Ryan McDonagh

You got three of them.

First time the Badgers have had three Cs on sweaters since, uh, the '09-2010 season, when Blake Geoffrion and Ryan McDonagh and Ben Street, uh, captained the Badgers to the national championship game.

You have Zach Schulz, you have Gavin Morrissey, and you have Joe Palodichuk.

Three, uh, assistant captains a year ago under Ben Dexheimer, and it's, uh, it's a good group.

Sorry Steven Stamkos, thank you for your time.

Ryan McDonagh, I know John Cooper sees you as Conn Smythe worthy in our back-to-back Stanley Cups.

Off you now go to Nashville.

He's, he's made some difficult decisions and stood by them.

Ian Cole's there.

Ryan McDonough was sort of in and out.

Um, you know, and, um, I probably wasn't mature enough for how structured that place was.

Ron Ralston was the coach.

Yeah.

I think that's the question, too, of like what makes Victor Hedman, you know, or a Ryan McDonagh, like a defensive pairing, a top defensive pair, different from like a Max Crozier or an Emil Hilberg, who are maybe, or maybe even a Das too, who's all the way down the line, right? What makes their defense different? I think as a casual fan, it's more difficult to discern the difference between defensemen than it is to discern the difference between forwards or even between goaltenders-

Right

... especially, right?

Mm-hmm.

Seeing maybe an Adam Engstrom with a Noah Dobson, seeing a Ryan, a, a David Reinbacher with a Lane Hutson.

Ooh.

You know, they're gonna tr- they're gonna try some things, for sure.

You know, that's, that's the way I see it.

So it's a good problem to have, and I think David Reinbacher has the elements that Martin St. Louis is looking for, and I think the other element that I don't believe a lot of people are really touching on that I, I think could make a big difference is also getting him to work with Derek Lalonde in terms of the, the way that he's brought up defensemen.

Like, this is a guy that's worked with Ryan McDonagh, uh, Victor Hedman, Mauritz Sider.

Um, he's worked, you know, even Simon Edmondson if I, if I remember correctly.

Do you trust him to kill penalties in the first month? [horn honks]

I do because he's paired with Ryan McDonagh.

McDonagh's positioning allows Karlsson to be more aggressive in his stick work.

It's a classic complementary pairing.

Coming up next, we got the prediction corner.

We're looking at Dastu, Czernak, McDonagh, uh, and a couple of y'all's sheets that you threw in.

Just really cool.

Someone put in an insane amount of effort, and again, I do wanna spend a minute on their sheet 'cause I just, I really respect the, the contribution.

He's 29 right now.

He's already...

I think he is what he is, and we don't expect much other than strong positional defensive play from him and McDonagh.

That's kind of what their job is as a unit.

The fact that this guy was still getting booed by the Habs for over a, you know, decade plus after the whole Carey Price situation in the Stanley Cup Final.

Ryan McDonagh was talking to me about it last year, um, when I asked him about th- when...

This is how I worked.

I worked in a, a bit of a Rangers angle with, like, being, doing, when I was doing a Habs game with, uh, Tampa, and he was like, "I'll never forget when that happened to Kreider." Like, when Kreider, you know, took out Carey Price and then for the rest of-