- 13 hours ago
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00I'm frustrated with myself for this.
00:02So there's the Lindy Ruff announcement.
00:06We expect to hear from him live next hour talking about the season
00:11and like everybody else is doing.
00:13And I expected yesterday that this would happen before they met with the media,
00:19and it has.
00:20Yeah, I just thought maybe he'd want to take a minute,
00:22but maybe they already figured it out.
00:24I mean, isn't that a question that could come up during the playoffs?
00:30Or even like late in the season when he's the Jack Adams favorite?
00:33Like, do you want to do this next year?
00:35I think he just mostly kept pushing.
00:40He certainly only wanted to say so much about Jack Adams.
00:43It was very little.
00:44And then he just stopped.
00:46And any questions about his future, I think he just did.
00:50I want to focus everything, all my attention on these games.
00:53Rightly.
00:54Rightly, right.
00:55So the rest of that will get taken care of when the time is right.
00:58And the time was right, you know,
01:00a couple of days after they got eliminated for them to get something done.
01:03I'm sure I would guess it was not a very arduous negotiation.
01:07You want to keep doing this?
01:09Yeah.
01:09Okay.
01:09Let's agree on some numbers.
01:11You're in.
01:11Okay, let's do it.
01:12Yeah.
01:12Let's go.
01:13That's kind of, frankly, how our contract negotiations tend to go.
01:16Yeah.
01:18Although maybe in his case, Lindy got a bump, like a big one, because this was a big year
01:24for him.
01:24Yeah.
01:24We think a raise for him would be warranted.
01:27Jeremy and Joe were talking about how you can't find out hockey coach salaries, at least
01:31easily.
01:32Like, there's no website that tracks that.
01:35Okay.
01:36What do you think he makes?
01:37Do you know?
01:37Do you have any idea what Lindy makes?
01:39Like, is it going way up?
01:41I don't know.
01:42I, did he have, he probably had, he had the leverage.
01:46If he walks after this year.
01:49Yeah.
01:50I don't know.
01:50I, I'm trying to remember, wasn't Babcock making like 10 million a year?
01:56Okay.
01:57Well, like when he took the Toronto job disgraced, former NHL coach, I think that was big money
02:03like that, that big.
02:05I don't know that other guys have crested the 10 million a year.
02:11I might be, maybe it was less than that.
02:13I don't remember, but I feel like Babcock was a big number.
02:16Well, he might've been the highest paid coach.
02:18And I very rarely, I feel like maybe we hear it when the contracts are announced and then
02:24we just never hear it again.
02:24And you have to go through all the insiders, Twitter feeds for, you know, find the dates
02:29that guys were hired.
02:30And maybe you get that info.
02:31That sounds like fun, but it's just different.
02:33And it's, yeah, there's no, there's no, you know, cap friendly.
02:37I don't think for hockey coach salaries.
02:41So my guess, and this is only a guess, cause I don't even know what like the average salary
02:47is.
02:47I don't know what a low paid coach is anymore.
02:49I don't know what a high paid coach is.
02:50I would guess Lindy was making between three and 5 million a year to be the Sabres coach.
02:55To come back.
02:56Yeah.
02:56I might go higher just because he wasn't sure he wanted to do it.
03:03And I think he was Terry Pagula's idea and they might've had to sort of sweeten it.
03:09Pay up a little bit.
03:10Yeah.
03:11But I don't know for his sake.
03:13I hope that's right, but I really have no idea.
03:15And this year, I mean, what, what's that conversation like?
03:19I would guess if, if he was in the three to five range, which again is only a guess for
03:25me, I would guess he's now in a five to seven range.
03:30But that all of that is without any knowledge of even what the hierarchy is within the league
03:36because of the initial comment here, which is there's not a database to go find.
03:40Well, what does Jared Bednar make?
03:43He's only the coach of the best team in hockey on balance for the last, what, five years?
03:49Almost.
03:49I'm going to guess he makes between seven and 10.
03:51You think he makes more than rough?
03:53Interesting.
03:54Yeah.
03:54It's his first job.
03:56But they've already won.
03:57I know.
03:58Does he, does he get them after that?
04:01I don't know what his timeline was contractually.
04:03See, I don't know, like, I don't know what year he was in when they won, but I would guess
04:07it's a, it's a few years ago now.
04:09I, I, I would bet he's had a contract, you know, renewal since he won the cup, which I
04:16think you win the cup and then you get bumped.
04:19That's another, maybe another tier.
04:21He's 54.
04:22I'm 54.
04:23Nice.
04:23Interesting.
04:24What have you ever done?
04:27Just this tire thing.
04:28This tire thing.
04:29Earlier today.
04:29That's one thing.
04:30Let's get back to that.
04:31That's one thing I've done.
04:33Well, congrats to Lindy.
04:36They would have had to want him back.
04:38No argument from me.
04:40And I'm glad that he wants to do it.
04:42Yeah.
04:42I think like you, you alluded to maybe the, the, the, the harder piece here wasn't so
04:48much that they would want him back with whether or not he wants to keep going.
04:51Sure.
04:51Cause I don't know.
04:52There, there was a lot of chatter about him in a different role at the same time that
05:00the Adams stuff started being rumored while they were still out West before he actually
05:05got fired Adams.
05:07There was talk about a change and that rough might be bumped up to into a different job
05:12and out from behind the bench and all this sort of stuff.
05:14And then they started winning.
05:15So I don't know, maybe that was all just wrong and never was in the works.
05:20I wonder, don't you?
05:20Yeah, I do.
05:21Or, or it was.
05:22And the turnaround reinvigorated the organization's belief in him and his desire to want to keep
05:29going maybe to the extent that he's now agreed to do it for two more years.
05:34Uh, but you know, I, I don't know for sure, but yeah, I, I felt like the, the, the, that's
05:39why when you said yesterday, maybe that's a little soon, you know, to assume that they're
05:44going to have a deal done, it would have been because does Lindy want to do it?
05:48There's no way the organization would be like, whatever the, whatever, whatever data points
05:53they want to look at.
05:53This had this incredible year.
05:55The guy is a beloved icon of the franchise.
05:59Guys, if he wants to keep coaching after this season, you'd be insane to not want to
06:04do that.
06:05So rough was really the, so I wonder maybe that, maybe that does drive his price up because
06:10he would have been, I would think, I don't know about in demand around the league, but
06:15if they want him and he wants to play a little cards with them, he could have played a little
06:19hard to get just to get, you know, get up there in the salary.
06:22I wouldn't hold that against anybody.
06:24His owner is rich.
06:25You got a chance to shoot your shot, shoot your shot.
06:27Right.
06:27I mean, do you want me?
06:29He really, he really could.
06:30I mean, I think there's maybe a, an instinct.
06:34I'm not sure this is necessarily how you feel, but Lindy has somewhat of a nice guy persona.
06:42A little, I mean, he can get hot.
06:45We all can, but he's sort of a, the personality he exudes is such that you might think he was
06:51just like, oh, sure.
06:53You know, and capitulate and be like, fine.
06:55I don't know.
06:55I mean, he, he could have had a lot of leverage right now.
07:02And even two years ago when he took it, because what were they going to do?
07:05I don't think at, I don't know.
07:07Like Adams was always like, or Adams was, it was always Lindy.
07:11I never believed him.
07:14Everybody was telling me it was going to go in a different direction.
07:17And then suddenly it was Lindy Ruff.
07:19And that just felt like so pagula to me.
07:22And I've not ever been convinced differently because you know, that, that is always what
07:27they'll try to do is tell you that doesn't mean I'm right.
07:29But that is always like, no, no, no, no.
07:30What do you mean?
07:31Like, what do you mean?
07:31Are you calling me a liar?
07:33Like they're, I just, I don't know.
07:34I just never felt like it was Adams idea.
07:39I thought they might've wanted somebody else.
07:40Anyway, here's Ruff at 66 getting a two year extension, which means he'll coach at least
07:48next year.
07:49Those kinds of things don't always have to last to their duration.
07:54He's chasing records.
07:55I mean, he's, they won 50 games this year in the regular season.
08:00He has 950 wins.
08:03If they win exactly 50 games again, which I mean, listen to me, but this is the new happy
08:12reality.
08:12I think with the Sabres, you can talk like this and it's not insane.
08:16That's a thousand wins.
08:17It's interesting that he's fourth all time in wins, but two and three are also active.
08:25That's Maurice and Quenville.
08:27Right.
08:28Quenville has, that's Anaheim now.
08:30Yeah.
08:30A thousand and 12 wins.
08:32Maurice, who is 59 years old, younger, has 956.
08:36That's Florida.
08:38So it's not like it's just sort of, I don't know.
08:42What, what do you want?
08:43Clear sailing or something.
08:44It's not available for him to climb, climb past anyone.
08:47Really?
08:47Not necessarily.
08:48Two of the guys in front of them are just going to keep going for the foreseeable future
08:51anyway.
08:52Right.
08:53But nobody behind Ruff is active until you get to John Tortorella, who is ninth, and
08:59that's almost 200 fewer wins.
09:01So there's a little bit of a, and then after that, unless Babcock comes back, it's like
09:07McClellan, DeBoer, that's 100 wins fewer.
09:10So Ruff is not being chased down.
09:12Chased really aggressively.
09:13Yeah.
09:14Yeah.
09:14Well.
09:15Cool.
09:16Good for him.
09:16I saw the announcement today, and there's a tweet, maybe it was Harry Skull, who did
09:23a few pictures of Lindy or something, and I looked at it, and I'm like, oh my God, I
09:27forgot.
09:28I would have had so much fun with this, really from whenever it got serious on, months ago,
09:35and I never thought about it again.
09:37When Ruff was, this is going to sound like a little bit of a brag.
09:41I'm sorry if it does, when Ruff was the coach before, and we had our, you know, all the
09:48fun we had with 06, 07, like those teams, you know this story, they had, not that you
09:55remember it, but they had one of those wine events at the arena in the atrium, and I was
10:02there with my wife and then our friends, and I remember my one friend's wife wanted
10:08to meet Ruff, and I knew him well enough where I could sort of impose on him, like would
10:12you meet my friend and his wife, and we played a joke on her, the subject of Ruff as a
10:19little
10:19bit of a prankster came up in the last couple days, and we played a joke on her, something
10:24about what she was wearing, we made fun of her for what she was wearing, and I felt like
10:28I was, you know, cool for a minute because I was in on that.
10:31And that same night, and this is like, I mean, I've had no more than 10 conversations
10:38with him, ever.
10:39This is one of them.
10:41We were there that night, I had him for a minute, we were setting this thing up with
10:44my friend, and for some reason we were talking about Sambuca.
10:51This is the Sambuca story.
10:52Okay.
10:53And I don't know, I don't think I was drinking it, but I was just sort of like trying to
10:56have
10:57a conversation with him, and I remember him sort of turning his head and looking at me
11:02and saying, can you drink that stuff?
11:04I'm like, oh yeah, no problem.
11:07I mean, I really didn't have a lot of experience with Sambuca, but I'm like, sure.
11:11And he said, I'll tell you what, if we win the Stanley Cup, I will drink Sambuca with
11:15you.
11:15I'm like, okay.
11:16And then what happened?
11:19They got down, and he left, and 20 years went by, and I never thought about that once
11:26this season, and I wish I had, because I would have loved it.
11:30I would have been like, oh, this is the Sambuca game, we've got to win this game because of
11:33the Sambuca.
11:34I could have just had, I would have said the word Sambuca 500 times, and you know, they
11:39don't pay me anything.
11:41Right.
11:41And I never thought of it until today.
11:43I'm like, oh, that's right.
11:45Wait, actually, the Sabres, if they'd won on Monday, it's the final four, and Sambuca
11:51would be alive.
11:51Sambuca's on the table.
11:52Yeah.
11:53Well, now you've got two more years.
11:56There's a lot to get through.
11:57October to April is long, but you know, hopefully they have good results.
12:02I mean, that is in a sidecar with how fun this has all been, is that like, it's just the
12:07beginning, we hope.
12:08We don't know that.
12:09I mean, you never know.
12:10We've said it many times.
12:11You never know.
12:11It was really the theme, well, one of the themes of these playoffs is, why not now?
12:17Like, you don't know that this isn't your best shot.
12:19This could be your Bills 21 season, and we just don't know it yet.
12:24So, you know, that'll get fleshed out over the next couple of springs, hopefully, or the
12:29next couple of regular seasons to even make it there.
12:33But it's nice to know you got Sambuca back in the window.
12:36Sambuca is back in the window.
12:39Have you ever?
12:40Is that, that's not really your cup of tea?
12:42No, I've had it.
12:43Yeah, I've had it.
12:44Licorice-y, right?
12:45Yeah.
12:46Yeah.
12:46It's not a, nowhere near ever been a go-to, but I've had it.
12:51Mad Men had an episode where they talked about Sambuca con la mosca, which is, means with
12:57the flies, where there's three espresso beans in the shot glass or whatever, like a rocks
13:03glass.
13:03Sambuca con la mosca.
13:04Well, I won't make him add the flies if we win, but I will find him, and we will have
13:12that drink.
13:13Yes, yes.
13:13I wish I thought of it.
13:14You've called it out publicly now, so.
13:16Again.
13:17Just ratchet up the pressure on him.
13:19What else today?
13:19So, it's Thompson with the back.
13:22Yeah.
13:24Yeah.
13:24You know, that was like my first guess with him, but watching him, like Owen would always
13:32say to me, like watching him closely, like he's, he looks like he's moving fine around
13:39the ice.
13:39He's been physical.
13:40He's not avoiding contact, right?
13:42He's finishing checks, even to his detriment at times, like, so I sort of ruled that out
13:48and moved on to something else to try to explain the, the, the consistent trouble that we saw
13:54stick handling, but back was always a decent guess.
13:58I just, I just got off it because I thought he looked too good to have a back.
14:01I was actually thinking that was what was wrong with Tuck and Tuck didn't want to cop
14:04to anything.
14:05Right.
14:05He just said, like, no, you know, bumps.
14:07Yeah.
14:07I got stuff, but like nothing, nothing that nobody else has.
14:10So like no excuse, which nuisances was the word.
14:15Yeah.
14:15But yeah, Thompson said he had a bit of a back thing all through, I think he said, right?
14:20The playoffs.
14:23So we can do with that whatever we want, but that was the explanation there.
14:29Well, you'd like to have been able, and I think this is a really personal decision with
14:34players, the season is over.
14:36They're always not always often fudging injuries and downplaying them, or, you know, just trying
14:44to hide whatever it is.
14:45Once it's over, there's no obligation to tell you anything.
14:49Like I'm, I'm out the door.
14:51I don't, I have no, whatever you want to say about what the obligation is in the first place
14:55through the league.
14:57And we're in here speculating about saber injuries and the sabers don't have a word to
15:01tell you during the playoffs.
15:02Like they're, they're not going to say anything.
15:04Apparently there's no repercussions for that.
15:06And nobody minds because we get it.
15:09We're all like, well, I don't want anybody to know anyway.
15:10If Thompson says he has a broken wrist, then here come the Canadians.
15:14Yeah.
15:14Like just whatever it is.
15:16They probably know more than we think anyway.
15:19Anyway, like once it's over, no, no obligation at all.
15:24And I think that's a personal choice.
15:26I think a talk or a Thompson could either want to say, even potentially exaggerate what
15:36it is that was bothering them physically to help explain their struggles or, or do what
15:43Tuck did, which is like, or Zucker said, I don't want to talk about it.
15:48Like he, he didn't want to give up.
15:50He didn't want to have the conversation about injuries.
15:52You know, Darlene said he was, he felt he was fortunate to get through it.
15:56I think that's all up to the player.
15:58There's no team aspect to it at all anymore.
16:01You say what you want to say.
16:03And I might say, yeah, I had a, I had this.
16:07And another guy might be like, I'm not, I still, I don't want to make excuses.
16:12I don't want to sound like I'm trying to explain away my struggles in the playoffs because I
16:17had an injury, which, you know, you don't have to necessarily even know about or, or respect.
16:23So I think that really is up to the guy.
16:25Yep.
16:26And from Tuck standpoint, I mean, if anyone has ever been motivated to explain away non-performance,
16:33it would be a guy who's riding into free agency for the first time in his career.
16:39But, you know, first of all, you can't also exaggerate.
16:44Your teammates will know, right?
16:46I mean, I'm assuming the guys on the team know whatever guy is dealing with their friends
16:49and whatever.
16:50So you can't sit there and try to say, this is why, if it isn't right.
16:55And, but, but also on the flip side of that, I think you can also trust that if the Seattle
17:02Kraken are going to talk to Alex Tuck, if he makes it to the marketplace on July one, and
17:07if they want to talk to him, they're going to find out.
17:10And they maybe, maybe teams already know through the agents and whatever, like, actually, here's
17:15what he was dealing with.
17:17So if you, if you, if a team needs that nudge to like keep his market ability where he wants
17:22it to be, you probably have a back channel way of getting that out there without looking
17:26like someone who wants to blame this or that.
17:28Well, if he's not hurt at all in any serious way, if you will, just like draw a line wherever
17:34you want to draw it.
17:35How do you explain the series?
17:37I really can't.
17:38I needed him to be injured.
17:40Yes.
17:41I, I, I couldn't move.
17:43Yes.
17:44So why, why, how, why?
17:49That's tough.
17:50Yep.
17:50I was ready for an injury announcement and he wouldn't give it.
17:54And like I said, and like you said, I mean, he doesn't have to.
17:58Right.
17:58And there would be logic behind not wanting to, like, I don't want anybody to think I'm
18:04just sort of making excuse for a scoreless series, a seven game series goes to overtime.
18:08And I also don't want teams in my future that might be bidding for my services to think
18:12I have an injury.
18:13That's like going to be a problem.
18:15That's right.
18:16If he says I had back problems, which was my guess with him, the way he was moving,
18:20moving around the ice.
18:21But again, what the hell do we know?
18:22We're watching from the 300s.
18:24That cuts into his value.
18:25Or on TV.
18:25Yeah.
18:26That would, that would be a ding.
18:27That's right.
18:28So you got to kind of walk.
18:29That's probably the most important.
18:30You got to walk the line there, you know, between which, you know, what helps you more?
18:37Like, our approval, I think, or from our view, we sort of were, like you just alluded to,
18:44we were rooting for him to actually be hurt because it would explain what we looked at
18:50as kind of like a disappearance, really, from really mattering to this team.
18:55But that could cut the other way when you get to the marketplace.
18:58That's the most important point.
19:00Or even with the Sabres.
19:01I mean, I don't know.
19:02If he's going to be the top free agent on the market, he doesn't need to talk about
19:06his problem.
19:07Oh, yeah, I need two hip replacement surgeries.
19:10Right.
19:11Actually.
19:12And, you know, whoever teams, oh, oh, well, let's cross them off the list.
19:16Right.
19:16So, yeah, that's more important than, because he still probably comes out, that's what
19:21everybody seems to be saying, he still probably comes out of the playoffs as that, as like
19:26a free agent gem.
19:28And if I don't have to explain why I didn't score in the second round because of something
19:35that, you know, might not sound good or be good, then I don't want to.
19:39I'd rather keep it to myself.
19:40That's probably the winning point.
19:43803-0550.
19:44Thanks to Dave here.
19:45Elbow grease means vigorous physical effort and hard manual labor.
19:49I'm out.
19:50This is definitely not elbow grease.
19:52It's dirt.
19:53We're back to dirt.
19:54It's not, it's not, I'm not proud of it, but elbow grease seems like a real stretch
19:59after reading this, uh, this entry.
20:01Mike Schopen, the Bulldog here, 803-0550 to your calls next here on.
Comments