You're listening to DraftKings Network. This is the Dan Levatore show with the Stugats podcast.

I'm not going to start in the obvious place. We'll get there in a second. But something happened before the show that I want to address because I was envious of what happened in the other room. I saw a door swing open and I saw an entire room light up and react to news that they had received. I thought, Did you, Donna Haslem walk in? What happened over there? And then big news was broken to me. And God, I am so jealous of Taylor, who got to deliver this huge news. Chris, what was the news that you guys received that made that entire room light up? It was baseball-related. If we start there as a hint, what could I say in the baseball realm that would get the room fired up? And I'll tell you, it's the Yankees getting rid of their beard policy.

That's insane news. It's worthy of that reaction. I think we did it. I think it was us. We were the tipping point. Tony, I think you're absolutely right. Our edition of Who That is the most recent one where we couldn't get two of the most recent Yankee signings because Paul Goldschmitt looks Dominican all of a sudden when he's clean-shaving.

A Hall of Famer. Guys, a Hall of Famer, and none of us knew him. Totally unrecognizable clean-shaven. So I'm I'm glad that the Yankees... Look, America is already on the rebound. Nature is healing.

The country is healing, at least in sports terms.

George Steinbrenner is rolling over in his grave right now. Jess, do you have an official statement? This is worthy of an official statement from the New York Yankees. Yeah, it says, Statement from Yankees' managing general partner, Hal Steinbrenner.

Alteration of Yankees' Facial Hair Policy.

In recent weeks, I've spoken to a large number of former and current Yankees spanning several eras to elicit their perspectives on our long-standing hair and grooming policy, and I appreciate their earnest and varied feedback.

This is crazy. These most recent conversations are an extension of ongoing internal dialog that dates back several years. Ultimately, the final decision rests with me, and after great consideration, we will be amending our expectations to allow our players and uniform personnel to have well-groomed beards moving forward. It is the appropriate time to move beyond the familiar comfort of our former policy. Well-groomed beards? Took me a while to have this conversation. It took them a while to just say, Hey, you can grow a beard. That's a lot. Who determines what's well-groomed? How many PR firms helped craft that? The dean of my Catholic school determines what is well-groomed.

Someone or some company made at least $600,000 coming up with that statement. And I still stumbled over how for some reason. Man, this just teaches me change is possible.

Yeah. I would have never thought that they would do this, and they did.

Hooray us. Hooray, Yankees.

This is great. This can only help the game.

All right. So speaking of growing niche sports, let's talk about hockey last night. He's the best player in the world.

You may want to mark him. That was ridiculous. All right. Look, headline, great for the sport. They gave us a week in February, a random week in February, that we all really came together and argued about politics, and it was great. We loved the game of hockey. The hockey was top-of-the-line stuff. You had a great game to deliver on all the hype and expectation. I'm sure this number is going to be massive. You lose an overtime, that's tough. I understand that. But how you lose an overtime really twists the knife a little bit because number 97 is Connor McDavid, Mcoverrated. I think we can drop that for a little bit. Pretty big goal that he scored last night. He's the best player in the world. He's wide open in front of the net. He's wide open in front of the net. And that's number 34 that is supposed to be marking him, Austin Matthews, who in the group chat I saw was referred to as Austin Badthews, who did not have the greatest tournament. I know he set some people up, and defensively, he played all right. But this is a huge, huge mistake from a Selky finalist, one of the top defending forwards in the league.

You cannot do this. From face off that to face off that. Top of the face of the circle to the bottom of the face of the circle. That's how much room that he had. It was a fool. They were in Rhode Island. That's how wide open they were. It's not only Matthews skates away from McDavid in that defensive spot. He had three scoring chances minutes earlier. So Matthews had on both ends of the ice a chance to do what McDavid did in his first chance in overtime.

He got the tuck and he stuck it home top corner. I wasn't rooting against Team USA. I swear to God, I wasn't. However, when I heard As I was falling asleep, I heard the game-winning goal call.

I did do a... When I heard Connor McDavid had scored, I did a... Then I rolled over and fell asleep. Mike, Jordan Bennington, the start over time. Yeah, he was incredible. Made three huge key saves. Went back to 2019. Yeah, he was incredible for them.

But I think we all had the Alonso morning reaction to that goal, which is not the result we wanted, but certainly the result we deserved on the balance of things. What I don't get, though, is we're going to play this Marshan sound where he's going at the K'Chuck brothers for giving them bulletin board material. Before we play the Marshan sound, did they guarantee victory?

What is he talking about here? Was it the fights at the first game? I don't understand, though, but he said he specifically says when you're running your mouth in the media, what were their quotes? I'll address that because I know what he's talking about. Here's Brad Marshan, who I hate immensely. This guy sucks.

He's a rat. But look, Cribs to him. He gets to be the winner on the day. Let's hear what he had to say post-game. Sometimes when you shoot your mouth off in the media, it bites you. You can do that during the season, but when you're playing best on best, there's It's different. They got a little bit ahead of themselves, but they're great players. There's not many guys in the league that they do, and they're extremely effective. But when you start giving teams So it can break you against you as well. So the running the mouth, and the Kachuk brothers, they can run their mouth primarily on the ice. But what he's referring to is what happened after the United States beat Canada 4: 1 in Montreal, they were asked about the fight, and they said that it came up in the group chat. In the ensuing days, I think Breton Hagle said, We don't have a group chat. And then Matthew Kachuk his ass about that while he was sitting next to his brother. He's like, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe they don't like each other. That's what he's referring to.

That is repressed Canadian male emotion right there. For them to take such issue with a group chat thing is, I don't know, weird to me because then look at this, and credit to Canada, good banter from Trudeau on down. They deserve it. Look, we certainly deserve it. But do we have the still of Brendan Hagle's IG story? A big break in news, a group chat has finally been formed. Brandon Hagle has given evidence of this, and it's called Champions with a big Canadian flag. Cool. I can see Sam Reinhart in that. Glad he made the cut. Brad Marshawn's in it. Sydney Crosby's in it. 227 unread messages. Is he in our hockey group chat? He must be in our hockey group chat. Man, that's a highlight group chat on a given day. We're all just Ethan. Special. You have no idea how much that cuts for Ethan.

There's at least 33 3% of the main group chats have Ethan muted.

I love Ethan, though. When he's in, he's all in. He's all in. Volume shooter, but he makes some occasionally.

Love you, Ethan.

Ethan is wearing a hockey jersey today. Again today. As a big surprise. I guess he's going to a steakhouse after after the show. Tune into mystery Crate to hear that story. Yeah. All right. God bless, Ethan. The group chat thing is weird. The really seizing on it. I guess, man, you want to talk really reaching for bulletin board material here. It's USA Canada. When you have the President insulting your country as a whole in 51st state, to seize on the group chat thing is a little odd. I don't really get what's happening there, but let's go back to the macro. The The whole theater of this thing that culminated with last night's incredible moment. That was an All-Star game. Was that the immediate pivot, Chris? You've got to be kidding me. All-star tournament. Was that the immediate- Exhibition. Great exhibition. Honestly, I felt better about USA losing when I saw how indifferent... They get their chance with the cup like they do with the Stanley Cup. They didn't care. The hockey players with Stanley Cup, they do a full lap around the arena. It's like you can see them like, oh, my God, the Canadian guys with that trophy, they went 10 feet, turned around, handed it to next guy.

I know I'm drawing for... I'm reaching here, but it did make me feel a little better about the loss. A couple of reasons for that. No one grew up wondering about the day that they might possibly lift the Four Nations Cup. I mean, it's just the Four Nations. I just love the way we were talking about this four days ago. I can't so much.

It's the greatest event that was ever created in the history of sports and made the NHL far surpassed the NBA and everything that we've ever imagined about the league.

It would have been if the US won. If the US won, it would have been the greatest thing that's ever happened. But as we said, it was just a geopolitical moment that was sweeping everybody up. It will never, ever, ever, ever be as cool as it was four days ago. All right, shut up, Connie. You could do the Four Nations Cup for a hundred years. It'll never be as cool as it was four days ago. I'm sure we... Let's talk Wemby and how the...

Look, the NBA is in shambles right now.

The NBA is not in shambles, by the way.

The NBA is dead.

The NBA is doing a great job.

The NBA is dead. Crazy people. I love the NBA.

What? What? No. So, Jeremy, you seized on that. I don't. I wholeheartedly still stand by my statements. This was awesome. This was the biggest thing. I would love to have won it. It hurts to lose it. Glad you enjoyed it while it was cool. It's so cool. It was still the best. I can't wait for next year in the Olympics. Now we have a great storyline. They hadn't played best on best, these nations, in 11 years. All you had was a historic rivalry. The US got the better of them in the World of Hockey in 1996. I remember watching that as a little kid and knowing what a big moment that was. But recently, when these two nations have met in finals, it usually ends in heartbreak. In fact, Sydney Crosby has five medals to his name, five gold medals in international hockey. The United States as a whole have four in their history. We are absolutely little brother here. It was weird. It was weird in how the... Look, the politics of it, the media coverage of it, we somehow gave Canada the right to be the underdog in hockey. At certain points in this tournament, they had Sydney Crosby, Connor McDavid, Nathan McKinnon and Keel McCar on the ice.

They are not the underdog. If we're doing this in video games, their overall team score is higher than the overall team score of the United States. But the United States had the vibes, they had the attitude, they were hosting the final. This was a pick-em game when it came to betting lines, and most of the action was on the United States. But make no mistake about it, the United States is always going to be the underdog against Canada. And something weird happened, maybe politically, where that narrative switched, and you can't give the more talented team also the right to call themselves underdog. That's weird. Well, going into this tournament, their inspiration was Johnny Goudreau. His depth and the Memorial lies in him in this tournament. The fans That was overshadowed. The fans chanting Johnny Hockey was awesome. That was awesome. It was a great moment. Michael Ruzioni coming out in the Johnny Goudreau hockey sweater. Yeah, that got buried.

That got buried by all this ridiculousness as it made it to the cable. No, I don't think anybody would agree with that.

It's a great show. No, it isn't. It's good. Just background television. Ridiculousness? Just put it on. Always on at the barbershop. 2010, maybe. Come on, still slaps. We've already seen all of it. How many times did Canada have to have too many men on the ice before they were going to call it?

The was too close to the bench. But there was multiple times where the announces were like, That could have been too many men.

Yeah, it seemed pretty...

The one penalty that... I think they only called one penalty.

It had to be super obvious. You knew that the stripes weren't going to be. Yeah, there was playoff rules in this one. Which I love. Look, top-of-the-line effort, great theater, great drama, the players caring. Matthew K'Chuck is probably not going to play for a few games for the Florida Panthers. It's insane that the players that were in this tournament have to turn around now and start playing for their clubs in two days, some tomorrow. Can we put back up the Canadian group chat? I'm wondering, with all this group chat talk, if there's USA players or Canadian players not in these group chats, and they're like, What the hell?

Yeah, there's got to be a green There's got to be a green phone.

There's got to be a green text.

Swayman is like, Why am I not in these group chats?

I like the idea of there being maybe Kael McCart in this group chat. Man, shout out to the NHL. They got this right. It's not just the NHL. The players also have to show that they wanted to do this. The players' Union were a driving force. International hockey means a lot to these guys. And I know PK went viral, drawing comparisons to the effort to the NBA and the NHL, but that's also one of the other story lines. That was unfortunately bigger than the Johnny Goudreau thing. And I understand the Johnny Goudreau thing is for hockey puck heads that know the story. For me, that was prevalent throughout this tournament. It wasn't what was headlining cable news. We all know that. But it happening during this weird inflection point for the NBA, as I want to get to the Wemby stuff now, too, is really interesting because there were Abuelitas that were watching this game last night. This was huge for the sport of hockey. I don't know if that sustained momentum, but like I said, the Panthers play tomorrow. There's a lot of people that are going to identify with this, and it's really unfortunate that Matthew Kachuk got hurt because he has shown time and time again on grand stages that he's willing to be the superstar.

He's willing to be the face of hockey, and you would love to just keep that momentum going. But I cannot think about this NHL exhibition tournament, whatever you may call it, best on best, though, and not think about the NBA. And the NBA had a crushing blow yesterday with the Victor Wemben-Yamma news. And this is really serious. As He fans know, that went through the Chris Bosh thing. This is career in Jeopardy type of stuff. Now, there have been reassurances that they think he's going to be fine. They caught it. It has not spread. They caught it in the shoulder. But this is a really scary thing. Tony, were you the first on this beat?

I had some information that was given to me that I had seen the writing on the wall. Hey, something's happening with Wemby. Mike, you talk about the deep vein thrombosis thing. Obviously, Chris Bosh had that. But Brandon Ingram also had almost basically the same exact thing that Wemby had, which is a shoulder. I'm not a doctor. Obviously, I only play one on TV. Thank you for clarifying. But those blood clots obviously can move around your body into places that I think Serena, a couple of years ago, had one in her chest, in her lung or something. There's a lot of things that blood clots can do. Luckily, they caught this. They were talking about how Wemby was very sluggish, how he was very just like... He looked tired. He looked exhausted 24/7. Obviously, you're playing an NBA schedule and flying and doing all these different things, you're going to feel pretty exhausted. But the team was like, wait, something just isn't right here. Obviously, ended up finding that he had that. It's tough for the NBA right now, but the good thing is that in six months, when the season starts again, he'll be back and ready to go.

I thought there was something interesting where Anthony Edwards, who is obviously bravado, who is face of the league in a sense, got asked during the All-Star Game. I don't know if, Jeremy, you saw this. It was like, Hey, are you ready to be the face of the league? Is that your place? And He's like, No, that's Wemby. Wemby is going to be the face of the league, not me.

It was. It is. I mentioned that this week on the show. The face of the NBA is Victor Wimbenyama. And 48 hours later, he's out for the rest of the season. There were some Bosch parallels, because when Bosch had his second one, remember, Bosch bounced back after the pulmonary embolisms, and then there was a weird skills competition, and Victor Wimbenyama had a weird skills competition, which feels a little weirder now with the news. That is funny. Yeah. There are parallels there. For Bosch, when the second one popped up, he's on blood thinners for life. That's not necessarily going to be the case here for Victor Wembegnyama, which was actually the solution, the cure for Chris Bosch, is what caused the end of his career, which was the blood thinners.

That's exactly right. With Wembe, he will go on blood thinners to fix this blood clot, but that's the whole thing. You really can't play sports on blood thinners. That's why heart issues become a thing and players are immediately out of the League. For Wemby, at least the reporting thus far and everything that the Spurs have said indicates, like Tony said, he'll be back at the start of next season, and they'll go from there. They right now were a couple of games out of a play-in spot anyhow. And so they have their own first-round pick. If you're looking at the future of the Spurs, him now missing this amount of time and getting them in the top three or four of the draft and landing Cooper Flag inevitably.

Stop that. We can't let that happen.

I'm just letting you know.

We can't let that happen.

You don't think that's a possibility that they end up in the top three and land? Don't even say it. If not Cooper Flag and Ace Bailey or whoever is going to be right there to help catapult them with De'Aaron Fox and Victor Wembe. I mean, look, it's the Spurs. All that said, this is a scary thing. Anytime blood clots pop up, you're worried for the future of anyone's athletic career. With Wemby being everything that he is, not just as this athletic freak who was going to win defensive player of the year, who's one of the most dominant forces in the league already in year two, you also have all these guys like Anthony Edwards across the league embracing... That's the guy. Wemby is the guy that all of us are willing to look at and go, he has everything that's needed in terms of personality, in terms of demeanor, in terms of competitiveness to be out here as the face of the NBA. So when you miss that guy for the second half of the season in a chase for a play-in spot, of course, that's awful news for the league.

I'm I'm wondering what this did to his memorabilia market, because Wemby is the hottest name in terms of cards and memorabilia. So I wonder if are things crashing? Are people buying low? How do you-I think it's a huge blow, not just for the Spurs.

However, the first name that I thought of was Chris Bosh. The second name that I thought of was David Robinson because the Spurs were in a similar position. They had David Robinson. He got hurt. They put themselves in position to get Tim Duncan. If they got Cooper Flag out of this whole thing, that's incredible for the franchise. I don't like it one bit. I don't like it one bit. But I don't like it one bit. It smells fishy. The league could have really used Victor Wembenyama in the postseason. I think it's a huge blow. You worry about the rest of his career because if this pops up again, you have the very recent comparison with Chris Bosh that, Okay, that's blood thinners for life, right? He's a liability out there. You can't put him out there. And that's usually unfortunate. I'll address the elephant in the room with my initial Victor Wembenyama takes. This was not what I had in mind. When I talked about his long-term health and his fragility, I was thinking maybe ankle. No victory lap for you today. No victory lap. I was made very uncomfortable with the amount of text messages and DMs that I got.

Mike, you were right. You're like, Wait, what? It's a dub, an unfortunate dub.

A victor lap would be funny.

How are you taking a victory lap today? I feel like Jare Bear should be taking the victory lap.

For being right about everything involving hockey ever?

How are you right?

How was I right? Are you politicizing this?

Yeah. I'm politicizing it. Yeah, you're politicizing it. It was me. I was the one who politicized it. I was the one who did that.

The last week and a half was awesome for hockey. Yeah, it was super cool. There was also a lot of politics involved.

Yeah, and everything I said was right. What did you say? What did you say? On Tuesday? What did you say? When I told you guys that inevitably, Team USA would embrace Trump because the overwhelming majority of the roster is right-leaning. And so in turn, when he embraced the team, they would continue to embrace it and it in a moment that only was being followed by the Abuelitas that you mentioned because of this political moment. All of those people will drop off the face of the earth and the tournament will never be a school again.

Did they embrace it? I didn't even see the embrace it.

Apparently, he's done in-depth reporting and he's seen their voter registration.

I'm asking, what did they do to I didn't trace him.

Every quote that came out after his phone call.

Bill Garen. No, not every quote. You got a quote from JT Miller and a quote from Bill Garen.

I'll find another one if you'd like.

No, but you've clearly seen all their voter ID cards.

Did you give them a pump-up speech or something?

He spoke Was it Bill Garen that came in with the speaker phone? Yes. All right. We know where Bill... I think it's safe to say, given the Fox News interview hit that Bill Garen did, where he lines up politically. Remind me of his title? He's a general manager. Yeah, that's right. What does that mean? He knew already.

Mike Jeremy is an ally.

Would you like me to go into the political donations of Pat Reilly and Mickey Arison? No, but we should do that all day.

That would be hilarious.

Let's do that and throw a blanket over. Let's blanket over an entire organization because of a general manager.

Well, and players. Look, it's safe to assume.

I understand what you're doing.

Was he rooting for the Canadians?

Was this guy rooting for the Canadians? The Canadians aren't conservative, not at all. No, the Canadian hockey players. No. Wayne Gretsky is only playing golf with '45 and '47 all the time and being encouraged to run for Prime Minister of Canada. The great one. Yeah, the great one. Look, there's Conservatives everywhere. We have to try our best to make this work. I don't like it either. And yes, I looked at the screencap and I tried to identify who's smiling. I know who was smiling. Austin Matthews, you got a huge smile on your face. I know what you want to do with Matthew, and I'm not so sure there, pal. No, I think it's more progressive. What I wanted to do? Yeah. But I Yeah, but just given, if you want to read into quotes and what Matthew Kuchuk has said, I know he spoke very excitedly, proud to be an American at the White House, but he's also been- What do you expect him to say? He's one of the captains of Team USA going into this tournament. What do you expect him to say? He's been really good about shielding that. But when it came to the rainbow stick tape, Matthew Kachuk has been on the right side of that.

I think Matthew Kuchuk is playing this about as well as you can, but I don't know the political leanings. I think it's safe to say- No one's asking you to go like- Player by player.

Player by player. It's just that I've seen fans say that the current feeling of patriotism is a little icky when the President of the United States is threatening the sovereignty of our friendliest neighbor, threatening tariffs, all of that. I think that was Jeremy's point.

And that it would have been embraced differently had you been said it. Because we were talking about this in the context of the NBA All-Stars and the NHL All-Stars. And obviously, if you were sending the NBA All-Stars up to Canada, this all goes a little bit differently. We would be rooting for them, too. Oh, it's not who we would be rooting for. I root for the United States of America. I'm not anti-American.

We'll put it on the poll. It's Jeremy Teche and- Are you guys fucking crazy?

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Don Lebatard.

There is no question Dan Levatard show included.

Anybody else that this guy is the best player on the planet, whether he wins the Stanley Cup or the Cotsmite this year, there is no question about it. Stugatz. Overrated? Wait, something Yeah, overrated. What's going on? Dan Levatard. How are you doing? Are you living in an altered world? Oh, my goodness. This is the Dan Levatard show with the Stugatz. Look, I get what you're saying.

I just think if you relistened the Tuesday's show- You might have a different perspective. Jeremy got shouted down on a number of points that were then- Proven right within 12 hours?

But again, he's He's lifting up a JT Miller quote and a Bill Garen quote and projecting that over an entire team, which I think is a little unfair.

I'm projecting it over a moment, Mike.

No, you cannot talk about this moment without the politics.

Right. That's all I did from the beginning was saying how this moment- I think if you really listened to this segment, you would feel a little bit different. Well, I'm taking a victory lap, a victor-y lap.

But that's the thing. You're taking a victory lap. A victory lap. But that's the thing. You're taking a victory lap. Look, I'm sure this wasn't like when the US women were being attacked by men, 45. And that was ideal if you were on one side of the political spectrum because you got to be a patriot. You knew where you were aligned ideologically with the players. And it was a great moment. Megan Rapino, that's like, okay, yeah, you get to pound your chest and wrap yourself in the flag. You get to be patriotic, and you get to stand up to someone that is your oppressor the way that you feel. That's a great moment. This one's way more complicated, as is everything right now. Overly complicated. And I do not like from a side of the aisle that during the Kaepernick thing wanted a clear division of politics and sport. Now, like many people in the past, you have a leader that is using the avenue of sports to not just normalize some of this behavior. Steve Banon gives a very clear Nazi salute at a CPAC. Very clear Nazi salute. This is abhorrent behavior. I understand why it's hard to disassociate some of this stuff.

You know where I stand on this stuff. I have a very difficult time reconciling what's in the news, but then I hear Free Bird. Right. I see players. This is the whole thing. There's a lot of of athletes that I am... Former athletes that are conservative that I'm friends with. I live in Miami. It's why the echo chamber thing is insane to me. I'm a second-generation Cuban.

We don't even have to do all of that. I think the point is just that a lot of people are trying to pretend this wasn't tense for a particular reason last week. A lot of people are trying to pretend that that's not the case.

It was only as intense as it was because of what the moment was. And that was what I was saying then, and it's what I'd continue to say now.

I think it would be plenty intense, and I don't think the intensity from the players would be any different if that storyline was not there. Trust me when I say that.

You're right. From the news perspective, he's right.

What I'm talking about is the gloms of people who have flocked to what this all our weekend was, who had zero interest in hockey before this.

Press secretaries alike. Correct. Yes.

I'm with you. I'm with you. And so using it as a vehicle. And the issue for someone on my side of the aisle, whether you're as far to my side of the aisle or a little bit closer to the middle, it was a difficult thing to put all of that aside, to find myself waiting for these guys.

Oh, nearly impossible to.

To find myself waiting for these guys who, by the way, the Panthers on the team, Matthew K Chuck. These guys are awesome guys. I'm not trying to disparage any of those human beings for what they were going through. It was a pretty intense thing to have on your back on top of wanting to honor Johnny Goudreau. There's a lot going on there.

Hugely on fair, I think, to these players. Right. So that became the issue. Who were professional in rolling with this.

Yeah, they did what they could. But I mean, obviously, there's some bites that come out, and I'll see them, anyone else will see them. You get frustrated, but you don't have a long in-depth conversation with other players on the team who might not feel that way. At the same time, it became really difficult to view this game and this tournament through any prism outside of what an administration that is, at the same time, doing some of the most heinest things I've seen while I'm alive on this planet and then wrapping themselves in the American flag around this hockey team.

It's tough. I get you 100%. I can say that the players, they didn't care about that stuff. That was not really talked about.

That's totally fine. I'm just saying, Justin Trudeau tweeted last night, You can't take our country or our game. Politics was a big part of the story lines of this tournament, and that's, I think, just-It's why 1980 mattered.

That tweet did numbies, though. 9. 4 million views.

Big numbies. Look, Chris and I were in a group that went up to Montreal. It would not have felt as tense were not for the political situation right now that the US finds itself in. Seemingly, by its own doing. No, not seemingly, totally by its own doing. We've never, ever had an issue with Canada, and now all of a sudden, a really friendly nation is booing our anthem straight to our face. It's not great. It's impossible to ignore. The players did their best in navigating this. Outside of maybe one wayward JT Miller thing that you could really read into, no one gave a quote that's like, Man, damn, you really let me down there. So credit to them. Hockey players are pretty good that way. They're not going to give you too much because then Brad Marshawn may seize on something totally innocuous. I do want to say, though, that I want to credit this team for how well that they handled all this stuff. They could have come out and made This was an Uber distraction. They didn't. Hey, there were people, Jeremy, and people that feel like Jeremy, that were tuning into this specifically because they wanted to get one over on Canada because the cult of personality is such.

Yeah, you're already in on the 51st State. It's like Republicans buy shoes, too. Team USA, they did nothing to dissuade Puckheads that really didn't want the politics being infused into this tournament. They did nothing to dissuade us from it, really. They certainly didn't do anything to dissuade the people that were coming to this game for that, too. In terms of being able to capture a market and know how to grow your game, I got to say that the players played this to perfection. I had my thoughts It's about Bill Garen, but what can you do?

The other player quote that I had seen, I remembered seeing more, and it was Noah Hanifin who said, Hopefully we can get the win tonight for our country and for Trump.

Well, okay. That's Noah Hanifin. Yeah. Well, there's two. There's two. Again, I'm not going to project over an entire team. I think it's safe to say, white, rich athletes in hockey, you can estimate, you can do your best to try to it out. I think you'd be shocked to know how many people on the Canada side are... I know it's a progressive nation.

I don't think anyone would be shocked. There you go. We know, yes, we understand that people with a lot of money tend to skew more When I'm watching the masters, I'm like, Do you think he might be lived?

No. I make my assumption.

Tiger Woods was at the White House yesterday.

Yeah, celebrating- Our social team really put Is Jeremy Tasche, Anti-American on Twitter? Thank God.

Here's the thing. Do we need to have everybody See that we watch in sports be on one side or the other? Like, does it matter?

I voted yes.

Thank you. I'm going to vote yes after. But does it matter? Like, oh, this guy's a Republican, this guy's a Democrat. We're watching the games. Are we really that invested with the polarization of politics?

In this moment, yes.

To be like, oh, man, JT Miller said something.

That's not what we're talking about. That's not what we're saying.

But you guys are parsing- This is a sporting event between- I hear you.

Teams that represent two countries where one country is threatening the other country. But we do this across all sports.

Oh, my God. Tom braided said what to who? He's got hat wear. We do this all the time. Oh, this person is progressive? Okay, great.

I'm going to root for him more. What I don't like is that's a message- Yes, because progressivism stands for having basic human rights at this point in history.

But my point is- Do you believe that gay people should be married? I don't know. Well, if you don't, I might judge you a little bit for that.

But my point is this, we're watching a game, right? Let's just watch the game, right?

But they're not allowing. And by there, I say Conservatives because that was the message when Kaepernick was doing his thing. And it's very convenient convenient to flip the script and just be like, Hey, go ahead and deal with it. Okay, I'm dealing with it. I'm a UFC fan. I see a political rally at UFC New York. I see a victory lap. I see every winning fighter go over there and get congratulated by the President. It's impossible at that point for me to draw the line, especially when Dana White is fully endorsing.

Okay, I understand that. But my point is, you can just be like, Are you upset at that? Or are you like, Okay, whatever.

It is what it is.

I think you can be disappointed by disagreeing with people's politics.

I think that that's okay. I want to hear what Jess has to say.

There's plenty of players that I love watching who I'm incredibly disappointed by constantly. I still love sports, and I still watch sports all the time. I love football. I enjoy the shit out of it. I understand that a lot of my favorite players do not agree with me politically. It's tough. Sometimes there's a line that you draw and you decide, I'm not going to watch that person anymore. That's every person's individual decision as a consumer of the sports that we watch. It's obviously a very shitty and unique situation that this tournament came at this time where these two countries are in the most tense situation they've ever been before in history.

It really is remarkable the timing.

You can't ignore that. A lot of people covering sports are being told by their bosses just to ignore all of that. But when the President of Canada is tweeting, You can't take our country after Canada wins, it's tough to ignore that that's happening.

It is pretty crazy how all of this aligned because the US and Canada never had issues. As long as I've been alive, they've been friendly neighbors.

As a hockey fan, it's been awesome to shit on Canada my whole life and make fun of them for not winning any Stanley Cups in my lifetime, even though all of their players were the stars of the team that I liked that won several Stanley Cups.

But that's beside the point. You had Caner. You had Caner, but again, you have to do the... Well, morally, I'm not really down with this guy, but go, go Hawks.

Right. I mean, it's a great... There's tons of ethical decisions that you make watching sports and just living in the world every single day. No one is saying you should change what sport you like because of whatever, Tony. You are welcome to like what you like and do what you do. However, I just think it's hard to ignore and that if you feel icky and yucky, rooting for a team when this is going on in the background, I understand that. That's all I'm saying.

Down the middle, Chris thinks this is an important conversation, and he's glad that we're having it.

I'm super glad that we're The discourse is fascinating because all this stuff happened at a moment in time where the politics were impossible to ignore. From the national anthems, they're booing the national anthem. Why they booing the national anthem? They were booing it because the Canadian national anthem was A little terrible. Well, I heard that, too. But you have- Did we do that on purpose?

That was the internet. They put a bad singer on purpose. Got them.

They should have had Greg do his song.

There was no outside framing. Like the Miracle on Ice, you knew the story. Geopolitically. This one, you had bad faith politicians, bad faith aggregators doing what they could to manipulate a storyline that couldn't give a shit less about the sport. And while all that circus was going on, Again, credit to the NHL, they leaned into the circus. They played it down the middle, non-political. When it came to their presentation, they would acknowledge it. The players, for the most part, overwhelmingly didn't close any doors to The people that were coming just for that, and they are Legion, I think there's going to be a massive number. But the people that truly have a passion for the game, Roy, I feel like I can speak for you. This was an amazing experience. This was one of the best things, genuinely, one of the best things I've ever experienced around this sport. That's not just because I went to some of the games. No, watching it on television yesterday was one of the iconic games in the sports history. Yeah, I think it might actually grow the sport because a lot of demographics that don't usually actually watch before the week.

So I think it might grow.

I can't believe that Yankee story.

Actually, I wanted to get back on the topic because we've been trying to discuss back here who is the Yankees player who benefits the most from being able to have their facial hair now. So Taylor put together a few photos for us of before and after shots of Yankees with and without facial hair. So here, the first one is Devon Williams.

I'll take your word for it.

Going to be difficult to beat that.

Devon Williams?

Just looks great with a beard.

So good with a beard.

So much better with a beard. That's not the same person. It's just flatly not. The eyes are closer together on the photo on the right. That's not the same person. You guys are trying to trick me.

Then, of course, we have Paul Goldschmitt next who-Oh, God, Paul Goldschmitt.

Those are two different people. That's not fair.

Looks thinner on the right, too.

The salt and pepper is great. I love a salt and pepper beard.

If I see the salt and pepper in a beard, I'm like, That's Paul Goldschmitz. Is that Gino?

I think we have one more. Let's see what the next one is.

Oh, wait a second.

No.

That can't be right.

Mike Ryan plays for the Yankees?

I'm really mad about this.

Taylor might not be here next week.

No. Guaranteed.

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