Boston Celtics top Golden State Warriors || Hurricanes Defenseman Tony DeAngelo

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. Let's get rolling. And of course, we have Luke DeCock on a Friday because we always do. All right, real quick, baseball schedule for you today. Campbell Georgia Tech in their regional, not even sure where that is and neither is the host, noon so that game is just underway. One o'clock, UConn and Wake Forest do battle and East Carolina is in action against Coppin State. We'll actually check in in Greenville at one o'clock. Two o'clock, Carolina will host Hofstra as they get their regional underway and Georgia Southern and UNCG. It is at Georgia Southern. That'll be a seven o'clock start. So that sets your state of North Carolina Division 1 NCAA Tournament schedule.

Real quick, win state playing. Why are you doing that? I couldn't resist. I don't understand that. I couldn't resist. Did you feel some sort of pride or what was that about?

No. My gosh. At the fan rookie on Twitter.

At the fan rookie on Twitter. Brown penetrates inside, flips it toward the basket, missed. Horford offensive rebound. Marcus Smart wide open, takes the pass and drills a three from the right corner.

The Celtics are eight for nine in the fourth from distance. Unbelievable. Let's just say, Dennis, that you're a little tired.

Okay. And you like maybe fell asleep after the third quarter. The commercials after the third quarter, maybe you fell asleep. Yeah.

Maybe somebody you know did that. 92 to 80 after three. Boston outscored the Warriors, 40 to 18 in the fourth. Jalen Brown, 10 points, four assists.

They tied the game on Derek White's three-pointer with 540 left in the fourth. Both of Brown's threes for the game. He was only two for eight from the game.

Both of Jalen Brown's threes came in that stretch. So Brown had those 10 points and the four assists. So essentially responsible because two of the assists were three-pointers. So responsible for 20 points in the first six minutes and 20 seconds of the fourth quarter.

Seems like somebody decided to take over the game. Al Horford took it from there. He had 11 points and an assist the rest of the way. Three minutes into the fourth quarter. Golden State was over for from the field. Had no offensive rebounds and two turnovers. So it went from up 12 to up three in three minutes. And frankly, it could have been worse. Yeah, because I don't think anybody did anything for the first minute of the fourth. So the only good part that came out of the game for me was I had Steph Curry plus 250 to make the first three. So there you go. Exactly.

Cash registers. Derek White, Marcus Smart, Al Horford. 15 of 23 from three-point range combined.

Amazing stuff. We'll hear from the particulars there. We're going to talk to Brendan Whitted in just a couple of minutes.

Real quick, couple of other items that I want to get to before we talk to Brendan. Duke needed a guard, right? Trevor Keels was staying in the draft. Perspective transfer from the University of Northern Illinois, AJ Green, also staying in the draft.

So what do you do? You take a prospect from next year's class and move him up a year. Tyrese Proctor is a 6-4 guard from Australia. And I had never heard of him before because that is the similar case with almost every single recruit in any sport.

But I did go online to watch Tyrese Proctor. I can't tell what kind of quickness he has because it didn't seem like there was much resistance. But 6-4, lanky guard, can shoot it, can handle, good passer, and was a five-star prospect from next year's class.

Now he's coming up to this year's class, which was already ranked number one, if you pay attention to those sorts of things. So pretty good. Two other quick things. Phillies have sacked manager Joe Girardi.

How about that? They sacked him. 22 and 29 on the season. They are on track for their 11th straight non-playoff finish. I didn't realize it had been that long since the Phillies had made the playoffs. Tony DeAngelo is a big Phillies fan. I will ask him.

You might have an answer. I'm sure he does. It is a big fan of Joe Girardi. It is not intended to be a contentious conversation as a Mets fan talking to a Phillies fan, but we will discuss things because Tony DeAngelo is that way. Alright, as we go to Brendan Whitted, my friend, at hucocell on Twitter.

He is part of the league pass lair, one of our NBA analysts, and let's talk about game number one. First of all, how much do you think Golden State's, I don't know how long a layoff it was. It seemed like it was a long layoff.

How much do you think the layoff mattered? I heard Magic Johnson talk about it a little bit pregame and then at halftime, he felt like they were lagging and were a little bit tired. Look, unless the Celtics go on that like historically great all-time great three-point shooting run, I think Golden State wins that game and maybe that's a that's an odd hypothetical throw out there, but I mean it was it wasn't just that they were hitting threes. It's Derek White, Marcus Smart, and Al Horford. They come out for 15 of 23 from deep.

I mean, those aren't guys that are high volume all-time great three-point shooters. They got, Celtics got into that driving kick thing that they absolutely love to do. I thought Golden State maybe over helped occasionally, but if they're going to, you know, anytime you shoot that sort of number from deep, it's going to change the complexity of a game and you mentioned how quickly it changed because Golden State had one of those classic Golden State third quarters. They got out close game at halftime. They got out, outscored and it felt like especially at home and it felt like they were going to roll. They were going to finish and you're going to keep going and it was interesting because one of the things I wanted to look for was experience.

People talk kind of in these larger source of kind of in the ethos of whoa, they're more experienced and so they're more experienced and so they'll be better. Well, what does that really mean as it pertains to what we see on the court? And so for what I think of it as is fourth quarters and runs. Like, the Celtics got down double digits in the first half and came storming back. They got down double digits in the second half and came storming back. And this is a team without anybody that's had any sort of significant finals experience and they were still able to do it. This ain't nothing to the fact that Udonka, this is his first year overall as a head coach. You know what I mean? I don't know if enough has been made of that. Like, this is this is a hell of a thing to do in your first year as a head coach. And so I just wanted to look at some of those things.

What is that going to look like? I didn't see that all and I was specifically surprised to see it on the road from this Boston team. All right, so here's the other thing. You mentioned the historic night shooting combined from Horford, from Smart, from Derek Wyatt. Can't expect that. But the flip side of that is that Jason Tatum is three for 17 from the field. Jalen Brown was relatively inefficient and really only exploded during that, you know, six-minute stretch of the fourth quarter.

So to me, that's the water finding its level. They got these great performances out of guys they don't necessarily expect, but they got below what they might expect from their two stars. So I don't know. I disagree a little bit on Brown and even if a little bit on Tatum, Tatum's not going to shoot that poorly again. That's not going to happen. But he was still, he had seven assists in the first half. He had 13 for the game. Yeah, like he, this was like the thing that has propelled him into now superstar sort of atmosphere is his decision making. Before, if he was three or 17 or having a bad shooting night, that was all you gonna get from him on the offensive end. He's improved as a defender and he's improved as a decision maker. And Golden State didn't do anything in particular with him. He was just kept seeming to find, and I mentioned overhelping a little bit, kept seeming to find the guy open from three.

And that that is, that's huge. Even when you're not shooting the ball well, and as far as Brown is concerned, I was really interested to see how he's going to go. Cause Golden State doesn't really have a rim protector. And you saw this Miami when they went five out and there was nobody in the paint.

That was him. He was going downhill. He's such an elite athlete that if he gets a little bit of a half a step on you, you need somebody, you need that back rotation guy to give you a little bit of help and help you recover or something because he's going to get right to the cup. Golden State doesn't have that. And as a result, they're unwilling or less willing to play up inside him. Like the, the thing that Jalen Brown kind of got exposed for a little bit versus Miami was his handle can get loose. You know, even in the, in the big, even in his biggest scoring game, he had seven or eight turnovers. Golden State doesn't really have that sort of an on-ball defender, especially as Clay still works his way back from injury.

They don't really have that. And so it'll be interesting. I saw that Gary Payton Jr. is, it was available. I don't know if you'll see him at all, but he was really their best perimeter defender. Somebody like him could help a lot on a guy like Jalen Brown, somebody who's quick and athletic because Golden State, you know, for all of his, all of his greatness, they don't really have a ton of those kind of lockdown defenders. Andrew Wiggins is by far the best perimeter defender.

He was the primary guy on Luca and did a fantastic job. But if you have two wings, like Brown and Tatum, he can't guard both at the same time. You're right.

He can't. Now, maybe he has to guard, maybe they have a better chance of putting green on Tatum, although I don't, I'm not sure that green is necessarily a great matchup for Tatum. But you mentioned also Boston's defense. Steph Curry got off to an amazing start and I want to thank him for the first three of the game.

That was plus 250. He got off to a great start. He was six of eight from three-point range in the first quarter.

One of six the rest of the way. What did Boston do? Because Steph looked like he was on course for 60 and he ends up at 35, which certainly isn't terrible. It's not the reason they lost, but they certainly did limit him the rest of the way.

What did they do differently? Smart. I thought Marcus smart had a, you know, one of those little live plug-in things that they do when they, when they mic the player up. I thought he did a really good job of kind of explaining, Hey, you can't just fall straight back into that draft coverage there. What Boston was doing defensively was one through four. We're going to just switch everything at that five, because it is so difficult for, for centers to kind of get back out into, into the space.

We're going to drop a little bit. You can't drop all the way back, but, and you started to see the Celtics kind of creep up a little bit and kind of deny some of that stuff. Some of it was also the fact that like, you know, he was sitting, he got a little bit of foul trouble. So they pulled him out.

Well, that was, that was late in the first. But I think that they just did a better job in the coverages that they were, they were doing. They were able to be a little bit more physical with them.

They were still able to keep him off the free-throw line consistently. I thought they, you know, they are, the Celtics are such a perfect defensive matchup for Golden State, particularly when Golden State does this. And I'm interested to see moving forward, how, how frequently these guys will be on the court together. They have at any given time, you'll have Draymond Green, Looney and now Andre Iguodala is back.

Those are three non shooters. That two of them are consistent and Looney and Draymond are consistently on the court together. That can make them a little bit more, a little bit easier to guard, even with the, even with Klay, even with Poole, I can make them a little bit easier to guard. I'm interested to see how much of that you'll see. If you'll see a little bit more Otto Porter, who has been really, really good for them, made a lot of shots, but it's also just defensively a little bit more switchable and a better perimeter player. I think that maybe that's some of the stuff that, that, that we'll see to maybe give, give Steph a little bit more room to work.

And again, still ends up with 32, right? It didn't have a poor game at all, but that's, that's definitely something to look out for it and how they, how they kind of respond with that. We didn't see transcendent Jordan Poole, the guy we had seen earlier in the playoffs and just back to backtrack to Gary Payton. Cause I, it raised my eye too, when they said he was available, if he's available and doesn't play, then he's not really available.

Then to me, he's a decoy. We'll see if he gets some run, maybe the fact that they have, I believe nine days off in between games, one and two, I don't understand what game one Thursday game two Sunday. Like w we're not, we're not traveling. Let's play, let's play ball.

Let's get this thing done. I don't remember that happening in previous years. Maybe I'm just, they're just doing it for TV. They w they want the Sunday night. Sunday nights are better than Saturday nights. I get it. And they just didn't want them waiting around, I guess.

Uh, now Friday nights are not necessarily great either. So they wanted, uh, it's all about, it's all about manipulating, uh, the TV ratings. Um, what did you see from before we, uh, before we have to say goodbye, what did you see from clay Thompson? Uh, he looked, I mean, close out clay. They could use, they could use close out clay. They don't, they didn't have close out clay.

So what did you see from him? Well, they don't have a lot of great ball handlers for, for golden state. And so they're able to switch so much of the stuff that they do. And a lot of what clay is able to get is off of switches. When you'll have a dribble handoff with Draymond or looney or, or a back screen or something like that.

If you're able to switch everything, a lot of those sorts of opportunities, at least open opportunities get taken away and you don't want to see clay drill. I saw a lot of clay, like really trying to dribble and try to freeze on the shot. That's obviously not his game. I think he's added a little bit more to, to that part of his game, but that's not, you know, that's not who clay Thompson is.

That's not who we, who he's been purported to be. I think there's just how, how flexible, how versatile the Celtics defense is. It can give him a little bit of trouble. I wonder if they're going to try to run up a few more things specifically for him to get him going early. Cause clay is also, you know, he can get as high as fish grease regardless of who's guarding them. And so I wonder if they'll start looking for him a little bit earlier, cause stem went, went crazy and ballistic early.

So they try to, you know, get in some pick and roll stuff a little bit higher than you might normally see. You said hotter than fish grease. We had Mark Jones again last night. I'm a big Mark Jones guy. I love Mark Jones.

Anytime I can hear hotter than fish grease, it just said nobody else can use it. I'm glad you did. Roca, do you still like golden state in the series or are you more Boston just now that I've seen it, Boston just might be a tough matchup. Boston is really, really good. Uh, look, if, if, if Boston's bench is better than golden States, then they will win this series. Uh, Derek white going for 21, I believe, uh, outscoring pool that, that, that you can't, that can't happen because they rely on pools so much for those non-current minutes and not current minutes. They were, uh, they were minus three, which is very reasonable.

That's a very reasonable number for them. Um, but I still am going to go with golden state. I, and, and there's not even one particular thing that I point to other than the fact that I don't think that they're the Celtics are going to shoot at that clip for the rest of time. I can, I can see Steph playing that way. Again, I can see pool playing better or clay playing better. They put up, I mean the three point shooting numbers that they put up, if they're able to shoot that way, then they're going to be everyone that's ever played. But I just, I just don't, I just don't think that's, that's going to happen again. Now what the scary part is that they were able to shoot that way on the road.

You usually don't get that sort of right. Production from tertiary players on the road they did. And so maybe that's them still in the game. They now have home court advantage. I'm gonna still go with golden state, but the Celtics obviously are, are, they couldn't have asked for a better start to this series. Golden state is now plus money on if, uh, if somebody wanted to jump in now, I might do that. Yeah. I mean, don't, don't, don't tip me, go.

Brendan Whitted, uh, the league pass layer at huco cell on Twitter. Uh, thank you very much, my friend. See you very soon. Talk to you later. Appreciate it. You got it. Brendan Whitted.

All right. We've got a couple of more things before we take our, uh, our first break. Uh, uh, Rafael Nadal has reached the finals. Shocking Rafael Nadal in the final of the French open.

You just stop 111. And to think he was an underdog. No, no, not in this one. I mean, like previously he was an underdog to Djokovic. Yeah.

So Djokovic is a fantastic player, but seriously, Alexander's very, if you have it, yeah. Should've won the first set up a break in a second set in the tank and then just got rolled in the third. It's too bad. Way too bad. What? Exactly.

All right. A couple of, a couple of quick things. We kind of glossed over it, but, uh, we had, uh, playoff hockey last night and the Colorado avalanche got busy early in the second period. But it's gone second period.

Yeah, that was, uh, believe that was the Arturi-Leckinen goal. Uh, the avalanche scored three times in a two minute and four second span of the first six and a half minutes in the second period. They win four nothing over the Oilers in game two. Like it ain't over because Edmonton hasn't played a home game yet. Edmonton could win both games at home.

True. Um, but man, Edmonton has, was non-threatening last night. Colorado just kept Edmonton at bay and nothing from McDavid and Drysidel. Yeah.

No danger, it seemed. Um, Colorado was awesome. Uh, Colorado might not even need a goalie.

No. Pavel Fransus, he actually had to make some, uh, make some good saves last night, but, um, they, they basically kept him clean against Edmonton. Nazem Kadri had three primary assists, uh, on the, on, on all three of those goals early in the second period. Nathan McKinnon made it four nothing with a third period goal. Tonight, we will see if the lightning can wrestle home ice advantage away from the Rangers. I will point this out.

Andrei Vasilevski has not lost consecutive playoff games in three years. So he's due. Maybe, maybe that's coming up in place your bets. Uh, and one more thing before we break, uh, Neymar and Messi, by the way, our teammates with Paris Saint-Germain. Yeah.

Right. Neymar from Brazil, Messi from Argentina. Remember, uh, in the summer, this past summer, I think it was the summer, maybe the winter, uh, Argentina for the one, like their first title, their first, uh, for Argentina in like 15 years by winning the, um, what amounted to the South American euros, right? The, what, I don't know what it's called, but we have the Euro every other year. We had the same thing in South America and Argentina finally won. They beat Brazil in the, uh, in the title match for it. So yesterday, the Argentinians and the Italians who won Euro, the Euro, they met in something called the cup of noodles. I don't know. It's the cup of something.

Okay. So they, they met at Wembley to play for another, another trophy and Argentina won and they celebrated and Neymar got a, of like a photo or a video of the celebration and put it on Instagram and then captioned it. Did you guys win the world cup? Well, salty from Neymar like that. I'm okay with salty.

I really, I like that. Speaking of salty, our friend, Tony D'Angelo, Carolina, I don't know. I said that Carolina hurricanes. He's not Carolina hurricanes, defensemen, hopefully going forward as well.

Next Tony D'Angelo number 77 in your program for the Carolina hurricanes joins us on the Adam gold show. I really wanted this conversation to happen a month from now. I know you did too. How you doing? Yeah, I'm doing good. How about, how about your savior months from now would have been perfect, but it is, it is still tough, still tough as well.

I'm sure it is. I was hoping that we'd all be slurring our words for like a week after, after it all happened. First of all, I'm sorry about Joe Girardi. Philly's, Philly's moved on from Joe Girardi today. I didn't realize they had not been in the playoffs for 11 years.

And don't be sorry about that. That was a good move. I think they needed, they needed some fresh blood. They need something to go on there. Pretty good team, pretty good roster, but they can't find a way to win.

Not even be 500 right now. It's tough. So that was a good move. Yeah.

Okay. That's that, that is, that is a fair assessment. It hasn't been the same for Girardi since he moved on from the Yankees or they moved on from him. What went, what went wrong against the Rangers from your standpoint? Maybe not, not you personally, but from, from where you sit, when you look at that series, what, what was, what was different than Boston, maybe? I think it's pretty easy to look at the series in a sense and some similarities in Boston too. You look at special teams and especially look at special teams on the road.

And I talked about this a couple of days ago, my, in my end of the year interview there. And I just said, our power play to me in the series wasn't bad in the sense that we had a lot of assisting zone time. We had good entries. We had chances. I think if I, if I'm adding up correctly, we had six posts in that series.

Yeah. Three of those goes in, you're at a, you're clipping at a 25% power play rather, or maybe you're more than that rather than a 12, you know, in a, in a short series like that. So it's the balance is going to go our way.

I could tell you that. I mean, there's other things that they go into it to the, just a little execution, but I really didn't think the power play struggled that much. And on the other end on their power play, I didn't even think our penalty kill struggle, but when they had a chances in the net and when it comes down to in the seven game series, that's a, that makes a difference. And when you come down to it, especially in just a seven game, as you guys know, and I've seen the past, I know the last six before this one, I've gone the hurricane's way.

Yeah. Just one little bounce, you know, what is there a three seconds on the power play, Dylan Fox gets shot. It just, you know, just finds a way through and then they get another power play and then actually, you know, they make a real nice play there and that's going to happen. You're not going to kill off every penalty, but now you're down to nothing and it just puts you in a tough spot and you're going against probably the best goal in NHL right now, the way he's playing at the moment. So it's, it's tough, you know, but they, you gotta give them credit too, right? It's not just all about us. They did a good job and they had a good game plan, but I thought we gave ourselves every opportunity to win. We just weren't able to, we weren't able to close it out.

Tony D'Angelo is joining us here in the Adam Gold show. Here's the, I always wonder about these things and I'm, you know, I played sports growing up and all that, but I don't obviously never played at your level. Can it, can it snowball like mentally? Can it become like, can you try too hard, not too much effort, but can you try too hard to score or be, try to be too perfect and create the best opportunity that just kind of, you think too much.

And then when you think you kind of slow down. Yeah. I mean, you could, I personally don't think we did that too much.

I mean, like myself, for example, these are coming at such a high pace, you know what I mean? You don't really think about it. You see that chance to score, you're looking to go.

I, in my opinion, I talked to you guys a couple of days ago. I had, I had seven or eight really good senses to score in the series, in my opinion, and I wasn't able to capitalize it. And I hold that, you know, I hold, I'm pretty tough on myself for that. I thought that there's a player that, you know, the player, I think I am trusting for this team and I think I needed to finish one of those. I don't care how good the goal is. So, you know, I think I'm pretty good myself and I, you got to find a way to put one's rule, but he, he just made the saves. You know, I wasn't like, when you're getting the puck, I'm only speaking for myself.

I can't speak for the other guys. Like when I'm going to get in the puck in those scoring areas, the only thing that might have a score, I wasn't thinking, Oh, this guy, you know, it's just too fast to think about that. I mean, when you get back to the bench, sure.

It's going through your head. Like I can't, you know, I can't score this guy right now, but as every shift you go out, at least for, at least for myself, I don't think about that. I just was, you know, sitting in bed after the game seven was tough. I was just thinking about the chances that we, as all, but personally, you know, it goes through your own head personally, what I could have done more to help there. Just one of them goals, even to make it to one in game seven, I had a chance in the slot and just wasn't able to do it.

So that, that'll frustrate me the whole summer, but also give me an opportunity to try to really work on my, you know, different types of shooting, maybe a little more deception and try to just work on some things that when you do get another chance, which I know we will try to, try to capitalize more. I thought the, um, you mentioned that chance, the sequence right before the Rangers make it three, nothing. Uh, it goes the other way with, uh, with Ajo and Svechnikov, which is probably the best combination, uh, may, unless maybe it's Ajo and Brendan Smith.

Uh, but I'll expect to cough. And, uh, I don't know if the past, if the, if the puck bounced or if, uh, under just missed his spot, but there's a chance to make it to one. How different is the game, especially because it's Andre, if that connects. Yeah, we had, uh, I mean, actually, I just plus about 10 other ones in the first period to really make the game two to one, you know, they, they get you, they get you a three or two quick in the first period in the first six minutes or seven minutes or whatever. And we had multiple chances to make it two to one. And in my opinion, you make it two to one.

I have no clue what's going to happen, right? You still got to make the two, two and three, two or whatever the score would have found it to be, but we just, it would have just given you such a shot at life and it would have given the crowd a shot at life that maybe it could have been a different game, but that's why they pay their goalie, the biggest contract after his first one in the league, right. He's one of the highest paid goalies ever after, after your first contract.

And he's proven to be every worth every penny of it. So it's tough to go back and say, I mean, obviously we talked about that. I'm sure it's like, it's rolling through your head and roll through our heads. The guys that missed those chances were thinking, Jesus, we get just one of those. It was a different game, but that's why they got their goal in and that, right?

So they look at it the other way. It's just, it's tough to go back on and reflect about each little chance you had. And I know we're all going to do it. You guys will do it. The players will do it. Roddy will do it, but it's just, in my opinion that we, you know, you let, you can't let teams back in series the way we did even against Boston. And it's not anything we were really doing there just the way it went, but, you know, the teams that are going to win the whole thing, find a way to step on the throat there and put it away. And we just unfortunately weren't able to do that.

Tony D'Angelo is joining us here. All right. So you mentioned contract.

I can't, I'm not going to get into numbers with you and you're not going to get into numbers with me and all of that and years and whatnot. But I, I know you said that you want to be here. You mentioned loyalty. I know Rod said, man, we want to have you back. What did you really like about your first year?

And I'm going to say first, cause I hope there's more first year with the Hurricanes. Yeah. I mean, there was nothing, nothing like I came in and kind of, uh, I was telling Donnie Waddell a couple of days ago, my, in my, uh, exit meeting with him, I said, I don't know if he's going to have to retire after training camp. I was so bad. I said I had been off, you know, I had been off for a year and I was like, Jesus, could I, could I even play this game anymore? And, uh, I didn't like my training camp and I was kind of like thinking to myself, I was like, what the heck is going on?

I didn't, like, I was just a little out of sync with the speed, you know, I hadn't, I hadn't played it so long, but then once I got back going, I felt, uh, as the season started almost from game one, really, I just felt as if I was ready to go again and just kept getting better and better. We've got a great coaching staff. At least was great with the D we have, uh, you know, I think Roddy's just his, he speaks for himself.

Everybody knows what kind of coach he is. And, and just the, um, the motivation that we were given every night by him and, and all the other players, it's, we, we go hard every night. We go hard every practice, you know, every, it doesn't matter what game it is.

You can be on Seattle and a back to back to back. It doesn't matter where we're at, what we're going to do. We're going to, we're going to find a way to go hard and give it our best, which I really appreciate as a group, because I think it's hard to do. You don't find that much in teams.

Everybody pushes each other to go, you know, to go the extra mile to try to win games. That's why we had such a good regular season, but, uh, the way we play, we have a really good team and you're surrounded by good players, every shift, which is, which is fun too, right? You know, you're playing with good players. You're playing with good guys in the power play.

You got a great deep partner in Slava and it was just a lot of fun. We had a, you know, we had a really good team. We had really a group of guys and that's probably even the more important part. I think why we had such a successful season, we had tremendous group of guys off the, off the ice.

And obviously people don't see that as much because you guys don't see our interactions in the locker room and all that kind of stuff. We just had a really, really, really good group, you know, probably the best group I've ever been around, which is nothing against other groups. Been around a lot of great groups of guys, but this group just seemed to be a lot of different personalities, but a lot of different personalities is that, uh, kind of brought the best out of each other. So we had a lot of fun and, um, we got a real, like I said, real good team, real good players. So when you have that and you have that off ice, you know, chemistry too, it just makes it a lot easier for you.

It's a lot more fun. You know, a couple of things about that. We used to be able to come in a locker room and see guys interact, but obviously that's, uh, with COVID, although maybe that will be, that'll disappear next year.

I don't know. Uh, you guys might, might, might like us not coming into the locker room, which is also fine. Um, but I did see, did notice, and I am, I pay attention to things like this. When the series was over with the Rangers, every single guy that you played with certainly for more than a year or two, every single guy that it looked to me to be a genuine warm embrace, uh, what was it like to see your old teammates do that? Yeah. You know, we, uh, people like to, um, kind of tell a different story than in the real story that it was there, but, uh, I was, I was really good friends with a lot of those guys, but to be honest, they probably wanted to kill me through games one and seven, because they, the way I was acting out there was if I never met anybody before, but that's just because we want to win, right. They were acting the same way, but, uh, after a seven game series, I just, uh, you know, like Ryan Stone, for example, one of my best friends would be, you know, it'd be a lifelong friends, one of the best guys I've ever played with, best guys I've ever met. And he just, uh, you know, I just told him, I said, after, after the series and it's really over, I mean, I was disappointed as we are, we're not holding it against them. Like you're not, you're not mad at those guys anymore. They did what they had to do.

Right. Like, just like we would have done what we had to do if we won. And I just, you know, we're giving each other a hug and I told him, I said, do you scroll the whole way at this point, man? Like, well, obviously we wanted to beat you, but you know, I'm rooting for those guys now and on a personal level, you know, I won't say the same thing that I'm not going to tell you. I'm going to root for the organization in a hole, but I'm telling you that I'm going to root for, I'm going to root for the players individually because those guys are just good people. We had really good relationships.

I was there for a pretty long time, you know, three and a half years and made a lot of good relationships there. So just a hard fought series. Now after the series is done chirping each other, you're slashing your friends and, and you don't even think about it during the game, but after the series is over, you know, you just, you sit back and, and, you know, you text, text a couple of guys about it and just give it a little hug after the game, wish it the best. So it was, it was, I'm sure listening, if we would have won, they would have done the same thing. And I just said it, the series is over now and I wish them guys nothing but the best.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to hate on them for winning. All right. First of all, before, before I ask you one more question, if you have time during the summer, I want you to be one of our baseball analysts, because I like talking baseball with you.

You and I have had casual conversations about it. We don't have to talk about the Phillies if you don't want to. What's your summer going to be like? Yeah, I'll take a couple weeks off here. We, you know, these last month was tough on the body for everybody, 20, 28 days, 14 games, right. Yeah.

Mentally and physically, right. But, you know, I was telling a couple of guys and then people, my family, I said, the crazy part is, you know, as much as we're in the hockey, I think about hockey all year, when you get into the playoffs, this is my first playoff experience. I said, you like, it's every day, 28 days straight and then the days off, all you're thinking about is, you know, you have thoughts running through your head from the next game to thrust, you know, future thoughts. You're thinking about winning the Stanley cup. Every, every game, you know, Mike Smith actually had a real good, a real good saying he was talking about on ESPN.

He said, every game you win, you think you're going to win the Stanley cup. And every game you lose in the playoffs, you think that it's coming to an end the next day. And that's just like the mental way of it as the way it goes.

You know what I mean? Like you're so into it and you want to win so bad that every day is like a roller coaster. So mentally it was tough. And, but it was worth every second of it. It's as fun as it gets.

And physically it was tough. You know, it's a lot of games to play in 28 days, 14 hard fought playoff teams, two seven game series. I'll take a couple of weeks off here.

Just try to rest the body up and I'll get right back to it. Honestly, I think that, you know, I was dealing with a hamstring injury a little bit the last couple of summers when I played Carolina at the bubble, I had tore my hamstring. So I was right before the series started and I played with it. So I really wasn't able to train the proper way that summer leading into last season.

Then obviously didn't play last season. So this will be a good summer for me to kind of take a couple months here and get the body right and start working on some explosiveness and other things. I think I need to get back in my game.

So I'll be looking forward to that. And then obviously once, you know, hopefully things go the right way and I re-sign and I'll try to get back to Carolina pretty early and get ready for, get ready for another run because, you know, like I said, hope they're back. And I think you got to, we had a lot of talent in that locker room and I know it's pretty quick. So obviously it's still in my brain right now, but I don't think it's going to leave anytime soon.

I think there's a bit of an organization with all the talent we have. Well, Tony, I appreciate your time. I love talking to you.

I really do. And hopefully we'll stay in touch this summer. Be well, best to you. And we'll talk to you soon.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it. Have a good summer. You got it. Tony D'Angelo, Carolina hurricanes number 77. We hope that we can say that again in a couple of months. This is the Adam Gold show.