This is the Jeff Merrick Show on the Sportsnet Radio Network.

Well, it's going to start with me at any rate.

We'll see if I can make it through the entire two hours.

Apologies for my voice in advance.

And I suppose apologies for whatever performance I'm going to turn in today. But as the

old saying goes, a mediocre man is always at his best. So with that, we welcome me to the program

today. Coming up, Elliot Friedman in a couple of moments. Oh, first of all, Maddie Marquesie,

thank you so much for giving me the relief that I needed yesterday. It's been a challenging weekend. I don't know what hit me. I don't know what kind of flu bug hit me going back to last Friday night, but I was out. I sat up all weekend watching hockey games. I can barely tell you what happened. But thanks for filling in yesterday, bud. That's what I'm here for, buddy. Any rest you need? To be honest with you, I thought you might take today, too, be like, you know what? I need that extra rest day. You know, like Austin Matthews, not getting out for practice and then getting out for practice. I need the rest day. Okay. So a couple of reasons why I'm not. One, I'm okay. I'm'm okay and I come at home doing the show today right

like I didn't come in uh my doctor friend said you better be 24 hours symptom free before you go anywhere

and I'm still not so I'm not going in that's courtesy to you and Lance and Jen and everybody

and listen as my wife told me one day this is a few years ago so she's an artist and she's up late doing like wood burning or something. And I was watching like a late Vancouver Calgary game. And she says to me, you know, I finally figured out what you do for a living. And I said, oh, this will be interesting. And she says, you actually don't do anything. I said, what do you mean?

So he goes, no, you don't actually do anything.

All you do is talk about things that other people do.

And she was right as I had no comeback.

So I always got to catch myself.

And remember, I watch hockey games and talk about them.

There's no heavy lifting involved here.

It's not really work, Maddie. So I'm going to try to soldier on here and get through this show. And we've got podcasts to do tonight with me and Elliot coming up. So I got, I'm good enough to go. How about that? I'm good enough to go today. And like, it's a time of year where you want to be on all the time, right?

It's playoffs.

Like the regular season is the grind.

The playoffs is the fun part, right?

Like, this is the dessert at the end of the meal.

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