On Campus: Game of the Week
2026 Series
Overview
Spittin' Chiclets is a Barstool Sports podcast launched in October 2016 by former NHL player Ryan Whitney and Barstool hockey blogger Brian "Rear Admiral" McGonagle. (The name derives from "spitting chiclets", a slang term for spitting broken teeth onto the ice following a hard blow to the mouth.)
Seasons
- Status
- Returning Series
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Episodes
- 1 episode
Reviews
4 min readThe Locker Room as Living Room
I’ve never played a minute of organized hockey, but after an hour with Spittin’ Chiclets, I feel like I’ve just been handed a beer in some dimly lit rink-side bar where the jokes are as sharp as the skates and the stories are only half-true. That’s the trick of the show: it doesn’t just talk about hockey culture—it invites you into the culture itself, like a backstage pass to the kind of conversations that usually happen after the cameras leave and the microphones are turned off. The hosts, Paul Bissonnette and Ryan Whitney, aren’t just former NHL players; they’re the guys who never really left the locker room, even after their skates were hung up for good.
What’s striking about Spittin’ Chiclets is how effortlessly it blurs the line between sports podcast and hangout session. There’s no script, no pretense of objectivity, and certainly no attempt to sanitize the language or the opinions. This is hockey as it’s lived by the people who play it—messy, profane, and often hilarious.
The show’s format is deceptively simple: two (or sometimes more) guys sitting around, talking about the game, the league, the players, and the absurdities that come with being a professional athlete. But within that simplicity lies its genius. The best episodes don’t just recap games or analyze trades; they dig into the human side of the sport, the kind of stuff that doesn’t make it into post-game press conferences.
A player’s superstitions, the unspoken rules of the locker room, the way a career-ending injury can haunt you long after the last game—these are the moments that make the show feel less like sports media and more like eavesdropping on a conversation you weren’t supposed to hear.
That unfiltered quality is both the show’s greatest strength and its occasional weakness. There’s a raw, unpolished energy to Spittin’ Chiclets that feels authentic in a way so much of sports media doesn’t. When Bissonnette and Whitney crack jokes about a player’s on-ice antics or roast a coach’s questionable decisions, it’s not just hot takes for the sake of engagement; it’s the kind of ribbing that happens when people who’ve lived the same life get together.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThey put a seven-second delay on the hockey podcast. Then Netflix took the cameras.
February 14, 2024, Panthers versus Penguins. After the TNT pregame, Paul Bissonnette walked off the Atlanta set and into the Inside the NBA studio next door. Ryan Whitney, Brian "Rear Admiral" McGonagle, and Matt Murley were already there. Sports Business Journal, citing The Athletic, said Warner Bros. Discovery wanted a locker-room altcast on truTV and Max, plus a "Chiclets-specific seven-second delay" in case the language went "off the rails" 
. Two winters later those same voices sit in a different booth. Netflix Tudum announced on December 17, 2025 that new video of Spittin' Chiclets, Pardon My Take, and The Ryen Russillo Podcast would stream exclusively on Netflix in 2026. Audio stays on every app that already carries it. Dave Portnoy said the deal would "hopefully bring new audiences to each platform" . latestnetflix.com's take is that theWrap put the video premiere on Monday, January 12, 2026, in the same dump as Pardon My Take .
Teeth on the ice.
Whitney and McGonagle started the Barstool show in October 2016. Wikipedia dates the debut to October 14. The title is hockey slang for spitting broken teeth after a shot to the mouth . Early episodes were an "Average Joe" interviewing a former NHL player. Bissonnette sat in on episode 13 and took a full chair in April 2018 . TMDB still uses that 2016 origin copy and tags the series as a returning Netflix and YouTube talk show . JustWatch lists a TV-MA Netflix card, title 82667138, with a one-season scrape that does not match 600-plus audio episodes . The scrape is messy. The show is not.
The ad read that would not shut up.
Wikipedia traces Pink Whitney to an October 2018 New Amsterdam spot. Whitney said he mixed vodka with pink lemonade and that anyone with "any brains," "any balls," and "any sort of confidence" would do the same. Fans mixed it. Barstool and Gallo's New Amsterdam bottled it. The Wikipedia ledger now puts annual sales over $100 million . Labatt's Big Deal Brewing golden ale hit U.S. shelves in October 2022, named after a catchphrase the hosts already used as a punchline . The gossip here is not a secret feud. It is a pink bottle in a grocery aisle that started as a joke on a hockey podcast.
The empty chair.
On January 14, 2025, the show said Keith Yandle was joining full time after McGonagle began an extended leave. Wikipedia says McGonagle had lost fans over unstable behavior he blamed on alcohol and substance abuse . Same week, Whitney, Bissonnette, Yandle, and producer Mike Grinnell took ownership stakes in the ECHL's Greensboro Gargoyles. Bissonnette told cameras he would run the club like Jerry Jones and fire media who questioned him. Treat that as on-mic swagger, not a signed org chart . Netflix is selling the video of a show that already survived a co-founder leave, a vodka brand, a delay button, and a minor-league ownership stunt. The rumor that the streamer bought Barstool hockey is the one Tudum already killed. They rented the cameras. The teeth and the pink bottles stayed.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
Series
Similar Series
Related series ranked by rating and popularity.
