Canes get a win at home!

I'm frankly embarrassed about that.

It's a real concern. $750 is a lot for trees. That did not happen. Okay, good. That was from last year's Christmas, she only bought one, just got one tree.

Good. I think the real takeaway there was feeling bad for the trees. That was the real point of that, was just feeling bad for the trees that don't get bought. It's not like the, you know, pound puppies. I was gonna say, animal shelter is really the only place I've said that a million times. My gosh, I feel terrible for them. I don't think this is related, but the two minute long commercials for like the dogs who have been abused.

Yes. I can't. With Sarah McLachlan singing that song. Right in the feels. I don't even care what I'm changing the channel to. I know. QVC, give me that. Turn it off.

Give me a Hallmark movie. Yeah, one of those Flex Seal commercials I'd rather watch. I just can't do it. Yep. So, bowl season's here. Yeah. Change the mood right away.

Just change the mood. Yes, we have bowl, there's a football bowl game on right now. It's the Bahamas Bowl. UAB, running it over Miami of Ohio. See, I don't feel like this is gonna distract you as much as like the World Cup did.

No, no. In general, bowls don't, I have a complicated position on bowl games. I don't care if we have 80 of them. There are people who get mad because we have now, we have 41 bowl games. There are plenty of people who, wow, it's too many bowl games. Everybody gets to go to a bowl. Good. That's my position.

Good. We need more bowl games. If there is a city out there that wants to host a bowl game, they can, and they satisfy what they need, we can put it on TV and ESPN or Fox or whoever wants to air a bowl game can put a bowl game on TV and we can put a betting line on it and people will wager and everybody will get satisfied and the athletes get a chance to go to a bowl game because playing is fun. That's why they do it for the most part. Then I am 100% for it.

Don't ask me to watch it because I generally don't care. But my general position on these things is what's best for the players. If they want to play in a bowl game, they should be allowed to play in a bowl game. I don't care if teams are two and ten. I really don't.

I actually think we should have two and ten teams in bowl games. Here's why. I spent way too much time in the car because I drive to and from the Arctic Circle every day. Did you see the weather for next week? No.

The end of next week? Uh oh. Get your thermals ready.

Oh boy. The overnight temperatures like in the low teens. Hey, that will be perfect for Christmas. It will actually feel like it sort of. I don't want it to be 80.

The greatest Christmas day ever, honestly, my greatest Christmas day ever was me, my father-in-law and my older son playing golf in shorts at a Raleigh Country Club that the guy who owns it just basically said, yeah, go play. Have at it. Right.

Okay. It was 80 degrees. I mean, I could see that. It was almost there. I don't think it was quite got to 80. It was like mid 70s on Christmas Day.

Yes. Well. That's the Christmas day I want. I can understand me for someone who does all indoor things on Christmas. I'm like, let it snow. It's fine. I'd be OK with that.

I don't need extreme cold. Yeah, I don't. I don't.

What were we talking about? Oh, so here's the real reason why I actually think that we should have more bowl games and two in 10 teams should go. There's an advantage that teams get for playing in bowl games, and that is X amount of extra practices. Yeah. Right.

Well, I can't. The teams that are two and 10 also get extra practices needed. Yes. And and sometimes we lose sight of what the whole thing is about. The whole thing isn't. It's not just about winning. It's about playing. It's about participating. And I like I'm not trying to make this little league sports.

I'm really not. But the overwhelming majority of the people, of the athletes who participate in college football know they are not going to play in the NFL. They know it. So why are they doing it? Because they love it. Sure.

So why should they be treated any differently than the you know, the the football factories? Yeah. And for people who love to make money, it's another opportunity to make money. People need to gamble. Yeah.

And these guys, these kids, these young men need to play. Yeah. And so why not? Sure.

Again, I am in favor. I don't care. But we don't have enough cities that want to host bowl games, right?

There's got to be. I'm sure we can make a list of cities that we don't need big stadiums. We don't mean bowl games. Don't draw fans to them anyway.

Basically, just TV shows for the most part. So have you ever been to Charleston? I have not. Charleston is a great city. Let's have a bowl game in Charleston. Let's take all the kids out for shrimp and grits. I was going to say there's good food.

Yeah. Hit up some food. Take all the kids out for shrimp and grits.

There you go. And let's play a bowl game in Charleston. We can go go to the beach. Go to go down to Wild Dunes.

Go to the beach. Sure. There's got to be there's got to be another 15 destination cities in the United States to have a bowl game. Absolutely. We don't even have to have them all in the United States. This one's in the Bahamas. And why not?

Right here. Hey, we have football games in London and Mexico. Why not? I have a question. Why did they put this game on at like eleven thirty on a good question on a Friday? What are they doing?

Are they trying to get people to not watch? Actually, judging from the parking lot here, there's a lot of people not working. Exactly. So we got a lot of that. All right.

I've already wasted half your time. Let's start this whatever this is called. Adam Goldschuh. Fun Friday. Yeah.

Look what it is. All right. The Canes won a game last night. Yeah, they did. I've been saying that a lot lately.

The Kraken was not released. Good. So here for those people who watched the game and I'm among them. I was there. I don't know how that was only three goals.

No, don't know. Philip Grubauer is really good, but that's just part of the equation as to why it was only three goals. There were some shots blocked, but also. This is Carolina right now, and it's a little bit concerning, but we'll get to that in a little bit.

But the Hurricanes, I mean, they absolutely destroyed the Kraken. But because only three to fluky goals had them. Hanging on in the third period, although Carolina controlled the play, it's still it's a one shot hockey game. And as Seattle proved, two innocent looking plays end up goals. And all of a sudden you go, wait a second, we could screw this up. But Carolina was dominant.

Here's Rob. You just never knew how it was going to go. You never really do. But we were sharp and all over it, which was great. Again, I thought all night and they had a couple of shifts in the third.

You know, they got that kind of lucky one. But overall, it was a solid game. Yeah, it was a solid game. Carolina outshot the Kraken thirty nine seventeen. They out chanced the Kraken thirty three to thirteen.

Wow. Just 13 scoring chances allowed. These are not even like super dangerous scoring chances because there were only six of those. And in the last three games, there have been a total of high danger chances of and this is in all situations. So it includes some power plays. There have been a total of twenty four in the last. If you're only giving up eight great scoring chances a game, you are probably only giving up one goal per game. Right.

And that's basically what. And as it turns out, over the last three games, the Hurricanes have allowed two goals. Both goals last night were flukey. One was, I think, a double deflection. I think it went up Brett Pesci's hip and then barely touched the stick of Ryan Donato. And the other goal was, frankly, one that Piotr Kuchetkov wants back.

But even that was kind of more weird than bad because it deflected off his own blocker pad and kind of then just trickled through his pads. And that was that. But you got to score more than three.

All right. There was a wild sequence in the game. And I really I appreciated Rod Brind'Amour's tact in how he handled this. So because the Hurricanes were penalized for high sticking when Seattle high stick themselves. Now, it wasn't the guy's own stick that high stick got him. It was a teammate's stick that got him. But referee's arm goes up and they didn't know what to do.

Here's Rod on the explanation. Nobody went to the penalty box. They had to go get somebody off the bench. Yes, Barry Kochenami ended up in the box. I'm not even sure he was on the ice. Yeah, no.

So I really don't. He might have been on the ice, but I thought it was the stall line that was on the ice at the time. And he doesn't play on that line. So here's Rod Brind'Amour and the explanation he got. Well, listen, the ref Garrett came over.

He's a phenomenal ref because he handled it perfectly in my opinion. I mean, he knew they messed up. So unfortunately, like I said, many, many times is why we need a review system, because I could have cost us a game that we have no business not winning. And they no one knew whether it was high sticking or not. I mean, I thought it was when it first happened, someone got high stick. If you don't call it and it is a high stick, you'd be like bad. So they call it.

And then you do quickly two seconds later, you realize that it's not our stick. It's not a penalty. Well, they've already called it.

It's not a great call. So he came over and I said, well, just review it. I know you can't because it's four minute.

For some reason, you can only review the formula one. Common sense doesn't really add up. When we can see it that quickly, there's got to be a better way to do this. And I explained it four years ago, and everyone didn't want to hear it.

So I'm not going to go in detail with it. But I think we're in an age now where we want to get it right, right? That's it. And you know, everyone's world's gonna take too long. Take your TV time out every time there's a every time there's a penalty, just take one of those nine that we sit there for three minutes and stare at the ceiling. Or we already knocked off three or four because you had three more three penalties.

But you're gonna get it right. Because if that would have scored a goal and we lose this game tonight, what are you gonna be talking about? I mean, the fans are gonna all be mad. That's the only thing they ever get upset about. And these guys are great officials. And he handled it so well.

He came over and just said, man, we think we might have messed this up. Can't review it. It's the rules.

And you can't take a penalty off the board once you've called it. This is what it is. But I think, you know, eventually it'll happen. But I'll be long gone when that happens. That's my favorite part of it.

I'll be long gone for what happened. Thanks to my man Colin for sending this along. Yeah, yes, Barry Kocaniemi was not even part of the play. He might have been on the ice, but he had nothing to do with the play. The three hurricanes that were there were, it looks like Brady Shay, Tevo Taravanen and Seth Jarvis.

And I theorize they could be Paul Stasny, but I think it's Brady Shay. And it was Matty Beneers who is pretty doggone good. If you watch the game last night, number 10, he high sticked a teammate. Right. It's pretty obvious that it was Matty Beneers stick that high sticked his own teammate. And they came over to the bench and said, yeah, you, you got to go.

And yes. So it's just weird. It was absolutely weird. I'm like, first of all, it wasn't the first time that I thought they had messed up a call last night, but that's one you should be able. I mean, if nobody really knows, like if we're sending somebody to the penalty box that wasn't part of the play, that's a clue that nobody really knows what happened. Shouldn't be caught. Anyway, real quick to the problem of the hurricanes and scoring.

And this is sort of into the weeds of analytics and I'm going to be very quick. The hurricanes create a lot, a lot of grade A scoring chances. They're second in the league. They don't allow any. They're first in allowing the fewest. They have allowed the fewest grade A chances. Their conversion rate on their own high danger chances is dead last in the league at 7%, 7.1%.

On the chance is that they allow their conversion. The conversion rate against them is also the lowest in the league. So Carolina's winning games because they do not give up goals. That is the reason why the hurricanes win hockey games. It's hard to score against Carolina, contrary to what maybe fans think. But at some point you have to get better in converting these chances because it's not always going to be that way. And you're leaving yourselves open to getting beat by teams who shouldn't beat you because you can't put enough goals on the board to put it out of the woods.

Honestly, I know this is going to sound weird. The hurricanes should have been up 8-0 through two periods. 8. Yeah. Well you have to prepare for the flukey things because it's hockey.

Stuff happens. And it was 3. They scored 3 goals in the first 22 minutes and 8 seconds and nothing after that. There were so many good scoring chances. Tevo Taravana could have easily had a hat-trick last night.

He had no goals. So, by the way, the median conversion rate on grade A scoring chances in the NHL is about 10%. If Carolina was just middle of the pack, it would have created 8 more goals this year so far.

Put sprinkle 8 goals somewhere for the hurricanes. That's a lot of wins. They've got 6 overtime losses. You put one of those in half of those games and that's just 3 more points.

And this is conservative. Yeah, they've probably lost anywhere from 4 to 6 points because of that. And by the way, this also speaks to, well actually these are only 5 on 5 numbers by the way. I wonder what it means for the power play.

These are just 5 on 5 numbers that I've given you. Alright, moving on to football. 49ers beat the Seahawks last night.

Nobody should be surprised. We have these two teams that are going in opposite directions. 49ers are rolling.

Seattle is reeling. And as a result, the 49ers and Kyle Shanahan have clinched the NFC West. To be able to clinch the division and just have a couple days, we can relax a little bit.

But there's no doubt about it. This isn't our final goal by any means. I'm very proud of our team and what we accomplished throughout the year to get to this. Our goal is to get in the tournament and we accomplished that today. But now it's all trying to set that up to be the best situation we can and hopefully get some of our guys back too in the process.

Alright, we're going to go through who they've got left in a second. Brock Purdy was hurt the week before, right? There was some question, you know, is he going to be okay? Is he going to blah, blah, blah. Alright, so what is Brock Purdy, the new quarterback of the future?

I don't know. It might be, you know, he's the 49ers version of Mike White. Yeah, you never know. Brock Purdy on his thoughts going into the game. Honestly, just, you know, my mindset was, man, even though I haven't thrown a ball, I played four days ago.

So I know where guys are supposed to be. I know what it's like to rip a ball on rhythm and in time on time. And so I just want to make sure my motion was good.

You know, at some walkthroughs wasn't ripping anything. But I knew once the game time had come around, the adrenaline would be pumping and my blood would be flowing and I'd be just fine. So I'm glad it turned out well. There is no painkiller quite like adrenaline. Yes.

No painkiller quite like it. Truth. Real quick aside, did you not have George Kittle to score two touchdowns? I did. When I saw that, I was like, let's go. Yeah.

Oh, that was good. Good for you. Looking at the box score last night because I was at the hockey game. I didn't really see the football game.

Looking at the box. I'm like, wait a second. Uh huh.

I hope we have a we have an audio clip of that to play during place your bets. All right. So apparently Brock Purdy is good. So that means the 49ers will have a decision to make at some point.

All right. Do we let this guy play? Well, I keep reading about Tom Brady is going to be the quarterback of the 49ers next year. And oh, by the way, Trey Lance, who they drafted third overall traded up to draft third overall a couple of years ago. At some point, he has to be part of the equation. No, maybe not.

I mean, it's very possible that he doesn't anyway. On the other the other bench are the Seattle Seahawks, who have gone in the other direction entirely now. And this is Pete Carroll, the head coach, on what they're going through. This was a classic opportunity to in the division with the team is leading, you know, and then here Thursday and all that stuff. Everything was really there for us to have a great night.

And they're really not a really good team and they're doing really good stuff. And they've been really consistent and a bunch of wins in a row and all that. And so it was going to be a fantastic win for us. And we just hung in there with an opportunity to get it done. We had an enormous swing right at the end of the half. And, you know, there's seven to three about a two minute warning.

We have a chance of the pickets midfield at least. And and then the fumble gets them down to five. Look, all sports are about the moments within a game that forget about momentum. Just change the game. Every single sport boils down to a moment in baseball.

It boils down to a pitch, a ground ball, an error, whatever it is, every sport in basketball the same way. Hockey is the goofy one, right? Hockey is good. Carolina was dominant. And all of a sudden you're a fluke away from.

Wait a second. We're tied. That's really as it can really boil down to just that. But the way I look at it in general, especially over time, the better teams seem to win the moments.

Just seem to win the moments. So I think the best way to point this out is probably tennis in general. The points are pretty close. Yeah. Over the course of a match.

Yeah. This man straight said six, three, six, three, six, three. Then you look at the points. Total points won. And this this player won one hundred and forty two points and the other player won one hundred and twenty one point or twenty two points.

And Mike, wait a second. That's pretty close. Yeah. But look at the big ones. Look at the look at the ones that mattered. And I'll bet you the overwhelming majority was won by the better player. And I just think that that's where we are with the forty niners and the Seahawks. And for the most part, the NFL is a one score league for the most part. So there are always things to point to where we're this close.

That's why I've never liked over three plays away from being undefeated. No, you're not. You're really not. There's a reason. There just is a reason.

All right. Bad news for the J.E.T.S. Jets, Jets, Jets. Mike White is out. Oh, the rib injury he suffered against Buffalo will keep him out this weekend against the Detroit Lions. Zach Wilson, who got banished, got punished and sent to his room, was not even active the last three weeks.

Yeah. Last three weeks. He wasn't even active. He was elevated to number two because they were worried that Mike White might not be able to go. So he at least has been getting practice with the ones and he will have to start. So Zach Wilson, the second overall pick a couple of years ago, is going to get his job temporarily back. And we're going to find out this week in a game the Jets have to win. There is no if the Jets want to be a playoff team, they must win.

We'll find out what Zach Wilson has. The Jets, the Jets actually had flipped. Remember, the game opened with the Lions as a one point favorite.

Yes. As of yesterday afternoon, the Jets were a one and a half point favorite. That's a pretty big swing for a betting line for it to go. And it went down even almost immediately after the Lions were opened up as a one point favorite. But to flip a game, two and a half points is a lot. It has flipped back to even, I believe.

Yeah. Based on the news that Zach Wilson was going to have to play. I mean, you still could use Joe Flacco. You could not. I would never do that.

I would never do that. Joe Flacco should not be starting a game that matters. I don't care if you have to use Zach Wilson. He still should give you a better chance to win than Joe Flacco.

With all respect to Joe Flacco. But we'll see how they manage Zach Wilson. The difference in Mike White and Zach Wilson for a lot of reasons for me, having watched a little bit of it, was they allowed Mike White to throw the ball. They have really not allowed that with Zach Wilson.

So we'll see. You think Wilson's going to come back a little more humble this time after a little time off being grounded? No, there's no humble in Zach Wilson. There's zero humble in him, which is good and bad in a way.

Well, as long as you're successful, then yes, it's OK. The same reasoning I have given for liking Baker Mayfield is that he carries himself as a number one. He has a lot of confidence. Now, I think that Baker translates that confidence to teammates better than Zach Wilson does. Zach Wilson is more bravado than it is confidence. So Zach just has to I mean. Don't be reckless, but he has to be aggressive and not be dumb about it, which unfortunately he's been pretty dumb about some of the things that he's done.