The Hockey Show - Episode 717

The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, is back with a full roster after having one of the hosts in Montreal where he was answering questions and networking with authors and publishers! Obviously, there will be a discussion on how Montreal is faring after the recent run by the Canadiens before our hosts get into the hockey news and stories that need to be covered. There are championships, drafts, and losses to discuss, so we'll get that going tonight on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!

Oh, we'll be talking about these guys who threw a celebration and more down in North Carolina! Teebz and Jason will have Travis (Montreal) do his exit interview and, potentially, Matt (Vegas) do his exit interview before they discuss the Carolina Hurricanes winning the Stanley Cup, the Florida Everblades winning the Kelly Cup, and the Toronto Marlies being in the verge of winning the Calder Cup. There will be some discussion about the PWHL Draft, the loss of a Canadian institution, and how both of those could be improved if U SPORTS gave a damn. It's another fun show where we'll offer up our thoughts on these topics, so hunker down by your radio or internet-connected device tonight for The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT on one of 101.5 FM, Channel 718 on MTS TV, or via UMFM.com!

If you live outside Winnipeg and want to listen, we have options! The UMFM website's streaming player works well if you want to listen online. We also recommend Radio Garden if you need an easy-to-use online stream. If you're more of an app person, we recommend you use the TuneIn app found on the App Store or Google Play Store.

If you have questions, you can email all show queries and comments to hockeyshow@umfm.com! Tweet me anytime with questions you may have by hitting me up at @TeebzHBIC on Twitter! I'm here to listen to you, so make your voice heard! And because both Teebz and Jason are on the butterfly app where things are less noisy, you can find Teebz here and Jason here on Bluesky!

Tonight, Teebz and Jason will look to send two more entrants home off Survivor: NHL Playoffs island before talking champions, dynasties, drafts, television, and much more exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Deserved, But...

Tonight, the PWHL welcomed a pile of players into their ranks as the PWHL Draft took place in Detroit, Michigan. I'm not sure if there were any surprises when it came to the first dozen picks made, but the Seattle Torrent decided to give one woman a shot who has certainly earned a look when it comes to professional hockey as UBC Thunderbirds forward Grace Elliott was selected 38th-overall in the fourth round! There may have been some familiarity for Seattle when it came to picking Elliott which I'll look at below, but it was another night where a pile of very good, very capable U SPORTS players were left without a team when the draft concluded. I'm not surprised considering how little U SPORTS does to promote these exceptionally-talented women, and it makes me wonder what exactly U SPORTS does to help its athletes achieve their athletic goals and dreams.

Make no mistake that Grace Elliott deserved to be drafted tonight. She's a two-time Canada West Player of the Year and the 2025 U SPORTS Player of the Year after blowing away most of UBC's school scoring records and placing her among the best historically in both Canada West and U SPORTS. Grace was always a good player, but her size, her skill, and her smarts became quickly evident as her efforts helped the UBC Thunderbirds reach new heights each year.

If there's one woman who knows how good she was, it is new Seattle Torrent head coach Christine Bumstead who often watched Elliott work her magic from the University of Saskatchewan Huskies' bench. In 15 regular season and playoff games between the Huskies and Thunderbirds between 2021 and 2025, Elliott scored seven goals and seven assists. The catch, however, is that she scored three goals and four assists in the two games played between the two teams in 2024-25, so Coach Bumstead is very aware of how explosive she can be.

Elliott will likely get every chance to crack the Torrent roster, but I wouldn't expect that Bumstead will guarantee anything with the influx of talent she has at her fingertips. Elliott will need to earn every inch of ice and every second of ice time just like she did in Vancouver, but we've seen how good she can be when she's focused. Having her alongside Lexie Adzija gives Seattle two impact power forwards, but she has proven time and again that she has the scoring and skating to play with almost anyone on the Torrent roster.

If I were Bumstead, I'd be looking at Jenna Buglioni as her linemate. Buglioni was her high-scoring teammate with the Greater Vancouver Comets where Buglioni had 26 goals and 52 points in 29 games while Elliott had 27 goals and 50 points in 32 games during the 2020-21 BCFAAA U18 season! That was the only season they played together, but it seems pretty clear that they had an incredible season playing together! Could we see them reunited in Torrent colours?

What I do know is that Grace deserves all the kudos for being drafted and moving one step closer to her hockey dreams. Congratulations, Grace, and we'll be cheering for you as this season gets underway!

Erica Rieder, who played for the University of Manitoba, was selected 60th-overall in the fifth round by Montreal, but Victoire GM Danièle Sauvageau knows her very well from her U SPORTS days with the Montreal Carabins. Rieder, who was playing for Lulea in the SDHL, has always been an incredible two-way defender who can skate, but she'll get a chance to step into the Montreal lineup this season.

Gabriella Durante, who suited up for Italy in the Olympics and won their only game in that tournament, was picked by Seattle with the 62nd-overall pick, but there's an obvious tie there to Christine Bumstead again who saw her play with the Calgary Dinos. Durante earned her role as Italy's starter at the Olympics with her solid play, and she should be just as good on the west coast stopping pucks.

Montreal used the last pick of the draft to select Concordia Stingers forward Emilie Lavoie who had a solid season in the RSEQ, and she was even better playing in Kitchener at the U SPORTS National Championship. Lavoie is one of those players that Sauvageau loves - an engine that doesn't stop, the puck seems attracted to her stick, and she can finish. She'll need to work hard to crack that talented Montreal roster, but Lavoie is a steal for the Victoire at 72nd-overall.

If you're waiting for the other shoe to drop with the "But..." in the title, the conjunction has nothing to with the players above. These four players earned their accolades and opportunities, and equally deserve the celebration for their personal achievements.

It does, however, have to do with the fact that there was virtually zero promotion or hype done by U SPORTS to elevate the profiles of all the players who played in their conferences. I find it baffling that U SPORTS wants to be taken seriously as a viable option for women who want to chase their hockey and PWHL dreams, but they do little to help those women who have excelled at the U SPORTS level.

Maybe they produced a whole package that was distributed to all twelve PWHL teams and didn't mention it, but I can almost guarantee that didn't happen. I can say this because only four U SPORTS players were taken in the six rounds of the PWHL Draft that saw 72 players selected. Yes, the argument can be made that every player picked was chosen for a reason by each team, but dynamic players like Jessymaude Drapeau, Tatum James, and Courtney Kollman were all left watching rather than being selected by any of the teams.

Tory Mariano, who didn't play last season, was chosen by the Ottawa Charge 13 picks before Rieder despite having six goals and 25 assists in 131 games with Northeastern University over her four years of defence for the Huskies. I'm not saying she isn't good enough nor should she not be picked, but what qualities does she possess after sitting out last year that are better than a defender like Waterloo's Lyndsy Acheson or Olympian and former Toronto defender Gabrielle de Serres who weren't picked tonight? Did I miss something here?

The Ottawa Charge, Toronto Sceptres, Vancouver Goldeneyes, and Hamilton Whatevers took a grand total of zero U SPORTS players in this year's draft. I can understand the American teams not taking U SPORTS players due to a lack of scouting thanks to streaming paywalls, but Troy Ryan, San Jose's GM and head coach, is a former Dalhousie Tigers women's hockey head coach. Both Seattle and Montreal took two players each, and both of those teams have women in positions of leadership with strong U SPORTS ties.

I'm not saying that Seattle nor Montreal made their picks with a need to draft U SPORTS players, but they're drafting from a larger pool of players and talent by looking at U SPORTS players. We saw how important the U SPORTS players were for Montreal this season as Alexandra Labelle, Catherine Dubois, and Kaitlin Willoughby played key roles for the Victoire in their Walter Cup victory. I'm not saying that every U SPORTS player will bring that return, but teams like Vancouver and Toronto who missed the playoffs should be capitalizing on the talent found in their own backyards before other teams do.

In lamenting the above, I will admit that I have a significant bias when it comes to seeing U SPORTS players getting their fair shakes. Four players were chosen tonight, and that's entirely worth celebrating when it comes to competing in the best women's hockey league on the planet. I just struggle to understand why U SPORTS isn't putting all twelve teams on blast when it comes to how good these players are. Why is this a task that seemingly no one wants?

Congratulations to Grace, Erica, Gabriella, and Emilie who, I'm hoping, will be on the opening night rosters for the Torrent and the Victoire, respectively. These women deserve the accolades they've earned, and I'll be cheering for them with every career moment they reach. I just wish there were more players for whom I could cheer.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

It's Just Business, Right?

The announcement today was certainly a long-time coming, but it was still unexpected in its arrival. The costs of broadcasting NHL hockey have risen beyond any sort of comprehensible amount of money that you and I will ever know, and CBC's involvement in the game that they helped to popularize, to curate, and to advance was already done outside of a sublicensing agreement from Rogers Sportsnet that was, at best, a charitable offering to keep the public broadcaster involved. Yes, the CBC showed games on their network, but their involvement in making the game better through Hockey Night in Canada was already dead.

Today, the final nail in the coffin was hammered home as Sportsnet and CBC announced that CBC would be stepping away from broadcasting NHL games moving forward. For 74 years, the public broadcaster was bringing the game to places and homes that Rogers Sportsnet cannot reach, but that all ends today. Gone and never to return is the collective unity of a nation coming together on Saturday night to huddle around the television to watch "the game" on CBC.

For many, this will be an "old man yells at clouds" moment, but there was one thing growing up that was a constant for me in the winter: Saturday night was Hockey Night in Canada. Yes, I lamented over seeing the Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks every week, but I was addicted as a kid to watching as many games as I could. There were very few midweek games in that era unless the playoffs were on, so Saturday night really was hockey night for all Canadians.

For many Americans in Buffalo, Detroit, Seattle, and other border cities, picking up the over-the-air CBC signal with their rabbit ears or TV antenna was how they were exposed to the magnificence of Hockey Night in Canada. Thousands of Canadians in the north, in remote towns, and in cottage country would rely on that same signal to bring the sounds of Hockey Night in Canada to their TVs in their abodes. There weren't high-definition hockey broadcasts to worry about in that time. If you could get the signal, everyone was happy.

That was the beauty of CBC and Hockey Night in Canada - it didn't matter where you lived in Canada, you could find a place where CBC's signal would reach. Hockey Night in Canada became an institution that saw generations of kids dreaming to play in the NHL one day becoming parents who watched their kids have those same dreams. There simply wasn't another weekly program like it on television.

We welcomed men into our homes that we didn't know, but who we trusted to describe the action from their seats high above the ice. From Foster Hewitt to René Lecavalier to Danny Gallivan, the early days of Hockey Night in Canada had its iconic voices that brought the action to life on the screen. Bill Hewitt and Dan Kelly gave way to Bob Cole and Dick Irvin Jr., and we have been blessed with the sounds of Jim Hughson and Chris Cuthbert who have called some of the biggest games in hockey's history. These men ARE hockey's historians.

We've watched, laughed, disagreed, and cheered other personalities that include Frank Selke Jr., Dave Hodge, Brian McFarlane, George Stroumboulopoulos, David Amber, and Ron MacLean as hosts who tried to guide the many panelists featued on Hockey Night in Canada. John Bartlett, Harnarayan Singh, Don Wittman, Dave Randorf, and Paul Romanuk have all called games for the public broadcaster while the likes of Harry Neale, Craig Simpson, Glenn Healy, Howie Meeker, Greg Millen, and Mike Johnson have made the game better as analysts. Making the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast booth roster was always the ultimate job for many sports broadcasters in Canada.

You can thank George Retzlaff in 1955 for inventing the instant replay while working with Hockey Night in Canada before it was perfected in 1965. Gerald Renaud introduced the multi-camera option for sports, which is now a standard, when he set up three cameras to broadcast the very first game. In 1965, Hockey Night in Canada was one of the early adopters of broadcasting sports in colour with all games in 1966-67 being broadcast on "colour TV". Hockey Night in Canada was an innovator in producing telecasts in Inuktitut, Italian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog and Punjabi. Cassie Campbell-Pascall was the first woman to call an NHL game on national television in 2006 on Hockey Night in Canada. All of this was done with the support from the CBC.

Dolores Claman, a Vancouver-born composer and accomplished jingle writer, gave Canada its unofficial "second national anthem" with her song "The Hockey Theme" which started Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts. It was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, and Bell Media bought the rights to the song in 2008 when the CBC reportedly declined to renew their rights. It was being used on TSN hockey broadcasts after Bell Media acquired it, and the first few notes of the song are recognized by almost all Canadians.

Sure, there were stumbles and questionable decisions made over its history, but 74 years of innovation, broadcasting excellence, and a reach like no other program in Canadian television history had were ended unceremoniously and rather callously with one brief announcement. We've talked about the loss of regional carriers for teams on The Hockey Show as broadright rights fees shot through the roof, but seeing Canada's trusted hockey institution close its doors today is a kick in the gut that I never saw coming despite me knowing that it was always on the timeline. Hockey Night in Canada is over.

I respect the fact that CBC wasn't making one cent off showing NHL hockey thanks to all of the ad revenue going back to Sportsnet, but there will be a void on Canadian TV now. CBC Sports did announce that they will launch a new Saturday night show that will focus on Olympic-oriented competition as they continue to be Canada's best media supporter of amateur athletics, and they can actually make a little money by earning ad revenue during this new show. That's a good thing when it comes to their continued support of amateur Canadian athletes and sports. I can't fault them for this decision.

With Rogers Sportsnet moving into a 12-year, $11-billion rights deal next year, it seems that cost for CBC to air games skyrocketed as well. It doesn't matter that the televised product got worse with Sportsnet involved, that innovation was all but killed under their watch, or that regional blackouts still plague the network. For $11 billion, Sportsnet got what it wanted all along as they're now only Canadian network where NHL games can be broadcast in Canada.

But as Ted Rogers and Gary Bettman will say, it's just business, right?

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

TBC: Home And Away

If there's one thing that will always remain as a constant in my life, it's my undying, unwavering support for anything that goes against the Toronto Maple Leafs. As long as the Leafs continue their streak of not capturing the Stanley Cup nor appearing in a Stanley Cup Final, I will remain fairly content in my pursuits of hockey stories. To this degree, it would should be weird to some that I would voluntarily pick up a book that's primarily about one player's career wearing the Maple Leafs logo, but I had a specific reason for doing so. Because of this, Teebz's Book Club is proud to review Home and Away, written by Mats Sundin and Amy Stuart and published by Simon & Schuster Canada. There's no doubt in my mind that Mats Sundin is one of the greatest players that Sweden has ever produced and his accolades from his storied career are many, but I had another reason to read this book.

From his Simon & Schuster biography, "Mats Sundin is the longest-serving captain not born in North America in NHL history. He enjoyed a prolific eighteen-season NHL career as well as a superb international career playing for Sweden, his homeland. When he was selected by the Quebec Nordiques in the 1989 NHL Entry Draft, he became the first European-born player ever drafted first overall. The Nordiques traded him to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the rest is hockey history. At the time of his retirement, Sundin stood as the Toronto Maple Leafs’ all-time franchise leader in goals and points. A quiet leader, the durable Sundin is regarded as one of the finest Swedes to have played in the National Hockey League, and one of the greatest Toronto Maple Leafs of all time." Mats, his wife Josephine, and his three children live in Sweden and visit Toronto often.

From her biography on the Simon & Schuster website, "Amy Stuart's fourth novel, A Death at the Party, emerged as a longstanding #1 bestseller. She is the author of three other bestselling novels — Still Mine, Still Water, and Still Here — which have been optioned for television by Lark/NBC Universal. Amy's other love is hockey. She is one of only four women head coaches in the GTHL, the world's largest youth competitive hockey league. She was born in Toronto, where she still lives with her husband and their three sons. They also spend much of their time on Prince Edward Island, where Amy's family is originally from." In 2019, Amy founded Writerscape, an online community for hopeful and emerging writers if you're looking for a place to hone your writing skills, and you can follow Amy on Twitter and on Goodreads to stay up-to-date on everything!

As stated above, I fully admit that I had very little interest in reading about Sundin's time with the Maple Leafs. I was interested in learning about his life, but that 13-year section of his career mattered little to me when I started reading. I actually was looking to see on how he and Swedish teammates reacted after losing to Belarus at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, but what I found in reading Home and Away is that Mats Sundin, despite his Maple Leafs career, is a man who never forgot his roots, loved his family, and loved playing hockey.

Home and Away is a memoir of Mats' life, from his time growing up as the middle child in the Sundin family to closing out his career with the Vancouver Canucks. I'm not sure if it's Sundin's disposition or Stuart's writing style, but the entire book is very positive which seems odd considering that hockey is about players and teams clashing. Add in agents and general managers who clash during contract negotiations and personal relationships, and I expected a few stories where Sundin didn't have a good interaction with someone. That reality, though, is a very positive memoir contained in Home and Away which may speak further to Sundin's character.

What is clear throughout Home and Away is Mats' sense of loyalty and devotion. He was extremely devoted in his career to his teams and teammates including turning down offers to leave Toronto via trades in pursuit of a Stanley Cup, and he was always in contact with his family and quick to have them at his side. For a man who grew up in the small Swedish town of Sollentuna, the sense of home and family was something that Sundin carried throughout his career that I never knew he carried. It was refreshing to read just how close he is with his family no matter how far away he was chasing his dreams.

One thing I wasn't aware of as I read Home and Away was Mats Sundin playing in a youth tournament in Winnipeg! Sundin played in the Manitoba capital in 1986 as his team from Sweden attended a tournament here. He was billeted with a family, and it sounds as though Mats enjoyed Winnipeg during this experience. He writes,

"Winnipeg, and Canada, felt both different and the same as home. The weather was warm and the days were long. People were friendly, but far more outgoing. In Sweden, we couldn't drive until we turned eighteen, so it was a shock to see out fellow sixteen-year-olds behind the wheel. My host player drove me to a local mall, where we met up with groups of kids eating at the food court and shopping for clothes. I couldn't believe how sophisticated they seemed in comparison to us. My host family took good care of me."

I went looking for newspaper articles of this tournament where Sweden "ended up winning every game by a large margin," but I found nothing. Nevertheless, it's pretty cool to think that Winnipeg was Sundin's first North American experience for culture, and he seemed to enjoy his short stay based on his story in Home and Away.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Home and Away as I really knew little about Mats Sundin. From growing up in Sollentuna to playing with Nacka HK and Djurgården IF in Sweden to landing in Quebec, Toronto, and Vancouver as an NHL player, there are all sorts of interesting stories in Home and Away. He does address each of the three Olympiads he took part in so 2002 gets discussed, but I really wanted more details. My unreasonable expectations aside, the book is an excellent look at Mats Sundin's life and career, and Home and Away absolutely deserves the Teebz's Book Club Seal of Approval!

Home and Away was released on October 22, 2024, so copies of the book should be available at libraries and local bookstores. The book is easy to read with very minimal crass language and no outrageous stories for parents of younger hockey fans to consider, and the chapters are short and concise, making the book easy to put down if one needs a break. In saying that, I read Home and Away very quickly because of its easy-to-read nature, and it is absolutely recommended for all hockey fans, especially Toronto Maple Leafs fans!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

The Biggest Storm Surge

While I legitimately had no team in the Stenley Cup Final I wanted to see win, there was a team that I definintely didn't want to see win. That made me a Carolina Hurricanes fan by proxy, and the Hurricanes showed everyone that they were for real this year with a convincing 3-0 win tonight to capture the Stanley Cup in six games over the Vegas Golden Knights. After running into and being bullied by the Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference Final the last few years, the Hurricanes showed that they learned from those series by bringing their version of grit and sandpaper into Vegas tonight where they grinded out a solid 3-0 shutout of the Western Conference champions to earn the right to be called "2026 NHL Stanley Cup Champions"!

Whether it was Jordan Staal's record-tying effort of scoring five goals in five consecutive games in the final, Brandon Bussi jumping right in where he left off with outstanding goaltending after relieving Freddie Andersen, the Hall-Blake-Stankoven line bring all sorts of chaos, the likes of Jarvis, Ehlers, Aho, and Svechnikov flying up and down the ice, the defensive prowess of Jacob Slavin, Sean Walker, and K'Andre Miller, or the coaching of Rod Brind'Amour and his staff, everyone on this 2026 version of the Carolina Hurricanes seemed to contribute.

I'm not making light of the fact that Vegas pushed Carolina in this series. Vegas took Game One by a goal, and Carolina responded with an overtime win in Game Two. Vegas won Game Three in double-overtime, and Carolina responded with a two-goal victory in Game Four. Vegas flipped the script in the best-of-three series that was remaining by winning Game Five, and they had their best showing in the final in Game Six with the three goals and the shutout tonight.

Much chatter was given to the "dark days" of the Hurricanes' rebuild when they missed the playoffs for nine-straight years and what it took to get back to winning their second Stanley Cup. They went through Kirk Muller and Bill Peters as head coaches before giving Rod Brind'Amour his shot behind the bench, elevating him from assistant coach to head coach in 2018. Staal, Slavin, Aho, Svechnikov, and Jordan Martinook are the players who have been in Raleigh the longest, so getting to this point as champions by adding and retaining the necessary players and staff to win has been a long process.

Every player tonight said that the long process was entirely worth it.

For me, it was awesome to see Nikolaj Ehlers win the Stanley Cup tonight after all he's been through. Like Paul Maurice did after his time in Winnipeg, "Fly" had fond memories of his time in Winnipeg that led him to the promised land elsewhere. Sportsnet's David Amber and Elliotte Friedman spoke to Ehlers after winning the Stanley Cup.
How is it that we've seen two recent Stanley Cup champions speak fondly about Winnipeg yet neither champion is a member of the Winnipeg Jets? I'm not going to turn this article into dissection of the Jets, but it seems clear that Nikolaj Ehlers wanted to hoist the Stanley Cup in the Manitoba capital. Good on him for finding a place where he could! He'll always be one of my favorite 2.0 Jets!

They swept Ottawa. They swept Philadelphia. They lost Game One of the Eastern Conference Final to Montreal after an eleven-day layoff before roaring back to life and winning four-straight games. They lost Games One and Three in trying to figure out the Vegas Golden Knights before winning three-straight games to eliminate the Western Conference champion. They went 16-3 in the playoffs, outscored their opponents 66-39 in those 19 games, and were 5-1 in overtime games. Tonight, they are the NHL's best team with the honour of raising the Stanley Cup for the second time in franchise history.

The spoils always go to the victors, so a deserving congratulations go to Carolina Hurricanes, the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup champions!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!