The Tom Gazzola Show - Oct. 5th, 2026 - Ryan Hana

0:00Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applaud those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what growth therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Insurance average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average.

1:00See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash start now. That's growtherapy.com slash start now. Growtherapy.com slash start now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Guessing is for game shows, not your business. Workday is the Enterprise AI platform for HR, Finance, and IT. It's AI grounded in your context to get work done and done right. It's a new workday. We are going to talk a little bit about the Detroit Red Wings as we welcome in Ryan Hanna from the Winged Wheel Podcast covering the wings. And listen, it's been interesting, dramatic, fun to watch from a far-right when it comes to the Red Wings. But how would you sum up the off season and then the training camp and everything that we've seen lately from the Detroit Red Wings?

2:03Yeah, it's been a show, man. I'm glad someone's having fun, Tom. Yes. I was saying to our listeners last night, I wasn't alive during the Deadwing Zero, so I'm not going to presume to know just how bad that felt. But as long as I've been following this team, even before covering it, this is the lowest of low. We thought coming into the season, the biggest concern was going to be fan apathy because of the team's trajectory was kind of aimless at best. But there's no apathy right now. This is the most eye rate I've ever felt, the hot town fandom to be. And it's not just Dylan Larkin anymore that they're doing. It's ownership, it's management, it's everything. There doesn't seem to be a single thing that's going right for the Red Wings right now. And this is like five alarm fire. You know what, it's such a good hockey market. I had the privilege of covering a bunch of games in Detroit that arenas fantastic, the great history, obviously.

3:04Where has this gone south? Is it from the top down? Is there toxicity like creeping its way down from the top? Like why have there been so many decisions that are kind of befuddling, Ryan? Everyone wants a simple answer of like, oh, it's all this that went wrong or all that thing, the moment that went wrong. And the reality of it is, the reality of it is that it's a lot of things that built up to it. But I will say that since Chris Phillips decided to let Steve Izzman go, it has been the indecision of the organization that has led them into this. They took too long in the GM search. They had a preferred candidate, which was internal within illicit companies, which also owns the Detroit Tigers and the MLB, Jeff Greenberg, didn't want the role in the end and that was the whole plan gone. So they didn't have a backup and they also took until mid-September to even name Sean Horkoff interim GM and give him some prerogative to start running hockey operations.

4:04That's too long. He had I think two business days before the start of the season or the start of the training camp and the window to sign Simon Edvinson or anyone else to a maximum eight-year extension. He had almost no time to do it. So as long as Sean Horkoff has that interim tag, to me this goes all the way to the top in Chris Phillips, but the organization and the Redmond's leadership right now are moving, they're almost paralyzed. Like they don't know what they want and that has led them to, and this is now a second trade request if you want to call it that. And you can't just sit on your hands and the national hockey league. It moves fast. It's changing rapidly right now at the salary cap. You can't be waiting around. You have to be active. Ryan, why did things sour around Steve Isman or was how much of this is on Steve Isman where this team's at right now or franchise I should say? I think things sourd. I think the biggest things in Chris Elch's mind were Detroit not being a destination.

5:08The Redmond's struggle to bring in free agents and they struggled to bring in players via trade who had any kind of trade control. And that was something that Chris Elch grew up with his dad, Mike Owning team and the Red mond's were like the premier American hockey market, you know, original 16th and that was never a struggle, right? And so for him that was a big point of concern. There was feedback from players or agents that it was Steve Isman that was a lot of that and the Dylan Larkin situation. That was a decision for his career. Like Dylan Larkin is doing what's best for his career. He wants to win and he knows like at 30 years old now he's not going to be anywhere close to his prime by the time the Redmond's are competitive again. But it was also a personal gripe and a personal disconnect with Steve Isman. Those two did not get along and Dylan Larkin was just kind of done with him. Well Steve Isman was there, he did rule the rules. Like he had run of it. So those were some of the things that Chris Elch really pointed to and thought, okay, Steve's no longer the guy for this job.

6:09And so that's kind of why that's soured with Isman. Does he have a part to play in how things got here? Yes, I think absolutely. But I also want to be very careful to say it's been in three months now for however much time. So you can't sit here and blame people that you've already moved on. You made a decision to move on from him. And so ownership inherently brought that blame onto themselves and they haven't resulted yet. How much of a chance does Sean Horkov have to get that intern tag taken off of his title? Do you think it's a realistic possibility that he actually just becomes the GM because I said it earlier in the show when we were team things up and saying you were coming on. Horkov, I remember him when he was an oiler, my time at oilers TV dealing with him daily and working with him. He's a smart guy and he's been preparing for a role like this for years now. And I feel like given an opportunity to do things hopefully his way, he might be able to be successful.

7:09But is this something that is going to be short term? Are they going to move on from him or could he actually make a statement and claim this job? I would love to apply logic and give you no reason as to what probably will happen. But that's not been the case for the past few months. What I will say is I agree Sean Horkov is an incredibly smart guy. Everyone I've talked to says the same thing about him and he's good with players and people. He really connects with them on a good level, which I think is something that Steve Heizerman lacked. I think he has every opportunity now, whether that's because he is being the Sean Horkov GM that he wants to be or whether for so much still is at the reins. The prevailing opinion from folks I talked to is that not only is Sean Horkov in a bad situation because he was brought in too late with an impossible task or now tasks. But I think until proven otherwise everyone's wondering how much control does he really have right now at that interim tech.

8:09That said for him specifically, I think he has every opportunity to have this role or some kind of role, whether they might bring in someone above him like a president of hockey ops, depending. I know ownership has talked a lot about they have their vision. They want to run things like they run the Tigers with Jeff Greenberg and Harris up there. So we'll see. But I think he has a really good shot at this. Ryan Hanna joining us now from the Wing Wheel Podcast. We talked about the Red Wings and speaking of those tasks, let's get a bit of an update. What is the latest on Mark and who got booed when he was intro at the home opener for the Red Wings? I'm not going to lie kind of snickered at that. That's a tough go Red Wings fans are their smart man. That's a good hockey market. Like I said, and then the Edvinson situation with him going back to Sweden. As soon as a year old goes back to Sweden, can't be a good sign. So where are we at with those? Is there any news there, Ryan? Yeah, the Lorcan situation is kind of no news.

9:12Like when you don't have a GM for a few months and then all the stuff right now coming out about his expanded list, asked more about that. And I think the list has actually been bigger for quite some time beyond his just initial three team or so ask. Is there movement there? I don't believe so. I think what the Red Wings want, there's two aspects to this. The team wants to go to our winners and winners don't have cap space. Lorcan's on a phenomenal deal, but they still need to clear the cap. So at this point, you're more likely to wait for the season to play out, wait to see, you know, if anyone goes on LTIR or season ending IR or teams decide, yes, we are a contender or not a contender. And then also the Red Wings need to know what they want. Like ownership has talked about and pushed for we want to win now, which in my opinion is not realistic. Like I think they're projected very firmly for eight out of eight in the Atlantic. Seventh maybe if you want to be generous or if another team has a devastating injuries. But what other teams have said is that the Red Wings are essentially asking for Lorcan

10:18but younger and teams who have that aren't trading them because they need them for their cup runs, right? So the Red Wings also need to figure out what they are actually going to get for Lorcan. Has that moved? No, because I don't think the Red Wings have much to my too much yet and I don't think the market has had openings yet. But I think with enough time and a bigger list that will play out with Edvinson, I'm going to point to Elliott Friedman's reporting over the weekend and then today on 32 thoughts, but it's that he's frustrated. And I don't know, I don't think this is the same as Lorcan right now where it's like if he yes, trade me, this is done. But he is frustrated because he did all the right things and came in good faith to camp when he didn't have to report and everything. Right. And he's watching players who are less established than him get big money deals. And this he was eligible for extension for 15 months and while Isman was in charge, they were only offering bridge at a very low number.

11:20And so really he's just kind of fed up. I don't think we're at the point yet of like no, we're done, trade me. I don't think that's impossible. This is to some degree, I think a lever, a big red button that him and his camper pressing with full knowledge of they may have to stand by their word and actually say no, trade me. But I think this is at least in some part to play to show how serious they are to see if the Red Wings will just pay Edvinson's contract demands. So the coming days will dictate a lot, I think in terms of where Edvinson is. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like and that's exactly what growth therapy is here for.

12:22Grow is therapy that works covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com-startnow. That's growtherapy.com-startnow. Growtherapy.com-startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Guessing is for game shows, not your business. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT, with AI grounded in your

13:25context to get work done and done right. It's a new workday. Yeah, I mean, when you show up to camp without a contract in good faith, like you said, Ryan, that's a pretty strong statement. Then to leave when camp ends without a contract, go back to Europe. That is equally a strong statement, maybe even more so than showing up without a deal in place. This is interesting, and it's been crazy to watch from afar, but the wings do have to play games. They're owned too so far this season. They drop a three-two decision to the Jets in their last game. Tough go for Keegan Colossar in that fight with Tyrell Bauer. What happened in that game, and then maybe we'll just talk about Colossar after it looks like he took a couple of good left hands from Bauer? Yeah, it was a bad start to the game mostly because of penalty kills. The penalty kill was actually locked there of, and Winnipeg was just all over them. Three powerplay goals. You're not going to win a lot of games allowing that.

14:26The Red Wing was actually the same as the first game, as the game went on, kind of turned it on. They shuffled the lines that had Emmett Finney, who, you know, the seventh round pick played in the ring all last year, except for a small stint at center. They tried him at center with Michael Brands, AgniGuard, and Alex to break it up at the top of the Red Wing's lineup. And it looked great. You know, so that... The whole Red Wing's forward problem right now is they have no scoring, and they're about to lose a perennial 30 goal score in Dylan Larkin. They have, you know, up until today, or yesterday, Andrew Copp is their number one center. He's a fine middle six center, but he doesn't facilitate offense at the current NHL level. So scoring the issue. And I think that's what you saw. You saw a lot of offense die on sticks of guys who just aren't those guys. Lucas Raymond and Alex to break it with Copp between them. They haven't really... They've been kind of ISOed out by other teams' matchups when you don't have a lot of scoring. It's easy for other teams to game plan against you. So the actual play was better as the game went on, but they just couldn't execute.

15:28And we were saying on yesterday's show that I think that might be the storyline of a lot of games, or the defense is good. The goal tenning's good. Five on five is good, but you just can't score. You need to just one more kind of thing. Yeah. And then Colossar and Bauer in that flight, Colossar went down pretty hard. There any update on him? Not yet, but... Or not that I've seen, I should actually add, but with how days he was, like those were some big last Bauer can throw him, man. Like that's the... The moment... That was my first exposure to the guy I've seen him. And the moment he started throwing him, I was like, oh God, that he knows what he's doing. But Colossar needed a little bit of help right when he got up, so I imagine there'll be some concussion protocol here, but waiting for updates, at least on my end. Some others may have it out, I haven't had a chance to check today. But we have an eight-week-old at home, so he dictates what we do early in the morning. Yeah, that's... That'll happen. Yeah.

16:28Colossar, I feel for him. I wonder if he was a bit taken off guard by how well Bauer knew what he was doing. Like you could see in that fight, like he wasn't letting Colossar get set, and Colossar is a tough customer. Yep, absolutely. He is a Bauer. This is his first foray into the NHL. I know he's kind of been waiting in the wings in Winnipeg, but everybody talks about how tough of a cat he is, and yeah, we certainly saw that. Okay, I have to ask you, Ryan, how is Todd McClellan dealing with all of this? Because Todd's not a guy to really hold back, at least in my time dealing with him day to day. I appreciated that, have a ton of respect for Todd. He'd let you know how he felt. There were a few times where he wasn't happy with me, and he'd let me know, and then we'd move on, and we'd be fine after that. So, how has he been handling everything that is encompassing the Red Wings right now? I'll tell you, in terms of what you hear from anyone in the Red Wings organization, Todd McClellan is probably one of the most popular guys in the entire team right now, among the fan base, because he's saying all the right things. I think it's an incredibly tough task to talk about these Red Wings this year, and have

17:30anyone be at all inspired. And he said before the home opener, something which I thought was really poignant, actually effective. You know, this is still the Detroit Red Wings. This is still an original 16, and we know what we have going on, and of course we have to overcome that. But the end of the day, you have to be proud to put on jersey and play for this team, and we're here to do our jobs. And even going back to Lassi, and then when he was brought in, like, he's, he's, he's dischorded out straight. He's called guys jerseys in a pejorative way, like to say they're just out there doing cardio and not much else, and that's a big problem with those Red Wings lineups still. And I know that's not always popular in the room, but you know, what if your room's not winning then I don't quite care what's popular in the room. Maybe what you should do, it's unpopular. So I personally, and I know a lot of the fan base loves what Todd McClellan is saying. Yeah, I think in the first game, people were wondering, oh, is he going to give the kid enough enough time? You know, he moved Emmett Finney to center on a top line. He gave Michael Brands a Gnigart, a big opportunity last game. He said that was MDN's best game as a Red Wing.

18:32He said he saw Finney as a long term center for the Red Wings. He's giving Antonio Hansen a big chance on defense and leaning into him. So there's not very many people who are doing and saying all the right things, but I think Todd McClellan's one of them. And I personally hope that he has a longer runway than most NHL coaches in his situation would have because he's far, far, far from the problem. Yeah, I agree with you on that. And he certainly does have a way with words and he'll let you know how he feels for sure. Ryan, this has been awesome. Thank you for the update on the Red Wings. And we'll see how this all plays out. They get the sends tomorrow at Little Caesar's Arena. Really appreciate the time today. Good luck with the eight month old. I know you've got a handful there, but really appreciate it, man. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. Take care. Guessing is for game shows, not your business. Workday is the Enterprise AI platform for HR, Finance and IT, with AI grounded in your context to get work done and done right.

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