The Carolina Hurricanes home opener was last night and, so far, they’re undefeated!

Persistence, my name is Marty Natures. Hit me a certain way last night. Fantastic. I laughed. Shouts to Mike Maniscalco for that.

Oh man. Mike and I sit at the arena and we're separated by a big thick pane of glass. And I heard that and I just, I burst, I burst laughter out over the people who are sitting, whatever the section is below us. I don't know if they got showered with my laughter, but I burst laughter at that. And I was like, Cincy, that was just, it struck me as funny. And I don't know if Mike was, like, if he thought I was being sarcastic or not.

I'm not sure he appreciated Mike's laughter. I'm not sure he appreciated my love of that, but it was authentic. It was very authentic. And I'll just say that I thought Natures was really, really good last night. And part of it was that he was incredibly persistent last night. And that was just, I just loved it. So shouts to Mike for that.

Good start to the hurricane season. We'll obviously discuss it at least a little bit. Maybe it comes up in the listener poll.

There is a listener poll out there for you. I tell you right now, here are your choices. The undefeated Carolina Hurricanes find a lie. Yeah.

The sorriest NFL franchise. I can think of one. I can think of more than one.

But I think there's only one that really qualifies for this. The discussion that happened at ACC basketball tip off yesterday about, should we expand the NCAA tournament? Should is a loaded part of that question. Will is probably a better question. Will they? Not should they.

We all know, no, they shouldn't. Because for those people who follow college basketball closely enough, they will all tell you the same thing. Not from the mouths of coaches that view NCAA tournament bids as job security.

But as people who watch the game, we understand this. There are exactly zero worthy teams left out. No teams that make the that do not make the NCAA tournament. Zero of those teams. And that if we did a Venn diagram, worthy teams of the NCAA tournament, unworthy teams of the NCAA tournament, and then the circle of who's in the NCAA tournament.

Some of the teams who are in the unworthy get lumped in because 68 is a lot. So forget about should. Will they? Yeah, they're gonna.

Of course they're going to. Money. So we'll talk about that.

And another option for you. The Victory Bell. Oh, the Battle of the Victory Bell. Will they paint it light blue again? Or will it be royal blue? That's what I assume. Duke blue is royal blue.

Carolina blue or Duke blue. So those are your options in the listener poll. Other than that, nothing earth shattering other than we have an NFL owner who is apparently compiling a dossier on other NFL owners and the commissioner. Yeah, this is, first of all, predictable and hysterical at the same time. This feels like a Housewives of fill in the blank episode is so good. It is so good. The funny thing is that what was reported today in ESPN and we are going to discuss it is while I have not been reporting this, I have simply been saying.

Daniel Snyder must know something. So let's get to other things and then we'll talk about the commandos. I want to appreciate hurricanes fans on Twitter who follow me on Twitter at Eagle fan who listen to the morning after podcast, the 25th anniversary podcast, because I received more than just a few mentions yesterday. I hope you're going to say you can't go 82 and oh, without first going one and oh, yes. So, I mean, that's just a true statement. Hurricanes are one and oh, 82 and oh, still alive. That's all I'm saying. Slow start last night for your heroes. I thought Columbus was the better side in the first 20 minutes. They were better.

They were more dangerous. Not that Carolina didn't have some chances, but Columbus was better. Patrick Lion, a scores 11 seconds into the second really good play by Zach. We're in ski at the just inside the blue line to get the puck loose from Jesper Fost.

I guess we're in ski did deflect it. So he gets an assist. Lion, he picks it up and drifts across to the just to the right side and beats Freddie Anderson blocker side for one nothing.

Five minutes and one second later, Seth Jarvis. They didn't steal the puck. It was given to him by Jack Roslovic of the Blue Jackets, kind of a ridiculous behind the back blind pass to Seth Jarvis, who brought it out from behind the goal line and backhand flip for one one. And that was basically it for Columbus. They did have a couple of chances. In fact, they scored on a power play, but the power play goal was called off. First of all, Brett Pesci didn't really commit a penalty. Still went to the penalty box, but the the play was offside. And they they counted the goal.

And then Rod went, what? They challenged it. Quick challenge.

No problem. No goal. Goal off the board. And then there was a really, really good chance with about a minute. Forty five left in the period, maybe a shade more. And Columbus, Justin, Justin Danforth, a young forward, had a two on lead on his racket, and it didn't work out.

And they paid the price. All risky with it is low drive rebounds out in front of Anderson, waiting on a piece of that one. Now, Neches for Carolina turning the puck the other way. Neches, Neches on the backhand.

He'll pull off. With 90 seconds left in the period, the canes take a two on lead. Brady Shay. Yeah, Justin Danforth on the backhand side had the entire net.

Freddy Anderson was laying on his belly. And Danforth only had to elevate it over the goalie. And it's a goal. And he kind of poked it right at Freddy, who knocked it loose.

And then it went the other way. And then Brady Shay ends up with the goal. Good goal.

Good shot. Deflected on the way in by, I think, by Borinski. Anyway, so Carolina was a little fortunate there because they probably should have been trailing 2-1. Instead, they were leading 2-1, and Columbus was broken at that point. Third period was utterly dominant. Carolina was all over them. And that was that.

Rod Brindemore, after the game, opening his press conference. Yeah, it wasn't a great start, for sure. Like, Columbus had a better of the play early.

Kind of expected that, to be quite honest. And we hadn't played in a long time. Some guys hadn't played in a real long time. So we definitely were a little behind the eight ball on the pace of the game. But, you know, Freddy played really, really well tonight. It was, you know, I had made some real big saves at key times. And, you know, and then the game, I thought a third period started looking a little more like how we want to do it. And I thought we kind of, you know, were able to at least, I don't want to say take over the game, but certainly, you know, put it home. No, you took over the game.

Yeah. It took over. Like, Columbus had a couple of chances here and there. But they went about 10 minutes without a shot on goal.

Columbus. Carolina was absolutely dominant in the third period. And I think you saw, even though Columbus is pretty talented, you saw the gap between the two teams in terms of depth. A couple of things that I thought were really important last night. Martin Neches played a great game. In the arena, he was the first star because he had three points. He had the goal. He had two assists. Freddie Anderson was the best player.

No question about it. Freddie, that game could have been 3-0 Columbus. And it was 1-0 Columbus in the first, say, 34 minutes.

Not 24 minutes, not 34. First 24 minutes could have been 3-0 Columbus. It was 1-0. And then he made some big saves even at 1-1. So to me, Freddie Anderson was the best player. Neches was great.

I loved Jalen Chatfield last night. This, I mean, defenseman developed differently than other positions. So sometimes when a guy isn't necessarily a prospect but has some tools, maybe he becomes something. I don't know if that's happening with Chatfield, but what was evident last night was he's fast.

Yes. And some of their other defenseman options on the third pair are not fast. Jalen Chatfield is. I like him. He got a little ornery last night.

Loved what I saw. I thought that Brady Shea and Brett Pesce were amazing last night. First of all, so were Slavin' and Burns, but it just became more of a Shea and Pesce show. By the way, two guys with SH sounds in their name without SH. Both of them.

I found that, I don't know why I think about these things, but I do. But they were a combined plus seven. Brett Pesce was a plus four.

Awesome. Already leading the NHL. And I thought the fourth line was great. I thought Derek Stepan, and I admit that I am the driver on the Derek Stepan bandwagon. But he was great last night and so was Jordan Martinuk. They were a handful for Columbus to deal with and help to create the Neches goal.

But they had other opportunities. They each led the team with three individual, three grade A scoring chances. Not surprised that they didn't score because Derek Stepan and Jordan Martinuk.

But Stepan had the highest expected goals for anybody on the team last night. It was pretty good. Carolina was certainly the second half of the game. Carolina was the dominant side. Alright, now to the... Carolina's off today. They play tomorrow in San Jose.

Only a 10-30 start. I'm already tired. Hey, go check out the Canes Corner podcast. Morning after edition dropped this morning.

Actually dropped last night at about 1145. And it's got an interview with Tom Dundon in it. So I talked with the owner, asked him about the future. If he has thought about two years down the road, the future of the Hurricanes roster. And he said, yup. Interesting.

Oh, no, no. That's probably of all the stuff we talked about. The way Tom views the roster should be the most encouraging to Hurricanes fans. And there's a lot of other good things in there, but I thought that that was a good part of the conversation. Alright, so great story on ESPN about Dan Snyder. And when I say great, I mean this is an incredible eye-opening, cringe-worthy story. And I think I'm like 2,000 words into the story.

This is a long piece. Because there's a lot of crap when it comes to Daniel Snyder. But a great work done by Seth Wickersham, Don Van Natta, and Tisha Thompson. There was a time where ESPN didn't do takedown stories well, especially takedown of NFL figures. But this is exceptionally well done.

So the thrust of it is this. Daniel Snyder has dirt on other NFL owners and Roger Goodell, the commissioner. And that's why Daniel Snyder appears to be untouchable in the eyes of, well, in terms of getting rid of him as an owner.

You mean there's shade in the NFL? Interesting point, right? First of all, and this is not to disparage the group of owners, right? Because I'm sure that there are some owners in the NFL that aren't dirtbags when it comes to how they made their money and who they hurt along the way without giving a damn. You know, there's plenty of Jimmy Haslems in the league who essentially swindled customers.

There's plenty of Stan Kronkies of the world that screwed a community to move to a richer environment even though the community was willing to do everything they needed to do what he needed them to do. And the commissioner was willing to lie for him. I will point out that in the most recent investigation, and I say most recent because there have been more than one into the conduct of Daniel Snyder and the Washington Commandos. In the most recent investigation, which dealt with the cheerleaders and the workplace environment, Roger Goodell allowed the report to not be written. There is no other situation on this earth where you would have a full-scale investigation and not have a written report of it unless Roger Goodell was like, yeah, we're just gonna bury it. Right?

Look, Roger Goodell burned the tapes when the Patriots got involved in Spy Game. He burned them. Why? Yeah. Good question. Okay.

He burned them. Let's just get rid of evidence. We don't care. I mean, it's not a criminal investigation. It's a league investigation. You can do what you want, and the commissioner can apparently do what he wants. But they are clearly protecting Daniel Snyder. But the story goes to great lengths to show that Daniel's like, Daniel, Snyder's walking around muttering to himself, they can't touch me in a fellow's mafia, which frankly, I don't necessarily think he's wrong. No. But, and I've been saying for a long time, there's a reason why they don't get rid of him because they could. Yeah, definitely. I'm not going down without taking you with me.

And that's what he said. There would be collateral damage. And his collateral damage, according to sources, Jerry Jones, Roger Goodell, and I'm not even, I'm not saying that I don't believe that because I believe it. Not that I believe those two men are bad news. I'm not, I have no idea, but I believe that Daniel Snyder has that information because he is that guy. Anyway, here's Seth Wickersham who joined Mike Greenberg on Get Up to discuss, I mean, Snyder's not going down without a fight, right? This is out there now. This has been reported, and as you say, other owners and other executives have been aware of the existence of at least him saying these things before.

So what should we expect to happen now, Seth? Well, there's league meetings in New York, in downtown New York next Tuesday, and we'll see. One of the most interesting things is that it takes three quarters of owners to vote out an owner. The owners don't think that, especially the owners who are mad at Dan even over this, I don't know if they think they can get to 24, but they've considered creative ways, maybe, of trying to force the team into the hands permanently of his wife, Tanya. And one of them is kind of an interesting technical thing, but they would jam him on a debt limit waiver. When owners build stadiums, they typically take out a lot of debt. The league has strict rules over how much debt they can carry. Now, most people think that Dan Snyder cannot write a check for a new stadium in the DC area and would need those debt limit waivers, including the loans that the league often offers. And owners have talked about not permitting him those waivers as a way, as a backdoor way to try to transfer permanent ownership to Tanya. Remember, and owners and executives are really clear about this, when Donald Sterling had to let go of the Clippers years ago, it wasn't because fellow owners voted him out. It was because his wife removed him from the family trust. And so I think that they're looking at Tanya Snyder as maybe someone that they could transfer ownership permanently to, who they respect and enjoy working with. His wife? Sounds like mom mentality to me.

If we can't get you, we'll get your family. How does that get rid of Dan Snyder as an owner? This is the dumbest thing ever. Vote him out. Make him sell the team. Here's the thing. It'll be worth more money to the National Football League if somebody not named Daniel Snyder or Tanya Snyder were the owners of the Washington Commandos. I'll even stop calling them Commandos.

Actually, I won't because it's a stupid name. But they're worth $5.8 billion now. It's the fifth most valuable franchise in the National Football League. It should be second. It should be behind Dallas. Dallas is one.

Number two is New England. There's zero reason, other than recent success, why New England is worth more than Washington. $5.6 billion. Did I say million? I meant billion. I could have said anything.

I could have said gazillion, for all I know. There's no reason why Washington is worth less than New England. I could see Chicago.

Interestingly enough, and I wanted to talk about this anyway. But that's tonight's matchup in Thursday Night Football. You've got Washington at Chicago. And all I could think of was 35 years ago, this was an awesome game. Absolutely. I mean, this game could be a Super Bowl.

Well, it couldn't be because they're both in the NSA. But an awesome game 35 years ago. And today, two hysterically bad franchises. No one cares. Right.

Well, no. See, that's the weird part is that those two fan bases care. Bears fans and Commandos fans, they care.

Although that's waning in Washington now. See, your fans will tell you when it's time for you to go as an owner. They are telling Dan Snyder, it's time for you to go. But Dan Snyder doesn't give a damn. He doesn't care at all. It's his team.

It's his toy. He was also at one point like the fresh face of NFL owners. Paul Tagliabue once called him the perfect owner. Yikes.

How how wrong did you get that? I mean, he is the worst. He's the worst owner. He's the worst human in among all. And that's a tough thing to do in the NFL is to be the worst human being owner.

That's saying something that is an accomplishment. Congratulations to you, Daniel Snyder. It's he's just it's they got to get it. They have to get rid of him. And if you can't get twenty four owners to say, yeah, let's vote the dude out. If you can't get twenty four, then Daniel Snyder does have dirt on you and he does have dirt on Roger Goodell.

That's the only logical explanation. And more people need to be out. Well, yes, but it's not going to happen now. It's not going to happen. They're not going to vote.

Daniel Snyder out. All right. Well, I am serious, though. I I want to have a conversation of because this is not just NFL franchises. Although if you looked at the most valuable NFL franchises, you know what strikes me about that?

Most of them are bad teams. Wow. Yeah. Dallas is one Dallas. Not bad. Dallas. Very good. Dallas, potentially excellent.

A potential Super Bowl champion this year. No, no joke. Number two is New England. Now we're going to cut them some slack. They were I don't think they're very good at all. And they haven't really been good for a few years.

But OK, we get it. Number three, I believe, was Chicago. Or maybe the Giants. Number four was Chicago and the Jets are, I think, five.

No, Washington was five. The Jets are like six. I mean, there's a lot of bad football teams who are incredibly valuable, which means that we have to figure out a way to incentivize being good. Right. Because if the valuable teams can't all suck. Yep. Cat, Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots, Los Angeles Rams.

Very good. But the only read the Rams as a franchise, not all that. They're just in L.A. and SoFi Stadium, which is basically there. So the Giants and the Giants and then the Bears and the Bears and the Commandos and Jets are right there. Yeah. Forty Niners. Forty Niners are good.

Yeah. Forty Niners are good. Now the Raiders. Raiders are bad. Then the Eagles. Eagles are good. Eagles are good. All right.

Real, real quick. Braves and Padres each evened up their series yesterday. Atlanta shut out Philly three nil. Padres evened up things with the Dodgers. They won 5-3. They lost 5-3 in Game 1. Seattle is in Houston this afternoon. Yankees will host Cleveland tonight. Astros lead their series 1-0. Yankees lead theirs 1-0. So there.