00:00You know, I, I've talked to Phil Esposito about this and I wonder what your take is. He hated the
00:06fact that the, that the break with the Olympics was in the middle of the season. And, you know, he
00:11came up with a wild idea of putting, you know, the NHL in the summer game. So it doesn't collide
00:18with the season and you cannot have it, you know, in the middle. What's your take on that?
00:23I mean, some teams like Tampa Bay didn't come out of that. You know, they were on a heater going
00:27in, Jeremy, after they came up, they kind of wobbled the bay. What's your take on it?
00:32I think it's two sides of the coin, right? You can't have your cake and eat it too. And I
00:38love Espo. Espo is one of my favorite, you know, favorite people of all time.
00:43He's got such a great charisma personality guy, but you can't put, you can't put a winter sport in the,
00:49in the, in the summer, summer games. It just doesn't work that way. But, you know, listen, it's, this game
00:56has become more popular because of the international mentality.
01:02And it's what we just talked about. When players are playing for their own country, there's a different feeling. There's
01:07a different look. There's a different mentality.
01:10And I think we have probably accumulated more fans over the last year and a half in hockey than we
01:16have maybe in the, in the last 10 years combined.
01:19So you, you have to take the, the good with the bad.
01:23You know, and some, Hey, listen, some teams are not going to come out of that, that break, but the,
01:28the, the thing is, is everybody got the same, the same situation, right?
01:33There's players that were there that had their top players playing there. The rest of the players had two, two
01:39and a half weeks off.
01:40Look what it did to the Buffalo Sabres. Buffalo Sabres were one of the hottest teams going in and they
01:45kept up on that.
01:46You know, the Philadelphia Flyers came out of that rejuvenated ready and they put on one of the best pushes
01:52to make the playoffs for the first time in six years.
01:56So it's too, you know, it's two sides of the coin. You know, you can't, you can't have, you know,
02:02the, some of the best hockey and watch it at, at, you know, a weird spot in the season and,
02:09and then complain about it.
02:11So for me, it was okay, but again, we still got to see great play and, but it's up to
02:17them as professionals to be ready to come out of that break, come out prepared and come out and do
02:22the same thing that they need to do.
02:23The only tough thing that I see is the condensed season. There's a lot of hockey that is condensed into
02:29a short amount of time. You get more injuries, you get more fatigue.
02:33It's definitely very, very difficult on the players, but I still think it's been one of the best hockey years
02:38I've seen in a long time.
Comments