John Matisz

Hey, fellas.

Thanks for having me on.

I mean, it's been...

Pretty eventful.

Like, obviously, we had the Olympics breaking things up in such a fantastic way.

But I'd say the regular season, in general, has been pretty entertaining.

Like, a real changing of the guard year, whether it's Celebrini and Schaefer really putting their stamp on things, and to a lesser extent, Bedard and some other younger players.

That seems to be, like, a wave of young players, and things starting to turn over a little bit at the superstar level.

And then, of course, the playoff picture, like,

You know, the Sabres, the Canadians, you could even throw in the Flyers, like these sort of ascendant teams, the Ducks, the Mammoths, all kind of not only making the playoffs, but some of them have a legitimate chance to go on a deep run.

So when I think of this season and what it may be remembered for, at least the regular season part, it's probably those two things, which obviously work in concert this sort of, I guess, changing of the guard type of year.

Nathan McKinnon is suddenly 30 years old, and he had, like, an insane season.

Not that 30 is super old, but when you consider that there are, you know, guys like Eric Carlson going off, Crosby, what is it, 21 years now of a point per game?

Artemi Panarin, like, his point totals aren't super high, but, you know, he's played on two pretty bad teams and put up some pretty big numbers, and he's in his mid-30s, late-30s.

So, yeah, you go around the –

The league and, you know, it's really like kind of like a weird overlapping period where you've got, you know, that sort of Crosby, Ovechkin era, and, you know, you'd loop in like a Patrick Kane, still around, still holding out hope.

You know, still, we're still seeing Eric Carlson every two or three years decide that he's like a star level player.

And then you've got the teenagers, and then obviously...

the traditional sort of prime-age guys like McDavid, who is now up to 134 points, which is bonkers.

And yeah, the playoff, I was hoping that Washington was going to make it.