shambashi
Oh, Sunday, two days ago.
Katie Nolan
Jesus. First of all, why?
Lily Shambashi
Let me tell you. Because Maybelline, you know Maybelline. Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Shout out.
Lily Shambashi
Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline.
Katie Nolan
Right. Maybe she's too tired to run half a marathon.
Lily Shambashi
Yes, same. But they did reach out and they asked me to be on Team Maybelline.
Katie Nolan
Can't say no to that.
Lily Shambashi
You can't say no. And so I got to wear like the lipstick while I ran, which is very sports ish of me.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
And I felt like I had to prove that I could do it because I'm also not very athletic. So running is like the one thing I can kind of do. And so I had to prove it to myself and my audience.
Katie Nolan
13.1 miles.
Lily Shambashi
Yes.
Katie Nolan
That's absurd to me. It's also not fair of you because I just started going back to the gym. I went to the gym yesterday.
Lily Shambashi
How'd it go?
Katie Nolan
It was fine. It was quick. It was pretty quick. I tried to. What I tend to do is go like, you've gotta go down there with a perfect routine. You've gotta execute that routine perfectly or you'll never be in shape. And yesterday I just Went. Put the clothes on.
Lily Shambashi
Yes.
Katie Nolan
Go down to the gym. Stay as long or as short. Just go.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
And so that was what yesterday was. But it made me feel really good. And then I come in here and I'm like. And then Lily ran a half marathon yesterday.
Lily Shambashi
It's okay. My running coach said, that's not my running coach. Peloton. She's my peloton coach. She's my private running coach. Bex Gentry. Forward is a pace.
Katie Nolan
It's true. It's true. And it's like the hardest thing to go. Like, just settle for a little step forward instead of feeling like you've got to take the most perfect, elegant step up the highest. Just go.
Lily Shambashi
Just go.
Katie Nolan
So I did. I just went.
Lily Shambashi
Got it.
Katie Nolan
And I assume that was sort of what you had to do with sports. Ish. You just have to sort of take the idea and just go.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah, exactly. And people did not take it seriously for a while. It was like, gain a follower, lose five. But slowly but surely, we found our audience and they came and they are now a great community. We love them.
Katie Nolan
So you have always been a sports fan. Tell me your story about, like, where did you grow up? How did you. How did sports first touch you and then how did it first really pull you in?
Lily Shambashi
So I grew up in a sports family, as they say. Very sports enthused. But also, my dad worked in pro sports. So when I was born, my dad was president of the New York Knicks.
Katie Nolan
You know, have you ever heard of him? You guys? The New York Knicks, A small. I believe they were in the G League.
Lily Shambashi
Right, right. Just a little team. He was doing a good deed, you know.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
Building them up.
Katie Nolan
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
So I was born into this kind of crazy Madison Square Garden life. When I was 2, he became CEO of the Garden. Wild, Wild, Wild. So sports have been my life. He left that when I was nine. And he owned an MLS team, an NHL team, and. And he's kind of, you know, dabbled in everything in pro sports.
Katie Nolan
Incredible.
Lily Shambashi
Yes. And I'm so proud to be his daughter. At first, I shied away from that part of my story.
Katie Nolan
I was gonna say. Cause it's gotta be a little tough where you're like, I don't want people to think that's why I'm here.
Lily Shambashi
Right, exactly. But my dad was not speaking to female fans on social media. My dad was negotiating NBA contracts. It's very different work. But also, he's been nothing but supportive. And I also feel like, you know, people assume a lot when you have A parent who has made waves in the industry, in any industry. But I've really just done this on my own with my team that I've built since. And so he's so proud of me, and I'm proud to be his daughter and have that relationship with sports. It was never, you know, I was never questioned about being a sports fan in my home.
Katie Nolan
That's awesome.
Lily Shambashi
We talked about it at the dinner table. So when I went to school and boys were like, you like the Knicks? Name five players. I was like, okay, well, I can name the whole roster.
Katie Nolan
I can. And I'm also going to tell you, don't ever make anybody do this ever again.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
It's sick of the quiz. We're sick of it. Oh, my God. It's so annoying.
Lily Shambashi
Right? Right.
Katie Nolan
Ugh. I hate it.
Lily Shambashi
So that started my foundation in sports. And also, like, the quizzes at school, I think that we all faced started my foundation in, like, hey, women watch sports, too. And there is a whole crowd of women who could watch sports that could love sports, but they're just not being spoken to.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. They're not being considered when it's being presented.
Lily Shambashi
Yes.
Katie Nolan
And so there's no. Like, why would they think I'll watch a hockey game? It's like, because no one's showing them that they. But we saw this year, hockey grew
Lily Shambashi
so much, 40% of female fandom. That's insane.
Katie Nolan
It's absolutely insane. Growth from. And big thanks to heated rivalry and I guess the NHL kind of getting out of its way, like, because when it first started. You're a hockey fan. We don't run into a lot of hockey fans, so I don't get to have this conversation as much. But when I first saw that this heated rivalry was coming, I was like, knowing what I know about the NHL and its history with that community, I was like, this could be a real collision course that I'm not ready for.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
It seems like they.
Lily Shambashi
At least.
Katie Nolan
I don't know if you've got opinions on how they handled it. I think they at least let it sort of. They embraced it in a way that I found I was pretty grateful for. Totally.
Lily Shambashi
I mean, they were reposting TikToks. I know Gary Bettman made a statement about. He did.
Katie Nolan
Right. Do you believe him? Didn't he say he binged it all in one night?
Lily Shambashi
He did say that. Listen, listen.
Katie Nolan
Do you believe him?
Lily Shambashi
I'd like to.
Katie Nolan
I know. Me too, because. Me, too. Just for the visual.
Lily Shambashi
And also, I binged it all in one night. So I get it, Gary.
Katie Nolan
You know what?
Lily Shambashi
You do you, man.
Katie Nolan
You do you. And I hope he loved it. It's a. God, I really loved that show. It was. I didn't. It's not usually my genre, but I was super. By the end, I was like, this is the most beautiful love story.
Lily Shambashi
You cried. Didn't I?
Katie Nolan
Yes, I cried, like, kind of a lot.
Lily Shambashi
Same.
Katie Nolan
It was kind of an embarrassing amount. But a beautiful show, and we love it. Since hockey. Hockey is the best. And we're in the thick of it now.
Lily Shambashi
Lord Stanley.
Katie Nolan
We're chasing Lord Stanley's Cup. Do you have a allegiance to a team?
Lily Shambashi
This is so interesting. So obviously, like, Rangers when I was little.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, of course.
Lily Shambashi
Yes.
Katie Nolan
Right.
Lily Shambashi
He left the Garden, and it's kind of like you have to leave that allegiance behind.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
I went to school in Utah College, and so, you know, two years ago, the Phoenix Coyotes became the Utah Mammoth. And I've kind of picked them up. They're so fun.
Katie Nolan
They are so fun. I like their owner. I don't know if you have, like, owner rivalries. Like, maybe he knows your dad and you don't like him. I don't know.
Lily Shambashi
No, he's one of them.
Isabella
Wonderful.
Katie Nolan
Okay, great. He seems. And I like that they list him and has his wife as both the owner of the team.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
So I was like, that's kind of neat.
Lily Shambashi
Hell, yeah.
Katie Nolan
They seem to be, like, really into it. I liked the jersey thing that they did.
Lily Shambashi
They.
Katie Nolan
They offered to the Golden Knights fans if they wanted to swap a jersey in for a Utah. I like their logo. I like their colors.
Lily Shambashi
Their mascot is a cutie, and they've got the Zam.
Katie Nolan
The.
Lily Shambashi
The Zamith.
Katie Nolan
The Zamith.
Lily Shambashi
I did say the Mam. The Zammoth.
Katie Nolan
You did?
Lily Shambashi
I did. It was a moment in time, like, the highlight of my life.
Katie Nolan
There's only been a couple voyages of the Zamoth.
Lily Shambashi
I actually, like. I was on a trip home from LA for a work trip, and I said, I gotta stop and I gotta see the Zam.
Katie Nolan
Yes. Was it amazing?
Lily Shambashi
It was amazing.
Katie Nolan
But it doesn't work, right?
Lily Shambashi
No, it's not like a real Zamboni.
Katie Nolan
Okay. But that really bummed me out, Lily. When I found that out, I was like, it's. But they refurbished the one from the Salt Lake City Olympics, Right?
Lily Shambashi
Exactly.
Katie Nolan
So it, like, was a Zamboni, which made me think that it was going to be a working Zamboni.
Lily Shambashi
I think the top tusks would get in the way.
Katie Nolan
I think so, too. But, like, figure it out probably next season.
Lily Shambashi
Next season.
Katie Nolan
Give me a thinner tusk or whatever. I want it to like, make them fold in like a side view mirror on a car.
Lily Shambashi
Now they use it as like a fan experience.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. Which is cool, I guess. It's cool and cute, I guess. But I want it to be functional. I want it to clean the ice. It's such an important job.
Lily Shambashi
It really, truly.
Katie Nolan
It's such an important. That's probably why they can fit so many fans on it, because they don't have to have the guy on there that's doing the, like pouring out of all the stuff.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. No, we need the Zamboni or else the guys are falling everywhere. I know.
Katie Nolan
Oh, it's crazy. It's been a good postseason.
Lily Shambashi
The best hockey.
Katie Nolan
As we just talked about, the heated rivalry of it all, the rising interest in hockey from that. But also the Olympics, the men's, women's and paralympic team all winning gold for hockey crown. No one's ever done that. How are you feeling about these playoffs so far?
Lily Shambashi
I love them. They are violent to the most extreme. There are rivalries that have existed for so long.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
The battle, you know.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. The battle for Pennsylvania. That one's heating up.
Lily Shambashi
Philly versus Pittsburgh is wild. And tonight it could end.
Katie Nolan
I know. And so it's Wednesday where we are. It's Thursday when this comes out. So as the unfortunate thing about the playoffs is that, like, the listeners are probably going. These two idiots don't even know. Don't even know that it's already over. But we don't know. We don't know. Let's start with that series. The Penguins and the Flyers for us, as of right now on Wednesday, the Flyers are up three two. But they were up three nothing.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
And. And this is just a little. Things are getting a little dicey and a little shaky in game three. Did you see 11 players getting a penalty at the same time?
Lily Shambashi
It's so incredible the way they fit those guys in the box at one time. I mean, they're on top of each other.
Katie Nolan
Just insane. And then you just always see them trying to go like, is it you? Is it me? And like moving in and out of the box. And then the wide shot of just everybody. It looks like the bench. It looks like there's two benches and they've just split them on either side of the ice.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. No, I love this series. And I love Sidney Crosby.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
What a man. Like, I actually feel like I need to speak about him with some.
Katie Nolan
Please, let's. Let's reverence yeah.
Lily Shambashi
You know, he changed hockey forever. He's mentally kind of insane because he loves hockey so much. Did you know fun fact that he has had the same shoulder pads and jockstrap?
Katie Nolan
No.
Lily Shambashi
No.
Katie Nolan
Really? The jock strap is a step too far, I think.
Lily Shambashi
No, it's unsanitary and heartwarming.
Katie Nolan
Since when?
Lily Shambashi
High school. He's 37.
Katie Nolan
Hey, hey, hey, listen. Don't your shoulders grow a little bit between high school and 37?
Lily Shambashi
He's making it worse.
Katie Nolan
Oh, my God. And he wears them.
Lily Shambashi
He wears them. And the staff has, like, really had to tape and work on them, but he's so superstitious that he refuses to give them up.
Katie Nolan
That's really pure. It's like a real. That sort of energy I associate with hockey.
Lily Shambashi
It's, like, kind of gross.
Katie Nolan
Those things must smell.
Lily Shambashi
I can't.
Katie Nolan
And I'm not even just saying because of the location of one of the items.
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
Hockey equipment. The scent, you do not know it until you've smelled it. And then you never forget it. Like, it never leaves your mind. It is like a mix of, like, sour mixed with, like, what you would think of the smell. It just has a specific. And the only reason it's so fresh for me is because I went to visit my brother, who lives in Chicago now, and he plays in a men's league, and he keeps his equipment in the little room between the garage and the house. House.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
And I forgot about. And I opened the door and was like, God, that smell. I have forgotten that smell. It is so specific.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. In college, I was the hockey team social media marketing manager.
Katie Nolan
Oh, that's fun, though.
Lily Shambashi
So fun.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
And a wonderful experience, except for that part. The smell was too much.
Katie Nolan
Hockey locker room, bottle it and then keep it away from me. That scent is specific. But, yeah, Sidney Crosby, I mean, he's had a decent recent series.
Lily Shambashi
He's been fine, I think, you know, he's old. 37, 38. I'm not sure which, but he's getting up there.
Katie Nolan
Latang is, like, 38, I think, too.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. They're legends. And with Geno, like, what a big three. And you want to see them succeed. But the Flyers are so young and zesty.
Katie Nolan
They are fun. They've got a lot of, like, spunk.
Lily Shambashi
Yes.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
And they're not afraid of the old guys.
Katie Nolan
Like, right.
Lily Shambashi
There's no show of respect, which is kind of cool. That they're not like, oh, Sidney Crosby, like, I can't hit you. They're ramming into Sidney in the boards.
Katie Nolan
I Know, it's kind of cool. And then another part of me as a 39 year old woman, I go, hey, hey, youngblood, maybe we start to show a little respect to our elders.
Lily Shambashi
Me too.
Katie Nolan
Okay. Leave Unc alone.
Isabella
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
Okay. At the end of the game, maybe
Katie Nolan
we all back up, go a little easy on the older guys. But no, it is in terms of a hockey game. It's more fun to watch that way.
Lily Shambashi
That's the best. I want a game 7 so bad.
Katie Nolan
I know. I know that. That Flyers fans listening are like, no, I know. Well, actually listening. They already know what I know they know. But I can't imagine. It was also shocking to me, the first home game for Philly when they were like, this is Gritty's first playoff game. I was like, wait, how is that possible? And I realized that in 2020 was the only other time they went since Gritty has been the mascot and that was the COVID of it all. So they didn't do the.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. Gritty is like the Sidney Crosby of the Flyers. Like, you should talk about him with a reference.
Katie Nolan
I love Gritty so much.
Lily Shambashi
He's life changing.
Katie Nolan
I love Gritty. I love Gritty's weird little belly button. We both have Gritty's behind us right now. I don't know if you've noticed. You've got your own Gritty.
Lily Shambashi
Thank you so much.
Katie Nolan
And I've got a little Gritty. I actually don't know if I have anything on their belly buttons, but they came with. He came with specifically little Velcro belly button. He's just such like a. He's such like a freak. In a world where on social media women were forced to choose between man and bear, Gritty is like kind of the best parts of both, you know, where he's like the. He's chaotic and a little bit unsafe, but in a really. In a way that feels safe.
Lily Shambashi
I would feel safe with gritty. I'd choose gritty. I choose gritty every time.
Katie Nolan
Or bear give me gritty every time. Okay, so that's that series. Pretty summed up. We talked about all the hockey of it. Canadians, Lightning, where we're at, is tied 2. 2. But that game is also tonight at 7.
Lily Shambashi
Yep.
Katie Nolan
How are you feeling about this series? I hate both these teams, so I'm rooting for a sinkhole. I mean, listen. And the. The Bruins paths to the playoff from my childhood have been through these teams. The Canadiens was the first team. I was told the Canadians and the Yankees are kind of neck and neck of like we do not. You will never marry a Canadiens fan or a Yankees fan. You. I don't dare you to date one of them. It was just put in me from very young, classic Bostonian. And it's great. They're great. I mean, the Canadians at least. Great fan base. Like great. But I hate them. I can't say a nice word about them legally.
Lily Shambashi
Well, let me tell you, they are legendary. And you know, a Canadian team hasn't won the Stanley cup in 33 years.
Katie Nolan
It's. And I. And I fear that they're gonna be upset when we bring it up, but. Yes, it does.
Lily Shambashi
Listen to me. Okay. I love Canada so deeply. Like I. I sometimes wish I were Canadian. I don't know what it is. I married a Canadian, first of all, so that helps.
Katie Nolan
That could be it.
Lily Shambashi
But I've been fully exposed to the country. It's a beautiful place. There are beautif. I love a coffee crisp. It's a chocolate bar you can only get in Canada.
Katie Nolan
That tastes like coffee.
Lily Shambashi
Yes.
Katie Nolan
I need that.
Lily Shambashi
You need that?
Isabella
I need that.
Katie Nolan
Why don't we have that? Why doesn't have an equivalent here?
Lily Shambashi
I don't know. It's like the dietary guidelines, nutrition labels.
Katie Nolan
We still do those. I didn't know.
Lily Shambashi
Who knew? So the Habs are so iconic. And I think they could be Canada's best shot. Yeah.
Katie Nolan
In a long time.
Lily Shambashi
In a long time. 33 years.
Katie Nolan
And then there's the lightning. Okay. You know. Okay.
Lily Shambashi
Okay.
Katie Nolan
Sure.
Lily Shambashi
I'm cheering for the Habs. I'm so sorry.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. I'm not cheering for again, either of them. I hope they both. I hope they're like, hey, these teams suck so bad. We can't even.
Lily Shambashi
Not to get sports Ish. But I love the Canadiens jerseys.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
They're so classic.
Katie Nolan
Classic. Really classic stuff.
Lily Shambashi
So that's what chose who I'm cheering for. Jersey.
Katie Nolan
Fair enough. They're also, you know, they're exciting and fun to watch. So not a bad. Mammoth and Golden Knights we sort of have talked about a bit. The Golden Knights tied that series up.
Lily Shambashi
Yikes.
Katie Nolan
I'm rooting for Utah. Cause I like that they're a new young team. I like the ownership and all the things we talked about before. I'm also happen to be conveniently rooting against the Golden Knights. I've got issues.
Lily Shambashi
I've got issues in the net.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. I've got a big issue in the net. Yep. And so when he has a bad game, which he has quite a few times this season, but also this postseason, there was A game I don't remember. I think it was something like three goals on eight shots or four goals on six shots. It was something crazy.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
Which I really did love.
Lily Shambashi
Oh, love it every time. I'm not only a Mammoth fan, but I'm an anti Carter.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. I'm a Golden Knights hater. Carter Hart hater. Yeah. So we'll see. Utah has won two of the three meetings between the two teams in Las Vegas during the season.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
The. The game four went to overtime. Lots of overtime. I think last year there was 20 overtimes in the postseason. I can't. I don't know if we're on pace. It feels like we're ahead of pace.
Lily Shambashi
Feels like we are every game a lot.
Katie Nolan
And there was one that was double overtime. Now, I don't know if statistically that would count as two overtimes.
Lily Shambashi
Why not?
Katie Nolan
But I would think that it would.
Lily Shambashi
It's intense.
Katie Nolan
How you feeling about those Mammoths? The next game is tonight. So again, this is one that the listeners already know about.
Lily Shambashi
But right. Last game, the Knights just came out so hot and it was in Utah and they went up three nothing. And then Carter Hart, you know, just shadow over the bed. So that's what I'm hoping to see. So sorry. Go Mammoth.
Katie Nolan
That's okay. You don't have to be sorry here. You don't have to be sorry.
Lily Shambashi
Love that.
Katie Nolan
Stars Wild the Wilder up 3, 2. And the game isn't until Thursday. So nobody knows what's gonna happen because this comes out Thursday morning. Right. The game is tonight, Thursday night at 7:30 Eastern. Yeah. The Wild are one win away from their first postseason series win since 2015.
Lily Shambashi
Crazy.
Katie Nolan
How have you felt about this?
Lily Shambashi
Listen, this is the best series, I think, in the postseason. They are so evenly matched. I think this is going to a Game seven.
Katie Nolan
I hope it does.
Lily Shambashi
I hope it does.
Katie Nolan
I.
Lily Shambashi
You know, Quinn Hughes is. Quinn Hughes. He sees God. He's not particularly likable to me. So I was kind of rooting for the Stars. I also like their Wag Jackets a lot. Which we'll get to.
Katie Nolan
Which we will get to.
Lily Shambashi
So I'm not. It's just a great series. I hope everyone has fun.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. This was the series I think most people pointed to as like, the playoff system is broken.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
Why are we watching these two teams play in the first round when they're both such good teams? And so I think if it doesn't go seven, we're getting robbed of hockey that we deserve. Agreed. So hopefully I don't want to root for a team to lose. But I do hope that that series goes to seven Oiler's Ducks. This one. The Ducks are up now. Three, two. And, you know, while we're airing grievances, I had forgotten who was coaching the Ducks. I found them easier to root for until that was reminded to me.
Lily Shambashi
Right. These skeletons in the hockey closets.
Katie Nolan
And Lily, honestly, it's like. I don't know if you feel this as a female hockey fan, but a lot of times it's a lot of just like, I can't. I can't look at that.
Lily Shambashi
Right, Right.
Katie Nolan
I can't. I'm gonna just look away from that because I have to hockey, I've always felt like a duty to represent it in media because I feel like it gets forgotten a lot.
Lily Shambashi
Absolutely.
Katie Nolan
And it's very hard as a woman to fulfill that duty as well as also fulfilling the duty of, like, don't love these things.
Lily Shambashi
Right, right.
Katie Nolan
And so it's like kind of a constant.
Lily Shambashi
You know, I'm with you. You just hold on to the good ones. Right. You really overexpose the good guys.
Katie Nolan
Yes, exactly.
Lily Shambashi
And then just root against the bad.
Katie Nolan
Exactly. So I think in this, I'm rooting for the Oilers. I think I'm hoping that Connor McDavid, he's gotta be very hurt.
Lily Shambashi
He's angry.
Katie Nolan
He's clearly very hurt, and he's clearly very upset.
Lily Shambashi
Two Stanley cup finals.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
And a silver medal. I know he's got a chip on
Katie Nolan
his shoulder and he's so good. It's not a reflection of how good he is. It's obviously team sport. A lot can happen, and yada, yada, yada. But it's just like, he's so nasty.
Lily Shambashi
He's. He's so fast. His stick handling's insane. But you know what? If they don't win, he's out.
Katie Nolan
It seems that way, doesn't it?
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. I think he should be.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
And that could be exciting to see Connor McDavid in a new environment. Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Okay. So that kind of sounds like Lily's rooting for maybe them. Not Edmonton.
Lily Shambashi
Don't come for me.
Katie Nolan
You're just. Just looking at the silver lining if that should happen.
Lily Shambashi
Exactly. I also am married to a Calgary Flames fan. And so Edmonton is like, that's one
Katie Nolan
of my favorite logos from as a child. I love the Flames. I was like, that's the. We had those sheets. I feel like every hockey fan had these.
Lily Shambashi
The sheets.
Katie Nolan
Those sheets that have, like. They were like, blue sheets that had every logo from every team this was back when, like, the Whalers were still a team. And. And I remember my favorite. It must have been that, like, where my head went on my pillow was the Calgary Flames logo. And I was always like, I like this logo.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. They're just not good at hot dogs.
Katie Nolan
I was gonna say, I haven't really talked about them a lot recently. I can't remember the last time I thought about them as a team.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
But it must have been when I was seven, looking at them on my sheets. Did you see the Oilers fans spiraling because Lauren McDavid, Connor's wife, liked an Instagram video on Monday? No. Tell me about McDavid leaving Edmonton to join a super team. And so people were kind of being like, what is this?
Lily Shambashi
I. I think he wants out. He's hinted at it.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. And didn't they ask him? And he was like, you can. You never know. Which is what you say when you basically know.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. And he praised the coaching on other teams and didn't praise his own. Listen, he's a gentleman, like most hockey players are, at least in the media.
Katie Nolan
And I was like, what is she talking about?
Lily Shambashi
Media trained?
Katie Nolan
Yes. They're very good at saying next to nothing.
Lily Shambashi
Nothing.
Katie Nolan
Which we do appreciate.
Lily Shambashi
Pucks deep. That's about it.
Katie Nolan
Sometimes next to nothing is the best way for me to continue liking them. You know what I mean?
Lily Shambashi
Yes.
Katie Nolan
Sabers, Bruins. We don't have to talk about it.
Lily Shambashi
Wait. I love Charlie McAvoy. Can I just say that out loud like one of the good guys, Right?
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
How are you feeling?
Katie Nolan
Yeah. Question mark. I didn't love the. He could have handled.
Lily Shambashi
Wait, what happened?
Katie Nolan
The phone call. A little better. Oh, but he apologized. Yes.
Lily Shambashi
He and Swayman.
Katie Nolan
Yep. And thank you to them for that.
Lily Shambashi
Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, Charlie.
Katie Nolan
I just hold out the. But I. Yeah, listen, I love them. I don't love the way the Bruins look in this post. This is the. And you're. And I'm talking. I've had. The last few post seasons have been pretty tough for Bruins fans. I know nobody cares and I know nobody feels bad, but I can only speak my truth. I don't know what you want from me. Yes, there was when the Panthers knocked us out unceremoniously that first time. I remember my brother just, like, went out and he said he. He thinks he remembers smashing a golf club against a telephone pole. Nice things happened and broke in our brain.
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
It was just like all the promise and none of the. And Florida. Who gives a. And then they go on their run so hockey has been pissing me off. Then they get rid of Brad Marchand, which I'm like, what do you mean? He's gonna go to Florida.
Lily Shambashi
I know.
Katie Nolan
What are you guys talking about?
Lily Shambashi
I know.
Katie Nolan
And then now I'm watching this team in the postseason, and that game on Sunday was maybe the least I've ever enjoyed watching a hockey game. Anything that could go wrong, went wrong. There was not a moment of, like, there's a team that knows what they're doing.
Lily Shambashi
Right?
Katie Nolan
And then the beginning of the game last night started that way. And as soon as I called my mom and said, I'm giving up on this team, go Buffalo. I guess at least it's a good story and we can keep rooting for this team if they. Once they leave us in the dust. Then the Bruins came back and won, and, like, Pasta had the first moment of something exciting. Exciting. Yes. He woke up, and then he goes up to the glass and is like. Like, screaming at them. And I was like, okay, that's enough for me to put the sweatshirt on today.
Lily Shambashi
I'm proud of you for the.
Katie Nolan
It's enough for me to rock the sweatshirt today. We'll see what happens next. I don't have a lot of hope.
Lily Shambashi
The Sabers are the Sabers this year. Everyone thinks the cup is going there, and their fan base is just so alive. They've got the pretzel.
Katie Nolan
It's a bread now. We got yelled at. It's bread. It was never a pretzel. Apparently, it's bread which makes the poppy seeds. I know. The poppy seeds make a lot more sense.
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
On a bread.
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
Sure. I still am opposed to their existence.
Lily Shambashi
The shape is still questionable.
Katie Nolan
I still am against putting my hand on it. It's the whole thing I'm really not into. But now that you bring that up, did you see last night before the game, first thing the Sabers did that I liked was they brought out that group of ice. Not ice skaters, rollerbladers that have been.
Lily Shambashi
I didn't see this.
Katie Nolan
I forget what they're called, but they have, like, a name, and they're all dressed in hockey stuff, and they came out and banged the drum.
Lily Shambashi
Cute.
Katie Nolan
And then one of the hosts of that barstool hockey podcast came out and was gonna chug out of the Saber, which is like those hollow swords that fill with beer.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
And it was the worst chug. The most embarrassing chug you've ever seen
Lily Shambashi
in your life from a barstool guy.
Katie Nolan
And you're like, hello, if you aren't Good at this. I'm afraid to ask what you are good at. And he just couldn't. I think it's that he was. I mean, this is. I can't tell if this is more embarrassing or less embarrassing. Sure. But it's that he was trying to pump up with the roof.
Lily Shambashi
Have you.
Katie Nolan
Right. Like, get the crowd into it. While trying to chug and realize that he can't tap his head and rub his belly at the same time. And both arms were doing the up and down and the beer was sloshing against his face. Oof. Basically, I'm wondering, do you think that is why they lost?
Lily Shambashi
I think so. And I think that's looking good for.
Katie Nolan
For Boston, you guys. Which honestly, at this point, Lily, if Boston wins, I'm like to just what? Go get. Absolutely. Get her ass handed to us. Us. It's. It is what it is. I'm pretending to still have faith.
Lily Shambashi
I. I have the faith.
Katie Nolan
I don't. I really truthfully clip it. Let him know I don't take some of mine. Okay.
Lily Shambashi
I think Swayman has So good.
Katie Nolan
And that's it, though. Like. But that's it. Yeah. But he's so great. Like, let's just root for him. He's so great. And he's so mad at them. It was kind of cathartic to see him get off the ice and go like, hello. Right.
Lily Shambashi
Right. He's so angry. But when a player's angry, usually that means they can play well.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. And I mean, he has been standing on his head.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
I mean, I know. You see like six, one, and you go, no way. The goalie had a good game. And it's like he was doing all he could with like zero defense being played by the team.
Lily Shambashi
But maybe Pasta just needed last night. Maybe he's awake. He's risen.
Katie Nolan
Maybe.
Lily Shambashi
We'll see. Maybe.
Katie Nolan
The Avalanche. These series are over. The Avalanche beat the Kings.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
They're waiting on the winner of that Stars wild series. And then the Hurricanes beat the Senators. They swept them. And they're waiting on the winner of the Penguins. Flyers. So we've got an exciting. Did you see that? The Hurricanes may have jinxed the Flyers. No, but, love, they were selling tickets for the next round. And instead of saying against either the Flyers or the Penguins, they had only put the Flyers.
Lily Shambashi
It's a bad mistake.
Katie Nolan
I know. And imagine if the Flyers blow this.
Lily Shambashi
You know what? And that's again, Sidney Crosby's gonna see that. He's gonna internalize it.
Katie Nolan
I know. It's like bulletin board Material. You do not want to give them that at all. Let's talk WAG Jackets. Wait.
Lily Shambashi
First. I heard you're a huge fan of the Kachuks. I heard through the grapevine you're their number one fan.
Katie Nolan
Just the fact that somebody saw those two, perceived them, took a snapshot of them and their family and the whole vibe, and they said, let's. Let's get those two on the mic.
Lily Shambashi
Yes.
Katie Nolan
Let's give those two a podcast, a video podcast. Let's watch those two read and talk. I think that is definitely the move. It's where I go. I must be out of touch with what's going on in the world. Cause I couldn't. I go, what. What do they talk about? I was just. They were billing it like it was gonna be new heights for hockey, and I'm like, without any of the charm or cultural cachet or kindness, there's nothing to it that relates it to that, except that it's two guys related and they both play a sport.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. So I'm glad I heard right.
Katie Nolan
Oh, my God. I was like, what is this? Really? Are they still doing it? Is it over?
Lily Shambashi
Oh, yes, it's still going. You know those two brilliant, brilliant minds. Brilliant minds. Thank you so much for that podcast.
Katie Nolan
Didn't the Hurricanes troll them by saying something like, if you can read this something. They were like, we won. If you can. If you can read this.
Lily Shambashi
The thing is, is not only do we not like them, but I think much of the league.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
It's not.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
Many of those players don't.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, well, yeah, I can imagine. But then again, you know, many of the players probably didn't like Brad Marchand, and I always liked him. So I do feel like he, especially like Brady Tkachuk, probably fills the role of, like, you hate him unless he's on your team.
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
But maybe I'm just being biased. I always felt like Brad Marchand at least had a little bit of, like, a. A wink, little charm to him, where you can at least go, like, I can't be mad at him. He licked my face. Like, I can't be mad. I can't be mad at him. Whereas Brady Tkachuk is like, yes, I can be, and I will be.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
I intend to be for the rest of my.
Lily Shambashi
The thing is, off the ice, Brad Marchand is, like, seemingly a good guy, it seems.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. And you never know.
Lily Shambashi
You don't know if there's one thing we know. Except did you see his wedding toast to his sister, Brad Marchands?
Katie Nolan
Yes.
Lily Shambashi
That Was beautiful.
Katie Nolan
Very sweet. He does seem like a sweet. I miss him.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
I hate that he plays with the other Tkachuk on the team. I hate more than anything that. I hate that I have to waste any of my hate on because they're
Lily Shambashi
in Florida and they're. But they're not in the post season.
Katie Nolan
Thank God. When they got eliminated, I celebrated more than when I found out the Bruins were in. It was like, thank God I don't have to see the stupid. Chewing on your mouth guard. Put the thing in your mouth. Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
No, it's gross. Do you think it's gross when Steph Curry does it?
Katie Nolan
Less gross.
Lily Shambashi
Okay.
Katie Nolan
It's less gross.
Lily Shambashi
Fair. Fair.
Katie Nolan
It's just the nature of having a mouth. You know what I mean? It's not a mouth I want to be spending too much time thinking about. Okay. Matthew Tkachuk.
Lily Shambashi
I'm not like, ooh, you know, Brilliant mouth with brilliant. So you love coming out of it? Yeah.
Katie Nolan
You like? And subscribe five stars on iTunes to whatever. That's every week. Do we know what that's called?
Lily Shambashi
Loyalistener. Nope.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. Chuck Brothers, Probably. Let's talk. Can we talk? Wag jackets? Let's talk. So do you know the history of the. Do you know when this started? Because I don't. I know that it's, like, become a thing.
Lily Shambashi
It's become a thing. And then, you know Connor McDavid's wife, Lauren.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. Yes.
Lily Shambashi
Is a designer, and so she's, like, taking it over. It's a new level. It used to be kind of just fun. Grab a denim jacket, put a patch on it.
Katie Nolan
Right. Like, iron on. Like, we used to do. Used puffy paint. I don't know if the kids are still using puffy paint clothes, but we were. And now it's kind of this whole thing. It's like an industry where they debut their playoff jackets, the WAG Jackets, for the playoffs. And I've actually seen it, like, throughout, like, even smaller leagues of hockey. Like, I think, like, the AHL does this. It's, like, become a thing. So it's kind of a nice little. Do you have strong takes? You have a favorite and a least favorite from this. From this season?
Lily Shambashi
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I love the Oilers.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
I don't love the Oilers as a team. I think what's hard is they're an orange team. That's a hard color to make a nice wag jacket or if you're in Canada, a wig jacket.
Katie Nolan
A wig. They do say wig.
Lily Shambashi
They say wig.
Katie Nolan
So funny.
Lily Shambashi
It's so good. So Lauren, like, did this muted brown instead of orange. It's kind of cool. Yeah. The Senators, Ottawa.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
Their jacket was incredible. The hockey, not as incredible.
Katie Nolan
No, no.
Lily Shambashi
But the WAG jackets.
Katie Nolan
But it's almost like that sucks because you got such a good jacket and then you got. Yeah. You didn't even. They got swept. Yeah. Yeah. They got so you don't ever. You got to wear it to four games.
Lily Shambashi
I know.
Katie Nolan
And then now it's always gonna remind you. Yeah. And it's gonna remind you of how terrible the experience was.
Lily Shambashi
But it looked great.
Katie Nolan
It did. For. It was short lived.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't love the lightnings.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
A lightning bolt is a hard logo to, like, make look chic.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. Yeah, I could see that.
Lily Shambashi
I'm partial to the mammoths. It's like monochrome, navy, beautiful.
Katie Nolan
There's a lot of monochrome this season. There is.
Lily Shambashi
And it's great. It's in style.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. And then there's other times I don't like it as much. Much.
Lily Shambashi
It's a little boring.
Katie Nolan
Like, I think the Hurricanes one might be a little boring.
Lily Shambashi
Didn't love the canes.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
One thing I will say. Who was I just thinking about? Oh, the Avalanche. The Avalanche. They went in very confident. They designed three different WAG jackets.
Katie Nolan
Three. So then did the Wags get to pick which of the three they want?
Lily Shambashi
It's coordinated. Oh, yeah.
Katie Nolan
By like line or by. Or by position.
Lily Shambashi
No, no. So like they each wear one jacket, then the next game they'll wear another jacket. And then apparently there's more coming.
Katie Nolan
Oh, my God. Now this is.
Lily Shambashi
This is extra, extra. But it's the Avalanche. It's like they knew.
Katie Nolan
Act as if you know.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
So it's like. It's the line between confident and cocky.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
Where it's like, good. I like that they put the effort in.
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
But a little. I mean, are they. Are they making them low quality so that it's all.
Lily Shambashi
They're pretty nice. Nice.
Katie Nolan
Damn.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
And you've liked all of them? No, no. Could have gone with maybe one. Maybe we just picked the one we like.
Lily Shambashi
And maybe one of them is nice. But the other ones I didn't love as much. Vegas. Meh.
Katie Nolan
I haven't seen the Ducks.
Lily Shambashi
I'm trying to think of the ducks. It was forgettable, whatever it was.
Katie Nolan
And that's. I mean, they went big into their orange this year.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. They fully leaned it. Like orange. The orange, orange helmet orange, everything.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. They can. They can. In my mind, I'M trying to think of who else's I just absolutely loved. Hmm. But monochrome is. Is the theme.
Katie Nolan
It's in. It's like very in right now. Oh, you know what I wanted to ask you?
Lily Shambashi
Oh, yes.
Katie Nolan
Before we move on from hockey. Pwhl.
Lily Shambashi
Let's go.
Katie Nolan
Utah is like on the list of teams that are cities that maybe get cities. Utah's a state that's okay. That may be getting a team in the expansion that they've got planned coming up. And we talk a lot on this show about what new nicknames are left out there for like, you know, like the Mammoths when we. Or the Mammoth singular, which Brady really, our producer Brady hates that it's anytime a team enters the league and they are one singular instead of an S. That's fair. It gets confusing, but there's not a lot left. We've kind of gone through all of the animals that make sense. And I hate when we repeat. Like, I hate when two different sports haven't do that. And so I'm wondering, as a person who spent a lot of time in Utah, who is connected to the culture as well as connected to hockey.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
You got any ideas of what they could name this PWHL franchise if they were to get one in the future?
Lily Shambashi
So, you know, they toyed around with YETI so much for the Utah men's.
Katie Nolan
But then I think then they run into like a copyright issue with the Cooler brand.
Lily Shambashi
But why can't the Cooler brand become an insane sponsor? I know that's a sick sponsor for a hockey team. I agree. So maybe they'll do it for the girls.
Katie Nolan
Okay. Maybe the Lady. Yes, the Lady Yeti. Like the Lady Vols.
Lily Shambashi
Right. I like the idea of like a cold weather mammal.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
Not that Yeti is real.
Katie Nolan
No, they're real. No, I think at this point, I'm sure they're gonna at some point release a government file that lets us know that actually they are real.
Lily Shambashi
Yetis, aliens, whatever.
Katie Nolan
Exactly. They gotta distract us with something. Okay, so we'll call them the Yetis.
Lily Shambashi
Okay.
Katie Nolan
And we'll also. We'll brainstorm it. Yeti. Sorry, The Yeti. Singular.
Lily Shambashi
But the PWHL has a lot of singular. Like the Frost. Yeah, singular.
Katie Nolan
The Fleet.
Lily Shambashi
The Fleet. Singular.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
I got quizzed on, like, name a singular sports team.
Katie Nolan
The Septs.
Lily Shambashi
Scepters are in plural.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lily Shambashi
All right.
Katie Nolan
They are up there.
Lily Shambashi
The Victor.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. Victoire.
Lily Shambashi
Victoire Victor.
Katie Nolan
It's the most. It's the hardest sound. It's like the most embarrassing I remember in French class when they would go like, it's victoire, and you were like, I can't do that in front of people I go to high school with. I'm too embarrassed by the victual. Wild. Our mouths don't do that.
Lily Shambashi
I'm adding one wag. Jacket.
Katie Nolan
What jacket?
Lily Shambashi
Well, it's not a jacket. It's pants. It's the Penguins. They have these jeans that are painted.
Katie Nolan
Shut up.
Lily Shambashi
Painted with their partner's number.
Katie Nolan
That's really cute.
Lily Shambashi
It's really cute.
Katie Nolan
In addition to a jacket.
Lily Shambashi
Yes, yes, yes.
Katie Nolan
But they went down to the jeans.
Lily Shambashi
They went down to the jeans, and it's nice. I think, like, yellow and black. Black could be a hard color, but they made it look nice.
Katie Nolan
I think yellow and black are fantastic. I'm sure you do wonderful together. They're actually my favorite. Okay, so that's hockey. Did you have any other hockey things we didn't get to that you wanted to make sure we say no.
Lily Shambashi
It's just such an electric postseason. I wish more people tuned in.
Katie Nolan
I feel like we are getting a couple people. We are. I. I really do think in the future, the. The strategy should be get him in the first round.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
First round of basketball. I know. Think some things, some of this series are heating up, but they're a little bit less exciting, I think. And I think you could really hook people with a. With the first round of the hockey. Of the Stanley Cup.
Lily Shambashi
I'm sorry. Basketball. Like, you know, Jokic was in a. What did they call it? Fight the other night, and they just, like, ran at each other slowly and just crowded. But I'm like, hockey. They're headbutting, they're slamming.
Katie Nolan
At the start of the game, the game is opening, and they're like, throwing gloves down and like, let's get this out of our socks.
Lily Shambashi
It's so cool. Very fun.
Katie Nolan
It's very cool. Very violent. And. And you know what? Sometimes you just need that. Sometimes you just need to get that out. That aggression.
Lily Shambashi
I know. It's my favorite part of the game.
Katie Nolan
Now it's time to turn our attention to Megan Thee, Stallion and Klay Thompson,
Lily Shambashi
the PBS logo man.
Katie Nolan
I mean, every now and then, someone on the Internet will say something that will make you just put your hand over your mouth and you just sit with it for a second and you go, oh. Oh, my God. And that was one of those.
Lily Shambashi
And by the way, like, accurate.
Katie Nolan
I know.
Lily Shambashi
We need a side by side. It is accurate.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, they actually. Oh, they did it. Yeah. Yes.
Lily Shambashi
It's a haircut, everything.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, it's the sharp lines. The. It did him no favors. But he does have shockingly lots in common with PBS logo. I said previously that Megan the Stallion is. Is so objectively hot.
Lily Shambashi
Perfect.
Katie Nolan
That it was enough to make us go, yeah, Klay Thompson is kind of hot. Like, it. It warmed him up to us.
Lily Shambashi
We gave him the benefit. We went, like, the doubts.
Katie Nolan
Oh, I love that she found, like, the one we weren't really looking at. Right.
Lily Shambashi
Like, good for Clay.
Katie Nolan
And what I dislike is this thing. I've noticed this pattern. I've been noticing, just noticing that, like, when a guy that isn't. Let's just say what it is. He was splash brother, but he wasn't the one. He was the second one.
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
When they go through this, cheating on their girlfriend publicly alleged, we still don't really know. But I think if we look at Klay Thompson's history, we can. Can make an informed decision, right? Somehow they come out with, like, these really passionate fans. All of a sudden. This same thing happened with Tory Lanez, if that's how you even say his name, because nobody talked about this guy, right?
Lily Shambashi
Especially this season, until this.
Katie Nolan
And then now they go like, klay Thompson, hall of Famer, and it's a guarantee. First bell, you're like, what are we saying? Since when are you a huge Klay Thompson fan?
Lily Shambashi
Since then they probably also cheated on their wives.
Katie Nolan
It makes me. And it's like, at what point can we start treating people that do that, that come out of the woodwork to defend somebody in these moments as, like, red flags? Pit dog will holler, like, why are you out here? Why are you yelling? Why does this mean so much to you?
Lily Shambashi
Why do you need to defend them so much? I know, because the girlies know, like, someone was just. Just dogging on his season in our comment section, his, you know, shot percentage and everything. And it was like, yes, go drag him. And then, of course, you have some man who's like, no top. Statistically, no one cares, okay?
Katie Nolan
He stinks.
Lily Shambashi
He sucks.
Katie Nolan
He stinks. And he keeps cheating on hot ladies. Like, it just. I think I'm just exhausted. I'm. This hit me. I'm embarrassed by how much this story has affected my last couple days. No, I agree. I don't know these people. This doesn't affect me. But I think what it is is I'm just sick of seeing, like, what more do you want? Yeah, what more do you guys want?
Lily Shambashi
Right?
Katie Nolan
You, like, what are you looking for? And I know everyone's like, don't say it's the. It's not the woman's fault. It's a man. Of course it's his fault. It's just, like, when you see this person who we've watched get hurt so many times publicly be so nice and so, like, open herself to him.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Remember when they made their red carpet debut and Meg on the carpet was like, he's so nice to me. Like, it's just really nice. I've never had somebody that I love be this nice to me, and I just really love him. He's so nice. And you're just like, no, he wasn't. Yeah, he was probably love bombing you, which is. Feels very nice at first.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Like, Megan, the sign has no reason to be cooking your family dinner for Thanksgiving. She could just show up, sit down, and you'd still go, thank God she came and she was there with and, like, making herself soft for you. And I just am so mad that, like, I don't know that this bum.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah, no, I'm with you. I mean, she was so vulnerable about their relationship to the point that she said out loud, publicly, I can't wait to get engaged to this man. Like, I hope a ring is coming.
Katie Nolan
I know. And she wrote a song that now I'm like, I never want to hear that song.
Lily Shambashi
No, no, Ban it from the airwaves.
Katie Nolan
I never want to hear that song again. I only want to hear all the other types of music, and not that one from her. Because that. I mean, I just. He had no idea what he had.
Lily Shambashi
It has to be.
Katie Nolan
He's got to figure out what's going on with him.
Lily Shambashi
Therapy for sure. But I think it's just confirmation that a lot of these athletes, or just men in general who do this feel above the moral code of relationships. They just feel they're above it. They feel that they've been successful enough, that they're hot enough, which obviously, Clay, if you're listening, you are not. Okay?
Katie Nolan
You're not.
Lily Shambashi
You're not above this. You're not hot. You're certainly not hot enough that they feel some justification for cheating. And I've never understood it. I've never understood why athletes do it more, but I think they just think they're above of everything.
Katie Nolan
And what could it possibly be that has led athletes to believe that they're above the rules?
Lily Shambashi
I just can't imagine worshiping possibly taught them that.
Katie Nolan
Through every situation in their lives, from when they're very young, we taught them that if you are good at A sport. You can do whatever you want.
Lily Shambashi
Right. Right.
Katie Nolan
I just wish we would get off this. Like, it doesn't make you the man. If you cheated like it does. You are not the man.
Lily Shambashi
Quite the opposite.
Katie Nolan
Groupies are throwing themselves at you and you are loving that and falling to that. Like, you fucked up here and you fucked up previously. Quite a bit, it seems.
Lily Shambashi
And I just, you know, we can receive some satisfaction. Is that he will get repercussions from this publicly. You know, Like, a lot of them probably don't.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
But they're not dating Megan Thee stallion.
Katie Nolan
I know she's got shooters. We're really out here going, do not
Lily Shambashi
we write it down. All of us.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
And so I will never, ever speak another good word about Klay Thompson ever again. And there's many like me.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. So I saw somebody say, I'd like his ACL on my desk by Monday. There he goes. Like, perfect.
Lily Shambashi
Okay.
Katie Nolan
Perfect. Please.
Lily Shambashi
Karma.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, But. Support public broadcasting Donate to PBS in honor of Clay Thompson. WNBA coming back.
Lily Shambashi
Can't wait.
Katie Nolan
Coming back next week. That's next week, right?
Lily Shambashi
It's next week. May 8th.
Katie Nolan
So quick. It's so crazy the way, like, the tournament happens. Then we had the. Obviously the CBA of it all was still happening. Draft, but they're back next week. The big story. Actually, we should start with. Didn't your. Your dad founded the New York Liberty. Correct sentence.
Lily Shambashi
Correct sentence. Dave is a pioneer of women's.
Katie Nolan
Absolutely absurd. Like the team. Isabella's WNBA team. Our producer and the team that gets. Right. So technically, your dad.
Lily Shambashi
We're so proud of him for that.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
And by the way, like, when I was five. Well, I think the team came when I was. Yeah, five, six. I was at WNBA games, so I always knew. Yeah.
Katie Nolan
You're an OG star.
Lily Shambashi
I always played basketball, too.
Katie Nolan
That's right.
Lily Shambashi
And I think that helped shape my narrative. Like, you know, women's sports are just as cool as men's sports.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
So I'm so proud he was a part of that. I'm still a Liberty, Stan. It's the one team, like, I couldn't let go of when he left.
Katie Nolan
It's a good team to root for. Yeah. It's like you were saying before, your. Your sports fandom was never questioned in your house. And to you, women playing basketball at a professional level was never questioned in your mind because it was just something that was always normal and natural to you. And I do feel like we are in a position where we're getting back to that. I went to a WNBA game this year. And I loved seeing like little kids, like little boys running around in Liberty jerseys. And I was like, they'll never know any different.
Lily Shambashi
Exactly.
Katie Nolan
This is amazing. But as with any growth of any league and bringing in new fans, there are growing pains and the major growing pain we've been dealing with this offse and in all of these conversations has been Paige and az. Since AZ got drafted to the same team where Paige is playing. Paige Beckers. They played together at UConn. They came out and said that they were dating, I believe last summer. And then AZ got drafted this year also to Dallas. So they're now playing together again. It's not their first time playing together and it's also not the first time in the WNBA that a couple is playing together. This is like such, it seemed like such, not news to me and I assume to you as well when this first happened, but now we find ourselves in this situation where during AZ's introductory press conference, the, the Dallas PR people stepped in and said we won't be answering any questions about the relationship. Which then people were like, well, what does that mean? And what's going on? And then I don't know if you saw this, but Paige came out and gave a statement to the press the other day. I think we have the audio of that. Isabella, can you play that for us?
Paige Beckers (Audio Clip)
Quite frankly, I believe me and az's personal relationship is nobody's business but our own. And what we choose to share is completely up to us. But as media members, I understand you guys have a job to do and you guys have to ask questions about the basketball aspect of it. So that's what I will be addressing today. Me and AZ have always been the most professional. We've always conducted ourselves as such. And I'm not entirely sure if this is new to media members, to social media, to new people who are watching the WNBA or women's basketball in general. But me and AZ are not new to this. We've been doing this for a long time. We have countless reps at it. We have a lot of experience with it. So we will continue to use that experience to show up and be professional. Great teammates, great leaders, great leaders, the hardest workers, and continue to show up and do our job and help the Dallas Wings win basketball games.
Katie Nolan
So I thought she did a great job with this. Me too. I think she, you know, reminded them that, like, we've done this before. Maybe it's new to you, it's not new to us.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
And, and I've seen A lot of people have opinions about, well, you shared that you're in this relationship with us and now you're closing the door. And I'm curious to know your thoughts on the whole thing.
Lily Shambashi
I think what people forget is Paige and Az were kind of outed first on social media. There were live streams with them kissing in the back or hugging. And so people like picked up on that and it was fan frenzy. They made edits of it. I mean, the narrative started long before they confirmed everything. And so I think they did feel a little bit pigeonholed into announcing that they were together, but they had just won this championship. Like they were. They were so elated. I think they were in a great spot, but I don't. I don't know what the details of their personal relationship are anymore. I don't think a lot of people do. Right. I'm so hopeful that they're together, but I think what we should remember is they navigated being together in the public eye, but playing together as teammates first and foremost for a very long time. Like she said, we're. We're not new to this. We've done this for a long time and we've also been successful at it.
Katie Nolan
Right.
Lily Shambashi
They won a championship doing it.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
So I hope to see them win another championship doing it. I. I root for them both separately. They're both phenomenal players. It's. I understand the excitement, I understand the buzz. They're both beautiful.
Katie Nolan
First number one picks. Like they. And they both come from the same school and they're both. Yeah. So talented, attractive. Beautiful.
Lily Shambashi
Beautiful.
Katie Nolan
So you get it.
Lily Shambashi
I get it.
Katie Nolan
And at the same time, yeah. It's like you got to give them some space because like, we don't know. Like, imagine the closest I can get to going from college to getting drafted into the NBA is like going from high school to college.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
And I remember the relationship I was in when I got there. That was a holdover from my previous school and I remember how long that lasted. Cuz life got very different very quickly.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
And so I feel like it's entirely possible that with the new life that they have, even though they are on the same team that, look, you don't stay necessarily with the same person that you were with. Things can change. Life changes, new opportunities present themselves. Right. Clay. Tom. And so it just feels like we got to leave space for. If they were to.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
B Word. No longer date, whatever that maybe that, you know, they can still be teammates. They seem like they have thought through all of these options and it Also feels if I were them. Them, especially with sue and Meg breaking up.
Lily Shambashi
Devastating. I'm actually not over it.
Katie Nolan
Me neither. That was. As I said it out loud, I realized, like, whoa. Oh, God, I think I have stomach hurts. I think I have tears left to cry. I should get those out tonight. I. I can see them being like, please don't put all your eggs in our basket. Like, we don't want to carry the weight of that. Like, AZ just finished what I imagine for her was a disappointing performance in the tournament. Now she's got a pivot to play her first pro season, making more money than a player that's in their first season has ever for. She's the first player to get that sort of a contract. There's, like, a lot of eyeballs on the W. There's a lot of pressure Y. And. And people are trying. People that don't know anything are trying to invalidate her pick, saying the only reason they picked her first was because they wanted her for Paige. It's a lot of uninformed people talking, but she's got all this stuff riding on this moment. I completely understand why. They're both like, can we not also put our love lives on the line for all of this?
Lily Shambashi
And also, like, fans sure are gonna be parasocial. Like, that's. That's a part of the game. And being some of the most famous athletes in the world, maybe the media can't be parasocial with this.
Katie Nolan
And that's. And that's. And that's on me because I do think I was really rooting for them when I first found out they were dating. And I. I see now why that's none of my business. Okay.
Lily Shambashi
But it's okay to root for them. You know, the questions.
Katie Nolan
Maybe I'll just root for them, like, silently, silently in my own place. Sure. Did you want to talk about Diana and Mike's playlist?
Lily Shambashi
We should. We should. It would be negligent not to.
Katie Nolan
The story just keeps on giving. The story just keeps on giving.
Lily Shambashi
Layered.
Katie Nolan
It's layered. So somebody found.
Lily Shambashi
People are crazy.
Katie Nolan
For sure. I know people are. Are voracious for information about this relationship. And I also think what we're learning is that the two people allegedly partaking in it, Diana Rossini and Mike Frable, are maybe. Maybe got a little sloppy with receipts. They just assumed who would ever look. And the answer is David Cavucci of FOIA Ball. David, who went and found that Diana Rossini made a Spotify playlist titled Turning the Page that she shared with A user named Mike on December 19, 2022. Now, anybody could be named Mike.
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
Truly.
Lily Shambashi
Including her son.
Katie Nolan
No.
Isabella
Boy A.
Lily Shambashi
Okay.
Katie Nolan
That is true. It also just so happens to coincide with a four game Titans losing streak. At the time, Mike Froebel was head coach of the Titans. They had lost four games in a row. You could assume just from being around sports a lot that he might have said something like, we gotta turn the page.
Lily Shambashi
Yep.
Katie Nolan
And. And Diana. And allegedly we don't. It's not confirmed. We know Diana made this playlist and we know that that's when it fell. And so I was one. We should go through these. We should go through these songs. We should. And see if these would help.
Lily Shambashi
Let's turn the page.
Katie Nolan
Now, ironically, I've noticed missing here. No Bob Seger turned the page, which I would have thought would make it.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Just based on the. It's like naming your movie Footloose and then that song's not in the movie. That wouldn't make any sense.
Lily Shambashi
Come on, Diana.
Katie Nolan
Beyonce, cuff it. Whoa. Well, whoa. And now, you know, sometimes you go. You set out to make a playlist about one vibe, but you're really listening to one song a lot. So you put that one on there even though it doesn't fit the vibe. Yeah, that's what this feels like to me.
Lily Shambashi
I hope it wasn't any deeper than that.
Katie Nolan
I feel like fallen in love is how that song starts. Isn't that interesting? Okay, Lotto. Big energy.
Lily Shambashi
All right.
Katie Nolan
And now. And now I've got follow up questions.
Lily Shambashi
It's so uncomfortable.
Katie Nolan
I've got follow up questions. You know, puff it.
Lily Shambashi
Big energy.
Katie Nolan
Okay. Beyonce, break my soul.
Lily Shambashi
Soul.
Katie Nolan
You won't break.
Lily Shambashi
You won't break my soul. That is about turning the page.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. I thought.
Danielle (Voicemail Caller)
I've.
Katie Nolan
I've strutted listening to that. Thinking about, you know, ex. Employers. Yes, for sure. House Party by Sam Hunt. I don't know if I know. Whoa.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. Do I know that's a house party? We don't need nobody.
Katie Nolan
Oh.
Lily Shambashi
Yep. It follows the theme of the first two.
Katie Nolan
Okay. All right. Route 94 and Jess Glynn, my love. Do you know that one?
Jackie (Voicemail Caller)
No.
Katie Nolan
Me neither. Tiesto, Black Eyed Peas. Pump it louder.
Lily Shambashi
What is going on?
Katie Nolan
I also would have thought that was parenthetical. Pump it parentheses louder. But I guess it's just Pump it louder.
Lily Shambashi
That song always does slap, though.
Katie Nolan
It does. That's a good. Like, oh, it's pre game. Or like, oh, there's a. They're in a TV timeout.
Lily Shambashi
Yep.
Katie Nolan
That's like get the arena going. Song Raise your glass by Pink.
Lily Shambashi
Whoa. Unexpected.
Katie Nolan
Yeah.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. Raise your glass if you've been wronged. So raise it.
Katie Nolan
Is that. What is it? In all the right ways. Oh, my God. This is. This is too much.
Lily Shambashi
Too much.
Katie Nolan
Yep. And then we've got Dev and the Cataracts doing bass down low, which is. I can absolutely picture Diana listening to that song. I don't know that I can picture Mike Vrabel. That feels very Jersey short to me.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Okay. Which. It's fine. Sometimes you share your culture with those you love. Red Hot Chili Peppers can't stop.
Lily Shambashi
Wow.
Katie Nolan
Wow. Yeah. And they won't stop.
Lily Shambashi
There is really only one through line.
Katie Nolan
Right. There's one thing tying them all together. Cut my life into pieces. This is my last resort. Or by Paparo. Like, this feels like. And where we're at with the state of misinformation on the Internet.
Lily Shambashi
Right.
Katie Nolan
I'm waiting for someone to go, guys, obviously that wasn't real.
Lily Shambashi
Right? It's not her real. Spotify.
Katie Nolan
They were joking, right?
Lily Shambashi
No, this is. It's real journalism.
Katie Nolan
It's real. He changed the user. Mike changed. Changed their username since this came out.
Lily Shambashi
Okay.
Katie Nolan
Do you know what they changed their username to? No tie Car. T Y capital C A R. Mike Vrabel has two sons named Tyler and Carter. Katie. What. What are they doing?
Lily Shambashi
Where is pr. What are they doing? I'm mortified, and I have nothing to do with this.
Katie Nolan
It's just like you're covering it up. It's like when you're. It's like your parents walking in and seeing the dirt on the. And you pull the rug over it while the. They're standing there. We know we have object permanence, Mike. We know that this is. We're not done. There's Guns and Roses. Welcome to the ch. Oh, my God. We got fun and games.
Lily Shambashi
Sure.
Katie Nolan
For sure. Def Leppard photograph Kiss God of Thunder.
Lily Shambashi
What is happening?
Katie Nolan
It feels like she started the playlist and then he added his song.
Lily Shambashi
That's exactly what happened.
Katie Nolan
Van Halen danced the night away.
Lily Shambashi
Beyonce to Van Halen and kids.
Katie Nolan
And then ending on sticks.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. This is half his half.
Katie Nolan
This is half his, half her. This is generational. I feel they're. They're. This is. I think where it switches is somewhere around Papa Roach. Guns N Roses. If not Red Hot Chili Peppers. But I could see them both really liking the Red Hot Chili Pepper.
Lily Shambashi
Someone needs to go look at the interview archives and see if he had an interview saying, like, we're ready to turn the page.
Katie Nolan
I bet he did. And honestly, Lily, I bet if they. If he did, they're going to find it. I. I've seen more clips of these two.
Lily Shambashi
I know.
Katie Nolan
People are digging back through the archives of everything at this point. Yeah. Which does drive me a little nuts as a lady who dares to make jokes on tv. I feel like if anything ever happens in my life, they're pulling old jokes going like, wow, they'll find it. And you're like. But it's just. But then at the time, they were joking.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
Like, I don't know if you saw people pulling, like, random dudes in her replies going like, are you sleeping with Mike Frable? And I go, okay. And a broken clock is right twice a day.
Lily Shambashi
Exactly.
Katie Nolan
That guy wasn't chasing down a lead.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. No.
Katie Nolan
He was accusing her of something to discredit her in a sexist way.
Lily Shambashi
And he's probably done that with multiple female broadcasters.
Katie Nolan
If he has.
Lily Shambashi
If.
Katie Nolan
Even if he ends up being correct, that does not mean that guy just knew. Right. It meant that we all get that every day.
Lily Shambashi
Yes.
Katie Nolan
Which we do. But we might start getting less of because of places like Sports Ish. So, Lily, thank you so much for being here.
Lily Shambashi
Thank you.
Katie Nolan
Remind everybody where they can find you and Sports Ish and where we can just sort of bring more people into sports.
Lily Shambashi
Thank you. We're on Social Sports Ish and Substack Sports Ish. Have you been on Substack? It is a fun place.
Katie Nolan
There's a lot going on over there.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah. You should come.
Katie Nolan
I feel like every time I click on it, it says, like, you got to sign up for this. And I'm just in a place right now. No new usernames.
Lily Shambashi
Yep.
Katie Nolan
Like, it's. I just can't. I'm not ready. But I know I'll be there eventually. And then I'll go. I really should have gotten over here five years ago.
Lily Shambashi
It's, like, the only social media without toxicity yet. So we like it.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. For now, I think I'm trying to just cut the whole concept out of
Lily Shambashi
my life of social media.
Katie Nolan
Can you imagine?
Lily Shambashi
No.
Katie Nolan
Imagine a world.
Lily Shambashi
You know what? I certainly would feel less things because the emotional roller coaster we've been on, like, brokenhearted over Megan Sue.
Katie Nolan
Right.
Lily Shambashi
Angry over Clan Megan.
Katie Nolan
Yep.
Lily Shambashi
Anxious over Az and Paige.
Katie Nolan
Yep.
Lily Shambashi
And then I don't know what we feel about Mike and Diana, but just
Katie Nolan
a little ditty about Mike and Diana, and then you put that. Even that didn't make it onto the playlist Jack and Diane. That would be fun. All right, now I'm just making them. Maybe we should just make them a Spotify playlist. We should send it to cope with.
Lily Shambashi
You've got their numbers, whatever.
Katie Nolan
They're allegedly just one of them, just Diana, and I've been too afraid to use it, but at some point I'm going to have to call her Lily. Thank you for being here and for doing all this. You're the greatest and hopefully we'll see you again soon.
Lily Shambashi
Absolutely.
Katie Nolan
This show is sponsored by Better Help. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, stuck, anxious or unsure, it's okay. Those feelings are more common than we think. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a good reminder that you don't have to go through those feelings alone. Having someone with you to listen to, understand, to support you. You can make all the difference. Whatever it is that's keeping you up at night, Therapy with Better Help can help you check in with yourself and gain support from experienced professionals. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. Just take a short questionnaire to identify your needs and Preferences and BetterHelp will handle the initial therapist matching work for you. Feel confident knowing Better Help Therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the us. It is a resource that's available to you. You you don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com Katienolan that's betterhelp.com Katienolan this year, experience the
SiriusXM Ad Announcer
NHL playoffs your way. Want to watch a single do or die Game seven? A full week of a heavy hitting back and forth series. Then check out Sling's 1, 3 and 7 day passes. Watch the Chase for the cup on ESPN and TNT starting as low as $4.99. No long term contracts or overpaying. Just live hockey at home or when you want it. Sling lets you do that. Visit sling.com to learn more.
Love's Rewards Ad Announcer
Out on the road, it's nice to have a partner who can help you make the most of your journey. A partner like the Luvs Rewards app. With Love's Rewards along for the ride, you save 10 cents on every gallon of gas every time you fill up at Love's and up to 25 cents on every gallon of auto diesel. That's why it's the best fuel discount program on the road. Download the app today, then watch those savings add up mile after mile. Love's Rewards save and earn at every Turn terms apply. Not available in all states.
Katie Nolan
We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature.
Lily Shambashi
Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes. Nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With Alltrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on trail navigation. Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with Alltrails.
Katie Nolan
And we're back. Wow, Lily. I'm so glad that she came by. She's so great. Guys, check out sports. And this. It's awesome. Yeah, I thought that was awesome. Okay, let's get into. What are you laughing at? What are you laughing at?
Brady
The play the. The Spotify playlist. There was a. While you guys were wrapping up, there was a. A piece on Yahoo that pulled up an old 2023 report from Titans.com while Mike Vra was the head coach there.
Katie Nolan
Oh, God.
Brady
Quoting the Titans.com piece. During the practice session, there was plenty of rock and country music blaring through the speaker. Def Leppard, Guns n Roses, and even some old school sticks. Renegade could be heard loud and clear, along with some Bob Seger, which makes me think Mike did add Bob Seger to this playlist at some point.
Katie Nolan
So they co collaborated. Oh, are you being serious?
Brady
I'm serious. This report makes it sound very much like Mike played this playlist at Titans practice.
Katie Nolan
Oh my God. This story is just. It won't die. It's all there. I don't. At least they added Bob Seeger to the list. I really felt that was a glaring mistake.
Brady
Mike looked at it and said, why isn't Seeger on here?
Katie Nolan
The namesake has to make it to the. Okay, can we. Let's check our mailbox. What do we got today, Chris? Give me something.
Chris
Well, the first email that we have or the first voicemail that we have is from Jackie from Cape Cod. Let's have a listen to Jackie's message.
Jackie (Voicemail Caller)
Hi, Katie and the Casualties. This is Jackie calling from Cape Cod, and I have two things that I want to tell you. The first is that my favorite time to listen to the podcast is while I'm driving, and I almost never know where I'm going despite living here for 10 years. So I have my navigation going all the time, which is set to be the voice of an Australian man who happens to sound a lot like Chris. So I spent a lot of the Time in my car by myself, screaming at Chris to stop interrupting Katie. She's very smart and has delightful, intelligent and important things to say. So Chris, if you could work on that.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, Chris, please.
Jackie (Voicemail Caller)
Thank you so much. The other thing that I wanted to say is that I am a bartender and I'm just so grateful for you guys and everything that you do. Sports truly are for everyone. And listening to this podcast, I get to talk to everybody about something. There's something interesting and fun and funny for every single person that I encounter on a daily basis to talk about based on things that I learn on this show. So I'm so happy that you guys are doing this and I love you and I mean it. Even you, Chris. Okay, bye.
Katie Nolan
Wait, I love that. That's so cute. Wait, I love that for a number of reasons. That's like such a. Not to get emotional over a random voicemail. But that's like so full circle for me, Jackie, because my childhood I grew up with listening to sports talk radio. Cuz my mom was a bartender and she was like, listen, I can make more money if I know what's going on inside sports. So we would just always listen to sports talk radio so that she could talk to people about sports when she got to her job, because it was the easiest small talk to make with anybody from any walk of life. So to hear that now I'm helping do the same, it just like makes me kind of really emotional in a way that I wasn't expecting. So shout out.
Brady
I pray that so much of our content comes up at that bar. Like, I'm hoping somebody sits down at Jackie's bar in Cape Cod. And she's like, what's trouble you? And he just says in a thick Australian accent, carlton, mate.
Katie Nolan
She's like, I got this. I know what to say. Or he goes like that young way coo. I just keep thinking about the kick he missed. And she's like, well, man, did you
Chris
see Luke Litler's 9 data the other day?
Katie Nolan
We haven't talked about LR in so long. Chris. Is he doing okay?
Chris
He's still doing fine. He's still doing his thing. I think once we had him on Some of the. Some of the shine about Luke Whitler
Katie Nolan
sort of wore off a little bit. That's one way to put it. All right. Oh, Jackie, I love you and I mean it. Thank you for your voicemail. That was really. I can't make it clear just how much that means to me. Actually, we got another one, Chris.
Chris
We do. This is From Sigh from New Jersey. You might remember Sigh as the person who called in and told us that he pooped himself after having a whole lot of chicken nuggets.
Katie Nolan
I forgot. Thank you for. I'm sure Psy really appreciates you reminding us.
Chris
Thank you. Yep, he definitely does. Let's have a listen to what he has to.
Sigh (Voicemail Caller)
Hey, casualties. This is Sigh from New Jersey. I have a question I'd like your opinion on. I currently have a 14 year old daughter who has her first boyfriend and he is from Pittsburgh and a big Pittsburgh Penguins fan. Family's die hard Penguins fan. And my family, myself included. I mean, obviously me, die hard Flyers fan. I have Flyers tattoos. My first dog was Dean Flyer Black Lab. Rest in peace. I love her. Miss her. My question is, I don't know how I feel about my daughter, Dana, Penguin fan. I know she's only 14 and probably is not going to be her husband,
Katie Nolan
but you don't know.
Sigh (Voicemail Caller)
I've also been told by said boy that his dad has gotten to arguments and fights with Flyers fans. So obviously this is not going to mesh well from the jump. So. Yeah, I don't know what to do.
Katie Nolan
Oh boy. We got a real conundrum on our hands.
Chris
We do.
Katie Nolan
And I'll remind you, the Flyers and the Penguins, now that could be over by the time people are listening to this, but to us, it's three, two, that series. The Flyers are up. So this is like kind of an important moment for this decision.
Isabella
Just only be around him in the off season.
Lily Shambashi
Yeah.
Katie Nolan
You know, just like get. Let her get through this series. It's her first boyfriend. You cannot go like, you can't see him. Because if there's anything I've learned from the movies, it's if you say that she will marry him. So you have to just sort of push the Flyers fandom onto her. Don't let them take her. She can't like be a Penguins fan. Fan for him. Brady's making a face.
Brady
I think s just got to fight his dad. Just. Just get out of the way.
Katie Nolan
Just pull up and. And tell him to come outside. And like, the quicker we get this done, let's settle it like men.
Brady
I don't want. I don't want facts being unknown. We. We got to find out where we stand right now.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. Yeah. Drop the gloves. No jerseys. Over the head. Once it hits the ice, blow the whistle. But I do think the two of them have to pow, pow, pow. Just to see who really wins. I think if you zoom out far enough side the silver lining is like she's dating a hockey fan. And as a hockey fan, you know, you're not always finding other hockey families. And so it is at the. At the heart of it. I mean, if you zoom out far enough, you're all Pennsylvania hockey fans. There's like a. Yeah.
Isabella
I thought he was gonna say he's like a devil.
Katie Nolan
You're more alike than different.
Brady
So gritty and iceberg that they're both Pennsylvania hockey fans.
Katie Nolan
It's just you're more alike than you are different. There's more common ground here than you think. And. And only one of you is going to win moving forward. So you just sort of have to. If the Penguins move on, he's going to be so annoyed having a daughter date in a Penguins fan cuz she's then going to root for the Penguins and he's not going to want to hear that at all. Good news is the Penguins shouldn't be moving on cuz Philly's going to wrap this up tonight.
Chris
So let's hope for size sake. That's true.
Katie Nolan
Size sake. But yeah, I would say of all the things your daughter could fall in love with someone that. That they're into something at. This is not the worst of it. You know, he likes.
Chris
Yes. There's plenty to talk to the son about, so that's something.
Katie Nolan
Yeah. At least they know hockey. You know, Brady doesn't seem to agree. Or you just are making interesting faces that I can't read.
Brady
I don't like grappling with this as a potential future concept in my own life.
Katie Nolan
Just the thought of your daughter dating. I think the thought of your daughter dating scares you. Just in.
Brady
Yeah. You're a tourist in this conversation. Okay. You are a tourist.
Katie Nolan
That's right. And I love it. It's so fun. I'm never gonna have this issue. Myrtle can't date. That's a hard and fast rule.
Brady
You won't let her.
Katie Nolan
Yeah, because the guys have to come and pick her up from the door and they refuse to do that. And so I'm like, well then you can't take my hairy little girl out on a date. I'm so sorry. It's exactly the thing my mom said to people middle school. Hey guys. That's it. That is the podcast. It was a really fun one. Go check. Check out Sportsish. It's awesome. Follow them. Give them a follow on Instagram. It's just like sports stories that maybe you're not getting necessarily served up to you by the millions of other things the algorithm is feeding you. And it's fascinating and it's great content. And Lily and everyone that works over there at Sportsish does such a good job. Big thanks to Lily for coming by today. And, you know, let's all hope the Bruins go out there. And I actually don't even know if I'm rooting for it. I kind of just hope they lose the next game so it can be over over and we can move on with our lives. But hey, go Bees and and we'll see y' all back here next week for some hot content, right, Isabella, Thumbs up. Love you.
Lily Shambashi
Yep.
Katie Nolan
Mean it. Bye.
Love's Rewards Ad Announcer
Out on the road, it's nice to have a partner who can help you make the most of your journey. A partner like the Love's Rewards app. With Love's Rewards along for the ride, you save 10 cents on every gallon of gas every time you philip at Loves and up to 25 cents on every gallon of auto diesel. That's why it's the best fuel discount program on the road. Download the app today, then watch those savings add up mile after mile. Love's Rewards Save and earn at every turn. Terms apply. Not available in all states.
Katie Nolan
Why have I asked my h vac
Lily Shambashi
guy I found on Angie.com to change my grandpa's trachea tube? I was so amazed at how he replaced our air ducts. I knew I could trust him to change my Pop Pop's tube.
Brady
I think we should call a doctor, Angie. The one you trust. Define the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects at Angie. Combination.
Date: April 30, 2026
Host: Katie Nolan
Guest: Lily Shimbashi (Sports Ish)
This edition of Casuals delivers a lively, wide-ranging survey of the week in sports and sports-adjacent headlines, with a special emphasis on inclusivity and entertainment over stats and gatekeeping. Host Katie Nolan, joined by guest Lily Shimbashi—founder of Sports Ish—touches on the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs, the complex relationship between sports and gambling, Florida baseball’s prom-night predicament, miraculous sports-adjacent medical saves, heated sports love lives, and viral WAG (wives and girlfriends) fashion. Throughout, the mood is irreverent, bright, and welcoming, combining sports culture, personal stories, absurd news, and a genuine effort to include newer fans in the conversation.
This Casuals episode is funny, thoughtful, authentic, and emotional—a blend of personal connection, sincere sports talk, and high-energy pop-culture commentary. It’s accessible for the “sports-curious” but never pandering, and it frequently circles back to themes of inclusivity, joy, and the real (sometimes absurd) human stakes of sports culture.
Whether you're deeply invested in the Stanley Cup playoffs, catching up on WNBA offseason drama, or just want to enjoy stories at the intersection of sports, society, and silliness, this show has something for you. The highlight is the rapport between Katie and Lily, whose playful candor and shared ethos for making sports fun and open for all make the hour fly by.
For more from Lily, check out Sports Ish on social and their Substack.
Next week: More sports, more pop culture, more recapping the weirdest and most wonderful sports-adjacent headlines.