Happy Monday, everyone, the best day of the week.
There is lots of trade talk:

Marlies all-stars:
Fam photo 🤗 #AHLAllStar pic.twitter.com/9l9h0SQWjr
— Toronto Marlies (@TorontoMarlies) February 3, 2025
Ryan Hartman was offered an in-person hearing for his actions on Saturday. This is his history:
Here is Ryan Hartman’s history. Needless to say, it’s about to get even longer after last night’s match penalty. pic.twitter.com/QwPs0fM24C
— Danny McCloskey (@DannyMcCloskey4) February 2, 2025
These are his actions and his self-awareness:
Hartman's reaction: pic.twitter.com/whcojUktj3
— Everyday Sens (@EverydaySens) February 2, 2025
Much like with Tom Wilson, this process of small suspensions and fines serves to teach the player where the line is where he can get away with intent-to-injure actions. It's not preventing them, it's just lightly tugging on the reins. He didn't figure it out, so he'll get a big one, and then return to his previous "style" of play.
A tangent from news
Rather than search for more idiocy like that, two things struck me in the most recent 32 Thoughts podcast. Both points made by Kyle Bukauskas. First, there was some talk about Minnesota (who think Ryan Hartman is neato) going cold on Matt Boldy. Boldy was drafted 12th overall in 2019, and came out of Boston College. This was Elite Prospects' scouting report on him at that time:
Boldy is a highly skilled winger. A finesse player with impressive creativity, a quick release and fine playmaking ability. Not the fastest of skaters, Boldy's hockey sense and overall skill level still allows him to be reliable offensive threat. (EP 2019)
Oh no! Not skill, finesse, creativity and playmaking. That's totally out of fashion. He'd get the label of zippy little winger, except he is neither zippy nor little, but the story as told by Elliotte Friedman was that Minnesota wants guys who play hard and check and are tough and he likely said "identity" but I'm not replaying to check that.
Bukauskas explained that Boldy's finesse and skill with the puck is how he's always played, and he was doing that well before he was drafted. He all but said what I'll come right out with: why the hell did they draft him, then?
Boldy isn't the only player that went high in the draft on the back of skill in the offensive zone who is getting a rough ride in the NHL from coaches who, in my opinion, seem to have misunderstood Vegas and Florida as Cup winning teams.
Why are these teams drafting players that are totally not right for the ideology the team wants to enact on the ice? If the team doesn't want to play in a way that suits the players they have, then get players that play the way you want! Which is maybe what Minnesota wants to do, but why did they ever draft him? This isn't new thinking for this team.
The second thing discussed was about the Vancouver soap opera. And okay, I know people are extremely cynical and jaded about the traditions of hockey. But this one, I think is a legitimate issue that trading J.T. Miller won't fix. The story is that Linus Karlsson scored his first NHL goal the other night, and no one on the Canucks noticed or did anything to get him the puck. The Linesman got it for the trainer on the bench.
You or I might not care about this, even if it was on the Leafs, but inside the team, that closed society, this is a big deal. And it doesn't say anything good about the team, the leadership group on the team or where they're all at right now.
Picture the Leafs: Morgan Rielly, John Tavares, Chris Tanev, Max Pacioretty, OEL, Jake McCabe and the younger guys, too, who might be a little more cynical. They would not let this happen.
I'm not all that fond of how the Leafs play these days, and the result in Edmonton was both a surprise (that they won) and not (that they were massively outplayed) but at heart there is a team there. And it's actually the thing that gives me the most hope that there is some third way between Keefe's system and whatever the hell that mess is they plop onto the ice every night. At least they're in it together.
These two things exist in tension: the team and the individual. It's not easy to get that balance right. But this Leafs team right now is nothing at all like the bad old days. It's not like Mike Babcock's team either. It's also not like last year's crew of players fairly disinterested in each other while Keefe tried to get them to play a whole game. There's a hell of a lot of material to work with there, and I hope it starts working very, very soon.
We have 9 pm and 10 pm starts on Tuesday and Thursday and then one last HNIC game on Saturday before 4-nations takes over. The Sceptres are dark until February 11, as the international break interrupts the PWHL season.
Have a good Monday, everyone, and if the person in the next cubicle scores a goal, get them the puck, wrap some tape around it and write down the date in black sharpie. They deserve it.
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