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It's Mike Shope and the Bulldog.
If you wrap foil around that, just like the little bit of the base part of the banana
where the fruit is, wrap foil around that top and they will last longer.
You know, I'm something of a scientist myself.
Who needs your bananas to last longer though?
Look, I don't want to go to the store every other day for bananas, so-
They're eight cents each.
What the hell are you talking about?
It's going on!
You're going to wrap them in foil.
They're better when they're just a little green.
Yeah!
It's Mike Shope and the Bulldog.
Too much work.
Not that much trouble.
Too much work.
Says the guy that's got a spreadsheet with 3,000 fantasy games.
Not WGR.
Sports Radio 550.
How big of a celebration will it be when the Saber's Clinch?
Is that champagne?
What is that?
You know, I'm too-
We talked about this a little and I mentioned how I-
I was asked, I was doing a thing for the Sabers that I don't want to divulge anything
about, but anyway, I was in a room full of people who are, you know, trying out for
the team.
We're working for the Sabers.
And I was asked that question.
What is it going to be when you thought about the moment when they clinch?
And I didn't, I remember saying like, can you see, I'm making a face, I don't know.
I'm not really thinking about it, but now that it's here, it feels like tomorrow
and I would be really, really cool.
I bet it's not a big deal in the room though.
I mean, I wonder, like when they know they clinched, I don't know.
I think for guys, I'm thinking about the caller who called us in the first hour of the show
today, saying, I'm just so happy for guys that have been through it here for so long.
You know, Thompson is the O'Reilly trade, Tuck is the Eichel trade, Dalyne is first
overall, power is first overall, all the expectations that come with that.
And they've never gotten anywhere.
I mean, I think it's possible that they react in such a way that we're all kind of like,
all right, just calm down.
You know, there's more, there's more to go, you know, I mean, you know, you did what's
called out of the playoffs.
But I think the, the, the letting go of just being a doormat might be significant for
those guys emotionally.
Well, a couple of thoughts, it's a little bit out from the playoffs.
So I think that helps the chances of it being a celebration.
If there are two weeks, more than two weeks from now to the playoffs.
Right.
So you can enjoy this.
No, you got to play off game tomorrow, right.
And I think if I'm right about this, I hope I am that in baseball, you would get whether
it's playoffs or division, you, you, there is a celebration that comes with that.
You know, it settles down and everybody talks about how they really haven't won anything
yet.
And whatever the celebration is, if there is one with the Sabers, that's what they're
all going to say.
It kind of freaks me out in baseball.
It feels like this happens in baseball.
Maybe it doesn't happen with every team every year.
But I feel like I get way more out of a team than I expect for like winning a wildcard series.
And the, the, the, the, the plastic is on the lockers and the ski goggles are out.
And the whole thing and it's like for every round, you just want a three game series.
What are we doing here?
Right.
And so I don't expect that level of anything in their room, but no cellophane.
I, I, I hope not, I guess.
But they should feel really great about what they've accomplished.
So I mean, what does that even say?
I think they'll be maybe enough of a celebration that we'll be talking about it.
And that in turn, look, man, like if you're out there and so scarred and mard by the drought
by both of these teams, extended playoff droughts that you can't really every time one of
us says, I'll tell you what, I don't want to see Ottawa in the first round.
Like that makes you go, I don't feel that, but I understand it.
And so that date, like whenever they clinch, I think may be more significant.
Like I said, this room full of people who all are, you know, working in some way for
the organization.
And I said, I don't know.
I mean, I just been assuming they're going to make it.
The room made a sound when I said that.
And this is like a week ago, like they've been in great shape for a month.
Yeah.
That's right.
So I think there is still, there's so much scar tissue that I think maybe I'm guilty of
underestimating how significant the clinching moment may be for the fan base because like
that, okay, now I know they're really going to be in the playoffs.
They can't collapse and miss anymore.
I am very curious about this now because the playoffs are not quickly, then we'll get
to calls here.
The playoffs are not the goal anymore.
And they're more a given than a goal, like they've, that's been true for a long time.
So I mean, if they end up beating Ottawa and clinching tomorrow, well, they go to Washington
and they'll still probably have a slim lead in the division.
And that game's just as big for that.
That's right.
But, you know, if you play this out to its logical conclusion, there's never a celebration
because you're probably, I mean, not necessarily, but you're probably going to the last game
with something, whether it's conference or division or wild car, like some sort of stake
there.
Or else, then you never have that celebration, you never have that moment and you probably
want to have it.
And I think they deserve to have it.
But it might not be intuitive if they beat Ottawa, oh, we did.
We clinched.
All right.
Well, what's next?
You know, like that's, yeah, maybe how they will react to that, I don't know.
There's probably a protocol.
Yeah.
And the way that every NHL goal scored means that the players will in line, just good
little boys, walk down the bench and give the fist bumps, no matter what happens on
the play.
There's probably a protocol where this is established.
I just don't know it.
When you clinch a playoff spot in the NHL, what comes, maybe we all should know what
that is.
I don't.
It's been so long.
I don't.
I haven't, you know, I haven't paid attention to any of these teams clinching playoff spots
in the last 14 years because it cares.
Who cares?
I don't know.
The players are going to get here.
I'm going to watch.
And that's great.
So I don't know what happens.
All I know is I think I think I, I think I missed, I think I missed on not, I mean, whatever,
I'm just being honest.
That's how I feel.
I haven't been nervous.
I'm not worried.
And I definitely feel like ever since Alex Tuck said, we're not just trying to get in.
We're here to win this, we're trying to win the Stanley Cup.
Like, yeah, you know, that's right.
It's when you don't touch the trophy when you win the Campbell conference.
That's how, that's how you should be thinking.
And, you know, I'm going to think that way too.
Go, you know, don't just get in.
You're good.
You, you can make noise in these playoffs, like maybe a lot of noise.
So I haven't been that focused on the clinch date, but that doesn't mean it's insignificant
to the fan base.
I think there's going to be a lot of exhaling whenever they get it, if they, if they get
it tomorrow night, we should celebrate.
Yeah, for sure.
It's not the players.
Right.
Here's Eric with us.
Hi, Eric.
Hey, how's it going guys?
Good.
Thank you.
No, I just speaking in general about the turnaround and, yeah, long time fan of the
both of these franchises, man, I'm a mid 40s and I've sat through so many years like
everybody else.
I'm happy we're going to break the streak and get the sabers back into the playoffs.
You know, so I'm going to have a beer celebrate it.
But at the same token earlier in the year, I was at the Chicago game where we kind of
ran them out of the arena, you know, nine to three, nine to four, something like that.
And we'd score three goals.
They'd score one goal.
We'd score two goals.
They'd score one goal.
And it was just this little bit of back and forth, but they kept taking.
They kept taking minutes off and they were sailing and you can see them cruising through
the neutral zone and they weren't skating hard on every play.
And I just remember letting loose.
I'm not going to say I was too far deep, but I remember having three or four beers.
And I just remember letting loose and screaming at him about keeps skating hard, keeps being
consistent.
And I don't take credit for anything, but I know I was being heard.
There was people around me laughing, you know, it's funny because a hockey game is different
than a football game in my eyes.
And I think there was a point where everybody either heard it, bought in, Lindy looked
at him and was like, you hear that guy eight rows behind you, like screaming like a moron,
you know, like if he can see it, how can you guys not see the inconsistency?
And I think we just been playing more consistent, playing together, every shift, everybody
skating hard.
And I know it sounds corny as hell, man.
But I think that's been the difference in this game is on TV, you can only see certain
things.
You can only see what the camera shows you.
But when I was sitting there, my personal perspective was there was people who were cruising
at certain times.
And we were up three goals, then all of a sudden, bam, Chicago guy, blue Chicago, I believe,
not Calgary.
It's not Chicago because they lost a Chicago, but they blew Chicago at nine to three here
back in November.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Are you right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We just, we've become that team where we're skating for all three periods and everybody
skating every shift.
I give the guys credit.
I give Linda credit.
Yeah.
I don't think it sounds corny at all, Eric.
I think there's a lot of, I mean, I said mostly the same thing without the, you know,
I wasn't sitting eight rows behind them yelling at them.
But playing good defense, which has been absolutely like the whole team, right?
Hard to play against is not, I mean, it can be having guys with sharp elbows and pointy
sticks and being mean in the corners and knowing where to spear guys when the rough aren't
looking and all that kind of crap.
But it also is a commitment, whoever is on the ice to never quitting on a play and always
coming back to defend, which is not always an easy thing to do.
I mean, you just, it can be fatiguing and that level of buy-in, not wanting to let one
another down is absolutely the same guys, which is the same guys that were in last place.
And then they started that being committed to playing that way.
And I mean, it's not all of it.
You still need the skill and the talent to make the plays and score the goals and the goal
is gotta be, you know, make some say, but their commitment overall to defense is the thing
that's different about this team from Don Granado's team.
Don Granado's team could score maybe even at five on five better than this team is scoring
right now.
But they could be good for years.
They could not defend at all.
I mean, this didn't have it.
And what was missing was that level of commit.
It's, it's, it's effort and wanting to do it neat feeling like you need to do it.
And saves.
Right.
That, I guess goes without saying, but I did say you gotta get the goalie to make saves.
You need to skill the talent to make, you know, make the play score the goals and make
the saves.
But in between, you gotta have the nuts to want to play that hard defensively.
It especially went without saying because you had just said it, it really didn't need
to be said by me.
Ryan is next.
Hello.
Hi guys.
How are you today?
Good.
Thank you.
Yeah.
So right before Christmas, the Sunday night, the savers were in New Jersey.
We had the opportunity to go down, take a, take a trip to the city with the kids.
And then, you know, long ago, we had tickets for like 25 bucks, beautiful building of
the rock.
And the bills just happened to beat the browns that day.
It was really fun being on the road, yelling, cheering your team on.
And then, we had one jerk behind us that he's like, you guys are so authentic football
that you go to a savers team and have nothing to cheer about except go bills after a goal.
And it was great because his wife or fiance or girlfriend, whoever she was, a little
mop saying that she liked Josh Allen.
She feels sorry for Bill's fans.
She feels sorry for savers fans.
And I just wonder what's going through that guy's head today knowing that the savers are
making the playoffs and this team has hidden the links like the Leafs.
It was just really awesome being on the road and hanging out with other savers fans and
hanging out, you know, and everybody's showing off their jerseys, the Andrew Chucks and
McGill knees.
And then, there's my 16-year-old kid who has never experienced this in her life and
show up.
I think your kid's like rough with the same age, so this is wild for them.
You know, when I grew up, I mean, it was the savers growing, savers canadians and then
93 happens.
And it's like, okay, we went from sweet to sweat.
So I'm just excited for my kids to be able to experience this playoff running.
I don't know what to expect from playoffing time because you have really good teams getting
in this year.
But the excitement is back and everyone's like, oh, you guys are bandwagon.
Well, no, we weren't bandwagon.
We just went in hibernation for the last 14 years.
And this is a, this is a rabid hockey market and I just cannot wait for April 21st to come
around.
I'll hang up and listen.
Okay, Brian.
Thank you.
My kids are a little older, but I do feel like I'm a little bit on the bandwagon.
We could parse that at some point.
Just like what says that you are, you aren't.
I have lived here my entire life.
I mean, I've gone to hundreds of games and rooted for them since I can remember, but not
when they got bad, like the last 10 years, I've kind of turned my back on it.
I don't feel like, I mean, I talked about this yesterday, whether it was Zucker or
Greenway or just different decisions they made with the roster.
Malenstein, who's that and Timmins and like, whatever.
My feeling about it all was just like, just reset it.
Just keep resetting it until you get it right, but they have been to say the very least
rewarded for what they did do, keeping players together, keeping the team together.
And I would have been, I was way wrong on that.
I don't feel like I have any claim to this season.
I'm going to games.
I'm going to enjoy it.
I don't have the right to do that like anybody else, but I feel a little bit like I'm on
the bandwagon because I'm not driving to Jersey to watch them play in December.
I feel like it's so big, by the way.
Oh, really?
Jersey.
Oh, yeah.
It's fine.
It's huge.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't.
I think you have had, we have all had such a unique experience having a team in this sport
be out of it for as long as they were.
It's just so uncommon for a team to be down that bad for that long and go through so many
different iterations of the rebuild and they're like, okay, I've got, we got the guy, we
got the guy, now we got the guy, now we got, oh my god, win, win, win, win, that I am not,
I'm not into gatekeeping at all about the whole thing.
I mean, I had my own thresholds, I know where, where I was at different times with this
team, even, you know, three, four, five years ago, not even, I'd rather go watch my kid practice
with the regals than sit in front of the TV and watch the Sabers game.
I got to that point.
Am I supposed to feel bad that I'm enjoying this now?
No, it's for you.
I, you've cared all along.
Whether you were paying attention for your own mental health or not, that's not for me
to judge.
I'm assuming if you live here and have cared about them the whole time, you cared on some
level about them.
You just stopped watching because it was driving you insane.
So I'm not inclined to put up a sign that says like, you must have watched this many
games per year, so I don't care.
Awesome.
The scene is awesome again, and I don't know, I'm not asking for Sheriff's cards at the
door.
I don't care.
Tony's next.
Tony.
Hey, guys.
I tell you, I'm part of that.
I've been in Louisiana since the 90s, and I kind of lost touch with the Sabers after,
you know, the Hoshik and all that.
But I'm dolling effect guy.
I bought the package of it, watching every game since dolling, but man, I have, I have
suffered.
What you're talking about, it's just a bigger surprise that Alan came out or the Sabers
this year.
I'm going to tell you what, we were kind of itch it on call and Alan, you know, like
EJ or Trinidad words, maybe not quite, but that Miami game he had that year and the
Rams game and all of that.
I think now the bigger question with the Sabers emergence is, I think it's more likely
that the Sabers win the cup than the bills win the Lombardi.
And I want to say this, Bulldog, you, you keep talking about that Dallas stars game on
New Year's Eve.
I was at that game in Dallas because I'm in tree boards and like three hours away.
And that's the same feeling I got.
I'm like, this team is real, therefore real.
So I'm excited about it.
I think, you know, it's funny, my son and I laugh about, you know, through the bad years,
like five years ago, we're getting up off the couch for a Jeff Skinner goal.
And more than we are this year for, you know, Thompson or Quinn or something, because
I think this team is good.
We expect it.
But I don't know.
I just, I think we're in a better place with our hockey team than our football team.
And maybe Brady can change that.
Let's hope.
Right.
But I love it.
I think go Sabers.
Go, Bill.
Thanks, Tony.
All right, Tony.
Nice to hear from you in treeport.
Wouldn't the bills be, I'm trying to find it, but here it is.
Plus a thousand to win the Super Bowl, the bills, ten to one.
I thought it might be shorter than that.
Sabers are seven to one today.
No, sorry.
That's to win the East.
Fourteen to one.
Okay.
The Sabers Cup.
Just a little bit longer.
Yeah.
A little bit.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, parsing through Alan, I mean, it was not a popular draft pick when it was made.
But I don't know.
I never, I never felt like it couldn't work.
So I don't know.
My level of surprise, I mean, my surprise, he's the best player in the league.
Sure.
Because you just would never expect a draft, the guy that's going to become the best player
in the league.
Like, I can't tell you that, but it always, to me, had a chance to work.
You know, one of the, one of the tenants of the NFL draft that we talk about a lot in
this room that you, the point you make, like nobody knows.
You know, they pick that guy and maybe that'll work.
Okay.
Like, I remember the day after that draft sitting here with you, like, if nobody knows, why are
we all, why is everybody so mad?
I don't understand.
If nobody knows, why are you so sure that this is a terrible idea?
And just trying to push back on that because I think if, if one thing is true, then the
other has to be as well.
So I still think this is the most surprising thing.
Certainly in my broadcast career, and that feels like my life at this point.
I mean, it's been 30 years.
So I just never saw this season coming.
You know, I thought in the off season, when some of the numbers people were like, you
know, right on the line, 94, 95 points, the decors really good, Kussel Ring will really
work.
There was some support in the analytics community for the sabres to have a drought breaking
season.
They've been, as you referenced earlier, I think this is a lot of it, really good, five
on five, right?
Differential expected goals.
Year over year.
Yeah.
They had the hard part, maybe mostly right, right?
But then goal tending, no luck, and special teams like power play last year was a downfall.
So I just, and then you add in that it started the way it did in there in last place.
And it looks like another, the fans are chanting for Adams to go.
The building is half empty.
I mean, it just did not, it felt like another year on the pile of the previous 14.
And then it just wasn't that anymore.
That is a lightning strike.
There's also, I mean, you can only go so far comparing it.
You knew that if Alan did hit, you'd be good.
There's one thing you pretty much needed to accomplish as a, as a football organization.
That's to find a great quarterback and they did that.
And they've been great ever since, even though not all parts of them are great.
So that's like the cheat code and makes it a different comparison than hockey team.
And what a lot of what you're saying is that this team was mostly established going
into this season and then to start the season.
Like why, why would you have expected them to just win every night the rest of the year,
almost?
39 of their last 46 games they have points in.
Like just how could you have, have expected that, right?
And that's different than just if you will, locking into a great quarterback.
Also on the Alan point, I like how you're talking like, why should we rule out the possibility
that he'll be great?
I wouldn't have wanted to rule it out.
And they also really, the process was okay.
You know, they did trade up twice to get them, but for a quarterback, you know, you can
kind of live with that for as desperate as they've been for so long to have one.
You know, like as opposed to say, trading up for Watkins, because you could have said the
same logic.
Yeah.
Well, why, why couldn't this work?
How do we know?
Whatever.
Yeah.
But the process was different and I think more respectable this time.
And of course, it did hit and look at them since, but this one is kind of really out
of nowhere.
The comment EJ Ratic made on this show a couple of weeks ago, how his perspective on his,
I always liked the Sabre's roster for a couple of years.
He wasn't floored by this.
He said they just had to figure out that they had to play every night like it was opening
night and realized you're not the lightning.
You're not the avalanche.
You're not a team that can just win because of who you are, you have to, you have to be
above that really sharp, I thought from EJ NHL Network 803 O550.
See for your thoughts, Mike Schopen, the Bulldog.
Back after the update, this is WGR.
