The Fourth Period

We want to start the fourth period with our good friend GM head coach of your Wisconsin Rappets of River Canes coach Paul joining us right now

Thanks for being in studio with us coach. How you doing? I'm doing great, man

I want to talk hockey with you guys want to talk River King's hockey specifically, but before we do

I don't know if you guys saw this story, but former van koover canuck Todd Bertuzzi who's 50 now

Is making a comeback?

He's making a comeback

He is he's looks like he may even sign with the canucks, but at least for right now

He is suiting up with the Cambridge Hornets of the Alan Cup hockey league

I want to say congratulations to Todd for continuing to lace him up and being able to lace them up

This cannot help and nobody who has hockey in their veins. It cannot help but remind you of the great Gordy Howe

Who I guarantee you wherever whatever you believe in in an afterlife

Gordy Howe is playing hockey in it

What about Reggie Dunlop? I guess it's going

Gordy Howe played until he was 52 years old in 11 days

He played professional hockey up until then he was still with the

And played up and with Hartford Whalers for a while too into his late age as well

And then there's also the stories of Gordy Howe in his late 60s

Still playing in like minor league teams and stuff

Yamir Jagger I think recently broke his record for oldest player ever and everything and I just I

You don't see this in any other sport you see you see these guys show up in old time games

Sure, but you don't see like guys literally putting on skates and getting out there and and playing hockey at those ages as long as none of them

Signed with like the squash for the havoc. I think we're all right

I didn't notice that we didn't sign any 50 plus year olds coach. I wanted to talk to you about that. Why no

Creepy

Let's start there right away as far as um because I had a couple of

Conversations with my dad about this recently when it comes to signing players

Is there a window that you can and cannot sign players talk to players or anything like that at this level?

Period or something. Yeah, yeah, something like it's it's

You have to till the deadline you can't you can't talk to anybody until nationals is over

So April 1st is usually the starting time of free agency. No joking

Huh, okay. Okay, that's interesting. Could sure April 1st

That's interesting uh, so with that uh, how has it been going this summer? How's it been going scouting?

Looking at players all that it's good. It's good. Uh, we I just had a

Russian defenseman commit and also

Uh, Canadian defenseman who's

Bigger than Bolshean oh boy

He's six six uh two thirty man. Oh, he's just an absolute beast. Um, so we're excited about that the Russian who's an oh nine

Which would be the youngest on the scale is six three one ninety five. So we're gonna we're gonna have some size and uh, you know

So it's a snick name toggle

Him in the count Ilian right there you look uh, that's his nickname now that that's a snake name but it's definitely a snake name

Um

On that point and that's great to hear. Uh, I mean, it's it's great. It's certainly size

It stands out and to even the layman hockey fan out there. I imagine but I real quick

I can't and I again just talking about this with my dad

It feels like it happened overnight with the the change in the NHL and in hockey in general

The size of these players

It's just insane

Used to be you saw these guys kind of playing other sports and everything and every once in a while you saw got a uh, sure

Uh, sure, uh, uh, uh, you know, uh, sure, uh, sure, uh, sure, uh, sure, uh, sure, uh, thank you, char, somebody like that or something

You didn't see that that often and I don't know if it's more surprising that or the size of the goalies and how much that's changed from when we were kids

To now it's nothing to see a six six six five goalie

It's which just makes it more impressive the way people are still scoring the way that they are

It's funny that you say that because that big defense when I just mentioned

He has a brother a younger brother who's six foot eight goalie

Six eight wins. Are you gonna be making a trip? Well, he wanted me to take him

I already have three goals

Nothing against the goalies that we're going we're going to have but boy oh boy

Well, that's something to keep it eye out about the games y'all get that's good good

It's a good uh relationship to build yeah, yeah, the junior river Kings maybe

He's uh, you know when you talk about that the the size and all that kind of stuff

I mean back when I played it was bigger right they weren't necessarily fast

But that's the what they were all looking for was the size right and then you start going down into the 90s and early 2000s

Where guys got smaller faster? Yeah, right? Yep more skilled Theo flurry and guys like that

And then I'll all of a sudden now you got six foot four guys that can fly yeah, right? Yeah, I know all of a sudden

So and I think it's just technology the training

You know, there's so much more available the way you're taking care of your body now these guys are machines

It's you look at some of the guys that come into our camp

And you could tell the guys that actually you're serious about it

And guys that have no idea what they're about to embark on yeah, yeah, and

Some of these kids are well taken care of one of the I

Certainly not only I agree you're talking facts over there with the change of the game and the evolution of the player and all that

One thing I'll piggyback onto that is

Hockey in general as a sport every division of it every league of it especially the NHL has done an incredible job of

Spreading the sport and making it more available for more people and

Again when we were kids maybe not everybody could play hockey because it just was an expensive sport

It was it wasn't easy. It wasn't always accessible. Not every community had it your hard press now to find

Community that doesn't have some kind of hockey organization or something for the youth at a young age somewhere around it

You're seeing the sport grow in so many ways. It's it's such a cool thing to see

I don't know that I ever saw that coming as a kid. I don't know that I ever thought that hockey

I always thought that hockey deserved to be big. I couldn't understand why people didn't like it

But I don't know that I saw that they're going that route and a hockey and baseball have done a credible job of this of getting down to the youth level

Going to rural communities building

You know an ice rink getting you know, here's a bunch of equipment

Same thing with baseball and fields. It's it's it's the smartest investment you can make it really is

What's happened now is that because we've done such a good job here over the last let's just say 25 years

Well now you have so many

Excellent players with nowhere to go. So now they're going to Europe. Yeah, now they're playing in these pro leagues

And that's building up that

countries base right? So now I mean I'm getting emails from from kids from countries that

You know ex Scotland. That's crazy Ireland

Yeah, in Japan and in all of a sudden now you start you're looking at this and these

Right, it's just took one guy that went over there 20 years ago and he just brought him in this and now all of a sudden the guys is sprouting out

And it's just it's making that

more we're having more quality players

but

The problem is is that our our league I feel is growing so much. Yeah, yep

That is watering down

That I think the cowboy would go up if we kind of just put the brakes on already

You know into what guys figure it out instead of taking everybody in anybody and

Much like so this is a really similar to an argument. I have about baseball

And that you get you shouldn't have guys batting 220 starting in in in baseball that doesn't make any sense to me

It doesn't never in my lifetime would that have ever happened

But you got so many teams now you got to fill the rosters you got so many of this so you got to do it

I think the greatest way to make baseball a better sport is to get rid of two teams

But it'll never happen

I nominate the two from Chicago. Yeah, I figured I was coming. I kind of I kind of walked into that

But when it comes to the us phl

It's a similar story that's happening

And it wasn't that way from the in the beginning and the start of it

But I can I see the concern

It's something that I know I've been worried about along with that when you have too many cooks in the kitchen and some things like that

You also have a lot of

The teams that are doing the right thing teams that are handling their business and all that suffer the most

Because there's this guy that doesn't does nobody's doing or this guy that doesn't even they don't have this open position

So they can't even make a decision over there this team and all of these things going on

And then you want to add even more teams to that

And which just leads to more confusion

I understand that money is the answer to all your questions no matter how much I bark or anything like that

It's always going to come down to that I get it. I'm an adult

but

It's a certain point

You would think that the

The it's about the product you can't make money without the product if you're watering down the product

That doesn't seem to be a good business model

You're exactly right the problem is the guy running

League has his own products right and

That's a conversation for no right right right when it when it comes to for our team though makes recruiting very difficult right

That's extremely because now you're getting average players

Think because they got ten different offers

Because teams just need to fill their roster

Right and do us and this team is in our division right now. I don't even know if they have a coach

Yeah, we talked about that a little bit last time July right we're still in the same boat

So now you look like well

Now

They you're gonna have a team right so right. I mean like Hudson struggled last year

I think they're a little more they're gonna be more set up this year

But the delts is in is in total transition right?

so

You know half the teams in our league got new ownership stick a new coaches they got new

It's it's wild

It's chaos you know with the usb-h older I know they got the different divisions the the elite the premier the the

ncdc whatever that I'd never really picked up on that when you have I haven't explored it much

But they're talking I keep seeing teams added to that and and I mean

Okay, all right, so I was just kind of curious what your thought was supposed to be the tier two

It's supposed to be the high level right?

So my job was to get guys so you see this from last year like

Garcia bulldoke

Opsfelder all strand all these guys are or have been tendered

To go to these high-level teams, right? That's my job push mom. Yeah, right?

But the problem is during the season last year we had a guy hunt a raffer. Yep went to Wilkesbury

For a week playing three games there

Came back hated

Coach, we bet in these guys

The problem is half of the degoody premier teams are better than most of the

That's crazy and then I guess my next question on that would that be

Because of that you take your top teams from the premier like

Rapids is some some of the other ones like Fort Wayne for example to throw names out there

Well, what's stopping them from putting from moving them up a lot money. Yeah, okay. All right

So now you get the ncdc which is supposed to be three

pay uh-huh and now this

Commissioner brings in half of those new teams last year

They're paying they're charging kids to play okay, so you you got a mixture of this which you can't do no no no

So but he's doing it right so now we've already had this conversation with the commissioner's like well

Why aren't we and cdc?

We're just as good if not better than 90% of those teams. Yeah, don't make no money. Right Kyle couple will

When we push them up to the mercy of chief. Yeah, that's where ops welders

Yeah, and then and all strand. Yep, so they're going to the main camp and ops welder. I got to North American League

training camp

I'm on their scouting staff now in corpus christian right on so

You try to move these guys along. Yeah, yeah, but

Have to time. We're better than that. That's that makes it hard

Makes it uh, it's now it now it's it's now what guys don't want to pay. Well, why would I come here

And pay when I can go play there free. Yeah, right free. It's not really free

$8,000 a month of building. Yeah, I mean really

There's a lot of sharing it

It muddies down

What should be about advancing these players growing this sport winning games all that yeah

Okay, in the often the GM part of the job and just has to be the most frustrating part. I imagine

You know at the end of the year you look at me. We ranked seventh. That was 72 teams. I'm standing not bad

You know harder just to get plays. Yeah, the conversations that I have to have with kids

That are that would be our second third wine guys right and they all think that they they should play for free

Yeah, because they got 20 other offers from every Tom Dickenary. Yeah, and uh, so that's what you constantly up against and now you got all these Canadian teams coming in

Yep, which obviously we've had some walk with yeah, well now all of a sudden it plopped teams it right in that area

And well that and that's got to make it even more hard tougher. That's uh

I'm waiting for them to reshuffle divisions again because they're bringing in so many teams

That there's there's something on the horizon. Oh boy. Mm-hmm. I didn't need to hit on that

But let's just say let's just say it'll

It'll be good. Okay, right up. It's gonna ruffle some patterns. We will

We'll be getting into that and do another period in the fourth period our next fourth period

I think well we'll get into that it will show down the line. I'm looking forward to that

I appreciate the the transparency the conversation as always with you coach. I think I do have a bit of an idea

My oldest a couple of months back had her first child. I am a proud papa now

First time papa. I'm very excited about it as you notice. I will shoehorn this into conversations. That's how proud I am of it

So we start just growing our own kids

We just start having our own camps and everything you got a new granddaughter around congratulations

Mazatops saluti you and yours

We just start having our of the kids just get in there. That's what we'll do

To bring in our own kids while turkey on my farm has a bunch of bullets now. I mean there's there you have there you go

Get my helmet get my helmet. Let's see what we can do

Coach always good talking to you appreciate the time with you and everything

And we'll be keeping an eye on things you guys keep an eye on things as well roomkings hockey.com

Be sure to go on over there bookmark that page keep up to date and all the interesting things that are going on over there

And be sure to follow them on social media everybody there do do a great job keeping up to date on different things that are going on and

Fun things that are happening throughout the season. There's no offseason anymore with any sports. No

We're going to start releasing some signings and stuff like that

Possibly start getting sweet. We're close. I mean I like what we got right now, but we're still a couple pieces away and

But we look good looking forward to that. Yeah. Yeah. Can't wait. That'll be exciting

Looking forward to it. We'll be talking about it in the next conversation coach. Thanks again for joining us. You got it