It's just a very perilous road to walk, even when you're forced to do it out of necessity.

Yeah, I mean, the easy part, right, is the tank where you ship guys out, you accumulate assets, you hope the lottery balls go your way, which sometimes they don't.

You know, you look at a team like Detroit, historically really bad lottery luck.

That's not ideal.

But I think the smart teams get creative during this tanking period in terms of bringing in every other team's problems.

And I don't necessarily mean problems in terms of character, because I don't know if you want to shake up your room in the wrong way.

But you look at what Montreal did a few years ago.

Yeah,

First of all, what do you make of the trade and the timing of it?

Yeah, the timing.

I'm glad you brought that up because the Blue Jackets actually released this behind-the-scenes video this morning, and they had a ticker of leading up to the 5 p.m. opening night roster deadline where they had to be under the cap.

And obviously the Leafs had to too.

And I guess the trade went through like 27 seconds before 5 p.m., something like that.

So super interesting from that perspective.

And I mean, we could talk all day about all the parts of this trade, but for me, it comes down to Nyes and Marchenko.

Like, where are you at on those two teams? And who's more likely to do what they're setting out to do? And that's be on the right side of the playoff line.

And so now I'm excited for us to continue to work together and as an organization, work to continue to take steps.

You mentioned, um, maximizing the potential of some of these acquisitions.

I wonder, like some of...

There-- You could maybe label some of these guys over the last couple of years as sort of calculated bets made by Kyle Dubas, like, you know, Mantha, Chychyn, Brazzeau, Söderblom coming in, Kuzmenko, where they're established, they're not en-entirely polished as players.

They maybe need a change of scenery, but there's like, there's something there that we've seen at the NHL level, and they're in their prime.

I wonder, how do you approach that certain type of player in terms of integrating him into the lineup, in terms of maybe just your coaching, the sort of individual coaching? Do you focus on accentuating their strengths, you know, putting them with the right line mates? Do you try to maybe round out their game in a way that maybe previous coaches were unable to, to tap into? Uh, what's sort of your approach with the type of guy that shows up that, you know, just let, let's just use Chychyn as an example.

How did you approach that, you know, that first month or so with him?

And when players came in, they clearly had like a, a design plan of either how they wanted to use them with Chinukov in terms of the offensive zone starts and where he slotted in the lineup or like, you know, focusing on some of those strengths they had previously in different stops and just getting more value out of them than they got in, in their most recent team.

And so he's the story to me coming out of this game.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, like, let's start with that iconic 4-3 goal.

Just, like, unbelievable stuff.

So he pressures Theodore, and the puck actually goes off of Staal's skate, so he kind of, like, gets an assist in that sense.

And then Jarvis tries to deke out Hart, ultimately fails.

Jarvis stays on the puck.

Uh, before we go into the rest of our notes, we were talking about Mark Stone right before we went to break, and I know you wanted to quickly close the, the loop on that with one more anecdote, so I'll give you the floor here.

And so I'll let you go with your biggest takeaway or biggest standout from this game one.

I mean, it's tempting to start with Nicklas Ahrle 'cause he was on one in game one, but I feel like [chuckles] we should start with Vegas considering they did in fact win the game.

So the biggest takeaway for me with Vegas is that when you look back at their five goals, all of them came off sort of quick trigger type of sequences where...

And, like, I guess the first one, Theodore, you know, it's a one-timer from the point, not quite what I'm talking about.

But when you get f- you know, their second goal, when you go through it, when you go all, you know, all the way to that fifth goal, second goal you've got Barbashev off a catch and shoot.

He's in the slot.

Eichel makes this beautiful pass from the corner.

They really got production from all three of their top lines, whereas Carolina's first line was very quiet, and they're just simply gonna need to be better if the Hurricanes are gonna win this series.

But I imagine a lot of teams are watching this and being like, "Man, we cannot wait for Beck Malensek to potentially hit the open market as a 28-year-old UFA because we have a ton of money to spend, and he's gonna be a fan favorite." And so I'm, I imagine that's gonna be a contract that a lot of people are gonna be like, "Whoa, I cannot believe that this guy got this much," but it's gonna be reflective of the market and the changing dynamic in the cap and the fact that he's a very useful player.

Yeah, he's had quite the glow up this year.

Like, I know that he was a player, uh, for Washington and had shown signs, but I feel like just, like, the role that the Sabres have given him has been really beneficial to, I suppose, his stock.

Um, and yeah, to circle back on, uh, McAvoy-Thompson, it's, it's in- it's interesting.

This has popped into my mind a couple of times throughout the playoffs where you've got national team teammates going head-to-head.

Like, you had Konechny and Crosby jawing at each other, and obviously they played on four nations for Canada.

McAvoy and Tage going at it as US Olympians.

You got anything else on either Kane Sens that we didn't get to or the Avs-Kings and just the Avs outlook in general, now one game away from taking care of business in round one and essentially waiting for Minnesota and Dallas to beat each other up for another couple games?

And then the other one, the, and then the other part of it is it just-- Or there's just a more of a willingness of people-- I think there's been a lot of this kind of put this out into the public culture of, "Well, I'm gonna put this out right away, because if I don't be the o- if I'm not the one that puts this out 'cause I got this from someone on a team, they're gonna give it to somebody else." And it, like, that, that seems to me to be s- another part of this whole, this whole problem here, John.

Yeah, I think it's, like, a slipping of standards ultimately.

And, like, like you s- I like that you brought up the sort of former player aspect of it, where a former player enters a media environment, and they're just sorta, like, spouting off, and they're just throwing this out there and that out there under, like, the, the guise, or not disguise, under the, like, shield of, "I'm just a former player that's, that's shooting the breeze," right? Um, and they just, they just sorta talk and, "Hey, I know about what's going on in this organization, that organization." And then next thing you know, they've, they've gained traction as someone who, who knows what they're talking about.

And then, you know, maybe a, a guy who comes from a more traditional journalistic background starts to shade just a little in their direction to keep up.

And next thing you know, you have this deadline where it seemed way more, I'll say, rumor-based than, than reporting-based.

A lot of, like, non-update updates.

A lot of half, you know, reporting.

Well, both guys aren't gonna be in the lineup.

And so I wanted to kind of just float out that delineation, I guess, because I still see people talking about him as if he was a player last year, as opposed to everything he's done so far this year for the Colorado Bunch.

Yeah, that's fair.

And on the Robertson note, just as an aside, like the guy's up to 29 goals in 50 games, first among Americans, I believe third overall.

I wonder if he dusts off the famous Phil Kessel tweet about being around the house with his dog, wondering what he should do.

And, you know, with Robertson, like all jokes aside, like we've seen it from even as recently as last night.

snubbed Americans going off in front of Bill Guerin, you know, the standings are set up for a wild stars first round matchup.

I mean, what could be more sort of in your face than him going off again? And this is looking far in the future, but him going off against Bill Guerin, if things go sideways for the Americans.

Cause I think that the upside of this team and the ceiling is clearly that it's just that the floor has been well beneath that.