Podcast Ombudsman Report for Blueshirt Bandwidth Ep. 69
From a skyscraper climb to draft-pick math and cap-hit reality, the Ombudsman is back to clean up another week of Blueshirt Bandwidth.
Welcome back to the Blueshirt Bandwidth Podcast Ombudsman Report. Each week, Charlie Vidal will listen to the latest episode of the podcast and correct the record on anything Joe and Eric get wrong. If you aren't already, you can listen and subscribe to the podcast here.
Guy Who Climbed Tower
Joe and Eric discussed the guy who climbed the tower on Netflix livestream. Last week, Alex Honnold free-soloed Taipei 101 live on Netflix:
Taipei 101 is a 1,667-foot, 101-story skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan. It was the world’s tallest building from 2004 until the completion of the Burj Khalifa in 2009.
Andrew Margolin
As mentioned on the podcast, the only New York Ranger to ever wear number 69 during a game was Andrew Margolin when he wore a jersey adorned with “McBackup” while sitting on the Rangers bench as the emergency backup goaltender after Ondrej Pavelic was injured in the Feb. 9, 2018 win over the Calgary Flames. Margolin did not enter the game.
Margolin played goalie for four years at Connecticut College, which plays division three ice hockey.
Third Round Picks
In trading for Carson Soucy last season and then moving him to the New York Islanders last week, the Rangers moved down (currently) 10 spots in the third round of the draft for one year of Carson Soucy.
Based on the current standings, the Islanders third round pick that the Rangers acquired for Soucy would be the 85th pick. The 2025 pick that the Rangers gave up was the 75th pick, and was used on goalie Michal Pradel who is playing with the Tri-City Storm of the USHL.
Trigger Warning: Some Really Nerdy Shit
Michael Schuckers of St. Louis Uniform analyzed the NHL drafts from 1988 to 1997 to determine the relative value of draft picks based on how their careers turned out. He determined that pick 75 has a value of 164, while pick 85 has a value of 145. That 19 point drop is almost the same as the drop in value from the 15th pick to the 16th pick.
You can read the original paper here.
Olympic Roster Freeze
The NHL Olympic Roster Freeze will have begun by the time you listen to this report. It runs from Wednesday, Feb. 4 at 3pm ET to Sunday, Feb. 22 at 11:59pm ET.
Ryen Russillo
Joe mentioned how he listens to the Bill Simmons podcast even though he does not like or follow basketball, and said that he enjoys listening to Ryen Russillo. Ryen Russillo is no longer employed by Bill Simmons or The Ringer, and as of October his podcast is with Barstool Sports.
Crypto
While discussing cryptocurrency, Eric mentioned “HODL”, which stands for Hold on for Dear Life.
Bible
John 3:17 actually says “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him” (NRSV)—not that you can control effort but you can’t control talent.
Rebuild vs. Retool
After Eric said that no NHL coach will think about what years two and three will look like when coaching a game, Joe jumped in to say that “they’re going through a rebuild.” As the letter clearly stated, the Rangers are going through a "retool." The difference between a rebuild and a retool is that you cancel your season tickets for a rebuild but keep them through a retool.
Penguins Arena
The Pittsburgh Penguins play at PPG Paints Arena, not “Pittsburgh Paints Arena” as Joe called it.
Saddled with J.T. Miller
It was mentioned that the Rangers are saddled with J.T. Miller for four more seasons. Per PuckPedia, if the Rangers bought out Miller this summer, he would count against the cap for $2.9 million next season, $5.4 million during the 2027-28 and 2028-29 seasons, $2.9 million during the 2029-30 season, and then $1.9 million for the following four seasons until summer 2034:
Senators First Overall Pick
During a discussion of the draft lottery, it was brought up that the funniest possible scenario would be the Ottawa Senators “winning” the draft lottery only to forfeit their pick.
The Senators are forced to forfeit their first round pick because they failed to provide Las Vegas with Evgeni Dadonov’s 10 team no-trade list when they traded him to the Knights in 2021. Dadonov had signed with the Senators as an unrestricted free agent in 2020, and was permitted to list 10 teams on a no-trade list. After trading for Dadonov during the 2021 offseason, the Knights attempted to trade Dadonov to the Anaheim Ducks at the 2022 deadline in exchange for (stop me if you’ve heard this before) the contracts of John Moore and Ryan Kesler, who would be put on LTIR to free up cap space. After the trade deadline had passed, Dadonov’s agent made the Golden Knights aware of the no-trade list that Dadonov had as part of his contract and the trade was invalidated. Five years after they forgot to mention that Dadonov had a no-trade list on their trade call with the Knights, the Senators are finally facing the music by forfeiting their 2026 first round pick.
Lafrenière Generational Talent
Joe said that “nobody who matters called Alexis Lafrenière a generational talent.” I was able to find a few examples of Lafreniere being referred to as “generational” prior to the 2020 NHL draft. That includes: a Pete Blackburn in an Oct. 2020 article on why he was the consensus top pick; Mike McIntyre of the Winnipeg Free Press also referred to Lafrenière as a generational talent; James Dator of SBNation (a joke of a website) called him “a generational player who could change the franchise overnight.”
Emily Kaplan in her draft lottery preview said that the only hope the Arizona Coyotes had of turning things around was winning the lottery to have “a shot at drafting a generational talent.” Although we can clown on Kaplan for referring to Lafrenière as generational, she was spot on that Coyotes needed to win the lottery or otherwise import top-level talent.
