00:00Let's head to the hockey world now.
00:01And good news and bad news for the Oilers.
00:04Good news, Oilers fans, I don't think your team's gonna blow this.
00:07Despite injury issues and a bit of inconsistent play lately, I don't think your team is
00:13going to blow this playoff spot.
00:15The bad news is the reason for that is more what other teams are doing wrong and not necessarily
00:20what your team's doing right.
00:22Alright, let me explain.
00:29So yes, the Edmonton Oilers have had many an injury issue, and consistency issue, and talent
00:37issue.
00:37But, I'm here to tell you, Oilers fans, I don't think it's going to be a problem.
00:43I, and not because of anything you're doing.
00:46I just, I think they're gonna run out of runway to blow this thing.
00:49I, I, you look at, they, they got a huge, huge, huge win against the San Jose Sharks the
00:55night that Leon Drysaddle was announced that he was going to be out for the regular season.
01:00Um, that, that was a monster win.
01:02If that, that one doesn't happen, then we are having really different conversations around
01:07this hockey team.
01:08But the good news for Edmonton is that everyone behind them also stumbled this weekend.
01:13And you look at the standings right now, and Edmonton still is, it's not comfortable.
01:19But it really does feel like just that one win against the Sharks is going to be enough
01:25to keep everyone off of them and keep them in the playoffs.
01:30So yes, huge break on the out-of-town scoreboard over the weekend.
01:33But the fact is, this team just isn't good enough right now.
01:37It does feel like it's McDavid against everybody.
01:39And they had a couple of moments against the Lightning, um, a couple of fun rush chances
01:44and, and all of that, but they lose four to two.
01:47And one of the goals was put into Tampa Bay's own net by their own team.
01:53There's, it, this isn't like insane breaking news or anything like that, but this team
01:58outside of McDavid just isn't good enough.
02:00And this is why the depth thing can really be a problem.
02:04No, most teams in the league could not sustain losing their second best player and be able
02:10to push like this.
02:11But you look at the injury issues that almost anyone else in the league has had last night,
02:15Tampa Bay, Hedman has had some major problems this season, a point missed a substantial
02:19amount of time to the point that he couldn't even make the Olympic team, um, that they
02:24have been banged up.
02:25You look in the West, Colorado, relatively healthy, but Landis Cog's been out for a little
02:29bit.
02:29Dallas has been missing Rantanen for a while.
02:32A lot of these teams have had injury issues and they were in a much better spot than Edmonton
02:37is right now.
02:37And so this is example 10 billion of where the mismanagement around the bottom part of
02:43this roster has really come back to bite this team as they got whooped on, um, by the teams
02:50coming through from Florida.
02:52So just not good enough right now for the Edmonton Oilers.
02:55But I just don't think that there's enough time for the other teams in the Pacific to really
03:01make them pay for it.
03:02The other part of that game is we should not be sleeping on the lightning.
03:05And I do think that happens this time of year.
03:08We get so focused on the playoff battles, right?
03:11Where the teams that are just trying to squeak in, they get a little bit more of our attention.
03:14And then we're looking, we're trying to, we're trying to find the dark horses, right?
03:19And that's why on radio in Calgary, I was talking about, Hey, Montreal could be a, could
03:24be a cup team.
03:24And people are talking about how high can Buffalo get?
03:27And well, Carolina, I mean, you never know.
03:29Maybe this could be the year.
03:31And I feel like we're kind of taking how good Tampa Bay is for granted.
03:35And we are looking at this team like, okay, well, yeah, sure.
03:38Like, yeah, yeah, we know, we know they're good.
03:40We'll talk about them later.
03:40It's almost boring.
03:42This is a championship level hockey team.
03:45And I think you see that on full display against the Oilers.
03:49When you have a top line that is working as hard as guys like Hagel and Point and Kucherov
03:55and all of those guys, Sorelli had a phenomenal game against Edmonton on Saturday night.
04:01And then Vasilevsky, he, not the toughest test at times, but there were some very good
04:07chances that Edmonton got and Vasilevsky shut the door every time.
04:11Getting Hedman back, looking at this team, it's just, it's so, so well-rounded.
04:16They know how to compete.
04:17They know how to win championships.
04:19And they're showing it now.
04:20So this is just your reminder that this time of year, we can focus on a lot of different
04:25things and we can start to try to not just go with the sexy pick for winning a conference
04:30or winning a championship.
04:31Let's not forget how good this Tampa Bay Lightning team can be.
04:35And then the unfortunate news from the weekend is another issue with NHL player safety.
04:40And on this channel, haven't been able to talk about the Gutis, Austin Matthews thing
04:44all that much.
04:45Talked about it quite a bit on the radio in Calgary.
04:47But this AJ Greer one is inexcusable.
04:52Like the Gutis one was basically inexcusable.
04:55There's like 1% that you can talk yourself into.
04:58He hasn't really had a suspendable act in the NHL in a while.
05:04And the game moves fast, this, that, and the other thing.
05:06There's like 1% that you can do plausible deniability.
05:09I don't think you should, but there's like 1% of that that you can.
05:12There is not one explanation for AJ Greer to do that to Conor Zari that makes that not
05:18a malicious, dirty, awful, awful hit.
05:21Like unless it's like, well, you know, Zari told me before the game, because you know,
05:25former teammates, Zari told me that he's having trouble fitting on airplanes.
05:29So I decided to just make him shorter a little bit.
05:32That's, that's it.
05:33It was right into the numbers, far away from the boards.
05:36It was so obvious of what, how dangerous that hit was.
05:41And now to only get three is inexcusable.
05:45I can't stand this at all.
05:48And like, it's such a, you don't want to think this way.
05:53You shouldn't think this way.
05:54But it's such an easy guy to make an example of, right?
05:57Like he's a fourth line plug on a team that's not going anywhere this season.
06:01So throw the book at him.
06:03And at least when people are criticizing you again, at some point, at least you can say,
06:07well, look, we really came down on that guy because we believe in player safety.
06:11They didn't even do that.
06:13They bailed out AJ Greer for no good reason.
06:18And so honestly, because this is getting a lot of the conversation, honestly, at this
06:23point, I hope it's corruption because this level of ineptitude, this level of incompetence
06:32is shocking and startling and incredibly concerning.
06:37At least like briberies or in cahoots or whatever, I can fix that.
06:44This is a level of stupid I can't fix.
06:46So I, I hope that there is some kind of conspiracy going on because the other alternative is just
06:53that they suck this bad at this.
06:55And that's probably a bigger problem.
06:58It's just, it's bad.
07:00It's bad.
07:00And the scary thing is it feels like now someone's going to need to get very hurt before this
07:06gets taken seriously.
07:07Because remember when concussions were starting to be talked about a little bit more and we
07:11were starting to understand that hits to the head equals not good.
07:14All right.
07:14We're cracking down on the blindside hits and the this and that.
07:16And we knew the name of the rule.
07:18I've forgotten it now, but we knew the name of all of that.
07:20And, and that we knew, okay, well that, that's definitely a suspension.
07:24It is almost like, because there isn't that focus on one issue in player safety right now
07:30that they're just like, yeah, there's nothing we really need to focus on.
07:32So nothing's really a problem.
07:33And it's not going to be taken seriously until someone gets really, really hurt.
07:38And that is a scary thought for players and for fans alike.
07:44It's, it's so frustrating.
07:46And we've had two of the clearest examples of incompetence at this level in a really long
07:53time.
07:53So what do you guys think?
07:54Am I overreacting to this or the goodest one?
07:57Let me know in the comments, share your thoughts on how long you think AJ Greer should have been
08:01suspended for.
08:02And we can have a fun debate down in the comments there.
08:05And don't forget, hit that share button and share this with your hockey fan friends so
08:09we can keep the conversation going and grow the channel just a little bit more.
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