While they haven't been officially eliminated, it looks like the end of the Leafs' push for the eighth and final playoff seed.  Toronto's loss combined with Buffalo's shut out of New Jersey puts the Leafs back seven points with six games to play.  Barring some sort of miracle collapse by the Sabres, the Leafs season will end April 9th.  It's been a great ride though, eh?  After the disaster that was last season, it's been nice having meaningful games this deep into March.

I'm sure there will be all kinds of articles in the coming days from Cox and Simmons and others about how the stupid Leaf fans were duped into drinking the Kool-Aid one again (etc, etc).  Ignore those clowns.  Toronto really put together an impressive run in the second half of the season.  It could be the sort of achievement that the team and fans can look back in a few years and say, "you know....that's where things really turned around for the organization." Sure it sucks the Leafs are out of it, but they gained a ton of valuable experience this season and that will only help going forward.

Links after the jump...

Sunday links:

Leafs playoff hopes fade in loss to Wings

the G&M has the recap

The night the music died in Nashville

VLM concedes as well.

Game 76 - game in 10

MLHS has a short recap

The rise of Nazem Kadri

MLHS  says he's ready to stick around this time