Podcast Ombudsman Report for Blueshirt Bandwidth Ep. 98

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.

Movie Reference

When discussing what they would do with a large amount of money dropped into their laps, Joe referenced a scene in a movie where a gambler talks about when to walk away with “fuck you money.” This was a monologue by John Goodman in The Gambler.

Career Lengths

During the discussion on what he would do if he got $2.5 million tax free, Eric said, "[professional athletes] are packing an entire career into 5 to 15 years.” For NHL players, they are actually packing an entire career into approximately five years, which is the average length of an NHL career. The NFL has the shortest average career at 3.3 years, with the NBA at 4.5 years and MLB at 5.6 years.

Kane vs Bedard

A listener asked, in essence, if you would sign up for Connor Bedard having Patrick Kane’s career right now. Looking at historical Hockeystats.com player projections, when he was 20 years old going into the 2009-10 season Patrick Kane had an 84 percent projected WAR. Bedard at the age of 21 currently has a 43 percent projected WAR, and has never been higher than 51 percent:

All those statistics aside, we’re overthinking the question here. Patrick Kane is the greatest American born winger (if not forward) of all time, and is a slam dunk lock to be a first ballot Hall of Famer. You would obviously sign up to have the ensuing 15 years of Patrick Kane’s career for literally any player on your roster with the possible exception of generational prospects who had already achieved superstar-level production like Sidney Crosby (100 percent WAR in 2008) or Connor McDavid (100 percent WAR in 2018):

Moving Morrow to Forward

Joe and Eric discussed the possibility of moving Scott Morrow from defense to forward. Brendan Smith is noteworthy precisely because it’s so rare.

There are only only two other examples since the lockout. Dustin Byfuglien moved from defense to forward during the 2008-09 season for the Chicago Blackhawks, and scored the game winning goal in overtime of Game 3 of the second round before returning to defense for the rest of his career. Brent Burns came up and played the first two seasons of his career as forward, converted to a defenseman for 7 seasons during which he made an All Star Game and received Norris Trophy votes, and then played forward during his age 28 season in 2013-14. After that season Burns went back to playing defense and went on to win the Norris Trophy in 2017.

Smith never actually was primarily a forward, he simply played some forward during the second half of the post-Letter-1.0-but-pre-Panarin 2018-19 season in order to remain in the lineup.

Pending UFAs

Drake Batherson and Alex DeBrincat have been identified as the two best players available as unrestricted free agents next summer. Hockeystats.com slightly prefers DeBrincat, who is about six months older than Batherson:

Of course, as has been previously mentioned on the podcast and meticulously reported by your Ombudsman, pending UFA’s do not always reach free agency the following summer.

Anisimov Shotgun Celebration

Joe referenced Artem Anisimov’s shotgun celebration. For those too young to remember the 2011-12 season, Artem Anisimov scored a shorthanded goal against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Dec. 8, 2011, and then dropped to a knee and pantomimed firing a rifle. This lead to a fight between the Rangers and Lightning. The ironic part is that Anisimov’s goal was a tap in rather than a “snipe”:

The entire incident was immortalized by the HBO 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic crew: