Simmer and Gabby 6

[00:00:13] Speaker A: Greetings. Welcome to a Simmer and Gabby podcast. Rob Simpson along with Bruce Boudreau. Hello. Bruce Boudreau. Hello. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Rob Simpson. [00:00:23] Speaker A: Now, if anybody asks why is Simmer and Gabby not Gabby and Simmer, it's because I'm kind of the host and you're kind of like the main talker guy. [00:00:31] Speaker B: Well, you asked me, so I got to believe it's your show. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it's my show first because I started the idea. Let's talk about those Canucks first since know bringing up Vancouver. And they have played some very good hockey. A two in one road trip. Not difficult to remember the scores. Five to two, five to two and five to two. And two of them were victories. And they have three of the top five scores in the National Hockey League. Gabby is that half of it and the other half is Demco and maybe throw in a Philip Aronic and a. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you look at mean, their scoring has always been there or from when I was, uh, Brock is probably, uh, much better than he did the previous couple. But the other guys have always been major scores. I'm pretty sure I said it many times, whether it's here or other places, that PD is going to challenge for the scoring championship one day. And it seems like now he's there. The year before, I think he started to gain a lot of confidence last year he got great traction and this year he's leaving off and he's the kind of guy that wants to prove that he's the best. And he's definitely on the way there and he wants to be the best. That's the one thing you got to love about him as a player. He wants the challenges. He wants to be playing against the best. He wants to prove to everybody that he's as good or better than anybody. And so far this year, especially with decline is the wrong word. But the first 15 game slump of Connors McDavid's season, that you find Ellis Pederson at the top of the heap. And I firmly believed and I told Quinn this last year and I said, you're an 80 plus point defenseman and we just got to get the goal thing up. And he practiced. And it's not that I told him to do this or anything. I meaN, his dad was a defenseman and a coach for many years also telling him the same thing is to shoot the puck and shoot the puck. And if you can get into double digit goals, you'll average a point a game. And he's obviously doing, I think, you know, for mean he was looking for a partner that would not necessarily. Luke Shan was not a liability. He really helped him in many ways. But Philip Peronic is a guy that can add skill to what he's doing, and so it makes a two headed monster every time they're on the. So none of this stuff is surprising to mean. I was thinking about the Canucks today and thinking, when people think of this, they've got five stars right now on their team, and when you think they've got the goalie and everybody needs the goalie, look at all the teams that aren't doing well, and what are they lamenting about is their goaltending. So, I mean, they got the goalie in Demco, they got the defense in Hughes and heronic right now, offensively, they got Pedersen up front, they got Miller up front, and they got Besser up front. Now, how many teams can say, hey, we've got six really good players on our team, whether it's superstars or just plain old stars. I mean, there's not many teams that can boast six. When you sit here and you talk in Toronto, you talk about the Big Four, and then O'Reilly could be five, but that's it. You talk about any other team, it's three four. But, I mean, even Tampa in their heyday had four guys and a goaltender, and so they would have had mean Vancouver's right up there with the star power. I mean, Jim Benning, for all, uh, the way people know he didn't do a great job, drafted really well in these, you know, he missed on a couple, but, I mean, everybody misses on one. Or, I mean, he's the one that drafted Patterson and Dempco and Hughes. And so, I mean, you got to give him a lot of credit for this. [00:05:13] Speaker A: And by the way, at start of business on Monday, as Gabby just referred to Elias Patterson, he is on top of the league, 25 points, and then Quinn Hughes and JT Miller are 23 points, and that is tied for third. So, essentially, three guys in the top five right now in scoring. [00:05:32] Speaker B: And Haronix up there? Haronix up there has eleven goals or something. Scoring is not a problem for the Vancouver Canucks. Hasn't been. [00:05:45] Speaker A: Real quick, before we get into the conversation I had at the hall of Fame luncheon today and transition into the rest of the Pacific Division, let's talk about our favorite number 17s, or at least our 17 choices for today. Our number 17 choice for today. Who do you got? [00:06:02] Speaker B: Well, I think I want to stick with the theme, and the theme being Western Canada and go with number 17 of the Oilers, Yari Curry, hall of Famer. Very easily one of the best right wingers to play the game, one of the best scorers. And, you know, it's mean. Wayne gets all the mean for him. But as good as Wayne is, and believe me, I'm probably his biggest fan, is that you have to have good players to play with. And Yari Curry was one of the best. But his personality wasn't as powerful as Wayne, so you didn't hear as much about him. But for a guy that could get away that wrist shot and it was so accurate, almost like Bossy's. Maybe not as powerful as Bossy's, but his key to me, he was such a great passer. And again, we talk about teams with star power and that, and that Edmonton Euler team from 1981 until Wayne got traded was pretty masterful. [00:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah. The Helsinki native Yari Curry, which would contribute to his maybe a little quieter nature coming from Finland back, especially back in those days, there were fewer of them around, but obviously a huge impact. I'm going with Mike Felino. Yeah. Detroit Red Wings and part of the reason, well, he was there for a little while. I was at a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert in late 1981, and it was the five encore show that Tom Petty often talked about, or talked about on a few occasions, including on MTV during an interview at the Kobo arena, the acoustically perfect Kobo arena where the Detroit Pistons used to play back before there was a Joe Lewis arena, back before the Pontiac Silverdome and all that good stuff. He was there for just three seasons, but the drummer for Tom Petty was wearing a Mike Felino jersey for that entire five encore concert at the Cobra Arena. So I always stuck out, and then I ended up interviewing. He played for the Sabres for years, of course, played for the Toronto Maple Leafs. And then I interviewed him when he was the coach of the Hershey Bears, a position you, of course, once held. That would have been right after that. [00:08:34] Speaker B: No, he coached before me. [00:08:37] Speaker A: Before you? [00:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah, in the early two thousand s. [00:08:43] Speaker A: I think you might have replaced him. [00:08:45] Speaker B: No, I replaced somebody that was a Colorado coach. I do know his name, but I keep forgetting his name, but he was before him. [00:09:00] Speaker A: There couldn't have been too much gap, though, because he left. There wasn't a lot of gap. [00:09:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And he ended up going to Anaheim as an assistant coach, which I ended up in Anaheim. And we've talked about it. I'll tell you, Mike and his family are one of the great people of NHL families. I mean, here's the kind of guy he is. I have a hockey school in St. Catharines and I didn't know Mike at all, other than he played for the Sabres. And through somebody that knew both of us, I phoned him up and asked him to come. And very rarely does an NHL player know just for somebody you don't know, let alone. I used to ask them to stay for one session and he stayed for more. Did autographs with everybody, took pictures with everybody. I got to just know him and one of the great, great people of all time. And then at the same time, Marcus Felino is in the exact same boat. I mean, you can't find a better teammate, a nicer guy than Marcus Felino at any point in time. [00:10:08] Speaker A: Nice. Yes. Sons Marcus and Nick, of course, both the National Hockey Leaguers, and Mike from Sudbury coached the Wolves, went to the American League coach and then ended up going back to coaching the Sudbury Wolves. I think the guy you're trying to think of is Paul fixture, and I. [00:10:27] Speaker B: Met him at an event in September, and I feel so bad. If you're listening, Paul, I said, hi, how you doing? And everything, but I couldn't for the life of me knew where I knew you from. And then I'm in the, I think the middle of the shot at the golf tournament and I'm going Hershey. And I remembered, but I mean, it bothered me the whole time. [00:10:52] Speaker A: That's funny. All right, well, I'll tell you what, since we're talking Marcus Felino, you had them with the wild, right? [00:10:58] Speaker B: Yes, I did. [00:10:59] Speaker A: So let's transition to the wild. They're not necessarily where they want to be. I guess we could say that about a lot of hockey clubs at the moment, especially in the Western Conference, they're not living up to those expectations. But a five, eight and two start, they're given up plenty of goals. They've lost three in a row. And has their dream goaltending combination been a part of this? [00:11:22] Speaker B: Well, I think I talked earlier in the show here about goaltending and the importance of goaltending, and I got into an argument with somebody the other day about this famous word structure, okay. And I said, look, Dean Evison three years ago was second for coach of the year in voting and two years ago was third in coach of the year voting. He's got the same systems that's going on. The two things that are different, the coaches don't change the way they play or they coach if it's been successful, but the defense is substantially weaker than it's ever been in Minnesota in the last, say, eight years. And the goaltending isn't as good as, well, not Flurry, but Gustafson in Minnie had a 930 save percentage last year. That's unattainable on a year to year basis. Now he's under 900. You take that with a defense that is less than stellar. They've had some injuries on the defense and all of a sudden you're going to get a lot of goals scored. In the past since Bob woods has been there, they've had a top ten penalty killing unit for the most part now. This year, obviously their penalty killing is 32nd right now. It's not that the system has changed or anything, but I think the goaltending isn't making the save that they used to and the penalty kIllers, I think, are failing them a little bit in doing it. But again, backing the coaches in this, it's something that they haven't changed. The only time sometimes you worry about the coaching is if their voice isn't being heard and if they're just like going through the motions and not playing with passion. But I mean, I don't see that all that much yet, but they're definitely not where they want to be at five, eight and two and who knows what's going to happen, right? [00:13:43] Speaker A: And I think last week you brought up Jared Spurgeon. The importance of this guy and how unbelievably is so he is back in the lineup. Alex Gologowski is a guy that they thought was going to be in the lineup. He's been hurt. They have had injuries, but Spurgeon kind of stirs the drink back there. Yeah, I punched up their goaltending statistics and flurry is at goals against 3.41 and an 879 save percentage. And Gustafson is at a 4.64 goals against and his save percentage is 0.872. You mentioned the PK 63 and a half percent and their power play is not countering that because they're only clicking at 17.5%. [00:14:25] Speaker B: You add all that up, it adds up to an under 500 record. And the other thing too is I think Minnesota has come from behind in two or three of their five wins by multiple goals and one. If those things, which is an anomaly in its sense, didn't happen, the record would be a lot worse. But I always look okay, who are the top five best defensive teams in the league? And every week, every day when you get the sheets and everything and you can usually tell the top five are usually in the top six teams in the league, and you can probably, and I don't know, I haven't looked at them since for a while now. But I bet you could go back and you'll see Vancouver's in the top, Boston's in the top. Those are Vegas is in the top, defensive teams. And when you're struggling to keep pucks out of the net, a lot of bad things happen. Coaches get fired and teams lose. Those are the two big things that happen. [00:15:32] Speaker A: In coming weeks. We'll get into, in the not so distant futurE, the former North Stars. And talk about the Dallas Stars a little bit because they're on a three game winning streak and they're ten, three and one this year. So Jimmy Nils pushed the right buttons as the GM there. Yeah. Minnesota, as you mentioned, five. They're three, three and one at home. I kind of remember the 1819 season where you were there. It's almost like the Seattle crack, and they're trying to figure out why they can't win at home. Didn't you have trouble winning at the XL Energy center for at least part of one season? It just couldn't pull off a home game. [00:16:05] Speaker B: If that was the Paul Fenton GM year, I think the last port. It wasn't at the beginning of the year, though. That was at the end of the year. And after the trade deadline, I think we got rid of Charlie Coyle, we got rid of Michael Granland. We moved some of our best pieces out, and I think the team had a lot of home games in March, and it didn't sit well with the group, and it was hard to get them motivated to play because they thought we were tanking at that time, which we weren't. But, I mean, we ended up missing the playoffs that year. We were in the playoffs at the deadline, and then we ended up missing by three points or something. [00:16:50] Speaker A: Yeah, not horrible, by the way. 1618 and seven. So a couple of games below 500 at home, but obviously at home you want to try to win two thirds of your games. That's like the old school formula. Two thirds at home and half on the road, and you're probably in the postseason. I was at the Hockey hall of Fame luncheon today. I'm looking forward to the induction tonight. But sitting next to Peter Marr, who is a Foster Hewitt Award recognized broadcaster forever with 35 years with Calgary, after three years with the Leafs, by the way, as an announcer, and then next to him with Jim Matheson, the Elmer Ferguson recognized writer from Edmonton. And I turned to him at one point and I said, maddie, which one of you guys has the more dysfunctional hockey team in Alberta and they had a nice little chuckle and we're trying to figure it all out and went immediately into describing some of the problems that they have going on. So where do you want to start, Gab? [00:17:50] Speaker B: I don't want to throw anybody under the bus. It's certainly something that if we had have been talking at the first day of September that we would not have expected. When it's Calgary, everybody talks about the 17 one goal losses last year, that in the overtimes, if they had won half of them, they would have been well into the playoffs. And they thought that that was just a fluke. And if you remove Daryl Sutter from the equation that all of a sudden it's going to turn back into great things. That hasn't happened so far. I mean it's been mired by everybody. Thought Jonathan Huberto would get back to 100 point plus category and Cadre would get into what he was in Colorado. And so far, again, that just hasn't transpired. I don't know the reason why. I think they're both really great players, but it's just not doing well. Now Zidorov off asked to get out Hannifin. His contract has been put on hold. Lindholm's contract has been put on hold talking. So I don't know what's going on there, but Calgary is a beautiful city. I just don't understand why anybody would want to leave. [00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah, well, Brad Schleving left for Toronto. They didn't offer him a new deal, but apparently he hadn't talked to his head coach for a long, long time last season before it all came to an end. And Darryl Sutter is going to make in the ballpark. I don't think it's over ten, but it's pushing 10 million doing nothing this season and next. Not each season. [00:19:39] Speaker B: In total, I think he's making 5 million a year in that ballpark this. [00:19:46] Speaker A: Year and next year. [00:19:47] Speaker B: If anybody wanted to hire Darryl, they got to reassume that contract. A lot of times they might phone Calgary and say, listen, we want to sign your coach. Will you pay for half of his contract if we hire him? And very rarely does the other team say yes. If you want them, you pay for them and that's the way it goes. But Darryl's a really good coach. I don't know what's going on in Calgary. Former teammate, by the way, the other thing too, when you talk about Peter Maher. I knew Peter Maher in 1976. How many we go back almost 50 years. His brother, Noonan Mar, was best friend of a teammate of mine with the Marleys. So I went to Campbellton, New Brunswick, in the summer to visit all of them, and Peter Maher would start. We'd have ball hockey games, and he would be doing the announcing on the sideline of the ball hockey games, which was really cool. So it's funny how everything interacts, people, you know, it's like the seven things of separation, or whatever it is. [00:21:08] Speaker A: Well, I've often said, yeah, it's the Kevin Bacon, the actor. Six degrees of separation hockey. It's two degrees. [00:21:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:15] Speaker A: It's happened three times since I've been back Toronto in the last 36 hours. In fact, yesterday, I'm speaking to a young lady who works for the Alumni association, and her brother is a defenseman on the team. I just watched in Seattle from the BCHL that came down for five days. The entire league came down to play in this rink in Seattle so that all the American scouts from colleges and such could come watch them in one place. So they had a showcase, and one of my best buddies, son, plays for the Merit centennials in the interior, and I meet this gal yesterday who works for the alumni at the rink, and she says, oh, my brother's number 28 on the merit centennials, and she lives here. And I was like, that's incredible. That just happens routinely. Every seems like two or 3 hours, but I could go through a list of the people I just ran into at this lunch. [00:22:07] Speaker B: Now, as for the other team up north, I think Edmonton's north of Calgary, who knows Chris Knoblock. I mean, obviously there's a relationship with Connor McDavid there, and the agents got relationship with quite a few players from the Oilers. So I don't know where it stands, but we'll see if it makes a difference. Connor says he doesn't have confidence now. Well, I mean, if you're the best player in the world and you don't have any confidence, I don't know how the rest of the team is going. So somehow every year, Edmonton maybe doesn't start out tremendously well. A little over 500, and then they go on a run for about 20 games. They're the best team in the league, and I think they're still capable of doing it. And the only thing is it has to happen fairly quick, I think, I. [00:23:09] Speaker A: Don'T want to say it's too many cooks spoil the broth, but when you've got, like, Jeff Jackson, who's apparently the CEO of hockey operations, and Kenny Holland is working below him. And Jackson was McDavid's agent, was he not? And now he got his former junior coach. I mean, it's like really much. [00:23:28] Speaker B: Well, it tells you who's really making the decisions there. Know, it's the same thing that I think I heard today that they asked Kenny and he said, yeah, we consulted with Connor and we talked to some of the players about him. And at the same time, which would be tough boy talking to a player, if a player ever leaked that to the coach, how's he feel? Mean. And then at the same time, Jackson said, no, we make the decisions. We haven't talked to all the coaches. So I think they got to sort of get their ducks in a row. [00:24:10] Speaker A: And come from the same place, some consistent messaging. And the thing is, Kenny Holland's being honest. Jeff Jackson, I don't want to say he's dishonest, but if he's McDavid's former agent, if he's not asking him and they, whatever, I mean, put two and. [00:24:27] Speaker B: Two and two together, it doesn't make much sense. But I just think, like, in a lot of things in today's world, people aren't stupid. They can read through these things. But it is what it is, right? [00:24:41] Speaker A: Well, there's a little element to that. And you know this from coaching as a head coach, there's a little element to this on a daily basis when you can watch a guy snap his ankle and be like, what happened to him? Oh, it's a lower body injury. Well, he broke his ankle like we saw. Like there's that kind of deal. But you have to say, oh, well, do you have an update on Joe Schmo? And you're like, well, we're going to check with the medical staff and we'll get off the airplane and do an analysis. [00:25:04] Speaker B: Of course. And every coach has asked the same thing after every game, and we all say the same thing. Well, I haven't checked with the medical staff yet. Be able to tell more tomorrow. But the first thing we do, of course, is the first thing we do is we go in and we say, how's so and so? Give me an update. [00:25:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it's comical. And there's usually two or three of us in the crew that are the media looking at you going, okay, well, we're just going to accept this because we know this is the way it is, whatever. And the others are like, okay, it's funny. This is one of those little unwritten rules, right? [00:25:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:45] Speaker A: We're talking about two degrees of separation. And then all these little wink, wink, nudge, nudge that go on. Also on a daily basis, you know. [00:25:52] Speaker B: At Brian Hayward in Anaheim, we always had fun with it and that I'd be doing the press conference and he'd be the last one behind everybody. And there wasn't many people in Anaheim to start off with, but he'd always be giving me the Pinocchio thing when he knew I was lying and I'd have to keep a straight face while he was doing. [00:26:18] Speaker A: Oh, he's a beauty. Former goalie, right? Yes. Ex goalie and longtime color analyst. [00:26:25] Speaker B: Does a great job, too. [00:26:27] Speaker A: All right, so the, by the way, one of their many problems in Oiler land is some of these contracts, and I'll just bring up one guy from each team. Darnell Nurse. I don't get it. And he's making a boatload of money, and I just don't think he's that good. In fact, how much is he making? It's ridiculous. 9 million plus, I think 9.25. And that puppy runs. That runs through the 29 30 season. And apparently, I guess Uberdo's contract in Calgary also goes through the same time span. That's tough stuff. [00:27:06] Speaker B: Maybe a trade. [00:27:08] Speaker A: Maybe a trade or rid is the door off? [00:27:12] Speaker B: I'm just talking out my hat here. I have no idea. I was just thinking money, contracts, too. Unhappy nurse has never indicated that he's unhappy in Edmonton. [00:27:26] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll trade you. Zidorov, you might be. Toss in this, Uberdo, guys. We'll toss in this $9 million contract. What happens is, if it continues down that road, then the inevitable buyout situation occurs in about two seasons, and then they're sucking it for the next double time. [00:27:45] Speaker B: We don't want to talk about that because I think the Suter Parisi buyouts is part of the reason that Minnesota is in the trouble they're in. [00:27:53] Speaker A: Yeah, no question. By the way, one of the other coaching things you brought up that it was kind of funny, was Sutter sitting on that money for two years. And, I mean, you've done it. We saw Travis Green do nothing for two years because he's like, why am I working when I can go fly around and have some fun and get paid? And Mike Babcock is obviously the ultimate milk, and what do you get? 50 mil. [00:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah, but you know what? You're saying that I don't think there's a coach out there that if he got another job and had the only one that I would know went right to Florida after he got fired, was Elaine Vino, everybody else. I mean, I would give up anything that I was supposed to be making for not working to. So I think the thing that coaches do is coach, and they want to coach and they want to work and they don't want to sit at home and not work. [00:28:47] Speaker A: Right. But in the case. But there are extreme examples where in Babs case, when you're talking about whatever it was, six mil, it's a lot of money. Yeah. No one's going to say, sure, we'll pony up to eat the rest of his deal for four years so that we can hire him. [00:29:02] Speaker B: And that's one of the reasons he didn't have a job after the Toronto one, because nobody wanted to eat 6 million for it was a minimum of four years. I think that he was still left on the deal. [00:29:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Which is ridiculous. All right. I think we've hammered our Western Conference pretty sufficiently, at least the teams of interest at the moment, because it's a little bit wacky. Any comment whatsoever before we go? Gabo on the Henrik Lundquist, Mike Vernon, Tom Barrasso, Carolyn Wallet, Pierre Turjan, Ken Hitchcock and Pierre Lacoix. Induction class. [00:29:46] Speaker B: A lot of great names to me, a lot of great names. And there's nothing negative that you could say about any one of them that they don't deserve to be in there. But the thing that I find the most amazing thing, and it's a stat that everybody forgets, is that Tom Barrasso won the Calder and the Vesna a year out of high school hockey in the just. I watched a lot of high school hockey in Minnesota, and I just can't picture anybody going to play in the NHL next year and being that good. And then he won the Cups with Pittsburgh. But, I mean, I find that as a tremendous story. I'm glad to see Ken Hitchcock went in. I always like to see when a great coach gets into the hall, that's awesome. But every one of those guys deserves end girl. Sorry, Carolyn, I didn't mean to not include you on that. But four Olympics for her, that's 16 years of world championship, world championships all the time. I mean, that's amazing. But they're all great and they all deserve it. And there's not a person out there that watches tonight that's involved in the sport that doesn't get a little bit jealous or think of what their speech would. It's because it's one of those things that when you're a kid, you think of the Stanley cup, what you would do with it. And the next thing you think of is when you get inducted into the hall of Fame. It's a pretty cool thing. [00:31:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And, of course, like you and Henrik Lunquist, both pin up models. [00:31:28] Speaker B: Pin up, yes. [00:31:29] Speaker A: Models, yes. [00:31:30] Speaker B: Can't tell us apart. [00:31:33] Speaker A: By the way, I had a nice chat with Tom Brass over the years. Had a reputation of not being a very friendly guy, but he was delight to talk to. Spoke to him for ten or 15 minutes yesterday and talked about growing up in Burlington, Massachusetts. His dad, with a group of investors, owned a twin sheet of rinks, and that's where he spent so much time on the ice. It wasn't out on the ponds because we talked about that, he said it was at this twin rink that his father was a part of, and that's where he honed his skills and became that goalie that you were just talking about. Enjoyed the induction, if you check it out. Gab there, rocking and rolling as it concludes and such, and having a nice time, and we'll say hi to everybody for you, and we'll see you soon, and thank you very much. Enjoy the hockey action. [00:32:16] Speaker B: All right, you, too. You take care and have a great night. It'll be funny.