Speaker 2: Hi everybody. Tonight's story stems from this week's chaos of the Maple Leafs and their draft. ⁓ They drafted number one and people just lost their minds. They just absolutely lost their minds. Like Vancouver was outraged. Toronto people were like absolutely beside themselves. the Steve Dangles of the world and those fan podcasts went from like, it's all over, I quit, this sucks to like, ⁓ my God, we're back, baby. ⁓ We're gonna get into the Leaf side of that a little later in the show, but it did make me think about this week's story for you. And so before we go any farther, you had one hint that it is inspired by the Toronto Maple Leafs. But I'm going to give you the story clues. So if you open up your little envelope, Vince, what's our first clue?
Speaker 1: Of course this was a coke idea.
Speaker 2: Meg, what's our... Wow, sound effects too. You don't make extra for that. Meg, second clue.
Speaker 3: Always fresh, never frozen.
Speaker 2: And your final clue tonight is hear me out. I think the earth might be flat. We're going to take you back to what I would argue before the maps, before the breakdowns of the 2020s. In 1985, Patrick Ewing goes to the New York Knicks and To this day, on comments sections, in sports blogs, people truly believe the 1985 lottery, the first ever lottery, was rigged. And I truly believe this lottery sets the unfortunate precedent for all lotteries to follow. Because if you don't know, the NHL does not do this for another decade. We aren't doing lotteries in the 80s in the NHL.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: David Stern comes in to a situation of, uh-oh, SpaghettiOs. He succeeded Larry O'Brien as commissioner in 84 and decided, you know what? I think that we should try to figure out a way to stop teams from tanking. And we also need to get some more buzz for fans and media. And for the reason of why, I'm gonna get to that in a minute. And that why reason kind of blew me away. But during this whole situation, there was a lot of conversation, including in a 1985 May 6th edition of New York Times to be like, the best thing to happen to the NBA is if the New York Knicks get this pick. The New York Knicks are in trouble. The New York Knicks are in disarray. Very similar, honestly, to the Maple Leafs in this situation. It's really similar, where they're like, ⁓ damn it. And sure enough, the Knicks get Patrick Ewing. But this is like a Zapruder film for NBA fans in a way that I just didn't realize. There are multiple conspiracy theories about this pick. And it all basically goes around the idea that there must have been, like, just like tonight with the Leafs, this week with the Leafs, just like every draft, there's a sleight of hand. Are the ping pong balls heavier? Magic, yeah. A couple of years ago in the pandemic era, guys mass, thank God for him. They're doing the lottery and he drops the balls in one by one, right? The ping pong balls go into the thing and it's like, and what they were doing in the, in their pandemic years was like Gary Bittman would stand awkwardly six feet away from the guy. the man who was just his whole job was to put ping pong balls in the would show Gary the logo. And then Gary would go. The Atlanta Thrasher's. And you'd be like, okay. So he would say this, but then when the New York Rangers ball came, it fell and it went right into the tube. And the guy had to like awkwardly get it back out, because like, I'm done. And everyone on the internet went like, that's a weighted ball. That ball is heavier. This poor guy, all he had to do was drop a ping pong ball and he messed it up. And the entire internet went to like, well, we know what ball is weighted. And this stems from this Patrick Ewing moment. Conspiracy theory number one is if you slow the video down and people do this, there's like gifts and stuff, one of the corners of the envelope is bent. And so people believe that there was a little bent envelope and then when David Stern reached his hand in, he was looking for the bent envelope. The guy who puts the envelopes in the big drum, it's like a literal like cartoon size clear drum that they literally did the crank with. And it's a bunch of envelopes in this drum. He takes his hand and he puts them in. And when he does it, he bangs one of the envelopes. I'm sure it was a mistake, but like when all things go sideways, things start to look away, right? The guy who banged that, unfortunately, okay. He was from the accounting firm of Ernst & Whitney and they were the auditing firm for golf in Western and the auditing firm of golf in Western, follow me with the string on the board. is the same team that owns the Knicks.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So there you go. Done.
Speaker 2: He bangs the one thing, the most hilarious conspiracy theory that has like zero evidence at all. You could at least see the bent corner and the banging is that it was frozen. So that they froze the envelope. It's the one envelope. So when you reach in, you're like, ⁓ that's clearly it. People really truly believe that there's absolutely no way to prove it. There's absolutely no way.
Speaker 1: It is funny. Yes. One envelope, yeah.
Speaker 2: There's like people that slow down like David Stern does a big sigh before he reaches into the bundle and they're like, oh, he's waiting for that frozen. I don't know. F and no, it's ridiculous. The point of all of this though, and the thing that I did not know and the thing that makes you go, yee, the second they're done with all of this and he goes to the scrum of reporters, they were like, how'd you think it went? It's the first ever lottery, right? So question number one, how did it go? This was what Stern said, we were very pleased with the lottery. If the interest was great, people are talking about the lottery instead of drugs. And when I read that, I was like, what the hell? Like I'm born in 83, I'm born two years before this, so I don't know what's going on. So then I looked this up. In 1980, the NBA believed that 40, anywhere between 40 and 75 % of their players were fucking cocaine. To the point where like,
Speaker 1: Yeah Joe
Speaker 2: people died, were like multiple interventions. There was a massive coke problem in the NBA. So they were honestly trying to stunt this to stop people from paying attention to the coke problem. So we have lotteries because the NBA had a coke problem. This is Toronto Pre- Welcome everybody to Toronto Appreciation Night. I'm Dan Spear and alongside every week my two friends, it's Megan Dingman and Vince Case of We're Worthy. It's a show where we talk about the past scenes, memes and Toronto's teams. This week, we've got so much to get into, but I am going to invite you all to jump into the shit show that was the Toronto Maple Leafs getting a pick. Do you want me to add one more little side fun note for that So a few years ago, Jim Rome, whatever, were you pronouncing the last name? He had Stern on, David Stern, and he asked him about it. It's just like 30 years later or whatever, 25, whatever. And ⁓ Stern was not happy he asked about it, like really deeply.
Speaker 1: Remember? ⁓ yeah! That was Jim Boombi's ⁓
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. He said, ⁓ he asked him about it and Rome said, was the fix in for the lottery, be honest. And Stern responded, I have two answers for that. I'll give you the easy one. No. And a statement, shame on you for asking. And when Rome was like, okay, but we have to talk about fake, this fake stuff because like people really believe it. He's like, your fan base really believes it. To which Stern, instead of engaging in that, just kept repeating. I'm not even making this up. Have you stopped beating your wife? Have you stopped beating your wife? Which is that old school for those of you who don't know, maybe younger people listening, that's a very old school politics joke. I don't know it's a joke. It's kind of an idiom of like that's an entrapment question. It's like you ask somebody like, when did you stop beating your wife? And then, you know, they do however they answer. It's like an admission of guilt.
Speaker 1: out of question.
Speaker 2: So people kind of always use that crassly as like, is yellow journalism. This is shoddy journalism. But it's also just awkward because A, that hasn't aged well. And B, it just was a really bad time to do that. And I think C, 2012, we're still not quite there yet in mainstream understanding about what's about to get unleashed in the next decade with social media. Like, we're still in that bubble. Vince and I started our online Young Turks show in that era. Right around there and like you start to see like ⁓ this is problem. Like we have a problem with misinformation We were problem with disinformation and like this stuff's gonna travel which I open up to That's not a great look when the Leafs won this week. What did you immediately think when you saw it? Like this is not, whether you believe it's rigged or not, it's not a crazy, like people across the spectrum were like, that's fishy. Like that's kind of sus. ⁓ Thoughts around the table. Not necessarily want to give creants a rigged or not rigged if you don't want to, but like, what did you think when the Leafs got to number one pick? Vince.
Speaker 1: Well, you can understand why people would jump to that. mean, but at the same time, if you're making a direct comparison to the New York Knicks, I would say the Austin Matthews ⁓ pick would have been more of a comparison than this one, because again, know, Shannon Plann and all that stuff and everything's starting to roll in the positive direction. And you've been in a dead zone of not making the playoffs, you know, except for one time for quite a long time after a successful error. So that would have been the perfect example of it. But for me, in regards to this whole thing is that like we've discussed this before here. It's like it's not like Leafs fans like the Knicks fans of the 80s are not going to show up for the games. The Leafs fans are going to spend the money and do all this stuff. So why does it matter that the Leafs win anything or not?
Speaker 2: I'll give you the motivation on the conspiracy angle. I don't personally believe it, but it is ridiculous. The Leafs have been not in the playoffs for two years. Exactly. And both times they got their number one pick. Like, that's not great. But I will give you the conspiracy theory if you want it, which is who owns Hockey Night in Canada? Who owns the team? Who owns the Leafs? What are the profits when the Leafs don't make the playoffs? What are the profits in the viewership when the Leafs do make the playoffs? And that's your conspiracy theory. So all the Leaf fans that are really pissed because they're like, I hate to break it to you, like Gretzky high stick and like Betman's obsession with expansion of the States and like it's not right. There is there are real reasons why you would want the Leafs to do well from a business standpoint. Once again, not trying to lay ground for for conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: Fair enough. also conspiracies come out right like it's it's never gonna be hidden so i don't i don't think
Speaker 2: Meg. Meg, you felt it was fishy. You were with the folks that were like, this feels a little on the nose.
Speaker 3: Okay, ⁓ but I have to contextualize my opinion on this by saying that I am a believer in the Lou Des quote, anytime you sell tickets to a competition, it's no longer a real sport. And Lou Des was a very famous wrestler. Lou Des had a theory that, he was specifically talking about boxing, that boxing was fixed. But he meant it to all sports. ⁓ And- I have just noticed in my 35 years of being able to pay attention to sports that they often line up with a lot of news events. ⁓ I won't go down this rabbit hole, but I have a lot of like terrible events with cities winning ⁓ championships. So much so that I predicted predicted the Houston Astros winning the world series before this season had started because there had been a terrible shooting in Houston right before the baseball season.
Speaker 2: Now I'm really interested
Speaker 3: And I made a little bit of money off that and said this prediction at a family gathering. And I'm now known as some weird like baseball guru also predicted the Patriots winning the Superbowl right after the Boston Marathon. ⁓
Speaker 2: Did you take a bath in 2001 when the Yankees lost the time?
Speaker 3: I wasn't old enough to bet. ⁓ So anyway, long story long, I am a long-standing believer in that there are some sports moments that are fixed. ⁓
Speaker 2: So interesting. This is a whole subplot. ⁓
Speaker 3: I didn't know we had. believes that a lot of sports are fixed. But to Vince's point, saying that the more Ewing-esque moment was the Matthews pick only tells me that they've done this before. When the narrative lined up with where the climax of sports should be, they hit. So last time we ended up getting Matthews right at the apex of the story of the Leafs. And now we're getting it at the, you know, it's the apex of the interest in the Leafs. Like they're so bad, their captain is talking about leaving. Look at their idiot GM. Now they've hired a criminal. This is awful. If I was writing their story, of course they would win. And sports tends to happen that way.
Speaker 1: But what I'm going to ask you is if you've got the idiot GM as we all agree on, isn't this going to be a disaster? Are we trying to sink the leaves quickly?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Get rid of me!
Speaker 3: Okay, but the Leafs are now the Titanic and you don't know that the Titanic sunk, right? So all those people are watching this season now being like, well, who are they going to pick and what are they, how are they going to do? How are they going to perform? People who did not care about them are going to be watching to see how this, you know, are we, yes, which sports fans don't love to hate watch. Come on. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Vancouver and Calgary. For this show, I pay attention, I started paying attention to like the different fan shows that exist online and stuff. So I went to the, I've got my like YouTube sets and all that. Oh my god, the flames in Vancouver fans were apoplectic. there's a, Steve Dane won the-
Speaker 3: That's true. They're insane. That's why I don't like them.
Speaker 2: Steve Dango and the boys are like going 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, and then they like lose their minds and that clip goes a little viral. But on the flip side, the Calgary show is like anybody but the Leafs, just anyone but the Leafs. And they're just like watching it. And the one guy's like broadcasting from the bar. He's in the bar and then they let him disappear and then they're like, you gotta be effing kidding me. And then the guy just comes back on phone, like Megan is tonight. He just comes back on the phone and he's just like. Are you kidding me? Like you look so broke. Like you look so distraught. And like it's so dumb because like honestly like they were like I thought we had a better show. The difference between Calgary and Toronto is like 8 % chance of getting it, 9.2 % chance of getting
Speaker 3: You It's like Vancouver like 40 or like 20 percent likely to get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But they're all shitty percentages, right? ⁓
Speaker 3: That's true. But also, I just want to point out, have we ever seen a draft lottery poll by somebody who wasn't an employee? Isn't it always a guy? It's not like you won the WKRP in Cincinnati contest to come and pick the Columbus Blue Jackets first round draft pick. Have we ever seen this? has it always been a guy?
Speaker 2: They're all plants. It's like those bad ⁓ fake illusionists who are like, are you, is your mom dead? ⁓
Speaker 3: I can hear from your side.
Speaker 1: It's a family member. It starts with an
Speaker 3: There's a strange, like speaking of magicians, if you were not looking at the barrel, do you think you could have found that folded small corner in a pile of paper envelopes if you weren't looking?
Speaker 1: Didn't expect
Speaker 2: If it was frozen. Yeah.
Speaker 3: because they had to graduate to frozen maybe because these guys couldn't feel the corners or whatever unless you were a guy who had practiced it
Speaker 1: Ow.
Speaker 2: That's so funny. I don't think it's rigged.
Speaker 3: This is gonna come up again in the show, folks.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a point. I believe I'm starting to believe this now. mean, David, David Stern disappears for a week right before the draft. What is he doing?
Speaker 3: practicing finding the fault. Yeah, have you ever done like a card trick? It's hard to do in the moment. Okay, but also I want to say that Jim Romy should have asked him, what do you think about the conspiracy and not was the fix in? Because we would have got way more from that second from that first answer than we got from. Of course he's gonna say no.
Speaker 2: think you're gonna go off from either of them. don't think you're gonna either
Speaker 3: tell with like body language is like, does he play? Cause that's something where he could play into it. And if he doesn't play into that, he's guilty.
Speaker 1: To reiterate, I do not believe in any...
Speaker 2: I believe they're very few
Speaker 3: That's a whole separate episode. didn't convince you. Everything is fair.
Speaker 2: ⁓ I really, I don't, I tend to believe, think Vince and I are probably on the same page on this from the politics days of covering stuff. ⁓ When I was a kid, I believed in a few conspiracy theories as a young person. And then as an adult, I met people in power. And I was like, we're all.
Speaker 3: Yes! That's a funny quote, but there are people in power who have hid a lot of terrible things.
Speaker 2: But they're not though, because the only reason why you know is because it came out. Like they tried to hide it, but it always comes out. So that's where I'm like, things like the 85 draft, it would have come out by now. think you would.
Speaker 3: I just want people to know that it's not all conspiracy theories I believe in. I definitely know that the world is round.
Speaker 2: The other thing about that, yeah, you got vaccinated.
Speaker 3: I'm not an idiot. I just think Bigfoot is a quaint idea, but I'm not afraid to go Oregon Forest.
Speaker 2: That was my favorite weird sub-tangent.
Speaker 1: Harry and the Hendersons ⁓
Speaker 3: You
Speaker 2: I also really liked that Neil in the newsroom when Sorca made that show that was like our entire subplot that Neil was like no I really think that there's something to this Bigfoot idea.
Speaker 1: Harry and the Henderson's director is the same guy who directed Angels in the Outfield.
Speaker 2: On the connectivity like, you know, where you point to the board with all the strings and the cards. Yeah. Gary Bettman did work under David Stern at that period of time. That's a ton of a trick! Alright, alright. I was going to go around the six and do some things before we got to our main topic of the Leafs, but I feel like we're just living in Leafs right now. So I want to start before we go into Chica and, you know, junior
Speaker 1: Alright. Yes
Speaker 2: You know chicken cheeseburger of an ownership. Here's my first question though since we're on draft Keep it or ditch it around the table. You keep the pick or do you sell it to try to move yourself up in the world?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you this. Are you asking Vince and Megan that question or are you asking John Chaika the question? Because there's two different answers to that.
Speaker 2: Give me both your answer what you would do and then what you think the leaves will screw up and do
Speaker 3: You
Speaker 2: So Meg, start us off. What would you do with the pig?
Speaker 3: So I 100 % would use it as a bargaining chip and I would trade and I would try to do a like, okay, Vince is giving me the only one who understands but I would build my mid card. I would not go after a Roman Reigns right now. I my dressing room with Chris Jericho's right now. What beliefs are you?
Speaker 2: By the way, following up your conspiracy theory rant with wrestling, maybe not helping your cause. ⁓
Speaker 3: They started the conspiracy with a rest. Anyway, feel like I use it as a bargaining chip to build my team up from the middle out. They are absolutely going to pick this kid because that's what everyone's going to watch.
Speaker 2: Keep going.
Speaker 1: Which kid though? ⁓ Gavin or? But Ivar, mean, mats! Come on, why wouldn't you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're picking Gavin.
Speaker 3: No, it's I, it's, no.
Speaker 1: He's also the safer pick, isn't
Speaker 2: Hamburg? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Because this holds to Gavin's game apparently, or whatever. I dunno.
Speaker 3: No. do you think?
Speaker 1: I think you are absolutely right. That's exactly how John Czajka would think too, is I think ⁓ he's going because he is that traitor guy, right? Like look at his track record.
Speaker 2: He's a b-
Speaker 3: Cheating is a huge risk.
Speaker 1: The two things, I mean, two mottos that this guy has seems to be like, you know, no trade is a bad trade. And if you're not trading, you're losing.
Speaker 3: Also YOLO seems to be what this man is talking
Speaker 1: That's true too. So what I'm thinking is he's looking at San Jose and going, hey, look, they've got a lot of prospects, forward centers, all these things. They need defense. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take Chase Reed and then I'm going to dangle Chase Reed to San Jose because I think Chase Reed's who they want. So there's no, Right, right. But he's so
Speaker 3: Right. That's his.
Speaker 2: ⁓ my god, some of the fan proposed trades this week. I was like, read a book. ⁓
Speaker 3: Terribly written version of that moneyball scene where Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill are talking about who to get and blah blah blah and it's just like, ugh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something something.
Speaker 2: But it's also just like, sometimes fans are just like, it's like, yeah, okay, great. Love it. I actually really like shout out to Ray Ferraro this week who like actually just had enough on one of the shows. Ray Fink? And no, that's a different thing. That's a whole other thing we don't watch anymore because of transphobia.
Speaker 1: We should...sing.
Speaker 2: No, we should not watch that movie.
Speaker 1: No, ⁓
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, bless you.
Speaker 3: Also, I think I know where you're going and Gina Reda is also on that road.
Speaker 2: Where I was going actually was for the Gino Reta thing was good for asking questions press conference I'm not going there just yet Ray Ferraro got on his horse this week and it was like I'm done with everybody being like well We just got to get a really great defenseman who can move the puck. It's like where? Who are these people you're talking about like there's nobody in the free agent market like that. There's nobody like
Speaker 3: get a goalie. Name two available goalies right now. that's, you're not, done. We gotta get a Jose Canseco. Look at this shit.
Speaker 2: It made me laugh though, because it was.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of that with the Leafs this week got like really out of hand. All we got to do is just fill a sort of the Raptors dialogue too. We're like, just need a big man and a guy that can shoot three. ⁓
Speaker 1: Bye!
Speaker 3: Where's my keys? Well, where did you lose them?
Speaker 2: Fight against sports. Like what? ⁓ Yeah. sure. Group table. Yeah. What do we think Jake is going to do? Keep the pick or ditch the pick? He's a trade up for it. And he's going to try to do razzle dazzle right out of the gate.
Speaker 3: YOLO, he uses the pic.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: ⁓ really?
Speaker 2: You think he's trading for it?
Speaker 3: No, no, I think he uses it. picks the kid and he gets the leaf for him and it's a whole.
Speaker 2: I agree with that. I honestly think that he's Yeah, well cuz he's just such a trick like there's no It's sort of the Brad Pitt going back to money ball It's that same scene where it's like, you know Jonah Hill says like, know, this is the kind of thing that managers lose Like when they trade paint. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is this is a thing and I feel like there's no downside to taking the kid it's like
Speaker 1: Do safe?
Speaker 3: for it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just like there's really but there's a huge downside if you don't get yeah, you could be a hero But I if if you were to give me if you were to paint me a picture of a person that was in a position to be To take a risk. It does not look like John Chaka to me. I Don't know. That's my hot take. ⁓ Okay
Speaker 1: The that made you think that way?
Speaker 3: Okay, but
Speaker 2: Okay, hold on. on. Wait, hold on. I want to, I just want to say, yeah, we're going Leafs. We're going to talk about everything. Okay. So I'm take it back to Leafs get out of the playoffs. They've been doing a hunt. Our good friend, Keith Pelly gives an amazing press conference that is heralded by everyone. It's not only just his. Right. Just absolutely.
Speaker 1: oratorial skills.
Speaker 3: I came to it
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It was that good. me too. And so, make it weird. So...
Speaker 3: It's cute when I do it, not when you it.
Speaker 2: Sexism still exists in some places. There's a brief gap where real hockey people get touted and there were so many rumors of like old school guys that I got on this program and immediately was like well that was all clear bullshit I guess because every single person in the mix is exactly the same hockey person like under Jim Nill under Kenny Holland under like it's like all these guys from like you know the best 101 hockey has existed for the last 30 years. So I was like, guess we're not doing that. We're not doing anything. I called the Leafs there for not doing anything interesting. So I guess my opening statement before I throw to Meg is, okay, Mia Culpa, they did do something interesting. Like I did ask to go do something outside the box and I didn't realize it was going to be.
Speaker 1: You asked for it. You've a fan for two months and you've ruined everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't realize that we're go this far outside the box ⁓ I'll get into my rants about it But I want to open up the floor to Meg who I saw a lot of leaf fans this week Give kind of a ceremonial. I'm out. done. I can't anymore and I you do it on threads a couple of times Start us off with just the emotional roller coaster. That was What the Leafs did in the last week?
Speaker 3: It wasn't a roller coaster for me, Dan. It wasn't a roller coaster at all. I did not get excited about this first round pick at all. I could not have cared less. It didn't surprise me that they won the lottery. Of course they would. Narratively, that's how I would have written it. So, yeah, it didn't surprise me at all. Does not bring me back to wanting to see these people succeed. ⁓ I don't care if John Chaka is the goodwill hunting of the NHL and he's secretly a genius and he's somehow like... spins an incredible team out of this. I don't care because I don't like him. He's a shitty cheater and Peli is a fucking condescending asshole. I do not want to see those two men succeed with the logo on their chests that I loved when I was 10 years old. Fuck those guys. I don't wish them success. I don't like Matthews. I don't really care for this Gavin kid either. To be frank, it's been a horrible year for hockey for women. I don't give a shit about any of them. It's hard to trust any of them. ⁓ an 18 year old upstart? Let's talk to his roommates. I don't give a fuck about any of these new kids coming in. I don't trust any of them. The whole culture is garbage. It's bullshit. And the Leafs are part of that culture too. Like there's MAGA guys on the team. They're owners. They're fucking morons. And then they put poor Matt Sundin, probably the only former Leaf who's willing to have anything to do with them. They tout him out like the dog in the parade, like, look guys, there's still something good about this team. Fuck that, fuck all of them. And the fact that they got that first round pick doesn't change anything for me at all. I hope they end up last. Or you know what? I hope they fucking win. I hope they win and that that parade has just covered me. Asshole, shitty new fans. who don't give a shit about integrity, who don't remember like the good Leafs. Now, whether those guys were good people or not, I was 10. I don't know. And I didn't know then. Maybe Doug Gilmore was a piece of shit. I didn't know what that was when I was 10. But now that I'm 40, I know what a piece of shit looks like in the hockey world, and I will not spend my time or my money supporting them. Fuck them.
Speaker 2: So, about the title of the show.
Speaker 1: So when are we going in the next sleevescape?
Speaker 2: Yeah ⁓
Speaker 3: Never, because we can't afford it because they don't want us there. They only want the rich shitheads who support them even though they're all evil ghouls. And I figured that out when I worked there in like 2009. I've been saying it for years and I'm so glad that they proved me right. Nothing feels better than that to a woman. I gotta tell you.
Speaker 2: The misogyny in sports, but especially in hockey, going back to like Eric Lindros for me, that was like the first time as a kid, I was like, wait, what? What did they do? I lived in an OHL town ⁓ and there's this whole concept of like puck bunnies. ⁓ And I was like, wait, what? And then you like kind of would hear about it. And I'm like, I think that's just sexual harassment actually. I don't even know. I don't think that she's that into this actually. What? and that culture and then of course the hockey Canada scandal. It's been a rough year and a half. Not maybe rough year and a half. It's been a rough period ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to be a female fan. It's just that everyone's realizing it now. Eddie Belfort was like the most beloved goalie and we all knew that he beat the shit out of his wife and we all knew that should matter. But none of you all knew that that should matter. And it's not like it's been a rough year for women. I feel like it's been a rough year for male hockey fans who care because they're like, fuck, we didn't know. We didn't know it was this bad. Whereas we
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, it's kind of more of a reckoning.
Speaker 3: Women sports fans have been talking about it amongst ourselves for years and that's why men didn't want us in the broadcast booths, didn't want us as journalists, because they didn't want us talking about it. We have always known, so it's a rough year for y'all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's been, I guess when I say it's been a rough year, I think it's been like, it's just been the turmoil of, you have these two drooling narratives at all times, which is like more women getting into sports, sports bars for women opening, and like all these great things, and then there's this like colliding train of reality that has been like, nope, we're still pieces of shit, like, sorry. You know, and the hockey, we talked about this at the very first sample thing we did for everybody, which was the awesome Matthews and the Team USA thing and just the misogyny off of that. And then kind of once again, good old Lorne Michaels and his SNL crew of like, let's make a little joke out of it and be like, don't worry, everything's fine. that like seems to be Lorne Michaels' job now is to just like assure white America that everything's okay.
Speaker 1: But it's just a blip. Don't worry.
Speaker 2: Moving away from that conversation and burying it, cause I'm a man, no, I'm moving away from that conversation for a second, which is now that you're the Leafs ⁓ and you've offended a good portion of your base. So like, mean, the most bro-y sports bro that doesn't care about anything Megan just said is also where Megan is with the Leafs. just in a completely for different reasons and different motivations. They just feel like it's been corporatized. It's been, it's just this mess. There's no like in the organization. They've been priced out. There's like a long list of grievances. So Vince, where are you at in terms of what you're, yeah, like you're not a die in the wool of East fan, like where are you at?
Speaker 1: in terms of But if you actually look at the last decade, I've gone to more Leafs games than, you know, any other sporting. No, but what a
Speaker 3: from star bro you don't have prove it you don't have a choice
Speaker 1: Yes. But the reality behind all of this is, you know, I was just thinking about it, it's like a restaurant situation for me, which is like, you go to a place, you know, a lot of people do, you know, same place, you know, every Saturday or something like that. And it's, you know, do it OK, you know, but not doing anything better. than just surviving since, you know, let's say 1967, right? And what happens is they say, ⁓ we're going to get a new manager who's going to do great things. And then you ask them real questions and they say, well, at the last place he was at, well, they did pull the liquor license for a little while. And you go, well, that doesn't happen. Normally, that's a problem. Okay, but it's okay because you know, my restaurant's almost gonna fold so I desperately want something to happen. So I'm okay with that. And then somebody tells you well, the last place he was at also, you know, the health inspector showed up and shut it down, but only for a short period. And you're like, okay, so
Speaker 2: time.
Speaker 1: This guy must be really good if we're ignoring all of these things and still getting him. And then they say, no, no, the reviews for the restaurants was subpar. then, you know, and the profit margins were exactly where we're at right now. That's what he got. And you're like, then why are we taking this fucking risk? Like, seriously, why are we taking this risk? Please tell me.
Speaker 3: is a great question. Why do you think they hired him? Like, do you think that, I think that everyone else they really wanted said no.
Speaker 1: Well, that and I also think is something you know, Dan's just gonna say right now.
Speaker 3: Do you think he was the guide? he the he was the
Speaker 2: Answer, I'm in a monologue on this. So answer, give me your hot take before I
Speaker 1: I take his the same thing Dan will expand upon in a couple of seconds, which is he's the guy who's the yes man who will do whatever you ask him to do.
Speaker 3: Who's the decision?
Speaker 1: Rogers. ⁓
Speaker 3: Rogers, so then how do you what do mean? You don't believe it's like owned and controlled
Speaker 2: Who said that? I think we're all on that page.
Speaker 3: No, that ⁓ it's fixed, I mean.
Speaker 2: Well, because I don't think... I think they got lucky with the pick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Everything I'm about to say will make you double down on that you think that it was fixed I know for sure like there's nothing I'm about to launch into that not gonna make you scream. No, but there's yeah good I want to ask you just before I go into my tangent for fans is when There's one thing because I'm about to get into why I think they do it I think there's a lot of like I think people at home who have certain jobs in certain industries will see a lot of parallel to their own plates and in their jobs. But here's what I will say that I think I wish more people asked this question, similar to how Megan just said about Jim Romy should have asked a different phrasing. ⁓ The Steve Simmons question, don't think was wrong, the Steve Simmons question or the follow-up that I wish more journalists backed him up on was this question. Who were the people that said great things about him? Because if they said great things about them, wouldn't they want, they could say it publicly, right? They'd come out public. We're a week after almost, not like by the time this air.
Speaker 1: Nobody's come out and said, yes, I'm the one who said.
Speaker 3: Supported it. Yeah
Speaker 2: In the era of when certain people were getting called out for all kinds of things, should still be happening, but it did feel like it was more of a period of time in the 2020s. When somebody got accused that people thought, uh-uh, I'm not sure. You heard people out loud put their necks on the line, but that's not true. This is bullshit. I don't believe it. Whether they were right or wrong. Anytime in corporate land where somebody feels like their corporate land uh, mascots are attacked. They come out screaming with their knives out. You'd be like, no way, but he's a great guy. He's my circle, my circle. Cause they're worried about themselves. They're worried about their standing in the country club. They're about crickets, crickets. We're still, I still, there has been not one editorial. Nobody went to the newspaper. Nobody went to their favorite blog. Nobody got on their favorite podcast. I have not seen anyone in the hockey world go, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. We're being kind of shitty to John. Not one person. That's crazy. I can't even think about another sports personality who if if the hammer got dropped on like it did in that press conference by Steve Simmons and by the way, Steve Simmons is also Not exactly like a person that you couldn't Right, so like it's a really easy mark for allies of chica to come out and be like absolutely not i'm still
Speaker 1: There's old ages, but control,
Speaker 3: ⁓ That man has no allies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, man. It's like the Brian Colangelo treatment of... do you say? Tired of Philadelphia and never got a job again.
Speaker 2: You what? Right. And this is the other thing, okay? This is the other thing that I think is a fair question of Chayka that I didn't hear this week enough. Which is like, you...
Speaker 1: You
Speaker 2: Did one of two things. You took your ball and went home and went to Wendy's land and ran your Wendy's. You didn't say, F this, I miss hockey. I'm gonna go exist in my sister's company that I helped found. You'd think you would have gone there. Could you go there though? Did she want you at that company? So that's his background. They started the.
Speaker 3: company.
Speaker 2: the most popular hockey analytics, well, the second or third most popular hockey analytics company, which is, you know, we're gonna do data for you, we're gonna tell you how to do all these things, and his sister's the CEO of that. When, so this is, now we're gonna get into my rants. So there is a slow case for John Chica behind the scenes happening this entire time. And I think to truly understand it, you have to understand where corporate culture is at right now in this sort of, post-boom world where the pandemic took the knees out from a lot of companies. The media industry is changing and once again, we are deeply owned. So Megan talks about how this team, and from a fan standpoint, it hasn't really felt that different. It's like a pension plan owned us and now this like mustache twirly media company owns us, but as a fan, what's the difference? And I'm gonna try to explain what the difference is and why I think the Chica thing was like,
Speaker 1: All the sports teams,
Speaker 2: shocking because I didn't think they'd get that ballsy with it, but it actually really aligns with corporate thinking. So you have to understand a bit of my background. You obviously know it, but for the accidental person who's in this podcast, I am around startup culture a lot in my day job and I'm around entertainment and media. So the Rogers and anything Rogers does greatly affects my life. When they donate money, it's they They own so much space. When they bought Hockey Night in Canada out from CBC, it completely affected the arts and entertainment world and the six degrees of the shows that ran on CBC and the advertising money and all of the things. So I quickly learned in my youth, I should pay attention to what corporate culture is up to because it's affecting our chances of opportunities for Vince and I when we're making our shows. Right. So the Rogers, we work for... the lower end of Rogers in 2010, we got to go through that silly ecosystem of making a television show for that company. And one of the things that you really learned is how mafia-esque Rogers is a thing. There's very like, CBC is like 38,000 cooks in a kitchen, and it's like, this person in Winnipeg doesn't like this person in Toronto, and you're like, what is happening? Rogers was very much like, what's Ted doing? What's happening? Blah blah blah. So you gotta understand Eddie Rogers is this little asthmatic fat kid and as an asthmatic fat kid I can tell you we grow up with a little bit of a chip on our shoulder. And so Eddie's got sisters and it's basically the TV show succession. Rogers versus Rogers and nobody bet on Ed. Not a single person. So when John Tory leaves to go run for politics the first time in 2003, I just moved to the city and John Tory runs for mayor. And he's up against David Miller, David Miller wins. John Tory's position had to be filled by somebody. And consistently in his life, Ted believed his sister was more like him and that Eddie was kind of just like, pat him on the head, good job. He was kind of a fuck up university, George W. Bush kind of kid, but he was quiet, but he liked to party. He was part of the U of T, he was part of the frat. that was very like, we just changed everyone's furniture around. Like, haha, prank. He was that kid. And so he's got chip on his shoulder. Long story long, Ted gives him the job and says, Eddie, you keep this gig as long as you show numbers. And I believe Rosebud style, that Ed became obsessed with numbers. I'm gonna read you a couple of things that happened once Ed did the unthinkable. Beat everyone and took over Rogers the sisters fell the other people on the board who were gonna like kind of muscle out the kids Succession style they fell and Rogers is reverse Jeremy strong in succession. He's the kid that actually won. He's the kid. There's like actually you're all fucked. I'm taking it and that is What starts to become? narrative. There's a book, Rogers v Rogers. There was a play about all of this stuff and there was a really good article that think every Toronto Maple Leaf fan should read from Toronto Life. It's called Edward the Conqueror by Trevor Cole. I want to read this to you and you're going to start as I'm reading this be like, ⁓ fuck, here's how we got John Chaka. This is from Trevor Cole. When he talks about building spreadsheets on a large computer display in his office, you hear joy in his voice. Each cell will relate to another cell, he says. One change can screw it all up, and you try to decipher that. He says, working in Microsoft Excel, it's almost therapeutic. During corporate presentations, he often finds himself wishing the presenter would get rid of the pictures and words. He calls it deckware. He admits that he's just not good at judging that stuff. He'd rather they just started with a page of numbers. In a different life, he says, I would have been an analysis, I think. An analyst, Dan can speak, really. Edward always sought jobs where his achievements were tangible. As much as there's a financial report card where I can get a measurement, I really like that. My whole mantra of how we run a business today is numbers, numbers, numbers. When he lost the gig and they got pushed out and he came back in Steve Jobs style the whole nine yards. Rogers launched a home phone product and Ted challenged his son to reach a million customers. Edward turned the home phone into the fastest growing product in the company's history. According to employees at the time, he did it partly by hovering over them relentlessly. Phil Hartland, now the head of the wireless division, was hired to work on the home phone project. As a boss, Ed was constantly saying, what else do need? How can I support you? What do need to get this done? That's to me where Hamza Tarani of the Chief Technology and Digital Officer at MLSE comes into play because we're starting to see this thing with first the soccer team and then the hockey team where we're like, we need to see some uniformity. We're not going to just get rid of presidents and then everybody answer to one guy We also need to see corporate uniformity like we're all kind of playing from the same playbook sure you're on a pitch sure you're on ice, but we're all doing the same thing here Humza can't get Borubei and Trevely to get on the same page with that. He can't do it. They try they're like, great part of that is I'm not gonna get too nerdy on you but part of that is hockey is the slowest sport to get onto the AI tech train because of how fast, because they're on skates. And because they jump into each other. It's really hard to get spatial recognition. If you think about a basketball player, basketball player is going down the court, he stops, he shoots. I can get a lot of biometric data. The cameras can pick that up really easily. Soccer's best. There's not scrums. Soccer, same thing. Baseball even, a lot of one-on-one matchups, right? Pitcher, batter, watching a second baseman move on the shift, whatever. I can get data from that. Hockey, we're going banging into each other, we're scrumming in front of the net, we're falling into the goalie. It's hard to get data back. It's getting better, they're working on it, but it was the slowest one to give to give the most accurate data. So the other thing that you really need to know about our Chief Technology and Digital Officer is he loves basketball. Not really a hockey guy. He's basketball guy. Now, once again, like Winch made joke with Vince, can't grow up in the city and not be forced into hockey, but he's basketball guy. Humza? is in on these talks, he is in on this conversation, he is in on the picks of who should be the manager. And I want to run down the analytics boys in the NHL for you, because when you're thinking about it, I think it's really important. Kulsky in Carolina ex-chemist Sonny Maeda poker player commodity trader Chris Patrick Julian Brizbaugh Corporate lawyer not a single one had a hockey background So Chica at least ran tried to play hockey Blooms blew himself out and then started a hockey analytics company. So if you're a corporate guy, why are you looking for this? Well, there's a couple of reasons why
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The first reason is corporate culture has a wet dream. It has a fantasy. It's capital without labor cost. That is the religion that we are preaching from right now. What if you could get less labor costs and more profit? What if we didn't have workers? AI is that evangelical thought. It is the fact. that, hey, I know you don't know anything about sports, but what if I told you you didn't have to? Because imagine you had Scotty Bowman as a coach, where you just get Humza to talk to Scotty Bowman, and Humza creates IP. And that's his job at Beat Police Sports and Entertainment, to create IP. So if you get a head coach that's really brilliant, or you get a guy in the basket like the Raptors have, who's really smart and talk about load management and figuring that out, if you figure out those styles, you implement them and you basically put them inside of your own systems, coaches and things, we haven't got to a place yet where we figured out how to trademark our coaching ideas. We haven't got to a place where we get bonuses for getting, for be part of the IP or getting, ⁓ for example, in a ⁓ real equitable workers world, you would get much like a musician did when you got your song played on the radio. If you use load management the same way that I invented down the road and I'm retired, I get a percentage of your profit every year. That's in my contract. We don't have any of that yet. So two owners, two the business class, What we've created is this brilliant way of scraping up an author's work, scraping up musicians' work, and creating our own. The tech people are better. We can do this with machines. And Ed Rogers is a numbers guy. So the second thing that is really important on the business side of this that I think everybody forgets about, Rogers family and the Shaw family. There's these two big media families in Canada, right? So you think about the... HBO show succession when they go to that with the woman's house with her family and they're both families are there and it's kind of awkward they're sitting around table He's we're gonna buy you, know, we're gonna buy you you're not thrilled about it, but you're not unthrilled about it You're like at least it's you guys. Yeah Shaw does that the problem is the world goes to shit as this deal goes through the the corp the The whole competition bureau in Canada gets involved. What about monopolies? But we don't care about monopolies anymore. So the deal goes through. The problem is they're holding a large bag of excrement with that deal. The thing that Rogers was doing with sports is, for example, remember Taylor Swift and coming through Toronto with the, well, they own the stadium, right? So they get the money from those things. So it's a real estate bid. It's like you get more stadiums, more things. WNBA comes to town. You know who didn't want to do it? Ed Rogers. and his CEO of Rogers, when they sat on a thing, they blocked us, the MLSE, going for tempo. Tenenbaum leaves, goes and gets it. The point of that story though is why? And my opinion on the why is there's no real estate attached to the tempo. There wasn't a deal that gets you anything really going and the money on the television wasn't big enough for them. So this is important facts. So the Shaw deal, going back to that Shaw deal, why is that important? Well, it's important because the Leafs
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: MLSC, whatever you want to call it, the MLSC structure needs to make its money back. So I don't know if anyone saw us in the headlines there, but they slash their workforce in insane numbers in April. This is the same time Keith Peli is going AI, AI, AI. This is Ed Rogers. Ed Rogers saying to you, we got to get all this. So why do you have to get all this in order? Why do we have to have Keith Peli? Why do we have to have everybody have like a chief technology officer doing the same thing?
Speaker 1: This is
Speaker 2: Because in three minutes, when all of these deals go through in late 2006 on the earnings call, Rogers has said, there's going to be minority owners of all of our teams. They are going to open this up and what do you have to do for minority owner? You have to make sure that everything is in a nice little pyramid so that the person wants to invest. They want to get bought out, not in terms of like, they're going to give the entire thing away, but they need to get rich folks. to buy into, wanting to hobnob at these events and have all of what they need. It's like the Mets member, Bill Maher, owned a piece of the Mets back in the day. And it was like, what? And then he sold it and he went on a big rant about during COVID. He's like, then I have to pay into it. Because you realize it's not just like, it's not a scam, but it's not not a scam. These minority odors are like. They are rich people that you're like, don't you want to hang out with us? Don't you kind of want to pretend that you're on the field? Don't you kind of want you want to be cash Patel, right? That's the.
Speaker 3: They're renting space close to them, essentially.
Speaker 2: So you've got to convince and you get it. But you also get F. So, for example, when they weren't making money, they asked the the owners, the smaller owners, minority owners, be like, guys, got to kick in some cash, right? Because we're not actually making. Bill Maher was like, what?
Speaker 1: and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Is this Avon? subscription to the fan club. That's just the highest tier of the fan club.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it's also like, it's a lot of money. And so this is what Roger's about to go do. So you need CEO, you need Keith Pelley to go and go, hello, how are you? And you also need Ed Rogers at the helm, basically doing all of these things. The other thing that's really important to know is the lead up. If you start to go back and look at crumbs, they were there. So in the articles of the score and a bunch of different articles that came out, When Keith Pelly said the thing about AI, Megan Sheka got on the horn. She is quoted in all of these. She's the co-founder of StatLite. All right. It's one of the main data providers like we just talked about. And she claimed her phone blew up with text messages and influential people. after Peli's remarks about data, everyone was like, we're looking for the same thing, Chika said. They're looking around and wondering, what am I doing wrong? How can I fix it? Who are the key players in the data space? And it's a bit of an arms race in terms of getting data contracts in line and also finding executives capable of working on it all. That was her pull quote to the score. then it's very similar in a bunch of different articles. Of course, she's the brother of the guy who we know now has clearly got. Ivy League of Business, I told you guys this in the group chat, they do a thing every year where they bring in data people and stuff and they bring in all of the main people from MLSC and they sit at the Ivy School Business out there and they have a little conference and it's John and it's Megan and it's the Chaker family that gives all the money to do it. I'm not convinced this wasn't like, when Keith Peli said, we're looking, I'm not convinced we weren't already there. There's one other thing I think you'd find interesting as fans. There's an 80-20. That's really big in tech right now. It's really big in business. The idea is 80 % of an engineer developer's time is spent orchestrating an agentic bot, telling it what tasks to do, what to accomplish, and 20 % of their time is now dedicated, is only dedicated to coding. And we love this idea because once again, it's the idea that we're smarter than everyone else at the top. We... are brilliant, we shouldn't be spending our time working, we should be spending our time with the bots so we have more time to think and strategize. This is also the idea of a Keith Peli. Keith Peli is Smithers, Keith Peli is the agentic bot. Keith Peli is just a piece that it goes out to the public and all he is doing behind the scenes is making sure everybody gets under Ed's vision of numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. And I think that One of the things that's really surprising is like, one of the things that's really problematic, I should say, is when a media company owns the entire ecosystem, guess what you don't hear about the media company? Because who's going to talk about it? Who's going to write an article about it? Who's going to do this segment even that's just like surface level? Do you understand what's happening behind the scenes right now? Because if they lose their job at their newspaper, like it's going to be two companies left. You know, when they told Bell to kick the road, to hit the road when they got rid of Bell, guess who took the tempo? There's like an inch left of corporate like back and forth, but Rodgers owns so much of the landscape now that we are kind of to you both, we are in a WWE universe. Like there goes ECW, there's Paul Mayman, there's Eric Bischoff, everybody's under the same.
Speaker 3: Ted Turner.
Speaker 2: Right. And so the thing that was surprising, the thing that was surprising to me was the absolute lack. And let me rephrase the thing that I was like, oh, that's really disappointing. Surprising is probably too strong of a word is that they look the other way for Chaka. I thought they might have convinced Megan to throw the dice. Chaka, like the sister, I'm like, somebody at that company. Yeah, it was surprising to me. They looked the other way of him. But the thing that I think is really key to all of it is the Shaw thing, which is this quote that was said in the CBC. the 26, it was a $26 billion deal finalized in August of 2023. And here was what the experts were talking about on CBC. The cost of the saw, the stock position is going to get more and more expensive because they don't have free cashflow to pay back the loan. So they're going to have to do creative things. And one of those creative things is these teams on the books. So when Rogers pulls a profit from the ratings of the Jays, none of this matters. It doesn't show up in the stock price. Like that's how little these sports teams monetize in terms of a corporation like Rogers. But what does switch over is if you can get them into the one giant MLSC package, because you're not buying Toronto Maple Leafs, you're buying MLSC. So their evaluation of their own company is $18 billion. The J's, for example, are 2.5 billion. The Raptors are actually 4.5. They have the largest. So the valuations. But if you put them all together, this is a very corporate one-on-one idea, right? They're worth more. So you can get more to buy into. You should buy into minority ownership of MLSE. And that idea is going to be. the downfall of sports in our cities. But it's also going to be, it's also gonna make all of these stadium ideas a lot more problematic because they're gonna want more public land. They're gonna want more of it. And we've seen this in a lot of places. Roger's getting really powerful. Roger's just getting really, really influential. What are you gonna do? Lose the Blue Jays and the Raptors? You're gonna piss off the people that run the Leafs? No, you're probably gonna give them more Brookfield.
Speaker 1: all this.
Speaker 2: probably gonna go to Brookfield and lean on Brookfield, but you know those buildings all around the ACC? You know the buildings across from, or sorry, for Scotiabank Arena? Maybe we should just have those. You know the man in front of the sand tower? Yeah, why not? Like, can you think of better use for this space? Come on.
Speaker 3: When they did the lights wasn't like the only color red for a really long time
Speaker 2: I mean, there's we also do live in Canada, but yeah I think that's the thing that I really, if fans are listening to this and citizens of Toronto, I think that's the thing that I wish more people were talking about, which is we have built ourselves a monopoly of sports teams and what they're doing right now has nothing to do with sports. It has everything to do with setting themselves up to be in a better position to sell. ⁓ And you can argue that's still better than the teacher's pension thing. They just have to get through this tough period. The question I have to ask you is do you think
Speaker 3: Mm.
Speaker 2: And I'm asking like in general to the public at listening, do we think that this will ever change? So I don't know if you remember a few episodes back, Meg rattled off a bunch of things that like they cut off players programs. don't fly people's dads out. don't, yeah, money is they, they just cut a large part of their workforce. And so there's two things clearly happening in Eddie's land. One is sticking to what got him succession, numbers, numbers, numbers. And number two is they've bought into AI evangelism, which is no, if we could just get rid of workers and replace them, if we could spend, smarter, not harder, everything will be okay. And I think Keith Peli's job is to smooth over egos while he gets that happening, while he moves into. So I think if you are a Toronto sports fan, the person that you should be obsessed with.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, no, you should be mad at yeah anybody but Ed Rogers. You're like getting mad at Ronald McDonald instead of But also I Really think you need to be paying attention to Hamza. It's right. That's like I'd be watching his LinkedIn if you're if you're a nerd about your team That's who holds the key because Kelly doesn't know anything about this So they're going to it's like when you get your you know, you've been in this situation out there in the world I bet you you've been the millennial who's like Hey, how does this like computer work? Or hey, how does this like, it's like, it's the corporate version of that. They believe he knows the things they believe he's on the ball. And so yeah, poker players, we've got bloggers, we've got like, those are the guys, right?
Speaker 1: in the table
Speaker 2: So, John Chaka at least owns Wendy's. And by the way, if look at MLSC, they really like their fast food people. There's people who work for Young.
Speaker 1: So like nepotism.
Speaker 2: True, it's a bit of both. That's kind of the world right now. It's like rich kids and people who've worked at the other multinational corporation that they go on, they're from them. But yeah, there's a lot of food brands, because once again, if you look at what you need to work at MLSC, we've got a bunch of different brands under one umbrella, and this is how this works. ⁓ you'll be great here, come over here. So, Chayka speaks the whole language, he's already there, and all you had to do was look by... past the resume, like the other parts of the resume. But to speak to what Vince says, to finish up this 20 minute random mind, simply put, John also brings to the table. what we also loved in HBO succession. I can own your ass. Like you're not gonna go Messiah. No, you're not gonna have anything. You're under umbrella. And for whatever you wanna say about Shapiro, also not really like a rock the boat kind of guy, like in a big way. You're looking at people who are gonna be in, who got replaced at TFC. We very much have John Schneider even, like you go down the list.
Speaker 1: Reddit.
Speaker 2: There's nobody in this org for a while now since Shanahan left, since Lou Ramarrillo left, since that group. There's nobody under the Rogers regime that feels like a threat. And Messiah did not like Eddie. They went up and had a cottage weekend, apparently. And Ed thought that he was an alpha male dick and he didn't like him. And that was the end of Messiah. And that's for me what Leafs fans were just pissed, but I'm like, think the Blue Jays are really looking good on the slide deck, because they went to the World Series. But I don't think they're immune from this in three minutes either. But it's like, you don't say shit about the team that's like winning. You just take credit for it and you put, you you just sort of shine up and go, ⁓ they're great. But give that to like, give that one losing season. And what the data train going to do then? So that's my rant. took up a lot of time, but to Vince's point, know, check has got a huge desk from Bill Armstrong told Steve Simmons that when he took over the back, we took the job over. He went to shake his office and there was always this big glass office because he was part of that Silicon Valley. Look, it's transparent. It's a glass office. And there were always there's always data terminals running numbers. He had six computer screens, apparently. And when. Bill Armstrong went in, he couldn't figure out how to turn the computers on. He's like, this data just keeps running, but I don't know how to get into the program and shut it off. like, how do I move any of this? And the data guys come upstairs and go, only one of these is a real computer. Like, those other screens are just running a loop of stuff. And that to me is what this whole thing is in data and AI. It's a bunch of rich tech nerds convincing rich people who've bought into religion. It's an old, it's... It's a scam from scammers who are scamming scammers. The snake is eating its tail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as a person who once worked for a huckster who asked me to do a similar thing. Yes.
Speaker 3: So let me ask you how far you think this AI thing is going to go in like, let's say it's Scotiabank center. Do you think we're going to see robot ushers in like five years? Cause that's a big workforce you'd have to get rid of all your concessions. And some of those concession stands are already self-serve.
Speaker 2: was going to say we're already going there.
Speaker 3: There's not gonna be like the guy yelling beer. It's gonna be a robot with an old tiny hat and apron.
Speaker 2: I think that that is true. But think the other thing that's really important when you think about these things is Yes, this is the real question. I'll get a little bit more cynical on you. I don't think you win Yeah, I think that's the problem
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: We'll have plenty to say in the podcast.
Speaker 2: When I, you have to understand, like on my day to day level, I work with a lot of people who are like trying to be YouTubers or trying to be in entertainment, go to Netflix, pitch something, da da da, and, or sports media. And one of the things I always tell them is it's a casino and the casino has no interest in Adele. The casino doesn't care about share. The casino cares that you gamble. It cares how long you spend inside of it. And so the same thing I'd say to sports fans, it's a little bit different, but it's not that different. The value when you go into a J's game, and the reason why you can no longer buy a physical ticket 90 % of the time and you have to scan, is Rogers actually wants to know the phone. So they want you to get the apps and they want you get the BlueJS app because then they're like, Dan still has an iPhone 14. He should probably update to it because that's where they make all their money. So the value in all of us as consumers going through these teams is actually the other products and synergies that Rogers can therefore then sell to you or get you involved in or say, hey, you know, you should leave Bell, you should leave TELUS because you want 20 % off on a J's ticket this year. And I'm like, well, I'm not getting that from TELUS, so maybe I will go over to Rod. It's all of those little things where they get the real money from. So same thing in the casino analogy I say to the kids who are like, Why doesn't YouTube care about like, you're like, well, cause it's a casino has nothing to do with entertainment. It's not entertainment company. It's a gambling company that has to have entertainment. So you stay gambling.
Speaker 3: And are you saying the Maple Leafs are a like food media and their media company?
Speaker 2: No, they're a media company. They're a telecom company.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the like the the teams. Do you think like the leaves or? You think so?
Speaker 2: There's no difference in it. There's no difference in it. Yeah. Wens Rogers took over the share. Similarly, using the succession analogy, when he got boxed out the first time, our Jeremy Strong character, who won in the end, when he got boxed out the second time, I'll say, so the first time it's just sort of like Ted pushing him down and being like Brian Cox, like, you're not serious people. And he's like, OK, dad.
Speaker 3: Not a team.
Speaker 2: The second time around, though, he really does get pushed out. Like, daddy goes away and he doesn't get the CEO gig and he has to sit and eat crow and plot and slowly build allies inside of his company. And Ed watches them go after steak. the two guys who now run it, Ed and his CEO, they wanted the whole thing at a time. They're like, we should go big. We should do it. Let's just take it. Let's figure out the way. What does Bell want? And instead they waited, they waited, they waited, they waited, because they saw Bell having some problems financially. And they're like, I think they're going to want to give it up. And they knew that Tannenbaum's shares under Kilmer were up in 2026. So it was a waiting game. They were taking this the whole time. They went, once again, by the way, I don't know if anyone remembers this, but do you remember what Keith Peli's real accomplishment was? Keith Peli convinced all of the people at the NHL to ditch the CBC and go to Rogers. Keith Pelley was one of the key architects of hockey in Canada leaving, which changed the entire, I can't express to you how hockey-centric and sports-centric the entertainment industry is attached to in Canada, especially in the modern era where you don't watch TV at eight o'clock, you don't watch Friends at 8 p.m. anymore, but you will watch the Jays and the World Series at 8 p.m. when it's on. So television, that's where we need sports, we all know this, but in Canada, smaller market, it was even more crucial. So the entertainment world would... would ebb and flow to this stuff. And when I would meet and entertain people, no one knew any of it. And I would constantly tell people to read Hockey Fight in Canada, but Rodgers taking over. Like, you got to read this. This is gonna like, you're not even pitching the correct people. This is all for not. Like, this doesn't even matter. You're not even being thought of. Do know how much money they make on like a half minute of Hockey in Canada versus your show?
Speaker 3: I right ahead, that was you and no one
Speaker 2: Full stop. And this thing is the same thing for sports fans for me, which is like, I don't think Meg's as much as I just started a sports podcast with my two friends. I honestly think that when I looked at this week, I did the thing that I've done in the past where I kept looking around the world and going, when's gonna, when's, when are we gonna talk about the real thing? Like we're talking about the cosplay theater. What?
Speaker 3: Thank
Speaker 1: Especially in sports, I we don't know anything about anything anyway,
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're trying to shiny up.
Speaker 3: It's Boeing. It's the Boeingification of beliefs.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's the... And also, why I keep going to that data thing isn't because I necessarily want people to walk away and go, data is the evil. It's that because data is great and it can be used really well and AI is interesting. And so I'm not somebody who is bulletproof on AI, but I'm also not like, it's all going to go back into the bottle.
Speaker 3: They're using it for evil. Like there's ways to use it for No, they are using for I don't think so.
Speaker 2: it for good. Well, wait, hold on. I think the problem though isn't, so this is actually why I brought this up. I don't want people to walk away from this and just put it in the same box as AI versus. What it really is, is it's a sales package that Keith Pelley is overseeing. That's the important thing. And the thing that they're using to make it feel like all of this is AI and data. We were all on the same page.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: We're all using this. When you can't have such a visible and important piece of it as the Leafs not on board when you go to sale. Because you're not selling to the general public. You're selling to guys that are gonna sip whiskey with you in the back and cognac and be like, you want to be part of this club, don't you?
Speaker 1: Same wavelength.
Speaker 2: And they're going to go because they're business guys. like, wait, this seems like a giant mess. Now, the irony of all of this is I don't think Keith Peli is doing that job well either.
Speaker 3: Well, just because you're evil doesn't make you like Luther. Like, he's the Riddler at best.
Speaker 2: Well, but also, once again, moving away from evil, you can believe that, I'm not disagreeing with you, but I am gonna say something that I also think is a misnomer, which is sometimes people look at brilliant people and good resumes. So you can't disagree that Keith Peli has been in influential positions. Whether you agree he did good work there or not, that's a different story. But what I will say is, a lot of the times an MLSC CEO isn't really a working job. It's a thank you job because you're so. that you're so well connected, you're just supposed to sit there and make everybody feel better about investing.
Speaker 3: If we're going with succession, it's the Greg of jobs.
Speaker 2: No, it's honestly, it's not even the Greg, that'd be better. No, it's Jerry. Craig Pelly is Jerry. He's just not really anything. You just kind of like toe the line. You always survive. You always figure where like Keith Pelly kind of take it out of live. Like you basically did the same thing. The Pigeon Tourie was like, ⁓ this isn't that great. I don't love this gig. See you at MLC. you know, like sort of very similar to what when like the thing I saw about Jake this week that I thought was like stupid.
Speaker 1: percent.
Speaker 2: was trying to like nail everything under the sun to him for loyalty and stuff. That was a disaster. That whole franchise was a giant disaster. Like, I don't think anybody, how he handled it was really bad, but I don't think anybody would, everybody would have been trying to get out of it. How he did it was so stupid that that you can hang around his neck and be like, you should have quit and been like, I'm out of this place. See you later. Trying to keep the paycheck, ask to like keep the paycheck and then also try to get out at the same time. Right. It's like so stupid that like that. But people got in the weeds about Phoenix and I just was like, I heard about Phoenix. The idea is, like, why do you have a data guy? Not to go full president, you know, all the presidents man and go follow the money, but like follow the money fans. And that to me is like, I'm not.
Speaker 1: just like ghosted. That's hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I and also it's more fun to talk about hockey. I'm not I'm not a business fan. I'm a hockey fan. Like I don't blame fans, but I'm saying. As somebody who works in the business side of it, yeah, I'm saying like it's also like if we want to change it, yeah, you got to start aiming at Ed Rogers because Ed Rogers doesn't like attention and doesn't really like that stuff. And I think that if you aim at that, there's a really good shot. You just get tenenbaums and people like that back in. It's it's very similar to like. You guys with the wrestling game was just like, know, all right, whatever. People had came in and people left because they I don't want to deal with all this drama, carny nonsense. And I think that that's similarly in hockey. think if you put the pressure on the telecoms, I'm not sure it's going to go the way they want it to. And the streamers are also going to bite into that profit. And I think that there's going to be interesting times ahead.
Speaker 1: That's why we want this podcast on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. All right, let's get out of this for, I'm gonna end on this. I wanna ask around the table. Do you have any faith in John being able to do his job even because the cynical league is just like, you know what, still got, the Leafs have assets we want, we're still gonna deal with John. Or do think John's gonna have problems just even doing a baseline version of Data 101? Because nobody wants to work with him and he has no connections anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because everybody else is thinking the same way that we are thinking about it, right?
Speaker 3: I think the Leafs are banking on things being a little more dystopian in the NHL than they are. I there are a lot of old school guys who are not going to want to deal with this little twerp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really think what's interesting about Nepo babies running companies like Ed is they forget about, they are so numbers people, forget about.
Speaker 3: Forget about your Mike Illiches who actually give a shit.
Speaker 2: And it's honestly not even give a shit. I think they actually forget the same thing that a lot of politicians forget who like come from business. Is that like loyalty is a currency and you can't just like, it's the same thing like going back to succession when Roman goes up to Jerry and Jerry looks at him and goes, what, how is it in my best interest? And he, didn't think about that. Like the individual people, they were just like, do the right thing. Cause dad's crazy. And they're like, but how is that in my best interest? And that's kind of how I think a lot of business people think, but then they forget about how people calculate the best interest. Like they think numbers, numbers, numbers. So they're like, if I present you with a good number, you don't matter. And I actually think from a cynical sports fan standpoint, that's what I'm most interested in with this ⁓ run of GM. Because if it's successful, it really says, yeah, it really tells you a lot about
Speaker 1: Yeah. Dystopian indeed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've really got to a place where the AI thing could happen because we've got to a place where it you are. I mean, there's push and pull for that, right? That door opens up jobs for women who can get into the boys club. That door opens up like there are other sides to that conversation. It's not all. ⁓ because the boys club have a lot of downsides. The idea of like, I know you and you know me and I'll
Speaker 3: The AI nerd males want women in that room more than the old school males did.
Speaker 2: I think there's always a conversation.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: No, but I think there's always a conversation that doesn't, which I agree with you, but I think we consistently have seen in capitalism the idea that what if we, there's a great, you know what, there's a great reductress joke that I think sums this whole thing up, which is. ⁓ ⁓ Man can't wait to tear industry down to rebuild it again in his image And that's kind of 2010s, right? It's like fuck taxis. We're gonna get uber You're like isn't this the same exact problem? I remember when uber came out people were like but women aren't you know women get sexually harassed in taxis and I'm like where It was like where in the uber model have they fixed that and people would be like no, but Dan like
Speaker 3: than uber
Speaker 2: look at this taxi, then like give it five minutes though. But everyone always believes that like, if you tear it all down and restart, something's better. It's going to happen magically, not, you know, by the unions and by like laws and the way that everything became great. It's like when people flipped out in the pandemic about, imagine if like, I remember people who were like mad that people want to get vaccinated and they would say things like,
Speaker 1: Whatever's
Speaker 2: You like be like arguing against stop signs and or seat belts and I always wanted to scream like have you ever looked into how many people argued against stop signs?
Speaker 1: I literally have a scar up here.
Speaker 2: GM literally hired prostitutes to honey trap Ed to honey trap ⁓ Why can't think of his name? Ben tell me out and a nadir right? Ralph nadir Ralph nadir. Yeah, say Ed. Ralph nadir sued sued and that's how he started Public citizens how he started that group in the states that like ran all the like
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ralph Nader.
Speaker 2: Anyways, long story long, like that's how bad they didn't want airbags in 1980s. Like, why don't we get prostitutes to hang out at the grocery store and try to trap Nader? Then he'll not be able to talk in the press anymore. You're like, what? It's crazy. That is weird. Okay, I want to move on to more fun and friendship before we get out of here. Because otherwise we're just like a weird ranty podcast about...
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: best episode we've ever done.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Since we're talking about crazy billionaires and wrestling and everything else and succession, we might as well go straight to ⁓
Speaker 1: wrestling business.
Speaker 2: Ted Turner died this week. Do you remember him? are you old enough to clock the 92 series against the Braves? Were him and James Fonder in the crowd like praying and stuff? Yeah. Okay. Because that's like the first time I knew who Ted Turner was. I have no memory of Ted Turner.
Speaker 3: him as the owner of think it was Superstation or TBS before he before he became the wrestling man.
Speaker 2: How did you know that?
Speaker 3: Because he would be on little like so he was on the World Series, but he was also in little ⁓ yeah Between shows on TBS or Superstation or whatever it was called back then
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. Do really? Okay, here's the
Speaker 1: and the Turner colorizing of movies.
Speaker 3: Is it the Turner Broadcasting Corporation, right? Originally? Yeah. Yeah. OK.
Speaker 2: Did you know that Ted Turner
Speaker 1: Turner Burk cast service, I think. TBS.
Speaker 3: ⁓ yes. You're right.
Speaker 2: There's not one person who is questioning that ⁓ acronym. There wasn't anybody at home going like, ⁓ I'm writing in. ⁓ That's not what they stood for.
Speaker 1: Is it good?
Speaker 3: You've never been a woman on the internet who says something wrong there are 25 people embracing quickly
Speaker 2: FED Actually... Okay.
Speaker 3: Thought space can't go fast enough,
Speaker 2: This is something I did not know about Ted Turner. Of course, the Blue Jays have a relationship with Bobby Cox. I never knew how Bobby Cox got his job with the Atlanta Braves, however. Vince, do you know this story? Because you're the kind of nerd who would know this story. Do know the story of Ted Turner?
Speaker 1: be the GM of the Braves, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you know that Ted Turner in 1977? promoted himself to manager of the Atlanta Braves. Yeah. I didn't know this. I read about this this week. was like, what? In 1977, Ted Turner, they started the season kind of like Mets style, right? They went 16 game losing streak and Ted Turner fired the manager of the Braves and appointed himself, but he didn't really fire him. So Atlanta goes eight and 21 in the middle of a 16 game losing streak. They lost a double header. the day before and in the afternoon Ted goes up to Dave Bristol he's like take 10 days off I'm gonna manage the team which is like also in this I just thought this was like an appropriate segue from our like billionaire story like this is goes through
Speaker 3: Actually the
Speaker 1: Today's half.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah, not wrong. So Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Negros on this team and they asked him about it. And he said he was going to start the game for Atlanta and Ted comes down and he's like, I just got out of the cage. I came out, walked behind the batting cage and Ted comes out of the dugout, walks behind the batting cage. I looked at him and jokingly said, hey, Ted, what spot you got me hitting today? And he goes, hell, I don't know. You want to lead off? You want to hit second or third? We lost 16 in a row. You've been here long enough. Hit wherever you want to. And Phil Negros like I don't think that's gonna work Ted put me in ninth spot When they asked Ted about he goes when things are going bad There are 10,000 guys in the stands you think I could just take over the ball club for a while. I'll straighten them out, but They told me I couldn't manage after this game and I said what if I went to the minors for a year and really learned? And Major League Baseball literally created a rule or dug out a rule that they had but no one ever thought we'd have to use, which was like if you own shares in a team, you can't manage. And so you never had to have an. ⁓
Speaker 3: Wow. the boys from playing, like pushing the real guys out of the way and be like, I want to play. That is insane.
Speaker 2: It just made me laugh.
Speaker 1: You get money, Ace of Spades.
Speaker 3: You could though, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2: That made me laugh. 100 % ⁓ Why make the money if you can't have fun spending it? That's ⁓ okay.
Speaker 3: So thank you. Hey. Explain smart human.
Speaker 2: We've got our friends. ⁓ We should talk sport outside of Leafs for two seconds. ⁓ Vince, next week, we're going to take on the Raptors season. So I'm going to hit a pause button on the Raptors. But I will say you had them in six if ⁓ Quick was healthy. Quick never got back, unfortunately. had even, as you say, then BI was hurt for the whole thing. And then also it's come out that like... Like we're gonna blame all of his problems on injury, which I hope is true, but I
Speaker 1: Yeah, the season,
Speaker 2: You know, but like we Bobby Webster really laid all of his issues at that and I'm like, ⁓ I don't know about that
Speaker 1: Just tell me where he clearly looked like a shell of himself, so yeah.
Speaker 2: Scotty Barnes said this coming out of gate. He was like, they asked him, hey, what do you think over, season's over, got it. You had a 16 win jump year over year. So like, that's pretty good, right? 16. He said, I wouldn't say this was successful because we felt we could have done better and went pretty far. Further than we wanted to go. Further than we went, I should say. You had him in six. You you were kind of in the group chat. You really believe they could pull it out in seven, right? I believe That they overachieved because like their big man situation was rough bi was rough. Am I most of it was m.i.a. You're okay. Yeah No, even not giving injuries. I just don't I don't think the kids are there yet. No, cleveland looked not only beatable but like at times like Atrocious and we still couldn't win a game in cleveland. I don't think this is Negative to be clear. I just don't think we're there yet I think we're in the part of the journey where you get better you learn some things So I think they overachieve by going seven games Start getting into like the position they did in the playoffs not having to go into the play in tournament all that like I think it was a better season than it should have been Where do you stand at the end of all this? overachiever or
Speaker 1: I think because of the injury, Scotty Barnes is absolutely right. Yeah, I think they could have done better. And what he's saying, and he was like the first press conference, he was miserable. Sitting there. And I was like, I'm glad you're that.
Speaker 2: Could have done better? Cruel to ask players right now. It's like I like can't give me your like post-mortem with your own failure about I can't right now actually
Speaker 1: No, but I like that in a player where, you know, he does care that he is miserable about the fact that, you know, I'm here instead of actually playing.
Speaker 2: So no surprise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I actually do think the injuries, you gotta take into consideration, they should have been in better position even with the IQ injuries. He was hurt twice during the season, the second time, I mean that eight game stretch, they went four and four. Yeah. They do better, they have home court advantage, who knows what happens even in Cleveland, right? Sure. All that stuff, I think injuries were a factor in both the regular season. Yeah, we can go deep in.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go and ask you about Darko. He's not going anywhere. Bobby Webster was pretty, Darko is everything. Bobby Webster is a conversation I think is worth having. At what point do you have to change? And I'd actually, I'm going to ask you this next week, which is, I'm going to hot take you that the Leafs are actually in a better position than the Raptors are, given all the things. Which is a hot take. Okay. I want to move to the next team. I want to talk a little Blue Jays.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: before we finish up with the tempo. ⁓ Jaze, messy, messy, messy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two and five this week. Since we last, yeah.
Speaker 2: ⁓ by the way- Megan is on my train. I just happen to be the host with the notes, but Megan is on my we're learning about Raptors We're pretending she's she's she's been she doesn't want it in case you're like, why don't you pivot to Megan? Because she's going to say whatever fucking Vince said But in a hot minute
Speaker 3: you
Speaker 1: Same way, same bad hug.
Speaker 3: I really enjoy the Raptors and I wish them all the best but I certainly don't pretend that I know nearly as much as Vince so that's why I don't interject much. It's okay. I enjoy We're gonna get there Meg. I'm learning. Yes, that I'm very excited.
Speaker 2: learn the tempo together we're gonna get into basketball together
Speaker 1: And the temple art owned by Rogers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the poison hasn't bled down to the Raptors yet, I don't
Speaker 2: The tempo is legitimately like the tempo and the scepters are honestly where everyone needs to. That's literally like, that's the warm hug.
Speaker 1: That's the podcast.
Speaker 3: real like competition.
Speaker 2: They are WCW in late 90s. Yes. I'm going to get a tempo themed NWO shirt. OK, so the Blue Jays have a four and three record in the last seven. They're five and five in their last 10. But here's my like, ⁓ and you know that I've been hitting the alarm all year long. So like Dan's a cynic film at 11, whatever. They've been hitting in this period 220 as a team. They're sitting fourth in the AL East, but. For the nightmare fuel for my fellow cynics out there. We got four runs in three game series. You went three for 18 with runners in score. Our top five offense last season is now 25th in runs per game, 24th in OPS. But that's not all. Our OPS drops to 652 RISP, which is the second lowest in the MLB. We are only ahead of the Royals.
Speaker 1: Mid-Make
Speaker 3: ⁓ my god, who cares if they do well? Aren't they just a joy to watch? They're the ECW of this world. Like the ECW was never gonna take over WrestleMania, but that's not what they were there for. They were there just a better product to watch. They're just to cheer for like the boys. Who cares if they're that well? Like are you gonna not watch them if they don't continue to win? No. ⁓
Speaker 1: I'm too-
Speaker 2: My 100 % I'm gonna wrap this podcast up.
Speaker 1: Goodbye.
Speaker 3: You're gonna watch them all the way to the end of the recital because you love them.
Speaker 1: complain like every single
Speaker 2: Well, okay.
Speaker 3: Bye!
Speaker 2: Here's my thing though, you can have both. My big thing is like you can have both, you can be like yay boys and enjoy yourself and it's fun if they win. Like last year was more fun than the previous 20 years.
Speaker 1: He was
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Here's my problem and what scares me is that the final game in the Twins series, which was an afternoon game and the same thing with the, no, actually it was a night game, the middle game of the Tampa series. those games, last year the team finds a way to win. This year they couldn't come back. And I was like, ⁓ this is bad like that. It's just like, Kirk is really a pro.
Speaker 2: Kirk is the I'm with you.
Speaker 3: judge them when they get their guys back. This is
Speaker 2: Barger coming back is helpful. ⁓ Like the pitching coming back is obviously gonna be huge, but I am- I'm excited about the hitting. The hitting is concerning because the only way you came back- So everybody's trying to take solos in your ⁓ shitty May record. Okay, yeah, but you don't have bichettes, so it's kind of like-
Speaker 3: We need to. Yeah. But, home runs. Their hits last year weren't incredibly consistent either, so that was kind of rocky last year, and you definitely wanted to see it get better this year, and it didn't. It got a little bit worse. And we got lucky that our shitty hitting didn't tank us, but I don't think that luck is gonna be there this year if we don't improve a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you you can't make up the bad may record like everybody like you us included on this show We've been like don't worry. It's the same record as last year. I'm like the second half of this season was fire Right, if you don't hit better, it's not gonna be fine
Speaker 1: end May at close to 500 it's gonna be tough and you're five games under.
Speaker 2: Beast is hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really weird too. Like when we were four games under 500, my head, I'm like, eh, whatever. And then five games under 500, I'm like, uh-oh, it's done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the great thing about baseball is that's a huge difference.
Speaker 2: Listen, I do not want to get on to this too much longer, but I just feel like baseball ⁓ I love the Blue Jays and I am just a little bit twitchy over here. I'm like, oof, I don't know
Speaker 3: if they don't win everything. Winning everything with these guys.
Speaker 2: Wait, hold on though. Here's the thing I think as an older person that you just realized though as a fan is the alchemy of things only aligns so many times in your lifetime. And when it's there, you're just like, ⁓ don't let it slip away. And the problem with this season for me is it's not their fault totally. Like just this, that and the other. But we're getting awfully close to me for seeing it where we can't get back. Like we're getting really close to like
Speaker 1: frustrating
Speaker 3: Right. In our.
Speaker 2: Well, no, not that season. mean, like, sure. It's dark. Yeah. All right. Let's move on before I cry. The tempo. Yay. The tempo. We're launching this season this week on Friday night. I'm going to do my best clipping and pop up video to tip off for you. WNBA 15 league team 44 regular season game. We run through May, September. Top eight teams, regardless of conference, conference are going to advance to a three round Bracket style playoff beginning at the end of September. You're seeding, I love this, it's just regular season record. First round is best of three, semis are best of five, your championships are best of seven. We got 15 games at Coca-Cola Coliseum, so if you want tickets, you got 15 at Coca-Cola, three at Scotiab, but that's not all. We are also doing the Blue Jays, Raptors, Canada's team approach. So you got a national. ⁓
Speaker 1: Actually playing regular season games.
Speaker 2: Due to Canadian language laws, we've got two at Bell Centre in Montreal. Even though they never stopped saying they hate us at every turn, we're doing two more in Vancouver. Which is nice. Just because Rogers owns that as well. ⁓ Just to remind them what they'll never have in Vancouver. So the tempo lost both of their preseason games, but most of us aren't worried about that because they had never played together before. And that's going to happen. Nobody as of right now is giving us playoff. No hopes. There's not a single I can't I couldn't find a single source that was saying We could make the playoffs but but but caveat. I'm gonna get to you right away Vince. Don't worry ⁓ let me finish these last few sentences the Reasoning behind this though. I would argue Has a lot to do with the WNBA power rankings kind of explain this you go to their page. You look at the power rankings There's 15 teams. We're at number 14 And they said a season ago, the Golden State Valkyrie set a new standard for expansion success. Can the tempo find similar success in their inaugural season with two time WNBA champion coach at the helm and a number of veterans to lean on? The tempo could be competitive early this season, but for now, expansion teams begin at the bottom of our rankings and work their way up. Similar to what Golden State did last season. So Sportsnet has us at 12 of 15. and their power rankings, the true power rankings is at the bottom. This will all change. I will also say to you, I also believe there's a little bit, just a little bit, a teensy-winty bit of the usual anti-Toronto bias in all of this because nobody's paying attention to what goes on up here and just we don't get into the same mix. And an example of that is even though Kiki Rice went in the draft fairly high,
Speaker 1: Yeah, 6 overall from UCF.
Speaker 2: She's nowhere to be found on the rookie of the year beliefs list or the odds for it. So I think come a few games in, you might see a lot of this prognostication flip and be like, ⁓ tempo, aren't that bad actually? Wait a minute. Because I don't think anyone's paying attention to this. Sykes is number 28 on ESPN's top 50 WNBA players list currently. Mabry is 31. Both of those players, by the way, are ours. Two players, these two players score around 15 points and 15.9 points a game. The Portland Fire is our fellow expansion team. They have no players in the top 50, but also seem to be riding the idea of like, let's get a draft pick again. And they're number one players, honestly, Canadian. So, you know, they stole the Canadian from us. So nuts to your asthma. I put a bird on it. Okay. So with all that. Vince, I want a prediction speaking to 12, 15, 14 out of 15. What is a successful season position wise at the end of regular season and what's a uh-oh fail?
Speaker 1: ⁓ fail is if you are in the draft pick hunt. I mean, if you're looking for a lottery pick, the top five pick, then I think you are in a bit of trouble. ⁓ I think the ceiling is the last.
Speaker 2: Worst in Portland? What's a ceiling? Like the Raptors go out in the first round? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's like the eighth seed is what you're looking for, the last player spot. ⁓
Speaker 2: Prediction.
Speaker 3: Can I make a prediction?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to wait a second. Vince goes first.
Speaker 3: I didn't know if you weren't gonna throw to me because it's basketball. I am interested in this one.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, you've previously stated you and I are going to pay attention to Okay, wait, Vince, where do think they land?
Speaker 1: I I want hope, so I'm going with eighth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Peg, hit me with your thigh.
Speaker 3: Champions right out of the gate. I'd put money on it
Speaker 2: Oh god. would be amazing. Hey, I mean. Wait, is there a Toronto tragedy that we should know about? Yeah, know something that we don't. Oh yeah, that tragedy. Yeah, John Shaka happened, so the tempo is going to get into the fight. That's right.
Speaker 1: a two-time champion. the sports teams. The NHL's rigging this. That meant spilling the strings.
Speaker 2: I would, I also am going to steer to you and say, I want eight. I wanna squeeze into eight. I just think, it'd be so great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of these negative things comes from the whole aspect of Golden State did it last year. know, like it's not going to happen again sort of thing. I think that's BS. Every team's do it on their merit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Good. Vince, not to say dark horse, but because people are paying attention to like the million dollar back or because people pay that maybe. Yeah. Who's who's your who's your player? You're watching this season. They'll be like, hey, this could actually swing it in a different direction if they if they start to heat up.
Speaker 1: ⁓ Sykes. Simply put, mean, this is, you you could see from what they did in the expansion draft and how they protect her, Nera Sibley is going to be important, right? If you ask me what my concerns are, two things. One is chemistry, because you're putting a whole bunch of players who've never played together together. Some of them have some experience playing together, but, you know, most of them have not done that. So that's a concern. And the other thing is, Bigs, mean, forward centers, we do have a lack of depth and a lack of experience. I like some of the moves that they're making in terms of developing bigs, like even Muriela Furosa, who they signed to be the developmental player, who's a big center. Those are all good moves for the future, right? Yeah. But right now you are hoping Neera is healthy. and she was going to concussed at the first preseason game. That's important. Also, Tammy Fegbenle, who played for Golden State as their starting center is going to be our starting center. How well she plays will matter. So that's really and how Tierney Kay, our second round pick develops. All of that. Those are the players that I would pay attention to, because if they play well, we've got a shot.
Speaker 2: Alright great. I'm throwing it.
Speaker 3: I'm this season like a goddamn Real Housewives season. I'm getting so invested in these athletes and then I get to watch them fight each other like once a week.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I read a couple things this week that I-
Speaker 3: Compete against each other, not fight.
Speaker 2: Julia Lohan from The Sparks, with The Sparks was interesting and then she went over and did a fun stint in Europe and was able to pull off a women's final six MVP.
Speaker 1: Yeah, also if
Speaker 2: If she, yes, that's what I was gonna go with. Like considering our coach and the style of play, if that can work and you get Kiki even at.
Speaker 1: And also like 85.
Speaker 2: He sent yeah college ball kiki. I think you're interested. I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: That's a good point too. They're both great passers. I mean you got that Yeah, protect the ball that seems to be an important aspect of it and also some people look at nurse and Kia nurse and They're like, well, that's a Canadian signing but no, she's a great ⁓
Speaker 3: She's fantastic. Even I know her and I don't watch basketball.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nurse is great. I think that that team is also going to have a blue jays vibe. I media. Yeah, they're really great at it. There's a lot of fun things. I'm foreshadowing my appreciation.
Speaker 3: 100 % Yes, there's another player asking for recommendations on where to eat and then she goes and then she does her little review. ⁓ that's adorable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're great. I actually really think that this team has vibes and the other thing too that I always talk about.
Speaker 1: That's what Okamoto
Speaker 2: I think that the thing that people forget about sports championship teams or teams that get to the playoffs or teams that have great years and that kind of came out of nowhere is it's hardly ever the stars. It's always like, where'd Ernie Clement come from? Where did like, know, I'm like, yeah, when I was a kid, like Joey Kosher scored a backhand up top, you know,
Speaker 3: Yes, 100%.
Speaker 1: players.
Speaker 2: where you keep the frozen foods and you're just like, what? Joey Kosher, huh? In the fucking Stanley Cup final? You know, like against Philadelphia, Darren McCarty did ⁓ a breakaway goal he wouldn't be able to do again, like if you tried. It's those weird things that like, it's those weird moments of other players stepping up, other players doing well. And even with the Raps loss, ⁓ Allen, who's Cleveland's? Jarnallet. you. It's good thing it's first name. Like, that's why they won that game. Nothing to do with like Hardin and there. ⁓
Speaker 3: They were rocky Maya via and then for like one game. They were the wrong
Speaker 2: really hope the people at home are appreciating the deep cut wrestling things that are happening on this program tonight. We've got so many.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, RIPCAD.
Speaker 2: Okay, as we wind ourselves down here, ⁓ I have one rant on the way out. Okay. I need not like us to stop being used.
Speaker 3: That's why they do it if we didn't care
Speaker 2: But it's all stupid and
Speaker 1: That's a whole bunch of white people playing it, dude. That's the whole thing. And I'm like, do you understand what he's saying?
Speaker 2: This is the problem, okay? It's never been used correctly. In 2024, in the US-Canada Olympic basketball teams, they did it, okay? They won 86-72. By the way, that team's got like LeBron and Steph Curry, and it's like you won by like seven, like get out
Speaker 3: You shouldn't have destroyed them like the red wings playing the children on South Park.
Speaker 1: The funny part is they lost.
Speaker 3: Yes!
Speaker 1: The brunch bill, Gabe.
Speaker 2: First time, that's the first time it's used as a troll and I think we would all agree like maybe slow your roll, right? But but that's the best you can at least be like a bunch of black Americans Screw this Canada. You're like, all right, fair enough. Yeah The second time though is maybe the dumbest Argentine used it when they beat can on July 9th at the Copa America finals and on on actual social media with the Argentinian players like excited post-school, they had like not like us as like a header. Like not even makes sense. By the way, aside subplot pop-up video fact, that was the name of our, one of our production companies. We turned that and then I was like, all right. So there's a secondary like, oof to that for me. But the dumbest thing this week that Vince and I, I went off and Vince's DMs about. is I'm a nerd, I'm of a certain color persuasion, white, and ⁓ I like my music, I like my boomer music. The Cleveland Cavaliers mascot is a Moon Dog. The reason why it's named Moon Dog is Alan Freed, the 50s DJ who got into a payola scandal, who was basically taking money from record companies to pay.
Speaker 1: Yes
Speaker 2: Records and ended up dying as an alcoholic because he could never get back to the top of rock and roll mountain But is often considered the creator of the phrase rock and roll is often considered one of the first people But he did a lot of shady shit like he would to get records on he'd be like I need to I should be a co-writer of that song and he would take publishing Exactly so he like Chuck Berry Maybelline Alan free took
Speaker 3: or whatever.
Speaker 2: co-writing of Chuck Berry's Maybelline. Fast forward to 2026 when we lose a game, Moon Dogs dancing to Not Like Us in a sea of white people at a stadium. And I'm just like, does anything mean anything? Like, what are we doing? Anyways, that was my rant of Not Like Us. Can we stop using Not Like Us to troll gay? If you're a white people, if you're like, if you're the whites.
Speaker 3: You're a white people.
Speaker 2: ⁓ over appreciate interpretation really fast not being american meg over appreciated under appreciate vids under appreciated over appreciated not being american
Speaker 3: Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Underappreciated indeed.
Speaker 2: Of course. Shapiro. think the desire to distance myself from the current US president made me more proud of the social dynamics and values in Canada. It's part of what made moving here so compelling. I keep saying this. When is the influx of Americans that are terrified going to help our sports teams? And apparently it already did with Mark Shapiro. Love that. You guys brought this up a little minute ago, but I'm going to ask you broader in a more broad section of this.
Speaker 1: Brought a Rick kiss.
Speaker 2: Yes, are we speaking of men who? Jennifer great, okay, so so My question to you is if you go to a bar with somebody does their drink order matter Do you judge them? Do you care? If they get a coffee
Speaker 3: ⁓ anyway- No.
Speaker 2: Do you care? here's my question. A coffee order, over appreciated, under appreciated.
Speaker 3: Underappreciated.
Speaker 2: Wait, underappreciated? You think it should be appreciated?
Speaker 3: Yeah, why is why sophisticated?
Speaker 2: I like it
Speaker 1: haven't had a cup of coffee since 2012.
Speaker 3: What about like a tea? Would you order a tea at a bar?
Speaker 2: I
Speaker 1: So, to not know what my skin color is, I am obviously steeped in teeth.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting in a teacup right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right here
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: No, that's yeah, if you if you went to a bar if the three of us I am and you ordered ⁓ a tea Are you an herbal or an earl grey? Either way dope as hell
Speaker 1: colonized.
Speaker 2: What level of colonized are you?
Speaker 3: Yeah
Speaker 1: Yes. Is it from the country or not is what I gauge my teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Where I'm going with this is they did a fun social thing on the tempos. ⁓ What's coffee order? What's your tea? What's going on? And you guys talked about tempo rookie Tien Kee being like pretty good on the social. She's so good. Yeah, you saw that? She's so good. She was like, I've been to Timmy's a couple of times now. She knows what she's doing. She listened to whoever the media training was. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Or maybe she's just a cool person.
Speaker 2: ⁓ God, I want that to be true. I desperately want it to be true.
Speaker 3: She's just a cool person.
Speaker 2: ⁓ Guys taking the TTC 47 times in a month overrated over appreciate underappreciated
Speaker 3: I- the person who does that is underappreciated. are a hero. Unless they are the head of the TTC, like, commission or the chair or whatever, you shouldn't be to that every single day. You shouldn't be allowed to take any- you shouldn't be allowed to walk. Get on a bus.
Speaker 2: Anyone who pays 47 TTC fares in a month using the same payment method will be able to ride for free for the duration of that month afterwards. So once you reach the 47 trip mark now, you have to still tap so you have proof that you got on in a whole nine yards, but it will get deducted. So even if you are...
Speaker 3: in the free month. sub is free.
Speaker 2: Truly and just remember though you gotta tap or the inspector will check your fare So don't don't be don't get the poo inspectors mad at you ⁓ The side hustles of a millionaire underrated underappreciated
Speaker 3: Bye. CC is awful. What's the side hustle? Absolutely matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just-
Speaker 2: A glance at Mr. Tyler Heineman for a second. He's got a cameo profile where he's rated 4.9, 4.95. He has 51 separate reviews. He has, he charges $34.68 for a personal video. While his business video rate, wait, hold on, a business video rate goes up to $693. If you just want like a, how are you? $34.
Speaker 3: Because next week Tyler Heineman would be the third person on this podcast if it was only 34 bucks. I would pay him to cover me for two weeks.
Speaker 2: Yeah
Speaker 1: That's 70 bucks. ⁓ Anyways, so
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. Just bring your phone onto the dugout. can participate live.
Speaker 2: Underappreciated. By the way, in the group chat this week, because this got brought up, I found out because of this, or was reminded, guess, because of this, that Tyler Heineman moonlights as ⁓ a magician. And then when they brought a magician in, he was like, Tyler Heineman booked me. And then he does a magic trick with the guy. And I'm just like, what is Tyler Heineman doing on his off season? And how can I join?
Speaker 1: I know that.
Speaker 3: What happened here?
Speaker 2: How dare you? I got my favorite story of week. Are you ready for it? Remember how we talked about how the Royals are like the only offensively worse team than us? So the Royals hadn't been doing great. And this kind of like, ⁓ this kind of hurt. much like you just said, get the fifth sub free, get the fifth sub free kind of a vibe. Yeah. There's a food chain out there called Hawaiian Brothers. And Hawaiian Brothers was like, oof, we're going to take advantage of this. And they basically said, if the Royals score six or more runs at home, fans can redeem a free lunch meal plate, which is usually like 12 to 16 bucks.
Speaker 1: in a city. I don't know man, that's not cool.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what happens is the Royals score six runs in four games straight. They scored in four games straight and the Hawaiian Brothers people are like, I don't know, this isn't great, maybe we messed up. I don't know if this is a smart thing that we did. So they had to release this statement on social media. ⁓
Speaker 1: Good, good.
Speaker 2: An open letter to our guests, rewards members and Royals fans. Well, this got a little out of hand when we launched the plates for plates with the Kansas City Royals. We hope for some fun, a little buzz and a few free plates along the way. You guys took it from there. You packed our restaurants, lit up social media and turned this into something way bigger than a promotion. Don't worry. We, loved it for every second, but it's been wild. Our restaurant teams have been absolutely crushed in the best possible way. We're working around the clock to keep up with the response in the lines. So to keep plates per plates for sustainable, we're going to have to make an adjustment. When the Royals plate six or four runs at home, the rewards members will unlock a free classic plate lunch with the purchase of a plate lunch. So it went to buy one, get one. And I was like, buy one, get one. why, like what happened to these poor people? Guys, they lost 700,000 dollars.
Speaker 1: Hey.
Speaker 2: ⁓ no! Karma is a real There's pictures of people lying down the street. is City was like free food.
Speaker 3: Just like the Chum
Speaker 2: Yeah
Speaker 3: Yeah. ⁓ my God. they learn nothing from our podcast?
Speaker 1: Bermuda show.
Speaker 2: Nothing. Full stop. That was the deal. They just anyways. So congrats to the folks at Hawaiian Brothers for having to walk that back as nicely as they did. But oof, Kansas City, you are not messing around. Free food. Four games, seven hundred thousand dollars lost.
Speaker 3: really sad, sad about the economic state of our country.
Speaker 2: Right? Right? Yeah. Yeah. All right, y'all. Final time. We did overappreciate, underappreciate it. And here's where we're ending up. Your own appreciation. Give me your appreciation parade and start us off. Meg, we've got a dog in tow. Is going to help? Is Ripley going to help us out? For not going to the bathroom for these two hours.
Speaker 3: appreciate Ripley. She's just a little fussy. appreciate the newly crowned WKRP in Cincinnati. So there have been many WKRP's since the show that ended in 1982, 1983, think, but never in Cincinnati. And this week there's an official WKRP actually broadcasting out of Cincinnati. So I appreciate the shit out of that.
Speaker 2: Guys, I wanna go work there so bad. Like, I wanna pack up. ⁓ yeah.
Speaker 3: What would your DJ name be?
Speaker 2: I would just be Danny Fever. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would just be Danny Theeve.
Speaker 2: I would stick with like Johnny Fever. Like Johnny Fever was great name. I can't be Venus Flytrap.
Speaker 3: Johnny Fever? Would you be Dr. Dan Fever?
Speaker 2: Dr. Detroit ⁓
Speaker 1: Don't jump ahead dead because I said I've thrown out my appreciation and I'm gonna appreciate
Speaker 2: because what makes This weird thing, Vince and I bonded on early in our working relationship, we became friends. think Howard Hesseman may have brought us together.
Speaker 1: We were like, look at that going, has anybody else actually seen-
Speaker 2: in this movie.
Speaker 3: My brother got so mad at me because I taped over his VHS copy of Dr. Detroit with a Monday Night Raw episode. That's
Speaker 1: In fairness, the 29 raw episode.
Speaker 3: Okay, no, to be fair, that Monday Night Raw episode was the night that Stone Cold took the Zamboni out to the ring. So that was an important Raw to see.
Speaker 2: Yes. was a key moment in the history of our culture.
Speaker 3: And of my wife, Dan.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. Was that rigged? I'm just kidding. ⁓
Speaker 1: No, it was not. You really did take that, Zembura.
Speaker 2: release.
Speaker 3: They're not like coy about it. They're upfront that it's rigged. I respect that. That's why I like wrestling so much.
Speaker 2: That's why you like rest It's like I can trust in its riggedness. That's Vince what's your appreciation parade float tits weak? What are you riding on? ⁓
Speaker 1: I already appreciated Dr. Detroit, that's it. ⁓
Speaker 2: ⁓ really? We're going to Okay. My appreciation then to end this little show of ours this week. ⁓ Our good friend, Brit Bundles, Britney Sykes wrote on the old social media, legit my first day slash attempt driving in Canada got pulled over by the cops because I was driving straight on King Street. Cop could tell I had no clue. But hey, now he's a tempo fan. Win-win. Welcome to driving in Toronto. So those of you who don't know, which I mean, why are you listening to Toronto-centric podcast? But you just have to make a series of right-hand turns downtown. If it becomes a mess, you can't keep going straight. It's a nightmare. There's a long stretch where you got to like figure it out. And it's so easy to not figure out. There are signs everywhere, but we're going to give her a break because she...
Speaker 3: But there are signs for all sorts of sign things everywhere, it's hard. It's difficult, there's too many signs. Half of them are parking signs.
Speaker 2: many. I was gonna say that's the the superstars of the WNBA just like us I'm Dan Spear and that's Meg Damon. That's Vince Kazer Murphy We appreciate a very special episode of Toronto appreciation night that took you from rigged to traffic Much like Toronto We hope to see you next week. Meg is gonna be away for a couple weeks. She is getting a whole house underway. She's got boxes all around her right now. We appreciate her on the phone.
Speaker 3: the show he means. you.
Speaker 2: Enjoy the move, all of it, because what is better than moving? And we look forward to you coming back to the show completely rested and not stressed at all if I know anything about moving.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll miss you guys. the two weeks of- for sure.
Speaker 2: day. ⁓ Yeah, however Hey Vince upside a Stay tuned so if you're if you are looking to talk about whether the moon landing was fake or not It's three weeks three weeks from now is when we do that. All right, everybody. Have a good weekend ⁓
Speaker 3: not gonna read this shit.
Speaker 1: Right there.
Speaker 1: Of course this was a coke idea.
Speaker 2: Meg, what's our... Wow, sound effects too. You don't make extra for that. Meg, second clue.
Speaker 3: Always fresh, never frozen.
Speaker 2: And your final clue tonight is hear me out. I think the earth might be flat. We're going to take you back to what I would argue before the maps, before the breakdowns of the 2020s. In 1985, Patrick Ewing goes to the New York Knicks and To this day, on comments sections, in sports blogs, people truly believe the 1985 lottery, the first ever lottery, was rigged. And I truly believe this lottery sets the unfortunate precedent for all lotteries to follow. Because if you don't know, the NHL does not do this for another decade. We aren't doing lotteries in the 80s in the NHL.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: David Stern comes in to a situation of, uh-oh, SpaghettiOs. He succeeded Larry O'Brien as commissioner in 84 and decided, you know what? I think that we should try to figure out a way to stop teams from tanking. And we also need to get some more buzz for fans and media. And for the reason of why, I'm gonna get to that in a minute. And that why reason kind of blew me away. But during this whole situation, there was a lot of conversation, including in a 1985 May 6th edition of New York Times to be like, the best thing to happen to the NBA is if the New York Knicks get this pick. The New York Knicks are in trouble. The New York Knicks are in disarray. Very similar, honestly, to the Maple Leafs in this situation. It's really similar, where they're like, ⁓ damn it. And sure enough, the Knicks get Patrick Ewing. But this is like a Zapruder film for NBA fans in a way that I just didn't realize. There are multiple conspiracy theories about this pick. And it all basically goes around the idea that there must have been, like, just like tonight with the Leafs, this week with the Leafs, just like every draft, there's a sleight of hand. Are the ping pong balls heavier? Magic, yeah. A couple of years ago in the pandemic era, guys mass, thank God for him. They're doing the lottery and he drops the balls in one by one, right? The ping pong balls go into the thing and it's like, and what they were doing in the, in their pandemic years was like Gary Bittman would stand awkwardly six feet away from the guy. the man who was just his whole job was to put ping pong balls in the would show Gary the logo. And then Gary would go. The Atlanta Thrasher's. And you'd be like, okay. So he would say this, but then when the New York Rangers ball came, it fell and it went right into the tube. And the guy had to like awkwardly get it back out, because like, I'm done. And everyone on the internet went like, that's a weighted ball. That ball is heavier. This poor guy, all he had to do was drop a ping pong ball and he messed it up. And the entire internet went to like, well, we know what ball is weighted. And this stems from this Patrick Ewing moment. Conspiracy theory number one is if you slow the video down and people do this, there's like gifts and stuff, one of the corners of the envelope is bent. And so people believe that there was a little bent envelope and then when David Stern reached his hand in, he was looking for the bent envelope. The guy who puts the envelopes in the big drum, it's like a literal like cartoon size clear drum that they literally did the crank with. And it's a bunch of envelopes in this drum. He takes his hand and he puts them in. And when he does it, he bangs one of the envelopes. I'm sure it was a mistake, but like when all things go sideways, things start to look away, right? The guy who banged that, unfortunately, okay. He was from the accounting firm of Ernst & Whitney and they were the auditing firm for golf in Western and the auditing firm of golf in Western, follow me with the string on the board. is the same team that owns the Knicks.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So there you go. Done.
Speaker 2: He bangs the one thing, the most hilarious conspiracy theory that has like zero evidence at all. You could at least see the bent corner and the banging is that it was frozen. So that they froze the envelope. It's the one envelope. So when you reach in, you're like, ⁓ that's clearly it. People really truly believe that there's absolutely no way to prove it. There's absolutely no way.
Speaker 1: It is funny. Yes. One envelope, yeah.
Speaker 2: There's like people that slow down like David Stern does a big sigh before he reaches into the bundle and they're like, oh, he's waiting for that frozen. I don't know. F and no, it's ridiculous. The point of all of this though, and the thing that I did not know and the thing that makes you go, yee, the second they're done with all of this and he goes to the scrum of reporters, they were like, how'd you think it went? It's the first ever lottery, right? So question number one, how did it go? This was what Stern said, we were very pleased with the lottery. If the interest was great, people are talking about the lottery instead of drugs. And when I read that, I was like, what the hell? Like I'm born in 83, I'm born two years before this, so I don't know what's going on. So then I looked this up. In 1980, the NBA believed that 40, anywhere between 40 and 75 % of their players were fucking cocaine. To the point where like,
Speaker 1: Yeah Joe
Speaker 2: people died, were like multiple interventions. There was a massive coke problem in the NBA. So they were honestly trying to stunt this to stop people from paying attention to the coke problem. So we have lotteries because the NBA had a coke problem. This is Toronto Pre- Welcome everybody to Toronto Appreciation Night. I'm Dan Spear and alongside every week my two friends, it's Megan Dingman and Vince Case of We're Worthy. It's a show where we talk about the past scenes, memes and Toronto's teams. This week, we've got so much to get into, but I am going to invite you all to jump into the shit show that was the Toronto Maple Leafs getting a pick. Do you want me to add one more little side fun note for that So a few years ago, Jim Rome, whatever, were you pronouncing the last name? He had Stern on, David Stern, and he asked him about it. It's just like 30 years later or whatever, 25, whatever. And ⁓ Stern was not happy he asked about it, like really deeply.
Speaker 1: Remember? ⁓ yeah! That was Jim Boombi's ⁓
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. He said, ⁓ he asked him about it and Rome said, was the fix in for the lottery, be honest. And Stern responded, I have two answers for that. I'll give you the easy one. No. And a statement, shame on you for asking. And when Rome was like, okay, but we have to talk about fake, this fake stuff because like people really believe it. He's like, your fan base really believes it. To which Stern, instead of engaging in that, just kept repeating. I'm not even making this up. Have you stopped beating your wife? Have you stopped beating your wife? Which is that old school for those of you who don't know, maybe younger people listening, that's a very old school politics joke. I don't know it's a joke. It's kind of an idiom of like that's an entrapment question. It's like you ask somebody like, when did you stop beating your wife? And then, you know, they do however they answer. It's like an admission of guilt.
Speaker 1: out of question.
Speaker 2: So people kind of always use that crassly as like, is yellow journalism. This is shoddy journalism. But it's also just awkward because A, that hasn't aged well. And B, it just was a really bad time to do that. And I think C, 2012, we're still not quite there yet in mainstream understanding about what's about to get unleashed in the next decade with social media. Like, we're still in that bubble. Vince and I started our online Young Turks show in that era. Right around there and like you start to see like ⁓ this is problem. Like we have a problem with misinformation We were problem with disinformation and like this stuff's gonna travel which I open up to That's not a great look when the Leafs won this week. What did you immediately think when you saw it? Like this is not, whether you believe it's rigged or not, it's not a crazy, like people across the spectrum were like, that's fishy. Like that's kind of sus. ⁓ Thoughts around the table. Not necessarily want to give creants a rigged or not rigged if you don't want to, but like, what did you think when the Leafs got to number one pick? Vince.
Speaker 1: Well, you can understand why people would jump to that. mean, but at the same time, if you're making a direct comparison to the New York Knicks, I would say the Austin Matthews ⁓ pick would have been more of a comparison than this one, because again, know, Shannon Plann and all that stuff and everything's starting to roll in the positive direction. And you've been in a dead zone of not making the playoffs, you know, except for one time for quite a long time after a successful error. So that would have been the perfect example of it. But for me, in regards to this whole thing is that like we've discussed this before here. It's like it's not like Leafs fans like the Knicks fans of the 80s are not going to show up for the games. The Leafs fans are going to spend the money and do all this stuff. So why does it matter that the Leafs win anything or not?
Speaker 2: I'll give you the motivation on the conspiracy angle. I don't personally believe it, but it is ridiculous. The Leafs have been not in the playoffs for two years. Exactly. And both times they got their number one pick. Like, that's not great. But I will give you the conspiracy theory if you want it, which is who owns Hockey Night in Canada? Who owns the team? Who owns the Leafs? What are the profits when the Leafs don't make the playoffs? What are the profits in the viewership when the Leafs do make the playoffs? And that's your conspiracy theory. So all the Leaf fans that are really pissed because they're like, I hate to break it to you, like Gretzky high stick and like Betman's obsession with expansion of the States and like it's not right. There is there are real reasons why you would want the Leafs to do well from a business standpoint. Once again, not trying to lay ground for for conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: Fair enough. also conspiracies come out right like it's it's never gonna be hidden so i don't i don't think
Speaker 2: Meg. Meg, you felt it was fishy. You were with the folks that were like, this feels a little on the nose.
Speaker 3: Okay, ⁓ but I have to contextualize my opinion on this by saying that I am a believer in the Lou Des quote, anytime you sell tickets to a competition, it's no longer a real sport. And Lou Des was a very famous wrestler. Lou Des had a theory that, he was specifically talking about boxing, that boxing was fixed. But he meant it to all sports. ⁓ And- I have just noticed in my 35 years of being able to pay attention to sports that they often line up with a lot of news events. ⁓ I won't go down this rabbit hole, but I have a lot of like terrible events with cities winning ⁓ championships. So much so that I predicted predicted the Houston Astros winning the world series before this season had started because there had been a terrible shooting in Houston right before the baseball season.
Speaker 2: Now I'm really interested
Speaker 3: And I made a little bit of money off that and said this prediction at a family gathering. And I'm now known as some weird like baseball guru also predicted the Patriots winning the Superbowl right after the Boston Marathon. ⁓
Speaker 2: Did you take a bath in 2001 when the Yankees lost the time?
Speaker 3: I wasn't old enough to bet. ⁓ So anyway, long story long, I am a long-standing believer in that there are some sports moments that are fixed. ⁓
Speaker 2: So interesting. This is a whole subplot. ⁓
Speaker 3: I didn't know we had. believes that a lot of sports are fixed. But to Vince's point, saying that the more Ewing-esque moment was the Matthews pick only tells me that they've done this before. When the narrative lined up with where the climax of sports should be, they hit. So last time we ended up getting Matthews right at the apex of the story of the Leafs. And now we're getting it at the, you know, it's the apex of the interest in the Leafs. Like they're so bad, their captain is talking about leaving. Look at their idiot GM. Now they've hired a criminal. This is awful. If I was writing their story, of course they would win. And sports tends to happen that way.
Speaker 1: But what I'm going to ask you is if you've got the idiot GM as we all agree on, isn't this going to be a disaster? Are we trying to sink the leaves quickly?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Get rid of me!
Speaker 3: Okay, but the Leafs are now the Titanic and you don't know that the Titanic sunk, right? So all those people are watching this season now being like, well, who are they going to pick and what are they, how are they going to do? How are they going to perform? People who did not care about them are going to be watching to see how this, you know, are we, yes, which sports fans don't love to hate watch. Come on. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Vancouver and Calgary. For this show, I pay attention, I started paying attention to like the different fan shows that exist online and stuff. So I went to the, I've got my like YouTube sets and all that. Oh my god, the flames in Vancouver fans were apoplectic. there's a, Steve Dane won the-
Speaker 3: That's true. They're insane. That's why I don't like them.
Speaker 2: Steve Dango and the boys are like going 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, and then they like lose their minds and that clip goes a little viral. But on the flip side, the Calgary show is like anybody but the Leafs, just anyone but the Leafs. And they're just like watching it. And the one guy's like broadcasting from the bar. He's in the bar and then they let him disappear and then they're like, you gotta be effing kidding me. And then the guy just comes back on phone, like Megan is tonight. He just comes back on the phone and he's just like. Are you kidding me? Like you look so broke. Like you look so distraught. And like it's so dumb because like honestly like they were like I thought we had a better show. The difference between Calgary and Toronto is like 8 % chance of getting it, 9.2 % chance of getting
Speaker 3: You It's like Vancouver like 40 or like 20 percent likely to get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But they're all shitty percentages, right? ⁓
Speaker 3: That's true. But also, I just want to point out, have we ever seen a draft lottery poll by somebody who wasn't an employee? Isn't it always a guy? It's not like you won the WKRP in Cincinnati contest to come and pick the Columbus Blue Jackets first round draft pick. Have we ever seen this? has it always been a guy?
Speaker 2: They're all plants. It's like those bad ⁓ fake illusionists who are like, are you, is your mom dead? ⁓
Speaker 3: I can hear from your side.
Speaker 1: It's a family member. It starts with an
Speaker 3: There's a strange, like speaking of magicians, if you were not looking at the barrel, do you think you could have found that folded small corner in a pile of paper envelopes if you weren't looking?
Speaker 1: Didn't expect
Speaker 2: If it was frozen. Yeah.
Speaker 3: because they had to graduate to frozen maybe because these guys couldn't feel the corners or whatever unless you were a guy who had practiced it
Speaker 1: Ow.
Speaker 2: That's so funny. I don't think it's rigged.
Speaker 3: This is gonna come up again in the show, folks.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a point. I believe I'm starting to believe this now. mean, David, David Stern disappears for a week right before the draft. What is he doing?
Speaker 3: practicing finding the fault. Yeah, have you ever done like a card trick? It's hard to do in the moment. Okay, but also I want to say that Jim Romy should have asked him, what do you think about the conspiracy and not was the fix in? Because we would have got way more from that second from that first answer than we got from. Of course he's gonna say no.
Speaker 2: think you're gonna go off from either of them. don't think you're gonna either
Speaker 3: tell with like body language is like, does he play? Cause that's something where he could play into it. And if he doesn't play into that, he's guilty.
Speaker 1: To reiterate, I do not believe in any...
Speaker 2: I believe they're very few
Speaker 3: That's a whole separate episode. didn't convince you. Everything is fair.
Speaker 2: ⁓ I really, I don't, I tend to believe, think Vince and I are probably on the same page on this from the politics days of covering stuff. ⁓ When I was a kid, I believed in a few conspiracy theories as a young person. And then as an adult, I met people in power. And I was like, we're all.
Speaker 3: Yes! That's a funny quote, but there are people in power who have hid a lot of terrible things.
Speaker 2: But they're not though, because the only reason why you know is because it came out. Like they tried to hide it, but it always comes out. So that's where I'm like, things like the 85 draft, it would have come out by now. think you would.
Speaker 3: I just want people to know that it's not all conspiracy theories I believe in. I definitely know that the world is round.
Speaker 2: The other thing about that, yeah, you got vaccinated.
Speaker 3: I'm not an idiot. I just think Bigfoot is a quaint idea, but I'm not afraid to go Oregon Forest.
Speaker 2: That was my favorite weird sub-tangent.
Speaker 1: Harry and the Hendersons ⁓
Speaker 3: You
Speaker 2: I also really liked that Neil in the newsroom when Sorca made that show that was like our entire subplot that Neil was like no I really think that there's something to this Bigfoot idea.
Speaker 1: Harry and the Henderson's director is the same guy who directed Angels in the Outfield.
Speaker 2: On the connectivity like, you know, where you point to the board with all the strings and the cards. Yeah. Gary Bettman did work under David Stern at that period of time. That's a ton of a trick! Alright, alright. I was going to go around the six and do some things before we got to our main topic of the Leafs, but I feel like we're just living in Leafs right now. So I want to start before we go into Chica and, you know, junior
Speaker 1: Alright. Yes
Speaker 2: You know chicken cheeseburger of an ownership. Here's my first question though since we're on draft Keep it or ditch it around the table. You keep the pick or do you sell it to try to move yourself up in the world?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you this. Are you asking Vince and Megan that question or are you asking John Chaika the question? Because there's two different answers to that.
Speaker 2: Give me both your answer what you would do and then what you think the leaves will screw up and do
Speaker 3: You
Speaker 2: So Meg, start us off. What would you do with the pig?
Speaker 3: So I 100 % would use it as a bargaining chip and I would trade and I would try to do a like, okay, Vince is giving me the only one who understands but I would build my mid card. I would not go after a Roman Reigns right now. I my dressing room with Chris Jericho's right now. What beliefs are you?
Speaker 2: By the way, following up your conspiracy theory rant with wrestling, maybe not helping your cause. ⁓
Speaker 3: They started the conspiracy with a rest. Anyway, feel like I use it as a bargaining chip to build my team up from the middle out. They are absolutely going to pick this kid because that's what everyone's going to watch.
Speaker 2: Keep going.
Speaker 1: Which kid though? ⁓ Gavin or? But Ivar, mean, mats! Come on, why wouldn't you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're picking Gavin.
Speaker 3: No, it's I, it's, no.
Speaker 1: He's also the safer pick, isn't
Speaker 2: Hamburg? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Because this holds to Gavin's game apparently, or whatever. I dunno.
Speaker 3: No. do you think?
Speaker 1: I think you are absolutely right. That's exactly how John Czajka would think too, is I think ⁓ he's going because he is that traitor guy, right? Like look at his track record.
Speaker 2: He's a b-
Speaker 3: Cheating is a huge risk.
Speaker 1: The two things, I mean, two mottos that this guy has seems to be like, you know, no trade is a bad trade. And if you're not trading, you're losing.
Speaker 3: Also YOLO seems to be what this man is talking
Speaker 1: That's true too. So what I'm thinking is he's looking at San Jose and going, hey, look, they've got a lot of prospects, forward centers, all these things. They need defense. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take Chase Reed and then I'm going to dangle Chase Reed to San Jose because I think Chase Reed's who they want. So there's no, Right, right. But he's so
Speaker 3: Right. That's his.
Speaker 2: ⁓ my god, some of the fan proposed trades this week. I was like, read a book. ⁓
Speaker 3: Terribly written version of that moneyball scene where Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill are talking about who to get and blah blah blah and it's just like, ugh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something something.
Speaker 2: But it's also just like, sometimes fans are just like, it's like, yeah, okay, great. Love it. I actually really like shout out to Ray Ferraro this week who like actually just had enough on one of the shows. Ray Fink? And no, that's a different thing. That's a whole other thing we don't watch anymore because of transphobia.
Speaker 1: We should...sing.
Speaker 2: No, we should not watch that movie.
Speaker 1: No, ⁓
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, bless you.
Speaker 3: Also, I think I know where you're going and Gina Reda is also on that road.
Speaker 2: Where I was going actually was for the Gino Reta thing was good for asking questions press conference I'm not going there just yet Ray Ferraro got on his horse this week and it was like I'm done with everybody being like well We just got to get a really great defenseman who can move the puck. It's like where? Who are these people you're talking about like there's nobody in the free agent market like that. There's nobody like
Speaker 3: get a goalie. Name two available goalies right now. that's, you're not, done. We gotta get a Jose Canseco. Look at this shit.
Speaker 2: It made me laugh though, because it was.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some of that with the Leafs this week got like really out of hand. All we got to do is just fill a sort of the Raptors dialogue too. We're like, just need a big man and a guy that can shoot three. ⁓
Speaker 1: Bye!
Speaker 3: Where's my keys? Well, where did you lose them?
Speaker 2: Fight against sports. Like what? ⁓ Yeah. sure. Group table. Yeah. What do we think Jake is going to do? Keep the pick or ditch the pick? He's a trade up for it. And he's going to try to do razzle dazzle right out of the gate.
Speaker 3: YOLO, he uses the pic.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: ⁓ really?
Speaker 2: You think he's trading for it?
Speaker 3: No, no, I think he uses it. picks the kid and he gets the leaf for him and it's a whole.
Speaker 2: I agree with that. I honestly think that he's Yeah, well cuz he's just such a trick like there's no It's sort of the Brad Pitt going back to money ball It's that same scene where it's like, you know Jonah Hill says like, know, this is the kind of thing that managers lose Like when they trade paint. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is this is a thing and I feel like there's no downside to taking the kid it's like
Speaker 1: Do safe?
Speaker 3: for it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just like there's really but there's a huge downside if you don't get yeah, you could be a hero But I if if you were to give me if you were to paint me a picture of a person that was in a position to be To take a risk. It does not look like John Chaka to me. I Don't know. That's my hot take. ⁓ Okay
Speaker 1: The that made you think that way?
Speaker 3: Okay, but
Speaker 2: Okay, hold on. on. Wait, hold on. I want to, I just want to say, yeah, we're going Leafs. We're going to talk about everything. Okay. So I'm take it back to Leafs get out of the playoffs. They've been doing a hunt. Our good friend, Keith Pelly gives an amazing press conference that is heralded by everyone. It's not only just his. Right. Just absolutely.
Speaker 1: oratorial skills.
Speaker 3: I came to it
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. It was that good. me too. And so, make it weird. So...
Speaker 3: It's cute when I do it, not when you it.
Speaker 2: Sexism still exists in some places. There's a brief gap where real hockey people get touted and there were so many rumors of like old school guys that I got on this program and immediately was like well that was all clear bullshit I guess because every single person in the mix is exactly the same hockey person like under Jim Nill under Kenny Holland under like it's like all these guys from like you know the best 101 hockey has existed for the last 30 years. So I was like, guess we're not doing that. We're not doing anything. I called the Leafs there for not doing anything interesting. So I guess my opening statement before I throw to Meg is, okay, Mia Culpa, they did do something interesting. Like I did ask to go do something outside the box and I didn't realize it was going to be.
Speaker 1: You asked for it. You've a fan for two months and you've ruined everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't realize that we're go this far outside the box ⁓ I'll get into my rants about it But I want to open up the floor to Meg who I saw a lot of leaf fans this week Give kind of a ceremonial. I'm out. done. I can't anymore and I you do it on threads a couple of times Start us off with just the emotional roller coaster. That was What the Leafs did in the last week?
Speaker 3: It wasn't a roller coaster for me, Dan. It wasn't a roller coaster at all. I did not get excited about this first round pick at all. I could not have cared less. It didn't surprise me that they won the lottery. Of course they would. Narratively, that's how I would have written it. So, yeah, it didn't surprise me at all. Does not bring me back to wanting to see these people succeed. ⁓ I don't care if John Chaka is the goodwill hunting of the NHL and he's secretly a genius and he's somehow like... spins an incredible team out of this. I don't care because I don't like him. He's a shitty cheater and Peli is a fucking condescending asshole. I do not want to see those two men succeed with the logo on their chests that I loved when I was 10 years old. Fuck those guys. I don't wish them success. I don't like Matthews. I don't really care for this Gavin kid either. To be frank, it's been a horrible year for hockey for women. I don't give a shit about any of them. It's hard to trust any of them. ⁓ an 18 year old upstart? Let's talk to his roommates. I don't give a fuck about any of these new kids coming in. I don't trust any of them. The whole culture is garbage. It's bullshit. And the Leafs are part of that culture too. Like there's MAGA guys on the team. They're owners. They're fucking morons. And then they put poor Matt Sundin, probably the only former Leaf who's willing to have anything to do with them. They tout him out like the dog in the parade, like, look guys, there's still something good about this team. Fuck that, fuck all of them. And the fact that they got that first round pick doesn't change anything for me at all. I hope they end up last. Or you know what? I hope they fucking win. I hope they win and that that parade has just covered me. Asshole, shitty new fans. who don't give a shit about integrity, who don't remember like the good Leafs. Now, whether those guys were good people or not, I was 10. I don't know. And I didn't know then. Maybe Doug Gilmore was a piece of shit. I didn't know what that was when I was 10. But now that I'm 40, I know what a piece of shit looks like in the hockey world, and I will not spend my time or my money supporting them. Fuck them.
Speaker 2: So, about the title of the show.
Speaker 1: So when are we going in the next sleevescape?
Speaker 2: Yeah ⁓
Speaker 3: Never, because we can't afford it because they don't want us there. They only want the rich shitheads who support them even though they're all evil ghouls. And I figured that out when I worked there in like 2009. I've been saying it for years and I'm so glad that they proved me right. Nothing feels better than that to a woman. I gotta tell you.
Speaker 2: The misogyny in sports, but especially in hockey, going back to like Eric Lindros for me, that was like the first time as a kid, I was like, wait, what? What did they do? I lived in an OHL town ⁓ and there's this whole concept of like puck bunnies. ⁓ And I was like, wait, what? And then you like kind of would hear about it. And I'm like, I think that's just sexual harassment actually. I don't even know. I don't think that she's that into this actually. What? and that culture and then of course the hockey Canada scandal. It's been a rough year and a half. Not maybe rough year and a half. It's been a rough period ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to be a female fan. It's just that everyone's realizing it now. Eddie Belfort was like the most beloved goalie and we all knew that he beat the shit out of his wife and we all knew that should matter. But none of you all knew that that should matter. And it's not like it's been a rough year for women. I feel like it's been a rough year for male hockey fans who care because they're like, fuck, we didn't know. We didn't know it was this bad. Whereas we
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, it's kind of more of a reckoning.
Speaker 3: Women sports fans have been talking about it amongst ourselves for years and that's why men didn't want us in the broadcast booths, didn't want us as journalists, because they didn't want us talking about it. We have always known, so it's a rough year for y'all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's been, I guess when I say it's been a rough year, I think it's been like, it's just been the turmoil of, you have these two drooling narratives at all times, which is like more women getting into sports, sports bars for women opening, and like all these great things, and then there's this like colliding train of reality that has been like, nope, we're still pieces of shit, like, sorry. You know, and the hockey, we talked about this at the very first sample thing we did for everybody, which was the awesome Matthews and the Team USA thing and just the misogyny off of that. And then kind of once again, good old Lorne Michaels and his SNL crew of like, let's make a little joke out of it and be like, don't worry, everything's fine. that like seems to be Lorne Michaels' job now is to just like assure white America that everything's okay.
Speaker 1: But it's just a blip. Don't worry.
Speaker 2: Moving away from that conversation and burying it, cause I'm a man, no, I'm moving away from that conversation for a second, which is now that you're the Leafs ⁓ and you've offended a good portion of your base. So like, mean, the most bro-y sports bro that doesn't care about anything Megan just said is also where Megan is with the Leafs. just in a completely for different reasons and different motivations. They just feel like it's been corporatized. It's been, it's just this mess. There's no like in the organization. They've been priced out. There's like a long list of grievances. So Vince, where are you at in terms of what you're, yeah, like you're not a die in the wool of East fan, like where are you at?
Speaker 1: in terms of But if you actually look at the last decade, I've gone to more Leafs games than, you know, any other sporting. No, but what a
Speaker 3: from star bro you don't have prove it you don't have a choice
Speaker 1: Yes. But the reality behind all of this is, you know, I was just thinking about it, it's like a restaurant situation for me, which is like, you go to a place, you know, a lot of people do, you know, same place, you know, every Saturday or something like that. And it's, you know, do it OK, you know, but not doing anything better. than just surviving since, you know, let's say 1967, right? And what happens is they say, ⁓ we're going to get a new manager who's going to do great things. And then you ask them real questions and they say, well, at the last place he was at, well, they did pull the liquor license for a little while. And you go, well, that doesn't happen. Normally, that's a problem. Okay, but it's okay because you know, my restaurant's almost gonna fold so I desperately want something to happen. So I'm okay with that. And then somebody tells you well, the last place he was at also, you know, the health inspector showed up and shut it down, but only for a short period. And you're like, okay, so
Speaker 2: time.
Speaker 1: This guy must be really good if we're ignoring all of these things and still getting him. And then they say, no, no, the reviews for the restaurants was subpar. then, you know, and the profit margins were exactly where we're at right now. That's what he got. And you're like, then why are we taking this fucking risk? Like, seriously, why are we taking this risk? Please tell me.
Speaker 3: is a great question. Why do you think they hired him? Like, do you think that, I think that everyone else they really wanted said no.
Speaker 1: Well, that and I also think is something you know, Dan's just gonna say right now.
Speaker 3: Do you think he was the guide? he the he was the
Speaker 2: Answer, I'm in a monologue on this. So answer, give me your hot take before I
Speaker 1: I take his the same thing Dan will expand upon in a couple of seconds, which is he's the guy who's the yes man who will do whatever you ask him to do.
Speaker 3: Who's the decision?
Speaker 1: Rogers. ⁓
Speaker 3: Rogers, so then how do you what do mean? You don't believe it's like owned and controlled
Speaker 2: Who said that? I think we're all on that page.
Speaker 3: No, that ⁓ it's fixed, I mean.
Speaker 2: Well, because I don't think... I think they got lucky with the pick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Everything I'm about to say will make you double down on that you think that it was fixed I know for sure like there's nothing I'm about to launch into that not gonna make you scream. No, but there's yeah good I want to ask you just before I go into my tangent for fans is when There's one thing because I'm about to get into why I think they do it I think there's a lot of like I think people at home who have certain jobs in certain industries will see a lot of parallel to their own plates and in their jobs. But here's what I will say that I think I wish more people asked this question, similar to how Megan just said about Jim Romy should have asked a different phrasing. ⁓ The Steve Simmons question, don't think was wrong, the Steve Simmons question or the follow-up that I wish more journalists backed him up on was this question. Who were the people that said great things about him? Because if they said great things about them, wouldn't they want, they could say it publicly, right? They'd come out public. We're a week after almost, not like by the time this air.
Speaker 1: Nobody's come out and said, yes, I'm the one who said.
Speaker 3: Supported it. Yeah
Speaker 2: In the era of when certain people were getting called out for all kinds of things, should still be happening, but it did feel like it was more of a period of time in the 2020s. When somebody got accused that people thought, uh-uh, I'm not sure. You heard people out loud put their necks on the line, but that's not true. This is bullshit. I don't believe it. Whether they were right or wrong. Anytime in corporate land where somebody feels like their corporate land uh, mascots are attacked. They come out screaming with their knives out. You'd be like, no way, but he's a great guy. He's my circle, my circle. Cause they're worried about themselves. They're worried about their standing in the country club. They're about crickets, crickets. We're still, I still, there has been not one editorial. Nobody went to the newspaper. Nobody went to their favorite blog. Nobody got on their favorite podcast. I have not seen anyone in the hockey world go, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. We're being kind of shitty to John. Not one person. That's crazy. I can't even think about another sports personality who if if the hammer got dropped on like it did in that press conference by Steve Simmons and by the way, Steve Simmons is also Not exactly like a person that you couldn't Right, so like it's a really easy mark for allies of chica to come out and be like absolutely not i'm still
Speaker 1: There's old ages, but control,
Speaker 3: ⁓ That man has no allies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, man. It's like the Brian Colangelo treatment of... do you say? Tired of Philadelphia and never got a job again.
Speaker 2: You what? Right. And this is the other thing, okay? This is the other thing that I think is a fair question of Chayka that I didn't hear this week enough. Which is like, you...
Speaker 1: You
Speaker 2: Did one of two things. You took your ball and went home and went to Wendy's land and ran your Wendy's. You didn't say, F this, I miss hockey. I'm gonna go exist in my sister's company that I helped found. You'd think you would have gone there. Could you go there though? Did she want you at that company? So that's his background. They started the.
Speaker 3: company.
Speaker 2: the most popular hockey analytics, well, the second or third most popular hockey analytics company, which is, you know, we're gonna do data for you, we're gonna tell you how to do all these things, and his sister's the CEO of that. When, so this is, now we're gonna get into my rants. So there is a slow case for John Chica behind the scenes happening this entire time. And I think to truly understand it, you have to understand where corporate culture is at right now in this sort of, post-boom world where the pandemic took the knees out from a lot of companies. The media industry is changing and once again, we are deeply owned. So Megan talks about how this team, and from a fan standpoint, it hasn't really felt that different. It's like a pension plan owned us and now this like mustache twirly media company owns us, but as a fan, what's the difference? And I'm gonna try to explain what the difference is and why I think the Chica thing was like,
Speaker 1: All the sports teams,
Speaker 2: shocking because I didn't think they'd get that ballsy with it, but it actually really aligns with corporate thinking. So you have to understand a bit of my background. You obviously know it, but for the accidental person who's in this podcast, I am around startup culture a lot in my day job and I'm around entertainment and media. So the Rogers and anything Rogers does greatly affects my life. When they donate money, it's they They own so much space. When they bought Hockey Night in Canada out from CBC, it completely affected the arts and entertainment world and the six degrees of the shows that ran on CBC and the advertising money and all of the things. So I quickly learned in my youth, I should pay attention to what corporate culture is up to because it's affecting our chances of opportunities for Vince and I when we're making our shows. Right. So the Rogers, we work for... the lower end of Rogers in 2010, we got to go through that silly ecosystem of making a television show for that company. And one of the things that you really learned is how mafia-esque Rogers is a thing. There's very like, CBC is like 38,000 cooks in a kitchen, and it's like, this person in Winnipeg doesn't like this person in Toronto, and you're like, what is happening? Rogers was very much like, what's Ted doing? What's happening? Blah blah blah. So you gotta understand Eddie Rogers is this little asthmatic fat kid and as an asthmatic fat kid I can tell you we grow up with a little bit of a chip on our shoulder. And so Eddie's got sisters and it's basically the TV show succession. Rogers versus Rogers and nobody bet on Ed. Not a single person. So when John Tory leaves to go run for politics the first time in 2003, I just moved to the city and John Tory runs for mayor. And he's up against David Miller, David Miller wins. John Tory's position had to be filled by somebody. And consistently in his life, Ted believed his sister was more like him and that Eddie was kind of just like, pat him on the head, good job. He was kind of a fuck up university, George W. Bush kind of kid, but he was quiet, but he liked to party. He was part of the U of T, he was part of the frat. that was very like, we just changed everyone's furniture around. Like, haha, prank. He was that kid. And so he's got chip on his shoulder. Long story long, Ted gives him the job and says, Eddie, you keep this gig as long as you show numbers. And I believe Rosebud style, that Ed became obsessed with numbers. I'm gonna read you a couple of things that happened once Ed did the unthinkable. Beat everyone and took over Rogers the sisters fell the other people on the board who were gonna like kind of muscle out the kids Succession style they fell and Rogers is reverse Jeremy strong in succession. He's the kid that actually won. He's the kid. There's like actually you're all fucked. I'm taking it and that is What starts to become? narrative. There's a book, Rogers v Rogers. There was a play about all of this stuff and there was a really good article that think every Toronto Maple Leaf fan should read from Toronto Life. It's called Edward the Conqueror by Trevor Cole. I want to read this to you and you're going to start as I'm reading this be like, ⁓ fuck, here's how we got John Chaka. This is from Trevor Cole. When he talks about building spreadsheets on a large computer display in his office, you hear joy in his voice. Each cell will relate to another cell, he says. One change can screw it all up, and you try to decipher that. He says, working in Microsoft Excel, it's almost therapeutic. During corporate presentations, he often finds himself wishing the presenter would get rid of the pictures and words. He calls it deckware. He admits that he's just not good at judging that stuff. He'd rather they just started with a page of numbers. In a different life, he says, I would have been an analysis, I think. An analyst, Dan can speak, really. Edward always sought jobs where his achievements were tangible. As much as there's a financial report card where I can get a measurement, I really like that. My whole mantra of how we run a business today is numbers, numbers, numbers. When he lost the gig and they got pushed out and he came back in Steve Jobs style the whole nine yards. Rogers launched a home phone product and Ted challenged his son to reach a million customers. Edward turned the home phone into the fastest growing product in the company's history. According to employees at the time, he did it partly by hovering over them relentlessly. Phil Hartland, now the head of the wireless division, was hired to work on the home phone project. As a boss, Ed was constantly saying, what else do need? How can I support you? What do need to get this done? That's to me where Hamza Tarani of the Chief Technology and Digital Officer at MLSE comes into play because we're starting to see this thing with first the soccer team and then the hockey team where we're like, we need to see some uniformity. We're not going to just get rid of presidents and then everybody answer to one guy We also need to see corporate uniformity like we're all kind of playing from the same playbook sure you're on a pitch sure you're on ice, but we're all doing the same thing here Humza can't get Borubei and Trevely to get on the same page with that. He can't do it. They try they're like, great part of that is I'm not gonna get too nerdy on you but part of that is hockey is the slowest sport to get onto the AI tech train because of how fast, because they're on skates. And because they jump into each other. It's really hard to get spatial recognition. If you think about a basketball player, basketball player is going down the court, he stops, he shoots. I can get a lot of biometric data. The cameras can pick that up really easily. Soccer's best. There's not scrums. Soccer, same thing. Baseball even, a lot of one-on-one matchups, right? Pitcher, batter, watching a second baseman move on the shift, whatever. I can get data from that. Hockey, we're going banging into each other, we're scrumming in front of the net, we're falling into the goalie. It's hard to get data back. It's getting better, they're working on it, but it was the slowest one to give to give the most accurate data. So the other thing that you really need to know about our Chief Technology and Digital Officer is he loves basketball. Not really a hockey guy. He's basketball guy. Now, once again, like Winch made joke with Vince, can't grow up in the city and not be forced into hockey, but he's basketball guy. Humza? is in on these talks, he is in on this conversation, he is in on the picks of who should be the manager. And I want to run down the analytics boys in the NHL for you, because when you're thinking about it, I think it's really important. Kulsky in Carolina ex-chemist Sonny Maeda poker player commodity trader Chris Patrick Julian Brizbaugh Corporate lawyer not a single one had a hockey background So Chica at least ran tried to play hockey Blooms blew himself out and then started a hockey analytics company. So if you're a corporate guy, why are you looking for this? Well, there's a couple of reasons why
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The first reason is corporate culture has a wet dream. It has a fantasy. It's capital without labor cost. That is the religion that we are preaching from right now. What if you could get less labor costs and more profit? What if we didn't have workers? AI is that evangelical thought. It is the fact. that, hey, I know you don't know anything about sports, but what if I told you you didn't have to? Because imagine you had Scotty Bowman as a coach, where you just get Humza to talk to Scotty Bowman, and Humza creates IP. And that's his job at Beat Police Sports and Entertainment, to create IP. So if you get a head coach that's really brilliant, or you get a guy in the basket like the Raptors have, who's really smart and talk about load management and figuring that out, if you figure out those styles, you implement them and you basically put them inside of your own systems, coaches and things, we haven't got to a place yet where we figured out how to trademark our coaching ideas. We haven't got to a place where we get bonuses for getting, for be part of the IP or getting, ⁓ for example, in a ⁓ real equitable workers world, you would get much like a musician did when you got your song played on the radio. If you use load management the same way that I invented down the road and I'm retired, I get a percentage of your profit every year. That's in my contract. We don't have any of that yet. So two owners, two the business class, What we've created is this brilliant way of scraping up an author's work, scraping up musicians' work, and creating our own. The tech people are better. We can do this with machines. And Ed Rogers is a numbers guy. So the second thing that is really important on the business side of this that I think everybody forgets about, Rogers family and the Shaw family. There's these two big media families in Canada, right? So you think about the... HBO show succession when they go to that with the woman's house with her family and they're both families are there and it's kind of awkward they're sitting around table He's we're gonna buy you, know, we're gonna buy you you're not thrilled about it, but you're not unthrilled about it You're like at least it's you guys. Yeah Shaw does that the problem is the world goes to shit as this deal goes through the the corp the The whole competition bureau in Canada gets involved. What about monopolies? But we don't care about monopolies anymore. So the deal goes through. The problem is they're holding a large bag of excrement with that deal. The thing that Rogers was doing with sports is, for example, remember Taylor Swift and coming through Toronto with the, well, they own the stadium, right? So they get the money from those things. So it's a real estate bid. It's like you get more stadiums, more things. WNBA comes to town. You know who didn't want to do it? Ed Rogers. and his CEO of Rogers, when they sat on a thing, they blocked us, the MLSE, going for tempo. Tenenbaum leaves, goes and gets it. The point of that story though is why? And my opinion on the why is there's no real estate attached to the tempo. There wasn't a deal that gets you anything really going and the money on the television wasn't big enough for them. So this is important facts. So the Shaw deal, going back to that Shaw deal, why is that important? Well, it's important because the Leafs
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: MLSC, whatever you want to call it, the MLSC structure needs to make its money back. So I don't know if anyone saw us in the headlines there, but they slash their workforce in insane numbers in April. This is the same time Keith Peli is going AI, AI, AI. This is Ed Rogers. Ed Rogers saying to you, we got to get all this. So why do you have to get all this in order? Why do we have to have Keith Peli? Why do we have to have everybody have like a chief technology officer doing the same thing?
Speaker 1: This is
Speaker 2: Because in three minutes, when all of these deals go through in late 2006 on the earnings call, Rogers has said, there's going to be minority owners of all of our teams. They are going to open this up and what do you have to do for minority owner? You have to make sure that everything is in a nice little pyramid so that the person wants to invest. They want to get bought out, not in terms of like, they're going to give the entire thing away, but they need to get rich folks. to buy into, wanting to hobnob at these events and have all of what they need. It's like the Mets member, Bill Maher, owned a piece of the Mets back in the day. And it was like, what? And then he sold it and he went on a big rant about during COVID. He's like, then I have to pay into it. Because you realize it's not just like, it's not a scam, but it's not not a scam. These minority odors are like. They are rich people that you're like, don't you want to hang out with us? Don't you kind of want to pretend that you're on the field? Don't you kind of want you want to be cash Patel, right? That's the.
Speaker 3: They're renting space close to them, essentially.
Speaker 2: So you've got to convince and you get it. But you also get F. So, for example, when they weren't making money, they asked the the owners, the smaller owners, minority owners, be like, guys, got to kick in some cash, right? Because we're not actually making. Bill Maher was like, what?
Speaker 1: and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Is this Avon? subscription to the fan club. That's just the highest tier of the fan club.
Speaker 2: Yes, but it's also like, it's a lot of money. And so this is what Roger's about to go do. So you need CEO, you need Keith Pelley to go and go, hello, how are you? And you also need Ed Rogers at the helm, basically doing all of these things. The other thing that's really important to know is the lead up. If you start to go back and look at crumbs, they were there. So in the articles of the score and a bunch of different articles that came out, When Keith Pelly said the thing about AI, Megan Sheka got on the horn. She is quoted in all of these. She's the co-founder of StatLite. All right. It's one of the main data providers like we just talked about. And she claimed her phone blew up with text messages and influential people. after Peli's remarks about data, everyone was like, we're looking for the same thing, Chika said. They're looking around and wondering, what am I doing wrong? How can I fix it? Who are the key players in the data space? And it's a bit of an arms race in terms of getting data contracts in line and also finding executives capable of working on it all. That was her pull quote to the score. then it's very similar in a bunch of different articles. Of course, she's the brother of the guy who we know now has clearly got. Ivy League of Business, I told you guys this in the group chat, they do a thing every year where they bring in data people and stuff and they bring in all of the main people from MLSC and they sit at the Ivy School Business out there and they have a little conference and it's John and it's Megan and it's the Chaker family that gives all the money to do it. I'm not convinced this wasn't like, when Keith Peli said, we're looking, I'm not convinced we weren't already there. There's one other thing I think you'd find interesting as fans. There's an 80-20. That's really big in tech right now. It's really big in business. The idea is 80 % of an engineer developer's time is spent orchestrating an agentic bot, telling it what tasks to do, what to accomplish, and 20 % of their time is now dedicated, is only dedicated to coding. And we love this idea because once again, it's the idea that we're smarter than everyone else at the top. We... are brilliant, we shouldn't be spending our time working, we should be spending our time with the bots so we have more time to think and strategize. This is also the idea of a Keith Peli. Keith Peli is Smithers, Keith Peli is the agentic bot. Keith Peli is just a piece that it goes out to the public and all he is doing behind the scenes is making sure everybody gets under Ed's vision of numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers. And I think that One of the things that's really surprising is like, one of the things that's really problematic, I should say, is when a media company owns the entire ecosystem, guess what you don't hear about the media company? Because who's going to talk about it? Who's going to write an article about it? Who's going to do this segment even that's just like surface level? Do you understand what's happening behind the scenes right now? Because if they lose their job at their newspaper, like it's going to be two companies left. You know, when they told Bell to kick the road, to hit the road when they got rid of Bell, guess who took the tempo? There's like an inch left of corporate like back and forth, but Rodgers owns so much of the landscape now that we are kind of to you both, we are in a WWE universe. Like there goes ECW, there's Paul Mayman, there's Eric Bischoff, everybody's under the same.
Speaker 3: Ted Turner.
Speaker 2: Right. And so the thing that was surprising, the thing that was surprising to me was the absolute lack. And let me rephrase the thing that I was like, oh, that's really disappointing. Surprising is probably too strong of a word is that they look the other way for Chaka. I thought they might have convinced Megan to throw the dice. Chaka, like the sister, I'm like, somebody at that company. Yeah, it was surprising to me. They looked the other way of him. But the thing that I think is really key to all of it is the Shaw thing, which is this quote that was said in the CBC. the 26, it was a $26 billion deal finalized in August of 2023. And here was what the experts were talking about on CBC. The cost of the saw, the stock position is going to get more and more expensive because they don't have free cashflow to pay back the loan. So they're going to have to do creative things. And one of those creative things is these teams on the books. So when Rogers pulls a profit from the ratings of the Jays, none of this matters. It doesn't show up in the stock price. Like that's how little these sports teams monetize in terms of a corporation like Rogers. But what does switch over is if you can get them into the one giant MLSC package, because you're not buying Toronto Maple Leafs, you're buying MLSC. So their evaluation of their own company is $18 billion. The J's, for example, are 2.5 billion. The Raptors are actually 4.5. They have the largest. So the valuations. But if you put them all together, this is a very corporate one-on-one idea, right? They're worth more. So you can get more to buy into. You should buy into minority ownership of MLSE. And that idea is going to be. the downfall of sports in our cities. But it's also going to be, it's also gonna make all of these stadium ideas a lot more problematic because they're gonna want more public land. They're gonna want more of it. And we've seen this in a lot of places. Roger's getting really powerful. Roger's just getting really, really influential. What are you gonna do? Lose the Blue Jays and the Raptors? You're gonna piss off the people that run the Leafs? No, you're probably gonna give them more Brookfield.
Speaker 1: all this.
Speaker 2: probably gonna go to Brookfield and lean on Brookfield, but you know those buildings all around the ACC? You know the buildings across from, or sorry, for Scotiabank Arena? Maybe we should just have those. You know the man in front of the sand tower? Yeah, why not? Like, can you think of better use for this space? Come on.
Speaker 3: When they did the lights wasn't like the only color red for a really long time
Speaker 2: I mean, there's we also do live in Canada, but yeah I think that's the thing that I really, if fans are listening to this and citizens of Toronto, I think that's the thing that I wish more people were talking about, which is we have built ourselves a monopoly of sports teams and what they're doing right now has nothing to do with sports. It has everything to do with setting themselves up to be in a better position to sell. ⁓ And you can argue that's still better than the teacher's pension thing. They just have to get through this tough period. The question I have to ask you is do you think
Speaker 3: Mm.
Speaker 2: And I'm asking like in general to the public at listening, do we think that this will ever change? So I don't know if you remember a few episodes back, Meg rattled off a bunch of things that like they cut off players programs. don't fly people's dads out. don't, yeah, money is they, they just cut a large part of their workforce. And so there's two things clearly happening in Eddie's land. One is sticking to what got him succession, numbers, numbers, numbers. And number two is they've bought into AI evangelism, which is no, if we could just get rid of workers and replace them, if we could spend, smarter, not harder, everything will be okay. And I think Keith Peli's job is to smooth over egos while he gets that happening, while he moves into. So I think if you are a Toronto sports fan, the person that you should be obsessed with.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, no, you should be mad at yeah anybody but Ed Rogers. You're like getting mad at Ronald McDonald instead of But also I Really think you need to be paying attention to Hamza. It's right. That's like I'd be watching his LinkedIn if you're if you're a nerd about your team That's who holds the key because Kelly doesn't know anything about this So they're going to it's like when you get your you know, you've been in this situation out there in the world I bet you you've been the millennial who's like Hey, how does this like computer work? Or hey, how does this like, it's like, it's the corporate version of that. They believe he knows the things they believe he's on the ball. And so yeah, poker players, we've got bloggers, we've got like, those are the guys, right?
Speaker 1: in the table
Speaker 2: So, John Chaka at least owns Wendy's. And by the way, if look at MLSC, they really like their fast food people. There's people who work for Young.
Speaker 1: So like nepotism.
Speaker 2: True, it's a bit of both. That's kind of the world right now. It's like rich kids and people who've worked at the other multinational corporation that they go on, they're from them. But yeah, there's a lot of food brands, because once again, if you look at what you need to work at MLSC, we've got a bunch of different brands under one umbrella, and this is how this works. ⁓ you'll be great here, come over here. So, Chayka speaks the whole language, he's already there, and all you had to do was look by... past the resume, like the other parts of the resume. But to speak to what Vince says, to finish up this 20 minute random mind, simply put, John also brings to the table. what we also loved in HBO succession. I can own your ass. Like you're not gonna go Messiah. No, you're not gonna have anything. You're under umbrella. And for whatever you wanna say about Shapiro, also not really like a rock the boat kind of guy, like in a big way. You're looking at people who are gonna be in, who got replaced at TFC. We very much have John Schneider even, like you go down the list.
Speaker 1: Reddit.
Speaker 2: There's nobody in this org for a while now since Shanahan left, since Lou Ramarrillo left, since that group. There's nobody under the Rogers regime that feels like a threat. And Messiah did not like Eddie. They went up and had a cottage weekend, apparently. And Ed thought that he was an alpha male dick and he didn't like him. And that was the end of Messiah. And that's for me what Leafs fans were just pissed, but I'm like, think the Blue Jays are really looking good on the slide deck, because they went to the World Series. But I don't think they're immune from this in three minutes either. But it's like, you don't say shit about the team that's like winning. You just take credit for it and you put, you you just sort of shine up and go, ⁓ they're great. But give that to like, give that one losing season. And what the data train going to do then? So that's my rant. took up a lot of time, but to Vince's point, know, check has got a huge desk from Bill Armstrong told Steve Simmons that when he took over the back, we took the job over. He went to shake his office and there was always this big glass office because he was part of that Silicon Valley. Look, it's transparent. It's a glass office. And there were always there's always data terminals running numbers. He had six computer screens, apparently. And when. Bill Armstrong went in, he couldn't figure out how to turn the computers on. He's like, this data just keeps running, but I don't know how to get into the program and shut it off. like, how do I move any of this? And the data guys come upstairs and go, only one of these is a real computer. Like, those other screens are just running a loop of stuff. And that to me is what this whole thing is in data and AI. It's a bunch of rich tech nerds convincing rich people who've bought into religion. It's an old, it's... It's a scam from scammers who are scamming scammers. The snake is eating its tail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as a person who once worked for a huckster who asked me to do a similar thing. Yes.
Speaker 3: So let me ask you how far you think this AI thing is going to go in like, let's say it's Scotiabank center. Do you think we're going to see robot ushers in like five years? Cause that's a big workforce you'd have to get rid of all your concessions. And some of those concession stands are already self-serve.
Speaker 2: was going to say we're already going there.
Speaker 3: There's not gonna be like the guy yelling beer. It's gonna be a robot with an old tiny hat and apron.
Speaker 2: I think that that is true. But think the other thing that's really important when you think about these things is Yes, this is the real question. I'll get a little bit more cynical on you. I don't think you win Yeah, I think that's the problem
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: We'll have plenty to say in the podcast.
Speaker 2: When I, you have to understand, like on my day to day level, I work with a lot of people who are like trying to be YouTubers or trying to be in entertainment, go to Netflix, pitch something, da da da, and, or sports media. And one of the things I always tell them is it's a casino and the casino has no interest in Adele. The casino doesn't care about share. The casino cares that you gamble. It cares how long you spend inside of it. And so the same thing I'd say to sports fans, it's a little bit different, but it's not that different. The value when you go into a J's game, and the reason why you can no longer buy a physical ticket 90 % of the time and you have to scan, is Rogers actually wants to know the phone. So they want you to get the apps and they want you get the BlueJS app because then they're like, Dan still has an iPhone 14. He should probably update to it because that's where they make all their money. So the value in all of us as consumers going through these teams is actually the other products and synergies that Rogers can therefore then sell to you or get you involved in or say, hey, you know, you should leave Bell, you should leave TELUS because you want 20 % off on a J's ticket this year. And I'm like, well, I'm not getting that from TELUS, so maybe I will go over to Rod. It's all of those little things where they get the real money from. So same thing in the casino analogy I say to the kids who are like, Why doesn't YouTube care about like, you're like, well, cause it's a casino has nothing to do with entertainment. It's not entertainment company. It's a gambling company that has to have entertainment. So you stay gambling.
Speaker 3: And are you saying the Maple Leafs are a like food media and their media company?
Speaker 2: No, they're a media company. They're a telecom company.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the like the the teams. Do you think like the leaves or? You think so?
Speaker 2: There's no difference in it. There's no difference in it. Yeah. Wens Rogers took over the share. Similarly, using the succession analogy, when he got boxed out the first time, our Jeremy Strong character, who won in the end, when he got boxed out the second time, I'll say, so the first time it's just sort of like Ted pushing him down and being like Brian Cox, like, you're not serious people. And he's like, OK, dad.
Speaker 3: Not a team.
Speaker 2: The second time around, though, he really does get pushed out. Like, daddy goes away and he doesn't get the CEO gig and he has to sit and eat crow and plot and slowly build allies inside of his company. And Ed watches them go after steak. the two guys who now run it, Ed and his CEO, they wanted the whole thing at a time. They're like, we should go big. We should do it. Let's just take it. Let's figure out the way. What does Bell want? And instead they waited, they waited, they waited, they waited, because they saw Bell having some problems financially. And they're like, I think they're going to want to give it up. And they knew that Tannenbaum's shares under Kilmer were up in 2026. So it was a waiting game. They were taking this the whole time. They went, once again, by the way, I don't know if anyone remembers this, but do you remember what Keith Peli's real accomplishment was? Keith Peli convinced all of the people at the NHL to ditch the CBC and go to Rogers. Keith Pelley was one of the key architects of hockey in Canada leaving, which changed the entire, I can't express to you how hockey-centric and sports-centric the entertainment industry is attached to in Canada, especially in the modern era where you don't watch TV at eight o'clock, you don't watch Friends at 8 p.m. anymore, but you will watch the Jays and the World Series at 8 p.m. when it's on. So television, that's where we need sports, we all know this, but in Canada, smaller market, it was even more crucial. So the entertainment world would... would ebb and flow to this stuff. And when I would meet and entertain people, no one knew any of it. And I would constantly tell people to read Hockey Fight in Canada, but Rodgers taking over. Like, you got to read this. This is gonna like, you're not even pitching the correct people. This is all for not. Like, this doesn't even matter. You're not even being thought of. Do know how much money they make on like a half minute of Hockey in Canada versus your show?
Speaker 3: I right ahead, that was you and no one
Speaker 2: Full stop. And this thing is the same thing for sports fans for me, which is like, I don't think Meg's as much as I just started a sports podcast with my two friends. I honestly think that when I looked at this week, I did the thing that I've done in the past where I kept looking around the world and going, when's gonna, when's, when are we gonna talk about the real thing? Like we're talking about the cosplay theater. What?
Speaker 3: Thank
Speaker 1: Especially in sports, I we don't know anything about anything anyway,
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're trying to shiny up.
Speaker 3: It's Boeing. It's the Boeingification of beliefs.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's the... And also, why I keep going to that data thing isn't because I necessarily want people to walk away and go, data is the evil. It's that because data is great and it can be used really well and AI is interesting. And so I'm not somebody who is bulletproof on AI, but I'm also not like, it's all going to go back into the bottle.
Speaker 3: They're using it for evil. Like there's ways to use it for No, they are using for I don't think so.
Speaker 2: it for good. Well, wait, hold on. I think the problem though isn't, so this is actually why I brought this up. I don't want people to walk away from this and just put it in the same box as AI versus. What it really is, is it's a sales package that Keith Pelley is overseeing. That's the important thing. And the thing that they're using to make it feel like all of this is AI and data. We were all on the same page.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: We're all using this. When you can't have such a visible and important piece of it as the Leafs not on board when you go to sale. Because you're not selling to the general public. You're selling to guys that are gonna sip whiskey with you in the back and cognac and be like, you want to be part of this club, don't you?
Speaker 1: Same wavelength.
Speaker 2: And they're going to go because they're business guys. like, wait, this seems like a giant mess. Now, the irony of all of this is I don't think Keith Peli is doing that job well either.
Speaker 3: Well, just because you're evil doesn't make you like Luther. Like, he's the Riddler at best.
Speaker 2: Well, but also, once again, moving away from evil, you can believe that, I'm not disagreeing with you, but I am gonna say something that I also think is a misnomer, which is sometimes people look at brilliant people and good resumes. So you can't disagree that Keith Peli has been in influential positions. Whether you agree he did good work there or not, that's a different story. But what I will say is, a lot of the times an MLSC CEO isn't really a working job. It's a thank you job because you're so. that you're so well connected, you're just supposed to sit there and make everybody feel better about investing.
Speaker 3: If we're going with succession, it's the Greg of jobs.
Speaker 2: No, it's honestly, it's not even the Greg, that'd be better. No, it's Jerry. Craig Pelly is Jerry. He's just not really anything. You just kind of like toe the line. You always survive. You always figure where like Keith Pelly kind of take it out of live. Like you basically did the same thing. The Pigeon Tourie was like, ⁓ this isn't that great. I don't love this gig. See you at MLC. you know, like sort of very similar to what when like the thing I saw about Jake this week that I thought was like stupid.
Speaker 1: percent.
Speaker 2: was trying to like nail everything under the sun to him for loyalty and stuff. That was a disaster. That whole franchise was a giant disaster. Like, I don't think anybody, how he handled it was really bad, but I don't think anybody would, everybody would have been trying to get out of it. How he did it was so stupid that that you can hang around his neck and be like, you should have quit and been like, I'm out of this place. See you later. Trying to keep the paycheck, ask to like keep the paycheck and then also try to get out at the same time. Right. It's like so stupid that like that. But people got in the weeds about Phoenix and I just was like, I heard about Phoenix. The idea is, like, why do you have a data guy? Not to go full president, you know, all the presidents man and go follow the money, but like follow the money fans. And that to me is like, I'm not.
Speaker 1: just like ghosted. That's hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I and also it's more fun to talk about hockey. I'm not I'm not a business fan. I'm a hockey fan. Like I don't blame fans, but I'm saying. As somebody who works in the business side of it, yeah, I'm saying like it's also like if we want to change it, yeah, you got to start aiming at Ed Rogers because Ed Rogers doesn't like attention and doesn't really like that stuff. And I think that if you aim at that, there's a really good shot. You just get tenenbaums and people like that back in. It's it's very similar to like. You guys with the wrestling game was just like, know, all right, whatever. People had came in and people left because they I don't want to deal with all this drama, carny nonsense. And I think that that's similarly in hockey. think if you put the pressure on the telecoms, I'm not sure it's going to go the way they want it to. And the streamers are also going to bite into that profit. And I think that there's going to be interesting times ahead.
Speaker 1: That's why we want this podcast on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. All right, let's get out of this for, I'm gonna end on this. I wanna ask around the table. Do you have any faith in John being able to do his job even because the cynical league is just like, you know what, still got, the Leafs have assets we want, we're still gonna deal with John. Or do think John's gonna have problems just even doing a baseline version of Data 101? Because nobody wants to work with him and he has no connections anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because everybody else is thinking the same way that we are thinking about it, right?
Speaker 3: I think the Leafs are banking on things being a little more dystopian in the NHL than they are. I there are a lot of old school guys who are not going to want to deal with this little twerp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really think what's interesting about Nepo babies running companies like Ed is they forget about, they are so numbers people, forget about.
Speaker 3: Forget about your Mike Illiches who actually give a shit.
Speaker 2: And it's honestly not even give a shit. I think they actually forget the same thing that a lot of politicians forget who like come from business. Is that like loyalty is a currency and you can't just like, it's the same thing like going back to succession when Roman goes up to Jerry and Jerry looks at him and goes, what, how is it in my best interest? And he, didn't think about that. Like the individual people, they were just like, do the right thing. Cause dad's crazy. And they're like, but how is that in my best interest? And that's kind of how I think a lot of business people think, but then they forget about how people calculate the best interest. Like they think numbers, numbers, numbers. So they're like, if I present you with a good number, you don't matter. And I actually think from a cynical sports fan standpoint, that's what I'm most interested in with this ⁓ run of GM. Because if it's successful, it really says, yeah, it really tells you a lot about
Speaker 1: Yeah. Dystopian indeed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've really got to a place where the AI thing could happen because we've got to a place where it you are. I mean, there's push and pull for that, right? That door opens up jobs for women who can get into the boys club. That door opens up like there are other sides to that conversation. It's not all. ⁓ because the boys club have a lot of downsides. The idea of like, I know you and you know me and I'll
Speaker 3: The AI nerd males want women in that room more than the old school males did.
Speaker 2: I think there's always a conversation.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: No, but I think there's always a conversation that doesn't, which I agree with you, but I think we consistently have seen in capitalism the idea that what if we, there's a great, you know what, there's a great reductress joke that I think sums this whole thing up, which is. ⁓ ⁓ Man can't wait to tear industry down to rebuild it again in his image And that's kind of 2010s, right? It's like fuck taxis. We're gonna get uber You're like isn't this the same exact problem? I remember when uber came out people were like but women aren't you know women get sexually harassed in taxis and I'm like where It was like where in the uber model have they fixed that and people would be like no, but Dan like
Speaker 3: than uber
Speaker 2: look at this taxi, then like give it five minutes though. But everyone always believes that like, if you tear it all down and restart, something's better. It's going to happen magically, not, you know, by the unions and by like laws and the way that everything became great. It's like when people flipped out in the pandemic about, imagine if like, I remember people who were like mad that people want to get vaccinated and they would say things like,
Speaker 1: Whatever's
Speaker 2: You like be like arguing against stop signs and or seat belts and I always wanted to scream like have you ever looked into how many people argued against stop signs?
Speaker 1: I literally have a scar up here.
Speaker 2: GM literally hired prostitutes to honey trap Ed to honey trap ⁓ Why can't think of his name? Ben tell me out and a nadir right? Ralph nadir Ralph nadir. Yeah, say Ed. Ralph nadir sued sued and that's how he started Public citizens how he started that group in the states that like ran all the like
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ralph Nader.
Speaker 2: Anyways, long story long, like that's how bad they didn't want airbags in 1980s. Like, why don't we get prostitutes to hang out at the grocery store and try to trap Nader? Then he'll not be able to talk in the press anymore. You're like, what? It's crazy. That is weird. Okay, I want to move on to more fun and friendship before we get out of here. Because otherwise we're just like a weird ranty podcast about...
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: best episode we've ever done.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Since we're talking about crazy billionaires and wrestling and everything else and succession, we might as well go straight to ⁓
Speaker 1: wrestling business.
Speaker 2: Ted Turner died this week. Do you remember him? are you old enough to clock the 92 series against the Braves? Were him and James Fonder in the crowd like praying and stuff? Yeah. Okay. Because that's like the first time I knew who Ted Turner was. I have no memory of Ted Turner.
Speaker 3: him as the owner of think it was Superstation or TBS before he before he became the wrestling man.
Speaker 2: How did you know that?
Speaker 3: Because he would be on little like so he was on the World Series, but he was also in little ⁓ yeah Between shows on TBS or Superstation or whatever it was called back then
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. Do really? Okay, here's the
Speaker 1: and the Turner colorizing of movies.
Speaker 3: Is it the Turner Broadcasting Corporation, right? Originally? Yeah. Yeah. OK.
Speaker 2: Did you know that Ted Turner
Speaker 1: Turner Burk cast service, I think. TBS.
Speaker 3: ⁓ yes. You're right.
Speaker 2: There's not one person who is questioning that ⁓ acronym. There wasn't anybody at home going like, ⁓ I'm writing in. ⁓ That's not what they stood for.
Speaker 1: Is it good?
Speaker 3: You've never been a woman on the internet who says something wrong there are 25 people embracing quickly
Speaker 2: FED Actually... Okay.
Speaker 3: Thought space can't go fast enough,
Speaker 2: This is something I did not know about Ted Turner. Of course, the Blue Jays have a relationship with Bobby Cox. I never knew how Bobby Cox got his job with the Atlanta Braves, however. Vince, do you know this story? Because you're the kind of nerd who would know this story. Do know the story of Ted Turner?
Speaker 1: be the GM of the Braves, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you know that Ted Turner in 1977? promoted himself to manager of the Atlanta Braves. Yeah. I didn't know this. I read about this this week. was like, what? In 1977, Ted Turner, they started the season kind of like Mets style, right? They went 16 game losing streak and Ted Turner fired the manager of the Braves and appointed himself, but he didn't really fire him. So Atlanta goes eight and 21 in the middle of a 16 game losing streak. They lost a double header. the day before and in the afternoon Ted goes up to Dave Bristol he's like take 10 days off I'm gonna manage the team which is like also in this I just thought this was like an appropriate segue from our like billionaire story like this is goes through
Speaker 3: Actually the
Speaker 1: Today's half.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah, not wrong. So Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Negros on this team and they asked him about it. And he said he was going to start the game for Atlanta and Ted comes down and he's like, I just got out of the cage. I came out, walked behind the batting cage and Ted comes out of the dugout, walks behind the batting cage. I looked at him and jokingly said, hey, Ted, what spot you got me hitting today? And he goes, hell, I don't know. You want to lead off? You want to hit second or third? We lost 16 in a row. You've been here long enough. Hit wherever you want to. And Phil Negros like I don't think that's gonna work Ted put me in ninth spot When they asked Ted about he goes when things are going bad There are 10,000 guys in the stands you think I could just take over the ball club for a while. I'll straighten them out, but They told me I couldn't manage after this game and I said what if I went to the minors for a year and really learned? And Major League Baseball literally created a rule or dug out a rule that they had but no one ever thought we'd have to use, which was like if you own shares in a team, you can't manage. And so you never had to have an. ⁓
Speaker 3: Wow. the boys from playing, like pushing the real guys out of the way and be like, I want to play. That is insane.
Speaker 2: It just made me laugh.
Speaker 1: You get money, Ace of Spades.
Speaker 3: You could though, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2: That made me laugh. 100 % ⁓ Why make the money if you can't have fun spending it? That's ⁓ okay.
Speaker 3: So thank you. Hey. Explain smart human.
Speaker 2: We've got our friends. ⁓ We should talk sport outside of Leafs for two seconds. ⁓ Vince, next week, we're going to take on the Raptors season. So I'm going to hit a pause button on the Raptors. But I will say you had them in six if ⁓ Quick was healthy. Quick never got back, unfortunately. had even, as you say, then BI was hurt for the whole thing. And then also it's come out that like... Like we're gonna blame all of his problems on injury, which I hope is true, but I
Speaker 1: Yeah, the season,
Speaker 2: You know, but like we Bobby Webster really laid all of his issues at that and I'm like, ⁓ I don't know about that
Speaker 1: Just tell me where he clearly looked like a shell of himself, so yeah.
Speaker 2: Scotty Barnes said this coming out of gate. He was like, they asked him, hey, what do you think over, season's over, got it. You had a 16 win jump year over year. So like, that's pretty good, right? 16. He said, I wouldn't say this was successful because we felt we could have done better and went pretty far. Further than we wanted to go. Further than we went, I should say. You had him in six. You you were kind of in the group chat. You really believe they could pull it out in seven, right? I believe That they overachieved because like their big man situation was rough bi was rough. Am I most of it was m.i.a. You're okay. Yeah No, even not giving injuries. I just don't I don't think the kids are there yet. No, cleveland looked not only beatable but like at times like Atrocious and we still couldn't win a game in cleveland. I don't think this is Negative to be clear. I just don't think we're there yet I think we're in the part of the journey where you get better you learn some things So I think they overachieve by going seven games Start getting into like the position they did in the playoffs not having to go into the play in tournament all that like I think it was a better season than it should have been Where do you stand at the end of all this? overachiever or
Speaker 1: I think because of the injury, Scotty Barnes is absolutely right. Yeah, I think they could have done better. And what he's saying, and he was like the first press conference, he was miserable. Sitting there. And I was like, I'm glad you're that.
Speaker 2: Could have done better? Cruel to ask players right now. It's like I like can't give me your like post-mortem with your own failure about I can't right now actually
Speaker 1: No, but I like that in a player where, you know, he does care that he is miserable about the fact that, you know, I'm here instead of actually playing.
Speaker 2: So no surprise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I actually do think the injuries, you gotta take into consideration, they should have been in better position even with the IQ injuries. He was hurt twice during the season, the second time, I mean that eight game stretch, they went four and four. Yeah. They do better, they have home court advantage, who knows what happens even in Cleveland, right? Sure. All that stuff, I think injuries were a factor in both the regular season. Yeah, we can go deep in.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go and ask you about Darko. He's not going anywhere. Bobby Webster was pretty, Darko is everything. Bobby Webster is a conversation I think is worth having. At what point do you have to change? And I'd actually, I'm going to ask you this next week, which is, I'm going to hot take you that the Leafs are actually in a better position than the Raptors are, given all the things. Which is a hot take. Okay. I want to move to the next team. I want to talk a little Blue Jays.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: before we finish up with the tempo. ⁓ Jaze, messy, messy, messy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two and five this week. Since we last, yeah.
Speaker 2: ⁓ by the way- Megan is on my train. I just happen to be the host with the notes, but Megan is on my we're learning about Raptors We're pretending she's she's she's been she doesn't want it in case you're like, why don't you pivot to Megan? Because she's going to say whatever fucking Vince said But in a hot minute
Speaker 3: you
Speaker 1: Same way, same bad hug.
Speaker 3: I really enjoy the Raptors and I wish them all the best but I certainly don't pretend that I know nearly as much as Vince so that's why I don't interject much. It's okay. I enjoy We're gonna get there Meg. I'm learning. Yes, that I'm very excited.
Speaker 2: learn the tempo together we're gonna get into basketball together
Speaker 1: And the temple art owned by Rogers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the poison hasn't bled down to the Raptors yet, I don't
Speaker 2: The tempo is legitimately like the tempo and the scepters are honestly where everyone needs to. That's literally like, that's the warm hug.
Speaker 1: That's the podcast.
Speaker 3: real like competition.
Speaker 2: They are WCW in late 90s. Yes. I'm going to get a tempo themed NWO shirt. OK, so the Blue Jays have a four and three record in the last seven. They're five and five in their last 10. But here's my like, ⁓ and you know that I've been hitting the alarm all year long. So like Dan's a cynic film at 11, whatever. They've been hitting in this period 220 as a team. They're sitting fourth in the AL East, but. For the nightmare fuel for my fellow cynics out there. We got four runs in three game series. You went three for 18 with runners in score. Our top five offense last season is now 25th in runs per game, 24th in OPS. But that's not all. Our OPS drops to 652 RISP, which is the second lowest in the MLB. We are only ahead of the Royals.
Speaker 1: Mid-Make
Speaker 3: ⁓ my god, who cares if they do well? Aren't they just a joy to watch? They're the ECW of this world. Like the ECW was never gonna take over WrestleMania, but that's not what they were there for. They were there just a better product to watch. They're just to cheer for like the boys. Who cares if they're that well? Like are you gonna not watch them if they don't continue to win? No. ⁓
Speaker 1: I'm too-
Speaker 2: My 100 % I'm gonna wrap this podcast up.
Speaker 1: Goodbye.
Speaker 3: You're gonna watch them all the way to the end of the recital because you love them.
Speaker 1: complain like every single
Speaker 2: Well, okay.
Speaker 3: Bye!
Speaker 2: Here's my thing though, you can have both. My big thing is like you can have both, you can be like yay boys and enjoy yourself and it's fun if they win. Like last year was more fun than the previous 20 years.
Speaker 1: He was
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Here's my problem and what scares me is that the final game in the Twins series, which was an afternoon game and the same thing with the, no, actually it was a night game, the middle game of the Tampa series. those games, last year the team finds a way to win. This year they couldn't come back. And I was like, ⁓ this is bad like that. It's just like, Kirk is really a pro.
Speaker 2: Kirk is the I'm with you.
Speaker 3: judge them when they get their guys back. This is
Speaker 2: Barger coming back is helpful. ⁓ Like the pitching coming back is obviously gonna be huge, but I am- I'm excited about the hitting. The hitting is concerning because the only way you came back- So everybody's trying to take solos in your ⁓ shitty May record. Okay, yeah, but you don't have bichettes, so it's kind of like-
Speaker 3: We need to. Yeah. But, home runs. Their hits last year weren't incredibly consistent either, so that was kind of rocky last year, and you definitely wanted to see it get better this year, and it didn't. It got a little bit worse. And we got lucky that our shitty hitting didn't tank us, but I don't think that luck is gonna be there this year if we don't improve a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you you can't make up the bad may record like everybody like you us included on this show We've been like don't worry. It's the same record as last year. I'm like the second half of this season was fire Right, if you don't hit better, it's not gonna be fine
Speaker 1: end May at close to 500 it's gonna be tough and you're five games under.
Speaker 2: Beast is hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really weird too. Like when we were four games under 500, my head, I'm like, eh, whatever. And then five games under 500, I'm like, uh-oh, it's done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the great thing about baseball is that's a huge difference.
Speaker 2: Listen, I do not want to get on to this too much longer, but I just feel like baseball ⁓ I love the Blue Jays and I am just a little bit twitchy over here. I'm like, oof, I don't know
Speaker 3: if they don't win everything. Winning everything with these guys.
Speaker 2: Wait, hold on though. Here's the thing I think as an older person that you just realized though as a fan is the alchemy of things only aligns so many times in your lifetime. And when it's there, you're just like, ⁓ don't let it slip away. And the problem with this season for me is it's not their fault totally. Like just this, that and the other. But we're getting awfully close to me for seeing it where we can't get back. Like we're getting really close to like
Speaker 1: frustrating
Speaker 3: Right. In our.
Speaker 2: Well, no, not that season. mean, like, sure. It's dark. Yeah. All right. Let's move on before I cry. The tempo. Yay. The tempo. We're launching this season this week on Friday night. I'm going to do my best clipping and pop up video to tip off for you. WNBA 15 league team 44 regular season game. We run through May, September. Top eight teams, regardless of conference, conference are going to advance to a three round Bracket style playoff beginning at the end of September. You're seeding, I love this, it's just regular season record. First round is best of three, semis are best of five, your championships are best of seven. We got 15 games at Coca-Cola Coliseum, so if you want tickets, you got 15 at Coca-Cola, three at Scotiab, but that's not all. We are also doing the Blue Jays, Raptors, Canada's team approach. So you got a national. ⁓
Speaker 1: Actually playing regular season games.
Speaker 2: Due to Canadian language laws, we've got two at Bell Centre in Montreal. Even though they never stopped saying they hate us at every turn, we're doing two more in Vancouver. Which is nice. Just because Rogers owns that as well. ⁓ Just to remind them what they'll never have in Vancouver. So the tempo lost both of their preseason games, but most of us aren't worried about that because they had never played together before. And that's going to happen. Nobody as of right now is giving us playoff. No hopes. There's not a single I can't I couldn't find a single source that was saying We could make the playoffs but but but caveat. I'm gonna get to you right away Vince. Don't worry ⁓ let me finish these last few sentences the Reasoning behind this though. I would argue Has a lot to do with the WNBA power rankings kind of explain this you go to their page. You look at the power rankings There's 15 teams. We're at number 14 And they said a season ago, the Golden State Valkyrie set a new standard for expansion success. Can the tempo find similar success in their inaugural season with two time WNBA champion coach at the helm and a number of veterans to lean on? The tempo could be competitive early this season, but for now, expansion teams begin at the bottom of our rankings and work their way up. Similar to what Golden State did last season. So Sportsnet has us at 12 of 15. and their power rankings, the true power rankings is at the bottom. This will all change. I will also say to you, I also believe there's a little bit, just a little bit, a teensy-winty bit of the usual anti-Toronto bias in all of this because nobody's paying attention to what goes on up here and just we don't get into the same mix. And an example of that is even though Kiki Rice went in the draft fairly high,
Speaker 1: Yeah, 6 overall from UCF.
Speaker 2: She's nowhere to be found on the rookie of the year beliefs list or the odds for it. So I think come a few games in, you might see a lot of this prognostication flip and be like, ⁓ tempo, aren't that bad actually? Wait a minute. Because I don't think anyone's paying attention to this. Sykes is number 28 on ESPN's top 50 WNBA players list currently. Mabry is 31. Both of those players, by the way, are ours. Two players, these two players score around 15 points and 15.9 points a game. The Portland Fire is our fellow expansion team. They have no players in the top 50, but also seem to be riding the idea of like, let's get a draft pick again. And they're number one players, honestly, Canadian. So, you know, they stole the Canadian from us. So nuts to your asthma. I put a bird on it. Okay. So with all that. Vince, I want a prediction speaking to 12, 15, 14 out of 15. What is a successful season position wise at the end of regular season and what's a uh-oh fail?
Speaker 1: ⁓ fail is if you are in the draft pick hunt. I mean, if you're looking for a lottery pick, the top five pick, then I think you are in a bit of trouble. ⁓ I think the ceiling is the last.
Speaker 2: Worst in Portland? What's a ceiling? Like the Raptors go out in the first round? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's like the eighth seed is what you're looking for, the last player spot. ⁓
Speaker 2: Prediction.
Speaker 3: Can I make a prediction?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to wait a second. Vince goes first.
Speaker 3: I didn't know if you weren't gonna throw to me because it's basketball. I am interested in this one.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, you've previously stated you and I are going to pay attention to Okay, wait, Vince, where do think they land?
Speaker 1: I I want hope, so I'm going with eighth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Peg, hit me with your thigh.
Speaker 3: Champions right out of the gate. I'd put money on it
Speaker 2: Oh god. would be amazing. Hey, I mean. Wait, is there a Toronto tragedy that we should know about? Yeah, know something that we don't. Oh yeah, that tragedy. Yeah, John Shaka happened, so the tempo is going to get into the fight. That's right.
Speaker 1: a two-time champion. the sports teams. The NHL's rigging this. That meant spilling the strings.
Speaker 2: I would, I also am going to steer to you and say, I want eight. I wanna squeeze into eight. I just think, it'd be so great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think a lot of these negative things comes from the whole aspect of Golden State did it last year. know, like it's not going to happen again sort of thing. I think that's BS. Every team's do it on their merit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Good. Vince, not to say dark horse, but because people are paying attention to like the million dollar back or because people pay that maybe. Yeah. Who's who's your who's your player? You're watching this season. They'll be like, hey, this could actually swing it in a different direction if they if they start to heat up.
Speaker 1: ⁓ Sykes. Simply put, mean, this is, you you could see from what they did in the expansion draft and how they protect her, Nera Sibley is going to be important, right? If you ask me what my concerns are, two things. One is chemistry, because you're putting a whole bunch of players who've never played together together. Some of them have some experience playing together, but, you know, most of them have not done that. So that's a concern. And the other thing is, Bigs, mean, forward centers, we do have a lack of depth and a lack of experience. I like some of the moves that they're making in terms of developing bigs, like even Muriela Furosa, who they signed to be the developmental player, who's a big center. Those are all good moves for the future, right? Yeah. But right now you are hoping Neera is healthy. and she was going to concussed at the first preseason game. That's important. Also, Tammy Fegbenle, who played for Golden State as their starting center is going to be our starting center. How well she plays will matter. So that's really and how Tierney Kay, our second round pick develops. All of that. Those are the players that I would pay attention to, because if they play well, we've got a shot.
Speaker 2: Alright great. I'm throwing it.
Speaker 3: I'm this season like a goddamn Real Housewives season. I'm getting so invested in these athletes and then I get to watch them fight each other like once a week.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I read a couple things this week that I-
Speaker 3: Compete against each other, not fight.
Speaker 2: Julia Lohan from The Sparks, with The Sparks was interesting and then she went over and did a fun stint in Europe and was able to pull off a women's final six MVP.
Speaker 1: Yeah, also if
Speaker 2: If she, yes, that's what I was gonna go with. Like considering our coach and the style of play, if that can work and you get Kiki even at.
Speaker 1: And also like 85.
Speaker 2: He sent yeah college ball kiki. I think you're interested. I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: That's a good point too. They're both great passers. I mean you got that Yeah, protect the ball that seems to be an important aspect of it and also some people look at nurse and Kia nurse and They're like, well, that's a Canadian signing but no, she's a great ⁓
Speaker 3: She's fantastic. Even I know her and I don't watch basketball.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nurse is great. I think that that team is also going to have a blue jays vibe. I media. Yeah, they're really great at it. There's a lot of fun things. I'm foreshadowing my appreciation.
Speaker 3: 100 % Yes, there's another player asking for recommendations on where to eat and then she goes and then she does her little review. ⁓ that's adorable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're great. I actually really think that this team has vibes and the other thing too that I always talk about.
Speaker 1: That's what Okamoto
Speaker 2: I think that the thing that people forget about sports championship teams or teams that get to the playoffs or teams that have great years and that kind of came out of nowhere is it's hardly ever the stars. It's always like, where'd Ernie Clement come from? Where did like, know, I'm like, yeah, when I was a kid, like Joey Kosher scored a backhand up top, you know,
Speaker 3: Yes, 100%.
Speaker 1: players.
Speaker 2: where you keep the frozen foods and you're just like, what? Joey Kosher, huh? In the fucking Stanley Cup final? You know, like against Philadelphia, Darren McCarty did ⁓ a breakaway goal he wouldn't be able to do again, like if you tried. It's those weird things that like, it's those weird moments of other players stepping up, other players doing well. And even with the Raps loss, ⁓ Allen, who's Cleveland's? Jarnallet. you. It's good thing it's first name. Like, that's why they won that game. Nothing to do with like Hardin and there. ⁓
Speaker 3: They were rocky Maya via and then for like one game. They were the wrong
Speaker 2: really hope the people at home are appreciating the deep cut wrestling things that are happening on this program tonight. We've got so many.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, RIPCAD.
Speaker 2: Okay, as we wind ourselves down here, ⁓ I have one rant on the way out. Okay. I need not like us to stop being used.
Speaker 3: That's why they do it if we didn't care
Speaker 2: But it's all stupid and
Speaker 1: That's a whole bunch of white people playing it, dude. That's the whole thing. And I'm like, do you understand what he's saying?
Speaker 2: This is the problem, okay? It's never been used correctly. In 2024, in the US-Canada Olympic basketball teams, they did it, okay? They won 86-72. By the way, that team's got like LeBron and Steph Curry, and it's like you won by like seven, like get out
Speaker 3: You shouldn't have destroyed them like the red wings playing the children on South Park.
Speaker 1: The funny part is they lost.
Speaker 3: Yes!
Speaker 1: The brunch bill, Gabe.
Speaker 2: First time, that's the first time it's used as a troll and I think we would all agree like maybe slow your roll, right? But but that's the best you can at least be like a bunch of black Americans Screw this Canada. You're like, all right, fair enough. Yeah The second time though is maybe the dumbest Argentine used it when they beat can on July 9th at the Copa America finals and on on actual social media with the Argentinian players like excited post-school, they had like not like us as like a header. Like not even makes sense. By the way, aside subplot pop-up video fact, that was the name of our, one of our production companies. We turned that and then I was like, all right. So there's a secondary like, oof to that for me. But the dumbest thing this week that Vince and I, I went off and Vince's DMs about. is I'm a nerd, I'm of a certain color persuasion, white, and ⁓ I like my music, I like my boomer music. The Cleveland Cavaliers mascot is a Moon Dog. The reason why it's named Moon Dog is Alan Freed, the 50s DJ who got into a payola scandal, who was basically taking money from record companies to pay.
Speaker 1: Yes
Speaker 2: Records and ended up dying as an alcoholic because he could never get back to the top of rock and roll mountain But is often considered the creator of the phrase rock and roll is often considered one of the first people But he did a lot of shady shit like he would to get records on he'd be like I need to I should be a co-writer of that song and he would take publishing Exactly so he like Chuck Berry Maybelline Alan free took
Speaker 3: or whatever.
Speaker 2: co-writing of Chuck Berry's Maybelline. Fast forward to 2026 when we lose a game, Moon Dogs dancing to Not Like Us in a sea of white people at a stadium. And I'm just like, does anything mean anything? Like, what are we doing? Anyways, that was my rant of Not Like Us. Can we stop using Not Like Us to troll gay? If you're a white people, if you're like, if you're the whites.
Speaker 3: You're a white people.
Speaker 2: ⁓ over appreciate interpretation really fast not being american meg over appreciated under appreciate vids under appreciated over appreciated not being american
Speaker 3: Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Underappreciated indeed.
Speaker 2: Of course. Shapiro. think the desire to distance myself from the current US president made me more proud of the social dynamics and values in Canada. It's part of what made moving here so compelling. I keep saying this. When is the influx of Americans that are terrified going to help our sports teams? And apparently it already did with Mark Shapiro. Love that. You guys brought this up a little minute ago, but I'm going to ask you broader in a more broad section of this.
Speaker 1: Brought a Rick kiss.
Speaker 2: Yes, are we speaking of men who? Jennifer great, okay, so so My question to you is if you go to a bar with somebody does their drink order matter Do you judge them? Do you care? If they get a coffee
Speaker 3: ⁓ anyway- No.
Speaker 2: Do you care? here's my question. A coffee order, over appreciated, under appreciated.
Speaker 3: Underappreciated.
Speaker 2: Wait, underappreciated? You think it should be appreciated?
Speaker 3: Yeah, why is why sophisticated?
Speaker 2: I like it
Speaker 1: haven't had a cup of coffee since 2012.
Speaker 3: What about like a tea? Would you order a tea at a bar?
Speaker 2: I
Speaker 1: So, to not know what my skin color is, I am obviously steeped in teeth.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting in a teacup right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right here
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: No, that's yeah, if you if you went to a bar if the three of us I am and you ordered ⁓ a tea Are you an herbal or an earl grey? Either way dope as hell
Speaker 1: colonized.
Speaker 2: What level of colonized are you?
Speaker 3: Yeah
Speaker 1: Yes. Is it from the country or not is what I gauge my teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Where I'm going with this is they did a fun social thing on the tempos. ⁓ What's coffee order? What's your tea? What's going on? And you guys talked about tempo rookie Tien Kee being like pretty good on the social. She's so good. Yeah, you saw that? She's so good. She was like, I've been to Timmy's a couple of times now. She knows what she's doing. She listened to whoever the media training was. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Or maybe she's just a cool person.
Speaker 2: ⁓ God, I want that to be true. I desperately want it to be true.
Speaker 3: She's just a cool person.
Speaker 2: ⁓ Guys taking the TTC 47 times in a month overrated over appreciate underappreciated
Speaker 3: I- the person who does that is underappreciated. are a hero. Unless they are the head of the TTC, like, commission or the chair or whatever, you shouldn't be to that every single day. You shouldn't be allowed to take any- you shouldn't be allowed to walk. Get on a bus.
Speaker 2: Anyone who pays 47 TTC fares in a month using the same payment method will be able to ride for free for the duration of that month afterwards. So once you reach the 47 trip mark now, you have to still tap so you have proof that you got on in a whole nine yards, but it will get deducted. So even if you are...
Speaker 3: in the free month. sub is free.
Speaker 2: Truly and just remember though you gotta tap or the inspector will check your fare So don't don't be don't get the poo inspectors mad at you ⁓ The side hustles of a millionaire underrated underappreciated
Speaker 3: Bye. CC is awful. What's the side hustle? Absolutely matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just-
Speaker 2: A glance at Mr. Tyler Heineman for a second. He's got a cameo profile where he's rated 4.9, 4.95. He has 51 separate reviews. He has, he charges $34.68 for a personal video. While his business video rate, wait, hold on, a business video rate goes up to $693. If you just want like a, how are you? $34.
Speaker 3: Because next week Tyler Heineman would be the third person on this podcast if it was only 34 bucks. I would pay him to cover me for two weeks.
Speaker 2: Yeah
Speaker 1: That's 70 bucks. ⁓ Anyways, so
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. Just bring your phone onto the dugout. can participate live.
Speaker 2: Underappreciated. By the way, in the group chat this week, because this got brought up, I found out because of this, or was reminded, guess, because of this, that Tyler Heineman moonlights as ⁓ a magician. And then when they brought a magician in, he was like, Tyler Heineman booked me. And then he does a magic trick with the guy. And I'm just like, what is Tyler Heineman doing on his off season? And how can I join?
Speaker 1: I know that.
Speaker 3: What happened here?
Speaker 2: How dare you? I got my favorite story of week. Are you ready for it? Remember how we talked about how the Royals are like the only offensively worse team than us? So the Royals hadn't been doing great. And this kind of like, ⁓ this kind of hurt. much like you just said, get the fifth sub free, get the fifth sub free kind of a vibe. Yeah. There's a food chain out there called Hawaiian Brothers. And Hawaiian Brothers was like, oof, we're going to take advantage of this. And they basically said, if the Royals score six or more runs at home, fans can redeem a free lunch meal plate, which is usually like 12 to 16 bucks.
Speaker 1: in a city. I don't know man, that's not cool.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what happens is the Royals score six runs in four games straight. They scored in four games straight and the Hawaiian Brothers people are like, I don't know, this isn't great, maybe we messed up. I don't know if this is a smart thing that we did. So they had to release this statement on social media. ⁓
Speaker 1: Good, good.
Speaker 2: An open letter to our guests, rewards members and Royals fans. Well, this got a little out of hand when we launched the plates for plates with the Kansas City Royals. We hope for some fun, a little buzz and a few free plates along the way. You guys took it from there. You packed our restaurants, lit up social media and turned this into something way bigger than a promotion. Don't worry. We, loved it for every second, but it's been wild. Our restaurant teams have been absolutely crushed in the best possible way. We're working around the clock to keep up with the response in the lines. So to keep plates per plates for sustainable, we're going to have to make an adjustment. When the Royals plate six or four runs at home, the rewards members will unlock a free classic plate lunch with the purchase of a plate lunch. So it went to buy one, get one. And I was like, buy one, get one. why, like what happened to these poor people? Guys, they lost 700,000 dollars.
Speaker 1: Hey.
Speaker 2: ⁓ no! Karma is a real There's pictures of people lying down the street. is City was like free food.
Speaker 3: Just like the Chum
Speaker 2: Yeah
Speaker 3: Yeah. ⁓ my God. they learn nothing from our podcast?
Speaker 1: Bermuda show.
Speaker 2: Nothing. Full stop. That was the deal. They just anyways. So congrats to the folks at Hawaiian Brothers for having to walk that back as nicely as they did. But oof, Kansas City, you are not messing around. Free food. Four games, seven hundred thousand dollars lost.
Speaker 3: really sad, sad about the economic state of our country.
Speaker 2: Right? Right? Yeah. Yeah. All right, y'all. Final time. We did overappreciate, underappreciate it. And here's where we're ending up. Your own appreciation. Give me your appreciation parade and start us off. Meg, we've got a dog in tow. Is going to help? Is Ripley going to help us out? For not going to the bathroom for these two hours.
Speaker 3: appreciate Ripley. She's just a little fussy. appreciate the newly crowned WKRP in Cincinnati. So there have been many WKRP's since the show that ended in 1982, 1983, think, but never in Cincinnati. And this week there's an official WKRP actually broadcasting out of Cincinnati. So I appreciate the shit out of that.
Speaker 2: Guys, I wanna go work there so bad. Like, I wanna pack up. ⁓ yeah.
Speaker 3: What would your DJ name be?
Speaker 2: I would just be Danny Fever. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would just be Danny Theeve.
Speaker 2: I would stick with like Johnny Fever. Like Johnny Fever was great name. I can't be Venus Flytrap.
Speaker 3: Johnny Fever? Would you be Dr. Dan Fever?
Speaker 2: Dr. Detroit ⁓
Speaker 1: Don't jump ahead dead because I said I've thrown out my appreciation and I'm gonna appreciate
Speaker 2: because what makes This weird thing, Vince and I bonded on early in our working relationship, we became friends. think Howard Hesseman may have brought us together.
Speaker 1: We were like, look at that going, has anybody else actually seen-
Speaker 2: in this movie.
Speaker 3: My brother got so mad at me because I taped over his VHS copy of Dr. Detroit with a Monday Night Raw episode. That's
Speaker 1: In fairness, the 29 raw episode.
Speaker 3: Okay, no, to be fair, that Monday Night Raw episode was the night that Stone Cold took the Zamboni out to the ring. So that was an important Raw to see.
Speaker 2: Yes. was a key moment in the history of our culture.
Speaker 3: And of my wife, Dan.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. Was that rigged? I'm just kidding. ⁓
Speaker 1: No, it was not. You really did take that, Zembura.
Speaker 2: release.
Speaker 3: They're not like coy about it. They're upfront that it's rigged. I respect that. That's why I like wrestling so much.
Speaker 2: That's why you like rest It's like I can trust in its riggedness. That's Vince what's your appreciation parade float tits weak? What are you riding on? ⁓
Speaker 1: I already appreciated Dr. Detroit, that's it. ⁓
Speaker 2: ⁓ really? We're going to Okay. My appreciation then to end this little show of ours this week. ⁓ Our good friend, Brit Bundles, Britney Sykes wrote on the old social media, legit my first day slash attempt driving in Canada got pulled over by the cops because I was driving straight on King Street. Cop could tell I had no clue. But hey, now he's a tempo fan. Win-win. Welcome to driving in Toronto. So those of you who don't know, which I mean, why are you listening to Toronto-centric podcast? But you just have to make a series of right-hand turns downtown. If it becomes a mess, you can't keep going straight. It's a nightmare. There's a long stretch where you got to like figure it out. And it's so easy to not figure out. There are signs everywhere, but we're going to give her a break because she...
Speaker 3: But there are signs for all sorts of sign things everywhere, it's hard. It's difficult, there's too many signs. Half of them are parking signs.
Speaker 2: many. I was gonna say that's the the superstars of the WNBA just like us I'm Dan Spear and that's Meg Damon. That's Vince Kazer Murphy We appreciate a very special episode of Toronto appreciation night that took you from rigged to traffic Much like Toronto We hope to see you next week. Meg is gonna be away for a couple weeks. She is getting a whole house underway. She's got boxes all around her right now. We appreciate her on the phone.
Speaker 3: the show he means. you.
Speaker 2: Enjoy the move, all of it, because what is better than moving? And we look forward to you coming back to the show completely rested and not stressed at all if I know anything about moving.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll miss you guys. the two weeks of- for sure.
Speaker 2: day. ⁓ Yeah, however Hey Vince upside a Stay tuned so if you're if you are looking to talk about whether the moon landing was fake or not It's three weeks three weeks from now is when we do that. All right, everybody. Have a good weekend ⁓
Speaker 3: not gonna read this shit.
Speaker 1: Right there.
