Hi and welcome to K Let's Talk, the podcast where we breakdown
storytelling across books, television and film with a
special love for book to screen adaptations.
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Let's talk. Hi everyone and welcome back to
the podcast. It's been a while since I sat
down to record. I went on a little trip to
Europe and took some time off. I'm excited to get back, press
the record button and talk to you guys about some hockey
related questions that I got as it pertains to the show Heated
Rivalry. So today that's what we're going
to discuss. I'm going to tackle a couple of
these questions. I've already talked about hockey
in some capacity and other Q&A videos, so if you haven't
listened to the previous Q&A videos, be sure to go back and
listen to those. There are some hockey related
questions that I answer in them, but this particular episode will
cover specifically hockey questions that I got asked over
on Instagram and also on TikTok and Threads.
As always, if you have any questions about the show that
you want me to cover in a future Q&A episode, please feel free to
send me a message on any of my socials.
I love getting to chat to people in the DMS and usually I have a
conversation with whoever's asking me the question prior to
picking that question out and putting it into my format for
these long form recordings. So please drop any that you
might have over on my socials. I look forward to reading all of
them and talking about them in these episodes.
And without further ado, let's get into the hockey specific
questions as it pertains to heated rivalry.
In my last Q&A video, I talked about the cap and how that works
with hockey players salaries and the teams and how they pay their
players and specifically how that relates to Shane and Ilya
and how their salaries are going to change once they both play on
the same team. And since they're both star
players, how does the team figure out what they pay them?
All of those details. So if that's a question you want
an answer for, go back and listen to my previous Q&A video
and you can hear my explanation for that in there.
The first question I have for this recording is why do NHL
players share hotel rooms? Is that normal?
And that's because in the show, it depicts that Shane and Hayden
are sharing a hotel room. And truthfully, that no longer
happens in the NHL. And that's because of a
collective bargaining agreement that happened back in 2013 where
the NHLPA, which is the National Hockey League Players
Association, they had mapped out and agreed upon updated version
of the collective bargaining agreement with the league and
its players, which you can find online if you're curious to read
about it. But in the 2013 agreement it
stated that any player on an SPC who is not in the entry level
system shall be entitled to a single room accommodation for
all Club Rd. trips. So to break that down further,
that means that the player has to be on an SPC, which means
standard player contract, and the player cannot be in the
entry level system, meaning they have to have an NHL contract.
So if the player normally plays in the AHL, which is the league
beneath the NHL, and gets called up to an NHL game, but they
aren't playing on an NHL contract for that game, they're
still on their two way contract between the AHL and the NHL.
They would not be required to get a single room while on the
road. And a two way NHL contract pays
a player a different salary depending on whether they're
playing up in an NHL game or in a minor league game.
And the player would receive a higher salary for an NHL game
and a lower one obviously for the minor league game.
So that's common for a lot of the developing players.
And the reason for those types of contracts is it provides the
team with a little more flexibility to manage their
salary cap and their roster, like I mentioned when we talked
about the salary cap question, but hopefully that answers your
question about sharing the hotel rooms.
That wouldn't happen for a team or a player rather that has ANHL
contract. They would be getting their own
room on the road. So that is an inaccuracy in
heated rivalry post 2013 in the timeline so keep that in mind.
Shane and Hayden would not be sharing a room.
The next question is why are fights a part of the game?
And I got that in many iterations, a few different
ways, but the gist of the question was why are why is
there fighting in hockey? And fighting transparently has
been a very big part of the game since the the league was created
in 1917. And I would say it's almost
entirely ingrained into the sport because of the blue collar
nature of hockey and its association with being a tough,
physical sport. And a lot of the time the
fighting is being framed as a form of self policing for the
players. So if players believe that
there's a dangerous play or someone's playing dirty, that
sort of threat of a fight can sometimes keep the game a little
bit more safe for the star players who do not engage in
those types of scrums. And for a long time, it was kind
of believed that if the opposing team knew that there was a
player or an enforcer on your team that would hit you or fight
you if you threw a dirty hit or took a cheap shot on one of
their star players, then you're less likely to take those
liberties with the skilled guys. And the second reason for the
fighting in, I would argue this is probably the bigger reason,
is that it creates a very big momentum shift within a game.
It gets the crowd and the benches excited and energized if
you see someone sticking up for a teammate with a fight.
And recently there's been more rule changes and criticisms of
the fighting, so it has died down quite a lot.
And we see that it comes back more often in the playoffs
because the emotions are running really high during the playoffs.
But the game as a whole is much more focused on speed and skill
nowadays. So the need for fighting is no
longer as valued or necessary. And I would say that some fans
are not thrilled with that, but it does remain part of the game
because I think it's maintaining the tradition and fan service
that often comes with, you know, people seeing a fight in person.
And in the book series, players like Ryan Price, he's an
enforcer. So his entire career would have
been built around his ability to fight and protect the star
players on his team. But that doesn't happen as often
anymore. Players nowadays are expected to
be able to be skilled and you do have players and guys who are on
the 4th lines who are physical and tough, but they also are
talented so they can be involved in fights and scrums, but
they're also expected to produce points and put numbers on the
board. So there's far less Ryan Price
like players in the league now. And fighting is not as prevalent
I would say, but it is still very much a part of the game.
I think it always will be and I would argue that the main reason
for it is for those momentum swings that I talked about.
It can really change the speed of the game and the emotion of a
game and tilt the ice in one way or another for a team.
So if you're losing and you want to get energy up on your bench,
someone might drop the gloves with somebody just to get the
crowd going and and get the energy in the rink back up
again. Piggybacking off of that
question, the next one is, are chirps and fighting necessary or
legal? And I would say yes, both are
legal and I would argue necessary.
It's very much a part of the game culturally.
Again, like the fighting and yes, you're allowed to chirp.
It happens all game long. The fighting occurs often times
when you know a player is fed up with another player.
Or again, just if, if two guys know each other and they they
know that the other player has a reputation for dropping the
gloves and is willing to fight. Sometimes they'll tap them at a
face off and say, hey, you want to go and they'll just drop the
gloves right away and, and start the game off with a fight or
start the period off with a fight.
So we saw that in the Four Nations tournament last year.
That was a perfect example of, you know, a player just dropping
the gloves for a momentum swing at the start of the game.
So yeah, I, I, I don't want to say it's necessary, but it's
used for a very specific reason, which is a momentum swing.
And just to explain the rules of fighting, because I think that
sometimes it can be confusing how that works.
So technically speaking, a fighting penalty would be when a
player repeatedly punches or attempts to punch an opponent.
When two players grapple in a way that prevents the officials
from being able to separate them so they have their arms on one
another and the referees can't separate the two of them.
Most of the time when they're assessing penalties, they'll
have to figure out each player that was involved in the fight,
who started it and who continued it.
And oftentimes the player that's been labeled as the aggressor or
the person who, you know, continues throwing punches even
after the other player is no longer fighting back, they're
deemed as the winner and they both will receive a 5 minute
major penalty. Or sometimes there's a game
misconduct if the player goes beyond that necessary threshold,
I would say. So that's kind of where the line
is crossed. Cost is sometimes there can be
additional penalties or misconduct penalties if the
instigator does more than they need to after they've clearly
already won the fight. During a fight, anyone who's not
partaking in the fight, they have to skate away or, you know,
go near a bench, particularly their own bench.
So in the show we saw that when Shane gets hurt, you can hear
the ref saying go back to your bench.
That's very common. If something's happening, they
usually try and get the other players that aren't partaking in
it to clear the area and go back to their bench area.
And sometimes if you don't do that, you can get your own
penalty for not listening. The goalies also have to stay in
their creases, so there's also been goalie fights.
So when the goalies leave their crease or crossover the red line
at the center of the ice, they can get penalties to the other
instance where the player might receive a misconduct or a game
misconduct would be if the player continues or tries to
continue fighting after being ordered to stop by the refs.
So sometimes the refs will put an end to the fight even if
there's no clear winner, and they'll intervene and break it
up. If the player then continues to
fight after that point, they can be issued another penalty.
So often times that will end up in a misconduct.
So the chirping, the the reason why that's relevant is that
being good at chirping, not only is it a point of pride, but
there's there's a line that a lot of these players kind of
ride. And it happens in women's hockey
too. I was never personally good at
chirping, but it's an effective way to get a rise out of players
you're matched up against with all game.
So it happens at the face off dots.
It also happens in the corners, it happens between the goalie
and the forwards on the other team.
It happens with defenseman who are defending in front of the
net with all the forwards. So they're matched up with
forwards all game, and it's funny and fun at times, but it
is also mainly used to draw penalties and get emotions out
of the other players so that they'll make mistakes.
And so in that sense, yeah, chirping is pretty necessary and
it's very much a part of the game for sure.
The next question was kind of a broad statement, but what is the
Prospect Cup? And interestingly, if you don't
already know this, in the show, it's called the Prospect Cup,
but in actuality, it's the World Junior Tournament.
And so the World Junior ice hockey Championships is what
it's technically called. It's a tournament hosted by the
International Ice Hockey Federation, and it happens every
year. It takes place at the end of
December into early January. And it's where the best players
from all of the qualified teams play against each other in this
really big tournament. A lot of those teams you'll
recognize Sweden, Finland, Canada, the US, of course,
Germany, Switzerland, Czechia, Slovakia.
I want to say there are a few other maybe Kazakhstan teams and
obviously Russia, but Russia is currently not permitted to
participate and they haven't been since 2022.
But the tournament is largely used as sort of another form of
a tryout for players that are hoping to make an NHL team or to
get drafted because the players participating in the tournament
must be under 20 years old. And that is the age group, 18 to
20 of amateur players that are able to take part in the NHL
draft. In regards to the Prospect Cup,
in the show and also in, you know, real life, there is a big
emphasis on Canada and Russia's rivalry because in large part
the NHL players for a long time were not able to compete in the
Olympics. So this tournament was one of
the very few opportunities that a Canadian player or AUS player
would have the opportunity to play against the Soviets for a
long time. So Canada and Russia, they're
the two teams that have won the most titles in the history of
the world junior tournament. So that rivalry between them
continues and is very, very real.
So that depiction is very, very accurate.
And specifically I remember in the show Ilya's father talks
about having to beat Shane and Canada.
That would be stemming again from this long standing rivalry
between the two countries in this specific tournament.
The next question was what is the draft?
So I'm again simplifying this quite a lot, but hopefully it
will be easy to understand and follow.
So the NHL draft is a draft where amateur players who are
between the ages of 18 and 20 are able to submit through
paperwork that they declare that they want to try and make an NHL
team and allow an NHL team to acquire the rights to sign them
to a professional contract. So they have to enter the draft,
they have to be over 18, under 20 and fill out paperwork,
submit it by a deadline. And all of the NHL teams have
scouts that go out all over the world to watch games.
They find talent when they're younger, they track their
performance, they evaluate them heavily, and they go to all of
these other major leagues that can include ones in Europe and
also in North America. There's leagues in Canada and
the US that these junior players would play in.
They also look at players in college teams who instead of
playing in these juniors, they can go to NCAA and play college
or the USHL is another Ave. that a lot of people in North America
take. In Canada, it's, you know, like
the OHL, the WHL, the Q. There's all these different
leagues. So scouts will watch those
players either in person or via game footage now, because a lot
of these games are streamed online.
And they'll kind of figure out who they like and keep tabs on
those kids so that they'll go into their development system
and hopefully one day make the NHL team because each NHL team
has feeder teams beneath it. So they have an AHL team and
then they have a ECHL team and they're all connected and in the
same system. So you can move up within those
two leagues and hopefully make the NHL team, which is, you
know, the pinnacle. Or you could stay in their
development program and be in the ECHL version or the NHL
version of that same program. Being drafted doesn't
automatically mean that you're going to play in the NHL.
They might, if they're good enough, go straight to the NHL.
That usually happens for people who are the top picks, which in
the show would be Shane and Ilya, who number one and two
overall. But a lot of them might go to
the AHL, which is the minor league, or they could choose to
stay in college or in their current league that they're
playing in. And then the the NHL team would
decide when they're ready to join one of their affiliate
teams or bump up into the NHL. So it's all based on that
specific players development needs.
So a player can be drafted, but then they can also not get
offered a formal contract or get signed to 1.
And if that happens then they can choose to re enter the draft
again or sign later on as a free agent.
So they're not obligated to sign to one team.
If they're a free agent, they can kind of shop around to other
teams. And like I said before, in order
to be eligible, the North American players, they can enter
into the draft between ages 18 and 20.
European players, It's a little different in terms of the actual
draft day itself. You don't have to be there in
person, but there are 7 rounds total.
The total number of players I think is like 224 or two, 225,
and it takes a few days. And most of the time the guys
that are going in the top rounds are the ones that actually
attend and sit in the audience. Because teams have large systems
of players spread out between the NHL, the AHL and their other
leagues at the ECHL, they're constantly trying to find and
develop talent and move players up and down as needed.
And so that's kind of good to remember that just because
you're drafted doesn't mean you're going to start playing in
the NHL right away. That's actually very, very rare.
So again, when we're talking about it in terms of heated
rivalry, the fact that Shane and Ilya both were drafted number
one and two overall and then played the next season, that's
just a sign again of how good they are.
That doesn't happen all the time.
It does, usually with the the 1st round draft picks.
A lot of them will will go right away, but again, not all.
It's really, really hard to do that.
The other thing to keep in mind that I think is relevant to the
show is that Shane and Ilya being chosen #1 and #2 overall.
That's in large part because of the draft order.
So the teams are all given a order or a number in which they
get to pick a player. And the order of the draft is
based on the inverse of the regular season standing.
So basically the worst teams get to pick earlier in the draft.
And they do this by using a draft lottery.
And that makes sure that teams don't purposely try to lose in
order to get a first round pick. But in the case of the show it
it does mean that Boston and Montreal had terrible seasons
before Shane and Ilya were drafted, and that's what put
them in positions to have the 1st and 2nd overall picks.
And so that draft lottery includes all of the teams who
did not make the playoffs. So just because you come in last
place, that doesn't automatically give you the first
round draft pick. All of those teams enter into a
lottery and then the lottery selects who gets the first,
second, third, 4th pick. And there's a lot more rules
within this, but I won't overcomplicate things.
Hopefully this gives you a pretty good idea of how the
draft works. The next question, again,
piggybacking off this concept, is what do the NHL playoffs look
like? Which we see them come up quite
a bit in the show. So just to simplify things,
there are 16 teams that qualify to play in the Stanley Cup
Playoffs in the show. It's called the MLH Cup and the
format of it is bracket style brackets that are division based
and then there are wild card teams.
So the top three teams in each division will make up the 1st 12
teams in the playoffs, and then the remaining 4 spots are filled
with the next two highest placed finishers in each conference,
which are considered wild cards. And that's based on regular
season records regardless of the division that they're in.
So it's possible for one division in each conference to
send five teams to the postseason, while another might
just send three of their teams to the postseason.
The position you get put in for the brackets gives you home ice
advantage for the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup
Playoffs. So the team that gets placed
higher at the end of the regular season, they will often get home
ice advantage and each of the four rounds of the play offs is
at best of seven. So the first team to win four
games advances to the next round.
In the first round of the play offs, the division winner with
the best record in each of those conferences will be matched
against the wild card team, which is the one with the lesser
record and the wild card team with the better record will play
the other division winner. Hopefully that makes sense.
The teams finishing second and third in each division meet
within the bracket by heading off against their respective
division winners. And then as we move through the
rounds, the second round sees the first round winners within
each bracket play one another to determine the four teams that
will participate in the conference finals.
So that takes place before the Stanley Cup Final.
So in the conference Final and the Stanley Cup Final, the home
ice advantage goes to the team that had the better regular
season record, regardless of the team's standing in their
division. So your regular season record
comes into play quite a bit in the playoffs, and they use it as
you move through each of the rounds.
And again, each round that you go in, it's the best of seven
series. Sometimes.
Almost all of these series will go to a Game 7.
And so that's a lot of hockey that these teams play in the
postseason. Everyone plays hurt.
It's really a grind. They get 2 days off in between
games. Sometimes you can have a team
that's playing a team on the other side of the country.
So there's a lot of travel time involved.
So it's really, really strenuous on the players.
Really intense, really fun, really fast, very emotional.
If you've never watched playoff hockey and you're trying to get
into hockey, I would highly encourage you to watch it this
spring. It's going to be starting very
soon and it's really fun hockey to watch.
The next question is how is women's hockey different from
men's hockey? Is there as much fighting?
So keep in mind that depending on where the games are being
held, the rules can change. So, for example, the PWHL has
different rules than the ones we saw in the Olympics, and the
same can be said for the NHL. The NHL has different rules than
the Olympic Games, rules that were implemented for the men as
well. But I would say the biggest
difference between the two is that fighting and the body
checking, which are not allowed in women's hockey.
It's starting to shift in the PWHL and it will trickle down
into the lower, lower levels, like the college game, some of
the club teams and high school levels.
But a lot of them are still operating under different rules
than the PWHL. And the big difference with that
is that women did not grow up learning how to check when
playing hockey like the men do. The men's side, they learn when
they're younger so that they know how to give and take a hit.
And the women, they didn't do that.
So hopefully as they move forward now with the youth
teams, that will change. The other difference for the pro
level is that women wear full face masks and men do not.
So women will wear cages or bubbles to protect their faces
and the men usually wear the half Shields.
I would say culturally they're pretty similar.
I don't want to get too in the weeds about that because my
particular experience is probably going to be different
than a woman's player playing in a different state or in another
country. But on the whole, I would say
that most of the differences are regarding the rules, and even
that is changing rapidly on the women's side.
So moving forward, it'll be interesting to see what else
changes for the women's game. The next question I got is how
did hockey get popular in warmer climates?
And I thought this was an interesting one, but also super
relevant. A lot of that was actually due
to the NHL itself pushing for the expansion of the league in
the 90s and the decision to put new teams into warmer climates.
O In the 90s we saw teams OU in Florida and Arizona and then in
2017 we got Vegas. We also have Dallas that showed
up in the 90s. So when those teams showed up in
those areas and those markets, it led to a lot more people
learning about the sport and there was more interest.
So there were rinks being built and more programs popping up in
those places. And so the game was able to grow
and kids watching the games in their areas wanted to learn how
to play. So it naturally took off.
It took, you know, a long time from the 90s until now for us to
see the trickle down effect of that.
But now there are players from all over the country who play
hockey and some of them are in the NHL.
Captain of Toronto is from Arizona, so a lot of the teams
before and players were contained to much of the
Northeast or you know, states like Minnesota, Michigan, all
those hockey hotbed places and then obviously Canada.
So the NHL is responsible for hockey getting popular and
warmer climates and the the push for the expansion of the league
in the 90s and making the markets in the South a priority
for them has really helped to grow the game.
The next question is I'm desperate to know what the
spitting on the bench is all about.
And I thought that would be a fun question to end this podcast
episode on. So I would say, I mean, and this
is my personal experience and take on this, but hockey players
spit on the bench quite a bit. On the men's side.
I can say for myself, I didn't spit really on the bench and
much of my teammates didn't spit on the bench.
But when you are playing hockey, it is a lot of cardio.
You are mouth breathing in a cold rink and the air can be
dry. You're also wearing a mouth
guard. There is a lot of spit that can,
you know, end up being a a factor, but I would say on the
whole, I would, I would compare it to baseball players who spit
sunflower seeds. It's, it's more of like a, a
habit that becomes heavily used by players.
I would say I, I more often would rinse my mouth out with
the water bottles and squirt my water bottle like Shane does in
the show, even though he did it incorrectly in the show.
And I actually had commented on, on someone's post and the guy,
one of the hockey players who helped out on the show to teach
Hudson and Connor kind of the little tricks of the trade of
mannerisms for hockey players. He confirmed what I suspected,
which is when Shane is leaning against the boards talking to
Hayden in episode 5, he he squirts the water into his mouth
and then he squirts the water onto the ice.
And it should have been the inverse.
He should have squirted the water onto the ice 1st and then
squirted the water into his mouth.
And I had commented on this thread and said that in large
part I would do that because the water bottles, the caps on them
are plastic and they get thrown around on the bench all the time
and they break. And so a lot of them, the water
coming out of the nozzle at the top, would not squirt straight,
and you would get it all over your face or all over your
jersey or all down the front of your equipment.
So I would check the cap of the water bottle before I squirted
it into my mouth to make sure that it was going to come out in
like a steady stream. So a lot of people will do that.
They'll squirt it first before they put it in their mouth.
And in the show, Hudson squirts it in his mouth and then squirts
it onto the ice. So I think he was meant to do
the inverse. And then the guy the hockey
player who had actually helped out, consulted on the show,
confirmed that I was right. So that was kind of a funny
detail. But yeah, I would say on the
men's side, think of the spitting on the bench like
baseball players with sunflower seeds.
It's just like a habitual nervous energy thing and a force
of habit. I would say a gross one, but
definitely a force of habit. As with smelling salts, if you
watch a NHL game, most of the time at the beginning of the
game or at the start of the second and third periods,
they'll put the camera on the benches and a lot of those guys
will do smelling salts. So there's a lot of little
things like that that if you watch enough hockey, you'll pick
up on, and if you play hockey, you pick up on too, because you
know you'll have a teammate who does something and you might
give it a try. And if you're superstitious,
you'll continue doing it. Like I put all my equipment on
my right side 1st and then my left.
So my right skate on 1st, then my left and I tie my right skate
first, then my left. Everyone has their own little
things. I would I would say spinning is
just like one of those cultural things like everyone on the
bench does it. So you just kind of join in.
And that happens with a lot of those little nuancey details
that I think the show did a good job trying to include.
So I'm going to end there. Hopefully this answers some of
the hockey related questions that people have and if you have
any more hockey related questions please let me know.
I love talking about them. There's not a lot of hockey in
the show, obviously, but what they do show is pretty
insightful and there is a lot of subtext within the hockey that
if people are curious, I love talking about it 'cause it is
relevant to the character development and it's going to
become even more important in Season 2.
So hopefully the show makes some hockey fans out of people and
you'll watch the playoffs and then going into Season 2, you'll
have a better idea of what's going on with the players and
what they're facing. As always, if you made it this
far into the episode, thank you so much for listening.
I really appreciate it and I will be back soon with another
episode. Let me know if you have any
topics you want me to cover. I've already got a good chunk of
them lined up for our next installment and I look forward
to receiving more from people who are following along with the
podcast, so I will chat with you all soon.