Podcast Ombudsman Report for Blueshirt Bandwidth Ep. 74

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.

Ombudsman Note

Most of the incorrect statements or predictions offered by Joe, Eric, and Chip were speculation about trades that would come to pass by the trade deadline. Everybody is aware of what trades were actually made by the deadline, and Joe and Eric recapped the trade deadline in the emergency (bonus?) podcast, so I won’t go through trades that weren’t actually made in this report.

Positive Time

At the start of the episode, Eric wondered “when was the last time that it was positive time in Rangers world?,” especially given the fact that this podcast began before last season. On Nov. 21, 2024, the Rangers were 12-5-1 and in second place in the Eastern Conference when episode 7 of Blueshirt Bandwidth dropped and the team faced the Calgary Flames in a game that would kick off a five game losing streak.

J.T. Miller on IR

After seeming to play through injuries the entire season, J.T. Miller is finally going on injured reserve. This appears to be the play where he takes a shot to the head:

Scott Morrow/ Offensive Defensemen

Eric mentioned Erik Karlsson, John Klingberg, and Tony DeAngelo as examples of offense-only defensemen in the conversation about Scott Morrow. Looking at the JFresh player cards and EvolvingHockey rate tables, you can see that even in seasons in which they had negative defensive contributions, these players were positive WAR players and major assets to their teams.

(Note: “xOff” is the contribution of the player’s offense above replacement level and “xDef” is his defensive contribution. Those plus Pnes (penalties taken/ drawn) equals “xGAR.”)

Shockingly, Tony DeAngelo was the eighth best defenseman in hockey during the 2019-20 season.

All that being said, Morrow both projects better than Vincent Ioroio and has played better than Iorio did during his extended run with the Sharks this season:

Dave Maloney

Chip said that Kenny Albert is carrying Dave Maloney like Adam Fox carried Ryan Lindgren. That statement is insulting to Dave Maloney.

Maloney works better as a radio guy because, for all of his faults, only obsessed fans listen to hockey on the radio, and Dave is one of us.

Joe also said that you get the NR-17 version of Maloney on the radio; the Motion Picture Association rating is actually NC-17.

Eric said that “there’s a reason why you don’t just put the television broadcast on radio.” There are actually a few teams, including the St. Louis Blues, Dallas Stars, Carolina Hurricanes, and Buffalo Sabres that simulcast their TV announcers as their radio broadcast, because they are poverty franchises.

Jordan Binnington

As the possibility of Jordan Binnington being traded was discussed, we once again need to point out that he has been the worst goalie in the NHL this season by a pretty wide margin:

Leetch Traded to San Jose?

The trade of Brian Leetch to San Jose was mentioned. Brian Leetch was never traded to the San Jose Sharks; only to the Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers.

If you don’t remember Brian Leetch playing for the Edmonton Oilers, that’s because he never did!

In the last CBA prior to the great lockout, there was a stipulation that awarded a compensatory selection between rounds to a team that “lost” a class III free agent, meaning a player who was 31 years old or older, and had played at least four seasons in the NHL. Unfortunately, the NHL forgot to clarify that the player actually had to play for the team that “lost” him, so large market teams would trade away pending free agents on June 30 to small market teams and then turn around and sign the player in July.

The Rangers did this three times during the summers of 2002 and 2003, in 2002 trading Mike Richter to the Edmonton Oilers for a fourth round pick (which was used to select Coery Potter); and, trading Brian Leetch to the Edmonton Oilers for Jussi Markanen and a fourth round pick in 2003 (Roman Kukumberg); then , trading Mark Messier to the San Jose Sharks in 2003 for the fourth round pick that was used to select Ryan Callahan one year later.

Grant Fuhr

While the boys were making their trade deadline predictions, Eric called Grant Fuhr one of the best goalies of all time while discussing Edmonton’s goaltending woes.

Grant Fuhr was the goaltender who won Edmonton’s first four Stanley Cups, but it’s difficult to give Fuhr too much credit. Of the five goalies who had at least 700 starts from 1983 to 2000 (Fuhr’s contemporaries), Fuhr had the lowest career save percentage. Fuhr finished third in the league in save percentage during his rookie season of 1981-82. In the 13 additional seasons in which Fuhr played enough games to qualify for the goaltending leaderboards, he never again finished in the top five for save percentage, and only twice finished in the top 10.

Grant Fuhr was an above average goalie who had the good fortune of playing behind one of the greatest collections of talent in the history of professional sports, with six Hall of Fame skaters in the lineup. In fact, many people would argue that backup goaltender Andy Moog was the better goalie on that team. 

Eric also mentioned that Grant Fuhr started every game for the Blues during his first season with them. Mike Keenan was reasonable enough to give Fuhr three games off as he started 79 games before injuring his knee in the first round against the Toronto Maple Leafs to end his season.