Hockey, NHL, Madison Square Garden discussed on The Rich Eisen Show

The Rich Eisen Show
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Automatic TRANSCRIPT

Cities, there's a whole run up to the event. I remember, by the way, as a youngster when the draft is always held in New York, it was at the paramount theater at Madison Square Garden. It wasn't even in the main, you know, part of Madison Square Garden where the Nixon rangers play where, you know, 19,000 people can sit. It was in the paramount theater of Madison Square Garden, which is like a smallish theater within the confines of the building. And I remember as a high school, I guess I was a junior or a senior going to the 1990 6 draft. The jets I was Jeff in, the jets at the number one pick in the draft, keyshawn Johnson, so I went. And we sat there for hours, and it was great. And then, you know, as the draft grew in status and I got into this business, I went to the Radio City Music Hall draft where obviously that's a massive place and I've seen the expansion of the draft when it went to Philadelphia a few years back and just hundreds of thousands of people packing the roadway leading up to the steps of the art museum, rocky steps, you know? And you saw what happened when it was in Vegas this year, the amount of people, even with COVID, right? I mean, it's massive what's become of the NFL Draft, the NBA draft is a big spectacle as well. It's great. It's fun. Baseball has now started televising their draft just a few years back. I mean, it wasn't as if every year they televised a draft. It wasn't a big deal to them. And hockey has always tried to do a nice job televising it. They have the, you know, the top players be there, they had it in Montreal. You got fans. It's cool, right? And I tuned in yesterday to watch, because I love sports, and I am a hockey fan. So I wanted to watch. The problem is you can not get really invested in the NHL draft, even as a hockey fan, unless your team's picking first, second, third or whatever it might be, and even then it's hard to get invested for two reasons. One, you don't know these players. We aren't watching these guys. Euros left Kafka going number one overall to the Montreal Canadiens in Montreal is a cool story for the 2022 upper deck draft at the bell center. It's a cool story. And I'm sure he's a great player playing in Finland being a Slovakian. Did anybody watch TPS in league of Finland's top professional league play? A lot of TPS fans there, huh? A lot of you guys watch TPS on tape delay from Europe? No. You didn't, right? The number two guy, I don't know who he is either. I have no idea who these guys are and I've never seen them play. That's the issue. Simon or Simon nemec? Picked by the devil's number two, another Slovakian Logan coolies in America. I've never seen him play. Never seen him. Why? Because they're playing an overseas leagues for one. Or they're playing for the U.S. developmental league, which again, where am I watching those games? I'm not. I don't watch junior hockey coming out of Canada like the oshawa generals. I'm not watching that. The Sue saint Marie, whoever's, right? Mustangs or whatever it is? Peterborough. I don't know. I don't know these guys. We can look at statistics and say, wow, they got put up big numbers, but a lot of guys coming from Europe a don't put up big numbers and B, the ones coming out of the OHL and these Canadian leagues, everybody puts up big numbers in those leagues. So the whole thing that I'm telling you and looking at is the fact that I don't feel invested in the NHL draft kind of like the baseball draft because for one, we just don't know these guys and we've never seen them play except for highlight reels. I can make a highlight reel of anybody and make them look great, right? Because it's picking and choosing a very minuscule amount of times in film compared to the entire body of work of watching them ten, 20, 30 times a year and seeing them play over the course of not just a game, but the season. We're looking at a two minute highlight reel going, yeah, that guy looks great. Maybe he looks terrible in the other film, right? We don't know. You can manipulate highlight reels left and right. High school prospects do it all the time to try to get college scholarships or coaches will, you know, pick the four great plays they've made, even though they may have had 20 terrible missed tackles right throughout the course of a game. That's the first problem. The second problem is, just because you draft a guy, when are you going to actually see him playing in the NHL? Even number one overall picks now don't go straight into the NHL. The guy last year who went number one overall, I believe played at Michigan this past year. Now he's going to be in the NHL a year after being drafted number one. Michigan had like 5 guys who are high first round picks on their roster this year. So maybe this Euros left kasky is going to be playing for the Canadians. This year may be returns to Finland for one more year of quote seasoning, right? This guy Logan Cooley, he went third overall to Arizona. I believe he's going to go play college hockey for a year. Look, I'm a New York ranger fan. They drafted Igor shishkin in like 2014. He didn't come to the states like 2019, like 2020. They drafted keandre Miller, he played a Wisconsin for a couple of years before he came. So just because you may get excited because they had a high draft pick and drafted a guy that an analyst tells you looks great and is a big part of your team's future. You're not going to even see him play at the NHL level most likely for a couple of years. And that's so similar to the baseball draft, right? The hockey draft mirrors to me the baseball draft, which is a bunch of college players or high school seniors and there's too many guys to choose from and we're not watching high school baseball and very few of us will sit there and watch the college World Series as fun as it is, very few people are actually going to sit there and watch the college World Series. So you don't know these guys. And then once you draft the guy even number one overall out of some high school and Round Rock Texas or Harvard Wesley high school in California, it's like the LA region, right? Part. Harvard westlake. Yeah, it's up in the valley. Yeah. North of LA powerhouse. There's like four guys that Major League Baseball right now right now who are like teammates at Harvard westlake at the same time. It's like what max freed I think of the braves Lucas giolito I think of the White Sox, the guy pitching for the Cardinals and I forgot who the other guy is. I think three or four guys off that scene like rotation or pitching staff were all high draft picks and are all playing in the major leagues right now. They better have one state that year. It's Phil bickford. Phil pick from the daughters. The Dodgers and who's the guy from the Cardinals I forgot. He just came back from I think his last name's Kennedy or something. He just came back from an injury. I think they all played, I think at the same time at Harvard westlake. Again, they better have one state. It's like when I think it was like Joey Gallo, Bryce Harper and I forgot who the other player was. We're all playing at the same time in Vegas. But again, you know, you draft a guy number one overall in baseball if he's in the major leagues three years later, that's a quick rise, right? He's an 18 year old kid out of high school.

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