Friday's FTB: There's lots more games coming this weekend

This is the last weekend before Christmas, so hide, hide in your homes and don't go shopping. Everyone has the 'flu.

The Leafs take a southern swing this weekend with back-to-backs in Nashville and Dallas. The Sceptres play in an afternoon game in New York (ish, it's in Newark).

Before last night's game, Craig Berube was asked about Matias Maccelli, and he said that it was his job to get him back into the lineup. This came in context of a bit about Dakota Joshua, who sure looks better now than at the start.

He sounded very positive about Maccelli, praised his attitude and said he knows what he needs to do.

We'll find out in time if that's spin or reality, but I'm not going to be surprised if we see him play this weekend.

This is the video and transcript of "Early Trading" where Pierre LeBrun talks about who will or won't be on the roster. If you have strong feelings about Tom Wilson, you might not like this.

For example, if you are taking Tom Wilson, and I think they are, can you have Tom Wilson, Sam Bennett, and Brad Marchand all on the Olympic team, or as someone close to it described to me, can you take two of those three or one of those three? So, that still is a conversation internally with Team Canada.

Okay, about last night...

I only sporadically watched. The Leafs lost out to some review videos of games on sale at Steam for the Winter Sale. Mostly I didn't want to end up typing out (again) how I had lost all respect for the top players on the team. And here we are.

I'm really tired of intermission panels talking about basic hockey plays that no one needs coached suddenly being beyond the "leadership group". And mixed in with that is the awful power play. No, wait, it's not awful, it's worse than that, it's mediocre. And disjointed and bad. The second unit at least did the basic hockey plays that the top guys didn't do.

I'm this close to making one of those remarks about how much some of these dudes get paid. But they are only human, and there's things wrong way beyond "do they know how to not be offside on a power play zone entry" or "do they realize they can't do line changes when the other team is moving up ice right past them".

But man, those things rankle. And here's the thing. The top power play unit with Auston Matthews and his invisible twin William Nylander got pulled after their offside jaunt, and the second unit got priority.

A second unit, and a game where Easton Cowan looked great. He's not quite scoring, he's at that point where it can become wonderful and these [delete] and the stupid coaching and whatever everyone is in a spin over is ruining that.

Anyhow, the first period was endless power plays, and the Caps are bad at that this year, so if you've got visions of their great power play in your head, erase them. The Leafs actually did okay on those first-period efforts, but got no goals. And then the Capitals scored two, and the Leafs did not flop over dead! Entirely.

Once the third period came along though, it was all Washington, they scored two more, all at five-on-five where they excel and the Leafs look like an ECHL team. Final score was 4-0.

Dennis Hildeby, much like Joe Woll the last time they played Washington, was actually good. And John Tavares's line with Robertson and Cowan as wingers was the best line, the third line with Roy, McMann and Joshua were really good too.

So if there's a silver lining the Leafs have a good third line now. Whoever that was that used to complain about that is likely at fault now for that being all they have.

There was no five minutes of heart-pounding heroics from the Leafs. And if Auston Matthews shot the puck at five-on-five at all in the game – he hadn't with six minutes left – I'm going to put in a Leafs effort and not bother waiting around to look it up.

Here's a thought, why don't they change that motivational wall in the locker room to say: No Move Clause doesn't mean you stand around with your thumb up your ass on the ice.

Happy Friday, everyone. This too shall pass because nothing lasts forever.

From The Branches