Speaker 1: Utah Hockey Club with an emphatic win last night. It
Speaker 1: was seven to one over the Kraken here in Salt
Speaker 1: Lake City. Our next guest joins us on a weekly
Speaker 1: basis to hockey, Utah Hockey Club and big picture NHL storylines.
Speaker 2: He is the great Neil Smith. Neil, Happy Wednesday, sir.
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm doing just great? Thanks guys, how are you doing? Spence?
Speaker 2: Doing well? Doing well?
Speaker 1: So, I mean, look in a vacuum, you know, seven
Speaker 1: to one, a home win for the Utah Hockey Club
Speaker 1: over a solid Seattle cracking team, not a team that's
Speaker 1: going to the playoffs this year. I mean, in a vacuum, Neil.
Speaker 1: I guess it's good to experience winning like that. So
Speaker 1: a nice win for the hockey club last night, but
Speaker 1: it will, you know, be in vain as the.
Speaker 2: Wildcard playoffs will not happen this year.
Speaker 1: But just for a moment in time, let's focus on
Speaker 1: a fun day last night, Utah Hockey Club.
Speaker 3: Getting a win, yeah, and a record setting win, you know,
Speaker 3: scoring seven goals and the first time that's happened. And
Speaker 3: I got to say that if we reflect back on
Speaker 3: the season, had Utah learned how to win at home
Speaker 3: earlier in the year, they might be a number of
Speaker 3: points ahead, and maybe you know, in that eighth spot,
Speaker 3: it was really not winning at home and getting used
Speaker 3: to Salt Lake City for whatever that means, that has
Speaker 3: cost them some points here in the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was two things, Neil, really all year long.
Speaker 1: It was as you reference, it was the inability to
Speaker 1: win at home. You know, when you look at the
Speaker 1: amount of home wins they have eighteen, I mean that
Speaker 1: would be tied for it would be tied for the
Speaker 1: worst home record in the Eastern Conference, which by the way,
Speaker 1: is an honor that my New York Rangers have with
Speaker 1: only eighteen home wins at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 2: How is that possible?
Speaker 3: Let me ask you that, you know what You've got
Speaker 3: to ask how anything possible that's going on inside the
Speaker 3: garden on Ranger game nights there. I mean, they have
Speaker 3: been pathetic, they're they're leaderless. They look completely disoriented, and
Speaker 3: they looked like they can't wait for the season to
Speaker 3: end and get back home wherever they're from. Just just
Speaker 3: they just played horribly and and for the talent that
Speaker 3: they have, they just I mean, you know that Chris
Speaker 3: Krider had seventy five points at this time last year
Speaker 3: and this year has twenty five. He's off by fifty points.
Speaker 3: That's just one example. They just Sstkin carried them to
Speaker 3: the President's Trophy last year, but he wasn't able to
Speaker 3: do it with the way this group played this year,
Speaker 3: and they're gonna they're they're going to miss the playoffs too.
Speaker 3: They've they've got a game tonight against Philadelphia tomorrow night
Speaker 3: in Long Island, and you know they're not far from
Speaker 3: being eliminated.
Speaker 1: So only four games left for the hockey club. The
Speaker 1: final home game will be Thursday against Nashville, and then
Speaker 1: they end on the road for three straight Dallas, Nashville again,
Speaker 1: and then Saint Louis. If you're coach Tourney, if you're
Speaker 1: Bill Armstrong understanding what the deal is where playoffs won't
Speaker 1: be a reality, what are you looking for from this
Speaker 1: young team to close out the season the right way?
Speaker 3: I just want to see that there's still fighting the
Speaker 3: team and that they have pride in wearing the jersey
Speaker 3: and that they're not going to go down. You know,
Speaker 3: they're not going to just let these games go. There's
Speaker 3: still a lot to play for. On a team basis.
Speaker 3: I mean, for example, Clayton Keller is only three points
Speaker 3: a week from having his best season ever point wise,
Speaker 3: He certainly, I'm sure, would love to accomplish that feat.
Speaker 3: The Utah Hockey Club is way ahead of where they
Speaker 3: were this time last year. I think they're eighteen points
Speaker 3: up on where they were last year. So that's something
Speaker 3: that they want to keep going. They want to improve
Speaker 3: their record, and on an individual basis, everybody wants to
Speaker 3: prove they deserve to be in the NHL if they're
Speaker 3: going to be a free agent at the end of
Speaker 3: the year, they want to they're playing for the scouts.
Speaker 3: But you know, the evaluation, as I've said, goes on continuously.
Speaker 3: From a Bill Armstrong standpoint, there's never a day that
Speaker 3: you're not evaluating who you've gotten, how to make it better.
Speaker 1: It's weird as I'm looking at the standings because I
Speaker 1: was looking just for a parallel to find a team
Speaker 1: that's only what eighteen home games, and looking at the East,
Speaker 1: I was surprised to see the Rangers there at the bottom.
Speaker 1: But the worst teams in the East are the Flyers,
Speaker 1: the Bruins, and the Penguins. And as a hockey fan
Speaker 1: from the nineties. I mean those are like three of
Speaker 1: the big banner NHL you know organizations. What gives with
Speaker 1: some of the biggest markets and best NHL organizations at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the table, they're out east.
Speaker 3: Well, Philadelphia has been into a rebuilding program. They started
Speaker 3: a few years go, so that's no surprise. They're trying
Speaker 3: to do it the right way, get draft picks, build
Speaker 3: it back up again. It took a while to get
Speaker 3: down to there where they are now, but they're trying
Speaker 3: hard to rebuild the thing. And they made a coach
Speaker 3: and change near the end. John Tortorella was let go
Speaker 3: and Brad shag got made the coach who was an
Speaker 3: assistant in the Boston Bruins case. It's got to be
Speaker 3: the most angry fan base in the league because two
Speaker 3: years ago they won the President's Trophy. Last year they
Speaker 3: had a real good season. This year, they didn't start
Speaker 3: off very well. They fired the coach, they made the
Speaker 3: assistant coach the coach there, and they just started to
Speaker 3: plummet to the point where at the trading deadline they
Speaker 3: offloaded even their captain, Brad Marshad, who's now with the
Speaker 3: Florida Panthers, so they're a minus forty nine on a
Speaker 3: goal differential, which is way down there and second worst
Speaker 3: in the East, only to the next team, which is Pittsburgh,
Speaker 3: which has the accolades of having the great Sydney Crosby
Speaker 3: play for them for twenty years and be fabulous every year.
Speaker 3: In fact, he's had twenty straight seasons of averaging a
Speaker 3: point a game, which is remarkable. Even Wayne Gretzky only
Speaker 3: had nineteen, so he's been fabulous. Malcoln looks like he's
Speaker 3: at the end of his rope. Chris Latang, who's the
Speaker 3: star player for them, is older now not playing poorly,
Speaker 3: but they traded for Eric Carlson that didn't do any good,
Speaker 3: and they're really just a team that should be rebuilding
Speaker 3: I don't know what they're trying to do there. They're not.
Speaker 3: They're half way into rebuilding him, halfway into trying to
Speaker 3: put good players around Sydney, and then right above them
Speaker 3: just to finish it off. You've got the Buffalo Sabers,
Speaker 3: who have now been crowned with a fourteenth straight season
Speaker 3: of no playoffs.
Speaker 2: That's wild.
Speaker 1: I mean, another you know, banner kind of organization and
Speaker 1: franchise in the world of pro hockey. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that it had been that long. We had the beat
Speaker 1: rider for the Jazz from the Trip on the show
Speaker 1: Last Hour, and I asked him a question, and it
Speaker 1: made me think of wanting to ask you kind of
Speaker 1: the same through the prism of hockey, where we find
Speaker 1: ourselves with the Utah Jazz, our basketball team.
Speaker 2: They're very early on.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't be this early on, but they kind of
Speaker 1: botched their early years of the rebuild. So now they're
Speaker 1: trying to build it up the right way for the
Speaker 1: first time this year after two years of kind of
Speaker 1: being in the middle, and it will be a brick
Speaker 1: by brick process.
Speaker 2: Some luck needs to land their way.
Speaker 1: And there are teams in the NBA neal that we
Speaker 1: can look at that we're where the Jazz are now
Speaker 1: just a few years ago, that are now starting to
Speaker 1: achieve some success. Give our hockey fans maybe a team
Speaker 1: or two that were where the Utah Hockey Club is
Speaker 1: at now just a few years ago that have been
Speaker 1: able to rebuild and are now in a spot where
Speaker 1: they're making the playoffs and they're threatening to do something special.
Speaker 1: Like a model of a team that was rebuilding just
Speaker 1: a few years ago that's done it the right way
Speaker 1: and now is in a place where they're being very successful.
Speaker 1: Is there one or two teams that come to mind
Speaker 1: if that makes.
Speaker 3: Sense, Yeah, no, it does make sense. And I'll tell
Speaker 3: you a perfect example of a good job as the
Speaker 3: Ottawa Senators, who are at ninety points. They have clinched
Speaker 3: a playoff spot. They've been out of the playoffs for
Speaker 3: I think it's seven seasons in a row, but they
Speaker 3: rebuild it. They're a small market team of the Canadian dollars,
Speaker 3: so that they can't they can't buy their way to anything.
Speaker 3: But their home record twenty four eleven and two. Their
Speaker 3: road record is about five hundred, and they've been really
Speaker 3: good as far as competitiveness. And it's not an easy
Speaker 3: game against Ottawa ever, but it was only a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago. Last year, I mean, they missed the playoffs.
Speaker 3: Another team that's been shocking in the East is Montreal Canadians,
Speaker 3: who were right down at the bottom of the Eastern
Speaker 3: Conference for quite a few years now. In fact, I
Speaker 3: don't think they've made the playoffs since the bubble, you know,
Speaker 3: since the colded bubble years when they somehow went to
Speaker 3: the final in that season where you played only within
Speaker 3: your division and they had a Canadian division. They got
Speaker 3: out of there and ended up playing in the final
Speaker 3: against Tampa Bay. And so they've missed for a number
Speaker 3: of years. But now they've got a lot of good
Speaker 3: young players and they've called back up. And those two
Speaker 3: teams are teams that have been trying to do it,
Speaker 3: you know, the way that the hockey club is doing
Speaker 3: it through continually drafting and developing players.
Speaker 1: So, Neil, since you and I last spoke, it did
Speaker 1: become official that the world of pro hockey has a
Speaker 1: new goal scoring king and it's Alex Ovan And it
Speaker 1: was a pretty cool scene. It was kind of a
Speaker 1: cool thing to watch. I mean, I would imagine if
Speaker 1: you're a player and you have to sit for twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five minutes and then play again, that'd be a
Speaker 1: little frustrating. But to see, you know, all of his
Speaker 1: family and his friends and his former teammates and Wayne
Speaker 1: Gretzky himself there to celebrate this achievement that when I
Speaker 1: was growing up as a hockey fan, I was always
Speaker 1: told this is something that will never be broken, and
Speaker 1: now it is so now that it's official. Put this
Speaker 1: into context for us in your ecosystem in the world
Speaker 1: of pro hockey. Just how impressive is this that Alex Ovechkin,
Speaker 1: after a number of years in the NHL, was able
Speaker 1: to break the great Ones goal scoring record.
Speaker 3: Now he's been twenty years in the NHL, just like
Speaker 3: Sidney Crosey. They both came in the same year. And
Speaker 3: Ovechkin has always been just a pure goal scorer, like
Speaker 3: obviously the best there has ever been, and he's and
Speaker 3: he's been able to survive for twenty years. A lot
Speaker 3: of guys are great goals, but their back gives out,
Speaker 3: their knees give out, something gives out, and they can't
Speaker 3: make it through all the years that Alex Ovechkin has.
Speaker 3: But he's a bowl big guy. I was at that
Speaker 3: game at Ubs Arena in Long Island against the Islanders.
Speaker 3: I was there. The atmosphere is absolutely electric right from
Speaker 3: the warm up. I mean, there were so many Cat
Speaker 3: fans there, Washington Capitol fans, and everybody was just waiting.
Speaker 3: When number eight came on the ice, everybody's eyeballs were
Speaker 3: on him. When he would go off, he sort of
Speaker 3: relaxed for a minute, and then he came back on.
Speaker 3: But I got to tell you, when the New York
Speaker 3: Islanders took a penalty early in the second period, you
Speaker 3: could just feel that the electricity in the building. Oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, is this going to be it? Alex is
Speaker 3: going to be on the power play where he scores
Speaker 3: a lot of his goals from obviously, and sure enough,
Speaker 3: on that power play, first shot that he had went
Speaker 3: in and the celebration began, and it was quite a
Speaker 3: celebration by all the fans in the building. Everybody knew
Speaker 3: they had seen something historic and it was really a
Speaker 3: great event. The Capitals are now have to try to
Speaker 3: turn around and put it behind him and get back
Speaker 3: to the task at hand, which is trying to win
Speaker 3: the Stanley Cup with the type of season that they've had.
Speaker 3: But he was you know, as far as individual achievements,
Speaker 3: that was certainly one of a kind to see that,
Speaker 3: because you know, in our day when I had Gretzky
Speaker 3: on the team, Spence, every day that he got a
Speaker 3: point or a goal, it was a new record, right
Speaker 3: because he held all the records. So we didn't stop the
Speaker 3: game every time he scored a goal because he had them.
Speaker 3: You know, we stopped the game when he beat Gordy
Speaker 3: Howe at eight o two. That was the La Kings
Speaker 3: he was playing for, and they stopped the game and
Speaker 3: they had a celebration all that. But then after eight
Speaker 3: o two, every goal was his goal. So he went
Speaker 3: from eight o two to up to eight ninety four.
Speaker 3: And then of course now Alex is at eight ninety five.
Speaker 3: Just to put the buff here's an interesting one for
Speaker 3: you to put the Buffalo playoff drought in perspective. For you,
Speaker 3: the Buffalo playoff drought is so long that Alex Ovechkin
Speaker 3: last time Buffalo made the playoffs, was five hundred and
Speaker 3: ninety four goals away from Gretzky's record. Yez he scored
Speaker 3: five hundred and ninety four regular season goals since the
Speaker 3: Buffalo Sabers made the playoffs.
Speaker 1: That is wild, is there? You know, when you have
Speaker 1: a nickname that's the great one, you know, you're probably
Speaker 1: in rarefied air by yourself. Are there any other players
Speaker 1: historically that could be in the debate of who the
Speaker 1: greatest hockey players of all time? Because we do this
Speaker 1: debate in other sports and I think maybe with the
Speaker 1: you know, actually, you know what, even in hockey or
Speaker 1: achieve me.
Speaker 2: Even in golf.
Speaker 1: If you want to say Tiger, then you can talk
Speaker 1: about Jack's major record. Is there any debate who the
Speaker 1: greatest hockey player is of all time?
Speaker 3: I think there's some debate in that. First of all,
Speaker 3: Wayne would say that Gordy how is the greatest player,
Speaker 3: because Wayne will never say himself. But there is a
Speaker 3: lot of folks who were during the Bobby Or era
Speaker 3: when he changed the game in the seventies, when he
Speaker 3: revolutionized how an offensive defenseman would play, and they won back.
Speaker 3: They won to Stanley. Excuse me too, Stanley cups through
Speaker 3: his heroics. There is a lot of people who would
Speaker 3: say that Bobby Or was the best player ever because
Speaker 3: of the way he changed the game. I personally think
Speaker 3: it's been Wayne because Wayne. I saw Wayne play in
Speaker 3: his glory years and he was just absolutely incredible, and
Speaker 3: he's called the great one for the reason of this.
Speaker 3: You know, the Gritsky name is close to a great
Speaker 3: like g R. E. T. The Great Eight is a
Speaker 3: great name for overeitskin, and that's what his nickname is.
Speaker 3: And he certainly has been the Grade eight.
Speaker 1: All right, Neil, before I set you loose, you know
Speaker 1: I can remember because I think Ovechkin and Crosby kind
Speaker 1: of came up at the same time, right, like they
Speaker 1: kind of broken Yeah, same year, right, And so I
Speaker 1: can remember back then the debate about, Okay, who's going
Speaker 1: to be better between these two? Can either of these
Speaker 1: two be this generation's Wayne Gretzky? Can either of them
Speaker 1: become you know, in that stratosphere where Wayne Gretzky exists?
Speaker 1: Who are if you have names the players right now
Speaker 1: in their early twenties that are this generation's Sidney Crosby
Speaker 1: and Alex Govetchin. If that's even a parallel we can make.
Speaker 3: Well, the latest two guys are are Barrard that's playing
Speaker 3: on Augall Blackhawks. It was first overall three years ago.
Speaker 3: And then you've got in San Jose, you've got two guys.
Speaker 3: Now You've got Will Smith who's a great young player.
Speaker 3: And you have also I'm going to stumble on this
Speaker 3: name here, but he's up for the Rookie of the
Speaker 3: Year as well, Matt Macklin. Celebrini is a great young player.
Speaker 3: Those are the guys that you need to watch. There's
Speaker 3: a guy in Montreal, Lane Hudson with a T not
Speaker 3: a D, who's a fabulous offensive defenseman, just fabulous. He's
Speaker 3: probably gonna win Rookie of the Year. So between those
Speaker 3: three names, Berrard, Celebrini and Hudson, I think you got
Speaker 3: chance there to see guys that are in that level
Speaker 3: of play that Crosby and Ovechkin have given us, which
Speaker 3: isn't generational necessarily because they did it together, so they
Speaker 3: were that generation together. Gretzky obviously was generational, Gordie Howe
Speaker 3: was way back, and Bobby or It's harder today to
Speaker 3: be a generational player because you don't have the same
Speaker 3: type of game. But I think those are the names
Speaker 3: you're going to be seeing for a long long time.
Speaker 1: All right, Neil, tell our listeners where they can go
Speaker 1: get the podcast Retch run Stanley Cup Playoffs almost here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did a great one the other day with
Speaker 3: Craig Laughlin, who's the color analyst for the Capitals and
Speaker 3: done every one of Alex Soovetchkin's games over the years.
Speaker 3: That was really fun and it's on you know, you
Speaker 3: could get it on YouTube or Spotify, Apple, anyplace. NHL
Speaker 3: wrap Around is the name, and I think people would
Speaker 3: really enjoy the guests because whatever is a current topic,
Speaker 3: we seem to be able to talk to somebody that's
Speaker 3: very current with that story into coming on, and we
Speaker 3: had a.
Speaker 2: Lot of fun, good stuff. My friend. I appreciate the time,
Speaker 2: have a great weekend. We'll chat too.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, all right.
Speaker 1: The great Neil Smith, general manager of the Rangers when
Speaker 1: they won the Stanley Cup in ninety four, stops by
Speaker 1: on a weekly basis to kind of help us in
Speaker 1: doctrine ad the market into the world of pro hockey.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's the wrong term anyway. Four games left for
Speaker 1: the Hockey Club Nashville coming up at home tomorrow. It's
Speaker 1: your final chance to see the hockey club here in
Speaker 1: Salt Lake. They finish off with three road He's at Dallas,
Speaker 1: at Nashville, then at Saint Louis. Neil stops bout today
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