Buffalo Sabres winger Josh Doan is capable of gaining entry into Las Vegas' high-limit lounges after recently signing a seven-year, $48.7 million contract extension, but for now he's just trying to best his teammates at the poker table.
Doan discussed the team's card games, which are a time-honored NHL locker room tradition, during an appearance Wednesday on the 32 Thoughts podcast with Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas. His choice for the Sabres' best poker player may surprise some people.
"I think right now, honestly, Ryan McLeod might be the leader," the Buffalo breakout sensation said. "It might even go in the opposite direction of you can't tell if he's being serious or not, and it gets guys in trouble quite a bit. I think it's his strength at the poker table. You don't know for sure if he has it. Nine times out of 10 he does but then the one time you do fold he doesn't, and it's quite frustrating."
Doan added: "This is going to cause some turbulence in the room. I think everyone thinks they're a good player on our team. I don't know if any of us are actually good."
The 23-year-old Arizona native also shouted out center Peyton Krebs, who seemingly gets under peoples' skin at the poker table just as well as he does on the ice.
"Krebsy plays the most by-the-book poker," Doan said. "I think guys give him a hard time for that. He'll play by how you should play."
The lighthearted nature of the poker discussion speaks volumes about how much fun the Sabres are having on and off the ice as they surge up the NHL standings on the strength of a 19-3-1 record over their past 23 games.
The most competitive person in the Buffalo Sabres organization may not be a player
The poker conversation came after comments from Friedman about Sabres general manager Jarmo Kekalainen, who took over the front office after Kevyn Adams was fired in mid-December.
"You know, he is legendarily competitive," Friedman said. "... There's a pretty legendary story about him that somebody played a practical joke on him where they said that this other executive in the league, who Jarmo doesn't consider as good an athlete as he is, was a ranked pickleball player and ranked higher than Jarmo, or ranked in tennis higher, and he refused to believe it. He's like, 'There's no way that guy could beat me in tennis.'"
Kekalainen's promotion certainly brought a much-needed tone change to the Sabres.
Adams, who was in the sixth year of his GM tenure, always tried to act like the sky wasn't falling when it obviously was, and once doomsday arrived, he was full of excuses and short on solutions.
Yes, the roster that's remarkably turned Buffalo's season around was built by the former GM, but it's far from a guarantee the results they've achieved would have been possible without the change.
Tage Thompson, one of the Blue and Gold's key franchise building blocks alongside Rasmus Dahlin, previously said Kekalainen's first meeting with the locker room delivered a clear message.
"You are all pretty much all expendable, and no one is safe," Thompson recalled Jarmo saying. "We are going to start working, and if you don't want to work, you're not gonna be on the team."
It's a message that clearly resonated with a previously failing core, and it's probably not a coincidence the Sabres have been the NHL's hottest team since that point.
Kekalainen is a firm believer in letting compete level drive his decisions, and Buffalo sports fans have witnessed more relentlessness on the ice over the past seven weeks than they did for pretty much the entirety of the club's 14-year playoff drought.
The message from the top matters, and Jarmo is striking the perfect tone so far, though the Sabres still have plenty of work to do before clinching a postseason berth.
For now, they're competing harder than ever before, apparently both on the ice and at the poker table.