Frequent Flyer #307 "Day Late and a Dollar Short"

0:00Checked at 345 traffic 2 miles, final without delay. Cross runway 30 left, runway 30 right, clear for takeoff. OK, cross 30 left, clear for takeoff, 30. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Frequent Flyer. Here it is Saturday. Friday, uh, yeah, Friday, Saturday, February, Saturday, February, seven. That's the word I'm thinking of. Saturday, February, seven, twenty, twenty, six here. We are back. Flyers officially at the Olympic break, saved by the bell in a certain sentence here. Things were getting a little steamy around here if you haven't noticed with me, all Rick Talketing Company. And we get a lot of a lot of stuff to get into

1:04here. And to help me do so, my co-host have returned, as always, my casitos back. Mike, how you doing? Fantastic. Good evening, gentlemen. Great to be with you as always. And hello to our fantastic audience. Um, I hope everyone is enjoying this frozen winter that we are in right now. We were just talking about it before we started. And, uh, I'm sick of it. Long cold winter, done. I've been ordering IPAs at the bar. I've been making smoothies. I want summer. I've had it. Unfortunately, it's only February. So we've got some time to go. But no flyers hockey for a couple of weeks, Olympic break, baby. So everybody can reset. Yeah. I, uh, been in the process of moving to Colorado and, um, thinking, man, how am I going to start in Colorado winter? You know, that's the first thing you think of, do you think about Colorado? It was, uh, 46 degrees there today. It was negative 10 here in a goal. Eastern Pennsylvania. So cold as fucking fuck here. God damn been cold on. God damn fucking god damn winter. I hate it. It's been so nice out there and so not

2:06nice here. But yeah, weather continues to suck. But we have another Canadian friend here. Manny, many benefit is back. Manny. What's the weather like in Canada these days? Cold, but it doesn't seem like a, it's quite as bad as, uh, as down there. Although we do have a lot of snow, but it doesn't snow here for a few about a week and a half now. So we're, uh, we, we're, we're right back to normal, but a rare soliditation and greeting style you gentlemen and all the listeners, but a rare Saturday night recording. And you know what they say? Saturday nights. All right. For fighting and the, uh, Twitter must be Saturday night every single night. Twitter is just a nuclear wasteland. I love it. It's great. There are very few places better to be than flyers Twitter when shit starts going sideways. But, uh, it's a fun little place, but since it's been a few weeks, and since we caught up, we like to start off this way. Obviously, I'm doing shows pretty much every day anymore, but it's been, been a minute for you guys. So how's it been? How we feeling here? I don't

3:09remember the last time we talked to us was a before that West Coast trip, maybe right after, but after yeah. Yeah, they went to one out West Vegas, Utah and Colorado and got what, two four or five out of the six points there. And then they come home and it has been a downward spiral in the handful of games since. And, uh, they are sitting what eight nine points out of a playoff spot here at the Olympic break. Uh, it's going to be an uphill battle for them to now make the postseason. So how are we feeling about the old fill out of your flyers here as the, uh, God, but we're nearly two thirds of the way through the year. Yeah, I think that this team and this is kind of consistent with some of the stuff that we talked about a little while ago is that I think they're kind of exactly where we thought they were going to be when you look at their record, their, their 25, 20 and 11, 61 points through 56 games, six place in the Metro right now. As you mentioned, Dan, eight points out of the playoff picture behind the islanders. Um, but I think the thing that is interesting about

4:11where they're at is how they got there. And they had such an amazing first part of the season, playing way above their heads, um, getting spectacular goal tending from, uh, Dan Vlodar. And Trevor Zegress, uh, uh, came in super strong. And the team was just outperforming expectations by miles. Um, and then once Vlodar gets hurt and the season starts to progress as we kind of speculate it as well, the team has really taken a massive downward turn since probably the beginning of January and right now. Um, and I think it's just at the end of the day that seems where we thought, but I think it's just weird to see that. I mean, I, I thought there would be that new coach bump at the beginning of the season. I think they had some of that, we're starting to see some cracks now. And a lot of these players to have ceilings, you know, like we don't have a lot of real stars on this team. They're not a lot of history of players having sustained success in this league year after year. And, um, you know, I'm, I get, I'm not

5:15satisfied. I'm not dissatisfied. I just think this is what we, this is what at least our group thought was going to happen here. And it's interesting to see a lot of other folks that got too excited during the first part of the season said, Oh, this team's headed for the playoffs. Look at, look at what we've done. We short circuited the rebuild like we're on our way. And we're like, wait a second. Pumped the brakes a little bit here, guys. Like let's see what happens. It's only Thanksgiving at that point. Um, and just, you know, this team regressed to the mean, uh, quite, quite dramatically over the past couple of weeks. So, uh, I like I said, I'm probably there, but I'm not satisfied. I'm not dissatisfied. It's just kind of right on course where I thought that they would be. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to argue with that, Mike. I mean, it's kind of predictable how, and it's, it's actually quite stunning. How similar flyer seasons, it's like they've merged into one another, but they all kind of follow the same sort of trajectory. They start out kind of well. They exceed expectations. And then at some point, usually it's the,

6:19you know, right after, you know, the January Disney on ice kind of thing or some west coast trip. And then the wheels kind of fall right off. And then they go through a prolonged stretch of losing and not getting points. And then we're at the spot in this, in the schedule right now where, you know, as you said, the flyers are eight points back of the islanders. And on this show, we kind of did our preseason predictions. And I think all three of us unanimously said that five teams from the Atlantic were going to make it this year. We all thought that Florida was going to be one of them. And it's crazy enough. They're not one of those five buffaloes in it, you know, Toronto sniffing around, but they're not really. We got Boston is in the mix. You still got Montreal and Tampa's having a tremendous season. And then basically what it does is the flyers only path forward after they're, you know, started the season of their goal of making the playoffs. And they can say whatever they want. They were the front office. Everybody was

7:23crowing about it. They loved it. They were mentioning the idea. They were talking about how playoffs were so important to give this crew experience and everything else. And now the only valid pathways to catch the islanders for third. And it's not impossible. They got a heck of a lot of digging to do. But don't forget, we got Washington also in the mix and right at right above us. Columbus is on a heater now since they've got their new coach bump. It's not really an easy way. And I can foresee already what's going to happen. We're going to come back from the Olympic break. The flyers are going to get hot. They're going to win some games. And it's not going to be enough because they're just going to fizzle out. They're going to give people that false sets of hope like they always do. And it's the same script just as it always was for the past few years. It's so pathetic and so bad. I can't believe we're here again. Yeah. Yeah. Just to give me a little bit. By the way, they're going to come back out of the break and disappoint us. We're going to miss by a few points. And I was like, yeah.

8:27So just to give you some more context on this playoff outlook, I was taking a look at some stats here. So the flyers are on pace for about 89 points, which would historically be about six points too low. I think that on a normal season, most of most of the prognosticators have stated that 95 points is historically safe to make the playoffs. But this year, based upon some of the records of the Atlantic division, specifically, it looks like high 90s, even 100 might be necessary in order to get into that wild card slot. So even if the flyers just got to the 95 point threshold, that would require 34 points in their last 26 games, a record of about 16, 8 and 2 roughly if you throw in a couple of the loser points there. But the points percentage needed is at least at a 6, 654 clip, which is very high. I mean, you're talking about really, really dominant type of hockey if they're going to do that. And that's at the bare minimum

9:31for them to maybe sniff it. So, you know, they're not going to be going, you know, 18, 5, and 3, the rest of the way, something like that. It's highly unlikely. So I think that a lot of the folks that thought, oh, well, you know what? They might be able to slip in. I think it's going to be, it's going to take a herculean effort. And, and for this team to really come out and, you know, Dan Villedard to be posted at 97% save percentage in just every player clicking offensively. And just I don't see that happening this year with the team. So hate to burst the bubble of any of the listeners that thought it was within reach. But those numbers, I think, are pretty telling for this team right now. Yeah, 26 games left. Eight points back. That's that's hard. That is a hard hill to overcome. You know, they need a lot of luck to go their way with everybody else to fail as well. And not just they need not just them going on a nearly undefeated street to make it happen. And considering how hot the Atlantic was is the man he noted. The only way to sneak in is the

10:34third place. And, you know, it's not impossible. I suppose the, you know, the, the Metro is not to overly strong this year. They're all kind of equal. So it's not mathematically impossible yet, but it's not looking good either. And, you know, there are so many people back in, you know, November and December when they were fighting and clawing and scratching out these overtime games and shootouts. And, oh, we proved everybody wrong. They're going to be so good this year. And then, you know, it's a lot of ways it mirrored the, you know, John Torrella 82 game playoff style of like, yeah, you know, they're picking up some wins. But are they really winning? And this is a point that I brought up a lot like how many truly dominant games have the flyers had this season? The answer's not many. You know, coming back when they were down 32, you tie it up in the last minute and then losing a shootout. You know, that's not like some big adventure here. That's just fighting and clawing to make it happen. And it has been a pretty rough year, basically, ever since ever since the Anaheim game. And they had that game out west. Yeah. I guess the western came,

11:37the western stretch came after the, the Anaheim game been a week later, but yeah, it's been not great around here ever since. And, you know, the injuries are piled up. Let armus some time. Urson has been about what Sam Urson always does. Colossum has been even worse. And, uh, yeah, just been just been a miserable stretch here, as I said, when the show opened, like they kind of got saved by the bell by this Olympic break, where they can take a couple weeks and not have people continue to shit on them because it's been not great. The, uh, the carnival happened last weekend, which was a modified disaster for the Philadelphia flyers in their front office. Yeah, they had the, you know, all the shields lying up with their little podcast tables out there. Everyone went out and did some talking and, uh, drew a whole lot of negative press their way. And Breyr, so, so negative that Breyr had to come out publicly and hold a pregame presser to apologize essentially for how shitty all those comments were, which is funny because when

12:39I heard that, they go, well, is it the talking quotes where he openly buried Mitch Kov again? Was it Breyr saying that they're not going to do anything at the trade deadline because they don't know what they're doing? Or was the Keith Jones saying, well, we were open for the 26 off season, but that dried up. So we got nothing now. We don't know what to do. I'm like, you got a lot to apologize for coming off of this little break here. So, uh, I, I've rancid about this as well. So, maybe I'll pass the baton to you guys, you know, how we feel in after this disasterous carnival presser and all the, the wonderful, amazing, positive field of the flyers news that came out of it ever since. Man, you set the stage please for us. I mean, listen, it was the flyers' wives carnival. It's supposed to be, you know, a great event and supporting great causes and everything else. And I think the more appropriate term would have been a circus. Yeah. I mean, where do you start? I mean, listen, I will say that I thought of the, I listened to the coverage. I did think

13:40that PHL wise coverage was actually pretty good because they did ask the questions of the different members of the front office and the coaches. I didn't like the answers. I, I will give them credit for asking. I thought to know the goalies was extremely pedestrian. I didn't like their coverage. We could probably talk about that a little bit later. But, you know, starting with Dan Hilferty and his old sales pitch, you know what, he's, he's the slick sales guy. You know, the guy that, hey, we're on the right track and stick with us, you know, we're building something here and we need all the fans here and all this kind of crap. You know, the stuff with, with Mitchkov and talk it. And when Charlie O'Connor talked and asked the question, right, oh, sorry, it was, it was Bill Matt's who asked the question about Mitchkov in the ice time. And Rick talk its response was, well, Charlie, you know me. I go down swing. He, you go down swinging.

14:46Look, what the hell are you talking about? Somebody's asking you a legitimate question about a player, a player who's really important for the future of this franchise. And that's what you came up with. He got his backup all of a sudden and he started freaking out and talking about camp shape and all this stuff. And it became an absolute like just garble of nonsense that was coming out of him. And like, you know, Danny Breer had that impromptu presser, which I'm sure we can come to after. But it was really set out to address the Mitchkov thing in particular because the heat has been rising for the last couple of weeks about the ice time and talk it. And what's he doing? And how is he going to get there? And all the stuff about camp shape, King mentioned every time he gets a chance. And then people are always about like, listen, it's February. He's been playing hockey. Like he shouldn't be that out of shape yet. And I know that there's the argument of, you know, hey, listen, other players are now in better shape. So he's always kind of playing catch up. And I

15:48get that. But they're not using him in any meaningful way to try to get the most out of them. They're really trying to make an example out of them. And I kind of think that that's also indicative of a coach that's trying to get as many wins as possible. And not really looking at the future. And I think that that ties into the Keith Jones comments at the carnival, which is really about the plan. And although he didn't say that the free agency thing was, you know, their exclusive plan in 2026, it's hard not to hear him belly ache about how the free agency period dried, dried up because the cap went up for everybody. And well, that wasn't really anticipated. And it went up for the next three years. And that wasn't anticipated. And it's like, you know what, Keith, do you not go to the board of governor's meetings? Did you and Danny not go to the GM meetings? Like this didn't come out of nowhere. Elliot Friedman and all the other beats and reporters out there on the national level have been talking about the revenues are up. The salary caps going to

16:52go up. The players have paid all their money back from the escrow and from COVID and all that other stuff. They're it's going to go up. You know what? How much of a blind side two by four to the head was this really? I mean, come on. And every fan out there was saying, really, that's your plan. Getting McDavid. He's not going to get to free agency. Really get cap resolve. He's not going to get to free agency. Really, I call Quinn Hughes. Not going to get to free agency. And you know what? Now, Pinaran didn't get to free agency either. So all the fans that quote-unquote are idiots pointed out the express thing that happened, which was none of these guys were going to be available. I find it absolutely stunning. It's shocking to me that these experts, these former flyers, these guys that played the game, they know everything. They've got all these connections. None of their connections are to like agents and stuff where we're like, yo Keith, my client's going to resign. You know this, right? We're just playing hardball. Edmonton's

17:53going to pony up. He's not going anywhere. Like, I know there's tampering and all this stuff, but it's shocking that none of these guys had it in even one Iota of a clue that this was a potential pitfall for this plan. And it really makes people second-guess and question this plan. Anyways, from the damn beginning. And that's the most frustrating part of all of this. The carnival basically exercised every fan's worst fear, which is, oh my god, the coach is totally not using Michikov properly. He's abusing our best and granted there's responsibility on the player. We know this, but he's not doing the right things to put him in a spot to actually succeed. So the coach is screwed up. We've got the plan from the front office is screwed up. They're not doing anything. And it makes you wonder if Danny Breyer even would have called that press conference. If Elliott Friedman on 32 thoughts that Monday morning didn't call out the flyers

18:55and Danny Breyer and said, Danny Breyer, we need the Breyer signal has to go up for the front office to address this. It's gotten way too crazy. Would he have even done anything you think, guys? No. Or was he shamed into it? Yeah, that's extremely well stated, man. And I agree with you, 100% there, that there's no way the Breyer would have had that impromptu press conference. He's in the middle of a hallway with some random flashlight being shown on his face, you know, like during that. That was not a planned thing. And that was a reaction to national commentators starting to throw some heat on the flyers after the carnival circus. That happened over the weekend. And I think, you know, this really all stems back to the fact that people are starting to wake up a little bit and say, well, you know, a lot of, a lot of the folks that were skeptical are starting to be proven right here. You know, you swung and you missed on Quinn Hughes. Mitch Koff is having a terrible second year. Where are we getting our one C

20:02and one D from Jetluchenko is not doing well in juniors like, you know, these puzzle pieces are adding up. And some of the folks that were not sure about the Breyer plan or were willing to give them time are now looking at things and saying, well, there's a lot of holes here. And I don't see how these holes are going to get filled. And, you know, some of these questions like Bill's question to talk it was very pointed. And you know, he certainly didn't like it because as we heard earlier in the season, talk it through a fit about how all the other media people were asking about Mitch Koff all the time, which is very similar to the fit and tantrum that he threw in Vancouver about the Peterson questions. Yeah. When that video resurfaced earlier in the weekend, and it's like he's having the exact same almost verbatim meltdown about a lies peterson that he was about Mitch Koff. I'm like, okay, like we knew there was drama there with that one and the Miller and the peterson and talking to that little, you know, love triangle that was going on last season.

21:05You know, but it's kind of distant viewers of that. It's like, whatever was going on was going on, you know, they clearly pushed it all on Miller and he got traded and then the only fire talking anyway. But, you know, I thought Mike actually made a really good point in the group chat about this. Like, it's not like, talk it was here for three or four years and this relationship between player and coach deteriorated, right? Like you kind of saw that in Vancouver. Those three were together for years before everything kind of went to shit. He and he keeps citing the fucking training camp. So in, you know, the second week of September, when he first showed up and met everybody, he apparently decided then I have a problem with Mitch Koff and in early February, he's still harping about the exact same problem. So he showed up from day one and decided that he doesn't like this guy and has been treating him like shit all year like there's something going on behind the scenes here that that their button heads for a reason. It's not in that, I thought that was such a brilliant point that that I did not talk about on my solo show and has not been brought up a lot by other people as well. That like, this was not a relationship that went sideways.

22:10This was a relationship that was doomed from day one and it's just only recently that people were kind of losing their shit over it because he keeps bringing up the exact same reason of, while he and shopping, it can't been shaped six months ago. Like if that's the only thing you got on this guy, what's going on here? Like how did this relationship get so sour in the first place? You know, did Mitch Koff like, is it just, and in this, this is all like bean dip, right? Because when we start talking about the way the media handles them, they kind of coddle them and everyone's shitting on Mitch Koff at every available, but Kevin Kurtz talking about his body fat percentage and all this fucking wacky bullshit. You know, it's like the media is going at like, did Mitch Koff actually do something that, did he go out there and slash all their tires by himself after practice one day because he was so pissed off about it? Or is this just some weird smear campaign because they're all parroting Rick Tucket because they can't think for them fucking selves and most of them being cached by like what happened here? How is this situation boiling out? Why is Mitch

23:11Koff the only player on this team being forced to take the accountability quote-unquote that everyone loves talking about so much? Why? Why? Why are we not talking about how shitty guard it halfway is? Or how fucking shitty Sean Catery is? That guy's beloved by the fucking media. They just jerk that guy silly all day long. But Mitch Koff is taking all this fucking heat for no reason. It's like, what is happening? How is this deteriorating as badly as it is as short of a time as it's been? I don't understand that at all either. And I think that's, that's one of the elephant in the room here when it comes to how the flyers have certainly handled him and kind of how they handle some of the younger prospects historically as well is like to me there's there's some sort of like hazing period that that has to happen with these guys and I don't understand it with Mitch Koff because it's his second year and I get there's a new coach here but like the thing that I think has been so embarrassingly mistreated and miscommunicated by the organization specifically talk it every air is that look this is like a two-way street with this player like one this player

24:16is different than basically everybody else on the team like you need him to be the face of the franchise moving forward like that's it so there's already a spotlight on this and you really need to make sure that this player works out and develops properly but there's no accountability for the organization like you'll never hear them say oh well you know we need to do a better job in making sure to empowering the player to you know to do all of the checkpoints and hit these checkpoints in the office season and they don't have to reveal everything but they need to show that like they are trying to give the player resources and empower this player to take that next step and mature as individual and I haven't heard anything like that there's been no language from anyone in leadership that has addressed that topic at all and I think that's also an easy out for them too like they can they can take the heat away from the player in public by saying things like that instead of just ramming it down everyone's throat that we have this this asshole

25:16from Russia came over to play for the flyers and he was eating donuts in the off season he shouldn't even made the team and I as Rick talk it if sniffed out the bad cancer here we're going to get him out of here like that's the level of of the communication and the tenor that we're hearing for the organization it's like why are you doing this to Mitch Koff other than some sort of hazing thing I mean what are they saying is like oh look at this shit he doesn't speak English fuck him he's not doing what we're telling him to do on the ice benches ass ten minutes max no three on three ever like I don't understand like has Mitch Koff and we probably actually circle this a little bit earlier in the season is has his behavior and play been so egregious has he been so flagrant with his lack of ability to perform or do what the coaches say but has he been so off that this treatment is warranted I mean I can't imagine that it is and and secondly the organization

26:16can't say that and they got to do a better job of allowing him to succeed in putting him on that path I mean when talk you came in the fucking off season what did he do with Mitch Koff did he have a conversation with him like they didn't have a fucking translator last year for him that was appropriate so like what did you do Rick you're the head coach you you are tasked with shepherding this this individuals career for this franchise what did you do to make sure that he came into camp in shape what are you doing now to get him in shape instead of just blaming this fucking 20 year old doesn't speak English it's just absolutely ridiculous and that's why Briar came out with this press conference like Mitch Koff isn't going anywhere is like yeah whatever whatever but the toothpaste is out of the tube at that point and we saw the true feelings of the head coach about what's going on with this player a few days prior yeah for me this it would say a day late in a dollar short right it's it's like the whole thing with the way that this this organization does business is they don't like talking about things they only like doing their availability for

27:22Danny Briar and stuff you know at like three four points in the season and you know what that's fine but you don't have to have a formal press conference you could at least call up one of the media people and give like an informal kind of statement if you want to address something sometimes in a losing streak during a winning streak you know whatever the case may be the problem is the way that they do things is they let the media do all the talking for them yeah and that's probably part and parcel of why the media and the organization are so in bed together and doing their bidding is you get the media beats that are paid by this organization they start putting out all of the different you know fires when questions come up online whether it's on x facebook whatever it is I'm not on flyers facebook but the whole thing is it gets to a boiling point and the beats are getting so bombarded with attacks all over the place and it's why the temperature has gotten so

28:25high is like just as an example this Mitch Cove discussion in the last week and a half I have been having discussion on Mitch Cove with other fans fans of our show and stuff and I've had not one but two different occasions two different beats have come in and inserted themselves into a conversation so one of them I was talking about they were talking about well his shifts are really short compared to everybody else he's pulling himself off of the ice and I I basically was arguing I said well based on who who's saying this and listen Jason Martinez came in and he showed a picture he's like this is my setup and he's got three monitors and like computers everywhere and he's like I get a lot of data and stuff on all the lines and shifts and everything that nobody else in the public can get and I'm like okay but I'm like that that that's great in all and listen it was a respectful back and forth nothing bad he was good about it I was good about it I said but how

29:29much of that is on him and how much of that is Rick talk it pulling them off that's what I wanted to know and other people now since then have actually gone on and said most of the time it's actually Rick talk it that's pulling them off it's like he's out there for you know an icing or whatever and he gets has to stay on but other than that they pull him off it's very rare like it maybe a third of the time yeah it's him coming off because he's gassed like how many times do we have to go through this and then one the thing that Martinez actually did say that I agreed with them he said you know I wish that we could talk to Matve and get his perspective on it because it's important that we we hear from him and in a different conversation I was talking about that exact same thing how do we have Slava Kusnetsov there and yet nobody freaking talks to him how is it that this story has been a story for months now and nobody not one reporter has said maybe we should talk

30:31to Matve not one I mean that it's ridiculous like who conducts any kind of an investigation on anything and not talk to one of the principal key people involved it's ridiculous we would a police force do something like this with the FBI do it this way oh we're gonna we're gonna investigate the 9-11 attacks but we're not gonna investigate anything from the airlines we're just gonna talk about like you know look at what happened at 7-11 on a day in Brittany like who does this talk to Matve so I basically said how can this guy not be available and Brandon Somerman who I don't follow basically jumped in it said you're wrong Slava's always at every game and I'm like so why don't you fucking talk to me no I mean I'm from them and he's like well it's not how you think you know you have to you know ask for availability and this and that and you have to schedule it and all that and I'm like wow I'm like really it's that hard so it in like in like the

31:3330-some-odd game since this has been a story none of you guys have bothered to make an availability so the organization holding Mitch called back from talking then if we're gonna go down that route are they purpose and not letting him talk to the media then and that's what I said I go that's what it makes it look like it makes it look like they're hiding him and they don't want him talking and saying stuff and it's like well and then Charlie O'Connor on his show said well it's hard I don't want to talk to a translator and then like not have a great like interaction and whatnot and he's not the story there's other guys that are more impactful in the game I want to talk to them which is exclusively the story right now there is no other story it's just yeah it's performing it's deflecting oh that's just a classic case of deflection and I think that there is legs to the organization not wanting him to talk that's that is certainly a tactic in situations like this particularly one where you have a player like him that isn't from this country is still new to the culture very young as well and you know I think if you can cut off some of

32:39any sort of difficult or critical type of media questioning which probably wouldn't be that critical anyway because it really does that down there but if you can if you can cut off that line completely I think that is their theory of saying well we're just going to protect the kid by not letting any questions go to him and unfortunately you can't really do that this is the NHL and you know there's people's people's jobs livelihoods kind of depend on you know following this team is isn't exhibition this isn't some sort of you know you 13 game where you don't want to hurt the kids feelings or something by calling them out in front of other people and it's it might be making the situation even worse because now people are speculating and guessing as to who's doing what wrong and why so I can see their theory behind it but at the end of the day it's a professional organization and you kind of have to come clean on this stuff and yeah I think that they're just purposely you know withholding that and and creating a barrier where they know that beat writers will

33:42just do whatever they want or whatever the organization wants that is so if they create an obstacle the beat writer and and there's some sort of soft pressure be like hey there's an obstacle for a reason they'll all be like okay fine we'll talk to him at the end of the year only you know that's the sort of thing just absolutely ridiculous see but then it gets to a point is are you protecting Mitchkov by not having him talk or you protecting yourselves yeah because there's something going on within the organization for whatever reason and it's almost like they're trying to pull the playbook of Cutter Go Che let's come right out we're gonna bash Cutter Go Che we're gonna do this we're gonna make humiliate him and do all this stuff it's a full court press the media will be in on it and then it'll almost be like we get the fans on our side and then you don't have to answer any more questions about this and it's done and then they got you know talk it they've had Keith Jones say about his shape in training camp Danny Breyer has said it you know now they got biz nasty on spit and chick let's saying it that now everybody's talking about it and it's almost

34:45like they're like oh good everybody's talking about it so we don't have to and that's a loser's mentality that shows you a junior GM and how pathetic that front office with no experience they're willing to actually not answer the hard questions they're not willing they they're willing to throw their body on the line and block slap shots for a living but they're not able to stand in front of a microphone and be honest with their fans and with the paying public that is so cowardly and so pathetic I can't stand that that's what that that's what pissed me off about that circus the flyers carnival it's supposed to be a good event and it showed the cowardice and the the patheticness of this front office and how little experience that they had in dealing with any of this it really the the war started to show and I think all the fans saw it yeah for sure also worth noting on the just translation front here they never hired a real translator to this day they don't have one and the two guys that were doing a heavy bulk of that

35:46were fetotov and particularly Zamula who was basically employed almost exclusively to translate for bichkov and they have since traded both of them so maybe there's something to uh to this one as well just keep in the silence of we just get rid of one of the speaks russian you're scurbankins hanging around these days he was colosov's best friend in lehi last year because they were the two that could communicate with each other but uh yeah yeah there's some there's some shady shit going on here with with this bichkov thing and you know how if you not talk to him about it why in the fuck does talk it keep talking about it why can't you just play the guy I just this is the one guy other than portamartone and the entire organization right now that you cannot afford to fuck up and it's like they're actively going out of their way to shit on this guy and I just there's never been a good reason for well his line changes fuck off you don't need three god damn computers in front of your stupid fucking face to sit there and worry about line changes that's bullshit this whole thing is fucked and like yeah with regard

36:51to that topic just to dive in you know on that one so was what Jason was telling you manny was that like on on a repeated and consistent basis this kid is simply just removing himself giving from the ice there's no way he's fucking doing like he just said flat out his shifts are much shorter than every other player on the team and that's what he said and that's due to bichkov doing it he's he's unilaterally saying oh I can't do this I'm fucking going to spend right now that's what that's what I asked I said so how much of it is the player and how much of it is the coach and he didn't have an answer he said this is where I really think that it would be helpful if we could talk to Matt Vey and figure that out yeah and that's where it's like yes so if if none of the other media people think like that like I don't I know he's not always there because of you know his circumstances and whatnot but it's like how can no other media people who are in that locker room every single

37:51game not one of them has said you know what I'm gonna talk to Bethany instead every instead after every loss you know speaking of mr. consequential they go and talk to the goofball captain marble mouth who's got nothing to say staring at the floor talking about we have to be better we have to our power play has to be better we we we we every time they lose they go talk to this dummy and it's like meanwhile Matt Vey bichkov's there and none of you you walk past the stall Slava's there and you just you don't even talk to him he's too busy eating borsh or whatever it is I don't know what's going on over there like it's unbelievable it's it's like the media is an arm of the organization they're supposed to take all the heat and all the questions and they're supposed to come up with the stories and the narratives to keep people from asking the rookie front office about how to do their job and then it blows up in front of their face when they're like oh man I can't believe the salary cap went up yeah gee what's stunning I can't believe that

38:55happened everyone was calling for that like it's like oh and again even if it kind of agreed three years it is gonna go up that is crazy but they did have whispers of that happening months before that said these guys have been in the job for three years and for three years their plan was basically we're gonna draft like you know six seven eleven twelve whatever a couple of times and then we're gonna nail free agency in 2026 and that's gonna be it for the old rebuild we're gonna be right back into the playoffs and we're right back into Stanley Cup contention yet three years and that's what you came up with that was your fucking plan that's what it seems like that's what Jones was saying but that was there that was the entirety of their plan was hoping that McDavid snuck through 2026 for agency and now they don't know what to do with this