John Shannon

No, in fact, I've been for, you know, as long as I've been alive, and I'm trying to tell people don't use nicknames for me.

Just call me John.

John.

I'm against, I'm an anti-nickname guy.

And you know what my guess is, Shani, some might say the same with you as well.

Listen, the only Shani story I have, and I think I've told it in this station before, is that for the longest time, Brendan Shanahan would be around, and whether he was a player or he was with the league or he was in management with the Maple Leafs,

And we'd be sitting together and somebody would say, hi, Shannie, and they were pointing at me.

And then Brendan would point at me and say, you can't be Shannie, I'm Shannie.

And I said, I don't want to be Shannie.

So you can have it.

So that became a running gag between Brendan Shanahan and me for years.

it exceeded my expectations bob uh i thought it would be a good game i i thought that we would see quote unquote big boy hockey two uh teams that are relentless uh one team a little bit bigger than the other but another the other side a little faster uh i expected some physical play we got it i'm not sure we saw the physical play i thought we were going to get but

There were enough mistakes made, and that created excitement.

And to get a 5-4 game in a Stanley Cup final is exemplary.

And to me, it was the perfect way to start a series.

The game's in a pretty good place, isn't it?

I think it is.

I think that the amount of revenue that is coming in, I think the relationship with the players, which has been a tremendously underrated storyline for the last three or four years with Marty Walsh running the Players Association.

A lot of what we have seen in the growth of the game goes to the lack of politics between the Players Association and the league right now.

face-off without the players and the league working closely together.