The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
The Hockey Show: Talkin Cawlidge Hawkey With Bucci
Fri, 28 Mar 2025
Roy, David and Ethan are back for another edition of the hockey show and to start off they cover some of the hot topics of the week including New Jersey Devils' head coach, Sheldon Keefe's, comments about Johnathan Kovacevic and the Philadelphia Flyers giving John Tortorella the pink slip. Then, John Buccigross of ESPN joins the show to discuss the NCAA Hockey tournament and some of the young stars that we could see see in the NHL. Also, he gives his take on who should win the Hobey Baker Award and Ethan has his Top 5 This Is Sportscenter commercials for Bucci. Finally, the boys recap a two-game week for the Panthers and preview a difficult stretch coming up that will feature new addition Brad Marchand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of The Hockey Show?
Hello, welcome to the Hockey Show. My name is Roy Bellamy. My co-host is David Druck. He works for the Hockey News. He is not in studio. He is on assignment, and that assignment is family vacation. Ethan is in the shipping container in the EP chair. Rosie is not here. She is still doing March Madness.
Yeah, let's be clear. I'm not the one on vacation, by the way. My wife is on vacation. I'm on dad duty.
Oh, you're on dad duty. Yes, you are.
I am not on vacation. No, you got two kids. I'm working double duty right now. I'm still working, and I'm doing all the dad stuff as well. So let's just, you know. Okay. Does it look like I'm on vacation? I mean, I'm surrounded by toys, but this is my home.
No, I'm at work. So it looks like you're on vacation.
Awesome Zoom background, by the way, Dworky. Awesome Zoom background. Top notch. That's some fake books in there, you know, like Ronan Farrell.
Today we have John Butchergrass from ESPN to talk about the NCAA Men's Hockey Tournament. For those on DraftKings Network watching today, you can watch that on the Levitas Show YouTube channel. Just go to Playlist and find the Hockey Show folder.
Now, earlier this week, San Diego Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh stopped by the Anaheim Ducks locker room to give a pep talk and announce the starting lineup. And this is how it sounded.
Thanks, Coach Crowe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gentlemen. What an honor. This is incredible. It's the kind of stuff I live for right here, this time right before the game. And I can see the heart going. My heart's going, too. I was always like one of those racehorses at the Kentucky Derby, you know, before a game. Like, you can tell. I mean, they got a little sweat. Got a little sweat coming down.
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Chapter 2: What did Sheldon Keefe say about Jonathan Kovacevic?
We need to have a playoff mentality as something that anybody was saying in that situation. Like, I don't understand why you would have a problem with that.
There's clearly something deeper there. Maybe this is like getting into the Torts Cam York territory. We'll get to that at some point. But, I mean, that seemed like there was something there. Like, that did not feel good.
It's been a frustrating year for New Jersey, right? And they're kind of limping to the finish line. Literally limping. Literally limping with all the injuries that they've suffered in the past, what, two months or so. Right now they're seven points back of Carolina, and they're fine in the division because Ottawa's in the Atlantic, so they won't catch them there.
But it's been a frustrating year, and it just seemed to all bubble over in the moment. I was listening to 32 Thoughts last week, and they were talking about this, And Fried was kind of saying that people were hard on Keefe about how he wasn't hard enough on his players in Toronto. And then now he takes a shot at his players and everybody's mad at him for being hard on his players.
So, you know, you can't have both. It's got to be one or the other. So we'll see, you know, how it affects them going down the road. But certainly some interesting comments there.
David mentioned John Tortorella. He got fired yesterday. The Flyers fired him, and the Flyers ended up the day before, I should say, and the Flyers ended up winning the very first game. with Tortorella, not behind the bench.
Doesn't that always happen, though? Isn't that always the case?
Yeah, it does. It does, doesn't it?
Everybody plays hard for the new guy.
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Chapter 3: Why did the Flyers fire John Tortorella?
By the time Merzlikens has a chance to reset himself, the puck's already halfway to the net. So I understand why that shouldn't have counted. It just doesn't look good in the moment. And good on Roy because it's bad for the Islanders.
Yes, I'm laughing at him regardless of what happens here. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha. All right, it's time for wins and fellows of the week presented by Jägermeister. Serve it cold or don't serve it at all. Jägermeister. Damn, that's cold. For more, visit Jägermeister.com. Drink responsibly. David, your win of the week.
My win of the week. We don't have to go too far away from South Florida to get there. Just a little bit up the coast to Tampa. It's Nikita Kucherov, who is a dark horse for the Hart Trophy this year. I don't know if he's going to get a lot of votes, but he's having an amazing season.
The other night against Pittsburgh, he got checked into Alex Nedeljkovic headfirst, lost the tooth on the goalie mass, which I don't know if I've seen that happen before. That's pretty interesting. But then what does he do? He comes back. He goes out into the ice where they're scraping, you know, the commercial break thing. And he's like looking with his stick. He's looking for his tooth.
That's such a sad thing when you're trying to find your own tooth in the ice. It doesn't look like he ever finds it. But what he does find about five minutes later was the back of the net when he scored a power play goal. And I think what was like a 6-1 victory or something over the Penguins as Tampa's rolling right now. But I just thought that was a cool thing all around.
He gets his tooth knocked out by the goalie helmet, goes looking for it because of course he did. And then he scores the goal because he's Nikita Kucherov. Win of the week by far. Good on Nikita.
Probably should check that shovel because it's probably in that shovel with the scraper.
The ice crew definitely got it in its pocket right now. That tooth is on eBay for sure.
I love Dworky saying that's such a sad thing when you're looking for your tooth as if that's something that's very relatable to all of us. That's a very exclusive to the greatest hockey players in the world problem.
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Chapter 4: What happened in the recent Devils game?
Oh, if you're watching on YouTube, it's a quarter with a Michigan State jersey.
Oh, my God. So credit to Markstrom for being real. Credit to Panger for getting razzed on it. Just a lot of fun all around.
My fail of the week comes from Bruins and Kings. This is the official's fail. Goalie fights. We need more of them. Jeremy Swayman and Darcy Kemper had a chance to do it, and they go to center ice, gloves, blockers, sticks down, masks down, and broken up before they even get together.
The lamest thing you can possibly do is break up a goalie fight. Swayman's already got his helmet off. They're ready to go at it. There is no reason that fight should have been broken up.
Yeah, and the tale of the tape, 6-3 versus 6-5, that would have been a nice little bout there. If they had gone through, but the linesman decided, yep, no. Jorky, you ever been in a goalie fight? What's that?
You ever been in a goalie fight? Have I been in a goalie fight once? It didn't go well for me. But whatever, you get caught up in the moment. I got in a lot of goalie skirmishes. I was a little hothead on the ice. I was an asshole. I knew that everybody had my back as the goalie. But, yeah, didn't go good.
For short guys, you know, short guys like to be scrappy on the ice, right?
Well, Mike Vernon. Remember, Mike Vernon is a short guy. And he went out and he went toe-to-toe with Patrick Waugh and did okay. So I really have no excuse.
By the way, anniversary for that. It was this week. It was the anniversary of the game in Detroit between the Avalanche and the Red Wings. So to recap that, by the way, it was Chris Draper.
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Chapter 5: Who are the winners and fails of the week in hockey?
He's going to get his big rookie bonus. He's going to start making his $800,000 a year, although there's only a couple paychecks left this year. But so that's the problem when you have these teams like that. I get it when you're 19, 20 years old, how they always say, I'm not thinking about that. I'm compartmentalizing.
But I know I would have thought about it when I was 19 years old with zero money in my checking account. So so, you know, that's that's the big challenge with these hyper, you know, talented teams. You mentioned, you know, obviously, Leonard James Hagan is going to be a top five pick in the draft this summer. So he can't go anywhere. Gabriel Perot is a Ranger first-round pick.
We'll see if he goes. I think he should come back one more. But, yeah, that's the issue. Same with Denver and Zeev Booyam, who will be in Minnesota's lineup as a big-time defenseman. So that's the issue with these young teams and why a team like Cornell, an older team, and Bentley even, an older team, this is it for them.
This is the highlight of probably their hockey careers where these other prospects have the NHL to kind of get distracted by.
You kind of led me perfectly into what I wanted to ask you about, because you mentioned like Leonard, you know, with B.C., with the Capitals, Perot, also B.C. with the Rangers. You've got Jack Devine at Denver. You know, Panther fans are always asking about him. What do you think of this crop of talent? Who do you think would be the most pro ready if they were to make that decision?
Leonard and Booyam. Leonard more so because he's a forward. Booyam, a defenseman. That's hard. An 18-year-old defenseman coming right into the league. You know, these guys are big, strong men in the corner. And now he's offensively dynamic. He's absolutely a sensational player to watch. He breaks people down like few hockey players do.
I always compare it to like Allen Iverson, you know, crossover dribble. He breaks people down like he's on a tennis shoes, you know, Rasmus style lane of Buffalo, you know, Quinn Hughes of Vancouver does it, you know, obviously kale McCarr that they can break people down one-on-one. He can, he can do that. And so he's in that kind of class offensively. Defensively, it'll be a little tougher.
So I would say Ryan Leonard, to go to a good team, they can pick his spot, pick his slot where he can maybe be comfortable. And so he would be the one that we're going to see in Washington's lineup as a depth guy. We'll see how, you know, they might realize, you know what?
He's kind of, you know, he plays a different game in college, gets a lot of breakaways, little Pavel Bure center ice logo hanging around to get those little cherry picking, you know, try to get those plays. Got to play a little more honest 200-foot game in the Stanley Cup playoffs for our Stanley Cup contenders. So he'll need to make that quick adjustment. I think he can. He's wired for this.
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Chapter 6: What are the highlights from the NCAA Men's Hockey Tournament?
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
It wouldn't surprise me if they get a deal done at all. And they kind of need to. He's a very valuable player. And like Dworky mentioned, Ekblad, I mean, has been just the defensive leaks in this game were crazy.
The defensive leaks since Ekblad went out have been very on Panther like they really need to try and get both of these guys resigned or else it's going to be an interesting offseason for sure.
So the Panthers complete their six-game road trip going 2-4 and 0. Not good. Not good at all. They were outscored 18-4. So a little home cooking for them was very much needed. And the Panthers played the Penguins. And all three of the matchups have gone past regulation. Extra hockey. That means more Sidney Crosby for me. Hooray. What are we doing here, man? Smile. Smile. It's all for you.
No. It's all for you, Roy. No, no, no. These teams know how much you love the, what is it, black and yellow, right? That's Pittsburgh black and yellow.
Yeah, that's correct.
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