It's not that this plan can't work, is that they have to do a lot more work for it to have a chance to work,

but it's not like the plan is inherently flawed because they don't have McDavid or McKinnon.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Shootout.

I'm Bill.

This is Charlie, and Charlie on our little bonus show here today, I want to expand on a conversation we had on Thursday's pregame, how preparing to watch the Flyers in Minnesota Wild, I said, do you think the Wilder may be a blueprint for how the Flyers could proceed without a 1C, but they have still built themselves

into one of the best teams in the league, their third in their division, but fourth in the

NHL in terms of points and points percentage coming into that Thursday game.

And you said something along the lines of, I don't know about blueprint, like maybe you

don't want to copy it.

But it is sort of validation that a team like the wild, a team like the hurricanes

can be a cup contender despite looking at the center depth and going,

it's not exactly McDavid Drysidal.

Yeah.

And I think that is, it's uneniably true that you can be a yearly playoff team,

a team that in the lead up to the playoffs is discussed as a legitimate possible cup winner

without having that guy.

I mean, we've said it on the show before.

You know, obviously either one of us would love to have kind of McDavid on the Philadelphia fires. Would be nice. But he hasn't won a cup. He's been to the cup final twice. He's been too well into the cup final twice. He hasn't won a cup. So it's clearly not as simple as like press McDavid button win cup. But there are teams that consistently are in the mix. Carolina is one. Minnesota, I wouldn't say consistently, but this year they certainly are. They have built themselves up to it. Yeah. Dallas is another where, you know, maybe some people would argue Rupé Hintz is actually a legit one C. Other people would probably put him on the same level as Aho, where he's good, but he's more in that Robert Thomas world where,

yeah, he's a clear-cut one-c, but he's not a top-10 one-see in the league.

And while teams like Carolina and Dallas have not yet won a cup, I personally am of the

opinion that just because they haven't won yet doesn't mean they can't.

Now, that's probably the point that people will throw back at me, is that, well, yeah,

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