DK’s Double Shot of Penguins: The 6-8 phenom?

0:00The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Manus is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. Dallow the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment. Warning, the following Zipper Cruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F-words. When you're hiring, we at Zipper Cruder know you can feel frustrated. For Lauren even, like your efforts are futile, and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just... fine. F***! Fortunately, Zipper Cruder figured out how to fix all that, and right now, you can try Zipper Cruder for free. At zippercruder.com slash zip. With Zipper Cruder, you can forget your frustrations.

1:01Because we find the right people for your roles fast. Which is our absolute favorite effort. In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zipper Cruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic! So whether you need to hire four, 40, or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip to try Zipper Cruder for free. Forget that zippercruder.com slash zip. Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip. Instagram Teen Accounts, automatic protections for teens. Instagram Teen Accounts have built-in content settings, now inspired by 13-plus movie ratings, and limits for who can contact teens. Plus, teens under 16 can't change these default safety settings without parental approval. So parents can help teens connect safely. Instagram Teen Accounts, automatic protections for who can contact teens and the content they can see. Learn more at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. Hey guys, welcome to Double Shot of Penguins here on DK Pittsburgh Sports.

2:13My name is Chris Hallock and joining me all the way from Las Vegas is a very awake and alive DK. How are you doing, my friend? Very awake and alive. Indeed, on 1.5 hours sleep getting here from Raleigh, North Carolina this morning. I want to show you something. Ready? Yep. Set the microphone down for a second. None of you know this is coming. I don't know. I have no idea what he's about to do. Now this is on purpose. You ready? Are you going to go ride a roller coaster? This place is ridiculous. It is. Why? Wait, see this over here? This is the only thing that's seen. That's the hockey arena. That's where the penguins and golden nights will play tomorrow. And that's like some, I don't know. I guess that's the. You're going to take the roller coaster to the game.

3:15It's crazy. How about this seven foot story tall? Can you see it from here though? The statue of Liberty now? Yeah. Oh, you can. Okay. Yeah. Just. Just such an excess of everything. It's what they are here though. It's crazy. Can I can I can I admit something? When we went there last season last season for like I had a really great time. I really did. Does everybody see the difference between Chris and me here? I had a great time. Oh, there's people on this roller coaster. I think that there would be people on it. I was riding. I think I just didn't have time. I like I wanted to do so many other things. I didn't get a chance to ride it. I saw it. I wanted to ride it. Well, when we get to our football program today, we're going to have some things to say about Las Vegas on that show as well. We sure are. We sure are. I think right now we need to talk about you football fans know what we're talking about.

4:15Oh, yes. But this show is about hockey. It is. And there's a yet another shootout loss last night. Yeah, but dot dot dot. I want to agree with that one. I mean that this might be the first one all year where you just say, man, I don't care. I don't care. Yeah. Well, you're down. You're down two goals with three minutes left. Against either the class of the division or the class of the conference are both in the hurricanes. And you come roaring back like that to tie and force them into an overtime. Really, if you had sit or Gino, four on three overtime is up. And there it is, man. You know, it's just the stupid shootout comes along and that's that. But that's a harder point. And Chris, don't forget, it's a harder point on a night where the blue jackets and the islanders themselves also had come back victories.

5:18Yeah. So you need to be able to keep the pace with these teams. I was just going to say because when you know, you pull up the NHL standings and you see it, you saw that this margin. Got a little tighter. So even though like, yes, you salvage the point and that is very, very important here. But now that lead over the islanders is, I mean, actually, they have the same number of points now, but they have a game in hand. So they still hold the advantage at second place instead of third place. And then with the blue jackets, they are now only three games or three points ahead with the same number of games. So it is tightening, which just goes to show how important that one point is that they were able to salvage in Carolina last night. And there's games where you look on the schedule and you say, oh, well, that's not one they're going to win. But then, you know, buffalo, not buffalo. Columbus is playing the lightning. I'm going to beat the lightning anywhere near as good as the light.

6:18They beat the lightning. Yeah. You know, the islanders, they were insane. Lewis, the blues aren't very good. They still had to come from behind to get it done. The thing is airtight. It's airtight. And I'm going to keep saying this, don't be looking at the conference. The conference isn't going to help you. The conference isn't here to rescue anybody. Because the Atlantic division has more teams with better records than the Metro does. At least for now. Agreed. But it's it's going to be like this. And for these guys, Chris, to get away. I don't say get away with this. They earned it. For these guys to get the result that they did to work for the result that they did. They had a bunch of things to go against them, including these dives that the hurricanes were taking that looked close to orchestrated by Rod Brenda Moore. They, they would write and say said to me on the way out of the room.

7:20Last night, he said he said this was a good way to start this trip. I know it's not going to feel like it to everybody. This was a good way to start this trip. So now they have to come here, play these guys and play them. Hopefully as well as they did about a week ago in Pittsburgh when it just completely crushed them. I don't know if we're going to get that kind of result again, but that was really something. Yeah, it was that that was probably one of the more complete games of the entire season. And yeah, they they need to have a repeat performance of that. I mean, let's just look at this from a practical standpoint, even for just from for just a second, because we see how important that point is. And regardless of the circumstance of whether they were ahead late and blew it or they were down and came back and tied it and salvaged it either way they got a point. What is there a number of points that they need to get on this road trip to be like, all right, that was a successful road trip.

8:21Or is this just played out day by day and just like, listen, you just got to get what you got to get. Yeah, you're not going to hear you're not going to hear anything from them that we need X number of points from this or whatever, because it's going to sound no matter what you put out there unless it's the maximum number of points is going to sound defeatist. I don't hear them talk about that internally either. I think what they have to do is show up at the rink. This is true, all month long, but never more so than on this insane trip. It they have to use these days in between to just recalibrate just not just not riding roller coasters, right? I don't know if that was them or not just one by I could just picture a corner cliff to do it though. You're not kidding. So these guys, the way this is set up and for anybody who doesn't know this, Dan me using his coaching staff, have all of this scheduled in a way that there are no practices days between games.

9:27The entire trip, that never happens. So they get into Las Vegas and they did this last night by the way they flew overnight. The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA's heating up, March Manus is here and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I could follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment. Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along. Which is why you should try Zip Recruiter for free. At ziprecruiter.com slash zip. Zip Recruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you.

10:28It's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast. So while other companies might deliver a lot of, hey, Zip Recruiter finds you what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire. And right now, you can try Zip Recruiter for free. That's right. Free at ziprecruiter.com slash zip. That ziprecruiter.com slash zip. Zip Recruiter.com slash zip. Some of us flew to Marshall this morning and are still paying the price for it. And they just have today to themselves if they want to be boring like me and stay in the room and check out the wallpaper. They can do that. He doesn't want them on the ice. He doesn't want them taxing themselves. He doesn't want.

11:31What he does want mues is for tomorrow morning is to skate to be treated almost like a practice. Again, it's not a excessive exertion, but it's making sure that your legs are loose. It's making sure you don't get off to a slow start. It's making sure that they can at least go over something, anything schematically. But from a practice standpoint, they're flying blind Chris. And they see that as a, as a better, there goes the roller coaster. They see that as a better way to get through this month than just let's max everybody out. Guys, this show is brought to you by our friends at the most southwest grill. They have a deal right now, a value meal that is kind of ridiculous includes a 10 inch junior burrito, which is an oxymoron and of itself.

12:32And you also get two ounces of their famous K so when you get some chips like a bag of chips and dip into that case so and then a nice regular size drink all for 995. That is a ridiculous deal. Take advantage of it because who knows how much longer it's going to be available. It's a great way to spend 10 bucks. I mean, 10 bucks for a 10 inch burrito plus a little extra. That's that's a heck of a deal. And they got locations all like at least 12 locations all throughout southwestern Pennsylvania, including one right here in downtown and market square. I might just hit up on my way home. So check out our friends of the most southwest grill really appreciate their support of this show. I just like we appreciate their junior burritos in our stomachs. So this game here tomorrow night is actually a 1008 PM face off Eastern time. I'm aware. I looked at the schedule and I saw that. Yeah. And that's another thing that you have to factor into all of this.

13:37They play multiple different time zones. It is every other day. 7 o'clock face off last night in Raleigh. 10 o'clock face off their internal clocks tomorrow here. 9 o'clock is moving back to mountain time in a couple of days. And then the other mountain team will the other American mountain team. The avalanche will be Monday. That will be 930. And then this is the NHL couldn't kick everybody in the groin hard enough. It's back to Raleigh. Yeah. Right back there next Wednesday for a 7 o'clock there against those same guys. Now the obvious key to all of this is for the penguins to continue performing defensively. Really all across the ring the way they did in all but the first eight minutes last night. They just had they just had nothing. Yeah, I'm nothing at all. And you know who turned around who turned that game around.

14:40I might be giving him too much credit but I don't think so. Em is yes, Elmer. Young Elmer Sutterblum. The glue. The glue. He goes out there and puts together just a ridiculous shift. It was it was nuts like a unit and especially striking because nothing else had happened for the penguins to that point. The hurricanes had 10 of the first 11 shots on goal. It was 10 to one. Yeah. And then along comes Elmer. Now Elmer didn't score. Elmer didn't even get a point. But Elmer ended up with seven shot attempts. Four actual shots. And he was just all over the ring. Stripping people of the puck taking the way coming back into the zone. Hard for check. Creating offense both for himself and for others. He did it.

15:40He did a soda rama in the third period. Spinning into the Carolina zone. He six foot eight. Yeah. What is that guy, Chris? What is he? What is he supposed to be? I don't know. But when you're six eight and you're doing stuff like that, all you can think of is like. A little bit of stars. Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, you're you're thinking somebody just needs to figure this out. Those guys. Those types of guys. Meaning extremely tall. They do come with a stereotype in the NHL. Modern NHL. Old NHL is just drop your drop your gloves. Yeah. Good old enforcer. Yeah. Modern NHL. It's like it's going to take a while. It's going to take a while for this individual to catch up with their stride. It's going to take them time to.

16:43Adjust their skating. Is it a no chart? I wasn't instant when he came up with the Islanders. He needed to learn how to expand that stride. Instead of making them these little choppy things that he did in his rookie year. This this kid can move. He can do some things. I'm I'm still floored by what I saw. I just I don't think I'm surprised all that often. He's been covering men's eyes hockey. You know that I was just like. What the heck is that? What the heck is that? He's he's going to be interesting to watch. He really is. He's got some. He's got some some interesting qualities to him. And man, if if they're patient with him. Who knows what it can turn out? Yeah. Saw your conversation with him last night. He's got that video is right here on our YouTube channel.

17:45Really. Really interesting. You know, it was it was a short conversation. It's still an interesting one too. And seeing the way that had you know him having trust in the process that it's all going to come together. Eventually, he plays that way. The results will come. The buck will go on the net. You know, whatever it is. But yeah, he's an interesting guy. And again, when you look at. The body of work, specifically this season, that Kyle Dubas. You know, with everything that he's done. And. You look, you know, initially at all, Parker Watherspoon and Justin Brazil and Anthony Manthin and so many guys. And you're like, they've all turned out to be really good acquisitions in one way or another. You usually each of them pretty unique in a certain way. This was like the only this is the only move they made on the actual like day of the trade deadline. And if this turns into another find of some kind. Good God.

18:45Like what more does Dubas have to do to get like GM of the year recognition or something like that? I guess the immediate concern. And it is a concern is we keep talking about Sid and Gino being a couple other players are hurt as well. Justin Brazil had his. Status changed yesterday in Raleigh from. Day to day to week to week. That's not the direction you want those things to go. Nope. That probably to me in reading their parlance on this stuff. You're not going to see him till April. Yeah. I would think that we did so too. Yeah, we've been saying for a while now that. That it's going to take. It's going to take some time. For any of these guys to try to establish themselves. But now you have maybe, maybe I haven't heard anybody say this, but a battle between Soder Blum. And Vila Coivan and to see who would who would take Brazil's place.

19:50In the actual lineup. That wasn't close last night. And actually I didn't think Coivan was bad at all. It's just that Soder Blum was. That was that was some wild material there. So do you give him, you know, do you do you let him run for a little while here? Do you see what you got in him? Or are you? You know, are you going to have a short leash with pretty much anybody in that position just because the importance of these games? That's again, that balance that we've been talking about all season long that you got a strike between trying to learn stuff. Move the franchise forward. Coivan had a really nice assist last night on Anthony Mantis goal. These are good problems to have. They're not the injury part, but then having guys that you could actually put in there to maybe make a difference. That's, that's the good part, but they still got to manage it. What did they do? And again, if you're going to have to deal with these situations and this is what.

20:52This is what. At least the point that I was trying to make whenever we're talking about, you know, ahead of the trade deadline. Do they make a move? Do they go and get like a really big time? Like a bigger, bigger name or at least an impact player. You know, add forward. And this is the exact reason why I brought it up. Like, yes, they're healthy now. And when everybody's healthy and accounted for this is a lineup. I really like it. I don't want to mess with it. But that's not the case right now. Cindy Groz, he's been out. I've got any malkin. No, it's not a health issue, but he's suspended. He's still serving that. Now, Justin Brazo goes from a day-to-day situation to week, week situation. And, you know, sometimes it can happen. All the one fell swoop. You showed up in Buffalo. You know, before the Olympic break and three guys just out of nowhere. Just one warning skate three guys out of the lineup. Just like that. Got about that. And so it's just like that kind of stuff can happen. And so when you don't go and you make a big move at the deadline. And your your move is elder solder bloom.

21:52Okay. What's he going to do? What's a Vila Coivan and going to do? What's a Rutgers majority going to do? What are these younger guys going to do? Now that they're given an opportunity and forced back into the lineup because of injuries. Let's take a look here. We're going to take a look at the end of the program and some of the stuff that we have from our members. But first, take a look down at the bottom of the screen to see how to become a member. And the unfortunate event that you are not already won should be as dkps.net slash join penguins. There's Chris showing off his healthy supply of the fur coffee made by our machine. And I'll go ahead and relay all the details. Yeah, there they are. There's a sausage sharp bottom sharpening her husband sure isn't. I could use all of it. You could use all of the deferred coffee we have. Yeah. Differ. We have to go.

22:52There you go to go. Get it all the way here to Nevada. Differ is is is locally roasted specialty coffee. ACEs with this stuff. There's some that just kind of screw around with it. You know, they pretend that they're all kinds of, oh yeah, look at us. We have coffee from here and kind of defer coffee is legit and it's been that for quite some time. You can have it in your office and that's the point that we're stressing here because we have the one in the middle Eliza furnace. Yeah, Eliza furnace. There's all kinds of Pittsburgh names to it too. If you don't know what Eliza furnaces go ahead and look it up. They they have brought a machine to us and these two are over there on the far end of this and join this while I'm stuck here in Sin City without it. It's so sad. It shouldn't be sad at all.

23:53You're right. You have a roller coaster right there that you could go ride for your enjoyment. You don't have to go surgeons for it. It's right there. I love that in our live chat that I brought up the possibility that Connor Clifton could be on one of those roller coasters and everybody's like, oh yeah, he's definitely on one of those coasters. I can't see. Let's let's take a look at some of the stuff that we have from our our members here. Mark McIntyre. Mark McIntyre is just landing in Las Vegas for the game. You know what that means? Mark is downtown in Las Vegas. Their airport is insane. It's like right there. The planes just land here because they can't wait a split second to take all your money. I remember. I wanted to get off the gate. I showed it to the boss here earlier

24:57with a little video camera. He's like, look, as soon as you get off the gate, there's just there's machines everywhere. Slot machines. They can't wait. It's just too much time being wasted that they could be taking your money. Crazy, crazy stuff here. Anyway, so that's Mark McIntyre. I enjoy it. He's in Frank Rice once hypnosis to solve the shoe dock problems. I don't know if it's going to take something more powerful on hypnosis. Yegor Chenekov didn't need hypnosis to totally undress Freddie Anderson, but then he just pocketed just that happens to man. Ice is bad. It's choppy. You just went through a third period and a five minute overtime. Having the teenage interns go out there with the shovels isn't the same thing. So whatever it is, it happened. Chris Stone asks on these off days to the players have access to the road facilities,

26:02game or practice to access any gym slash rehab areas or they forced to use the hotel gyms. In every case, Chris, this is all 32 teams wherever it is that you go. There is an understanding that on all days that that team is in that town, they need to be able to get somewhere to do something. Now, when you say gym and rehab, that's a little bit different. That's because that gets into either physical weight rooms or medical things, but I'm looking right at that ice rink over there and I can promise you that if the penguins had chosen to escape there, they would have been able to do that. The Golden Knights are the signature tenant in that building. The WNBA team has moved to some other arena here. They don't have enough arenas in this place, but yes, they have options, including in Pittsburgh. This is my favorite

27:06one for the day. Chris, Hurricane looks like a bunch of LeBron soccer players out there. When Ryan Shay tells me that he barely touched Taylor Hall and that Hall had pulled the same stunt on him in the second period so he should have known better than to even touch him. In the third, these are people who don't lie to me and it only supports what I saw with my own eyes from the press box and what everybody I think could have seen on the television screen. These were spills. Nikolai Eilers took a spill. Nikolai Eilers who used to do this stuff in Winnipeg too, just he felt a stick on him and he went, ah, Nikolai Eilers, I'm dead and he crumbled to the ice and it worked. It worked. These referees fell for everything. Yeah. I think if there's, and this is for anybody who has played hockey at any level, whether you

28:10have played at the NHL or you've gone all the way down to the earliest level of being a kid on skates, learning pads in the first place. One thing, there are certain phrases that are synonymous with playing hockey and one of them is always, just stay on your feet, like, just skate and what that means is, like, if you feel contact, like, keep skating, don't just fall down. That's the kind of stuff that drives, especially once you get to that level because whether you are, like, when we talk about NHL players, we talk to being like, good, like, this guy's a really good skater. This guy's not like, like, like, for example, Taylor Hall, the MVP and Nikolai Eilers, one of the five fastest guys on the planet, like, those guys, like, they can skate Chris. They can skate and then they can, they say, well, thing is that, but my point was,

29:11everybody at the NHL level can skate to a certain point. You can't get to the NHL if you can't skate, but then at the NHL level, then you still have the guys who are better skaters than most, and it's not like Taylor Hall and Nikolai Eilers are bad skaters for NHL players. They're good skaters, and they just fall. Yeah. That stuff will drive players nuts because it's like, it's obvious of what you're doing. Just play the game, man. Like, what are you doing? Just play the game. I'm back entire in landing here also became a member of our of our penguins channel. We appreciate that. Michael Bobrick, a member says, need to get sit back. I'd love to give you more of an update on Sid than the fact that he skated yesterday in Raleigh. He sat in the press box with us, again, just off to the right. I'd rather just kick him out. You know, you're out of here. This is our spot year intruder and sent him back to ice level where he belongs.

30:15We'll see how that goes here tomorrow, but my feel is that when Sid comes back, you're not going to have some advanced notice on it. Let's put it that way. I would agree with that. Because of these no practices. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Because then you have your morning skates. And even then, like the the morning skating Carolina, he was like on the ice. But then, you know, yeah, I don't think it's going to be something you're going to hear about. But they're not going to announce it. They're not going to announce it. Yeah. So anything else you want to you want to relay before before we hop off and go talk Steelers? No, let's go talk football. All right. Let's talk football. Thank you guys for tuning in to double shot of penguins. We'll be right back here tomorrow at 330. And right now, come on over to our Steelers channel. We're going to talk some football where we're celebrating a certain occasion on the calendar in the NFL. So see you guys there. Yeah.

31:38Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCartle and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a news show from Washington Post Opinion called reasonably optimistic. And it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. Every Wednesday, I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward. It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems where they are. Now, I am a believer in America and it's worth fighting for. Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. If you liked the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.