Max Talbot joined Paul Bissonnette and Ryan Whitney on the latest episode of the Spittin' Chiclets podcast.
Talbot joins the show at the 46-minute mark. There's a language warning on this podcast.
Talbot discusses some of his career highlights, his time playing with Bissonnette and Whitney, his time after leaving the NHL, and more.
A couple notes from the podcast:
• Talbot got an orange Nissan Murano his rookie year in Wilkes-Barre that Whitney nicknamed "The Pumpkin," and Bissonnette called "a nightmare." Talbot drove the car until his rookie NHL season and has since given it to his parents.
"You got it in a burnt orange color, and then put the worst rims on it I've seen," Bissonnette recalled. "It looked like you got it done at Pimp My Ride."
• Talbot called Michel Therrien "amazing," and said that Therrien taught him how to be a pro.
• Matt Murley and Whitney ran a casino out of their apartment in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
"We started with poker," Talbot laughed. "We used to play every once in a while. At one point Whit and Matt Murley ... were like 'OK, you know what, the house always wins, so we're going to start a casino and guys will come play.' I think we played in the afternoon, just drink a couple of beers and stuff. But the first time, (Whitney and Murley) just got swept. We took all of the money. Whit and Matt were down like, 1,000, 2,000."
Whitney said they later added a roulette wheel and either he or Murley would also deal blackjack.
• Talbot says Evgeni Malkin "is the definition of talent" and Sidney Crosby "is the definition of skill."
"Geno can not skate the whole summer, he's still going to come down and dangle everybody at camp," Talbot said. "He's talent. It's natural, he's strong, he's tall. He's amazing. But Sid is skill. Sid is the best grinder in the league. He has to work so hard to be that good, it's all about repetition. His hand-eye coordination is amazing, not because he was born with it, but because he does 1,000 tips after every practice. He's good at faceoffs. He used to suck at faceoffs."
• Talbot, on the best player he's ever played with: "For one game, at his best, I've never seen anybody dominate as much as Evgeni Malkin. For one game, at his best, I would take him before anyone in the world. When we won the Cup in 2009, he won the Conn Smythe, but the series against Carolina he just took over."
• Bissonnette said he tried to replicate Crosby's tape job on his stick thinking it would make him better. Talbot said Bissonnette was able to pull off one of Crosby's moves "once or twice ... in practice ... with no goalies."
• Talbot, on fighting Dan Carcillo in 2009: "I caused the first goal for my team, right? I had a stupid turnover and they ended up scoring, they scored two more after that, it's three to nothing. I know I'm not going to score three tonight so I've got to do something. I just showed up beside (Carcillo), I knew that he was an intense, emotional guy, and the crowd was just going nuts. It was so loud. I just asked him. "Hey, you wanna give me one? You wanna go?' And he knew because we played together that he was going to beat my ass. So he's like, "F--- yeah." It was so natural, there was nothing that we said that were disrespectful things. Just, "F--- yeah, let's go!" So we went at it, the crowd liked (Carcillo), I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was going with his arms on both sides, so the natural reflex of mine was trying to quiet the crowd."
• Talbot wanted to stay in Pittsburgh in 2011, but he couldn't turn down five years from the Flyers when the Penguins were only offering two years. The Maple Leafs, Avalanche, and Sharks, made offers, but Talbot wanted the security of the Flyers' deal. He also wanted to stay in the Eastern Conference, and thought the Flyers had a good chance of winning.
• Marc-Andre Fleury's helmet for the 2010 Olympics featured other Canadian Olympians participating that year. One of them was figure skater Cynthia Phaneuf, who married Talbot in 2014.
"My wife was on his bucket, that creep," Talbot laughed. "She wasn't my wife at the time, I didn't even know her. But I go to his home one night before a game in Pittsburgh. And it's in his library, the helmet. I start moving it around. I'm like, 'What the f---? That's my wife. You f---head, you're a creep, man.' He was like, 'Well she was just a Canadian athlete that I liked.'"
• Talbot said that if he ends up a coach, he's bringing back Dan Bylsma's "Mustache Boy" drill once a month.
Talbot, 35, retired from professional hockey last month and will be working in player development for the CAA Hockey agency.
