Hello, everybody, welcome to Episode three hundred and eight of Spit and Checketts, presented by Pink Whitney from my friends at New Amsterdam Vodka here on the barstool sports podcast Family.

What is up everybody?

Hopefully you all enjoy just the Williams and Jerry D certainly sounds like it based on the feedback on that feedback was very much appreciated. But the final episode of the month, we're happy to bring you Brian Burke and Josh Gratin, a longtime executive and a longtime professional. So we'll get to that in a second. But before that, we want to remind you that now is the time to get your student loan payments under control. You could be saving by refinancing your student loans with Earnest.

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Speaking in legal terms, it's probably a perfect time to bring in our friend Brian Burke. So now time to enjoy the return of our buddy Burke.

Well, it's great to welcome back this colorful character of the game character who's played many roles over the years agent, GM player, director of hockey operations, dean of discipline, and he recently released his first book, Burke's Law A Life in Hockey, with Stephen Blunt.

Thanks for joining us once again on the Spit and Chipotle podcast, Brian Burke. How's it going, Becky?

But how are you? We're doing tremendous.

So you're in Toronto right now. You just said. But are you doing one of these book tours?

Are you going to pass on that? Well, you can call what you can. And we're doing all virtual. We're doing a bunch of events virtually and a lot of media stuff. But no, there was there was going to be a book to cover.

We can't you see, I'm a type of guy that's really into the virtual type stuff these days. But you weren't frustrated at all getting on with a motherfucker.

So, you know, the worst part is since they were very young white kids can altec me on everything. So I have to ask my 14 year old daughter to fix my computer. It's embarrassing.

Burki, did you did you have to wear that outfit today or do you specifically put that on to come on our podcast?

I assume I put this on the corner podcast and you dress like a bum Brickey uniform.

Of course. Yeah.

Well, Burkey, before we get into the book, we're going to talk about the postseason a little bit overall. Did you enjoy the playoffs a lot?

Yeah, I thought it was fantastic. And I knew we were in for a treat when the. Less than a minute into the first game, Brady say ass kicked. Super fast with a big hit there. And I thought right out of the gate, we got second round intensity in the planning round. So I thought the league and the players association did a marvelous job and then the players delivered. So these people say there should be an asterisk on the.

I agree. An asterisk because this was harder than doing it like when we won it. Yeah, that's what I had written down. Did you think mentally it was the toughest one to ever win under the circumstances?

Yeah, I do like to play it, like especially Dallas, to go all that way, like when you lose in the finals. I remember when we won the silver medal in Vancouver in 2010. You're sitting on the bench and what was there? You're not thinking we had just had a great run. You're thinking we failed and we got to watch these guys get their gold medal and we were all choking on our defeat. And you don't realize till probably a couple of years later what an amazing feat that was to win a silver medal with a team that was picked to finish sixth.

Same thing for Dallas. They'll realize someday how special everyone was. But right now, I'm sure they're not feeling it.

Yeah, I think it probably takes a little while to at least settle in. And the problem was, is like I talked about losing losing in the Cup finals and how horrible it was.

And this was just so much worse because of what they'd been through to get there and still not to get to raise that trophy.

But with Tampa, I mean, with what happened the year prior and then the slow start to the year before covid it was there any was there a moment when when everything began again? Where to you that was like, all right, this team is just unstoppable?

I think that five overtime game, I know it's early in the playoffs, but to win that game, if they lose that, it's just such a different story.

I think it could have been the one thing. What I like is Steve Eisman lost a really good team there and then they got swept. And I thought we had approached the upgrades to the team with surgical procedure. So like he said, these are very specific needs we have and I'm going to fill them. Exactly. And so you gave up a couple of first draft picks for Coleman and Goodrow. But they're not rentals. They're under they're still under contract.

They got bigger than that fast. They brought in, in and brought in Shati. They brought in Patty Murray room last summer, brought in Lukasz. And these are all character people with a fair amount of hostility. They wake up kind of grumpy except for shouting those other guys all wake up grumpy and they're ugly. And so to me, they change their whole lot. They kept their skill set, but then they changed, just like our team in Anaheim in terms of clearly defined roles.

You know, I used this quote when my players all time you go to the symphony and the first violin is elegant. She wears a white dress, she comes out last and she's beautiful and stylish. But there's a guy built like me born on a tuba in the back row, and they don't start until we both sit down. I love it when I was going to hop in there, I was going to ask you about Vancouver. Do you keep a close eye on teams that you've been associated with in the past?

And if so, you know, seeing them get over the hump in that first round against St. Louis, you know, as an organization, where do you see them making strides? And do you think that in the next few years they could be a contender?

Yeah, I do. I do follow teams that fired my ass. Thanks for bringing that up. It's a lot of teams finally. Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of work in itself. No, I do.

I do. And I do a radio show in Vancouver, so I do follow their team closely. They've got some great pieces, but they got hit hard at free agency too. They brought back Najran at the end, but crosstabs are very underrated player. If he played in these people talk a lot more about him. He's a shot blocking machine pellicular right shot reliable hits like a great mentor, like he's a really fast track Quddus for me. And then they lose the goaltender and then they lose to Foley.

Now they got Nate Schmidt back at the end, but they were hit hard, but they got some wonderful pieces on that chessboard. By all accounts, the bubble was a huge success, but do you think there was anything that the either the league or maybe the union got wrong, that nobody wants to do a bubble again, but if they had to do it over, they might have done different?

There's I don't think so. I'll tell you this. I'm not shy about criticizing the league when I think something is wrong. Like the draft lottery to me is insane, just stupid. And this one, I think they get straight A's and the union deserves the same same level of praise because they agreed to it all. It's not funner to be stuck in one place for that long. It's not fun. And people say, oh, room service is not that bad.

Is that being hockey players move around? That's what we do. We like to move around. Being in one place like that with all your family suck and the teams that run all the way, that was a hardship. So I don't think there's one thing that we could have done better. If they tried to make it more livable, they would have violated the bubble if they tried to bring the families in the 14 they currently want to stop them.

I don't think there's anything they could have done better. The only thing they could have done better is you say OK, for the frozen for the final four. All your families better come right now so they can beat the quarantine in case you make it into the finals. They'll be clear for you to be there. That's the only thing that maybe you could have done, but the players could have done that on their own, too.

I've long heard you kind of talk about the draft lottery and how ridiculous it can be. I'm curious, like, how how would you change it? What are the things that really drives you nuts or pisses you off or basically make you think it's foolish?

Well, it is foolish. I mean. What a lot of New Jersey just move on are the Rangers just move up 11 places? Mm hmm. So when we started doing drafts in all of pro sports, the principle is inverse order of finish. So the worst team gets the best player. Then we had crooked owners and we had to put in a lottery or we had teams that were willing to tank. We had to put in a lottery. I accept the lottery, but it should be the fewest number of teams possible to make the incentive to tank as low as possible.

So in my mind, five teams, the five worst teams do a straight lottery and that's that. No one can move up more than four places that way. Right. And a guy like that, like the Rangers, were on pace the regular season for like 90 points. They're pulling ahead of teams that would have it like Detroit had, what, fifty seven points at the Post. That's not right. And this is not the first time bitched about the flyers moved up and took Nolan.

Patrick moved up a bunch of spots. It's not right. If you've got a shaved cut, wait, you're not taking the big Band-Aid out. You're taking the little Band-Aid out of the box. This is something we've got to cure. Used the smallest Band-Aid you can. Don't penalize teams that have a bad year like Detroit tried like hell. They're awful. They should have got a higher pick than they did. They got screwed. Ottawa got screwed.

So to me, that's problem number one. And they've got to fix it. And the league gets almost everything right. This is the reason they don't want to change this. All leagues are like this. What they because their guys pass this role, they're very reluctant to admit it was a mistake because they approved it. So if you change it, you have to say we didn't get this right. And they're very reluctant not to. The NHL alone, all pro sports.

Think about it. I'm a GM. I'm like, jeez, I voted for that. I'm not voting to change it. So they're reluctant to change. I get. But they've got to fix it. Second part, they've got to fix this. If you pick in the top three, you can't come back to the buffet table for three years, the highest you can pick his fourth. We can't do an Edmonton job again. Well, they have a number one pick three years out of five or whatever it was.

We're not going to reward sustain failure. Those are the two phases I would like to see. So far, no one's listening.

Is that a shot at Edmonton, by the way? No, it's a shot at the system. I'm just I'm just fucking around. I usually I just bring it up the low scrap again for crying out loud. I'm not sure if it made the book.

It's in the book. Great. You know what the beauty is best.

Kevin Rohwer showed up for that fight on time and happy to fight like the wee hockey guys aren't afraid of a fight. He would have been there. Would have been early.

Yeah. And you would've brought the six pack for afterward. Yeah, exactly.

I'm curious, you have such a good memory. Last time we saw you.

I remember after that. How do you remember everything. So you must have been had at least had the idea of writing a book for quite a while.

What made it finally come to fruition and figure out time's the time's right to give this a go?

Well, after we won in 07, Steven Brown, who wrote this book and did a marvelous job, he's a great author. He approached me about doing a book after the Cup in 07. And I said, no, I got too much hockey in front of me, but I started keeping a diary thinking maybe I should do a book. So last February at twenty eighteen was my last year in Calgary. The deal I made with the Calgary Flames is that I would come in at the end of each year.

They could walk away or I could walk away. So King, the late, great Ken King, wonderful man, Communisms and said we want to pull the plug at the end of this year. So I said, OK, that's the deal with me. That's fair. They figured out Bradshaw Levy was ready to go on his own and it is he was so no sweat, no hard feelings. Love it there. But we went to the playoffs that year, so between February and the end of April, mid-April, I'm not as involved as I was.

I'm still consulted. But it's after the trade deadline. There's not much we can do anyway. Right. So I started making an outline, ended up doing one hundred pages, single spaced with some of these anecdotes sitting like drafting the Sabines draft and Praga in ninety three. And then you feel like kind of Forest Gump, like I was at some critical points in like the McSorley perseverance that I was the GM Bertuzzi Moore, I was a GM diesels.

They intersected at these points, the CB, both collective bargaining agreements. I was on the bargaining team. So I think I think people will like this book. I think there's some interesting stories in there, hockey fans and some front office workers at shows. I had to interact with players, interact with GM, interact with coaches, interact with owners. I think that people like. Did you keep the journal specifically for the book, also for sort of cover your ass reasons down the line potentially?

Well, no, I'm I'm a lawyer, so I keep I keep a diary of important events anyway, just so like when I was when I was a GM of the Leafs. So let's say let's say what's the GM in Chicago? I call it at noon on Wednesday, October 15th. I make a note in my diary what we talked about. So if he says later, well, we never talked about that. So I can tell you the time and date I was in my office.

So as a lawyer, I keep a diary not to cover my ass, smart ass, but to make sure it's like you can't question when I say no. This guy was more than I talk about recording stuff, so I enjoyed it. It makes you reflect on what you did, right? Like you go back and think in your mind, I could have done that better. All right. I did a great job there, but I could have done this better.

I could have I wish I could change this. So it was good. I enjoyed it.

Brian, as part of it, also going back on these big moments and once you've reflected on them, even if you maybe were wrong in some instances explaining it and saying, you know, this is at that time why I landed on that decision. And, you know, sometimes you got to eat a little bit. Does any of that type of explaining go on this book?

Yeah, like I give an example of Phil Castlebury. So we tried to first draft picks for Phil Casserly and a second they turn into Tylor, say again and Doug Hamilton. Now Phil Kessel came in and did the job for us. I loved to have him. He was great but it's too high a price that. So at that time when we made the trade we were like six games over five hundred like Christmas time. So we make that, we start the season, we're doing well.

We're clearly fighting for a playoff spot. There's no way we're picking first overall, our second overall. And we talked about the possibility that we select the two top guys in this draft. Taylor, I'll say again, we can't end up giving up the first or second pick. And we're like, we're going to pick around 10, 12, 14 somewhere in there, Christmas time. It look like we're bang on. And then the 18 wheeler went off the cliff.

We lost like nine out of eleven and ends up being a high tech. What? I like to have that back. Yeah, I still like that felt, but I'd like to have that deal back.

So when it was offered, was it was it not lottery protected? First of all, were they asking that, that it wasn't the most.

Most teams did not lottery protect picks back then. OK, let's start. That started after I screwed up.

Oh Jesus. Oh good. Yeah, I'm sure fucking Steve Simmons had a ball with that one.

But you know what? When I, when I speak publicly, people say, what's the worst trade you ever made? Usually I say how much, and that's what happens. So how much time we got? I made a lot of. It's not covered, sorry, it's an allergy. Oh, that's what happens when you think you should trade. You just start like twitching and sneezing. Yeah, well, not just that when you played sports, if you want to if you want to hit a homerun, you've got to strike out.

You know, if you swing hard enough to hit a home run, you're going to mess sometimes. So I hit a lot of home runs. I struck out a bunch. You just kind of hit more home runs and strikeouts and teams keep firing you.

That's a perfect analogy. I, I talk about the last episode. We talked about free agency, obviously. And you just mentioned the Hall Sagan draft. Was it surprising to you to see Buffalo as a team, to see a one year deal? I know covered in free agency and money is changed. But what do you think of that situation?

I thought it was bizarre. I talked to I didn't make any sense to me at all. But then I talked to Darren Ferris, who represents Taylor, and he said, look. If you look at the free agent market, a couple goalies got paid a couple of days, got paid and no one else got paid, no forwards headed out of the park. And he said the deals didn't materialize that we thought would be five plus years, a big deal just didn't happen, let's call it.

And the bad news is going to keep on coming, folks. These guys that aren't signed yet, those price tags aren't going up. They're going down. So he said you had a chance to play with an elite center for one year, hopefully the revenues rebound and there's more money in the system a year from now, which I think is a safe bet. Why not? And I think Jack is one of the top 10 players in the league.

Me personally, I think he's a stud that could be played anywhere but Buffalo. They'd be selling statues of them. Right. Like these. Amazing. You just said corn with the GM in a hypothetical situation. That's hilarious because, you know, his secretary would be like he's on a scouting trip in Myrtle Beach right now. I'll take a message.

Yeah, Dale, I'd be Dale Brekky during the process of making the book. Was it fun? Did it get frustrating? Was there ever a point where you like the hell with this? I don't want to do this anymore.

The chapter where I had to dictate the chapter about Brandon, about my son, that was hard. And they asked me to read the book on to an audio book, which I did. And if you if you bothered to listen, I don't do audio books, but if you listen to that chapter, you'll be able to hear I had a hard time getting through that even 10 years later. So even now, I don't like talking about it. But that was hard.

The rest of it was. Like, you know, I'm a Harvard lawyer, Harvard educated law student, and, like, work comes easy. So Stephen Braun would I would dictate a section, he would have a typed up and get it back to me. I would have approved and edited, like within three hours, like, I'll take 60 pages, read them, fix them up. Not not change his language, but typos or stuff I dictated wrong.

I went back. I tried to get. Go back 30, 40 years now, write in this book you go back to when you played in college, I tried to get it right and where there were set where I could check on things. I went back and checked with people and said, if I got this right, look at these pages, make sure I got it right. So I'm sure there's errors in there. But if they are, they're errors, unintentional errors.

I tried desperately to get the book factually correct.

Did you find it? I mean, as I get older, I'm younger than you, but you find maybe your memory sometimes we play tricks on you would say, well, shit, did that really happen that way? And you have to double check.

Was that a frequent thing?

It was just like just in general, like got me. I got it all this time.

As time passes on, the one thing that amazed me was I remember one time I was going through the airport in Toronto with Pat Quinn and a kid came up to played for us in Milwaukee for two years. And he goes, Hey, Pat. Hey, Burkean. What are you doing? I'm an electrician. I got two kids, great kid. And he walked away. And Pat says who the crises are? And I said, Pat. He played two years for us in Milwaukee.

Like he wasn't some kid that came to camp one year, we had him in the system for two years and Pat said no idea. And I thought at the time, boy, is his memory terrible. Guess what? I'm Pat Quinn. Like like I've had guys come up to me to play for me and I'm like, they got a me played for in Milwaukee. I played for you and Frederickton. Guys have played for you. Now I can remember every guy who played with going back to that time, but guys who played for me like I was doing a part of my last year of Vancouver, I looked at the roster and there are at least two guys there that I knew played for me, but I didn't realize how good they were and how important they were, like Marty Rochinski.

You kind of get put in that spot where when you're at the draft and the Columbus draft of that kid, you guys are all looking at each other like, what the fuck? We got no notes on this guy, the Russian kid. You're like, I think he's a winger.

Well, I talked to him afterwards. I think the guy's got six goals in six games now so far. But, yeah, we had nothing. And Sammy Cosentino, he's the guru. He's the swami. If he doesn't get it, kid probably doesn't exist. So I said they said Russian winger. So I said, I think he's a winner. And everyone called you idiot. We know he's a waiter. Say hello.

And I had my guy keep him with the TV theme here. You must have had a blast being back on the juice during the playoff run. He I mean, he had a breakout performance. Everybody raved about it. I was in the States. I didn't get to watch as much as I wanted to. But just talk about the energy that he brought to Hockey Night in Canada during the run.

Well, he he's he's a star. Yeah. Star. Like, he can break down and explain play like I can explain a play. I can explain to you how a three on two broke down. It didn't work, but I labor through it. He explains it quickly and simply in language that people could understand. He's self-deprecating. He's got a great sense of humor. He's not afraid of anyone on the panel. He'll take a shot at anyone on the plane.

He doesn't care. But that's that's the kind of player he was. Like, I drafted him and he was the whole story about how we got started. That's true about Fedor Federoff. You guys heard that? Yeah. He fought a teammate in the parking lot and also want to fight Thunder Federov and he won constantly cut them wide open. They went back into the bar. He said to Dallas Eakins, I'm going to get sent home tomorrow. He was not an atlas on an amnesty trade agreement from Bowling Green.

He said, no water Winnipeg in the I back then, I guess it was. And he said, they're going to send me home tomorrow and I'll see. You said you don't know our boss. They're going to sign you tomorrow and Steve down when he called me the next morning. So you're not gonna believe what happened. I said two players fighting the runway. Now, someone had a fight. No, it's better not to teammates fight. And so we signed them.

So I think you've dated Bieksa a little too far saying it was the I. I think it was the age all at the time, was it not? Two thousand and.

What about I love Vancouver, 2004. This would have been 2003 unless unless I'm going crazy here, but but yeah, he was excellent and you mentioned, like the club, even even Anthony Stewart on there as well.

Do you want to hear a bizarre thing? I asked. I'm at the drop. I just drafted Kevin Bieksa. And a guy comes up to me and introduces himself and says, I'm Kevin's dad, I played against you in college, though, so I said, really, I'd play a clerk. So I'm like, I don't remember the exact clerks. OK, so I was talking to Juice on the set and I said, the day I drafted you, I met your dad.

He goes, Oh, it's funny because I was sitting at home in Hamilton with me. When I said a guy came up and introduced some say, the clerk said, he said, my dad never went to university, so some some stranger came up and made up the story. I was like, oh, let's just get to talk to.

Oh, shit.

So so when you put the book together, how do you know where the line is on, what to share, what not to share. That's something you just got to go your gut instinct on.

No, I mean.

These kids got, well, what played for me briefly and business me, they know I've got one hundred stories I could have put in that book that would really embarrass people, that would bury people where a player asked me to do something for him or I made something go away.

That's never going to be shared. That's off limits. That's my task was I wasn't to put anything in the book unless our team had common knowledge about it. In other words, I'm not settle the score. I'm not telling a story that no one knows about. The guys who played for me during those times would have looked at those reports. I put it and said, Yeah, I remember that. But we didn't have common knowledge on my team or my management team and didn't see the book.

If it was private in nature, a player come in my office, bare his soul to me about his parents, about his wife, whatever, that doesn't belong in a book ever. I know your media now, but did you take any media to task in your new book? I haven't had a chance to read it yet. Absolutely. Let's hear some more, Tony Gallagher, Steve Stemmons, what's his name? Dimethoate, Larry Brooks. Yeah, I'm not they're not getting a free ride, I never got a free ride from them.

Exactly. And to me, the sad part is I think the vast bulk of the media are honest, sincere men and women that try to get it right and work hard. And they're important to our game. The media are important to our game. I've always believed that. But it's a handful of jerks that record for everybody. You know, I named my name and I can't stand them and I don't care if they don't like it. Do you think that's going to be a I was going to happen there, do you think that's a big element to bring in Joe Thornton to Toronto, maybe to deflect some of that?

And, you know, in a guy who's been around so long, he's able to come in and kind of settle those young guys down, given, you know, the media there is fucking nuts.

Well, it's a catch 22. Here's the problem with the media here, because it's there's too many of them. So if you look at the size of a dressing room you guys played in the NHL of the Jets rooms that pay for the media, we don't need a room that big for the players. If we had our druthers, you guys would be 10 feet apart, like when we were kids. So I can look you in the eye and say, we need more from you tonight.

I can say you can't cough up the puck like that. We've got them so far apart, they got megaphones. But that's so after the game. The media can fit in the room. So after a game in Anaheim, there'd be twenty five or thirty people in the room. Calgary, twenty five or thirty, maybe thirty five on a Saturday, maybe forty on a Saturday night. There's eighty on a weekday in Toronto and there's one hundred on a Saturday.

So hockey that kind of game is under media. And so when you're not playing well they all pick up a rock. So it's the volume of the negativity and the social media. It's not that the media in Toronto are negative necessarily. There's a handful that are, but it's the volume and they blame they got to blame somebody. So one night it's me. The next night is from also the next night is the next thing I just felt. So it's the volume that's a problem here.

It's not that there's anything wrong with the media. Actually, the media here really professional for the most part. But the social media, that's something I have to deal with when I first came into hockey and now it's massive. The leads back to Joe Sartin, so go back to Joe. Sergeant, sorry I didn't answer your question. Oh, that's all right. We go we can go off the rails. I got this is a rock and a hard place for me because I love Joe Thornton as a player and I like him as a person.

I don't see a fit here. This doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense to me where is he going to play, who's going to play with, whose job is he taken? What kind of work do they have? So I look at their moves so far and I think they've made some smart moves. I like TJ Brody had him in Calgary. I've admired Wade and Simmons forever. But it's the sleight of hand here. It's like you're watching David Copperfield.

Oh, we had to Wade Simmons. No, you didn't. You replace Kyle Clifford with Wayne Simmons. So it's not like you went out and found a character guy with grit. You had one. You kind of had to you replaced Kyle Clifford. So I love when Simmons. But net. Net. OK, I'm tough. You're dressing for the game. You feel any different? If there's just one of them in the lineup, you're getting ready.

I might have to fight tonight. I've got to fight Simmons. They're going to fight Clifford, but you don't have to worry about two of them. So that's number one. Number two, I don't see the fit with Joe. He's a wonderful human being. He's a he's a good player. He's on the back nine. He might be putting on seventeen. He's up there, but he's still an effective player. He's a wonderful human being. I just described Jason Spezza.

Now they've got two of them. I don't get it. Yeah, they're going they're trying to go really all in deep with older veterans who are expensive to help out these guys, make it 10 sheets who need who need to be able to figure out how to win in the playoffs. But it is because they have the speed up front on the top two and then it gets slower and slower as you look. But at least they do have some toughness.

I look at as a fan, they go, well, you're adding something, Bogosian. I don't know how much I'll play, but still he's different than a lot of the men they had. I agree.

I like the moves. I like Brody. I like because I like getting ready. Andre Johnson, like he said, they have players like him. They got rid of capital and they have players like him. I think Kyle said a great job. I don't get the last one. And I'm amazed that everyone in this marketplace has bought into the idea that they added Wayne Simmons. They made it out with the same. He's a wonderful guy, I love them.

I wish he played for me. He's my kind of player, but so is Clifford. So if you net out the toughness, the grit, the sand, the fighting ability, at best it's a wash. But, you know, the cap is flat now, everything that's gone on with the pandemic, but I could have asked before the pandemic, can you win in today's NHL if you pay in three guys? Ten million dollars each?

No. OK, so an answer and moving right along, well, here it gets better. How about give us four guys, 40? Yeah, that's true, they got half their cat. It's eighty one point five million dollars, 40 million dollars and four guys. So guess what? The math doesn't work. They've got to trade Newlander and get a defenseman. Change it, changing conferences. Put yourself in Stan Bowman's shoes here for a little bit and look at the article that comes out with Jonathan Tapes.

Just very emotionally upset at what's gone on there.

They don't sign. Crawford's gone. He doesn't think there was ever going to be a rebuild. What's going on in Chicago and how much of a point do you think a player has to say maybe he should have been involved with a GM is making moves. You look at it like a guy who's created a dynasty, has the right to be informed of moves or. No, you play. I do. I do the office stuff.

OK, so what are you playing for me? You know what I'm going to say? You were, but you were you wouldn't know what was going on, so I think he's got the right and Patrick Kane has the right to be informed. They don't have a vote, though. And if you had popped off in the paper, I would have come to my office and told me that come to my office. Now, here's my point. I think Jonathan Davis has been a marvelous player.

I worry when you pop off in a marketplace and you're making ten point five million dollars. I worry about local reaction to be like, you know, why we're rebuilding? Because we overpaid two guys. And I don't feel they've overpaid Jonathan Davis. I think he's earned every bloody said he's ever right. I love them, but there's no one locally blowback on that because they wouldn't have to rebuild at that more cap space to you say to yourself, it's the same thing Jimmy Rutherford say to Pittsburgh, I've got two elite players.

We're not going to a total rebuild. We're going to try and win. I don't think Pittsburgh is good enough to win no matter what they do now with their cap situation. I think it's that window was closed for me because I, like I said, OK in the East and I love Jimmy Rutherford, but I look at these stats. Are they better than Tampa? No. Are they better than Washington? Nope. Are they better than Boston?

Nope. And this is the same thing if you're Toronto. And I thought if you're Chicago, Natsume wouldn't want to do rebuild. We've got these two studs. Fact is, those teams aren't close to championship caliber in my mind. So you're better off getting good fast or getting bad fast. The money middle is nowhere to be the mushy middle. Since we're talking about Jonathan, I think Jonathan James has a right to speak up behind closed doors and I think Stand probably wishes he had consulted them.

But if they can't say there's a rebell coming there, if they think they should still be going for it, saying Corey Crawford and add this and add that, I don't see it. I think I'm a pretty experienced hockey guy. I don't see it. You got three rings. Just remember, when you go buy gas, you got three rings. You're putting gas in your truck, you're wearing three rings.

Don't forget that since we're on the topic of GM's Joe Sack is a psychic excuse me, who's just done an incredible job in Colorado. Another reload really in this free agency without giving up any major assets has like I mean, other than Eisenman, I can't think of another guy who's transitioned so well into that role from being a Hall of Fame player to now potentially a Hall of Fame game.

And sneaky. They're both sneaky eyes. What do you what are you. It's right. In the last two weeks, they've made major changes and not a not a headline, not a whisper. Joe Sakic, just like three interviews a year. The Sphinx is a better interview than he is. And yet look at he's doing it. He's quietly turning that team, which was already good into a contender like, OK, so I don't make my predictions before the season until right before.

And then I put the team side by side. I draw the line up and put them side by side. I confer with people, coaches, GMs. But I've got news for you right now. I can't see Vegas or Colorado or anyone in the West approaching those teams on paper. And they've got both. They've got good coaches. They've got good teams. And Joe does it quietly. He doesn't get in trouble with the media. Like I didn't get all worked up and start yelling and screaming and threatening and fight people.

But quietly, professionally.

That's fair enough. Though Denver's a market, it's not going to be like that. They don't have you got six reporters in the room in Denver.

It's so different there. It is not at all similar to some of the markets in the league in terms of pressure from media and fans.

Yeah, know what? I agree with that. And maybe that's what they need to fill the building and keep it filled. But they've got a pretty good fan base there. That media coverage, it's always football there. It's always college sports. You know the difference. But they got it. They got a great fan base in Colorado and they got to be watching this team now because. I was proud of my team's on selling tickets, my teams sold tickets, were fun to watch.

We traded chances. We fought. We had people like watching our team and that team sells tickets. Colorado was fun to watch. That's an explosive, dynamic team. I don't like the fact that they don't. They traded the Russian defense. I liked him for it. But that's a good team to watch. Burkey Petrenko left St. Louis via free agency for Vegas. There was lots of talk about Doug Armstrong's philosophy on Naumov clauses and bonuses. Where do you stand on those particular issues?

I don't think I've ever given a full blown trade naumov class ever. I was always eight teams. I mean, again, memory is faulty, but I think you have to adhere to your principles like Louis Armstrong. They're not going to break. You can't I can't say to Paul this not here's the rules and then give it to a star. So you can't have that because we don't do that here. But then I give it 10.

I think consistency is really I think I would have understood whatever just happy being there.

And the reason you can do it is because they were giving you guys would even do a lottery protection's back. That's why the no boos clause didn't even exist. No HL looking for free trade.

I think it was the I tell smartarse. I think it was anyway. The if you go back to when no trade clauses came in, they're really inherently, if you think about it, they're pretty stupid. If you get to a point where you want to trade a player, he should want out and he should just be able to say, I don't want to go to certain places. Here's the part that aggravates me. You asked for eight or eight teams on the no trade list.

So you give a no fly zone. Eight teams, all seven Canadian teams are almost always on. It's for tax reasons. But even your Canadian players give you a list with all Canadian teams on it breaks my heart. I'd say no. I'd say to players who are Canadian, you just said you don't want to play in Canada when you retire. The year you remember most fondly will be the years you played in Canada because people love the game and they love you.

My time in Canada has been so special working for Canadian teams. And not to hurt anyone's feelings here, Brian, but if you were a star player right now and you had to put three teams on your Naumov clause, who would you pick? Who would be your three teams?

Well, for me, I focus on the travel like the travel is going to be. That's going to be a compressed schedule this year. So I'd say take three West Coast. They take Vancouver, Anaheim. And it sounds like the travel is going to be a nightmare this year. I think they're actually better because they'll compress the schedule. And if you have more back to back sports, reenforce, that's why goaltending is going to be important. But my prediction is going to play around 60 games and it is going to be the Calgary Flames are not going to fly to Vancouver and play once.

They're going to play twice and then they're going to go right to San Jose and they're going to play twice and then they're going to write to L.A. and play twice. They've got it. And I've been harping on this since I worked on that. I think the league does a poor job on scheduling anyway. The travel costs are unnecessarily high now that money matters and they have to focus on travel costs, they'll do a better job on travel. Yeah, understandably, nobody has a clue what's going to go on that show you just mentioned, you think it might be 60 games.

Are we looking at possible division realignment or are we looking at a thing where when I read that the league needs fans where so much of the revenue is created from the gate, how do you how do you approach what's going to go on when the season starts, if they're asking you?

Well, first off, I think it's a fair question, what I want to know as a season ticket. All right. I want to know when we're starting. So in my mind, the league dragged out the bubbles for a very good reason. They could read the covid-19 ratings and delayed as late as they could and then pick two very safe hub's. They want to do the same thing here as late as you can. Now, in my mind, at some point, that's a mistake we have to play.

People will find something else to do if we don't play and that they'll watch something else to watch on TV. We lost some percentage of our audience this year. Whether we know what yet or not, we don't know what it is. But some people said there's no Hokkien. I'm going to watch the documentary channel. I'm going to watch Netflix, I'm going to read books. I'm going to learn French. We lost some percentage. We don't know what it is yet, so we've got to play.

In my mind, there's no question there's going to be divisional realignment because you need a Canadian division now. So there's a 14 day quarantine. They're not going to look that any time soon. They're not opening the border. So if the Minnesota Wild fly up to Winnipeg to play a game, they've got to stay for 14 days. Ain't going to happen. So you're doing a Canadian division and then they'll do tight, like take a ruler. And you ran McNelly Map.

And I showed the side of the hockey night two years ago. The old Rabinow playbook used to keep in our truck. No one has that right. They all nav systems and GPS. But if you take the geographic distances between the different cities in the US, you can figure out what the divisions will look like, what's the tightest travel, what's the cheapest travel. So you got Anaheim, L.A., San Jose, you got Vegas, Arizona. That's a grouping.

And then at Filiba, Colorado or whatever, Florida, instead of playing with Montreal, you're going to go far enough, the Washington, Philly, that group, so on. So you're going to play. Now, the question is, can you play the three American divisions? Can they play each other? Canadian division is going to have to stay and play the Canadian teams. And that's OK. I think they'll generate interest for a year. It'll be fun.

Imagine what you've played in battle, all of that. Plus, when we have back to backs, always dressed a lineup that made sure that the second game would be interest. So you can bet you can guarantee a sellout the second night if you dress the right people for the first time anyway. So that's what I say. Sixty games, compact schedule. You'll need to goaltenders more back to back sports reinforce. During the free agency period, there's often PR battles between players, teams, agents.

I think we had a little one here in Boston with Terry Crew. There was lots of information on both sides going back and forth. Did you ever participate in media subterfuge or did you deal with things head on when you were in charge? How would you handle that type of shit?

What with free agency? The way we did it was we only went after on the first day. We only after one after one guy in his position.

So it wasn't like we were making three offers simultaneously. I remember the example I gave on TV was we went after Brad Richards so that July 1st I was in Kandahar in Afghanistan, visiting the Canadian soldiers. Dave knownas made the pitch. But our pitch was, you're the only four where we're going after today. And you've got to be truthful because players know if you lie and they find out later, you did the other sense it right away or they find out later.

And players are smart players. You can't lie to players. So. So, Brad, we're only making one pitch. That's, you know, the only four. We're going to try and sign it. If we don't get you might do something else tomorrow, but you're the only guy only forward. And we made the pitch and you're about family and place to live. And here's our prospects are coming, our chances to win. And we offered them, I think, six times six and the agent laughed at us.

He's like, well, once the real offer coming. So I'm in I'm in Kandahar. I'm on the base in Kandahar. I'm on a landline from a colonel's office. And I said, well, we'll go seven years, seven times six. And they were like, well, what is the real offer? So you got sixty three million dollars. He got seven times nine. He got nine years at seven or seven times. He gets three million dollars.

We went to forty two. We weren't even close. So we said, OK, we'll move on. But we always did as we set our price and said, we'll go to forty two and then we're done. We tried to sign it. He's obviously that same day and said we're the only defense we're coming after today. Eddie, you play for me. We love you. Come to Toronto. But we went three years and you got four in Florida wherever we went.

So we set our prices internally. I never had a great July 1st except Scott Niedermeyer, and that's because I had his brother. It wasn't because I was a great salesman. You want to play with Robbie? So on a on a I'm thinking of an example like what kind of what happened with the Bruins and Torrey Craig in that crusade saying like there wasn't an offer and the Bruins said there was. How would you ever come out and be like, this is exactly what happened.

I got my diary right here. Let me read you the notes. I mean, when you think of players disagreeing with with GM ownership in the media, how do you approach that?

Well, there's no way I would call me a liar, but but I always put my players first. I would call Terry and say, look. Here's the date and time. I've got a copy of the offer we faxed through our email that they fax, it looks like all men. So I still have a fax machine. Can you guys you have a fax machine?

Oh, yeah, yeah, it's right next to the the eight track and the the VCR, Patrick, my sunglasses, they said that they have a pager too, but I would call a player and say sorry before I before I call you a liar.

Make me look like a jerk. You tell your agent to retract that, here's the offer that was made. Here's the date and time you got the email. It's timestamped. We made the offer, I give the player a chance to get out of that gracefully before I get in a fight. I don't like fighting with my players. I don't my fight with agents, but I value my relations with my players. So I want to go to Italy and say, look, you've got this wrong, don't look like a jerk.

Fix it or tell your agent to fix it or I'm going to fix it. And that's the hard way. I'm going to go on and say, obviously, someone's lying here because here's a copy of the. Turkey sticking with contracts, you're seeing quite a few buyouts, obviously, that's with a flat cap coming this year. Do you see it moving forward? Or maybe the owners will start saying we maybe want a longer signing, are less less length in signing.

So even you're with your if you're with your organization, it has to be less than eight years. And if it's going somewhere else, it's less than seven because I feel like these long term deals keep getting bought out. Or do you just know?

So I would use no signing now that they got these last two, three years. He's not going to be that guy. We may buy him out. We were talking about this earlier. That's why Buis brings it up, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I think what you are doing now is the answer to a question is yes, this is something that should not have been given away in collective bargaining. And this is where the rank and file on the union has to pay attention. Eight year contract terms. How many players get those? Just superstars, and yet they traded away stuff to get done sort of on a five year contract. And then you've got a chance of getting a four year deal.

This and what's got a chance to get her four years out. Star can only get five now if they pay yours on that down to transload. Someone's getting squeezed in Vegas. Yeah. Why the union gave that away or that I'm not. I don't get it. Signing bonuses. Thirty five, nine and paratransit those times and signing bonuses. The other 18 guys on the team or 60 guys on the team that never will get a signing bonus if there's a lockout, they get squeezed.

If we have aspro, that gets accelerated by the signing bonus. Right. Why did the union protect star players, the guys who need the least protection in this deal? Why did the rank and file vote for it? I don't get it. When I was on the bargaining team with a cap of 10 percent on signing bonuses and a max of five years, maybe a franchise player could get a six year deal. And by the time they kicked me out of the room and then they came back with eight years and no, I'm not signing bonuses on my watch.

But the union said, what, about 20 guys in the room to protect all of them? Don't protect one or two of them. I don't know of any more I don't know if you go into this in the book, but a lot of times you'll see rumors start right about whether our guys get possibly getting shot and you might get moved or whatever somebody else is thinking. If that's ever happened in a team that you run, do you try to right away find where the rat is, find who's giving this info out, or you just realize that's part of the business.

We actually we actually would plant we had a guy on trial and we thought was we did we had a guy we thought was leaking in and we gave him something and a Game of Thrones.

This is unreal. You just do that shit to keep yourselves entertained.

Burkey No, I'm not the guy we suspect that was innocent, at least on this one. The problem is. Guys, I think the reason people leak stuff from the media is because I think if I make a friend of Paulson that I make a friend of. Right when I make a friend of the admiral. When I get in trouble down the road, I lose 10 in a row. Somehow you're going to save my ass or you're going to go to bat for me.

And the truth of the matter is, you can't save me. If I started to think no one in the media can say it's a bad bargain. So we just tell our guys, wake up. Now, most of the leaks we would I would say to our team, we are close on a deal so we don't bring the coach in on a deal till late. So you don't want to bring in a player your coach hates. So it'd be me and Dave know me and Bob Murray.

OK, start. Why would you do Whitney for Vishna? OK, we're talking the straight No. One climb up, no one talks about it. We do our own research. What do you think of this and that? What do you give us that? But we say we don't think we can get them like we keep the security on the deal now, we think we were going to make this deal. Now we bring in the coach the day before the deal.

OK, Mark, I can get this and that. What do you want to do if he says I hate him? OK, a deal's off. Randy Carlyle, what do you think? Ron Wilson, what do you think? Glenn Garcia, what do you think? You only bring them in at the last minute because you don't want to bring in a player that he won't like or doesn't like, but you can't risk the leak. Most of the leaks, I'm confident my most of the leakage came from the other side and I would stay true to its mandate.

In the room, there's no way to know about this. If I read about this, the deal is off. I was going to follow that up. Have you ever nixed one because it got out first? Yeah. Any one in particular you can mention on the part and the vault. All right.

Maybe fax it over and I'll if I can give it a bracket, would you say it's still a common tactic for some free from some front offices, rather, to feed, you know, maybe a story? Whether it's true or not, it's a preferred media?

Well, I don't think we can store it and just make an enemy. Right. So if I leak a story that's clearly false, you're going to call me back and say that was that crossed the line. That's malicious. That's just evil. But no, the leak. The leakage game. Yeah. These guys this is how a system jams that mentioned for possible jobs. Right. That leak something to a writer and says, oh, John Smith and Buffalo, the assistant GM, he'd make a fine GM.

That's the currency the guys use in our trade. It's been that way forever. So it's not wrong. It's not evil. It's just hard for players. And these two guys with all this, it's hard to read your name in the paper. You might be traded, if you like, where you are. If you hate where you are, then you're like, yeah, great, let's go, giddy up. But if you like where you are and this is what I worry about in Vegas with the number of names that were floated where they're talking about making room for this deal to sign for TransGlobe.

You heard Alec Martinez's name. You heard Paxon's name. You heard this guy's name. Then that's unsettling, if you like where you are. And if the team came after you hard and said, here's a five year deal, you'll love it here, we love you. And in two years I've made smart, you make sure every passport you get across the goddamn border, I mean, it's hard. When you look at our storylines from the playoffs, one of the funniest, funniest, biggest ones was the Alan Walsh tweet of the sward to Marc-Andre Flurry's back.

You know, being around the game and knowing him is that surprise you and something like that. Could you ever imagine an agent doing that without the player giving it the OK?

No. Never I think the player knew exactly what was going on. I do think this. It's fashionable to go after our loss. I never had a problem like all my years working in hockey, I never had a problem is very professional with me. So I'm not one of these guys. Here's a chance to jump out at a loss and punch him in the head. I don't think it was timely. I don't think it was helpful to me.

OK, it's going to play out one or one or two ways. Neither runners will be the starter. And then this is terrible. It looks like terrible self-interest or we're going to battle it out and he'll get some starts either way. Untimely, unnecessary, really, I think muddy the waters for no good reason. But to me, you've got to be really careful if you're an agent and you whine about a player's lifestyle, like to me, if Robert Hunter was a stiff, that's one thing.

But he's a pretty darn good goalie. And Marc-Andre me, I feel kind of victimized here because I felt lost and stayed out of it. Everyone likes Mark for hugging out life, and he's handsome. Quick Smile is a nice guy, is a good player. He's polite, great teeth. He's like a poster boy for the NHL and now he's stuck in this mess was unnecessary. Burki, I want to ask you this one, Anthony declared, decided to represent himself as his own agent, going to what I think is probably the biggest contract of his life.

Have you ever personally dealt with a player who was negotiating his own deal? And do you recommend it, especially for a guy going into the biggest contract of his life?

OK, so let me go back to your question, the last player that represented himself to me was Richie Sutter. And I overpaid him, I just I long respected a lawyer, I overpaid him now to give me an idea of the times you the fax machine dates me, I think I gave one ninety five when Pat authorized one ninety carrier pigeon.

So there Ritchie Sutter, who I admire greatly as a player I overpaid him by. I remember back when give me a hard time, and so I said one idea is that I gave one ninety five or two hundred or whatever I gave and Pacci why they continue to slip across the desk.

And I couldn't say, well, the difference would be that Ritchie and I had a relationship and he played for our team. I knew I think when you're a free agent, like if I'm sitting on my desk, I'm still running from police. I get a call from Ramsey, declare I'm probably not taking my call. I mean, like our relationship with that, I don't know. I think it's hard being a free agent situation to represent yourself. Probably not the best idea.

You seem like people of the Bush agents, they're very important, they provide a very important and crucial service for fires, either calming it down on both sides so it doesn't get to too vicious.

I mean I mean, that was just I thought it was I thought it was a little I guess. When's the last time that we've seen that Ovie did it, I think. But it's all those guys are in it. Yeah, but it's different with those.

It's like, what do you want? Here it is. It's so this wonderful declared. It was very odd, especially because of how different this summer is.

I'm looking at your shirts and we might have chatted about this before we get to get the Syrians behind them, their jerseys in ninety nine when you trade it up and made that all happen to select both of those guys. Did you think that that Patrick Stafford had a chance to be one of the bigger busts in NHL history, or did you actually love his game?

We tried to get I tried to pick one, two, three in that draft. I'm trying to get around Patrick Scott. That was a good player. He got concussed. All right.

His career and important stuff. I never watches us. We had him rated right there with the twins. We loved him. He would have had a great career if he hadn't got confessions early. He would have been a good player. And that and what we've talked about this, that's a worst first run on history to lead, but not.

Hey, hey, my draft right up there with it, I'm telling you. Ninety nine and zero to something was in the water because 03, the year after was a joke, somehow got picked that draft.

Well, three three Pichichero, instead of calling it aswini like they do now, they could have called it a Burki if you could have pulled that one off that I wrote it.

I wrote my book in a shorter time than we're doing there. So how are we doing this? This is a movie.

No, no, I to ask you all these smart questions, I guess on all this, we just get we catch up with you. You get good opinions on everything.

Soup, soup to nuts. How long did the book take Burki or. I don't know. I haven't. Probably put two hundred hours into it, but over two years. But little bursts of activity, right, so you write a bunch and then Steven writes a bunch and he gives it back and you it and he says, I don't like this any more amplification on this. But it was like I say, I try to do is give people, hockey people on civilians both a chance to see what it takes to be a the interaction with owners, players, media, like like here's the decision to make.

Here's how I get the city. Here's how you draft press. Prysner Ninety three. Here's how to make this big trade. And I think people like being in the room. They feel like they're in the room when they read a book like this. If you feel like you're sitting at the table, they love that stuff.

But I'm looking at the cover. What is that? Torontos old seating colors. What arena is that?

That's Toronto's new seating colors.

Oh, they're like the red and yellow now. Jesus, how long have I been out of the league? So they were red and yellow and the old building to those are the those are the gold seats. So you've got to buy those are the gold, the mortgage, a second mortgage on the house to sit there. Those are the gold seats.

Nobody's sitting in the last ten, ten, first five minutes of you know why.

So people don't live in Toronto, probably don't get to hit those seats around. So those are bunker suites underneath them. Like this is the greatest scam in the history of the world. Somebody conceived that we can sell top dollar seats for a suite that has no view of the ring. So they go down the stairway, they don't go up. They don't get like the and get a beer. They go down the steps to a bunker suite. They got this nice suite attendant there.

There's not private bathrooms in the suites, but they're semiprivate like down the hall. They might get in a line for people instead of four hundred. And then you have to wait for a whistle to come out for the second period. So if there's sustained play with a whistle, these poor slobs are all backed up downstairs and so the seats are empty. But those are the platinum seats in there caviare doing there, Wolf.

In fact, I'm not even watching the guys on the ice now.

They're nice, though, I have to tell you, I did this with visits during the game. Sometimes I talk to people in back of their business. Those suites are nice.

Not enough pictures in the book. Dubravka, I was just looking through the middle there. I will say, though, did you pick one picture where your hair didn't look unbelievable? Come on.

This is his book. I'm jealous. Well, I'm a very good requalified. Thank you so much, everyone. Check it out. Brian Burke, bearclaw also with Steven Brunt. So I think that that that book's going to be great. I can't wait to get my copy. I'm going to send you my address. And thank you so much for coming on. And I think for somebody who's been in the game, as long as you haven't had so much success on the ice, off the ice, but also dealt with tragedy, it's going to be an incredible read to.

Thank you for joining the show once again.

Thanks for having me, guys. You guys are become a legend. Thank you for having me on.

You may not have got the first three picks in the draft, but this is your third time on the Charcot's podcast. So it's a nice consolation. Yes.

Once again, it's called Berk's Law A Life in Hockey with Stephen Bright. You can buy wherever books are sold, correct, Burki? Yeah, excellent. Well, good luck with everything when we enjoyed having you.

Thanks to you for joining us once again, always a fun conversation with that guy, got great stories. And if you're looking for a holiday item, certainly grab his book for one of your hockey loving friends. All right. Moving right along, this next interview was brought to you by our friends at CrossCountry Mortgage America's crazy good mortgage company who make it easier to get the financing you need fast. I know a lot of our customers have young hockey players at home, and there's nothing cheap about bankrolling your budding star.

So if you need a little extra scratch to help out what fees or equipment or anything else, definitely check out our friends at KCM Cross Country Mortgage to help you out.

Go to Scotland's Dotcom and Beedie to learn more about your future home buying or refinancing experience and MLS three zero two nine equal housing opportunity, equal housing opportunity. Now up we have Josh Craton and his international adventures.

I would welcome my next guests to the show. This guy was never drafted, but still carved out a professional career that lasted for 15 seasons and made stops in seven countries. Four of those seasons were in the NHL split between Philly and Phoenix.

Also went to call the cops, including one with our pal Biz. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. Josh Craton has gone. Good man.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure.

So where are these days? Where you right now? I'm in Potomac, Washington. I just took a head coaching job here in the U.S., so I just got here actually about a week ago. So it's all new to me. But I was living up in Collingwood, Ontario for the past eight or nine months and just this fell into my lap. So I jumped on it.

And here I am as head coach. Wow. I love it. Yeah, I don't know really what I'm doing quite yet, but I thought in both feet and jumping in here, so it's been pretty good.

So the drill, the drill Buster's going to be drawn up the drills. Now that's trying to be like I'm trying to be like Stutzer yelling at all the boys like you all say like, okay, so we're a little bit more old school, so we're probably used to that.

How funny were some of his Phuket's speeches and these young guys eyes light up? Oh yeah. He would come in there and just rip on almost some of them. Right. I went to the washroom and cried for about three periods, if I remember. Right.

But I kept the boys in the Calder Cup. I think it was a second round against Wilkesboro, him going out at O'Brien. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he was here. I think he was going to fucking kill him. I thought after that for over getting into coaching, how did that all go down?

I mean, did you know right away at the end of playing that you wanted to or was it more just like I think this could be good for me?

I wasn't sure I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do a little bit. I actually went over after I was done playing my last year. I went over to China and ran a hockey academy for a little while there. So kind of I kind of liked it. I didn't really like living in China, not too much, but came back because of the covid. So it was kind of worked out. And then I signed a contract with the Collinwood, blew the O.J. there in Ontario, and unfortunately, they're not going to play this season.

So this fell into my lap. And like I said, I wasn't too sure what I wanted to do, but here I am.

Is that what eventually led you to a blue mountain? Yeah. Friends to call it connection.

Yeah, sort of. It was it was all a lot of a lot of personal stuff was going on as well. So I just kind of wanted to go to London, Ontario there. I was kind of going through some tough stuff and went up to Blue Mountain and met these guys up there. They and they helped me out and have been best buddies ever since their great big group of guys there.

We're going to talk about all that later on. But we want to dive in your hockey career a little bit. You're my first memories of you was you and in and terrorizing me when you play with the winds or spitfire's well, they were there because these were on the same team. These guys would be jerseys off in the penalty box like the fucking Bash Brothers, everybody on our bench in their pants.

Yeah. That was when Janni would go into the box or after a fight and just rip off all his gear start and I'd be licking the glass trying to scream. I was just a bunch of two like brothers from Mighty Ducks. He is not exaggerating. This guy is licking the penalty box like being there right after buddy.

Yeah, we're we're two beauties there for sure. Jan would be running around so much you'd go see this guy so hard to break the glass like three, probably once every ten games he had run someone right through the glass. They'd have to put boards up in the back of the behind the net instead of the glass in the grass.

You ought to look a point per game player. The last year in junior to is fuck you can chirp Jantz. And he had like one goal that. Yeah, that's because I was playing with Kyle.

Well where you just put the puck on my stick, I could have scored half those goals with my eyes closed.

So that's one of those examples where I mean it doesn't happen like it does now, but it doesn't happen now like it used to.

But if somebody touched Wellwood, it was like, oh, yeah, they didn't have a choice. They even looked at if they even looked at him or asked him what he had for breakfast, I'd have to go and run together, get a piece of those guys.

I was that was what brought you to fighting? I mean, was it just back home in Bradford, Ontario, where that he can't bleed because that's what brought him to play? Well, we'll get to that later. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I don't know. I just like Junior because I play a little bit and then I just fight and just kind of got good at it. Went into each other halfway through the season from like my eighteen year old year. So I was never drafted and I went to Byrd. Templeton was the coach and this guy was fucked up like in school. He grew me to be like kind of the guy. I was like, you fucked up. Like it's hard to explain why he would be so hard on guys.

It was crazy. Rookies like he would sit on the back of the bus, he would take up seven seats and the rookies would have to double up. He'd bring his wife and dog on the back on the bus show type time. Was that that's what everybody talked about, the fact that he would take up the whole back of the bus and. Oh, my. So you'd have to walk by him to go to the bathroom. Oh yeah.

You couldn't change you, you had to wear your suit the whole trip because he his wife was on the bus, he wouldn't let you change out of your suit. Oh, my goodness. But he was he was a great guy. A good coach. Like, you got the best out of guys if you played hard. He was he was a good guy to play for. We had a good team out here, too. So but that was kind of how I got into and a little bit is mostly the only way I was going to get with him as a coach.

You kind of undersized, too.

I mean, you're not the tallest guy in the world, but never really affected you at all in terms of fighting balance wise. You were no joke.

Yeah, no, I could I could hold my own that way, but it was more because I had a pretty good chin. I could take a couple of punches off the head, no problem. But that was sort of the only way I could hang in there with the big boys.

So we've talked about this multiple times in the podcast.

And when your name comes up, how this guy like just talking about being able to take a punch and then rumors are swirling and it's like it's like when you hear about fucking William Wallace, he's ten feet tall. He's like he's got thicker cheekbones. He's like, is it just something?

And literally with the bone structure in your face where it's like punching a rock, you know, I'm just a rock and that's it.

No, I don't know if people used to say rumors like I took the bone out of my nose. That's not true. It's got punched out. So I heard it all. It was pretty funny, but it was like a tender surprise. By the end of the game. You're just picking up the pieces, assemble it back together. That's it.

Well, there is a story there is a story where someone got you and they knew about, I'd say probably an inch and then probably half an inch deep. And there was just no blood. Yeah, I guess I wasn't drinking that night.

My friend was going to say I got the night off before. Yeah, no. Yeah, I was. Remember the one time I forgot to check in, he tagged me hard and I popped back up and we kept on going. I was in the box or like my Facebook. I felt like you hit like I got hit by a truck. I thought I was bleeding. As my teeth are dangling from my mouth, I pull them out, I pull them out in the penalty box and give them to give them to the timekeeper to bring back to the guys.

I can't you won't believe this teeth tonight.

I had them. Yeah. It doesn't happen like that anymore, that's for sure. So, Josh, before the NHL draft, for any teams reaching out to you at all, or did you have any draft aspirations that you knew you're going to probably have to latch on as a free agent somewhere? Yeah, I pretty much knew I was going to be a free agent. I played harder than Junior, but I was never, never really knew I wasn't going to be drafted.

I came in a year later than everybody else. So I just I was lucky enough to play on some good teams with some good coaches. And then I knew that I was going to have to take the hard road to to the coast after my over eight years. So it's you know, I never really expected to get drafted for sure.

And your first protein, the San Diego gals in the East Coast League. I mean, it must have been all downhill from there as far as places to play. No.

Yeah, no doubt. We were living on the beach getting surf lessons before games there. Pretty sweet with the crowd.

As good then as it is now, because isn't it sick now for that team in the A supposed.

Yeah, it was good. It was good there. Now I'm not sure if they play in the same rink. I imagine it's the same one, but they were great. It was it was a good spot for the East Coast, that's for sure.

So you're leaving, you know, just you said you need to take the high road. Like, how did it even come together with San Diego? Like, were they calling? Was that the only team or did you kind of have options? You had a good year in Junior that year.

Yeah, I had a couple of good I had a couple of options in in the coast, but the Steve Martinsen was the head coach there and he liked to be like guys like myself. And I got a tryout in Cincinnati with the American League team there. So I pretty much it was my best option at the time. And I went to camp there and had a good camp in Cincinnati, but I got sent down thirty games, so I had to fight my way out of that league.

I was the fastest way to get out of there. So I got called up around Christmas time and never look back.

That's so nice. I was going to hop in. How was the adjustment as far as going from like the probably the toughest guy in the OAS to going into pro hockey and especially back then? Man, there were some really tough guys at the pro hockey level, especially in the minors.

Did you adjust pretty well in the coast? I guess it was it was a little adjustment period. But going up to the American League with with the big boys, I think the one time I got fed my lunch by right is honest. We are both kind of young. But he was a he was huge. And that was the first time I really got my ass fucking beat up pretty good. And it was a wake up call that these guys are men, not boys anymore.

But but you never I mean, you were someone that would just stand in there toe to toe. So, like, it didn't really change in terms of how you fought. Right.

It was just like, oh, well, I'm going to have to be a little bit better at it. Yeah.

It was just like, yeah, go toe to toe is like either you're going to knock me out or I'm not, you know, for the of Russian roulette.

And he says that. No, but you know, I was young and a cowboy at that time I. And nothing new. There's some guys that could get away with it, but like there's a lot of good, good fighters out there and I had to take a take.

My kid is the best lesson to learn is by getting beat up, you know, what's boxing something in the off season you did or did you have to learn, like on the ice from something from a mentor, someone to teach you how to do it?

No, I didn't really box. I did a little bit. I did actually box one whole summer. And then I went to camp. This was when I was in Phoenix. I did boxing the whole whole summer. I went to camp and I broke my hand and my and my thumb, like on one hand, my left hand, I broke my hand. And then the other hand, I broke my thumb. So I had both hands stuck in broken first first game of the exhibition after boxing all summer.

So I was like, fuck this, I'm not doing that again.

So, Josh, just your third season pro Philly Phantoms, you guys, when they call the cops and 05 take us through that experience.

Oh, that was great. That was the lockout. Yeah, it was. The hockey was so good and John Stevens was the coach. He was really well good to me. We had a tough team. And that was a really I consider that my first full year of pro hockey, it was it was an experience I'll never forget. We had a group of guys who would go to bat for each other every night. And we had a tough team.

We had Frige, Fannie or Freddie Todd talk, Fannie or Riley, Coté doctors, a couple other that and every other team had a bunch of heavy heavyweights, too. But we had some battles with weight and and Wilkes-Barre, they're a bunch of bunch of games. And they had Binghampton had McGrattan. Janssen was in Albany. It was that it was I think there is a vision from hell. Yeah, it was. Hal, every night you got after you get through the game and then you go into Binghamton and you get my lunch, my lunch by McGrattan, come home Sunday and get you come in and given me and give me another fucking chicken.

So I've said many times that I've never seen and I never will again. A player in a league like Brian McGrattan that year because he wasn't just beating the piss out of people, he was an absolute show.

He'd like throw his hair back looking at it was like it was absolutely out of slapshot. I was in that rink, as people don't even understand the size of bingos rink. And then to see this guy, just like even David, coziest, toughest shit like there was, he would fight anyone, but like kind of McGrattan kind of always got the best of him. And he was just it was in his head at this point. It was like we would go in there just shaking our heads and Spezza toe dragging me from that fucking flying around.

They were good. Yeah, they had that like Chris Neill was there too. So they were stacked with a bunch of bunch of meat to it was it was like going to war every night.

And so when you I mean you made an immediate impact with them and you're such a flyers type player.

So going there, I mean, you didn't necessarily think I'm going to end up playing for the flyers, but was there any part during that year like I have a chance to play on the big club when whenever hockey gets going again?

Yeah, it was after like midseason, I started realizing that could play in the American League a regular shift and be effective. And then it was a big the biggest thing was in the playoffs when I got I got an opportunity to play a lot of minutes in the playoffs when we won the Caller Cup. And I after after that, I knew that I was going to get a chance. They told me after this season they wanted me to stick around that summer and they're going to give me a good opportunity and then went to camp, had a good camp.

And that was that year after that. It was a few games into the season. I got my first first call up there. So it was it was good. And the flyers were so good to me. The coaches, Paul Holmgren, Johnny Stephens, Craig Roubaix, they groom me to to the player that they thought I could be in. And it was really I owe a lot to them as a as a player. And I still keep in touch with Johnny Stevens once in a while.

So he's he's definitely a mentor of mine for sure. Guys love playing for him. Really.

Hey, I got the I got all your drills for practice, too, by the way.

Thanks for having me, but I'll of you send me a board with that.

No, go ahead. So I was saying you were going to ask him to send you like a whiteboard. You could be like, hey, I don't have anything, Johnny, send me something.

Yeah, I borrowed skates to get the Bobby Bouchet binder out. All the players drawn up. Yeah.

You know, what do you remember about, like, your first NHL game, first NHL tilt? Who are all those against? The first official game was against Vancouver. There's no fight that night. The first tilt was against Andrew Peters. And I was shaking in my boots and lined up and I was like, can you give me one? He goes, he didn't want to, but he respected me and said, I going to see my first first time.

So we went, it was a good fight and I'll never forget, like I caught him. It was a good tilt. But after the game I go into we went out that night and like people all through the city, seeing the fighter was like I was like in Hollywood. I fucking felt like I was a rock star. I got it.

I got this round voice. Yeah.

This league is amazing. Yeah. It was it was pretty special, isn't it.

I know you're only in Philly three games that first it was Ken Hitchcock and we have tons of stories on the show about I'm sure you've heard a few. Did you have any any stories with him and with his high pitched voice yelling at you.

Yeah. If I could beat. No, he fucking. He was good, but brash, Donald Brashear was pretty hard on him, one one story I'll never forget is he came in and there's a bunch of donuts there in the lounge and he grabs it and he goes, what are these tastes like? Brash goes, what the fuck's that matter? You're going to eat it anyway, you fat fuck. Oh, my God. Just drop I get pretty heated.

Homely Jesus say anything back here.

So he goes, I'll have a good day. Braasch Yeah.

This is like I'm in the lineup tonight.

Yes.

I went when thinking of some of your most memorable fights. I mean the Mark Bell one has to stand out. I think that one went viral where he caught you a couple times, where afterward they have the camera zoomed in on him with the official and they're just like laughing like that. I just tee off on that guy's face twice as hard as I could. And he didn't even fucking body you might even you might have even done an ass drop and then came right back up.

And that was that was hard to chuck. When he tagged me, I dropped it almost touch the ground and popped back. I felt like it to heels well back up. And then it was like you were a marionette on strings and they dropped you and then brought you right back up. And you're like just chucking them.

It's like that power skate movie. When you shoot the doctor in one leg out, it's not like that you. Yeah. Ballsy hammering me a couple of times that I've been hit so many times it doesn't matter.

Can't remember half of them but I just watched that Peters one that was a pretty sick first NHL fight at home too.

Yeah. They're, they're, they're buddies. And it was, it was pretty special. Place is going nuts. Yeah. Going to Philly.

Traded at Phoenix. It was psyched. We. What was your reaction to that. Pissed off, angry, whatever. Like just that whatever.

This is a pretty good story actually. So that trade deadline came up and I was in the hospital, I just had my surgery and Paul Holmgren called me and I thought he was calling me, asking me how I was. I'm in the hospital bed. He goes, Hey, we just traded you to Phoenix. I was like, What? And I can. And still just literally got out of surgery. Not like that earlier that day. And then Wayne Gretzky called and said, ask me how I feel or whatever.

So I don't know. But I got traded when I was in the hospital, so it's kind of fucked up.

I feel great. No, I was like, I don't really care to. You're not part of my you're not our property anymore.

It's my problem. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. How was your time in the desert?

You probably loved it here. I was awesome. Grass was good to me. We had a bunch of beauties there too. We had like Mike Reiji and Noel and the Rolnik Kamryn donor or donors are the best. But we had a great group of guys. There's a good first year. There was older team and Wayne was a good coach, like good players coach. So I had a blast in the city was awesome. It was not a bad day.

And you had this the second ugliest knows on the team with three. That's the first time I come in and make Ritchie goes off. Thank God. Now, I'm not the ugliest guy in the league we got to here.

That guy was like a sex symbol. They said in San Jose.

I mentioned, oh, a pretty intense fella. A lot. Yeah, he was. He was. He was. He was really good to me. He was on the tail end of his career, obviously, and he was he was good to the young guys when he scored. He was really happy when things were going his way. It's kind of a grumpy, grumpy guy, I guess that best way to say it at that age. And but he was great.

He was a good guy to be around. Good guy to learn from.

I think that like that line up, I'm looking through this team. It's crazy. Like they had a lot of good players. I mean, it's so I feel like Phoenix, Arizona, should have had more success over these past twenty years.

Some of these guys I mean, I guess they're on the tail end of their career, but still, you got to play with your hands, right? Oh yeah, that's right.

I first met you and said he a beauty came in as a rookie and we got along great. He he he stayed there and he had a bunch of buddies that went to ASU there, Arizona State. So we would hang out with Arizona State, like all these guys that go to their pool parties during the during the year and stuff. It was pretty fun.

I was with a guy I was with a buddy of mine, Mike Shaw. He went there to a shooting I partied with Great before. It was unbelievable. I think we had his hockey fights on the Internet at four in the morning, one night watching them dummy people.

Yeah, I maybe, but they. Yeah, yeah. It had a couple of guys I think you went to prep school with. They were going to school there. So we, we hooked up with them and they, they hooked us up with, with all their girls and stuff like that hang out with. So it was, it was definitely a good time. We used to go on the campus with a book in our hand and pretended we were going to school there so we could go and stare at the all the all days.

Was there anyone that you were afraid to fight? Was there like, oh, my God, he's the he's the one guy.

No, not really. I didn't I knew that I was going to get my lunch read to me when I thought George were OK. I didn't really want to fight him, but we played together in in Phoenix. And I always said to him, first chance I get, I'm going to fight you. He never thought I would. So first chance. First shift, I went after him and he gave it to me pretty good, you weren't of other question because I love the question, is there anyone you're afraid to fight?

And he's the one storyteller's is the guy who said, I'm fighting you when we play against sick puppy.

This guy, sick puppy. Go ahead, then.

And then you were kind of bouncing around a little bit in the trial after the stint in Phoenix. Right. And then, like, finally end up going to Europe. Was that just looking to make more dough or how did that all come about?

I mean, Russia by the West and Russia. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. It's just kind of getting sick again and getting asked to fight in the American League. And I got a chance to go over to Russia and go play for that team in Russia the weekend with Chris Simon that was there and it was good. The money was really good, the hockey was really good, but the town sucked with that mafia boss that brought us all over.

He just use this as human toys. If you wanted us to go fight, go ahead. We were just as human puppets was pretty fucking crazy, actually. Oh, my goodness. So you're so you probably have a couple of stories just like everybody else of like just stuff that doesn't fly over here going on.

Oh, yeah. You'd come down, we'd be losing and you have a bunch of his buddies up and up in their box and would be the third period in between periods you come down and just rip on us and he goes, Josh, like goalie.

So next year, Chicago, you got to go run the goalie and fight them. If you don't, you're just he's not going to pay. We got the one time we had like a brawl right off the bat up in arms. They had a big battle he had with their team. And he called me the day of the game. And we're in August and he's like, we want his buddies wanted to watch a big fight on TV. So they started me.

Darsey, we're all just a bunch of a bunch of meat and right off the pocket. I don't even think the pocket dropped like hit the ice and our gloves are off. And we were soccer and guys going running around like our heads cut off. It was brutal. So we get suspended like fifteen or twenty games. I had twenty one. There is twenty one games left. I got suspended for twenty and they bag the piss out of me for fucking two and a half months just to play that one game and then fuck all.

Oh my goodness. But the owner still paid you because you did what you were told. Exactly.

And he said Nazaroff was the coach you all. Oh oh he hates us. Oh yeah.

So now he's an idiot too. But now as I said, he's like, if you're going to the boss says if you guys don't don't do this, don't bother coming back to it to go to the town. So you have no choice.

But overall had three hundred and seventy four and thirty four games under several used to play for the Syracuse crunch, correct.

Yeah, yeah. That was part of it. Play for Wilkesboro too. As part of that gang squad that they had, they had like him Konopka like Marus the they were you know, they were loaded. And if you got past two goals on them, it was going to turn into a brawl. Yeah. Yeah.

You almost want to you almost want to keep it close just so you didn't have to go and deal with that shit there. Oh, yeah.

Actually, two years prior he had five hundred and eleven teams who really set the metric system. Yeah. Yeah. You got to love the KHL 20 game suspension. You still get paid. But this is obligatory. Anyone who played in that league, did you expect with the Russian gas at all.

Oh yeah. Well yeah. And since we were flush it seems like the boss would get us on the everyone on the gas.

You go, Josh, you've got to take double. Sorry.

So I come I come home that summer I look like Ivan Drago.

Oh. Okay. So what's it do? Are your recovery rates just a lot stronger so you can chuck weights more. Yeah.

So they have two different things they have like and they have injections like through I.V. and then they have this gas mask that you take like before games. So they've got all sorts of cocktails on it for sure. Coming out of the cement wall too, right.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Like the doctor brings this big, big briefcase on the road and you get hooked up the night before game. If you're not doing it, everyone else in the league is. So you're kind of like behind it. Like it's and they don't really give you a choice like you. You're doing it.

So how unreal did you feel on it? Oh, yeah.

I felt like I was a hockey player. Like I didn't get tired.

Hey, my story was when I was on and I thought I could play in the NHL again. And then the next day of practice I couldn't skate or part of what the hell happened. That thing's legit.

Yeah, it's crazy. It just makes you like you don't get tired. Is the oxidizes your blood or whatever they do. But there's some beefs over there, so there's some of them probably been on it since they were six years old.

I think Hennesy he told the story about the same owner like did you ever have any situations where they they kind of like forced you to go out and get hammered with them?

Oh, yeah. They bring us to the village and he would bring us the mob right to the village there. And he has a big compound. And we were there when the Canada won the Olympics, when Crosby scored the goal. So we were watching there for two days and he wouldn't let us leave. We were trying to leave your pass out and he would wake up. He would go out. Brandon Sugden was on the team that year, too, and they were out there shooting guns.

I was in the washroom puking because I was drinking so much. Then we the next day I was like, you wake up and you're you're stranded at the village. You have no way of getting out of. There you go. Let's go. We're going again and just start drinking again. It's a nightmare. But the one time so he I was in the washroom and he was like saying so he asked Darcy how many girls you have. Darcy was say just say three.

I don't know what he said. And then he goes as chief chief Chris is like ten. So I was in the washroom. Miguel, perhaps when you come out, say you have a lot of goals. So I was like he asked me, I got twenty. And then he brings out a big wad of cash and he gives a thousand dollars per goal. I had two goals at the time and he thought I had 20.

So I went home with 20 grand cash or something.

But he didn't check the sheet. He's just like he doesn't care. He's just too worried about being fights either human toys. So it was pretty funny. So it was pretty good.

What did you think about Panarin? Was it just ridiculous? I mean, it's so young. Yeah, he was young. He was so like he was good. But I never thought like that he was going to get is he is ready to play. He was what, eighteen skin and bones. And then he went to world juniors that year and they I think they might even be one that year, world juniors. And after that he came back and was lights out the rest of the year but he was playing at seventeen years old and keeping up with, with everybody.

So, but he's, he's a lot better than I ever thought. I always stated my buddy is a good thing. I'm not a scout because I didn't think he was going to be that good. Now he's talking one of the best in the NHL.

So you're going to be playing a fourth line plug on your team on the first power. Play this shit just for guys good in front of the net. That's it. Yeah. You got to hire someone of the squad who can evaluate talent because we just go for strictly toughness. Yeah. So you end up coming back. I mean, we want to call their cops together. I mean, at the end of your career or at least towards the end of your career, that must have been like I mean, I had a blast playing with you.

It was kind of like especially for that time we got to bully other teams around because there weren't like a crazy amount of tough guys. But just talk about what that did for you and your and your spirits at that time. Yeah.

You know, they're coming back. And I came back and I was going to try out there with Manchester. John Stevens got me to try out strategy as a coach and you as a player, our players type of player's coach and plan for him. And when you came in and it was you took the load off of off of me so we could mean you could do it together. It made it a lot a lot easier to play in the boys.

The boys got to play their game like Will and Neil O'Neal, like the tougher team in the American League, usually usually did pretty good and the skill guys could play. And that year, playing with you and winning in Manchester and playing for Stazi, it's it revived me as a player, gave me like made me realize how much I like hockey coming back from Russia because you get kind of sour taste being over in Russia. But that year, that year, we're probably one of the funnest years I had in hockey.

We had a lot of laughs that year and good, good group of guys we had.

And to lefty mutant.

And how excited are you to see him score that first NHL ball in his first game? After the Matthews incident, I was cheering in my living room by myself and I was so happy for him that I texted him right after that. That was special because he took he took he had a hard road after that. A couple years after his first year, he had a really good year in the league. And then the next year he was in and out of the lineup.

And then even I think when he went back when the team moved to L.A., we had a little little tough spell down there, too. So it was good to see that he stuck with it. And I was really happy for a guy like that that grinded his way through it. And we both know how hard that role is to to play. So I'm really happy for that guy. You've got another contract, I think, in Toronto, so without doing good for him.

So, yeah, he he grinded for sure. I was really happy to see that happen and do it. Like I said, it was such a blast playing with. Yeah. And we had three guys that carry the load so it wasn't just one of us. So after that you ended up going back to Europe a little bit though.

Yeah, I went to Finland after that. And Finland was one of the best years I had like Finland. And I ended up I ended up meeting a chick there and I stayed there for over the summer and into the into the following season. But the summer there in Finland, those students know how to party. They they do it up. Right. They go to festivals every weekend and fucking they drink. They do it up.

Right. Let's put it that way. It's awesome. What city were you in. I, I played in, I played in Korea, which is a small city, but in the summer I stayed right downtown and like a good spot right in the center of Helsinki and Helsinki is unbelievable. It was trouble, let's put it that way. It was trouble. That's the best way to describe that place.

Just trouble. Yeah. So let's leave it in the in the summer.

It doesn't get dark. So the daylight all day. All night. So it's and you go into the bar at eleven and. Later, when you come out, it's still it's kind of a mindfuck that is after that season of Finland. I see. There was no games there. Did you take the year off? You injured. What was that? What was going on?

Yeah, I was I was injured. I had a I had a bit of a concussion and problems there. And that was kind of the start of my concussion issues. I just started catching up to me and I was getting getting concussions fairly easy, not even fighting just like small hits. And I think I got two or three that year. And then I was I was struggling throughout the summer, so I wasn't getting really getting cleared to play. And I finally I waited until I think it was December or even maybe even a little later.

And I went over to check for 20 games. And I didn't have to fight. I got to play. It was a little lower league, a little it was the team, the owners there. So they were good to me there. And I just played. And then the next couple of years after that, I was healthy, more or less until my last year. Pretty much.

But you played in France as well. So how is the hockey there? It was OK. I was there and I got to put up a lot of points for the first time in a long time there.

So, yeah, you say, OK, that means shit. You were just.

Yeah, nice. Let's, let's call a spade a spade. I was shed but I had a lot of fun. You were like the Sidney Crosby over there. Yeah.

I felt like it kind of like when you were in England at two points a game and you go there, I get the tires pumped a little bit. You come back and you're like, oh fuck, back to reality, check over the gas. Yeah, that's right. But you obviously in your personal life fell through some tough times. I mean, talk about this experience you went through recently. You you ended up moving to Blue Mountain Collingwood area for about eight months to I guess I'll let you take over, describe the whole process you went through.

Yeah.

So I was getting out of hockey. I was toffy. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was hockey was pretty much the only thing I had, like structure wise and purpose. So whenever hockey was done, I went through a pretty hard time trying to figure out what I wanted to do and concussions and depression and all that stuff. So I was in a dark place for a little while and it was a good buddy of mine, kind of helped me out and hooked me up with these people up.

And Hollywood got me a job just to stay busy and get my my life back on track a bit. I was I was hanging out with the wrong people and doing and doing some stupid stuff in London. So I was grateful for grateful for him. He's been my best friend since I was a child. So he he seen how dark, dark the days were for me. And I went up there to Collingwood and I was lucky enough to to get introduced to these these group of guys that own a gym up there.

It's called Primitive Patterns. And they helped me through a lot a lot of tough times in the last eight months or nine months. And they're just good guys. And they're three brothers are on the gym. And then there's two other guys that work with them. And the brothers, the older brother, Luke Varella, is his name. And he he kind of runs it and he works a little bit as a life coach in a sense, and helps Kyle helps people when they're in a little bit of trouble or helps just just just kind hearted guy that really helped me through through a lot.

And then his brothers are twin brothers and they're they're really advocating for mental health. They actually swam thirty two kilometers across Georgian Bay, which was fucking incredible. You sent me the video. Do it at thirty two kilometres. You guys are machines now.

What's the temperature of that water? It was it was in July, so it was like swimmable. But they were in the water. They didn't they didn't touch the boat there in the water for I want to say it was close to sixteen hours straight and we were on the boat. There is a there is about six of us on the boat with them supporting them and they swim thirty two kilometres. And unfortunately the one brother couldn't couldn't finish like he just his body just gave out on him and the other brother did finish.

And it was probably the most incredible thing I've ever witnessed in my life. These two guys are the closest things to Navy SEALs that could be like they're just their machines and they're mentally so strong. And just to even attempt something like that, I couldn't I couldn't swim fucking five hundred metres. I was sinking alone. These guys go in thirty two kilometres.

So it was it was some special.

So going there, was it like a disciplined structure where you wake up early in the morning, you chuck weights, you'd work on the mental side of things and like it was just kind of like a like an overall experience. Yeah.

In a sense. And it wasn't supposed to it wasn't I didn't go there for that reason. I just literally went out. I went there just to get away from way from London at the time and get away from what I was doing more or less. And I was just a coincidence that I felt like I met up with these guys. I met them up through a friend. So I went there for a workout one time and talked to them. And then we just started a routine and I would go every day in the morning.

Before like six, six in the morning, and they put me through a workout, then I go and then come back later in the afternoon and just like they may have helped me so much. Words can't describe what they've done to me. Like, they pretty much saved my life just single handedly with how they how they approached me and got me out of that dark, dark days. So I owe my life to those guys.

So you must feel so much better, not just mentally, but like physically your body. Like, it must just be so different now waking up and not feeling kind of hungover and shitty all the time.

Yeah, it's yeah, it's incredible. And like I, I'm just so grateful. I just to get a second chance to make that's the only way I could stay and I'm just grateful for everything and everything that happens, happens now. I just appreciate so much more. And they've taught me, they've taught me to be grateful. They taught me that I'm lucky enough to get a second chance. And these guys are just starting out in in their fitness and they're opening up a brand new gym facility.

And they're going to be they're going to do great things. But like I said, I'm just I'm appreciative and grateful for everything that comes my way now. And it's almost like a rejuvenator and got a chance to chance to do something special again. So it's it's a good feeling for sure. Fucking right.

And I actually want to go back to Philadelphia. Twenty eight. Twenty nine. You split between the phantoms in the Flyers. You were there before Peter LaViolette in Dry Island. The HL team is in the same town. I just want to rattle off a few names here, Maroon Jaru, Kaita, Richards, Hocknull, Lupul and Absol all in the same city at the same time.

Yeah, like every one of those names, you just rhymed off. Are there a bunch of beauties? And we have some good times, that's for sure. And then Riley Coté on top of that, was there like the times those guys had. They made my experience the second time in Philly, so much, so much fun, like they knew how to have a good time, but they came, but they came to work to every night and to work hard.

Play hard. That was that was the motto for sure.

I saw Israeli Coyote. He started a podcast with Nasty, I think. Right. Yeah, yeah. I think a couple they have a couple episodes or one or two. They just started. O'Reilly was a big help helping me with like the medicinal stuff like the CBD. I don't, I don't really smoke weed or anything like that, but the CBD oil has really helped me a lot and the psilocybin mushroom has really helped me move it forward, too.

So he he was a big part of that. I know he he advocates for it and and everything he's done to help athletes for that. I know that he has athletes for care. He's really passionate about it. And I'm really grateful that he helped me through a lot of that stuff is I talk about the mushroom use.

I feel like it allows me to dig a little bit deeper. We have such just like a hard shell exterior where it kind of softens you up a little bit and you're allowed to express more of your emotions now.

Yeah, I think I think so. And it just dials me in and just it calms me down. I don't know how I the way I can explain it to to people is like it just makes you dialed in and focused in a sense. And like, I don't I don't know. I said to myself, after a month taken, I was like, how did I live without this? Because I felt like my brain was Adderall being like, you know what I mean?

Like, my brain wasn't working until I started taking this. And I'm not sure if it was that or it's like placebo effect. But whatever it is, it's working for me.

So I'm going to keep on going for the reason already does it all the time. I just say you forgot the dancing babies because you're probably taking the, like, more than recommended dose so they can announce a day with micro means.

Are you on like a schedule for. That's where you got a certain amount of pills?

Yeah, I take I take one pill like it's point zero one of whatever. I take one of those every three days and a day off and then a three day repeat that. And it seems it seems to be working for sure for me. That's awesome to hear that.

It's nice to see they've made some strides in the States. I mean, we've recorded this around election time and states are legalizing this. I mean, this that's if you told me that thirty years ago, twenty years ago, the states are going to be legalizing the stuff. I would have thought you were crazy. So it's nice that doctors and medical professionals are coming into this with clear eyes and realizing there's some benefits to it. I got one more flyer.

You played in Scotland. Men, I mean, Glasgow. That must have been unbelievable. Our IP, Sean Connery. Well, we're here, too.

Yeah. It was a good time there. I had a good bunch of guys there, Scotland. I had never been there. It was tail end of my career and I was skeptical of going over there. And it was it was a last minute decision. I hadn't really skated. I was a pretty much consider myself finished playing hockey in that. And then I got a call. I had nothing, nothing going on really in the winter that winter.

So I just decided to just go and take the leap and go over there. And I had a blast. Glasgow at Braehead is where it is in Glasgow, and the fans there are awesome, the league is the league wasn't didn't have a lot of fighters. So that was a big reason why I went there. When I when I went there, there wasn't too many guys who had to deal with. So I got to go there and play hockey and enjoy it and have some fun just in the bars afterwards, hopefully.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, there are Gratz, we want to thank you for coming on. That's all I had. But glad to hear you're doing well. Glad to hear you're going to be coaching this upcoming season. Yeah. You guys are so lucky that we're going to have to we're going to have to keep following your team here, maybe offer up a case of Pink Whitney on the board for the board.

But these guys legal drinking age, I depends with legal No. Twenty or twenty one of the states rights. So, yeah, no, I guess not. OK, about that.

Thanks so much. It's really good to hear where you're at. I'm happy for you. Thanks, boys. I appreciate it. And I love watching you guys listening to you guys. So keep keep doing what you're doing. Thanks to Josh for join us with a good time shooting shit about his very interesting career. Hope you enjoyed it as well to say Tuesday night we dropped that latest sandbagger man. The boys are looking pretty sharp out there on the course.

They were looking sharp. And Ariah, unfortunately, we had to switch to wearing pants on the course. The last few sandbaggers, you know, it's getting a lot colder out there.

Fortunately for us, Peter Miller makes the most comfortable pants in the course and they're comfortable enough to wear all day. I mean, the wet dog talks about it all the time. It's also perfect for your schwing provides ample flexibility, also perfect for Thanksgiving when you need a little flexibility for the feast, but you still want to look good. Like I said, the wet dog won't step on the course without them. There was a lot of talk about business pants in the last sandbagger, so you're definitely going to want to check that out.

Like we said, visit Peter Miller, dot com slash checklists in use code checklists at checkout for a complimentary performance hat. And again, these are Rinkel resistants. They look natural. They feel good, tons of versatility. And again, it's Peter Miller. It doesn't get any better than that. So Peter Miller, Dotcom's Checketts, used coach tickets at checkout for a complimentary performance hat.

Yeah, this might want to get a bigger size next time. He looks like one of the American Gladiators that he talks about so much, little little tighter around the rim there. But anyways, that was awesome stuff. The video, like you said, it dropped Tuesday night. Big thanks to our friends at Wub. You can still check it out on the spit and check that YouTube page. What else you have?

Well, I was going to say, thankfully for Peter Miller, that they're so flexible and versatile that BESE had no problem on the course at all. They might have looked tight, but, man, was he striping the ball out there.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun, man. I check that out. We did the live ask me anything, live, watch. And huge thanks to everybody who tuned in. I know it's Tuesday and a vacation week and we get several thousand people who tuned in. And again, if you want to check it out, I know you want to go to our YouTube page bit check. That's it's good stuff. It's like having a couple of stand up comedians out in The Cosby Show.

So hopefully you guys enjoy it as much as we did. Also, too, we want to remind you that Checketts is dropping a whole bunch of new swag just in time for your holiday gifting needs. Be sure to check out all our social feeds as well as barstool sports, dot com triplets on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You can take advantage of those early discounts.

Again, we got a ton, a ton of great stuff drop and plenty of gifts for the holidays. A couple other notes here. We're not exactly sure when the twenty twenty one season is going to start for the NHL, but either way, the other two PECC heads will be back next week. We'll be back with our full muscle show. So it won't be just me and G going back and forth playing ping pong here, Busi and we'll be back and we'll be back in style.

And one final note. Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American listeners and happy Thursday to all of our Canadian listeners.

Have a great week. Everybody will catch you later. And as always, we like to thank our fantastic sponsors here in Spin Chip. That's big thanks to our long time friends at New Amsterdam Theater and Pink Whitney big thanks to our friends at Earnest's for getting those student loan rates down.

Huge thanks to our new friends over at CrossCountry Mortgage. Like a safe. You need some dough, pick them up, see what they can do, fire. They great at it. And thanks to our friends at Malath for making us look hot as hell on the golf course. Have a fantastic week, everybody. Little.