Yesterday the Marlies beat the Cleveland Monsters to advance to the Conference Finals against the Wilkes-Bare/Scranton Penguins.

As reported by our own Species, the Marlies are going directly to W-B on the bus to get ready for a practice tomorrow with the first game on Wednesday night. The schedule is:

Where is that?

You can see why this choice was made. The trip from Cleveland is a mere 6 hours or so, approximately the same time to drive to Toronto. To go between Wilkes-Barre and Toronto is another 6 hours.

The WBS Penguins are, surprisingly, the affiliate of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and their GM is Jason Spezza. Spezza is with Team Canada at Worlds right not, something that seemed to be engineered by mentor Kyle Dubas to give him a broader management experience. Their AGM is Amanda Kessel, and Kirk MacDonald is the head coach.

They have a young and exciting team with a lot of 21st century birthdates on the roster including Bill Zonnon, drafted last year, who has just made his pro debut and who has three goals in five games so far. He's working out okay.

Meanwhile, the Marlies have a lot of players born in the 90s as well as Easton Cowan and Ben Danford and a few more young-ish players. The outstanding playoff performers (in terms of points) have been Vinni Lettieri and captain Logan Shaw. William Villeneuve has an assist on a third of the goals as well.

These two teams do not know each other well:

Okay, that's the AHL, what's going on at Worlds?

Norway beat Sweden. And while Sweden's team is not their Olympic roster by any means, Norway is missing all of their NHL talent and their 1C is barely older than Sweden's. Or course, TLK is our prospect so he's obviously better than Viggo Björck.

Canada continues undefeated, as are the hosts Switzerland as well as Finland. Canada finishes against the Czechs on Tuesday, which might be their toughest game. Sweden, and those draft-eligible prospects, play Slovakia on Tuesday, a game they need to win if they want in the quarterfinals.

By the way, Denis Malgin is third in points in this tournament, behind teammate Sven Andrighetto and Lucas Raymond.

Good detailed coverage of both this and Troy Ryan's move to San Jose.

Duggan leaves NHL Devils to take over as GM of PWHL Hamilton
Three-time U.S. Olympian Meghan Duggan is leaving her player developmental job with the NHL New Jersey Devils to become general manager of the PWHL’s expansion franchise in Hamilton, Ontario.
TSNThe Canadian Press

Much has been made about Ryan becoming the GM and coach of the team. This sort of arrangement is totally normal in the ECHL, and some AHL teams load a lot of the management onto the coach too. NCAA teams have head coaches involved in player acquisition in ways that are very unlike the NHL. So it's not really as weird as everyone is making out.

Meanwhile the Toronto Sceptres still need a coach. As do Seattle.

And finally, Vegas doesn't want to hear about your odds of Colorado winning the Cup. What does Vegas care about probabilities and odds?

The Avs went up 3-0 last night, and Vegas scored five straight, the last one in the empty net. Not even Nathan MacKinnon playing on whatever he broke/strained/bruised blocking a shot could save them. Vegas leads 3-0 with another home game on Wednesday.

Lots of narratives about this series miss an interesting piece of the puzzle as to how Vegas is overwhelming the best team in the NHL. Their regular season team SV% was 26th at .879. Their playoff number is third behind the Hurricanes and the Senators (LOL) at .919. They aren't suddenly good because of whatever the story says was just the one thing that wins them games – magic coaching mysticism. They were always good. Very good. Just sewered by goaltending.

And the Avs, who led the league in team Sv% all season? Now they're just ordinary. The margins here are so small. These two teams score the most goals per 60, but the difference has been some pretty subtle variation in defensive numbers, most noticeably on the PK.

The Avs need four miracles in a row, and I don't think they're getting even one.

This is why you actually play the games. If life was predictable, all those Vegas betting houses would go broke! We can't have that.

Have a great Monday everyone, and there is another game tonight you might have heard a very great deal of hype about.

From The Branches