Minnesota found the one neat trick to getting younger while in the middle of their contention window.

Or maybe Tampa did:

Boris Katchouk played for Tampa back in 2021-2022 as a borderline fourth liner. He went to Chicago, the natural home of such players, packed on the years, did a season in Ottawa and then ended up back in Tampa. He played three games there this year before the first trade, which netted them Roman Schmidt, who has graduated from the OHL, and so far hasn't matched Katchouk's stats, but he's younger!

He's at the age Katchouk was when he briefly hit the NHL.

The Wild have traded him for Michael Milne, also the same age as Schmidt, 23.

These are all the same guy. This is how you get pointlessly, fruitlessly, meaninglessly younger. You trade your 14th forward or your eighth defender for a guy four years younger who is likely to be the exact same guy, and then the older guy goes and plays five years in Germany or Switzerland, and it all cycles through again.

All of this is in search of that guy that one guy that will be good on your team and not any others. It's like a gold rush where almost all the gold ever found has been fake, but the belief never wavers.

Until the waivers.

(not sorry)

Later today (or already if it's after 8) there will be a post about who the Leafs have in the minors. Generally the Leafs just sign younger, not that good guys out of college and dispense with the trading.

In other news, the Leafs play yet another game tonight at 7:30 pm, and there's a lot of these later start times down the stretch, so make sure you're up on the schedule, you don't want to miss a moment. Last game, when the Leafs hit 20 SOG (very late in the third) was an amazing moment in sports.

This is how you play after a break when you're down and seemingly out:

Okay look, there is no news, no real trade rumours beyond what we've seen a million times, and the radio and TV people are reduced to speculation about Sergei Bobrovsky and stories about Robert Thomas realizing what the draft does to good players.

So I will be honest, as I usually am, about how I think and feel about this team.

They are in a bad place emotionally. I don't think you could have watched the last two games and not have seen that. And they were in that place back in November/December, and they snapped out of it. They may again.

You are never your worst self, nor your best every day. And no, actually, how much money you make doesn't really influence that or make you less prone to human frailty.

I find myself very willing to laugh at them like they are absurdist comedy because the alternative is not to be angry, but sad. That's what absurdism is for, for those days when it's all spinning out of your control and you don't want to paint over the red door with black.

So here's the straight talk: they can't make the playoffs, short of 12 simultaneous miracles. The are not going to finish in the bottom five, and I'll brook no dissent on this, they can't hit the tiny Points % needed there's too many other teams trying harder to lose who are better at it. People who should know better will pander to fans who can't do math and claim they might, and you should ignore them.

This is, yes, in many ways the worst possible outcome, but also better, in my mind, than squeaking in and finding an excuse about playoff failure come July. This team is not it, and they need to accept that and deal with that, and not find a way to back out of that acceptance.

Now, you guys out there who want them to be bad so someone up the org chart will see the light and trade everyone and tank and blah blah blah, nope. Stop it. You are campaigning for the impossible. Corporately, in terms of player control over their own futures, and in terms of smart playing of the percentages, they can't trade the big guys.

Hell, they can't trade Morgan Rielly.

Sometimes this is where you end up. Fill your time with alternate reality universe that validate your priors if you find that fun, I cannot anymore in these times, leave the real world. So here I am, staring at this path with snakes (Australian ones) on one side, alligators on the other and spear pits randomly along the way. This is the path the team must walk.

It's likely not going to work, which is the easiest prediction ever since most teams don't win the cup ever in any given 10 or 15 years. But it's still the path. It might lead to a total tear down and rebuild. I hope not because those are actually really boring, and the hockey is horrible. If it comes to that, I will be right there deep into the business of drafting and prospects and all that stuff. But I cannot wish for it.

For right now, we're on this path, the past is a foreign country, the wench is dead, and there's only the future in front of us.

We'll see where this goes.

(Please, someone, do a stupid trade, we need the laugh.)

From The Branches