Welcome to The World of Podcasting! Or, more specifically, welcome to Neil Smith’s and Vic Morren’s new podcast, The NHL Wraparound.

That’s right, former NY Rangers Stanley Cup-winning GM Neil Smith and former ESPN Production Executive Vic Morren have joined forces to create a brand new hockey podcast. If you’re wondering why this is big news, please, first allow me to ask you something.

When have you ever heard of a Stanley Cup-winning GM – who also won multiple Cups with the Islanders as a Scout – creating his own podcast? Sure, it might not be out of the realm of possibility for a former high-level production executive such as Morren. But for a former GM such as Smith? And they’re teaming up together?!? 

Well, welcome to 2024, the year in which anything can happen. And since anything can happen, “Blittner’s Blue Line” got in touch with Neil Smith and Vic Morren to drill down to the nuts and bolts of this new podcast.

First off, their first episode dropped early this morning, and can I just say, they certainly hit the ground running. New episodes are scheduled to drop every Tuesday morning on at least 30 different podcast providers, including Apple; Spotify; and YouTube. (Yes, there is a visual component to this podcast, as well as the standard audio). 

Now that you know the where and the when let’s get into the fun stuff.

So, why are they starting The NHL Wraparound Podcast now?

“It was really a timing thing,” Morren explained. “Because Neil, as he said in the introductory episode, he had wanted to do a podcast for some time. But the folks who he wanted to partner with, I don’t think (they) had the commitment necessary for any sort of sustainability. And I was laid off by ESPN in late June. He actually reached out to me when he knew I was getting laid off because the time between when I was advised and when I was actually laid off was about 10 weeks. 

“So, in early June, Neil reached out and said, ‘We should do a project together.’ And I just blurted out, ‘Well, why don’t we do a podcast?’ Really not knowing everything that it took to go into it. But as soon as he suggested it, I was in, with both feet ready, to go into the deep end and here we are.”

“I’ve been wanting to do this for quite a while,” Smith added. “And when Vic left ESPN, I jumped at the opportunity to ask him if he would do it with me. I couldn’t be any happier with us being together.”

Okay, so now we know how this unique pairing came together. But we still need to know why. 

According to Smith, “I’m hoping to be able to give people a different perspective on The League, past hockey and be able to share my opinions with people publicly and have a rapport with hockey fans again.”

“I’m not the average GM,” Smith continued. “I never have been. I’ve always been a little bit different, in my own way. I’ve always enjoyed doing radio, and to me, podcasting is similar to radio in that you’re not cut for time like you are on TV; where you have only a certain amount of seconds to get your point out. I enjoy this kind of format, and the fact that Vic and I only report to ourselves is truly a bonus in itself. It’s our own thing.”

“No podcast is going to be everything for everybody,” Morren chimed in. “But we believe that we have the proper mix of past, present, and future vision to offer our listeners something unique.”

You can say that again. With the differing backgrounds these two have, this podcast will certainly have an interesting mix of knowledge and personality. But what kinds of topics will Smith and Morren cover during their weekly show?

“It’s not so much the topics as what you decide to do with them,” Morren explained. “So, for instance, we interviewed Wayne Gretzky on the first episode. And what’s the number one question that’s being asked of Wayne? ‘Is Alex Ovechkin going to catch you? Do you care if he catches you?’ We decided to put a little bit of a different spin on it. And while I did mention Ovi in my questioning to Wayne, we spun it to Auston Matthews, who has better metrics than Ovi and will probably become the heir apparent if he stays healthy. 

“So, we’re gonna talk rules, we’re gonna talk current teams, we’re gonna bring history into the fold. Really the sky’s the limit in terms of the directions we can go. We will talk about the broadcast end of things. We’ll also solicit our subscribers to ask them what they want to hear us talk about. The breadth of area that we could go in is too deep to describe right now. A lot of it, we will be reacting to the news, but again, it’s what we do with it and how we wanna approach it that is gonna make us unique.”

Now we’re cooking, or, at least, Smith and Morren are. But I still have a few questions for these new podcasters. Why are they naming the show, “The NHL Wraparound?” What kind of stories did Gretzky share during his appearance in the first episode? Who are some other guests who could potentially appear in future episodes? And what might a standard episode sound like from a structural perspective? These are important questions. 

Let’s find out if they have the answers…

“The term ‘wraparound’ is used in hockey, and it’s also used in broadcasting when it’s a wrap,” Smith explained. “It just felt like the right name for it. I really want to bring people things that they didn’t know, so that if they watch or listen to the episode, they’ll always come away with something that they didn’t know before they turned it on. (We don’t want to) discuss things the way that you see it discussed on TV — where it’s an (on-air) talent person speaking to a hockey person. This is gonna be a hockey person speaking to another hockey person.”

That’s one answer down. Now let’s get to another.

“Gretzky had a great story about a wraparound goal he scored that turned out to be the third goal of his hat-trick in Vancouver, back in October of ’97,” Smith recounted. “I asked, ‘Do you remember that?’ He went into a whole story of how he remembers it so well and what happened on the day of the game. He had every detail there. I think everybody will find that interesting. 

“It’s just a personal story. It’s not an electrifying story, but it is one where Wayne Gretzky’s telling you about his game day routine. He also talks about how he played the way he did, how he learned to play that way, and why he learned to play that way. I think people will find that extremely intriguing.”

Speaking of things people might find “extremely intriguing,” let’s keep this quasi-lightning round going and find out who some potential future guests might be.

“We’d like to have Gary Bettman on at some point,” Smith said. “I can’t imagine a much better guest than him. We’d like to have some General Managers on. We’d like to have some TV people come on and give us their opinion of things going on. It’s unlimited really where we’re gonna go with this and I’m very excited about the guest part of it.”

Last, but certainly not least, what does a standard episode structure look like for “The NHL Wraparound”? Well, let’s let Morren bring us home by giving us a brief glance at how part of the first episode went.

“We’re gonna call things as we see them,” Morren said. “We’re gonna start with something called ‘one-timers.’ Essentially, that’s a top of mind topic. Something that’s either irritating us or praiseworthy and it gets us out of the gate quickly, because there’s energy right away. 

“From there, we will go into our first main topic, and (on the first show), that will be Neil and I in discussion regarding the team who sucks more oxygen out of the room in discussions than any other — the Toronto Maple Leafs. Good, bad, or indifferent they’re the team who has the longest drought, the team who gets probably the most attention because of the drought and they still don’t really have a team composition that is going to be able to make a deep playoff run — at least, that’s the way both of us see it.

“So, not only do we address the most obvious of topics,” Morren continued, “but also how the salary cap is going to affect them negatively in the next year because they have the William Nylander and Auston Matthews extensions coming in and they’re gonna have 53% of their cap going towards their top four forwards. So, even though the cap is going up, those four forwards will assume a greater percentage of the cap for next season. What do you do with all those contracts and more importantly, how do you fill your backend in when you’re investing so much money in a quartet of players?” 

Okay, let’s end things with a final word from Morren.     

“We’re not professional broadcasters, but we have opinions, we have knowledge, we have a history base and we’re hoping that the things that we talk about are things that people will come out of the podcast saying, ‘you know what? I know more about the NHL than I did 30 or 45 minutes before I turned the podcast on.’”