What move should the Carolina Hurricanes make?

All right, today's fan poll is...

I really think there's only one correct answer here, but we apparently have split this down in the middle. Biggest game for the Big Four this weekend. Notre Dame at Wake.

Huh? What is Wake going to get for winning that game? Nothing.

Nothing. Just don't lose it. They just can't lose. Just don't lose it. Virginia Tech at Duke. I mean, eh, whatever. Duke, win the game, Duke.

Don't mess around. At this point, Duke is just going to screw up their seating by losing that game, so win it. Virginia... I'm sorry, let's do Clemson at NC State, which gets the second most love here. I think it's a good game for NC State.

Yes. It doesn't change their overall profile. It will not bump them from an eight to a seven or a six or whatever. It won't do that, but I think it continues to build who they are heading towards March. Oh, I think it also gives them the opportunity, well, will give them the opportunity to jump into the top four of the ACC and get a double by to Thursday.

Yeah, no, no. Because Clemson is ahead of them right now. NC State sits at five. Yes, NC State, actually, I think that they win that game, they might even move into fourth place. Yes, they would.

So there is a real life practicality here. Virginia at North Carolina, to me, is the answer. Okay. Because North Carolina needs something to show, like, here's who we are. We can win this type of game. So far, they have none of that. Best win, I shouldn't say none, they do have one, their best win is NC State at home. Yeah. Their second best win is College of Charleston at home.

That's it. There's nothing, their team sheet is a Twinkie. This wins there, very sugary, empty calories right now on their team sheet. They desperately need this win. I would argue that this one is more important than the win over Duke, if they could get that at the end of the season, end of the regular season. Because you beat Duke, that might not even be a quad one win. They have nothing. They're, I think, 0-9 in quad one opportunities. You just can't be, and you know, I'm complaining about the way it's all done, but the reality is that's how it's done.

I hate it, but that's how it's done. So they have to go out and win this game. This is the game they really need, not next week.

This is the game they really need. So I think that's the right answer, but it's very close between Virginia at UNC and Clemson at NC State. About 300 votes have been cast. All right, so that is our listener poll, our fan poll, and now it's time to break down games in 60 seconds. All right, let's get to it.

We've got, there are five options, Dennis Cox, let's start. Virginia is at North Carolina. My guess is that we're going to see the Tar Heels as a very slight favorite. So how does it go for UNC when it becomes hard to score?

Because that's what Virginia does. Defense travels. Carolina's going to play desperate. They will have to play desperate. This is going to have to be their feistiest game of the year.

I think they get it because they have no other choice. Yeah, though they have no other choice, but I think they're also catching Virginia at the wrong time because you know, UVA is going to want to bounce back after that loss against Boston College. And they're almost lost at Louisville.

Yes. So they're looking to turn things around with the last few games of the regular season for them. I think UNC is catching UVA at the wrong time. I just don't see UNC winning this game. I just don't think this team has it. Simple as that.

They don't have it. Well, you're such a Virginia. I'm from there and I don't like it. It's embarrassing how much of a Virginia Homer you are. Wow. Wow. Wow. Sorry. All right.

Your turn. NC state hosts Clemson. New tip off tomorrow at PNC arena. Clemson, a seven point dog it looks like in this one. NC state, I think for them moving forward, as I mentioned a moment ago, this is an opportunity for them to get into the top four and have a double buy to Thursday in the ACC tournament. A win here, I think will secure that because Clemson I think still has to play Duke coming up, if I remember correctly off the top of my head, I don't see Clemson winning both games against state and Duke. So I think state wins this one, they'll jump up into the top four. They just got to keep the good vibes rolling in Raleigh.

That's really what it is for them. That team is playing hot right now. Clark being back helps that team even further. I hope he is back. Do we know what the status is? His arm was in a sling after the fall.

So I don't know the status of him. Jack Clark, we remembered now why we liked Jack Clark so much before before his other injury, but yeah, I'm with you. I can't wait to see state fully healthy and Jarkel Joyner to me is again turquavian Smith, their best prospect. Jarkel Joyner is their best player.

He has been absolutely tremendous. All right to the next game. This is Duke and Virginia Tech over at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Apparently it's legal to accidentally punch somebody in the throat during the game. I will be interested to see if Duke inadvertently punches somebody in the throat during the game just to test that theory because it worked for Virginia Tech in Blacksburg about a month ago. I kid Duke's playing much better. This Duke team is more interesting to me today than it was a month ago. Tyrese Proctor has been a better shooter, a better defender, and a better distributor.

All of those things takes pressure off Jeremy Roach. And if Derek Whitehead can continue to stay in the lineup, Duke has a chance, not just tonight, but going forward. It's a tough stretch coming up for Duke. Obviously they need this one if they want to potentially get into the top four, which is possible if they win out the rest of the regular season. But to me, I think Lively is the guy that is starting to come on a little bit for them. And if he can be good down low of Filipowski, I think it would be a tough Duke team come tournament time. Could be. I still worry about Duke's athleticism away from the basket.

That's why Whitehead is such a big part of what they do because it looks like he's the guy who can get his own offense if he's healthy and he's playing at a little bit higher level. You go. Alright, Notre Dame is visiting Wake Forest. Notre Dame an 11-point dog. Now, a lot of people are giving gifts to Mike Bray. I want to know what Steve Forbes is gifting Mike Bray because this is, again, his last season in Notre Dame. Like, you know, we've seen some people give him, you know, whiskey or wine or something along those lines. I just want to know, what's the gift that Steve Forbes and Wake's going to give Mike Bray?

That's the only thing that matters. A mock turtle. A mock turtle.

A mock turtle. And a pair of gym shorts. Love, I love Mike Bray. Mike Bray is one of the fun ones.

So is Steve Forbes. Those two guys in a room together are absolutely electric. Yeah, they should just go to the improv. Yes. Just let's do it.

Forbes and Bray just sit up there and just have a press conference at the improv. I'm for it. Alright, let's do it. Alright, finally, one more game. Hurricanes at home. Just blow that up because we have nothing to say about Wake.

Look, no Damari Monsanto. I just went and restarted. Oh, did you? That's bad for Wake. He's out for the year. Alright, so, Hurricanes at home to the Ottawa Senators. Gotta deal with a really good frontline for Ottawa. Carolina's been a little bit too generous, although they weren't against Washington at the stadium game.

Little bit too generous in allowing transition opportunities and being a little messy in their own end. They were against the Rangers. They were in the first game in Washington. You know, after they lost to the Rangers, they went to Washington. They were a little generous there, even against Montreal. They allowed a few too many golden scoring opportunities that will not fly against the Senators because they will burn you. I think it helps Carolina. The fact that they had two days off between games from the stadium series to St. Louis and two days off between that game Tuesday until this weekend, actually getting true practice time this late in the season is not something that NHL teams get often at this point in the season. I think it helps.

I know it's weird to say, but the ability to actually go on the ice and practice. What? Practice? Yeah. That's true. We're talking about practice.

Exactly. And they won't skate tomorrow before A&M. Oh, there's going to be a basketball court. An interesting back to back. They should skate during the basketball game.

Hey, I'm for it. On the court at BNC Arena. My son's at soccer practice, so I'm kind of like I go and I start researching hockey trade rumors and I get a rumor, but looks like a real story. It looks like the Caps trade Dimitri Orloff and Garnet Hathaway to the Boston Bruins for Craig Smith and a bunch of draft picks. And it turns out, yes, it's a truism.

So that is the jumping off point as we bring in Luke to cock of the News and Observer columnist extraordinaire at Luke to cock on Twitter. When you see the Boston Bruins make a move like this, how compelled are the hurricanes to not answer it, but to also step up and make some alterations to their roster to get better? You know, I don't know that it necessarily changes anything for the hurricanes because I think they had to anyway.

Right. I think it changes that, you know, they were behind the Bruins, obviously. They're going to be a little further behind the Bruins now. I think it changes things in the sense that the Caps are throwing in the towel, which is fascinating to me because, you know, the old Jimmy Rutherford truism that if you're in it, you can win it. The Caps are still a chance to get into the playoffs.

I think, you know, I still could. So the idea that they've stomped out the fire and called in the dogs is fascinating to me. I'm sure Columbus is a little angry since they were sitting on Gavrikov waiting for the Bruins to clear space. And then the Bruins went made a different trade, which is hilarious.

But no, I mean, I think the look is what I wrote today. The hurricanes had to anyway. They've got to replace Max Pacharetti. You and I both know that. And they've got to add a third pairing defenseman.

You and I both know that we've been talking about this for months. We talked about it, you know, when Pacharetti was coming back, they didn't have to make a move because they clearly needed to add something. But they're going to get Pacharetti and they needed to upgrade on the fence. So I think what the Bruins deal does helps to find the market a little more. And, you know, the big trade for me is still Tarasenko to the Rangers, because I thought that was the if they were going to do a rental rental, I thought Tarasenko was the rental that made the most sense.

But the Rangers jumped first. Maybe that does reopen Patrick Kane as a possibility since he was dying to go to the Rangers. I would be very leery of Patrick Kane given his injury history and his underlying analytics this season. Look, we know he's a great player. We know he's a skilled player. He's a winner. He's a star.

His underlying analytics this season have been absolute hot garbage. And I would worry about giving up all those assets and bringing in a guy who just isn't in good form, you know, as a good player who just isn't playing well. And obviously the theory would be, OK, you get out of a terrible situation, you get to a contender, he's reenergized and all of that.

That's a huge risk to take. Everything I hear is that Timo Meyer is going to end up with the Devils. I think he'd be a great fit with the Hurricanes, sort of a like for like swap for Patrick already over there on the right side. I just every everyone I talk to says this is inevitably heading toward the Devils.

It's just a question of what the return is. So, you know, I think this is going to be a situation where, like the Trochek deal and like the Brady Shea deal, they're going to have to go and be creative and get a guy with some term, because I think a lot of the whatever you want to call them, you know, primary targets or common names may not may not work for the hurricanes, but whatever they do. And obviously I threw out a couple names of stuff that could work. I don't think it will. But players like that, like a Dylan Larkin, like a pure Luke Dubois, whatever they go out and do, they've got to do something because you you have a your window is closing and closed.

It's closing. We both know that with the the Pesci enslaving contract, you've got to do something because if you can beat the Bruins, you got a chance to win this whole thing. And they've done well against the Bruins in the regular season. They've got as good a chance to win the Stanley Cup as they've ever had.

And you can't just do what you did in twenty twenty one and pretend it's not happening. Well, I mean, look, the cock is with us. They have to beat the Rangers before they can beat the Bruins. I think we understand that. You mentioned Tarasenko. I I would argue that the other rental possibility for Carolina that would have fit, I actually think it would have fit better, would have been Ryan O'Reilly.

He wasn't playing great. And he's had some injury issues because primarily he's a center. And I still think that the the least intrusive to Carolina's chemistry is to put somebody in the middle of the ice than on the wings because Carolina would have to drop either Tevo, Tara Von in or Seth Jarvis to the fourth line in order to make room for a Timo Meyer or a Vladimir Tarasenko. And you would put those guys in your top six.

So somebody would be somebody would feel in a way left out. Now, that doesn't mean that they won't be valuable parts of the team and they wouldn't be getting power play time and all that. But theoretically, the best spot is to find somebody who can play the middle behind Sebastian Ajo and in front of Jordan stall on a scoring line and put yes, Barricode can hear me as a fourth line center, although he has played very well. We agree on the defenseman thing. And I think the devil's become a problem to with Timo Meyer because they become somebody who's with a little bit more physicality who can operate in the middle of the ice a little bit better. And that's where Carolina doesn't do their best work between the hash marks, especially in the postseason.

Yeah. And, you know, as a player that the Hurricanes really like, you go back to the summer of twenty eighteen, the Svechnikov draft when they made the Hamilton deal, you know, O'Reilly was tops on their list that summer. They really wanted Ryan O'Reilly then. So this is a player that they've been interested in for some time. Obviously, he went to Toronto. And, you know, that's why when you talk about all right, so who's a guy that's maybe not a rental that you can go get, you know, if the Red Wings were to move Larkin, if they decide they're not going to, you know, can't sign him long term, looks like they will. There's a guy you drop in at center.

Perfect fit. Sign him to a long term deal. You figure out the money later. Same thing with Pierre-Luc Dubois. So Winnipeg's got a chance to make the playoffs get on a run. He's restricted, so they don't have to worry about losing him for nothing over the summer.

But if you can get a return for him now at the deadline, that's better than what you might be able to get over the summer when teams have a little more leverage because of an offer sheet or whatever. You know, maybe those are guys like I don't think Larkin or Dubois is going to move, but it's somebody like that that they would have to go get, you know, like they did with Trochek, who was a guy with some term who can slide into the middle. I just think even if it screws up the lines a little bit now, you're going to have injuries, you're going to have slumps, right? You've just got to add a top six forward. It would ideally would be a center. If it's a winger, fine, it'll all work out. But you just you need more depth. You need more talent depth. You know, you don't need another fourth line guy.

So, yeah, you know, Riley would have been great. But, you know, the Leafs jump first. And, you know, we know how the hurricanes operate. They're going to put a price on guys. They're not going to go over that price. I mean, I think the most interesting thing that came out of my conversations over the last week and a half really going back to the start of the outdoor game is is that they're you know, even though Alexander Nikitian, the big defenseman in Russia who's turned into a third round pick has really turned into a star in Russia is under contract through twenty twenty five. They are not going to move him. You know, that was one of the theories was you can move this guy since he's not going to be here for two years. They're more likely to move Scott Moro and Jack Drury among their prospects, both of whom have a ton of value.

Jackson Blake's another guy who shot up the board this year because he's had an unbelievable freshman year in North Dakota. His size, though, makes him less of a trade chip and more of a guy that, you know, a team is going to hold on and develop. But for all of that, look, they've got the cap space because of patchy already. Their first run pick is basically an early second.

If things go well, there's nothing wrong with parting with that. And they've got prospects that people want. People want Jack Drury. People want Scott Morrow. And while those guys are guys who can help the hurricanes, if that's the price you pay to win a Stanley Cup, you do it, especially if you've got another blue chip defenseman who's rapidly blossoming in the pipeline two years out, which happens to be the point where you start to get in trouble on defense on your death chart. So, you know, that works out really well for them. But but the point is and all of this is kind of smoke and mirrors dancing around the main thing, which is they have assets, they have cap space, they have a chance to win the Stanley Cup. They have a week to add a guy who can help them do that. And that's really the fine and fine print here.

Yeah. And other than a couple of years ago, heading into the bubble, we didn't know we were heading into the bubble because we didn't know we were about to shut the league down when they made the Trochek and Brady Shea deals. One, they didn't give up anything and they actually got rid of a problem in the locker room and Eric Holla in the in the Vincent Trochek deal and the deal for Shea. They had to add a top four defenseman because Dougie Hamilton and Brett Pesci were both injured and out for a substantial period of time. They had to go out and do that.

The recent history is they're not inclined to do anything, which makes me a little worried that we're still going to just tweak on the margins. They're going to have to prove to me and I think to the fans that they are all in on this team, too, because twenty eight, four and four since Thanksgiving is a bonafide Stanley Cup contender. And to watch Toronto, New York, Boston and possibly the Devils, likely the Devils, all add substantial pieces and you don't would be I don't know if it's a slap in the face to your fans, but I think it can be spun that way.

Let me you want you want to follow that up or you want to move on to who you know, I was just going to say that, you know, you could. Here's the flip side. I agree with you.

I'll play Devils advocate real quick. They played extremely well against the Bruins in the regular season. They then whatever it is, twenty eight, four and four with this group against the best teams in the league is the argument. Hey, we're better than you guys. We don't need to add anybody, which is kind of the way Tampa's approached the deadline in some of the years when it's headed for Stanley Cup. You know, we like our group.

Coach, he likes his guy. So, you know, it's I can see I can see it being spun that way. That said, I know that the hurricanes are looking. So if they go and say, well, we weren't interested, then they're lying. They're trying to add some money and they should.

Yeah, it's all about what the cost is and they don't want to jeopardize next year for this year. I get it. This team has a chance to win a Stanley Cup this year. I think there's value in that.

All right. So North Carolina's game against Virginia, can we argue that this game is more important than next weekend's game against Duke? No, I think for Carolina to have a chance, they've got to win one of these two games.

So I think they're probably emotions aside and the feeling of, you know, wanting to be Duke for the feeling of wanting to be Duke from an NCA selection perspective. I think they're I think they're they've got to win one or both of these. And they also can't lose the Florida State. I would argue the must win game of the three of the last four games they played Notre Dame, Virginia, Florida State, Duke, the two most important games are Notre Dame and Florida State because if you lose either one of those you're cooked.

Right. You know, you've got to win both of those and beat either Virginia or Duke, preferably both just to have a chance and then you got to beat somebody in Greensboro. So yeah, no, I think I think they're equal other than the Duke factor. If it were Virginia and Miami, I would say they're 50-50. I think if North Carolina had a choice and was told it had to win one of the two games, it would prefer to be Duke over Virginia because it's Duke and all of that. But no, I think I think from a selection perspective, they're probably the same. Gotta win one to have a chance.

Right. Win both. I think there's a good chance you bought yourself some margin for error in Greensboro.

Oh, I think if you win both, you're in. I mean, they can't go out and get trucked by Syracuse or Wake in an eight, nine game. But if you win both of those games over Virginia and Duke, I think they're in the NCAA tournament.

The fact that they're essentially on the edge of being in the field now with zero on their resume is kind of amazing. The the reason I say Virginia is the more important win is that if you beat Duke, it probably ends up being a quad to win based on the way we process these things, which is silly. The Virginia is not going to get out of quad one on your own floor, which means they have to be top 30. Duke is right now twenty ninth. If you beat them, Duke probably goes to like thirty three.

So it becomes a two. Duke will a barring a collapse in the tournament. Do I think Duke ends up in the top thirty by selection Sunday? So I would I would like it's it's you know, the Carolina people were like, oh, well, Miami beat us. You know, if we beat Miami, they wouldn't be in the top 30. Well, yeah, well, Miami is going to be in the top 30 at the end of the year. So that was an opportunity for a quad one win just because they went would have gone down if you beat that didn't mean they weren't going to go back up. I I'll tell you, I had this conversation with West Durham on Sirius XM.

I'm fascinated at how people don't understand the net like it's it's like people not understanding the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius. Hey, we beat Team X and they're still above us. Yeah, there's three hundred fifty Division one teams playing. Every one of their results goes into the stew.

Right. If you if five of the teams you beat earlier in the year all lost and five of the teams that Team X lost to earlier in the year all won, they're probably still going to be ahead of you. Like this is all interconnected. It's not just it's not just if Team A beats Team B, they should move above like people talk like that. Like, do you realize that this is like, I would say the net is flawed.

Sure. But in the end, we know what's going into it. You know, it's like this isn't the AP poll where, oh, you won. So you move up four spots.

It's all interconnected. Your win might be completely meaningless. It's just I'm the discourse over the net, especially coming out of Clemson, which played a garbage non-conference schedule and hasn't beaten a couple of Carolina.

Yeah. I mean, it's lost terrible games, has had played a soft ACC schedule, has a couple of good ACC wins, but has beaten up on the bottom half of the ACC and then complains about the net like, geez, schedule somebody play a game. And the other part of it is, oh, we could win the league and not make the tournament. Oh, look back to all those years that Clemson was 14 and oh, going into the ACC schedule and then went, you know, lost six of its first eight games in the ACC. Like, this is all the same stuff.

Like, that hasn't changed. You still got to play people and beat people. You're playing the same lousy schedule you used to play.

You're just not winning all the games. Here's the though. My problem is not necessarily with the net itself. And it's been misconstrued, I think.

And I had I probably had done a poor job of explaining what my overall issue is. It's how we apply it. So I don't think the net is dramatically different than the RPI. And the net numbers look very similar to Ken Pom, which looked very similar to Bart Torvik.

They all look about the same. They're all within the margin of error. My problem is that because we group these teams in certain groups and I believe that the bigger problem for the ACC and how they look in terms of these power rankings isn't that we don't have a heavyweight. It's that we've got five historically bad teams in the league dragging us down enough where it makes the numbers like Miami Duke all around 30. Or even worse, you've got teams around 50 or around 75. I don't believe that there are, what, 80 teams better than Wake Forest.

I don't know. But now without Damari Monsanto, we're going to see if they can hold it together. I think Wake's a good team. They have been before the injury. I just think that the bottom five teams in the league, which are historically bad, have dragged the league back enough where we just don't. It's a better league than the metrics say, and the metrics are being used to define the league. So I just don't see how we can get around that.

Yeah. I mean, I agree with you on the net and the quadrants because we have measures of resume strength that don't require quadrants. So you don't have these giant value changes when a team goes from 30 to 31 or 74 to 80. We have measures like wins above bubble and strength of record that tell you exactly how good a resume is.

We just ignore them because it seems creepy to turn things over to the computers. The next problem is that it tries to combine predictive rankings like Ken Palm with resume rankings like strength of record or wins above bubble. And the problem is those two things don't mix. It's apples and oranges. So the NCAA tried to have its cake and eat it too. It tried to measure team strength and resume strength at the same time.

And it just kind of is a mismatch and then the quadrants make it worse. What they ought to do is pick a resume metric. I like wins above bubble. Strength of record is fine. You can do it however you want.

Use that to pick the field and then you can do all the little seeding things you want. You still need a committee. They still get to fly around and go places and and it's fine.

But just take the human part of it out. Then everybody knows when the when the when the computer runs the night at 3 a.m. you know exactly where you stand and exactly what you have to do. Here's the issue with the ACC's image because it would keep coming back to us.

Sure. Nonconference play matters because that's what sets the bar for everything. When the ACC I tweeted this on Monday when the ACC and I dropped out Boston College because they skewed everything got nine bids in 2017. The worst of its 29 nonconference losses. So the ACC lost 29 games out of conference. The worst of them ranked 118th in Ken Palm. This year the ACC lost 43 nonconference games.

So 14 more. Twelve of those are worse than 118 which means not only did the ACC lose all the games it lost in 2017 when it lost when it got nine bids. It lost 12 of them pretty much all the games it lost above that point were the worst teams. So that skews that more than anything and I dropped Louisville out of that too. So when you know that's that's a colossal level of nonconference failure. The ACC is losing games it never used to lose.

And that's the problem. It's not about the net. It's not about teams getting better during the season because everybody does.

It's not about the transfer portal. Beat the teams you're supposed to beat and this discussion doesn't happen. You go back 10 years every team even state even wake in the bad years or maybe that way but everybody was 10 and one 11 into Clemson I mentioned there were 14 like 13 and one every year. The ACC did not lose to teams in the Ken Palm 200s even power five teams like wake loss to LSU terrible LSU team. We mentioned Clemson South Carolina terrible South Carolina team Virginia Tech had one loss this year.

It was to Charleston. Great loss. NC State had one loss this year to Kansas.

Great loss. That's how it used to be. But then you got all these teams and Florida State was obviously an issue. It wasn't just them. It was Clemson.

It was wake. It was all these it was Virginia. You know I know Virginia's only losses to Houston. So that's a great loss to Syracuse. It was all these teams that used to not lose these game losing these games that does drag everybody down before you even play a conference game. No question about it by the way. Wake also lost to Loyola Marymount.

Don't guess that's another good one. Don't do it lose to Loyola Marymount. We can get away with a loss to LSU because oh, you know, it's a power five conference, but man, it's hard to overlook the loss to Loyola Marymount Luke the cock of the news and Observer. I'll talk to you next Friday and then man, we're we're dangerously close to Greensboro and we can we can hang out in person. Yeah, we can do that. Anyway, we'll do it in Greensbury on next Friday. Although I don't know where I'll be now that they play the games on Fridays and Saturdays at midnight.

I don't know where I'll be at 115 on Friday. We may have to we may have to do this one on the I'll be back here anyway. Well, I'll be back here. There you go. But I'll see you before then.

All right, Luke the cock. Appreciate your time. All right, you got it. Six minutes of added time there.

Well, we had an injury. Yes, there was. All right, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet by the way. Happy now you want happy National tortilla chips day.

What? Yes. Do you have a favorite tortilla chip? Yeah, the ones I get to eat. So you're not particularly use chips. What you're gonna do is you're gonna look chips. No, no tortilla chips.

We use gambling chips or sour cream and onion chips for your health. There you go. What movie is that from? No, that's actually from Steve Bruell. It's it was a show on Adult Swim.

Oh, that's John C. Reilly playing Steve Bruell. Very nice. Very nice. Yeah, I like a good blue corn chip. Oh, blue corn chip.

I'm a big blue tortilla chip guy. Okay. Yeah. What about soft torch? Well, that's tortilla shell.

That's right. I was thinking like tacos like a soft tortilla shell. I like I like flour soft tacos. Okay. I don't like the I don't like corn.

Okay, soft. I don't do like the the street tacos. Yeah, I really want a flower tortilla. Just I don't like the soft corn, but whatever.

You know, you get you can't be, you know, choosy if that's your only option. Sure. Tacos are great. They are. They are delicious. Again, happy National Tortilla Chips Day. We're off.

All right. Cocaine Bear releases today in theaters. Honestly, I cannot wait to see this. I want to see it so badly. The fact that it's based off a true story where a big bear got a hold of some cocaine.

So that's that's all you need to know. The last time you need to know the last time you and I professed, man, I really want to see this movie. Yeah. You know the movie? Oh, it was Top Gun.

Yes, Top Gun Maverick. And I finally saw it. It was amazing. No, it was not amazing.

How dare you? It was the same movie and it was amazing. It wasn't amazing. It was OK. I was expecting I was expecting some originality. Like maybe you just didn't have to play naked, oiled up football.

No, you had to play that dogfight football offensive defense at the same time out of silly. Not a good movie. Well, speaking of movies, apparently we're getting more Lord of the Rings movies because that's what we all want. So yesterday during a Warner Brothers Discovery quarterly earnings call, CEO David Zaslav said there's going to be a big focus on franchises. Now, Warner Brothers Discovery owns DC.

So we have there's already a big slate set up with James Gunn. There's Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings is in that mix as well now because Embracer Group owns the intellectual property rights for Lord of the Rings. Well, Warner Brothers Discovery and New Line entered into a multi-year deal with Embracer recently. So we might see some more Lord of the Rings stuff. Again, HBO originals like Game of Thrones, Sex and the City, etc. DC Warner Brothers Discovery is going to be focusing a lot on franchises because they know there's already an established fan base. So expect more Lord of the Rings in the future because, yeah. Really?

I know. The Lord of the Rings, those movies were too long. They were drawn out. The third movie of the original trilogy had like thirty seven endings to it. And all they did was walk around the woods for three straight movies. Can I just say, like, I'm more Harry Potter series than anything else. I know that they would like to put if they could go out and do like eight more Harry Potter movies, they do it. But they're not.

It's over. But the magical beasts or whatever, those things stunk. Yeah. And most people recognize that they stunk. Yeah.

So they didn't do well. No. I mean, no, it's no good. Just stop. Stop with your Lord of the Rings. I'm with you.

Stop with them. All right. We all know ESPN.

I'm sorry. Major League Baseball has some rule changes coming up with pitch clocks and things along those lines. So ESPN as well as some NBC regional sports networks are testing out a pitch clock on their score bug on the screen. That way viewers at home can actually see what the clock is. And if an umpire makes a ruling based off the pitch clock, fans watching at home would understand.

So expect to see that on some broadcasts. Again, it's a testing thing out that we'll see during spring training and something we'll likely see moving forward, except maybe from Bali, because Bali is bankrupt. They can't afford the pitch clock. They can't afford an extra pitch clock.

Here's my prediction is that you will see very, very few violations during innings. You know where you're gonna see them? First pitch of the inning.

Yeah. That's where you're gonna see them. Teams that are not ready. Pitchers that are not ready. That's where you're gonna see the majority of the violations at the beginning of innings. I do not think you will see very many violations within the inning, which is fine.

Nobody wants violations. We simply want the game to move at a rapid pace. Yeah. Right?

And this is something I've suggested a long time ago. We didn't need the pitch clock to get to this. We simply needed a home plate umpire to say, let's go.

Come on, let's move it. You don't have to step out after every pitch. You get on the mound and let's play ball.

People out here, you're getting them drunk with wasting too much time between pitches, right? So that's what I got to say about that. Well, that's all I have for halftime entertainment. That's it? That's it.

All right. Again, happy National Tortilla Chip Day. I like that.

I like National Tortilla Chip Day. I have something here in the studio with me. Oh, do you? Yeah. Why didn't you share?

Well, because you were talking to Luke. Oh, OK. Somebody brought you tortilla chips? Yeah.

Well, I paid for it. Yes. Oh, OK. Yeah.

Delivery driver did. But there's actually a big bag of tortilla chips in the break room. So go indulge. All right. Well, maybe we on National Tortilla Chip Day. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe I probably won't because you can't crunch on the air.