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- [00:13]
Sam
All right, welcome back to another episode of the most Valuable Asian Podcast. I am joined today by a buddy of mine in Pittsburgh. To the hockey fans out here, he may look familiar. This is somebody who played in the NHL, was a second round draft pick, I think, in 2007. And if you are a local Pittsburgh guy, you probably recognize, recognize him from being the head coach and I guess hockey director of the Shady side Academy Bulldogs. Go Dogs.
- [00:40]
Matt
Go Dogs.
- [00:41]
Sam
Go Dogs. Love it. So at the onset, I want everybody who's listening to kind of understand, Matt, why would you have somebody who's in the NHL or was in the NHL who's a hockey coach come on the podcast? Like, help me understand that. And there's really two things that I want everybody who's listening to to fully grasp and understand. The first is, I think a lot of the travel, baseball, parents who listen to my podcast, they all right or wrong, probably assume, well, we know youth sports is crazy, but the stuff going on in baseball is unique, and that doesn't really happen anywhere else. And I think you could speak to whether or not that's true. And then the second point is really, for any pro baseball players listening, you obviously played in the NHL in a system that has a salary cap, right. So you got to experience it from, you know, living within it, having to operate within it, and really seeing kind of that behind the scenes look into it. Did it work? Did it not work? What were the problems with it, et cetera. So as we jump in here, number one, appreciate you for joining us, but I guess quickly walk us through. So you're obviously from Philadelphia, Right. You played, I would imagine, hockey your whole life. Right. What age did you start?
- [01:54]
Matt
Yeah. So first off, thanks for having me. Yeah. I'll give you a little background on my story. So I grew up in the inner city of Philadelphia. Blue collar family. My mom was a waitress. My dad was a mailman. I had two older sisters that were very involved in sports. Philadelphia is a city of 2 million plus people. At the time, I was the fifth ever kid in the inner city of Philadelphia to be drafted in the NHL. So when you look at the path to professional hockey, this is not a hotbed for developing hockey players. But what makes my story somewhat unique is I kind of had this hand or, you know, big break. I'm a faithful person. Maybe someone shining down on me to just kind of like, show me an organic road to the top. So two sisters that played sports. My oldest was in softball. Early age, it was. It was kind of told to me that Every kid at the field would go to the playground, would be roughhousing and you just see me in the outfield watching baseball. My sister would be there and I had this ability to observe and process and learn. So while games were going on, I'd sit in the outfield and I'd watch the boys play at five and six years old. And I would do it for hours and hours and my dad would be like, why aren't you at the playground? Why aren't you playing football? And I just wanted to sit and I wanted to watch. So the story is that when I had my first T ball game, I was the last batter you get to hit the automatic home run. And I did a perfect stand up slide. Nobody taught me how to do it, but it was just, I think my gift was the ability to process and to observe my surroundings. The YMCA growing up was the old school daycare for any working parents. I got dropped off there multiple times at a young age. Most kids were playing basketball, swimming in the pool. I found myself in a half of a basketball court playing floor hockey. Don't know why, don't know how. Was just naturally drawn to the game of Florida. From there. Someone told my dad, your kid's pretty good at floor hockey. Get him into roller hockey. Only place to play roller hockey in inner city was in a basketball gym. Small confined space. Helped me learn how to get my head up, have some awareness on the court, develop my hands and then the last pieces. Someone, someone told my dad, he's pretty good at roller hockey. Try him on ice skates.
- [04:07]
Sam
And what age was that?
- [04:08]
Matt
That was probably around 8 years old. Very late to today's, today's terms. The closest rink to my house was a figure skating facility. So my dad took me every Friday to figure skate with a buddy of mine and I did a one hour figure skating lesson and then did an open skate for two hours. So I skated for three hours on Fridays. If you look at the European model on how to develop a hockey player, you start him in figure skating and then you put him in a small confined area to help develop his vision, his hands and his on ice awareness. So kid in the inner city of Philadelphia, with no direction, no playbook, no game plan, got the European hockey model of development naturally from there it was just, you know, going into the club hockey scene. Started in low level hockey, played all kinds of sports, was a baseball player, played baseball up into high school lacrosse. But once I turned 15 is when things started to really, really accelerate. So that's just a Little bit about my getting into hockey journey.
- [05:09]
Sam
Fascinating. I never would have expected that you started out figure skating. What's funny? So I may have told you this before. So as a kid, I had played baseball as well, but I went to the ice rink, watched my sister skate. My mom then put me on skates. And I was a little younger than you, so I think I was like five or six. But it's funny how, like, that's kind of the introduction into a lot of this for people. It's like, yeah, get them on skates. And of course, the first time you skate, it's atrocious. Right. You're not doing anything with it. But I find it interesting that you actually had this ability to watch and learn. And I'm sure on some level, that kind of. It lended itself to your success down the road. How. Okay, so at 15 years old, things started to take off a little bit in Philadelphia. Are you playing for the high school team or how. How does it work?
- [05:58]
Matt
Yeah, so the. The high school. It's probably kind of similar to what's happening in baseball. I'd say hockey was probably the first to have it happen. Where club was life. Yeah, you couldn't advance. Playing high school hockey was just for fun, and it was social. Club hockey was always going to be how you get to the next level. And that's, you know, early 2000s, that had introduced into hockey. So I played high school for the social part, which I think is really, really important. But I did play club hockey. I started off with a team called the Valley Forge Minutemen, who were probably the third or fourth best in the city, and then went up the road to play for the number one team, the Philadelphia Junior Flyers. And at 15 years old, the best thing that happened to a young kid happened. I got cut. I got cut from the first team and ended up having to play for the second team. And I think that's one of two of the great transformations that happened to me, where I had a decision to make at 15 years old. It was feel bad for myself and give up or just get fricking angry and get pissed off and do something about it. And I chose to get angry and pissed off and work and prove people wrong.
- [07:03]
Sam
Did your. Did your dad ever force it on you? Like, was he, or were you, like, your own driver?
- [07:10]
Matt
Yeah, I mean, I'd say, like, the expectation of my dad not knowing anything about the game was said, obviously, effort and attitude. Right. So your. Your effort is the name on the back of your jersey. A lot of people look at it as like, that's the me. He. He instilled in me that my name on the back of my jersey represented our family. It didn't just represent me. So I had an expectation that I had to be the hardest worker. And that was the standard that he held me to, was I needed to make sure that I was the hardest worker. So when I got cut from that team, it was, hey, you got something to prove, you got that name on the back, like, go out there and just work harder than everybody else and see what happens. But there was no expectation outside of that.
- [07:47]
Sam
What's interesting to me too is I had the same experience. When you grew up in the United States and you're playing hockey, it's not an American sport, right. It's Canadian sport. And so if you grew up in Canada, chances were that maybe your dad actually played hockey, Right? Sounds like your dad didn't. My dad also didn't. And so from a parent standpoint, they're trying to instill in you, like, we want you to do this thing, but they can't actually speak to ever doing it themselves. And so there's this weird dynamic that occurs where it's like, how do you, how do you parent or coach as a parent when you don't ever have the experience of actually doing it yourself? Like, that's a. That's nothing that I even expect anybody to have an opinion on. It's more like what a hard thing for any parent to do because that's an unnatural feeling. Like if I'm coaching baseball, I'm coaching from my own experience. But if I had never played hockey and I'm coaching my kid playing hockey, it's like, hey, man, at some point, like, you got to listen to your coaches. I don't know whether what you're doing is right or wrong. Like you need to ask them. Which I think is actually kind of a cool dynamic too, because it removes maybe the parent from over coaching and getting maybe too involved.
- [08:51]
Matt
Hundred percent. Because I think now that I'm on the other side as a hockey coach, I feel like some of, you know, a lot of destruction happens on the car, in the car ride, right? The car ride home from the game, car ride home from the field. You know, I kind of label it as we're living in a world of the snowplow generation, where mom and dad are out front trying to pave a flat road for their kid versus the ability to be a self starter, to process emotions, understand adversity, how to work through it, independence and My dad's inability to be able to sit in the car and say, I think you're better than this kid, or I think you're co. He couldn't do that because he wasn't knowledgeable enough to do that. So the expectation was, is, hey, how do you feel? I feel pretty crappy. Well, what are you gonna do about it? Are you gonna go out back and you're gonna shoot pucks? Are you gonna go run the hills? Or what are you going to do where in today's generation, it's, I'm gonna call your skills coach or I'm gonna go get the video, I'm gonna pay, and I'm gonna go do more for you. Which is all in good, genuine, you know, care for your kid, but sometimes let them process their own journey. And I think that's what you're mentioning, and similar to me is all he knew was you just got to work yourself out of it and you got to figure this out.
- [10:04]
Sam
I'm assuming you had somebody who you tried to model your game after. And I don't mean somebody. It could have been Eric Lindross who was a flyer, maybe in the NHL. You're like, I want to be just like him. But I do think it's valuable for any athlete to really pick somebody who plays the game the right way. And then you, you, you keep that in mind as you're doing things like what would, what would this player be doing in this scenario? Right. He'd probably be figuring out how to get better. Did you have somebody like that that you focused on, looked at?
- [10:31]
Matt
Yeah, and I think there's a couple different parts to that. So, like, we didn't have Instagram or social media, and I think social media is, we can get into a longer, detailed understanding of my perspective of why that's very, very detrimental to the youth. But we didn't have 10 second clips to, to watch. We had to watch the full bill of work the whole game. Right? You'd sit down and you'd watch a Flyers game. I'd watch Eric Lindros play the entire shift. I'd watch what he did on the bench. I'd watch his attitude, the fights, the penalties. I'd watch everything that went into his game to try to model it off. But why did I pick Eric Lindros? Well, I was always the biggest kid on the ice, right? It looked like at times he was slow. I got told that I was slow. But the bigger guys, just longer stride. It takes a little bit longer for us to get going So I spent more time watching hockey and looking at a player that I envisioned myself as versus let me just watch all the guys score goals on Instagram. Well, we didn't have that. So Lindross was one that I watched. Keith Primo was another one. I wore 25 and pro cause of Keith Primo. And I tried to watch more than just the goals and assists because we really couldn't. We didn't have YouTube or anything like that. I got to watch the entire shift in the way that they played.
- [11:40]
Sam
Yeah, that's so interesting to me. I know how big you are today, and thinking that you were like, a big kid, like, not a surprise. When you were in the NHL, you were a winger. What were you growing up? Same.
- [11:52]
Matt
No center. Usually, like, the. One of the better kids always just gets put into center, right? So I started as a center. And I'll tell you what, that was a huge adjustment, right? Because you go from all this freedom you have as a centerman, you have the ability to always be moving where when you get on the wing, it's a lot more in the trenches, against the walls. You don't have both sides of the ice to work off of. You have the boards on one in the middle of the ice. So it was definitely an adjustment. So I did. I naturally watched centers, and then as I got older, I started to shift. Okay, now I got to watch a winger play because I'm a winger.
- [12:24]
Sam
Right. So as your career kind of took off, and I do want to come back to the career a little bit, but what would you say your. Your family specifically did well for you? Looking back on, you know, you're obviously dealing with a ton of parents now. Being the director at the school that you're at, interacting with a lot of these parents, seeing the good and the bad, what would you say that your parents actually did well for you, that that led to some of your success?
- [12:50]
Matt
Well, the. The biggest thing is it's ha. I mean, it's ultimately the financial piece, right? Like, hockey's an expensive sport. Dad worked multiple jobs, mom was working. But for me, I think it was just. Always just being a cheerleader, Right? Like, effort and attitude. Those have nothing to do with the results. Right. It was all about the process and then just enjoying the moment. I'm always gonna have a support group. Mom was always the phone call when it was just life talking about kids stuff. And dad seemed to be the one that wanted to discuss more about, like, the intricacies and really just, like, how cool everything was, right? It wasn't like, hey, you had a bad game. It was like, that was a pretty awesome game. That was pretty cool. What'd you think of that stadium? Like, it was just an ability to escape. We had the best relationship. For me to just feel like a kid and remember why I was playing the game. There was no external pressure about what's next, what's next? What's next? You need to do this or that.
- [13:44]
Sam
Right. Which leads to the bigger problem that I see today, as I'm sure you do. A lot of parents are led by a sense of fear, Right. Whether it's fear that their kid is going to miss out on the opportunity, fear that they're not being exposed enough, fear that, you know, we're. We're investing all of this money, which I do want to kind of touch on how expensive it is, but investing all this money and it never turning into anything. In. In youth hockey today, when you say it's expensive, like, what it. Give me an idea.
- [14:15]
Matt
Yeah. So the top organization in the Pittsburgh area, they're requiring you to move schools because the school that is near the rink has a special schedule for you to have more ice time. They want you to sign up for their training package. They want you to sign up for the team, the jerseys, the tournaments, all the Travel. It's probably $45,000 a year for one kid to play hockey at highest level in Pittsburgh.
- [14:41]
Sam
Yeah. So as that relates to baseball, I would say that's even what you just described is on the higher end, where in baseball you can pick and choose. Should we go to these certain things? There are these programs you'll be a part of where you are paying these. These fees and whatnot. So I definitely don't want to act like it's free by any means, but there's less of a local draw of, like, oh, this local team is requiring that I spend no less than 45,000. That is somewhat surprising to me. Yeah.
- [15:12]
Matt
Yeah. And I mean, I think the biggest piece of that is that investment. As a parent, you feel like should be everything to get them to the next level. But as we both know, it always comes down to what are they doing when nobody's watching. That's how you separate the good from the great. That's how when puberty hits, when maturity happens, like, that's where the men separate from the boys. And there is no investment you can make in the. What I call. In my opinion, that's the it factor. The it factor is what a kid is doing when nobody's watching. And their ability to want to be in that environment. Most kids burn out at 18 years old because of being pressured into that environment. Not all of them want it.
- [15:52]
Sam
Do you find that kids playing hockey can play multiple sports?
- [15:56]
Matt
Absolutely. I mean, I think of all sports, athleticism plays the biggest role in hockey. There's a statistic that 75% of the NHL played multiple sports until they were 16 years old. Now, with the resurgence of club, the ROI on being specialized athlete, we have kids getting sports hernia surgeries at 15, hip surgeries at 14. That's overuse injuries. Yeah, athleticism is the most important thing, and it's part of why I'm coaching at Shadyside in a prep school, because it's a school requirement that you have to play multiple sports. And I think that's a huge advantage that we have.
- [16:33]
Sam
So have you talked to the administrators who came up with this rule and, like, why they believe this to be the right pathway?
- [16:39]
Matt
It's just. That's just been the traditional prep school model. If you look at prep schools across the country, they have basically three terms, and two of the three terms you have to play a different sport. So most of my hockey athletes will play fall and winter hockey, no problem. We'll play 50, 60 games. We'll compete with what everybody else is doing. And then when March 1st hits, put your gear away. Go play lacrosse. Go play baseball. I have kids that play ultimate Frisbee track and field. It's okay for your body to still be athletic, but heal at the same time. I think that's more. More powerful for the mind than it is even for the body.
- [17:15]
Sam
So specifically around youth hockey today, if a kid is in high school and he's playing for you, he's also playing these other sports. When does he have time to play club hockey?
- [17:27]
Matt
So that's where we're. We're trying. We're supplementing club hockey. That's what we're trying to do. We're competing with it. So most prep schools now, we're not really considered high school. High school would kind of be like that social aspect that I talked about, like locally, Pine Richland or somebody like that. You can play high school for them and club somewhere else. We're telling the kids, give up club hockey and trust in our process to be the replicated or even do it better. So we are basically club hockey, but as a school.
- [17:55]
Sam
Got it. So someone who is used to the club hockey mold, if they would find club hockey to be attractive in their mind, whether it's a parent or a player, what Is it about club hockey that is the draw? Is it? Oh, well, I'm gonna go. Because in baseball, you're gonna go to these national events. You're going to be seen by whether it's D1 colleges, pro scouts, like that's typically the draw. Right. The. The parent feeling like, I want to get my kid around the best players. That's where he's going to develop. Is that what it is for hockey too?
- [18:28]
Matt
Yep. And you, you, you explained it perfectly because that's basically as. As recruiting. Everything you're mentioning is results driven. Right. It's how many games, how much exposure can you get me. It's not about development. Right. Though they'll come in and say, we're going to go to this showcase, that showcase, Scout, scout, scouts. Actually, it should be the opposite. How many practices are you going to have? How many skill sessions are you going to have? What is the development method that you guys do? But instead, the draw for club hockey is all about what showcases, what exposure, how many games. Right. My sell is we have a rink on campus. We're on the ice five to seven times a week. I'm going to give you the ability to develop you Monday through Friday so that the hard work you put in practice, the game is just an opportunity to showcase the confidence that you developed in practice. I am very. I'm pro practice and games are just the ability to showcase what you put in.
- [19:23]
Sam
So I have a saying where if you take what a lot of families think to be the focus and it sounds like it's the same in hockey, exposure is number one for them. Right. The third component, which I'll skip the second for a moment. The third component is the development. Right. And I'll develop however I develop. And then the second and the reason I skipped it, it's competition. Competition sits there as like, well, we know we have to compete on some level, but it's just a part of what we're doing. And I've always told people, flip that upside down. Being recruitable is not the same as being seen.
- [19:55]
Matt
Right?
- [19:55]
Sam
Right. You can be seen a bunch, but if you're not any good, it doesn't matter. Like you're. They're watching the player that you show them in that moment. So if you're not developing, that clearly is the biggest piece. So it sounds like naturally not surprising you've done that yourself and said we need to develop. So practice is the most important piece the game. Yeah. That's a byproduct of if we do everything well, obviously we're going to have to go out there and play and test where we're at. But the exposure piece, that's a byproduct of doing everything else well.
- [20:27]
Matt
Right.
- [20:28]
Sam
Is that fair to say?
- [20:28]
Matt
Yeah. I mean, preparation is everything. Right. There's, There's a, Another statistic. I don't know why I'm struggling with that word, but Sidney Crosby has the puck on a stick for about a minute and ten seconds in a game. Best player in the world, minute and 10 seconds. Hockey player has a puck on a stick for 10 to 13 minutes in a practice.
- [20:44]
Sam
Right.
- [20:44]
Matt
Same thing as a, as a batter in baseball. If you get three to four at bats in a game, that's a normal game, well, you can go explore, experiment, develop in the cage. Seeing how many abs.
- [20:55]
Sam
Yeah, Right.
- [20:55]
Matt
So that's where I just think that preparation, like you mentioned, is. You go into a competition, sure, there's an element of, like, adrenaline. The big game, down, down a goal with one minute to go. Like, you need to get put in that environment, of course, but all the preparation to your, Your form, your, your, you know, your, Your preparation and confidence that you build when nobody's watching, like, allows you to thrive in that environment and good players get seen. There's not a good player, in my opinion, in hockey that's like in the middle of nowhere. That because he's not on the club team, isn't where he should be.
- [21:29]
Sam
Yeah, because everybody's going to tell that player or anybody else, hey, you got to go watch so and so, like, this kid's legit.
- [21:36]
Matt
Right.
- [21:36]
Sam
It doesn't matter if he's in Wyoming, if he's in Winnipeg, if he's in, yeah, Pittsburgh, it truly doesn't matter. Like, that player will be found. That's, that's kind of how the system is built. And I think I say this to families all the time. Like, when you look at these major league organizations, their job is to have scouts in places to make sure that if you're somebody that needs to be scouted, they're going to have somebody there at some point. You don't need to, at 13 years old, put your, put your son in a position where it's like, oh, no, if we don't go to this one event and it costs us $5,000, that, like, our career is over. No, that doesn't, that's not how this works. Right.
- [22:13]
Matt
Yeah. And I'm a big believer in. You should be a big fish in a small pond. Right. There's also an obsession in club sports that the tracksuit in the bag means everything. So that's what we say in hockey is like, if you're on the number one team in the country and you're the 12th best forward out of 12, that doesn't mean your kid's a Division 1 player. He might actually develop the most dangerous thing you can give a young kid, which is confidence being the best player on one of the worst teams. So I think that there is an element where we're chasing rankings and things that don't matter and, you know, oh, my kid plays for this club, but he's the extra hitter. Well, an extra player, like, no. How about in an environment where he can be the man and also has to carry the team, carry the load, have leadership qualities. I do believe that the big fish, small pond thing is a huge piece as well.
- [23:03]
Sam
I like how you phrase that, too. I haven't heard anybody say it so eloquently, but it's true. Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of families make the incorrect assumption that. Well, no, I mean, if. If we're getting around the better players, then through osmosis, we'll somehow get just as good as they are because there's a level of instruction maybe that they're getting that someone else isn't. There's no, there's no secret to this thing. Right, Right. And that's where I think somebody who's gone through it at the highest level, like you, when you're talking and coaching these kids, I feel like that information is extremely valuable. But I would assume you have plenty of kids and players who probably argue about this stuff all day long. They don't. No, not true. I need to go join this team. And part of the reason that I've found is it's ego, because it feels better. Right. You think, you know, your eyes are playing a trick on you. You think because I'm around this organization that, yeah, we're just going to receive whatever it is and we're going to. We're going to get the fruit of it all. And that's not where that stuff comes from.
- [24:08]
Matt
Right. And again, it comes down to the it factor of, like you said, when, when. When the road reaches the end. And you know, what's success and failure, Right. Like, to some success is just advancing to the next level or playing pro or this and that. Well, we can tend to forget what the true meaning of sport is. Right. Sport is what makes sports great is it gives you all these valuable lessons for life. And sometimes when you're in these environments where you're playing on the best team and it ends. It allows you to have all these excuses and naturally come out of it in a much more negative state than like a positive state of like, I was in this environment for the right reasons, adversity, we played championship, leadership, maturity, all these things. And then in the end it's like, I played on the best team and I got screwed or this and that. Right. It kind of gives them a scapegoat of we did everything we could, but it just didn't work out. Versus, like, sport is valuable for bigger things than just the outcome.
- [25:06]
Sam
If you had to say there, like, what is the biggest thing that is broken in youth hockey right now?
- [25:14]
Matt
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing that's broken is the. These Exposure. Detournent. The word exposure, right. This pay to play model where if you pay more, more, more, it's going to create an opportunity that you couldn't get anywhere else. We have a huge group that's going viral, the Black Bear sports group. They're buying up all the rinks in the area. They're charging 3,000 for a tournament. State of play. Probably all the same thing you see where a family has to pay $10,000 to go to the middle of nowhere to get quote, unquote exposure. So I think the pay to play model is what's broken this promise that if you pay a certain amount of money that we're going to get your kid to a place that nobody else can. And I think that's the greatest lie in youth hockey that is destroying the game. And our numbers every single year get lower and lower because we're capping parents out their ability to be able to play hockey where if you look at the best state that does hockey in the country, it's Minnesota. Minnesota is the number one state of developing and advancing hockey players. Ten, 15 years ago, it was Minnesota, New England, Michigan, New York. They were all kind of ebbs and flows, ups and downs. Now it's like clear cut. Minnesota takes it up, takes over. And why is that? Well, every community in Minnesota, you're brought up in your high school program. There is no club. There's no pressure to play club hockey. You play for your local high school, you play grade school hockey there. It's all about development in house. No travel, no club, no. No Phoenix, Arizona, for a hockey tournament, you play in house. And then guess what, you go to sixth grade in middle school and you get cut from the middle school varsity team because you're in sixth grade and you're not ready but you learn that, okay, I'm going to play for the JV team, I'm going to work through this, I'm going to persevere. Then when it's my turn to step up, I'll be ready. Then you go to high school as a freshman, you get cut by the varsity team sophomore year, you get angry in the gym, you learn all these things. And then junior and senior year, you're ready to be a performer and you play. So there's this little hierarchy in sports that always existed that for a reason that Minnesota just does so well and now they lead the charge in hockey development. And everything I mentioned is a couple thousand bucks.
- [27:32]
Sam
Wow.
- [27:33]
Matt
It's, it's, it's night and day compared to what everybody else is doing.
- [27:36]
Sam
It goes against, this is funny. It goes against, I think a parent's natural inclination because it goes against their will, really. Their ego. Because you want to believe. No, no, no, no. My son is a diamond in the rough. He's different. He needs something more. He needs to be exposed to different things that may work for other kids, but it's not going to work for my, my son. And yeah, I mean this isn't like Minnesota came out of nowhere and is like miraculously doing it for the first time. Like sounds like they've been doing it for a long time. And so is that known throughout hockey that like Minnesota? Oh yeah, it is.
- [28:13]
Matt
Yeah. And the funny part is, is like with club sports and I'm sure you see it in baseball, like if a parent doesn't like the opportunity, their environment they're in, like they'll pick up and move. They'll move a 14 year old kid to another state to go put him in a better environment. Where Minnesota, they just, I guess it's because that's been the norm. The parents went through it, right? So that's what they know. They're just like, no, this is for them, this is what you are going to do. And if you don't make it at the end, like that's on you. Right.
- [28:41]
Sam
Which is a lot easier to do when you're not so invested and you haven't spent all this money. The minute, you know, the, the money piece, it, it's this anchor in a sense where it does drag a lot of other things down and it starts leading these parents into some incorrect thinking. Because now as a parent, if, let's just say I have a retirement fund and I'm like, well, I don't have the money to spend $45,000 a year. That you referenced earlier, I don't have the money to spend so I'm going to start dipping into my retirement. So now four years in, I've spent, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars and it's like, well now you have to get a scholarship. So now we have to go to these things. And like I'm going to, I'm going to will myself into being the person that's going to help you get this opportunity. But to the parent in Minnesota, it's like, yeah, we're, you know, we're thousands of thousands of dollars in, but we're not, we're not drowning in debt from doing it. So it is a lot easier to just be less, less influenced by all that stuff.
- [29:35]
Matt
Yeah, I mean, I can't, I couldn't imagine watching a kid and like, what's the roi, right? Like instead of just like, oh, my kid's having fun, he's thriving, he's doing great. It's like that is a pressure. And again, like this isn't, as you would probably say, like to crush the parents because they're just trying to do what's right. But hopefully we can educate to just say like, there is no decision that you can make or not make that is going to hold them back. Ultimately it's going to come down to them.
- [30:04]
Sam
Yeah, right.
- [30:05]
Matt
They are going to have to make the decision. Now I'm not saying a 14 year old kid can drive himself to the batting cages to get a batting session, but what I'm saying is like you moving or finding the best opportunity for your kid isn't always the best thing. Every kid is different. There is a kid that might need to move out somewhere because he's on a different level and needs to be surrounded in an infectious environment to thrive. But there also might be a kid that will tell you that he wants that. But realistically he needs confidence and he's vulnerable and he's maybe a little insecure and he might need his friend group and an anchor and a support system in place. So it's all different, different strokes for different folks. And I think at times parents are making the decision for the kids and those are the ones that burn out and then have these conflicts at that 17, 18, 19 year old age that we see it all happen.
- [30:56]
Sam
Well, and the thing that I want the listener to kind of understand and hear. And one of my guests, a buddy of mine by the name of Johan, he and I are putting something out here in the near future where we really help families understand their role in all of this. And I think sometimes what these parents assume is they don't even know the game they're playing. They think the game they're playing is in our case, baseball, in your case, hockey. Right. Like, no, no, no. That's what the kid is doing. Your role is parenthood. And the best analogy that we've found to articulate this is you're a gardener. Right. As a gardener, think about, are you able to convince the plant to grow by just telling it to grow, do this? No. You have to feed the plant, you have to till the soil. You've got to figure out, how do I make this thing be the best version of itself? That's not the same as, like, I'm going to muscle through this thing. Muscling through it is literally telling the plant, grow, grow. And so that's, that's a distinction that I want everybody to understand is it's not a matter of doing more. It's a matter of changing your perspective on really what your role is. And so that's where I would encourage everybody to think about your role. Being a parent and not playing the sport that your son. Because when you make the wrong interpretation of that and you think that your role is to play the game now, you start trying to do everything for them, right? No, no. You have to go do these 15 different things. And if you don't do it how I expect you're not performing. That's not, it's not going to work for a plant. Right, right. And the same applies for this. Okay. So I guess at a certain point when players develop and specifically with your, I guess, career, at some point you get to the next level. Right. So you were a second round pick in 2007 by the Ducks. Yep. Right. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about that journey from that point forward. I would assume on some level, just like it is in baseball, when you step foot in professional hockey, you realize that everybody around me is talented. Oh, yeah, right. So the thing that's going to help me get to where I need to go isn't just pure talent alone. Some of it is opportunity. Right now you need to do what you have to do to continue to perform, but you also need other people, the organization to give you the opportunity. How was that experience for you when you stepped foot in pro hockey?
- [33:20]
Matt
Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It was hard. Right. So I played in a junior league in Canada, arguably the best junior hockey league in the world, the Ontario Hockey League. 16 to 21 year old kids making 60, 70 bucks a week just to eat food and have a couple drinks after games because it's 19 to, to drink in Canada. But what I'm getting at is it was all about culture. The team, the boys, the brotherhood, right? And you. And that was all I was used to when it came to hockey. So we, we played for each other, we played for the logo on the front. It was all about winning. Everybody cared about each other. You step into a pro environment for the first time, yes, everybody's talented, but you learn really, really quick. It's a dog eat dog world, right? You can say all the right things, Everyone can say it's about the team we want to win. When, because I started in the minors, even training camp, you go in, it's like I'm wearing an Anaheim Ducks jersey in my first camp and I get put on a line with Perry and Getzloff, who were the two best players there. Why was I there? Because I was second round pick, right? They wanted, the organization wanted to show me to the fan base, see where I fit in. I can assure you that every other kid in my draft in the year before was hoping I fell flat on my face and failed.
- [34:32]
Sam
Right?
- [34:33]
Matt
There wasn't the support group that I was used to. So I got a really quick taste of that, of like, you know, after playing a good game, you're like looking for all of everybody come up and be like, great job. And it was like all of my peers are moving further away from me. And the next day in practice, finishing checks in practice, like my teammates never used to do that in juniors. We were laughing and giggling like, this is pretty dog eat dog world. Again. Got a quick taste of the business because a year later I got traded to Pittsburgh. And when I got to Pittsburgh, it was the same thing. I got traded with Chris Kunitz for Ryan Whitney. I was supposed to be the prize prospect to be Sidney Crosby's next linemate for the future. And what I thought was going to be support and friendship turned into the same thing every day in practice on a microscope, people hoping I failed. And it was nasty. So, you know, I would say my immaturity, being a 19, 20 year old kid getting thrown in that environment, that was really, really challenging for me to, to understand.
- [35:29]
Sam
So what happened from that point forward when you got to Pittsburgh, like at what point did you make your debut and what, like, what was that journey like to get to that place?
- [35:39]
Matt
Yeah, so my first year was in Wilkesbury. I had a really slow start. Cause I struggled with that Loneliness, piece of being on a team, but not really, right. You go in a locker room as a 19 year old with a couple 35 year old grizzled veterans who co host their kids every day. Right. Ended up having a lot of success at the end of the season, Played my first NHL game. The following year I made the Penguins out of training camp. And that was kind of like my first taste of the big show. Something happened that summer. A software app was developed called Twitter and it completely destroyed my young career. I went into that season excited, hungry, played a couple good games, signed into Twitter and now I gave access to every fan to have a direct line to tell me how awful I was every single game. For every two or three nice comments, there would be five or six really bad ones. And it just beat me up mentally and physically. So I started the year in Pittsburgh, really lost myself mentally and ended up getting sent back down to the Miners. So that's also like a lesson that I try to tell the youth is like we grew up in an environment where we didn't even know what tomorrow looked like. Where going into pro I was exposed to. Now everyone has access to tell me what they think. And I started to try to be something that other people wanted me to be versus what truly like my identity was. So sorry, I'm.
- [37:04]
Sam
This is a very important piece to professional sports nowadays. I mean, you know, after a bad game in the big leagues, guys are getting death threats. And it makes it even worse now that people are betting.
- [37:15]
Matt
Right?
- [37:15]
Sam
Right. Guys, these, these baseball players will get these messages and it's like some random fans Venmo account. They're like, hey, you cost me a thousand dollars. Venmo me a thousand bucks or I'm gonna kill you.
- [37:27]
Matt
Right.
- [37:27]
Sam
Like that's literally the messages that they're getting. So this was just the beginning stages of that. But I could see how that can, I mean, completely play tricks on your mind. And the hard part too is after a good game, you go on there and everyone's loving you and it feels good. So you're like, oh, let me continue to do that.
- [37:43]
Matt
Right.
- [37:43]
Sam
It's like an itch that you can't get rid of. Right?
- [37:48]
Matt
Right. Yeah. And I mean kind of the big part of that is like now I'm seeing kids at a young age to kind of correlate back to the youth. Part of it is they use social media as a self gratification when things for the highs and the lows, right. When things are low, you can go and maybe you find A kid that you think you're better than and you go check his box score and say, oh, he had a bad night too. That gives me self gratification to say, like, it's not just me that's struggling. And then when you have the good, you get to go in there and find all the good. So that was a part of it where, like I'd watch a kid that was drafted 50th overall get games in the NHL and it would destroy me. And I'd watch his box score and see how many minutes he played. Why does his journey and his path have anything to do with me? Right. Like, I ended up later in my career and we can get to that. Like getting a sports psychologist, that completely transformed me. But it was like control the controllable. That is what social media to like the youth out there, like, your journey and your path is your own. Don't go searching and looking and trying to find either self gratification and. Or a scapegoat to, to try to justify how you. Where you're supposed to go or supposed to be. Stay in your lane and control the controllable. But that's ultimately my entry into the big leagues of National Hockey League. It was quick, it was fast, and it was hard because of all these external pressures via social media that I put on myself.
- [39:14]
Sam
And so was it, you know, in baseball they say, you know, you're up and down. You get a taste here, you get that sent back down, you designated for assignment. Different terms in baseball obviously than hockey, but you continue to kind of go up and down. For how long?
- [39:30]
Matt
Yeah, I mean, four years in Pittsburgh. So I was with the Penguins organization for four years. I had spurts where I'd go up and I'd play really, really well. And then again, the worst thing you can happen to an athlete, complacency. I'd get too high, I'd get comfortable, and then boom, I get sent back down and then I go back to the minors. And that was my safe space, right? There's no media scrums, there's no national tv. I always thrived in that environment. And I just seemed to be like that fringe player where I would just dominate the minors but couldn't scratch the surface of being an impact player in the majors, which ultimately led to me feeling like the victim and saying, it's the organization, it's not me. And asking for a trade, asking for a trade from Pittsburgh, which looking back, was not the right decision. But as a young kid and you know, looking for again A cop out or a scapegoat. It was like this, the organization screwing me. I need a trade. And I can tell you the grass is not always greener.
- [40:22]
Sam
No. And what's interesting too is you're obviously again in a system, and I brought it up earlier within a cap system, but just professional sports in general, it's a business, right? Major league baseball teams, national hockey teams, they are making decisions sometimes from the standpoint of what is best for the hockey team from a performance standpoint, but also sometimes because of a roster move. Right. As an example, I'll use it in the big leagues. If you've got a top prospect who gets called up to the big leagues and let's just say he's platooning, meaning he's playing against, if he's a right handed hitter, he's playing against a lefty starter. And let's just say a team isn't going to face another lefty starter for two weeks, right. Oftentimes they need that guy to get at bats. And if he's not going to get at bats in the big leagues because he's a prospect, we got to send him back down so we can go get at bats. So it's not that he's not one of the best players on the team, it's that, oh, the limitations that they have based on your role will dictate whether or not you end up staying or going back in hockey. I'm assuming on some level every time you got sent down wasn't purely from the standpoint of oh, bad game, get this guy out of here. It was whatever contract you were under, whatever system was in play was leading them also to say, well, this is the most logical decision, giving this. How was that experience for you within that system?
- [41:42]
Matt
Yeah, it was hard. And honestly I, I had a, I didn't have a great agent growing up, right. I had an agent who found me at a local rink in Toronto. And again, my dad wasn't educated and he always just seemed to allow me to thrive in the victim card. Right. If what I know now what you said, like I play in the NHL, I'd play seven minutes, in the minors, I'd play 20. Where am I going to develop better in the minors? But naturally as a 20, 21 year old kid, you get put in a limousine on the way up and a cab on the way home, you have this feeling of like I sucked and there's this rejection. But there was nobody to explain to me that there's a bigger picture to all this. So I Definitely struggled with that. Right. And I would come top sometimes I would come back to the minors and I'd have a little bit of a crappy attitude. I'd be like this distinct, why me? You know, play the victim card. But explain the way you explained it. Like yeah, there someone needed to sit me down and say, hey, like there's a bigger plan for you and it might not be right now. You played 10 games for us in Pittsburgh in a fourth line role, energy type player, and we want you to go play power play and get extra touches. But it was never really explained to me or I wasn't mature enough to understand that at that age.
- [42:52]
Sam
Right. So the message you're receiving is I'm not good enough.
- [42:55]
Matt
Right.
- [42:55]
Sam
They don't want me here.
- [42:56]
Matt
Right. And it was rejection versus no. Like don't get stuck in the suck, control the controllable, go down, prove em wrong. Just you did it in minors, why is it different in the pro hockey?
- [43:08]
Sam
Well, and one of the things, talking about the immediate group around any athlete, the reason why it's so important and everybody really does need to be on the same page is as an agent, right. There are countless conversations that I have with clients and what I'm hearing them say isn't the truth. Right. It's their opinion based on a number of factors mixed in with what they want. They don't like what they're going through. And so for me it's very easy to say you're right. Yeah, you're right and just allow them to stew in it. And oftentimes agents do do that because they don't ever want to create friction or with their clients. Right. If I actually say what I really believe and I tell you the truth out of fear, I may think, well, what if he ends up firing me because of it? So it's easier, let me just tell him what he wants to hear. And oftentimes that's what agents do. And so, you know, being that I've been doing this now long enough, I've seen situations where like that is the biggest, the biggest disadvantage I could ever put on a player is to be a yes man and be somebody who merely just reinforces a false narrative because it's easy.
- [44:13]
Matt
Yeah, right. Those conversations are tough, right. And I think like you'll always appreciate the truth. And as a, as an athlete sitting on this side of it, like if, if I would have had that conversation with my agent, I might have been frustrated, I might have screamed at him. But like, you're a soundboard too Right. That's part of your job, is to like, to listen. But ultimately I needed somebody to sit back and say, like, no, like, go down and do something about it then, like, let's not blame everybody else. So, no, you make a great point that there aren't a lot of them out there that do do that. And those are the tough conversations. But I can assure you, like, that trust and relationship will lead to better things in the future versus just this feeling of like, it's not me.
- [44:54]
Sam
Yeah. So moving on to the salary cap piece, what was that like? Because you only ever played within the salary cap system. What was that like from the inside? How did players talk about that system? Was it something they liked? Was it something they didn't like? What was the general feel of it?
- [45:14]
Matt
Yeah. So, I mean, me being, we'll call it, of 600 players in the NHL, I was in the. The threshold of player 500 to 600. Right at the hierarchy. I think where we really struggled as players is you'd see the union go to the meetings and you'd see a lot of superstars at the table.
- [45:34]
Sam
Right.
- [45:34]
Matt
And you're wondering, well, who's advocating for us? Who's out there advocating for the entirety of the league? Because it's pretty easy to Satisfy the top 100, but then the 200 through the 500 middle tier, the middle class of the league, like, they seem to have a voice, but what about me? Who's got a voice for, like, what we're looking for? And what really seemed like was positive in progress coming out of the negotiations in the new cba, really, you know, for someone like myself who only played 150 games, like, I gave up a lot of money. I put a lot on the line for the new cba. That seemed to help the interest of other players, not necessarily me. So again, you talk about the salary cap piece. On days off, I was being sent to the miners to save $2,500 on the books because it was easy and they knew I wouldn't complain about it. Well, looking back on my life, that's, you know, 20 days, that's an extra 40 something grand for, for my family that I should be. Should have. But I just was content about the, the part of escrow where, yeah, here's your salary for $700,000 a year. But we're going to take 15% and put it in a little, little bucket just in case some of these owners lose money. Well, how, how does an owner lose money when he owns the rink and he owns the Parking garage and he owns the restaurant across the street. But then he says he loses money on the team, but he's killing it in concessions. And in the parking garage, there was just a lot of invariables that just didn't seem to be representing the overall base of the players. And it just kind of felt like we were being taken from and certain guys, entities and, you know, we're being fulfilled over ours.
- [47:12]
Sam
Well, what's interesting is you bring up a concept which I think is important for everybody to understand, which is in a cap system, there's a limited pie, right? So you have an amount of money and players are pitted against themselves because any dollar to one particular player is a dollar out of another player's pocket. Right. And I will say from the standpoint of baseball, the commissioner of baseball has gone around and he's basically tried to convey to players like you that you were in hockey saying, hey, the, the big name players, these, the current system always takes care of them, but what about you guys? And he's smart enough to know that there's more of the, those types of players that are kind of in the middle tier to the lower tier than there are the superstars. So if I can get them to be on board with this, then we don't really even need the top guys. Right. And that's the thinking. But as you so eloquently described, that's not really how it works in practice. And so I think what, what all of these sports leagues recognize is that they want to control costs. Right. You know, you brought up specifically, they own the rink, they own the stadium, they own the concessions, they own all these various things and you guys aren't able to actually, you know, partake in all of the revenues. Like if, if the value of a sports team increases and they sell for 3x what they bought it for, you don't get to participate in that. They do, but you don't. What's an example of like something like that that happened? Like, would that, would that be commonplace? Where it's like, oh, they're saying they lost money, but they're not accounting for. Yeah. The concessions and all the money that they're making from actually having a game where we're playing. Did that happen a lot?
- [48:59]
Matt
Yeah, I mean, example is I played in Winnipeg, Right. And Winnipeg, one of the knocks on that organization is they only have like a 14, 15,000 seat arena when the normal is 20,000. So they would always be up somewhere on the top limit of the salary cap. And because of the ticket sales price, which was 5,000 seats less than every one of their competitors. They'd say they were losing money every year and in turn, like again, they had a separate company that was running the concessions, vending machines, all the other aspects of the whole square. Ownership was doing okay, but on the books they're able to dip from the escrow pie of saying like, well, we lost money this year. And again, every single player had to contribute during my time, 13% of their salary to pay the owners to break even on a season.
- [49:47]
Sam
Right.
- [49:48]
Matt
So yeah, that's a great example of that happening. Now. Things have changed with the TV deals. There are a lot more than they've been in the past. But yeah, I would say salary cap is control. And what happens is, is there's no, you don't, you're not looked at anymore as a salary. You're looked at a percentage of the cap. Right. In hockey, the top players, you get two top players for around 20% of the cap. That's how that works. So then now there's pressure on teams that they have to have 3 to 5, 18 to 22 year olds on entry level, low salary deals that they fit into their roster. Well, what does that do? That pushes guys like me when I was playing out of the league, because now we're going to give a kid who's not ready, but he's cheap an opportunity and push the proven veteran into Europe or Russia because the younger, cheaper kid, if he's, you know, if I'm a, you know, call it an 8 out of 10 player and he's a 7.5 for half the cost. Well, what are you going to do? That's, that's where the cap really starts to change. You'll have an influx of youth, but those guys you're mentioning, they're going to be out.
- [50:54]
Sam
Yeah.
- [50:54]
Matt
You know, it's just the reality.
- [50:56]
Sam
I mean, it's funny. So, you know, the, the common theme that I think if you just, we walked outside right now, asked any sports fan. Right. Let's just say they're a Pirates fan, hey, do we need a salary cap in baseball? And I don't know, I would say a large chunk because the Pirates would probably think, yeah, I mean, I think what the Dodgers are doing is unfair. And I think if we had a salary cap, it'd make it easier for a team like the Pirates to compete. And the issue that I have with that is what, what Major League Baseball is doing is they're misrepresenting strategically what they're wanting a cap to solve. They're saying that they want it to solve competitive balance, all it takes. And there have been plenty of studies on this and I have one right here, a study by Evan S. Toddy and Mark F. Owens, where it Liz literally broke down and showed that salary caps in all the leagues actually do not solve competitive B. And here's what's funny. And I pulled this up in advance of this, this podcast. So if, like, think about this. If, if salary or if revenues in baseball were the determining factor as far as who won the Milwaukee brewers this or last year in 2025, had the best record in baseball with the 17th highest payroll. Right? The Mets had the highest payroll in 25 and they missed the playoffs. The Guardians had the 26th highest paid payroll and they won, won the division this year. Right now, the Rays have one of the best records in baseball. They have the 24th highest payroll. The brewers are in first place with the 21st highest payroll. The Guardians again first place with the 29th highest payroll out of 30 teams of the 10 of the the teams with the top 10 best records in baseball right now, five of those teams have payrolls in the bottom third. So that's teams 20 to 30 in payroll. The Dodgers, Yankees, Blue Jays, Phillies and Braves, who all have payrolls north of 250. What I think people lose sight of is sometimes the reason why these organizations are successful is because they have an infrastructure and a way of developing players that is just better than other organizations. Right? And to prove that point here is like the biggest thing that I continually go back to. Everybody wants to criticize the Dodgers and in hockey, everybody wants to criticize who would it, who would they be?
- [53:12]
Matt
Probably Vegas or Florida now, right?
- [53:14]
Sam
You want to criticize an organization like the Dodgers and the ownership group with the Dodgers, they bought that team in, I think it was 2000 or 2012, 2011 or 2012. And so I looked, I said, well, what did the Dodgers do prior to that, that ownership group buying the team? Well, they missed the playoffs five out of the next 10 years. Right. They never won a World Series. And so what does that tell you? Naturally, it's not like, oh, the Dodgers are just a big market so they can spend more money. It's that organization had set things up very strategically and have made smart decisions to make themselves good. No different than the guardians with the 29th highest payroll, the brewers this year, the Rays this year. And so it's possible that a team like the Pirates can be good. And this year, thankfully, they're trending in the right direction.
- [54:03]
Matt
Right.
- [54:03]
Sam
But a salary cap doesn't solve that problem. The commissioner just wants you to think it does. Right. Because that's the easy thing.
- [54:12]
Matt
Right.
- [54:13]
Sam
And so that's why with you having lived within that ecosystem, you saw firsthand, like from a player standpoint, it's not all what they're saying it's going to be.
- [54:24]
Matt
Right. 100%. I mean, I think that the idea of a salary cap is that it creates parity, it gives opportunities for a floor and a ceiling, it forces teams to spend. But ultimately, like you said, every team that has had success has had dark years to build the prospect pool, the development, fill the. Well, that's the nature of like the, you know, I agree more about trying to prevent teams from tanking than about putting a salary cap.
- [54:49]
Sam
Right.
- [54:50]
Matt
Because that's more of an advantage to try to win in the future than a cap. But yeah, I can just tell you firsthand, like the minimum salary in the NHL when I first entered the league was 600,000. I've been retired and out of the league for 14 years. It's $750,000. So it's gone up $150,000 in 15 years. So this, this whole idea that it will increase the bottom player salaries north is not true.
- [55:17]
Sam
Right. Would you guys oftentimes openly talk about like this system that we're in? Because it's, it's funny, I was talking to another buddy of ours who played in the NHL and is working for an organization now, and he was telling me how, because the salary cap will, will increase obviously you know, year after year after year incrementally, but still increases that some of these star players are choosing not to sign long term deals in that moment because if they wait a year or two, the cap goes up, they're just going to guarantee themselves more money. So what's funny is to a team like, let's just say Pittsburgh, the Pirates, who would say, oh, a salary cap would help us retain our better players. No, the better players may say, well, I don't want to sign this deal with these guys now. I'm going to wait two years and maybe at that point I'm a free agent and I'll sign the deal with them maybe, or I'll go somewhere else and sign a bigger deal. You know, the manipulation within the system is, is very apparent too.
- [56:16]
Matt
Yeah, that, and that's a big piece is when you have a salary cap, there's no transparency on what it looks like in the future. So the same thing happened in hockey where about a year and a half ago we had an influx of eight year contracts for players. Two years later, players that are better than them are getting 3,4 million a year more than those players because oh, actually guess what? The cap's going up 10 million next year. Well, why did I sign an eight year contract? So there is going to be, we call them bridge deals where guys are just going to keep signing these short term bridge deal, bridge deals until they feel like they can maximize their dollar amount, which is not going to keep players in one place. No, the point of a extended contract is to anchor a player forever. A cap doesn't do that.
- [56:57]
Sam
Yeah, what's funny is, you know, salary caps certainly solve something, but they solve a problem that the owners want to solve, which is how do we increase the value of our franchise? That's what a salary cap solves for them. But that's not solving anything for players. And in fact, again, you know, referencing this study that I, that I looked at made things significantly worse. And funny enough, the one thing that they said, actually they did show that that helped with competitive balance was revenue sharing, which baseball already has. So if you want to work on that system, work on that system. But don't, don't introduce a salary cap as the, as the, you know, the, the solution to all these various problems because they're all different problems, right?
- [57:44]
Matt
Absolutely. No, I think you're right. The agenda of a salary cap is for the betterment of the owners to, to, to then put their hands up and say this is out of our control. And then they're going to continue to 3.4x their valuations of their, their teams and their organizations and the highest players will start to get paid a little bit less and it will really restrict and confine the veteran guys who put in their time because baseball is all about putting in your time. They're going to be replaced with younger influx of youth that have an opportunity that they never had because they're a younger, cheaper option.
- [58:17]
Sam
Well, you know what it feels like too, a little bit. And this is going to be a funny, a funny analogy or a funny example. It sounds like it's a lot of complaining, right. Coming from organizations that aren't performing. Maybe teams have spent a lot of money, but maybe the front office chose poorly. Right? They signed the wrong players, the guys didn't produce. Whatever. It sounds a little bit like, to use this bad analogy, if, because Shohei Ohtani is so good. Right? So compare that to the, because the Dodgers are so good at developing players and creating this system, we should have Shohei Ohtani, who's left handed hitter. Right, right hand thrower, left handed hitter. We should have Showhei Ohtani bat right handed and throw left handed. We gotta even out the playing field. That'd be insane. Everyone would be like, what? That doesn't make any sense. It's, it's a little bit of the same as far as what these owners are saying about these, these, these pro teams. You know, no one blames a really, really savvy business owner that they're too smart. And in some sense, the teams that have had the most success in baseball, they've been really, really smart. Like the Guardians, like the brewers, like the Rays, and there are plenty other ones like the Dodgers that, you know, they've, they've done good work. So. Yeah, buddy, I appreciate this. This was super interesting.
- [59:37]
Matt
Yeah, no, it was a lot of fun. We had to tackle a bunch of different areas and I'm glad I could share my experience.
- [59:42]
Sam
You know what we have to do, we got to get Walker on and then we'll have the baseball versus hockey, who's a better athlete Conversation.
- [59:48]
Matt
Oh, yeah. He's got some good stories about he, he could have played Division one football. I didn't have any other things in
- [59:54]
Sam
the bag, but he's a better golfer. He's going to watch this. I'm going to send it to him right now.
- [59:59]
Matt
He's better than me. Historically. I do have some hardware over him that I want.
- [60:04]
Sam
Hockey players are good golfers, man.
- [60:06]
Matt
Slap shot.
- [60:06]
Sam
Yeah, that's exactly right.
- [60:07]
Matt
Seeing guys go for the first time playing golf, shoot 80 Europeans just because they just take slap shots. So it is a similar motion.
- [60:14]
Sam
All right, last, last couple things. Rapid fire. Who's the best hockey player you ever played with?
- [60:20]
Matt
Sidney Crosby. Because of his practice habits, the ability to see him in practice, people watch the, the results, they see the goal. I watch him do it in practice 500 times. So it's almost like to them, they think God has gifted him with this superpower. What he does in practice makes him more special than in the games.
- [60:39]
Sam
You ever get in a fight in the NHL?
- [60:41]
Matt
I did. My record is.08. One great tie though.08 and one little bit of humor. I didn't do so hot. I ended up getting a boxing coach when I was 30 and became pretty good fighter, but it was too late to that.
- [60:55]
Sam
Is that normal in hockey? They get boxing coaches?
- [60:57]
Matt
Yeah, yeah. I mean some. The guys who were paid to fight would I just. Again, I got this obsession late in my career. With how do you gain confidence, Practice?
- [61:07]
Sam
Who's known as, like, the best fighter in the NHL?
- [61:09]
Matt
Oh, there's. There's many, but Brian McGrattan was one that I played. Eric Goddard was in Pittsburgh. I mean, every team had one that was, like, the best. And if you just catch him on the right night, he could be the toughest guy in the world.
- [61:21]
Sam
Would there ever be a guy. These. Apologies for these questions because you may be like, bro, like, this is so obvious. Everybody knows this. Would there ever be a guy who isn't a fighter who would find himself having to get into a fight in a game with, like, that guy?
- [61:35]
Matt
Oh, yeah, yeah, those. Those would happen. And if you look at, like, some of the late 90s, early 2000s, like, there's some smaller guys like the Tai Domis and Matt Barnabys who, like, were just scrappy and would just find ways of just. I'm just going to throw as fast as I can and hope that the good things happen. But, yeah, that. That happens time to time. And generally, most of us have been brought up in an environment where we've had to fight in junior hockey, in the minors, where you can do enough to protect yourself. It's the scariest thing I say in a fight is when you hit somebody as hard as you can and they don't blink and stare back at you, then you know you got a problem, right? Because that's. That's one of the scariest things you can have happen, is, like, you know, when you punch someone as hard as you can and they don't flinch, you're like, oh, no, something's something bad going to happen.
- [62:17]
Sam
Why are there not more? Well, let me ask you this. When goalies fight, all right, one's on the other side of the rink. Like, how does that ever happen?
- [62:26]
Matt
Those are just like.
- [62:27]
Sam
Is it like a predetermined thing?
- [62:29]
Matt
We have a weird code in hockey. The code is, like, the coolest thing I think about the game of hockey. So how the code kind of works is each team has a tough guy. Not so much anymore, because every game's all about player safety, even football. Remember the old safeties? The Brian Dawkins, they run through the middle and just take your head, right, Lewis, like, the player safety is in. Concussions have gotten so important, and the fighters are getting out of the game. But there was a code in hockey where the refs were there to enforce the rules, the players were there to enforce the law. So every team would have a tough guy. And there was an understanding that as long as your players didn't take any liberties and my players didn't take any liberties. Our two fight tough guys may fight to create a spark, but the game will just police itself. So the code is similar to that. Whenever there's like a line brawl or say that there's a scrum in front of the net and the goalie gets involved, it's the code that the other team's goal, he's got to skate himself down there. Only one person can fight the goalie. Naturally. Generally it's the other goalie.
- [63:23]
Sam
Yeah.
- [63:24]
Matt
So that's kind of the code of like if something's happening, if there's some action and the goalie gets involved, the code is, is that our goalie better get down there to be ready to go. I love it.
- [63:33]
Sam
I love it. All right, well, we're gonna end there. I appreciate you, brother.
- [63:37]
Matt
Appreciate you having me. It's fun. Sam.