FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, April 13th, 2020

MIKE ‘DOC’ EMRICK ON HOCKEY’S POTENTIAL RETURN; CARSON PALMER ON TOM BRADY-BRUCE ARIANS DYNAMIC — QUOTES FROM TODAY’S EPISODES OF LUNCH TALK LIVE WITH MIKE TIRICO AND THE RICH EISEN SHOW ON NBCSN

“The league is being very smart about these things and has a plan B, C, D and E depending on when it’s safe to get back to play.” – Doc Emrick on resuming the 2019-20 NHL season

“Tom (Brady) is used to a certain standard and Bruce (Arians) demands that same kind of standard that I think (Bill) Belichick does in New England.” – Carson Palmer on Tom Brady and Bruce Arians in Tampa Bay

“The Masters being the final major of the year versus the first really changes the mindset for Rory (McIlroy), and I think it really gives him a really good chance to become the sixth player to win the career grand slam.” – Notah Begay on golf’s schedule

STAMFORD, Conn. – April 13, 2020 – Mike Tirico hosted today’s episode of Lunch Talk Live on NBCSN and was joined remotely by:

    • NHL on NBC play-by-play announcer Mike ‘Doc’ Emrick
    • New Jersey Devils defenseman K. Subban
    • Two-time Olympic gymnastics medalist Laurie Hernandez
    • NBC Sports’ Ahmed Fareed
    • NFL Network commentator and host of The Rich Eisen Show Rich Eisen
    • GOLF Channel/NBC Sports Notah Begay III

 

Following Lunch Talk Live, The Rich Eisen Show debuted on NBCSN today as host Rich Eisen was joined by:

    • Emmy Award-winning actor Tom Selleck
    • Three-time Pro Bowl quarterback Carson Palmer
    • NBC Sports NFL insider Peter King

 

Following are highlights from Lunch Talk Live on NBCSN:

Mike ‘Doc’ Emrick on how the NHL should go about resuming the 2019-20 season: “All along, the NHL has said what has to happen will be fair…One possibility would be to crank every team’s standings to 68 games, not everybody will be happy…You have time when you come with these ideas, but in fairness I think you would have to have something equal…The league is being very smart about these things and has a plan B, C, D and E depending on when it’s safe to get back to play.”

Emrick on broadcasting without fans in the arena: “The first couple of games, I think, would be OK…There would be energy from both benches which would be audible, but I think after those first couple of games, we would certainly miss it a lot because so much of what we rely on for the energy of the arena comes from the fanbase.”

P.K. Subban on his new show, NHL Hat Trick Trivia Hosted by P.K. Subban: “This is my first- ever hosting of a trivia show. I’m excited to try new things and I’ve always been an open book. Hockey is my number one passion, but post-career who knows, so I’m trying everything out while I have the time.”

Subban on playing another 10+ years in the NHL: “This season, my body has felt better…as a veteran player, you have to understand that it’s not always about you and your numbers, it’s about the team and developing (the younger guys)…Personally, I’ve never felt better than how I feel right now…There’s no question that I can play hopefully another 700 games and hopefully 10 years.”

Laurie Hernandez on the gold-medal winning Team USA at the 2016 Rio Olympics: “I just think of the team. I think of the girls, I think of how tight we all were and just when we went out there, we all did our best. I’m proud of all of us, I feel a lot of pride in us.”

Hernandez on the Olympics’ postponement to 2021: “Of course a time change as big as that feels a little scary at first…But I can adapt to it pretty quick…I think that year really threw a lot of athletes off even though we can all agree it’s what’s safest for the world, but even still, my goal is still to make the Olympic team. It’s still a dream of mine. So, I can’t speak for anybody else, but I’m definitely going to hang in there for next year.”

Ahmed Fareed on the top of this year’s NFL Draft: “It seems like as we go, the quarterbacks float up to the top of the draft every year and that’s happening again this year – it might be the first two picks, who knows? It might be the first three picks if the Lions can trade out of there.”

Fareed, a lifelong Lions fan, on Detroit’s pick at No. 3: “They’ve got a lot of options and they’re in a pretty good spot because there are some talented non-quarterbacks, obviously, that could be taken there. A couple from Ohio State, Chase Young being one of those guys…I just hope that the technology doesn’t hold them back from being able to execute and make those phone calls, which we joke about, but that could be a very real thing in this 2020 draft.”

Notah Begay III on the coronavirus’ impact on Native Americans and the Navajo Nation: “As a whole, the infrastructure and with our health care system is always underserved, underfunded. So we’re certainly just not equipped for this…The things that have to be put in place are just not available to – not just the Navajo Nation – but many tribes across the country.”

Begay on how hard it has been to witness: “It’s just really hard to watch. I’ve got family members that I grew up with, that I went to school with, that I played sports with, that are sick and most likely some of them are going to die. It breaks my heart, but we’re doing as much as we can through the NB3 Foundation. We started a COVID-19 response fund…We’ve raised I think almost $100,000 now and that’s going to go to food assistance.”

Begay on the restart of the golf season: “The storyline is going to be [whether] this long layoff [is] going to take a toll on Rory McIlroy’s great momentum that he was carrying…The Masters being the final major of the year versus the first really changes the mindset for Rory, and I think it really gives him a really good chance to become the sixth player to win the career grand slam.”

Following are highlights from The Rich Eisen Show on NBCSN:

Tom Selleck on Al Kaline: “He was my boyhood hero…I was a huge Tigers fan. We had no Dodgers in Los Angeles until I think ‘57…Somehow I got into the Tigers locker room and met Al Kaline, along with Harvey Kuenn and a lot of players. That was obviously a big deal as a very young kid…I just admired the way he played and the more I found out about him, the more I admired who he was.”

Selleck on a story he had heard about Kaline: “Al comes in at the end of one season, and at the beginning of the next, they say, ‘Al, you’re as valuable to us as Mickey Mantle and we’re proudly going to give you 100 grand next year.’ And Kaline said, I had heard, ‘I don’t want it. I didn’t have a good enough year. I didn’t hit .300.’ He said, ‘Next year, I’ll hit .300 and you can give it to me, but not this year.’…That was very typical about who he was.”

Carson Palmer, who played for Bruce Arians with the Cardinals from 2013-17, on the Tom Brady-Arians dynamic: “I think it’s going to be great. Bruce, he’s a very difficult guy to play for. He has very, very high expectations. He doesn’t put up with a lot of nonsense, but he treats his vets like adults and like vets, and he treats the young guys like young guys. Obviously, Brady coming there and having the experience he has, I see them running a lot of what Bruce’s offense has been for a number of years…but I would almost be positive, and I don’t know this for a fact, but Tom’s coming in and really running the bread and butter of what he’s been running for the past 20 years…I think at the end of the day it’s a really good mixture of those two guys’ offenses.”

Palmer: “Tom is used to a certain standard and Bruce demands that same kind of standard that I think (Bill) Belichick does in New England, so I think that mesh is going to be really well…I don’t think it’s too big of a transition for Brady.”

Palmer on the Bengals: “I just hope that they are taking those strides and making an effort to get up to speed with the rest of the league and be on par with the rest of the league as far as everything that goes into building an organization and building a culture. Just over the last, I don’t know how many years or decades, they just haven’t consistently shown an effort to try to win a Super Bowl and do whatever it takes.”

Peter King on if teams have expressed any concerns over this year’s draft: “I don’t really think there’s a lot of concern other than – Ron Rivera told me something really interesting. He said, look, we’re figuring out what sort of our line of demarcation is. When it gets to maybe the three-minute mark or two-minute mark, we’re getting off the phone and we’re going to be concerned with just getting our pick in. He said because the last thing we want to do is screw up the delivery of the pick and have somebody jump in there…I think the NFL is going to be understanding of some of those issues.”

King on draft day trades: “I think it probably, probably, is going to cut down – not massively – but I think it’s going to cut down the number of trades in the draft because they’re not going be used to this (process) and especially once it gets to be round four through seven and you only have five minutes.”

King on Cam Newton and Jameis Winston as free agents: “This is the most unique set of circumstances about trying to vet players that I’ve seen in 36 years covering the NFL. You can’t fully vet Cam to your liking right now because your team doctor cannot get his hands on Cam Newton and you can’t sit in a room and talk to him…I think it’s pretty natural why this is going to take a while, at least with Cam…I think there are multiple teams that if I were them, I’d want Jameis Winston on my team, but it takes two to tango.”

–NBC SPORTS–