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REWIND: The Goal That Saved the Pens · Pittsburgh Sports Memories

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody, welcome to Pittsburgh Sports Memories.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Tim Hannon.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Steve Wirt.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, we're going to venture back to a Pittsburgh sports moment of the past and talk about it.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This episode, we're going to talk about a goal that Yarmair Jager scored in 1999 that some people, including Yager, claim literally saved the Pittsburgh Penguins franchise.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: But let's let's let's get going into this.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the Penguins in the 1990s were pretty successful at the onset of the decade.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: In 1991 and 1992, they win back-to-back Stanley Cups, and they are the toast of the town.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they're pretty successful the rest of the decade.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: However, it's kind of a mixed record.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: They have a lot of success, but they also miss a lot of opportunities, and it's a lot of unfulfilled promise because they never do get back to the Stanley Cup finals.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And little by little the key pieces of those teams kind of start leaving.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Larry Murphy and Kevin Stevens and Ron Francis.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the big hitter happens after the 1997 season when Mario Lemieux, who is the greatest player obviously in the history of the franchise, decides to retire.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's really riddled by back injuries, cancer, everything else.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, you know what, I can't do this anymore.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he retires at age 31, which is a little shocking, but given the injuries, I think it's it's understandable.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so by the time we get to the end of the decade, by the 98-99 season, again, many of those core pieces are gone, except for one guy, Yarmir Jager.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Jagger was uh, I believe, an 18-year-old rookie when they won the first cup.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and by this point, it's his team.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's his team.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's the captain.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he's he's probably the best player in the world.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Also, by this time, the the NHL has undergone quite a transformation.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's now a very defensive mining league.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: The teams that that used to win were the the Edmonton Oilers in the 80s or the the Penguins of those early 90s, teams that could score a lot of goals, teams that had speed, flew up and down the ice.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: By the time we get to the end of the decade, it's now teams like the New Jersey Devils and the Florida Panthers, teams that play this um clutch and grab style of hockey.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Steve, I know it's a style that that many fans detest, including I think us at the time.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think too, like the um there's always been a like uh theory I've heard is in 1967 the league did expand by six teams, and hockey was so regional back then that it probably took almost 20 years for the talent to kind of catch up.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then the goal the goaltending, too, was like there was a lot of stand-up goaltenders, and then Verdure came in, and there was another guy with the more the butterfly, which I just call ice sitting.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, it's basically the old mighty ducks joke, you know, just get get a big kid to sit in the net, you know.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: So there's some of that, but too, the the main thing was like you said, the clutching and grabbing, and they had no you weren't allowed to have a two-line pass, which means you could set all your guys up on the center red, and you couldn't pass pack, and they could just trap you between the blue and the red line, which was kind of the whole goal.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: And and with being able to grab that, totally negates any speed through the neutral zone.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it makes it very difficult.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you had said the uh the penguins were the toast of the town.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: Was that the uh avocado toast, or we were a little before that, I guess.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh avocado toast will do.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Although it's it's Pittsburgh, you you have to pick a more blue-collar toast, I think.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe a Rubin sandwich or something with the guys on it.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so yeah, the NHL is definitely you mentioned the trap, and the and the trap is is really what's dominating play right now, and that's not a style that the penguins ever really adapt to.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's not their style of play.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's never been, it never was.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um they they're still trying to build around offense, and so it's not good for them, it's not good for the league, it's not good for the fans.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Heading into that 98-99 season, again, Jagger, best player in the in the league, best player in the world, uh, the rest of the team really isn't that good.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the only other really borderline star was Martin Stracca, who wasn't really that that great.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: He he did some really good things for the Penguins later on, but at this point, he's he's now on his second stint with the Penguins, and he really had been mostly a disappointment up to this point, at least.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and if you look up and down the roster, I went back and looked at the roster for this year in preparation for this episode, and and just pulled some names off of there.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Jan Herdina, Brad, Brad Warenka, Kit Miller, uh Yerman Titov, who had a pretty good season that year, uh, because I believe he centered Yaugers line.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Alexei Morozov, who was um he was a guy that a Russian uh player that had a lot of talent, but never really um became what he was supposed to become.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was he ended up being a much better KHL player than he ever did in the NHL for whatever reason.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Which is awesome for the KHL, um, but not so wasn't so great for the Pens when they needed him.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um Kevin Hatcher was probably their best defenseman.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's not saying a lot.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that was the old, let's sign the guy that always scored goals against us or did well against us.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, okay, I guess at least he can't do well again against you now.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the the Pittsburgh sports teams have a long history of anytime we sign the guy that that killed us and said, Oh, good, that guy always played so well against us, now he plays for us.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like never worked out well.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I can think of just like examples off the top of my head.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um John LeClair, who the Penguins signed a few years later, stunk for us.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: He used to kill us.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then even into other sports, Derek Bell for the Pirates, that was a disaster.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: He always killed us.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, who was the kick returner for the Ravens?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Jacoby Jones.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Remember Jacoby Jones?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: We used Jacoby Jones.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, I've heard.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he had I I wish I had the stat in front of me, but he had something like negative 11 return yards or something on the season.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was some terrible stat.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, guys like that, and and Kevin Hatcher was one of those guys.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he wasn't terrible for the Penguins, but he certainly wasn't, you know, they they sort of got him, they had they had Larry Murphy was their sort of like anchor defenseman.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Then it then it was Sergei Zubov for a while, and and by this point it's Hatcher, and Hatcher's just nowhere near those other guys.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So just up and down the roster, not a very good roster.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Robbie Brown was on that team.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: He was also on his second stint with the Penguins, the guy that was really good in the late 80s, and by 1999 was you know a shell of his former self.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Also wasn't playing next to Lemieux, which really was his bread and butter for making him who he was.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I loved Robbie Brown, but he really wasn't that great without Lemieux next to him.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So just not a very good roster.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: The the goaltending duties, I I said Jagger was the only one left from the cup teams.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's not entirely true.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Barrasso is still one of the goaltenders, and he was the goaltender for the cup teams.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: But but by this point in his career, Barrasso is often injured, and um he's platooning with Peter Scootra in the net.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Barraso is still there, but he's certainly not that effective anymore.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the head coach at this point is a guy named Kevin Constantine.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: He he's actually heading into his second season.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: They had hired him the year before, and he was known for kind of being a disciplinarian.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um that was a little bit different of a of a coach to hire for the Penguins, but again, the the way the league was headed and the way the roster was made up, they decided that that would be a better approach, kind of hiring like a tough disciplinarian.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Constantine had been the coach of the San Jose Sharks when they were an expansion team.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: He had had some success there.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so um Craig Patrick and the ownership decided that this guy might might be you know the guy to to sort of take this new team over.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And again, disciplined defensive style coaching did not really gel that well with um the offensively geared penguins.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly did not gel well with Yaramir Jager.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Those two had some uh you know falling outs, I believe.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it still was there trying to, you know, play to the trend of defensive hockey, and I guess Jagger didn't chafed Jagger a little bit there.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I can't remember if the dying alive, the the infamous I'm dying alive comment was made during the Constantine era.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say it was.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the Penguins enter the season is a team that is still competitive, um, mainly because they have the best player in the league.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's certainly not a team that's anywhere close to competing for a Stanley Cup.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're really a middle-of-the-pack hockey team entering that season.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what's going on on the ice.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, there is a lot going on off the ice.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Howard Baldwin had bought the team from Eddie DeBartleau in 1991, and that was a good time to sell because the Penguins had just won the Stanley Cup.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're selling the best team in the league, right?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I guess they they're running out of malls to build.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can't have too many of those.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and they own the San Francisco 49ers as well.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but they he his father made his money building like Century 3 in a bunch of malls in Ohio.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're from Youngstown.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right, that's right.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot about that.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so I mean, so they they decided to sell the Penguins, and and Howard Baldwin is a guy that he was a movie producer, and he had owned some, I think some like minor league sports franchises, but this is kind of his first foray into major major pro sports.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Baldwin's entrepreneurial kind of strategy was to to buy things with very little of his own money invested.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, his his actual cash investment in the penguins was wait for this, it was$1,000.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: He bought the penguins with$1,000 cash.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Now I'm gonna used car.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I would have known you could buy an NHL franchise for$1,000.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: That would have been a good thing to know.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh the rest of it is assumed debt and capital provided by other partners.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so no, he doesn't just pay$1,000 and get the penguins.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: He he has to bring in partners.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And his biggest partner is a is a group called SMG.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're the group that manages the Civic Arena where the Penguins play at the time.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And he gives a large percentage of the revenue streams from the arena's luxury boxes and advertising and parking existence, all that kind of stuff.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: He gives that to SMG in return for the financing that Baldwin needs when he buys the team.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is an unusual deal.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Most sports franchises receive most uh of the revenue from their arena arena or stadium operations.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's why you have sports teams holding cities hostages hostage over new buildings, right?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because they get so much revenue from those luxury boxes and things of that nature.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, plus I think most of the owners realize that owning a building is basically a white elephant.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Because, you know, it for some reason those things don't seem to appreciate like a normal real estate.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure why.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: But um it seems to be that once they can offload that expense onto the uh local government, which is sucker enough to go for it, you know, why you're giving billionaires you know free stuff, I don't know.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: But hey, it is what it is, and if you can do it, more power to you, I guess.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's and that's what owners typically do.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um in this case, um Baldwin has an older building and he's not getting a lot of the revenue from it.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that ends up that ends up causing some problems later.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um at the same time, that's happening.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: He also starts giving out enormous contracts in an effort to keep the team relevant in Pittsburgh.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's that's not you know that that you could say that was a bad idea.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think it was.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was it was kind of what he had to do at the time.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um number one, um, player salaries are skyrocketing in general.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, the NHL had had finally had a real TV contract, and the the league is making a lot more money, it's becoming a lot more in the spotlight.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so player salaries in general were growing going up.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think also, you know, he he looks across town, he sees what's happening with the pirates, where they were losing all their big stars and they were starting to become irrelevant.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the penguins did not have the general generational kind of um um set of fans that the Steelers and Pirates did.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Steelers and Pirates had, you know, my dad was a fan, and his dad was a fan.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the penguins really didn't have that.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: The penguins' popularity was still fairly new at this time.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it I think too, what what happened, and we've I think I've said this before, is like the um the way that the um NHL was structured was more like baseball, whereas like you have all these regional networks because you have 82 games to cover, right?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so it's not like football where they negotiate as an NFL as a whole.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: There are some games that are nationally televised, but for the most part, it's regional.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: And when you end up with regional con TV contracts like that, you run into the same problems that baseball has, where you have teams, markets like New York, maybe not LA at the time, but definitely New York, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Montreal, especially Toronto and New York, it's just a license to print money.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the money that they can put up and generate through their regional TV contract is not a revenue stream that the Penguins would have access to.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that was something else that works against, you know, the pirates worked against the penguins at that time until Hockey finally, you know, saw the handwriting on the wall and realized they were either gonna go the way of the dodo or get a salary cap.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: So Right.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't happen until the mid-2000s.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So so at this point, you have the big salaries.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you you mentioned that the penguins aren't a big market team.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, other other smaller market teams could afford those big salaries because they had the revenues from their buildings, from the readily afford it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely had gave them another competitive advantage on top of you know the penguins, yeah.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, and by afford I mean like not bankrupt you.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and and I guess it's all relative, it's a relative term, yeah.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and and Baldwin, so Baldwin doesn't have that because he gave he gave all that away to SNG.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So now he's stuck with the cost side of things.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: But unlike other owners that are doing this, he's unable to make up for it on the revenue side.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um as the decade goes on, Baldwin makes more bad decisions.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: He accepts a$12 million improvement to the Civic Arena from city officials rather than jumping on the bandwagon with the Steelers and Pirates for a new building.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he he basically takes a payoff here.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: We'll make some improvements to the Civic Arena, which by this point is the oldest building in the NHL.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, rather than trying to force the politicians to build him a new building.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: The Steelers and Pirates are successful in that endeavor, of course.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and he's, you know, all he gets is a measly$12 million improvement, which doesn't do all that much.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: He also turns over a lot of the advertising and marketing rights to Fox Sports Pittsburgh, that's the the network that televises the penguins.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: He turns that over because he needs cash.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: So um he's just sort of making bad decision after bad decision, trying to get to the next year, you know, trying to basically stay keep his head above water.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um when Lemieux retires, uh the Penguins still owe him$32 million.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what had happened with Mario Lemieux was uh he was the highest paid player on the team, and the team had asked him repeatedly to defer his salary until later.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now you you might ask, why would Lemieu even even consider doing that?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um it it benefited Lemieux also, because if Lemieux says no, you need to pay me now, then he knows the team is gonna say, okay, well that means we can't keep this guy, your winger, or that defenseman, that puck moving defenseman that helps you score goals, right?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Mario wanted to win another cup.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: He agrees to keep deferring his salary, but when he retires, he says, Okay, uh you still owe me that$32 million in deferred salary, um, you know, and I'm entitled to that, and and I want my rest of my salary because I I kept deferring it at your request, which anybody would, right?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Mario was uh definitely good for that.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it's a shame he you know eventually, yeah.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it does work out for him in the end, but that definitely was kind of a really bad deal for him there.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: It it was, it was.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that happens when he retires, attendance plummets.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I never realized this until I until I saw the figure when I was doing the research for this episode.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: What season ticket sales in Mario's last year uh were 12,000.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: They sold 12,000 season tickets.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: The year after that, they only sell 8,000 season tickets.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's gonna be a problem.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even think what was the the exceeding capacity of the that arena?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: Was it 16, 15, 16?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, something like that.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I mean, not only do you lose 25%, you're only at half capacity.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: So you're you're really I mean, you're really depending on walk-ups to make your money.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, which you know is dependent on you being good, which is dependent on so many other weather that night, I mean everything, right?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Baldwin um brings in a guy named Roger Marino, who is a computer storage company executive from Boston, to invest$42 million of capital.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this happens in 1997.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Baldwin, um sorry, Marino loses most of that money.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh later says he didn't realize how terrible Baldwin's previous decisions had been.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um by the fall, by the fall of 1998, when this season is about to begin, uh Merino, who who now owns the majority stake in the team, decides to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so that's really where this all culminates.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: A whole decade of bad financial decisions in the fall of 1998 culminates with the team having to declare bankruptcy.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Which is saying a lot, Steve.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, from a team that won back-to-back Stanley Cups just a few years earlier.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, bankrupt is not a good place, although uh was that's chapter 11.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: So that's well, that's just reorganization, right?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's chapter 13 is you're selling like the the the shelving and the seats out of the building.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just a reorganization, which isn't as bad as chapter 13.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: You're not, you know, think, you know, sears and you know that's chapter 13 where you're not around anymore.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 11 is the is definitely the first step.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, and and that is meant to protect you from your creditors as well.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, normally if you can come up with a plan that you can make money and pay them back, you can come out of that eventually.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Chapter 13 is the one where you're um, yep, it was nice, but we're done.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're out, maybe.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and coming up with the the funds to get out of chapter 11 is gonna be difficult.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, so we mentioned Mario Lemieux.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Where is Mario and all this?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: So he retires in the spring of 1997.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it when he retired, he had said real openly, his plans were to play golf and spend time with his family.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: He he was not gonna be a coach or he wasn't gonna be in a studio announcer or anything like that for the league.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: He just wanted to live a quiet life.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he was gonna stay in Pittsburgh, but he wanted to, you know, he wanted to just be a family man and and and sort of get away from all this.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when the team declares bankruptcy in the fall of nineteen ninety eight, Lemieux, who is an uninsured creditor, he stands to get absolutely nothing.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a big people don't realize that.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because I only know this because I know people have gone through this.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like your last paycheck, they can.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Pay you ten cents on the dollar.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know what ten cents on the dollar of thirty-two million, but well, he he did definitely gonna be ninety percent less than you should be getting.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: He he he did sue Marino and he won, I believe it was five million dollars, so maybe that's the ten cents that you're talking about, or or whatever that whatever that equivalent is.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um but that was all he got, and that was not a lot.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean you figure uh$32 million, that was years and years of of him playing for the penguins that he was owed.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So now um, you know, he starts meeting with his advisors to talk about what do we do?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so now Mario's got a big problem.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So as the season starts under this just ginormous cloud of um financial ruin.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: The the players are able to focus on hockey though.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um at least that's what they're saying in the press.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: I I went and I tried to find a bunch of old news stories from that early in that season.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, at least at least, again, in the media, the players are saying, you know what, this doesn't really affect us.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um the team's still able to meet payroll barely, um, thanks to loans and other, you mentioned Steve, chapter 11, other reorg.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So they are able to you know write checks.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you're an employee, if you're a player, um, you know, some of these guys that play for other teams, you know, it I guess as long as you're still getting paid, as long as you're still at practice every day and playing the games, I I can see where maybe it doesn't really affect you as a player.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um they they do mention some things like they're not staying at luxury hotels on the road anymore.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I did find a story about there was a there was a broken water pump uh in the hot tub at their practice facility that that didn't get fixed because the company that installed it never got paid.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so there were little things like that, um, but nothing to you know to be like, oh, whoa was us, we can't we can't go on with this season.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: So so the the financial issues aren't really interfering with the the team's ability to play.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and as the season kind of starts going, the penguins come out of the gate and they're they're mediocre, and that's really what everybody expected of them.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um they they make a big trade in late November of that year.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: They they trade Peter Nedved and Chris Tamer and Sean Pronger to the Rangers, and they get Alexei Kovilev.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Alexei Kovalov was a guy that um was a big talent, had never really quite lived up to that talent, and ends up being a really good trade for the penguins in in the long term.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: In the short term, it's it's it doesn't really do all that much.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Kovalev doesn't come to Pittsburgh and light things on fire.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um again, he does later, a few years later, but that first year he doesn't do all that much.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: He could really skate.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: And like I know Don Cherry would sometimes say he dances too much because it he could at times like make unnecessary movements, but he could really like it was almost like I don't know to come by like Michael Jordan, yeah, like where he could really fake a guy out of his own skates, and that was that was you know, he was really good at that, you know.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of years later, um, they put him on a line with Stracka and with Robert Lange.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that was after Mario came back, and um and that line was just amazing.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and so those guys ended up again becoming really good players.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at kind of the the stats and everything for that season, Kovalev doesn't really end up being that big of a contributor.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So so by by late January, by the all-star break, the team's 20 and 15, and they're hovering right around that that line of playoff teams, or teams that qualify for the playoffs.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they they're like one point ahead or something, you know, they could easily fall out of the playoff picture.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: So again, middle of the pack, sort of where everybody expected them.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: After the all-star break, they get hot.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they reel off a 10-game winning streak, which is a big deal.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: 10 games in a row in hockey is not easy to win.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's significant, and it's really fortunate because it it does save their season.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because in their last 30 games, they only win six of their final 30 games.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now I think you know, a handful of those at least were ties, and you still get a point for a tie back then.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but they did not win a lot of games at the end of the season, six of their final 30, and they finished the regular season as the number eight seed, which is the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: So they barely, just barely, squeak into the playoffs.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one last note on the regular season before we start talking about the playoffs.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the the final regular season game is scheduled to be played at Madison Square Garden.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Wayne Gretzky, who's playing for the Rangers at this point, announces that he's going to retire.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: So this ends up being uh Wayne Gretzky's final ever game against the Penguins at Madison Square Garden.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a big deal.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: That gets a ton of fanfare.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think they painted like 99 on the ice.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, just a just a big deal.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um the game goes into overtime, and Jagger actually scores the game-winning goal in overtime.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and Steve, I don't I don't know how you feel about Wayne Gretzky.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I never I never like hated Wayne Gretzky.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: I respected him.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: He was he's a great player, and and I it's hard to hard to not say he's you know the greatest ever, um, just based on the records and everything.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I I always resented the fact that you know he he was always worshipped as this like greater than Lemieux.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I just Lemieux was I just always thought Lemieux had more talent.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Lemieux just had the injuries and the unfortunate luck.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: He also didn't have the the players around him that Gretzky had early in his career.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the refs didn't let people hit him.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Ty Domi would beat people up.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they they they had he had a lot of other things going for him.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: And two, it's always like it's a contrast of style.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas I thought Lemieux was more of a one-on-one player, although Lemieux could pass too, and Gretzky was more of a distributor.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's kind of like pick your poison, like it's almost like a point guard in basketball.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want the guy that drives the basket?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, uh, I don't know what am I thinking of, like Isaiah Thomas or like well, Michael Jordan really isn't a paint guard, or do you want Magic Johnson who's gonna be the distributor?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: And the same thing with Gretzky and even Crosby, they're more of a distributed, although they both could score goals and they scored a lot of goals.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you want Ovechkin who's just that right and not a center, but a right winger is just gonna absolutely blister the puck from that dot, you know, and score a lot of goals that way.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it is a contrast of styles, but there were some other stuff too, was Gretzky was English Canadian and Lemieux is French Canadian, and Canada's a weird country.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: I've done business with that country.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like when I mainly I would ship a lot of stuff for a warehouse, and we had a warehouse in Nova Scotia, and you would hope that it didn't go through Montreal because it would take three extra days, because the French Canadians would always want to stick it to the English Canadians in Nova Scotia, and it's just an odd dynamic.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then you throw in the Native Americans and the the Western part of the country, it's kind of its own little deal.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's an odd little dynamic there, and I think that kind of carried over.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like Madden always says that about you know that they didn't they kind of stuck it to Lemieux because they didn't like investing as French Canadian, not English Canadian.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that definitely seeped into the media because um the the the most egregious example of that was the 1989 season.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Mario Lemieux uh won the scoring title by 31 points, and I believe the difference was all goals over Gretzky.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: 31 points, and they gave the hard trophy to Gretzky because that was Gretzky's first year in Los Angeles, and they wanted it to be like, oh, look how he you know revived hockey in the United States and all this stuff.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, Lemieux was had had a way better season, and that was when Lemieux, I believe when Lemieux famously made the quote about um the only the only award he cared about was the Art Ross, the scoring title because nobody voted on it.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: I agree with him on that.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I don't follow the Heisman or NL NFL MVP.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really care.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_02: Lamar Jackson, congratulations.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, how was that first round playoff loss, buddy?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, NFL P NFL MVP.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's with all the Heismans.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what does it mean?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: Ty Detmer, what did Ty Detmer ever do?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: He had a barely mediocre career.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just a it's just like you know, a Miss America war, you know, nice thing to have, but I mean it doesn't mean much to me.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm with Mario on that one.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: You can't fake goals.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: It either went in or it didn't.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's getting like it's got at least they got like that with the Vesna, too.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: The goalie award, like who has the lowest save percentage?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: There's your number, take it or leave it, you know?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and so so I didn't again, I didn't hate Gretzky.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's a great player, you're never gonna, you know, be ridiculous to say otherwise, but I I remember watching that game, kind of feeling a little bit uh of of guilty pleasure.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Guilty pleasure.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: He was sitting on the bench when Jagger scores that goal.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it would have been better if he was on the ice.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just kind of Jager ends ends Gretzky's career with an overtime goal.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: And did Jagger do the salute to because remember he always did the Denver like oh yeah.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or no, that was the Atlanta Falcons, wasn't it?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: No, it was the Denver.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: Then they do Denver Salute, yeah.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Falcons were the Falcons were the dirty bird or whatever.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I think we're getting off track here, but but it's it's a little of a passing of the torch moment.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Gretzky is certainly not the best player in the league, had not been for quite a few years at that point.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's definitely not retiring at the top of his game.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: But Jagger at this point is.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um Jagger wins the scoring title that year.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Jagger also eventually wins the Hart Trophy.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only um Hart Trophy he ever wins, his only MVP award.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he's at the absolute height of his powers in 1999.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the regular season ends, um, but but the whole bankruptcy situation is far from settled.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: The two biggest creditors were SMG, who, as we mentioned, the group that owns the arena, and Mario.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And both of them are entertaining the same idea, which is hey, we can recover at least some of the cash owed to us by buying the franchise out of bankruptcy.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: So both of those groups are putting together plans.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: However, that being said, everything's still up in the air.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there was talk of moving the franchise.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, of course, you know, anytime something like this happens, it's like, oh, maybe they'll move to another city.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: But but there really isn't an out-of-town buyer interested.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there's actually a real prospect, as hard as this is to believe, of just literally dissolving the franchise.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um now, now that's happened many times in pro sports leagues before, but but typically it's either in you know, lesser-known sports leagues, or if it's in in one of the major sports leagues, you know, it was back in 1929 when like the the Lancaster Maroons or whatever folded in the middle of the city.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not the Pottsville Maroons, no.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's some you know, it's some bygone era.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um might have been the Canton Bulldogs or But you know, in 1999, so so you think of it as happening, you know, when before these leagues were were were well known.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, it the in the four um big North American sports leagues, that's NFL, NHL, MLB, and NBA, the the last franchise to cease operations uh is the Cleveland Barons, an NHL team, and that actually happens in 1978.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't it was only 20 years before this that a major sports franchise and an NHL franchise had folded.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and of course, you know, figures it was a Cleveland team.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but it's not it's not out of the question that that could happen, or the team could just cease to exist.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so so that's that's where things are headed into the playoffs.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: The first uh round playoff opponent is the number one seed, and that's the New Jersey Devils.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we mentioned the Devils before when we talked about the trap and this era of clutch and grab.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um no no franchise perfected that style like the New Jersey Devils.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: They are the absolute powerhouse team of this era.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Between 1995 and 2003, they win the Eastern Conference four different times and they win the Stanley Cup three times.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: They have um not only you know a great defense in that style that they play, but they have arguably the league's best goaltender.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Steve, you mentioned him before Martin Verdeur.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's just a shutdown goaltender.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: The the style, everything that they do fits around Martin Verdeur.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Was the only was the only team to really stop them the Red Wings?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: And did the Red Wings ever beat them in the finals?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, they beat the Red Wings in the finals.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: When did the Red Wings do back to back?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: Wasn't that 99?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, so the the Devils beat the Red Wings in 95, um, they beat the Stars in 2000, and they beat the Ducks in 2003.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: The team that beat them in the finals was the Colorado Avalanche in 2001, and that was a seven-game series.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that went right down to the end.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so yeah, they they they won three cups and they almost won a fourth.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: They were one game away from winning a fourth.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: So very good team.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not not a popular team.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Usually when you have teams that win that are dynasties, you have like a bandwagon set of fans.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have fans from uh outside that market that root for the team because they're winners.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um that didn't really happen with the Devils, you know.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was because I think nobody really liked the style that they played.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was hard to get on board and be like, yeah, that team's awesome.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, like it is with like a you know, I don't know, Golden State Warriors and Steph Curry.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: Where do they they play in New Jersey?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what's that, the uh the Meadowlands?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't think there's like a really big like metropolitan fan base.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: You have the Rangers and the Islanders in New York, and then you kind of have like the you know when they you know when they had you know where they had their Stanley Cup parades at?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: Where?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: In the parking lot.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: They did have the parking lot of uh the Meadowlands, yeah.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: Nice drive it was seriously not even I don't know where else they could have had them in New Jersey, but I guess apparently not.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so not not well liked, and you know, but you know, it's very successful, nonetheless.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can't can't say they weren't successful, for sure.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and this year, 1999, they're the number one seeds.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're obviously heavy favorites uh in a one-to-eight matchup.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the other reason that they're heavy favorites is because Jagger enters the series suffering from a pretty severe brain injury.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um that just gotten worse and worse as the end of the season um came.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and so game one uh is in New Jersey and the Devils win.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a close game.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Penguins actually outshoot the Devils in game one.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: But Brodor makes some big saves.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Peter Socorro for the Devils um scores twice.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Peter Scorer, of course, later becomes a penguin.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Wonder if we predicted any of those goals.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and and you know, Jagger in that first game, he really struggles.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um the the the Devils, uh again, Brodor really was what made them tick, but they had these defensemen, Scott Stevens, a Hall of Famer, Scott Niedermeyer, I believe, is also a Hall of Famer.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um they were both all over Jager, and he's he's clearly not 100%.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: He can't he can't do anything.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and so the Devils take game one.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then the series like right off the bat gets ugly.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Penguins had acquired uh Matthew Barnaby in a late season trade.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew Barnaby, Steve, how would you describe him?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's not a goon.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: No, he's like one of those classic agitators.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like he's not gonna like, I mean, he'll fight you, but that's not like he's not like um like Donald Brashir or like you know, Ty Domey.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: I already mentioned it.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: He's not like a fighter, he's more of like an instigator where he tries to get you to take a penalty.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: He'll do like little cross checks when, or like, you know, when they get in the glass and they put their glove up in the face, you know, give them a face wash, like stuff like that, like stuff that's not necessarily a penalty.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: Sean Avery, perfect example, like stand in front of that.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: Was my favorite, like he did was that Brodore or Halunquit?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: That was Pro Dor because he played for the Rangers.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: And he could they remember the NHL had to change the role the next day because he put his hand in front of Brodor's?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yeah.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's Sean Avery is probably a perfect example of that.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and and if you remember Sean Avery, you're right.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew Barnaby was a very similar player to Avery.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: He wasn't a goon, he wasn't a great player, he was like a mediocre player, but he just would just get under people's skin, just do it, like I said, like literally putting your hand in front of Bird Doors, right?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: And you didn't know who to root for in that case.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, yeah, and and Barnaby, so so getting under the skin, he immediately um ignites a feud with Devil's Defenseman Lyle Odoline.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I should say re-ignites because that's actually a long-standing feud, Barnaby and Odoline from Barnaby's Days in Buffalo.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um, he calls Odoline Cornelius.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've never seen Planet of the Apes, Steve, but apparently he thinks that.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why you didn't go with Dr.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sayus.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: Did you ever remember The Simpsons and the musical version for Troy?
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, that's my like only human apes reference.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I already know the spoiler of how it ends.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that's not how the movie ends.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I know.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: But it's a great movie.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: You should really watch it.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's the opposite of what the uh Troy McClure version is.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I digress.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: So Cornelius was the young uh kid who was kind of like didn't was kind of uh naive.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I think but he looks like an ape, right, yeah.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so I guess it was probably more of what I guess Matthew Barnaby was hinting at, not that is this guy, maybe this guy was naive, I don't know.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so Odoline then is quoted as saying um that Barnaby's wife Christina is quote, god awful to look at.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: So below the belt.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean they're just taking like real personal shots at each other.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that kind of adds some fun to the series.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: But but on the ice, um, you know, it things aren't aren't trending up for the penguins because Yager uh for game two is now out.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, game one again, he was hobbled.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: In game two, he just can't play.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happens?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow the Penguins pull off a four-to-one victory in New Jersey in game two, which is stunning.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: They come back to Pittsburgh for game three, and again without Jagger, and again, they win.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: They they this time they overcome a three to two deficit with two goals in the first minute of the third period, and then it end up hanging on for a four-two victory.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Straka has a hat-trick, the Civic Arena is rocking.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: The post Gazette the day after in their write-up uh says that it feels like 1992 in the Civic Arena.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden the Penguins are up two to one in the series, and and the Jersey fans in the the media um start getting nervous because the the the Devils uh had won their division each of the previous two seasons, but were upset in the playoffs each time by a lower seed.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this 99 team was even better than those two teams, and now they're down two to one in the series to the number eight seed, who's playing without their best player.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: So definitely some some consternation there on the on the devil side.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, as good teams often do, New Jersey kind of writes the ship.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they win game four in Pittsburgh, and then they go back to New Jersey and they win game five.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: And at this point now the this pendulum has completely swung the other way.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: New Jersey once again looks like a wild-oiled machine, and the the pens just look overmatched.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I just I remember watching those games, okay, well, you know, we we showed some life, that's good.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: But but they're just better.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they were just better than us.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and we had no answer.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: And and so now um the Penguins are on the brink of elimination, headed back to Pittsburgh for game six.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the good news is that Yager, who has not played in games two through five, is going to come back for game six because the the whole season's on the line.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so he's gonna force himself to play.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody knew if you know he was gonna be anywhere near effective, but it was worth giving it a shot because this was it.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think he had some accuracy.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what did it?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: There's a little needle, so you don't work the trick.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: So so game six is played on May 2nd, 1999.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's an afternoon game.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a Sunday afternoon game in Pittsburgh.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was an eerie kind of feeling when the game starts.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember watching this.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was in my dorm room at Duquesne University.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: I just finished my finals.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was watching it by myself.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't know how fans have felt of teams, you know, um that have moved or that you know may not exist anymore, you know, kind of watching what may be that last game.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: But but for me, I just remember like, this is so strange.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like this might be seriously, me it might be the last time I ever watched my favorite team play because they may not, they may move to another city, or what seemed more likely at the time, they may just not exist anymore after today.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just a weird feeling.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: I it's the only time in my life as a sports fan I ever had that situation.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the feeling going into the game.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of other people, you know, obviously in Pittsburgh, felt the same way.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Devils um take a one-on-one lead in the first period, the Penguins even up in the second.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but then in the third period, Niedermeier scores on a power play, and that gives New Jersey a two-to-one lead.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a two-to-one lead is just absolute gold for a team like the Devils that play that defensive mind-minded game, that have the best goaltender.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh holding a two-to-one lead is not a challenge for them.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, now the Penguins are frantically trying to come back, um, but you know, they're not having any success.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: The minutes start to tick away.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: I remember in my head, I'm like flashing back to like the Stanley Cup years and my favorite moments, just kind of trying to savor what could be the last few minutes of a penguin hockey that I'll ever see.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: Umger, meanwhile, he's not giving up.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he ends up playing 29 minutes in this game, despite the major injury.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, he's he's arguably the best player on the ice that day.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it you know, as the minutes tick away, it's it does doesn't matter on the scoreboard because it's two to one devils.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, one one thing you can say about Jagger, Jagger certainly has a checkered history in Pittsburgh.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of love-hate with Jagger, but but he was always clutched.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I think, in my opinion, Steve, one of the most clutch players in the history of Pittsburgh Sports.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you look at some of the goals he scored.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: Even in 91, didn't he come off the bench and score one in overtime against somebody?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was against Boston, I think.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then 92 he was part of that big comeback against the Blackhawks in the game one.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, he scored that magnificent goal, yep.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, we're leading up to this.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yes.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, with under two minutes left, um, Titov kind of storms into the the devil's end, and he's pushed into the corner, he kind of um flutters the puck back towards the net where Jager is.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Brodour standing right in front of the net, and Jagger somehow jams it through to tie the game and send it to overtime.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you watch the replay of that goal, I I still don't know exactly how it went in, um, but somehow he gets it through, and uh it's shocking because the game's now going into overtime.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just a minute ago, your your rate your season's over, and you're you're assuming that the season's over and the franchise is over.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're headed into overtime.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that was pretty shocking.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um in overtime, the penguins definitely have the momentum because of that goal, you know, but the devils are still shutting them down, shutting them down.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um about nine minutes into overtime, uh, they finally get a chance, and that is when this happens.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: Pass didn't get there because of Stevens.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: Stevens fired it back off the board.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: Three big plays on this shift by Stevens.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: Three.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: So Stracker breaks in, uh he he crosses, does a cross pass, uh cross ice pass to Jager.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um Jagger beats uh Stevens on the play, beats Berdor, and he wins the game.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's a shocking and significant goal.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a goal that not only wins the game but breathes new life uh into the into the series and into the franchise.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the team obviously was bleeding money.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: The the home playoff games were huge moneymakers, and it was something that the team badly needed to be able to keep things going and to possibly be able to close a deal with another buyer.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I want to read what Jager said about that goal years later.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: He said, quote, I remember that like it happened yesterday.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we were losing three to two in the series, and if we would lose the first round, I think the team would move to Kansas City because they had no money.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: We had to make the second round to get the money for the payments.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: I came back and tied up with a minute and a half to go, then I scored in overtime.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: That was probably my best game ever, I would say.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: My most important for sure, I'll never score a goal that important.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Probably if I hadn't scored that goal, the team wouldn't be in Pittsburgh right now.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sydney Crosby would be playing somewhere else.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, geez, it's a lot of repercussions there from one goal.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um the the Penguins end up winning game seven at New Jersey.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh they still had to win game seven, but they do.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the Devils players openly admit uh in the media that the series was lost when Jagger tied and won the game, uh, game six in Pittsburgh.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they they didn't give up for Game 7, I'm sure they still tried, but they knew at that point it was over.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and and so the Penguins went on to play a second round.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: They play play a pretty spirited second round against the Maple Leafs, but they're ultimately eliminated in six games.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, they they still went a lot further than everybody thought they would.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then later that summer.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure two or well, how many games did they play?
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: They play six, so they're probably still the eighth seed.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: So what they got?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: Two more home games out of that.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: It would it would have been three, six games, you would have been.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, three more sellouts.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: I remember there were a lot of Maple Leafs fans in town, too.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_02: I guess it isn't that long a try, but hey, money's money.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: I went to I went to one of those games against Toronto, and um, there were a lot of Maple Leafs fans.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, like you said, they were packed.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's all right.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: The Penguins have won five Stanley Cups since 1967.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know how many the Toronto Maple Leafs have won since 1967?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a number less than one.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know that.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's zero.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: How how do you screw that up with all that money?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they literally have money to burn, and you can't win one in what is it, 50 years?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_02: Come on.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's a shame.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a big win in game seven in a uh spirited second round series against the layout.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: The Leafs are uh unfortunately fall short.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um as they say, the uh rest is history because later that summer uh Mario instead of taking his 32 million, just um takes his uh takes it out as uh team.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: They give him the team pretty much, you know.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it was uh you know a big decision for Mario.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: He did take a chance, but he believed in hockey in Pittsburgh and you know, really it was you know makes him a legend.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: Outside of the chief, I would say uh Art Rudy Sr.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: He's probably the second most legendary owner in Pittsburgh sports.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean the Galbrace owned the Pirates, but really for longevity and saving a sport and keeping a team alive through the rough years, for my money, I think it's the chief and then Mario maybe second, and maybe not, maybe not even, might be one A, one B.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: Because they're both great people that do a lot of great things for people, and I'm sure there's many more stories we'll hear as Mario gets older about you know how good of a person he is.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, he he's given he gives money to uh cancer research.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's a whole floor in um the Hillman Cancer Center named after him.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um he is he's donated money for rooms for children at children's hospital.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, he's very, very chief.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: He's it reminds me a lot of like the chief, even though it's kind of weird that you know he's not necessarily he didn't grow up in Pittsburgh, he grew up in Montreal, but yeah, very interesting.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, there's very much characteristics between those two people.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and you know, Mario, to me, Mario's the real hero of the story.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I you know, so so let's talk about that.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: Did that goal literally save the team, as Jagger said?
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and by the way, Jagger's not the only one to say that.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Paul Staggerwallet has said that there's been lots of other people that have said, you know, that goal made all the difference.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: If Jagger doesn't score that goal, if the devils get the next goal, you know, we may not have the Penguins anymore.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um how much legitimacy is there to that?
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I don't know that we'll ever know the answer to that question for sure.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I I think it a little bit it overshadows the fact that, you know, to your point, Steve, the the real hero here is Mario Lemieux.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um a couple years ago, um the Post Gazette did a long form story on Lemieux, and they they delved into the events that were going on at this time.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and again, you know, the the the whole strategy uh for for Mario was to to buy the team and to get all his money up front.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, not not just not just get the team, but get all his money back is$32 million.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh they they're putting together this plan, and there's a story where um Mario's uh attorney, a guy named Chuck Greenberg, um gets a call from Mario on a Sunday morning, and this is what Greenberg said.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: He said, uh Mario called me and said, quote, I've been up all night thinking.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: If I went through everything I did in my career only for the Penguins to have to leave town a couple of years later, what have I really accomplished?
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: We have to make sure they stay in Pittsburgh.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Lemu had decided that he was no longer going to receive any money after acquiring the team.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: He would turn much of what he owed what much of what he was owed into equity and also contribute the five million dollars that he made from the lawsuit with Merino.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: Greenberg, his attorney, was taken aback.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: He asked Mario to take a minute and think about his family.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: He would be risking never getting the money or even losing money if the Penguins weren't successful.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way it has to be, Greenberg recalls Lemieux saying.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: When Team Lemieux told the bankruptcy judges about this change of strategy, they became the favorite option.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really the unselfishness of Mario Lemieux.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Steve, you mentioned it was a risk.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was a huge risk buying that team.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um the the the in that same story, uh, his agent said he was so worried that Mario was going to spend the rest of his life uh in the middle of Monroeville Mall hawking autographs just to try to make some of his money back.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, he had already gotten five million dollars in that lawsuit, and now he's gonna give that up and give up any chance of guaranteed money just for the the virtuous act of keeping the team in town.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, his attorney, his agent, all the all the people that you know were supposed to advise him are telling him that's a terrible business decision.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it is.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a good business decision at all.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: But Mario cared more about the team than he did about making it.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think he was ever gonna get that 32 million, and I'm sure he's seen that 32 million back plus, you know.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, well, you said they could they could have gone belly up, but very very easily they could have gone belly up.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he did eventually get the new, they desperately, like I've said before, like the Civic Arena was not a great place to watch hockey.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: It really wasn't.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like I remember going to games there and sitting in like level C, which is supposed to be not bad seats, and everybody kept standing up, and I kept wondering, and I noticed it was because the monitors and the overhang from the next level, you couldn't see the other side of the ice.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_02: To see the other side of the ice, you'd have to stand up.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so the console was a big improvement, and that helped keep the team in Pittsburgh.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been, you know, a great, a great thing for for the penguins and a great thing for the city.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_02: They have other events there, you know.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: You love to go see monster trucks run over stuff, that's always fun.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and concerts, and I think I've saw Billy Joel there a couple times, so you know it's benefited the city for sure.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget Disney on ice.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I've I've taken my daughters there as well.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't been to Disney on ice since I was a kid, geez.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's not um it's probably just like you remember just as bad.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: Only with like new characters Aladdin and Frozen.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so so yeah, I to me that that's Mary is the real the real reason that the team is saved.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, this goal, it it's still important.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um it and and honestly, it I think it has to rank as one of the most dramatic moments in Pittsburgh sports history.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the championship wasn't on the line like it was when Mass hit the home run or when San Antonio makes the catch in the Super Bowl.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, the entire fate of the franchise was up in the air.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: And there's really no other moment in Pittsburgh sports that has that kind of background to it.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, this is still a pretty important moment.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um it the aftermath of this, uh, the Devils go on to win the cup the following year.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at that point it was like, oh boy, this is going to be unfulfilled promise.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they bounce back, they win the cup in 2000, uh, and then they go back to the finals in 2001 by defeating the Penguins, getting revenge on the Penguins in the conference finals.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the Devils make up pretty well.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um Team Lemieux, as you said, Steve, makes up pretty well.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not right away.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's some some lean years there, but then they win the draft lottery for Sydney Crosby.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um the league implements a salary cap, all kinds of things, and the new building, like you said, you know, all kinds of things that that that favor the penguins.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I I would offer up that they are the toast of the town again.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and they're and they're quite on they're you know, with five Stanley Cups, they're the most successful expansion team in in uh outside of the original six, they're the most successful expansion team.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't think any other well the Flyers have two.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, who else St.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: Louis just won their first.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I I mean also also look what Tampa Bay, does Tampa Bay have just one still?
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, yep.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_02: And Carolina only has one.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right, Washington.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: Dallas has one.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_02: Buffaloes never won it.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so they really are the most successful.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the Kings have two.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's another expansion.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Devils, I think, came after the Penguins.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: They have three.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so there's they're definitely the most, you know, they're definitely the most successful uh expansive franchise, I would say.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and look at the even within the city, um, they've won three championships since anybody else in the city has won anything.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um the Steelers won the Super Bowl in 2008.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so they haven't won since, yeah.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, since then the Penguins have won three championships.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that's all possible thanks to you know, some combination of this goal and and Mario buying the team.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, but at least I think at least it proved the team could be viable again and kept them afloat long enough to Mario to finally kind of you know.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like I said, I think he made a calculation.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_02: I kind of could see 32 million, I could maybe see half of it, or keep the team in Pittsburgh, own a hockey team, and it, you know, not the worst thing in the world, you know.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_02: And uh Ken, it was a Ken Sawyer came on board as a or was that Burkle?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: Burkle.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: It was Burkle.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:00:46
  unknown: Right.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: Burkle came on board and helped out with some money stuff.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean it definitely, you know, he had to hit some green lights going downhill, but you know, things kind of broke broke out right for him, and it's nice to see the good guys win one.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's you know, you can assign whatever level of importance you want to this goal, but I'm glad we were not living in a world where we had to see what happens if Jagger doesn't score that goal, that's for sure.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: Any other final thoughts, Steve?
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_02: No, just uh great goal, and uh thank God for your armor, even though he never came back after all that.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: But uh we owe Yagger that one clutch player, Mario, you know, clutch in his own way, and uh you know, it all worked out for the Penguins.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks everybody for listening.
• 1:01:35
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• 1:01:39
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• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll catch you next time.