On the Sheet: Utah Mammoth GM Bill Armstrong

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2:02Yes and no. It's an interesting one when you're breaking that one down because your team's playing pretty well and you have to have a split on P and P K and gold coming in. You got to kind of look past it a little bit, but you got to clean up a few things that you don't want to see repeat itself. So I think it's a tricky day for coaches. They got a pair of the group. We got to choose to get what we need to out of this road trip with a good win against Buffalo and then home. So it's a huge game for us tomorrow. And we got to refocus on that. But our coaches do a good job, making sure that they get what they need from the meetings today and move past it and be ready for tomorrow. It's, you know, I've said countless times and now I have to use the number 84 instead of 82. That there's no such thing as an 80, formally 82 now 84 game schedule. It's 84 one game schedules. Like it feels like every single game is like its own season. But you remember,

3:02like when you played, you couldn't, you used to be able to ease into a season, right? Like, okay, it's sterile. We don't hear it's sterile early anymore. We hear, you know, Bill Armstrong saying, no, we got to clean this up and we got to maybe, you know, pay attention to our knitting year. And like the idea of easing into a season bill is gone. Like that's that's foreign now. Yeah. It's there's so much data you read and trying to get ahead of the trends that are coming your way on your team. And I think it's just a different era, you know, to play more games and it's so competitive. I mean, the NHL's such a humbling league because you can, you can absolutely crush it one night and dominate and then and then absolutely get killed the next night. You know, you're on the road, you're dealing with trouble, delays, you know, and just being tired from the road schedule. It's just very humbling league and you do have to make sure that, you know, when you're going through, you know, good times or bad times, you know, you don't get too high and too low and

4:03you kind of stay, you know, right in the middle and just keep getting better all the time. So that's that's a lot easier said than done. You know, I was just talking to Brian Burke before Achaimani joins me every Friday and he he sends his best and, you know, he, uh, he had an interesting offer sheet situation once upon a time with with Kevin Lowe and Barn Fight threats and all these types of things. I don't think that it was similar between you and Sunny Amada, but I'm curious what happens when you when you get an offer sheet for for one of your players? Like what goes through your mind right away? I know you want to take the emotion out of it probably, but like what happened? What happened when you got that? Well, you know, like it's everybody just has to understand it's it's in the rules, you know, it's in the CVS. You can do this. So teams are going to do it more and more. Um, and like you said, you got to take the emotion out and figure out the problem and kind of identify it and how are we going to move through it? What are we going to, what's our next step? And so those two we kind of just work through and and, uh, you know,

5:06obviously match the offer sheet because it's an important player and on our team and and where we're moving to and he always has been. So, um, you know, and no hard feelings on on our side. I think you're going to see it more and more. Um, I think it comes down a strategy to not let yourself be set up for an offer sheet. Um, you know, and there's deals to be done. You you got to make sure you do your homework and get in there early and and take care of business. Because it's definitely something that is the new trend in the national hockey league. And I think it's here to stay. Yeah. You know, I think we all agree with you and I've, you know, I've kind of equated it to build. I've kind of equated it to a hockey fight and that it's not so much the fight itself. As much as it is the threat of the fight that can that can change behavior. You know what I mean? Like we we just went in through a summer where everything was, you know, um, we just had Chris Patrick talk about this at NHL.com and the in the off season about like

6:07the Anaheim situation scared a lot of people and he wanted to make sure he got business done and we saw deals that were signed because of it. Like is the threat of the offer sheet to a manager, the equivalent of the threat of a fight for a player? Does it feel the same way? It does. I think, you know, you know, it's, you know, it's like the school year fight you're going to get into and you're sitting in your play a all day class because you know, we success is going to happen in about 20 minutes and you're you're nervous to go outside and I think it's the same. I mean, I think with the off sheets that, you know, are going to happen here, they're definitely going to be way on GM's mind when they're when they're approaching the player of both getting a deal done. But, you know, hopefully if, you know, you're you like your player and you see some seismic player that he's going to be really good and going to help your franchise, you got to take that step to go sign them. When we look at some of the numbers right now too, I think I keep saying here and other other places too. Like I just think we need to sort of calibrate ourselves to the new numbers and they're going to get a lift like every every summer.

7:14There's sticker shock to a lot of these new contracts that that we look at and then eventually, like we can all remember when Nathan McKinning got six million dollars and we all went, whoa! And then by the time he won the sale, I caught up, it was like six million dollars. The biggest bar I can in the NHL, like there is there is an element of everybody just needing to adjust here, right? Yeah, there's a sticker shock for sure. Some of the people get, you know, like, oh my god, you know, we're gonna, you know, go into the market and do this and now you look back and you like it's just the movement of money, the growth and the cap, it's, you know, it's just a part of doing business and I think we just all kind of get over that sticker shock. But I do think there's also enough men of listening at the end of the day if you want to build a championship roster, you have to make sure that everybody fits in, you know, to that piece of puzzle or the pizza as we call it, you know, if one guy comes in and takes all the slice of pizza, nobody else is gonna eat. So if you want to be a championship team and you want to, you know, you know, the way that we are built, we cut teams with a thousand different blades from the first line to the fourth line and 60 and two

8:18good goal tenders. So we need money to spread around. So for us, it's just about being smart, making sure that we have that right thought process that we're signing players and also trying to get our players to work with us a little bit in the sense of understanding that we're trying to build a championship roster. The sheet is brought to you by Maud. Maud prescribes a once or twice daily, medaphonal drink that can keep you energized, focused and alert throughout the day. Here's the mechanism. Energy drinks with caffeine temporarily block adenosine, the chemical that makes you feel tired. It builds up and when the caffeine wears off, it all crashes down on you at once. Maudaphonal works differently. It engages multiple pathways in your brain, dopamine, norepinephrine, histamine, anorexin to achieve steady energy and alertness for 10 to 12 hours. Maudaphonal was invented in the 1970s and since then it's been used by the highest performers on

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10:28Grab these hot deals before they're gone. Save on brands you trust. Restrictions apply. See website for full terms and conditions. With almost half a million customers and over a trillion dollars of secure payments, Bill isn't new to intelligent finance. It's the proven way to simplify Bill pay and maximize cash flow. Want to learn more? Visit bill.com slash proven for a special offer. One of the interesting things that we've seen with your team here because we put this premium on youth. Look at all the players that are coming here. I thought it was really interesting the way in the off season whether it was Vincent Trochak or Andrews Lee, it's like Bill's going out here to balance the youth with guys in their early 30s. Heading into the summer. How much deliberately did you look at and say, yeah, for every cool we have a Trochak along with them.

11:35It's kind of the thought process and it goes back to my days with St. Louis, Robert Thomas, he was a young kid coming out of junior tremendous sentiment. Planting the national mockula is a whole lot different than planting the OHL and we had Tyler Bozak right beside him. He guided him through the process and they played on a line together. It was huge to give him that right veteran. It's hard in the national mockula when you're going rookie to rookie on a pass. You're doing that for 84 games a year. It's hard grind if we can get to the veterans that add in what we need and that are good role models and good leaders. It really helps your team and you can see that with adding Lee and Trochak for our group. It's what we needed. They're not only good leaders, they're good players and good people and they're going to help guide some of our younger players through the tough times and help them become pros and hopefully champions. It was a big one last season obviously for the mammoth getting to the playoffs. The series against the Vegas

12:37Golden Knights and it's interesting. Berke was just saying before he came on, you know, Anaheim makes the playoffs while he's there and all of a sudden the next year, the expectations rise but you want that. He was saying like, yeah, but that's fun that you can't sneak up on anybody anymore. Utah, I'm sure you read all the preseason predictions from big brains on our side of it. Watch Utah, Utah is coming at the end of the day too. You know you can't sneak up on anybody anymore and that's a compliment. Yeah, it is a compliment and you know, I think for us we're going into building nobody's nobody's like, oh, I wonder if they're going to be good like they know we've got a good team and there's some confidence with our group. I think at the end of the day, we used to run into the the backup goal tender and the rookie parties and you know, you know, we didn't really have that, you know, the real concern that we could be teams and now you see we've taken that step. So I'm really like with our group that really taking a step and you can feel that confidence and I think for expectations, you know, we expect to be a really good team, a team that can

13:41get back into the playoffs and it's hard to get into the playoffs so we don't treat that lightly. Our goal is an expectation to get back into the playoffs and see where we can go from there. Do you consider your team in the conversation with the Colorado's, the Dallas's, the Minnesota as those those main stays in the in the in the in the in the division? You consider yourselves there now. Yeah, well, you got some good questions today. Sorry, but you must have got you all worked up. No, you know what it is. It's your former agent who said, make sure you're hard on bill. I had him since I was 14 or 14 years old. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, but it's a great question because when we do go into those games now, we expect to win, you know, and that's a great thing. And you know, when we play the big boys, you know, any team in the national hockey league, we're going into the game expecting to win. We don't

14:41we don't think, oh, they're they're a little bit better than us. We want to we want to play our game, our style with our culture. And we think we can beat an 18th in the national hockey league. And that's that's that's something I feel from our group. It's taken a long time to get that feeling. We've been at it for a while. And now we come to the ring. You can feel it. Like we got a chance and we've got the ability to beat anybody in the national hockey league. You know, one of the things about about the situation that you find yourself in now with with Utah and and previously with the coyotes like there's a I don't know how do I how do I say this like you have right right Smith's your owner right like and and part of that is like this is like you're walking through the desert and you find a glass of water and like oh finally like and try and I'm trying to be polite about about Arizona in that situation. But like how profoundly different does it feel for you being able to do your job like we

15:46saw make the joke about you know teams that like don't let players go too deep in the offensive zone you know bungee cords on the players don't let them don't let them go deep keeping close it must feel like the bungee cords got taken off like you would go to a certain point with the coyotes and then get snapped back and that's gone now. Yeah and you're right it's it's a game changer for us to have Ryan and Ash Smith and SEG what they've done there's no excuses in our organization you go in our practice facility you know we have a car wash for the players we got a barber shop for the players we got their dry cleaning you know as is available you know it's just it's really a super set up it's it's really you know we got some of the best food made by our chef's every day for our players your name and it's it's available and it's an incredible facility our practice facility then you go down the Delta center and it's sold out and you know they renovated it we're really very fortunate to be in an organization that provides absolutely everything and there's zero excuses and that's the greatest thing about you know being a GM and

16:50you're walking through the door in Utah as we don't have any excuses you know we we come to the ring every day thinking that we have the best of the best and we expect to be the best of the national hockey league and like you said those expectations are on but put in a good way but we want them before before I let you go um right now we're all wondering about a number of different players and trade scenarios and you know trades are sort of you know catnip for you know our side of the industry and for hockey fans as well just just curious like how how busy is it right now with talk like normally we have to wait until November and so things really start to get the system starts to get lubricated we sort of get conversations how frisky is it right now and uh not that I think you're gonna tell us what it is but is there something out there that would stun everybody that might happen you know there's it's just a different you know year this year with as many guys have you know been in that holding out from their teams and not coming into play for their team so

17:54it's been a little bit different that and there's been players been a little bit but um you know it's it's tough to make moves everybody's got their full roster and full lineup going right now and it's one of those things that you you've kind of got to let your team settle in and see how they played it see what you need um so it's really uh for a lot of teams probably hard to make some some some tough tough decisions right now uh based upon they're still learning their teams and seeing how good their team is and what the strength and weakness of their clubs are so it's it's gonna take a little bit of time to play itself out but yeah there's no blockbusters that I know of haha well see it's uh it's it's it was I got to I did me on the list but I've never seen a summer like this I I can't imagine what it was like from your perch but I never saw a summer like that nor did I see one coming nor but it was it was it was the weirdest summer I've ever seen covering this game yeah it was it was a unique summer and there was a lot of money pumped into the system and it showed and you know it was it was it was a it was a truly entertaining I was some

18:56the the offer sheets in the way that it played out um so you know let's see what let's see what the season brings you never know there's been a lot of movement in the national hockey league and we'll see how it goes absolutely uh as always thanks for your time uh congratulations on the the early success notwithstanding last night I understand um but continue to kid listen continue success with the mammoth like it's it's a fun team to watch and it's really cool to see an organization hitting its stride so congrats well thank you very much thanks for having me appreciate it i swear it stays clean i lost that's not every day this week every day this month i can't get out my head i'm still in fishing's day to day because you can call it all right i went to the dark man you don't give me little medicine i'm like no i'm in that spine i'm not against those methods but you it's me myself in I've just got country fixing my mind

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