The Hockey Show: Catching Up With The Voice of Hockey

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Welcome to the Hockey Show.

That's David Dwark over there on the Hockey News and the shipment container.

It's Ethan and Rosie.

My name is Roy Bellamy.

If you are watching on DKN,

you can see the Bob with Schusen interview.

We're going to have him on later on the YouTube channel for Levaton and Friends.

Just click on the playlist tab and click on our folder.

It will be there.

So, before we start, I just want to celebrate and I want to put something up there because Roy just graduated from school, learning how to skate a skate.

So, there he is.

Look at him.

Very good graduation.

If you're going to see the video, I shut a picture of him belly.

I was just going to say he's on his ass.

On his belly.

It looks like he did a great job skating.

Yeah, he did.

He did good.

So now he graduated.

Congratulations.

Same look on my face as I was to start the show, as I was interrupted by Rosie.

Yeah, there you go.

You can keep going.

I just needed to give you preps.

Thank you.

How many goals did you score, Roy?

One.

One.

Nice.

One.

And Rosie wasn't even there.

Actually, two.

Two.

And Rosie wasn't filming for the first one, which was bar down.

The second one.

Bar down.

Your first goal was bar down?

Yeah.

That's a beauty.

The sound reverberated throughout the practice.

That must have been an incredible feeling.

Yeah.

The stick went up on that one.

I'm scared.

Oh, yeah.

Saturday on tomorrow.

You want to put this out there?

Like, people might show up and like, heckless.

I hope they do.

They'll be heckling with me, really.

But, yeah.

We are going to do stick and punk.

I don't know.

You're going to be there for it, Rosie.

You see.

Maybe non-plus about it.

But yeah, we're going to do TFT.

Hi, boys.

And Dave's going to be in full goalie gear.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, so that's going to be interesting.

We're getting old, man.

First time in a while.

Yeah.

First time since the knee knee surgery.

Oh.

When was the last time you stopped on the pads?

I don't want to put a number on it.

It's just been a minute.

I'll try not to deke you out of your pads there.

That's fine.

What is stick and puck?

Stick and puck is full gear.

You just go out and you fuss around with the puck.

Like you're doing this yourselves.

You're not going somewhere.

Well, it's organized at the Panthers practice right.

But they open up the ice to anybody that wants to do it.

Kids can do adults.

So

I'm bringing my kid.

I've been waiting to do this.

So him and I can skate together.

That's all.

So my kid's in a dode Roy.

He'll, you know, follow my belly.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Kim will toad.

He'll turn me inside out.

And then, you know, Rose can just laugh if she's there.

Yeah, I doubt that she will be.

Yeah, me too.

All right, a legend

is getting his number retired.

In Detroit, the number 91 jersey of Sergei Fedorov is going up to the rafters at Little Caesars Arena, a building that he did not plan.

He played all 13 of his years with the Red Wings in Joe Lewis you've been there.

I have.

Yeah, it's a nice little farm.

It is a nice farm, nice barn that they got there.

So he scored 400 goals and 554 assists with Detroit and won three Stanley Cups there.

He finished his 18-year career with 483 goals and 696 assists.

It's a knife jersey retired by the Red Wings.

It will be.

And a lot of us, I mean, well.

The two of us in this studio grew up watching 90s hockey, so seeing that is

is a real treat what's the first thing when you think of sergey fedorov what's the first thing that pops into your head russian basically because uh russian five i mean i did the right rings really made that one famous i actually watched that last night i watched well i watched like two-thirds of it and then i fell asleep but no i that's when i think of sergey fedorov from the 90s like i just think of white nike skates yeah that's like i don't know he's the only one doing it he was the only one doing it but he made it look good yeah the fad did not carry over no i mean nike hockey gear in general general didn't really make it no no no no but Detroit the jerseys were made by Nike wasn't made by a CCM like all the other teams oh that's true yeah you can saw and say what's your federoff memory for before you were born well first of all I saw I saw his white skates on Twitter the other day but I also saw a video of the game where he scored five goals and he scored all five goals including the overtime winner I saw come across my channel the other day

that's my that's my win of the week footage

what we just spoiled no my win of the week is we're talking about it now.

I'm going to change it on the fly.

So if you want to, if you want to play my win of the week video, Rose, that's what Ethan's talking about.

Anyway, the passing, the hockey that's being played here is so much different than the hockey that I feel like we watch today.

Like the passing, the movement, some of these plays that Detroit was making.

Look at this tic-tac passing.

He needs to watch footage from Yager in the early 90s.

If you really want to see something that's insane, the putt control that Yager had back in the day, not to take any smoke off Fedorov here as we celebrate him, but yeah, like when I think of like somebody who just the puck was literally stuck to his stick tape.

This is beautiful.

Look at this passing.

But what changed?

Like what's so different?

Because I know scoring went up because the goalie pads increased and they kind of learned how to play the position, but like why don't you really see this kind of passing and movement anymore?

Is it the way people defend now?

Well, the neutral zone trap is pretty much no longer there.

I mean, entry's a bit easier.

Like, they got rid of that.

But, I mean, there's not a lot of patience being shown by the capitals in this highlight package.

There's also a reason that like a lot of fluctuations in this game, like this wasn't, like, happening every day.

Like, the storing was much lower in the 90s, and like federal guys like Fedorov and Lemieux and those guys that were on another level, like they set themselves apart.

Um, but dude, the Red Wings were a conundrum in the 90s.

Yeah, that was definitely the team of the 90s.

We can definitely agree of that.

Um, we have reached the time of the year, and it's ice shaping time.

It's time to build the ice.

And the Anaheim Ducks, I don't know if they were the first to release their video, but that's the first that I saw, first team that I saw to release their ice building video so far.

Now, you can see them on this video putting down the water mixed with the paint.

They ended up painting the lines on the ice and putting down the plastic tarps with the logo and the ads.

It's that time of year, y'all.

I'm looking.

Almost there.

Did they show the center ice logo?

Because I'm very curious because there's only one that I want to see in Anaheim.

Yeah, they're about to do it right here.

They're putting in the

center line, which is

that logo right there, what's on his I think is that one that they put in.

I could watch videos like this all day.

Every time I see so satisfactory,

by the way, I think of Darkwing Duck.

It is dwarfy.

It is.

Basically,

very good.

Yeah, there it is.

Very good.

Okay.

Good job, Anaheim.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

The only other team that I can think of that's played any kind of similar video is in Utah because they've been showing the videos of them.

They've redone the entire inside of the Delta Center to make it because they had the funky sight lines and everything last year.

So they've been they posted something like that, and it looked like they were putting either the ice down or the piping underneath it, but it is so cool.

The guys were out there talking about how football is back, and I don't know, like hockey is like right behind it.

Yes, yes,

very excited.

Oh, it's coming month and a half.

Rose is

hockey, college basket, you're going to be logging air merles.

Yeah, no, it's got to be a hard couple of months.

I mean, hopefully the hurricanes are good this year.

So you and Lucy can like stay local?

oh no buddy

when there's a hurricane they send us a week prior last time we were a week prior no no no i don't mean an actual hurricane i mean the miami the football team that plays here no david doesn't want hurricanes to be good in miami

i don't think we're gonna go to a hurricanes game like i have no they have amazing fan ambiance bro what i do

i just get into the plane and they just tell me where i'm going and i sometimes i don't even know where i'm going.

Okay.

I believe it.

All right.

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Somebody owes $5.

Dave, what's your win of the week?

My

win of the week is on the fly because I actually had my win of the week as Fedorov's numbered in the code.

But that's fine.

Because there's something else that's happening in Detroit that we can honor.

And that I actually

thought was going to be my win of the week.

And

if you guys can help me out here, I'm going to stand up.

It's what's on my sweatshirt here.

They're putting hockey town back at center ice.

This is gonna be the center ice logo right here, Hockey Town.

Boom.

Keep in mind that this is the 100th anniversary of the Detroit Red Wings.

And it's the 100th year, and it's gonna be a really cool-looking center ice logo because it's gonna have the 100 and the hockey town.

And I think that's awesome as we're talking about center ice logos in Anaheim.

I bought this hoodie years ago just because I think that's such an iconic look, the hockey town.

So props to you, Red Wings.

I will be enjoying that.

Looked like that hurt you standing up and sitting back down.

Dude, shut up.

I'm sorry.

The win of the week for me goes to Team USA.

The Helenka Gretzky Cup is a under-18 international tournament that showcases draft eligible talent.

And Team USA, who barely squeezed by Team Canada in a shootout win in their semifinal game, earned a shot at gold and they got it.

They got out to a 5-3 lead in the second period against Team Sweden and shut things down.

It is Team USA's second gold medal in tournament history.

The tournament is 34 years old, so congratulations.

Congratulations to them.

That's the World Juniors, the Gretzky-Halinka Cup, the men's world championships, and Team USA won gold in the women's world championships, if I'm not mistaken.

That is correct.

Four gold medals for Team USA this year.

USA hockey on the rise.

All right, my win of the week.

Guys, you know how much.

Let's see what happens in the Olympics.

Let's see what happens.

We'll get to that in a second.

We're excited about that one.

All right, my win of the week is Sam Reinhart.

We all love Sam Reinhart.

We all love Sam Reinhart.

I love Sam Reinhart more than anybody.

And he got his day with the cup.

And the picture that went around of him on the boat was epic.

But what was really epic was they posted a video on the ANHL Twitter account of him working out with the Stanley Cup.

Describe it.

Like bench pressing it

and putting it on one of the sleds.

Yeah, and pushing it.

It was awesome.

And that's just a great way to show off.

Not only am I better than you, not only am I stronger than you, but I'm a two-time defending Stanley Cup champion.

I scored four goals in game six.

I scored the game winner in game seven the year before.

What a resume for Sam Reinhardt.

Yeah, shove it in the face.

Rosie.

My win-win of the wig goes to this guy.

I don't know who did it, who he is, but

Corey Perry.

He made hockey interesting for 10 seconds.

Look at that.

He threw everything away, grabbed a small puck, and one to the end, go.

There you go.

He made hockey interesting for 10 seconds.

He made hockey interesting for 10 seconds.

Okay, so this highlight came when he was a duck.

Like,

this is his one Stanley Cup, by the way.

How long ago was that?

I'm on it.

I don't know, but you know, that was definitely an all-star skills topic.

That's my win of the week.

They made me watch a video 10 seconds and I enjoyed it.

All right.

Corey Perry hasn't been a duck since 2019.

There you go.

Okay.

David and I have

2015.

2015.

2015.

Or 2012.

Those were the two times Brian Elliott was an all-star.

Okay.

David and I have a dual fail of the week.

This is a major

film that came out of Reddit.

We failed today with our wins and fail, like just organizing.

Yeah, we don't talk to each other.

We got to get back.

And it's not like we send them to each other during the week or anything.

It's not like we actually do do that.

So that's what it's like.

What are we doing?

Anyway, I'll let this Reddit user whose name is Chitty explain why this is a fail.

There is an absolutely wild theory going around about the Buffalo sabers goathead logo and i'm still trying to wrap my head around it someone mentioned on reddit that they've thought that the buffalo sabers goathead logo has been oriented left the entire time what so by that logic does it mean that this is what the logo technically should be interpreted as Should there be teeth on the left side and a tongue?

This kind of looks like a half buffalo, half rat kind of situation.

And I don't know if they could ever come to this conclusion, to be honest.

Like, this just seems a little too nuts.

Someone actually photoshopped the logo oriented left on a goat and you know what the more i look at it

maybe that is how it's supposed to be

given everything else on the logo the nose the way the eyes are facing there is no way that it's supposed to be oriented left in my opinion it's absolutely right what are your thoughts my thoughts are this is the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard it's a buffalo i can't i don't yeah it's not a goat right like it's a buffalo

it looks like a goat because it looks like a goat but it's a a buffalo.

You don't see buffaloes with that color.

That doesn't look like a goat.

That looks like a buffalo.

Well, goats don't have horns.

Well, buffaloes on silver.

They don't.

So that's why it looks like buffalo.

It doesn't matter.

Goats are evil.

I don't like goats.

Color doesn't matter, but.

It does matter.

Yeah, but structure does.

What is their name?

Well, the buffalo saber is a name after swords, but it's in the city of Buffalo.

That's why the buffalo is the mascot.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah.

I don't.

Why do they want to change

When I saw this picture,

they had changed it.

Like, I made attempts.

I put it up.

I lowered my eyes.

I put it back up.

I hide it just so I could try to reset my vision and try to see it from that.

I could not do it.

I cannot see it left-facing at all.

I did.

This didn't work for me.

It just doesn't make any sense.

We have a minute left.

Do we have any time for you two to get your fails in?

My fail can get off.

My fail is to the Hockey Hall of Fame Twitter account that decided it was a good idea to post a video of Sam Reinhart hammered talking again.

Okay.

Hi, guys.

I am out here in West Vancouver in my hometown with Margaret O'Ball, two of the top ten cupkeepers we had to date.

There's probably less than 10, but they're probably up there.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

I'm completely honored to donate my sticks from game six on the final

camp.

And I can think of no better place to be.

Rose.

Fail of the week is this.

Here it.

Why?

Oh my god, what is that?

The puck disappeared.

Nobody knows where he goes.

It's in his

equipment.

We don't know.

You repeat it, repeat it, and you don't know.

Yeah, that's not even the worst one because sometimes it could get in the

goaltender's padding and go into the net, and that would be a goal.

Like, they just back up into the net.

That has happened before.

It's happened in Buffalo.

Yeah, it has happened before.

Bob Rachusin is coming up next.

So enjoy that interview with us.

Thank you.

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Bob Rashusin is in hockey group tats that I'm not a part of because I have an Android phone and I'm not happy about it.

The voice of hockey.

The voice of our guy.

It's an iPhone thing, then why am I not in it?

It's an iPhone thing.

Well, you're going to have to ask.

There's a waiting list now, Dworky.

There's a big waiting list.

It's like Packer season tickets.

Yes, it's like Packer's season tickets.

All right.

Bob is the play-by-play voice for the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network and the American Broadcasting Company because they're both owned by the Walt Disney Company.

He's about to do football, pro football, college football, but we're going to talk to him about hockey.

So

the grind that is

announcing and doing broadcasts.

during these playoffs.

It's just, it's ridiculous.

How do you get through, especially the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs as a broadcaster?

But it's what we wait for, right?

So like, yeah, I don't, I mean, it's hard.

It's that the schedule is a grind, you know, the last couple of years,

let's say even all four years, I think,

you know, we'll,

because we alternate nights with Turner, we have hockey nights and NBA nights.

rather than following a series.

So because we'll put hockey on, say, like the first week of the playoffs, you know, Sunday through Wednesday or Monday through Thursday, and then they kind of take over Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

We come back Sunday.

And when they have hockey, we have NBA and vice versa.

So you don't follow a series.

It's not like you get assigned, you know, Panthers Lightning and you just follow it all the way through.

So I'll do like a game one Monday, game two Tuesday, game or game one Monday.

Yeah, I'll do a game one Monday, a game one Tuesday, back to the other series, game two Wednesday, Wednesday, back to the other series, game two Thursday.

You just get up early in the morning, go to the rink, do some interviews, go back, grab a nap, do a game, get up the next morning, go back to the airport, do the same thing over again.

But it's the best part of the year if you're a hockey fan.

It's like what we wait for.

So I never complain about the lack of sleep.

Yeah, I was going to say, what typically happens on a game day for you?

It totally depends on like what the coaches want to do in terms of their meeting schedule, but it's one of two things.

Either we go to the morning skate and watch, you know, whatever we watch and then talk to the coaches after that, or we'll go to the rink, you know, two and a half, three hours before the game and meet the coaches then.

At some point, we're going to talk to the two coaches.

That's really like the box you have to check because they will tell you in, you know, and they know the information's in the vault.

We're not going to share it with the other coach.

We're not going to put it out on social media, but we need to know.

injuries, who's in or out of the lineup that night.

Are you changing your lines?

Who's the starting goaltender?

Those types of things.

Just so in our truck, they can build what they have to build.

We can make the corrections to our charts we have to make.

So it's really just based on their schedule, what they want to do.

So it's either real early to the rank to meet them, or we go to the morning skate.

The morning skate, when I first started doing hot and I was like the backup guy for the Rangers for MSG in the early 2000s, we're going back about 25 years.

The morning skate was sacrosanct.

Like you literally only had an optional morning skate if you played like the second half of a back-to-back on the road and your team was old.

And even then, most of the veterans would show up for morning skate.

If the morning skate was on a just a normal homestand, even if it was a back-to-back, but you slept in your own bed, or I mean, even if you had a night off the night before, everybody was at the morning skate at all of them.

And now I would say they're like 50-50

optional or full.

So we definitely don't get the same information that we used to get from them because so often they're optional and it's just half the team doing drills just to get a sweat in.

When you talked about going game one, game one, game two, game two, like when I hear that from a broadcasting standpoint, because I know like the preparation that goes into just trying to get for one game.

You have got your stat boards with every player.

You've got information.

You've got little stories that you're referencing.

How do you, how, how is it like not get super confusing?

And everything is jumbled up when you're going going from two teams to two different teams, back to the same two teams, and you got to keep track of everything.

Like, it just sounds like incredibly challenging.

I don't know.

I mean, I don't want to make it like I'm splitting the atom or something, right?

Like, I'm a hockey broadcaster.

I just, I'm looking at the guys on the ice and I call the game.

I part of it probably has, at least for me, to do with just the

cumulative work I've done during the year to get ready.

Very rarely am I going to have a team in the playoffs that I either haven't watched a lot of or have had

myself during the season?

So, I mean, you do have kind of that vault of accumulated knowledge during the year.

I've watched these teams and I recognize all these guys.

And also now, it's a lot easier than it was four years ago.

I mean, I'm about to enter my fifth year of doing this again in the league.

You know, this isn't college sports, right?

College sports.

If I had, say, Clemson football last year, and now I get assigned a Clemson game or an LSU game or something, and I pull my chart out from last year and I look at it.

I'm like, God, like, none of these dudes are still on the team, right?

They're either

transferred because they didn't get enough playing time or they went to the NFL.

So, yeah, like there's a little bit of carryover, but it is not unusual at all.

Like, if I had a Miami football game this year, I mean, the quarterback's gone.

I know that.

So, I'm starting to fresh at quarterback.

You know, and obviously, you get a big name transfer in there.

So, you got to bring your Georgia chart out to get ready for Miami at quarterback.

You know, the NHL, if I look at the guts of almost every team from last year to this year, they're all basically the same.

And there are a handful of guys that move around.

And free agency seems crazy as if 50 guys change teams.

Well, even if 50 guys change teams, there's 32 teams in the league, right?

Like you're only talking about two or three guys a team that move around.

Everybody else is the same.

So there's that also helps is that not only the cumulative work I've done during the season, but also the fact that in pro sports, guys sign three, four, five, six plus year contracts and stay on the team that they're on for a while.

And that makes it a lot easier.

Bob, the reason we have you this week is because you're about to head out for the college football season before you get started with the NHL.

You've also got Jets preseason.

So what are, what's the schedule looking like and how does it compare to the NHL?

I mean, you just, you know, told us about some of the differences, but, you know, in terms of the enjoyment and in terms of going to places like Lubbock, Texas, or things like that, like how does you know, how is the college grind different?

Yeah, it's different because the travel mostly makes it different, right?

I'm unlucky.

Week one, I'm in Atlanta.

Like, our crew is going to do the two games that are in Atlanta.

So that's Syracuse, Tennessee, and Virginia Tech, South Carolina.

So big city, non-stop flight, normal hotel, NFL stadium, all good.

Something that I do not take for granted about the NHL in a big, big way is that, like, I used to do a lot of college basketball and now I do the NF, uh, the NHL.

So, yeah, like, non-stop flights, normal hotels, big cities, airports with more than six gates is nice.

Um,

you know, but my life doesn't really get super crazy until it all starts to overlap.

And of course, that'll begin opening night.

Because not only will I do opening night, but like, I think last year, I did a dozen NHL games for ESPN before, um,

you know, before like

the bowl games for college football.

So I did, and what, you know, what's how many weeks is that, right?

It's like second week of October through the end of December.

Um,

you know, you're talking about 10 or 11 weeks.

I did like a dozen games.

So I was doing basically college football, a weekday hockey game, and the Jets for like 10 10 weeks straight, basically.

Um, that's when all three of those things intersect and overlap, it does get a little messy.

Where are you opening night?

Sorry, Roy for hockey, yeah.

Are you here?

We haven't been told yet.

We need you here, Bob.

We have nothing.

It's opening day here.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I'm going to be in person watching a banner go up as well.

I think there's at least a better than 50-50 chance that'll happen.

It'll be nice because then if you watch the banner go up, you still get the night off because the game is at five instead of like at a normal time.

Well, if you guys were on the hockey chat you would know that after that game i'm assuming there's going to be some type of post-game at the rainforest

cafe oh my god

so so the first round of drinks at the rainforest i was gonna say will be on me if i get that yeah bob if you get that game afterwards we're linking up beer's on me though but the hockey bar is too far away yeah right like for a post-game no no that's yeah that's it that's that's a schlep that's a schlep yeah but like i said the rainforest cafe is a walk yeah it's a walk.

Okay.

Yeah, but I mean, I said, like, it is a grind.

I mean, I felt bad for Emily Kaplan, our friend, just for her doing her job, going back and forth.

But I feel worse for all the play-by-play guys,

like, because of multiple sports that you guys have to do.

It just doesn't make any sense.

Did you even get a vacation?

Yeah, we, you know, snuck it.

June and July are good months for me.

I have no complaints about, you know, like, I basically am a school teacher when it comes to like, you know, my schedule.

I basically work non-stop from Labor Day through like Memorial Day.

And then when Memorial Day hits, I get some time off to not be in airports for a little while.

And now it all kicks back in again.

But nobody wants to hear me complain about my job.

I get to go to games for a living.

So I'm, I certainly won't complain about it.

Yeah, just like Ethan didn't want to hear us complain about our job.

Oh, enough.

Enough with this.

Bob, they've been complaining for two years about having to go to Edmonton, and then they were on the ice after game seven.

The big seven was at home.

NHL Hispanic

was at home.

Yeah, but you got to be there.

I would have gone to NL

10 times back.

They lost

like 13 to 2 in those two games or something.

It was like.

And we had to go through like six airports

each way.

What are you talking about?

Come on.

In the NHL, like, I have yet to go to Winnipeg.

Oh, thank God.

I haven't been to Winnipeg yet.

I'm anticipating at some point the stars might align and I may get to go to Winnipeg.

I think I've been to every other Canadian city that has a team.

The last time I was doing hockey, Winnipeg wasn't Winnipeg.

They were Atlanta.

So,

so you know, the Jets have since returned to the NHL since I started doing this again.

But I would have to say, of all of the places that I've been,

yeah, like Miami, Fort Lauderdale, like South Florida to Edmonton, that's got to be about the, not even just distance-wise, the biggest schlett, but about the biggest, like

everything

being completely different dichotomy between two cities.

Thank you, Bob.

Ethan did not understand.

I understand completely the travel.

I'm just saying, you guys got to be on the ice after game seven.

That's all it is.

That's all it is.

That's great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You can't throw that back either.

You have a top five, Ethan.

Go ahead.

Yeah, so we mentioned that Bob is in the hockey chat famously, that Roy is infamously not in.

And

I consider Bob a friend.

We've hung out.

We've had a couple beers.

He watched the Gators win the national championship with me famously.

Had to put up with that.

So I concocted a list.

My top five people, broadcasters, that I would like to have a beer with.

Strong list here.

All right.

OLI, friend of the show, John Butchergross.

There we go.

All right, John Butchergross, OLI.

And if Bob has any good stories about drinking with any of these people, I would love to hear it after this list.

Number five, Kenny Main.

Number four, the San Francisco Giants broadcast team of Dwayne Kuiper and Mike Kruko.

Number three, this isn't necessarily a beer, but I'd like to have a steak and a brandy with this guy, maybe Al Michaels.

Not that I've ever had a brandy in my life.

Number two, Chris Berman.

Number one, this should be easy.

Come on, guys.

Harry Carey.

Who wouldn't want to have a beer with Harry Carey?

Well, that would be impossible.

Well, you can't do it now, but

you were a hot dog and you were starving.

Would you eat yourself?

There's only one answer, and it's yes.

Yeah, who would be your number one in broadcasting you would like to have a beer with?

Uh, Vince Scully.

Oh, wow.

I miss Scully.

Uh, me

will be Arena Grande.

Wait a minute.

No, that's not, that's not a bad case.

That's not a broadcaster.

She's not a great broadcaster.

Sports broadcasting.

She goes to games.

She's not a man.

She is

famously a Big Panther fan.

Yeah.

But she's not a play-by-play color analyst.

That is the list.

Nobody mentioned Al Michaels.

Al Michaels was third on my list.

You wanted to have a nice job listening.

A brandy.

Yeah, a brandy.

Yes,

he'd be my number one.

All right.

Wait,

the zoom for me froze for a second.

So I heard Kenny Mayne, John Bucci Gross, Al Michaels.

I missed the other two.

Number four was Dwayne Kuyper and Mike Kruko.

Number two was Chris Berman.

And number one, of course, Harry Carey.

The spots for you.

Hey, Norm.

Bob, do you have any great stories with any of these people?

Or can you just tell us a great Boog Shamby story?

Well, I can tell you a bunch of great Boog Shamby stories,

but no, the other five guys, no.

I mean, a couple of ESPN seminars, a few cocktails, but not nearly the depth of

John Shamby stories that I would have.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, you know him very, very well since

roommates.

So yeah, you should know.

So John, in the spirit of Bob, you lost a job because you're talking about five dollars.

Five dollars.

That's oh my goodness.

All right.

Well, let me resign.

All right,

all right, Bob, in the spirit of the top five, and I'm going to put you on the spot here.

So if you can't, you know, recall all this at once, I totally get it.

I wanted to see if you could your top five moments that you've called to you.

Not necessarily the top five that we would think, but just if you could remember your favorite moments that you called.

Maybe not necessarily top five, but yeah, no, they all, I mean, at least right off the top of my head, I'll have to think of five, but right off the top of my head, I would think,

you know, I go to like playoff overtime winners, right?

Verhage

was a great one.

I had an I had Barkley Goureau against the Panthers.

That was fun, though.

Game two Eastern Conference final at the Garden.

The series went okay for Florida.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's right.

Ultimately, it was a happy ending for the Panthers.

Maybe the Bobrovsky save.

Oh, the

Lightning.

Yeah, like the windmill save.

I feel like you're curating this to your audience, and I appreciate that.

Yeah, I'm trying.

I had

I would say

the last game we did this past year was pretty good.

I did game six in Dallas when Dallas won

in overtime, right?

But at the same time, remember that was

the

Schifley goal the day after his dad had passed.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

So like there was the emotion of watching him

break down, of having,

you know, the like the slow handshake line of every guy spending some time with him.

It just, that was one of those peaks into the culture of hockey.

Yeah.

Right.

Of like everybody on the Dallas stars knew exactly what Mark Scheifley was going through and they all spent a little extra time with him.

But I would say my number one moment in doing this, probably, I think it was the first year that I was doing this, was,

and obviously it takes on a whole different level as a memory in terms of significance,

was

in Calgary, Johnny Godreaux in double overtime beating Dallas

in the game where Jake Ottinger stopped like 65 of 67 shots or something.

It was the best performance I've ever seen by a goaltender and a loss, certainly.

And then Godreaux won it in overtime.

And, you know, less than a year and a half later, he wasn't with us anymore.

The thing I think about

the Jet Stars game, the mountaintop and valley of the situation was Mark Schifley scored, and then he took the penalty.

that led to the Thomas Hawley overtime goal.

Correct.

Like,

that's just like, oh my goodness, that's on the opposite end of the spectrum.

I remember we were texting about it as it happened, and you actually texted me.

You're like, they better not score with him in the box.

And then like, just as I read the message, the goal went in.

Yeah, I threw my phone when that happened.

The moment that stood out to me from that was Mason Marchmont, who had also lost his father.

I think within the last like year or two.

Yeah.

Him.

consoling Mark Scheifley after that was unbelievable.

That was an incredible moment.

Losing Brian Marchmont, that one, that hurt.

And seeing Mason Marchman being in this league, doing as well as he is right now,

that's great to me.

That's like a you know, we had another moment.

I'll give you like a similar moment, it was a regular season moment, but it was

one of those, again, like just a peek into the culture of the sport and the guys that have been in the sport forever, literally.

Ovechkin,

one of the games that I called of his chase for the record, they played

Minnesota.

And right at the end of the season,

and

as the game was over, and I want to say like Washington won late, and there was like a big celebration.

I can't remember exactly how the game ended, but what sticks out to me is right after the game was over, Ovechkin.

yelling up the tunnel to half the guys that had left the rink, hey, get back out here because he recognized it was right at the, it was the last time they were ever going to see Mark Andre Fleury.

Yeah.

And they all lined up and shook his hand.

That was cool.

And Ovechkin was the one that we had, we had a camera on him because obviously he had a camera on Ovechkin doing everything, right?

With an isolated camera, followed him everywhere.

And we caught the whole him like end of game and then having this recognition of, oh, wait a minute, I have to go get like, right, like legend recognizes legend and you, I have to go get the guys out of the tunnel.

Everybody has to come out here and shake this guy's hand.

And so that was a pretty cool moment, too.

You mentioned Ovechkin.

He's going to play next season now.

One of the biggest questions, I guess, going coming into this upcoming season is, is this his final season?

So, what are the biggest questions coming into this upcoming season to you?

Well, I mean, are the Panthers going to run it back?

Probably.

Right?

Like, to me, that's going to be a story that'll dominate the whole year because

how often do you see a team that has all of of these guys that could probably across the board be making more money elsewhere?

All basically being like, you know what, palm trees and sunshine in January and February and winning, not a bad combo.

And so they're all kind of collectively doing what Tom Brady did all those years in New England.

Like Tom Brady, of course, had a supermodel wife that made more than him.

So easy to give the team a hometown discount.

But, you know, you've got a bunch of guys giving the Panthers a hometown discount so they can keep it together and try it again.

And I'm fascinated to see if it works again because in a way it'll be awesome if it does because like it, it would reward guys for caring more about winning than about their paycheck.

Yes.

Yes.

Quite frankly.

And I like that.

Like I like guys that care more about winning and about don't mess with happy and about realizing that they're in a great place on a great team with a great group and saying, you know what, that's that's worth sacrificing 20%, 30% of what I might be able to make elsewhere.

So fascinated to see how that works.

I mean, I'm in New York, so I'm always wondering about the Rangers.

Yeah.

And will they squeeze into the back end of the playoffs?

If they get there, what will their team look like?

I mean, they basically kind of admitted at the trade deadline this past year that they just flat out got it wrong because they tried to totally overhaul their team as much as they could on the eve of the playoffs, basically, just to try and make that run.

Didn't work.

Will it work this year?

The one thing the Rangers have is they have the goaltender.

Like the jumping off point for any team is you want to know you've got the goaltender.

And,

you know, they have the goaltender.

So those are the two, you know, teams, like just off the top of my head that I'll be interested in following all year, see how it works out.

Is it just that they need, is it time for a culture shift up then for the Rangers because of the way that they handle bring tortz back?

Yep.

No, no.

Always a good idea to bring tortz back.

Oh, no.

Culture, I mean, to me, it's just being honest about your roster and the type of guys that you've got.

And I hate to say it, but the Rangers, unfortunately, have proven to have a lot of regular season stats accumulating players that when they get to the playoffs, get exposed, right?

Like Zabanajad, Panarin, Fox, they have not been the players in the postseason for the last couple of years, not even getting there last year that they were, you know, in the regular season.

And, you know, it just again speaks, I think, to the genius of Bill Zito, that Bill Zito recognizes what a, what a, of today,

what a playoff hockey player looks like.

And would I rather have a Barkoff, a Lundell, a Loesser Rainin, you just go down the list, guys that like Barkoff at a superstar level, but

I don't know, is he going to be better than an 80-point player in the regular season?

Maybe, maybe not.

If he's better than an 80-point player, he's not better by much.

You know, the other guys might be, you know, 40-point players.

And yet, who would you rather have in the playoffs?

What type of player would you rather have in the playoffs?

Those guys?

Or some of the 90, 100, 110-point guys that can just be taken out of their game because those guys, the Lundells and Los Doranians, go out there and stick a fist at their chest.

and in the playoffs and take them out of their game.

And to me, what it goes to show is you have to look past the statistics and look past the regular season numbers and say to yourself, like, what type of game does this guy play?

And when I get to the playoffs, what type of player am I going to want?

And the Panthers have figured out, especially on their third and fourth lines, a lot.

Like, look, they've got the Reinhard, you know, superstar scorer.

Barkoff, obviously, even if he doesn't put a ton of points up, Selkie winner, like, they've got star players in their top six, but their bottom six has a lot of guys that are no fun to play in a seven-game series.

And I think some teams miss that a little bit.

Like they miss going and getting some of those guys.

And Bill Zito's really smart about how he puts it together.

All right, Bob.

Go and enjoy football.

Well, I mean, he's not the Jets, so you know.

Yeah, you're not going to enjoy tonight, so I'm not sure how much I'm going to enjoy it.

Can you tell our Panther propaganda has worked on Bob, by the way, that we've been feeding it to him for the last year or so?

Well, I mean, they're back-to-back champions.

Like, that, yeah, and they've been in the finals three years in a row.

Like, it's not, it's not hard to

drink the Kool-Aid, right?

Like, if I was at an NFL show and was talking up the Chiefs right now, it probably wouldn't be because somebody had to sell them to me.

They're pretty darn good.

Yeah, there's a, we got a bit of a history here of the final winning, uh, you know, just three years of history, I guess.

A little bit.

All right, that's it, Bob.

We appreciate you joining us here today.

Thank you for joining us.

Bob's anytime I can do it, guys.

See ya.

Thanks to Bob with Choosing for joining us.

And thank you to Ethan and Rosie and Gino and Jason for helping us out.

For David Dwork, my name is Roy Bellamy.

We will see you next week.

Bye.

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