Young Carolina Hurricanes have impressed this season

This is the Adam Gold Show. Mike Maniscalco is the voice of your Carolina Hurricanes. You can hear the games if you're listening here in Raleigh on 99.9, the fan.

Stormwatch starts those things and we get to start a Stormwatch on Friday at 6 30 p.m. Eastern time. I could not be more excited. Welcome back to East Coaster. Oh, I am right on that same boat with you or playing whatever got us back to the East Coast, Adam. So happy to be here, happy to be on the Atlantic Coast. And as much as I love the West Coast, good to be here and good to try to get into a bit of a rhythm again.

Hey, one time we'll have a conversation about what the best time zone is, but let's not do that now. Coming up tonight at Backyard Bistro in Raleigh in the shadows of PNC Arena, the return of Kane's Corner on the road. It's not really on the road.

It's at Backyard Bistro. You picked a very good first guest in Sebastiano. Yeah, nothing wrong with getting a guy who scored in every game on the road trip, at least recording a point in every game on the road trip. And I can't wait to talk to him. And it's funny, Adam, because you and I both remember when he came here as a draft pick, that second rounder from one of the best drafts in NHL history from 2015.

And now it's seven-year veteran of the NHL Sebastian Ajo. So to find out how he's grown, how much he's changed. And the funny thing is not much, but I think you're going to see a lot more of his personality because he's far more comfortable with the English language than he's ever been. So I can't wait to talk to Sebastian. It's been a while since we've had this show and I can't wait for the fans to be able to take part because you can come.

If you can't listen, I'm 99. I'm a fan. That's right.

You can come to Backyard Bistro. 7 o'clock this evening is when it starts. So when was the last one you did? Do you remember it? And do you remember the guest? Oh, no, I do not.

I know that I've hosted every single one of these except for one. So I've got to go back. It's got to be 2019. Yeah. And it's got to be, I'm going to go February of 2019.

That's as close as I can get. And for the last guest, you're going to have to, you're going to have to bring that one up. I don't know. Sometimes you ask and you know the answer to the question. I'm not a lawyer, but I did not know the answer to this question.

Mike Mattascatt. I have people. We can find the answer just so you know. All right.

Well, if somebody is nearby and they know the answer, that's fine. All right. Let's talk a little bit about what you have seen from Ajo. We know how it ended last year. And I think Sebastian probably wore that as much or more because I talked to him right after the game and you could tell his level of disappointment because he felt like he could have, should have done more. So what have you seen from him and how do you think he's responded? I've seen a player who understands that he is the, as much as there are other guys and it is not by committee with the Carolina hurricanes, but there are other guys who can fill the role of point producer. He's the guy who feels he has to be the man for the team when it comes to driving the offense. You take a look at his numbers, his last four years, they're, they're going to speak to that's what he does.

But I'm with you. I think that he's gotten into the playoffs and he's seen players like Mika Zabana Jad or Patrice Bergeron or Steven Stamkos carry their team to the next level offensively because playoff hockey is hard. And he has taken notice of this. And again, he is the most competitive person I have been around.

Doesn't matter what it is. He wants to win in everything at him. So for me, I think that he has taken stock in that and he takes it personally, not to do the Michael Jordan thing from the last dance, but he takes it personally when the Kings get eliminated from the playoffs, because he always feels he could have done a little bit more as far as production. So what I've seen this year, he's a guy who's on a mission and it's not just the stat sheet. It's wind and how you win games and how you play every single shift to be talked about in the level of those best players in the league. That's what is motivating him. And I think we saw it on the road trip.

Like when this team needed offense, you saw him truly find a way to get to a level that would bring his teammates with him. You saw it in, in San Jose, where he scores the game winning goal with what about a minute or two minutes left. Yeah. 158. Yeah.

Somewhere around there. And you saw what he is, is able to do carrying this team. He wants to win more than anything. And in the playoffs, like I said, going through this process, he knows that offensively your superstars have to show up and he doesn't like that term, but he's a superstar and he has to be the guy who will carry the hurricanes once we get to that postseason. Mike Maniscalco, Voice of the Carolina Hurricanes, joining us. We get a few days off, which we're kind of used to at this point because the hurricanes aren't allowed to play back to back. Although we get a Friday and Saturday as they head up to Philadelphia to say hi to old friend, Tony D'Angelo on Saturday.

But Kane's Corner tonight, seven o'clock backyard Bistro Sebastian Ajo is the featured guest. On the other line that is expected to produce, it certainly has been the understatement of the year will be to say it's been a good start for Andre Svechnikov and Martine Neches. Obviously, those guys had disappointing ends of the season for Marty.

It was probably a disappointing entirety of the season. What do you think is different about these two? For Andre Svechnikov, I think that there's the fact that he knows that he can just show up and everything that is in his mind that he thinks he can do on the ice. He now knows he can do it, Adam. It's funny, when you talk to Rod Grindemore, and I go back to a conversation I had with him about halfway through Andre's rookie year, and he goes, he doesn't realize that he can do everything he wants to do on the ice. And when he figures it out, it's going to be something to watch.

Well, he's figured it out. And he's figured it out with a shot, which is above average, he trusts it. Now, he can power it through goaltenders. I asked him about his hat trick in Edmonton, were you because I know this is going to sound odd for some people tuning in right now. But there's a difference between shooting to score a goal, and I just trying to hammer the puck on net, you know, because if you're trying to score, you're trying to pick a corner, you're trying to go someplace you see on the goalie. And he goes, well, I was just trying to hammer it on the first one, to be honest with you. And now he can hammer that puck through net minders, and he knows he can do it.

So that becomes more dangerous. So now if he can add the accuracy, which he has with powering it, he is shot is, is on the cusp of being elite, you know, Ovechkin ask if I could go, he's added that to the repertoire. And he's a true power forward. He likes being physical, he likes going in the corner, getting hit, getting the puck and coming out with it for nature. I think for nature, it was the drama last year, and players will never say it. The drama last year of trying to get a new contract and playing with that pressure.

Well, he knows what his contract is now. And he's playing on a line with a player who complements him on the opposite side. And Andre Sveshnikov, and it's very cool. Kenyemi has been very good in the face off circle, Adam, you know, they that that line starts from the majority of their shifts with a puck.

And that makes a big difference. And you get that group going and wheeling with the puck, they're going to put pressure on the other team and, and on the power play, you know, these two guys, they got called up from, you know, I won't say the second unit. But that line was the other power play unit, right?

And Sveshnikov and Neches go get moved up to play with Ajo. And we saw the power play, which I'm sure you might have a question or two about little feast or famine. But when it's when it's feasting, those guys have been a major part of it. All right, there's there's no question there.

The fall. Look, I think sometimes we get this team gets a little pass happy, as opposed to recognizing that you have an extra guy. So putting the puck on net and then going and attacking the net is probably a good thing.

It's basic, but it's a good thing. But they get a little, you know, let's let's make it look real good. Tick tack toe type of stuff.

And sometimes that stuff doesn't work. Mike Maniscalco, host of Kane's Corner Tonight Backyard Bistro, seven o'clock, Sebastian Ajo, the fun Finn, I just made that up. Don't use that.

It wasn't that good. Have a good time tonight. I will see you at the arena for the Islanders game on Friday. Adam, I will let you own the fun Finn moniker. That'll stay with you.

And I will see you on Friday as well. Yeah, fun. That's terrible. That's what happens when you you're not prepared to bestow a nickname on somebody. All right. We have a rewind and then right after that, are you a Bo Jackson fan, Dennis Cox? I mean, he was a little ahead of my time. Yeah, a little before. That's before me.

So you just called me old again. You do that a lot. It's fair.

You just because it's not. Bo Jackson is my all time favorite athlete. Bo was amazing in a lot of ways. A phenomenal baseball player would just scratch the surface. Probably a better football player than a baseball player. But he chose baseball. When guys can play both, they almost never choose baseball because baseball is really hard, really hard. No offense to football.

I'm not saying football is easy, but baseball is super hard. And there's a new book out about Bo Jackson written by Jeff Perlman. And we'll talk to Jeff. Jeff Perlman is the author of, I don't even know how many books.

I have a whole shelf of them. And the latest one, I think is ultimately going to be my favorite because Bo Jackson is my favorite athlete ever. The Last Folk Hero. The life and myth of Bo Jackson, Jeff Perlman.

First of all, I saw you, your video, your walk in New York City Tuesday morning in the dark. How was the first day of massive book promotion? It's super tiring, but super rewarding. I know I'm in a charmed, not the same, it's like I'm in a very charmed position. And I've had books that have succeeded and people want to talk to you. So I can't, you know, it's great.

It's tiring though. It's, the thing is like you do start to get asked the same questions over and over again a little bit and that can be you up, you know, why do you write the book? And I totally get it, fair question. And they're all individual markets, but you know, it does beat you up a little bit, but I can't complain. I was on the Today Show.

I was on Good Morning Football, a lot of TV. I can't, there's no complaints. All right, good. I mean, as Rod Brindamore says, the head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes, the excuse jar is full. Let's talk about Bo.

So I hope to not ask you questions that you have been asked already. You interviewed 720 people. Who had the best Bo stories? Probably the high school guys who played against him. The thing about the high school guys is you have to kind of believe them or at least use your imagination because they're telling stories that have never been reported that sound just otherworldly, like there's an outfielder for Fairfield High School named Eddie Scott. And when Bo is a McAdory, he swears to God and used playing left field. Bo hit a ball that went so high into shallow left field, but by the time it touched the ground and Eddie Scott picked it up, Bo was at third base. And I thought, that's crazy. But these guys swear by these things, you know, they do. So the high school guys are good because, you know, they feel like they saw Sasquatch before anyone else did. They saw the Lock and Monster before anyone else did, you know. Were the stories more about baseball or football?

Oh, split, totally split. I mean, the stories I actually like the most are probably about baseball because I really enjoyed his metamorphosis. I thought like in football, he could hide a little bit.

You know, you have an offensive line, you have a helmet, but in baseball, you don't. And it was just like this fascinating. He could have been Mike Trout, like it's really interesting. He could have been Mike Trout and he just didn't follow it. He didn't pursue it, but he could have been.

And those stories, that potential was amazing. You know, as a baseball fan first, I always felt a incredible pride that Jackson chose baseball because almost everybody else in that position, it's not across the board because Brian Jordan ultimately chose baseball. They all choose football. No offense to football.

It's simply an easier game to play. You deal with less failure, especially when you're as good as Bo was at football. But he was just scratching the surface as a baseball player when he had the injury in the NFL. I mean, who knows how good he could have been?

Yeah. I find his, the thing is his potential was just limitless, like absolutely limitless in a way that you can't even really fully describe. I mean, the guy, his first day when he reported to the Raiders, in one of his first days in 1987, they had him run a 40 on grass and pads and he ran it in a 4.19 in pads on grass. And Tom Flores and that coach didn't believe it. Once you guys didn't believe it. So they actually double-checked the distance and had Bo run it again. And he ran a 4-1-7. Like it's preposterous.

The whole thing is preposterous. His first major league kick kick came on September 2nd, 1986. Royals, White Sox. Bo was facing 321 game winner, Steve Carr. And he hit a grounder to second, beat it out, ran the second fastest recorded time from home to first by random right-handed hitter Major League history. And after the game confessed, he had no idea who Steve Carr was.

Like it's just crazy. Like everything about him in high school, he twice, his junior and senior year at Max Dora High, he won the Alabama State Decathlon Championship. His senior year, he did so after spraining an ankle.

Didn't run the last event to 1500 because there was so many points ahead. And the next day, pitched his only game of the year for the high school baseball team. Struck out 13 in a state playoff game to win. And the guy's still on 90 out of 91 bases in high school. He set a national single season record for home runs in a high school season with 20. And that was missing seven games so he could do track events.

Like it's insane. The whole thing's just boggart. Jeff Perlman is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. The book is called The Last Folk Hero. The life and myth of Bo Jackson.

I know this is going to sound basic, but why myth? Well, you know, the whole title of The Last Folk Hero was something Joe Paz and Anthony once wrote. How he's the last athlete really who did these Herculean crazy, crazy, crazy bonkers things, but we didn't get to see them all. And we talked about it and we, you know, kind of like Bo Jackson hitting a ball that was so high that he rounded third by the time it came out. There's no one to record it. And nowadays, even if that was the high school game, somebody would have that on video.

You know, like somebody somewhere, there's always every time a UFO is sighting 100 videos show up. So like someone had a game and back then, like a lot of the things just weren't actually captured. When he, if you ever watched the video of him throwing out Harold Reynolds against the Mariners, that ridiculous throw from left field, you've seen it, but I think you didn't notice and you will now. You don't see him release the ball.

Like the cat, they only have one camera shooting that scene. So the camera goes to Harold Reynolds and he never see Bo Jackson throw the ball. So did he throw it? I mean, I assume he did. What did it look like?

I can guess, but I don't know for sure. And there's just a million different things that either events you was in that were shot with one camera or events you think that were shot with no cameras where so much of what he did was mythological. Like, I don't know for a fact that he ran a four one seven, but people swear by it.

And there's no reason to think he didn't because he ran a four one three at Auburn. Yeah. His exploits everywhere. Just next level, the breaking the, they break a bat over his head, right?

They didn't do that. He ran on the wall. No, nobody runs on the wall. He took like three steps on the wall. The wall is my favorite, actually, in a lot of ways because it was captured on video.

If you told someone someone did that, they wouldn't believe you. And the reason I consider it the greatest Bo Jackson highlight of all time and there's so many shoes from is because like, all right, the great throw versus Howard Reynolds every year you get some great throws. We say that's the best story I've ever seen when it runs over Bosworth or every year we get a Derek Henry or somebody old, you know, destroying someone on a football field. Never before.

Never seen literally never before. Never since has there been a major league player or minor league player recorded climbing up a wall and he was so high up the wall. I never knew the guys with the, with the Orioles because they were playing the Orioles and all of the Memorial stadium guys in a bullpen, the Orioles bullpen behind the wall.

We coil. They saw Bo Jackson might be coming over the wall. Well, I he's, he's capable of everything.

Jeff Perlman is joining us here. What, why do you think he shied away so much from any attention? I know he had a speech impediment that he had to overcome, which he did, but why do you think he stayed so far out of the media spotlight after it was over? Did it have anything to do with the injury that claimed his career? I think he was always like that. He was not good with the media. The media did not really enjoy talking to him vice versa. He was standoffish.

She was Kurt. He didn't really see what the big deal was. And I don't think he's a guy, like I think he wants people to know how great he is, but I don't think he wants to be the guy telling you how great he is.

Does that make sense? Like, you know, he's not a bragger. It's not his nature. And I mean, he does come from very, very, very, very, very, very humble upbringing.

One of 10 kids living in the three bedroom house, Bessemer, Alabama, no running water and outhouse. He had to walk to to go to the bathroom, uh, tar paper roofs, a mom who worked three jobs, two as a maid. Uh, he would sleep on the floor and oftentimes have burn marks in the morning from rubbing against the heater on the floor. He was held back a grade. He stuttered. He was made fun of.

He was a bully on and on and on. And I think like, it's kind of weird. I think we as sports fans and we in the sports media too, we give a guy a snazzy uniform. We give him a lot of money and we expect everything to be great. Meanwhile, he's scarred by a really difficult challenge. I can't imagine Bo Jackson just became whatever a start Auburn and all of a sudden he's like, all right, I'm great. Don't worry about me. Everything's normal again.

Like you cannot be scarred by that kind of upbringing. Before I let you go, Jeff Prohman, and I know the book will do well because they all do well. And I've read so many, by the way, the, uh, yesterday was the anniversary of game six of the world series in 1986.

The bad guys won, uh, another one of yours. I saw you tweet the other day, the other day, it's probably, uh, three weeks ago now, uh, at Jeff Prohman that you didn't want anybody to buy gunslinger because of, because of the things that Brett Favre has been accused of and probably did do, uh, had when you do a book like this, uh, whether it's Bo Jackson or anybody, I, my guess is that it becomes emotional and personal and that there is some level of, I don't know, shame and not, not that you're, you're ashamed of it, but, um, what is that like? And why did, why did you go there to the point where you would tell people not to buy your book? Yeah, I would not say shame at all to be honest with you. I understand where you're getting at.

I'm not insulted. I, um, I think it's more like you invest all this time in a subject and that book was not a Brett Favre blood test. Right.

There was a lot of stuff about fire. You know, I think it was a fair book to him, but I think I was just like, can you, thinking about Favre now, I think we all should have been done with him when he sent Jen Serger the pictures, you know, it's almost gross on all of our behalf that we were like, he's the gunslinger. You know, Oh, look at him. He's back with the Jeff.

This is great. He's going back to the Vikings. Look at this guy. He's still a kid. And it's like, wait a second. Like this guy sexually freaking harassed the sideline reporter and ruined her life.

And we're just like cheering him on and I'm as guilty as anyone, you know, the gunslinger. So when he did this, I was so blown away by the idea that you would have money that you are from Mississippi. It is the poorest state in America.

And it's not even that close. People need welfare money desperately, desperately. You're also a guy who has played in a very diverse world for 20 years of your life. So you know what it's like to grow up African-American poor in need of help in America. You've heard the stories from your teammates and for you to willingly, willfully funnel money that was supposed to go to welfare recipients, the poorest, most meatiest people in your state. Now, where does it go to a freaking volleyball arena at your alma mater?

Because your daughter's a player there. It is so specifically disgusting that my reaction was just don't even bother. Don't buy my book. Don't even think about that far. He does not deserve to be in your head.

And that's just how I felt. Jeff Perlman, the last folk hero, the life and myth of Bo Jackson. Gosh, books going to do well because all of Jeff's books do well.

And I appreciate his time for, you know, he's been on a he's on a book tour now and he's everywhere. This is the Adam Gold Show. Did you know 77% of women who wear bladder weakness products experience intimate skin irritation? As if having incontinence wasn't stressful enough. But 10 intimate pads have been gynecologist tested and do not cause skin irritation. Gentle on my intimate skin. I need to try 10 intimate pads. Visit 10 a sample dot com for your free sample kind of skin protects like 10 a