Stage 1 is complete!

And by the way, there's a poll up. We haven't done a poll in a while. There's an Adam Goldshow poll. Our listener poll is up.

Now that Daniel Snyder is going to sell the Washington Commandos, who is now the worst owner in team sports. Now, there are a lot more candidates than the four I listed. Yeah, they only let you do four. Right, that's all I got. There's a lot more candidates than four.

One of them is really a representative of about six others, but I just chose that person, mostly because nobody knows his name. So there you go. Go check it out at a gold fan at 999fan.com on Twitter. And we'll, we'll goof around with that at the bottom of this hour. We got a lot of things. So here we go.

Stage one is complete. The Carolina Hurricanes won the division. They were never, ever, ever supposed to win. And they did it again.

They are champions of the Metropolitan Division, Rod Brind'Amour. To what do you owe that? You know what it is.

You know what my answer is going to be. It's the guys we got in that room. They just, you know, they're as honest as they come and they go out there and they earn their, their way every night. And that's what you see. I mean, that's the way we have to get it done top to bottom.

It doesn't matter who it is. They, you know, they just come to play. And I'm proud of the group.

Obviously it's, it's kind of neat because I mean, that's a big accomplishment. 82 games, you know, to be the best in the division. In the division we're in, that says a lot. But they're like, it's like, that's not what we were about. It's not what we came to do, you know, so everyone's kind of, eh, it's okay. But we got bigger things that we obviously want to accomplish. There are, there's the biggest goal, which is, as Rod likes to say, being the last team standing. There's that, but there are other goals along the way. And one of the goals was win the division.

That's an 82 game grind, man. That is, that is an accomplishment. It is. So congratulations again. When they made these divisions, what is it, about 10 years ago now, it was a commonly held thought. I'll admit it.

I held it too. How are the Hurricanes? No, this is the way it was phrased. How are the Hurricanes ever going to make the playoffs in this division? It wasn't about winning it. It was about making the playoffs in a division with the Capitals and the Penguins and the Rangers and the Flyers. Yeah, because this isn't a hockey town. Well, that's, that's part of it. But you're going up against like perennial contenders.

How are they ever going to make the playoffs? I mean, I was with you. I'm not arguing that. I'm not saying that those people were wrong or stupid.

I thought it was a fair assessment. They just won the division two years in a row, two years in a row. They won 6-4 last night.

We'll get to the game very briefly in a second. They will meet the Islanders in the Eastern Conference quarterfinal series, 3-1 against New York this year. They lost the first game back in October.

They won the other three. I'm here to tell you, it doesn't matter who you play. If you don't play well, you're going home. So, and that goes for Boston too. Boston isn't just going to throw their jocks on the ice and win. They're going to have to play well.

I think they'll beat Florida, but they did lose twice to Florida during the regular season. So, eh, who knows? Who knows? It was the dumbest third period I've ever seen.

Dumb with a capital. What the hell just happened? Right? So, you lead 2-0 after 2. Probably should have been up 3 or 4 or more, but it was 2-0 after 2, but that should be fine. You allow an actual goal, one that you go, all right, well, they scored a goal. And then Frederick Anderson gave the puck away.

I don't, I don't know that he got a primary assist on Ryan Lomberg's goal, but he's deserving of it. He gave the puck away. Now it's 2-2. And then Brent Burns scored a second goal of the game, about three minutes after the Panthers tied it. 21 seconds later, Jesper Fosse scores to make it 4-2.

And now you can sort of breathe. But Brent Burns had two goals last night. Here's Rod Brindamore on that guy. I don't know where we'd be without him, to be honest. You know, that D, our D are real special back there in the mound. I think pressure we put on him to perform in every aspect of the game. And this guy's, you know, been better than advertised or as good or whatever. And, you know, real pleasure to be around and have him with our group.

He's 37 years old. He played every game this season. He led the team in time on ice and he just is a really, really good player. Kicking butt.

So 18 goals for him. He ties Brady Shay among defensemen for the team lead in that category. Real quick, I want to put in perspective what the Hurricanes have done in winning this division with their challenges, OK? Because I have an ongoing battle with irrational Hurricanes fans about what this team is. And part of it is their own fault, not the fans, the team. Because they have league average goaltending.

Does anybody want to debate me on that? League average goaltending. They have a bottom third of the NHL power play.

They are 15th in the league in goals scored per game. Two major injuries to people who were supposed to be doing some scoring. Max Pacioretti and Andre Svechnikov.

All of that. The Pacioretti thing. I mean, he was out for all but five games. Svechnikov missed the last, what, quarter of the season, last 18 games, something like that. They scored 113 points this year. They were the second best team in the NHL with all of that. So what does that tell you?

It tells you that, A, there's different ways to win games, and B, this team has something about it that allows it to do that. Does it translate to the postseason? Maybe not. Hope so. Right.

We hope. But there are no guarantees for anybody when we get to the regular season. Because I can point to an example of, well, that team was amazing. And they had all of that. And yet they still lost. We go to Florida last year, who should have lost. They had the best record in hockey. Should have lost to the Capitals. They were not the better team in that series. They somehow managed to get out of it. But then they got swept and embarrassed by Tampa Bay.

Bad. I mean, they're just owned by the Lightning. Every year, there's something like that.

Tampa Bay, five years ago, best record in the sport, 62 wins, swept out of the playoffs. There just are no guarantees. Do you widen your margin for error if you have a higher level of skill?

Yeah, you do. But you can still lose. I didn't see the Rangers playing for the Stanley Cup last year. So I'm not saying the Hurricanes are going to win. I'm saying they're going to give you their best. And their best was second best in the entire league this year. I love how flexible they've been. That's just how they've been able to adjust. Let's keep adjusting. There's a way they've got to play.

And if they can get to that game, they've got a chance to beat anybody, anytime, anywhere. By the way, I have goalie rankings for the playoffs that I'll give you later. We don't have time to do it now. I have goalie rankings for the playoffs.

We'll give you later. Real quick, Matt Brown thinks we need to separate into three divisions of college football. Did an article, an interview with Sports Illustrated. I believe Ross Dellinger.

I don't know, last week, whatever it was, they were in his office. He says the pretense of amateurism in college football is over. We are the NFL. We're a mini NFL. Players should have a salary cap.

All right. Let's say Matt Brown is right. Let's say he's right. The days of amateurism in college football are over and the players should have a salary cap.

All right, let's do that. What percentage of the total revenue of college foot that college football creates would be appropriate for college football players to get as their portion of the revenue? Great question. Since that's how salary caps work.

Yeah. So I could be the NBA. I believe the players get 50 percent of the revenue. In the NFL, it's like 42 percent of the revenue. Do we want to give the college football players 42 percent of the revenue that college football generates?

Is that what we're doing here? Matt Brown has been great for the University of North Carolina. They haven't really accomplished a ton, but they have certainly put UNC football, made it matter again. They've certainly had some good seasons. They have not always been present when it comes to winning the big game or handling that moment. You go back a couple of years to Notre Dame game and we're not ready for the moment. Right. But they have certainly been good enough under Matt Brown to to point out that that's a good it's a good program. But at the same time, we have to stop listening to coaches that came up in an era before the money hit. And understand that. They're just swimming upstream there.

This is not healthy for the narrative today to to go there. I mean. Division one has already separated from FCS, right, or separated to FBS and FCS.

Did that a long time ago. And that's fair. But I don't believe the F. And I've suggested that we should have different levels of football. But who would the SEC play if we separated?

I'm kidding here. But the idea that we need competitive equity is such a farce. We've never had competitive equity in the history of college athletics. We've never had competitive equity at the Division one level ever, ever, ever, ever. Any attempt to get to competitive equity is silly. We need to get past that.