James Neal

No problem.

Jonathan Huberto, James Neal, what's wrong with you? Why would nobody want this guy on July 1st? We'll give you big money.

Come on down.

Brad Trey Living, I am ashamed that I was a big Brad Trey Living supporter.

Yeah, and like I said off the hop, I think if you were to build in a lab the type of player to put with Nico and Timo, it kind of comes out a lot like Evangelista.

And if you were to build a player in a lab to play with Jack and Brad, it comes out a lot like, Mike Ruff keeps bringing up James Neal.

Yeah, what does all this James Neal love? The real

deal James Neal.

I'll go back and watch James Neal highlights.

I can't even picture what he looks like in my head.

But if you were going to build a guy to put with Jack and Brad, it kind of looks a little bit like Manta.

Like that, that sh- does show me that you're using your cap very efficiently.

Like you look at those Oiler teams, um, you know, a couple years ago were like, you know, James Neal was a scratch and, um-

[laughs] Pouliot

...

I would say the biggest mistake.

James Neal's.

Because here's the thing.

It was, oh, look at this.

I think he will learn from the bridging Matthew Tkachuk mistake.

You know, at the time when they went to, when they went to sign Tkachuk, I mean, they had, you know, uh, James Neal money on the books and then which turned into Milan Lucic and they had Michael Frolik still on the books and they had Troy Brouwer and Michael Stone's buyouts on the books.

And all of a sudden, you know, there's $15 million in essentially dead cap space and that's the reason why you can't sign a guy like Matthew Tkachuk.

So I, I'm gonna assume Craig Conroy's absolutely gonna learn from those terrible mistakes by Brad Treliving that ended up costing him his job.

Ethan Baer gets traded for Warren Fogle.

James Neal gets bought out.

He had been brought in on the Lucic trade, but he had a...

The big thing with Neal is his contract was a lot easier to buy out, a lot less painful than the Lucic contract, and they bought it out.

I had a little bit of... a hockey fan version of PTSD from the Luchich contract.

It was still weighing heavily on me.

The James Neal thing, you know, they had to buy him out.

And then there was Kyle Turris, right? Who was a very similar player in a lot of ways to Nugent Hopkins up until about the age of 30.