New Jersey needs to do something, and be seen to do something because they're in freefall. So naturally it's this one guy that's the problem.

The full text:

Reached out to Dougie Hamilton’s agent J.P. Barry. His response:
“Dougie was informed today that he will be not be playing now that Kovacevic is back in the lineup. In our view,
this decision is all about business rather than his game right now. Singling him out seems very calculated at this stage.
Dougie has a 10-team trade list and there have been efforts to trade him going back to the draft last year. We have made it clear to the Devils that we will consider teams outside our list and other creative ways to get to a team that is mutually acceptable.”
So Hamilton camp willing to be flexible beyond 10-team list if it means finding suitable team in a trade.

I took a look at HockeyViz, and Hamilton is very, very good at generating offence, and he's had a rough year defensively. So this makes him Morgan Rielly only better at almost everything. I don't know why the zeitgeist thinks he's old and washed up, but then the zeitgeist only deals in negatives these days.

This was the coverage last night:

I think it is fair to say that Hamilton is being targeted for non-performance reasons. They just don't want to pay him.

Another team has caught the Malaise:

So what did they just do? Ohhhhh. Lose 10-2 to the Bruins. This must be the Omicron variant of Malaise going around.

This is how it's done:

About last night...

So, to sum up, everyone got a penalty. And it wasn't one of those games where they were chippy nonstop, it was just 11 power plays for stupid things, some of which never actually happened. The Canucks can't stir themselves to much animosity. This counts as a fight when they're involved:

They were so lacklustre, so moribund, so dull, so enervated. And to be honest the Leafs just let them faff around without really pushing hard, and they got four goals in the first two periods anyway.

This was one of those games where if you whine about the shot differential, you just seem to be missing the point.

Third verse same as the first, and Joe Woll got another shutout while Nick Robertson sealed the deal with one more goal.

5-0 Leafs.

The Leafs now have 51 points in 44 games for a Points 5 of .580. Last game the Leafs got to the Point % that would get them 92 points, so I raised the bar to 95. And the Points % needed to get to 95? That's .579. That was quick. But in deference to a really hard schedule on the road in the west, I'll keep them at 95 for now. We'll see where they are by next Saturday.

From The Branches