I mean, I did watch Friday Night Lights, but the basics of hockey are extremely familiar to me, so I get all the hockey in-jokes, like the podcast being called Man in the Crease, how extremely on-brand it is for a Canadian hockey nerd to say he likes playing in Winnipeg, and then all the little things they are beating each other in -- the goal race, the NHL Awards, the All-Star captainships when they're both too young for it, the World Juniors, the way the league pits them against each other for press attention... Also, the intense history of Canada and Russia around the game -- neither of them would have been alive for "Da, da, Canada, Nyet, Nyet Soviet" but they'd both know about it.
(Aside: There's a hockey podcast up here called What Chaos, and they love Heated Rivalry, but they HATE Man in the Crease with a passion, which really cracks me up. It's a fictional podcast and they're all "These guys are HACKS!")
I'm not sure what the pro-bowl is but the all-star game -- I thought most sports did that! It's probably the same thing -- just a game where the two conferences face off against each other with their best players. Except here -- and the NHL DID do this -- they have been on different teams because they've been doing World vs. North America instead of East vs. West. I assume they're going to be on the same team in the next episode because they just released a still of Ilya in a jersey that had an E on it, and he's NOT the captain
I'll add that, from a hockey POV, one of the funniest things that happens is when Shane chirps Scott, and Scott releases (unintentional?) napalm in return, they cut to the commentators saying "Well, there's something you don't expect to see!" -- because yes, it would be absolutely crazy to see two gentlemen team captains get into a brawl AFTER the game ends! Even by hockey standards, that's nuts. I imagine even their teammates being all "what the hell, guys!"
