The Leafs were up 5-3 in the final preseason game and lost it 6-5 in OT, with James Reimer in net for the back half of the game. Where have I heard this story before? We did get a nice shorty by Robertson at least.

In any case, this was the last of the preseason games, and the big roster cut and any necessary waivers will happen today, and that's going to be the big news in town, at least for hockey. More on the other thing later.

The first real game is against the Habs on Wednesday night which will kick off a busy start to the season of six games in eleven days. The Marlies first game is Friday night in Rochester. They will be back on Saturday for their home opener while the Leafs are away in Detroit.

Get ready. It's officially hockey season!

Other News

Another wild game in Florida last night ended with a 7-0 Panthers defeat of the Lightning which featured 12 players ejected from the game, and a grand total of 322 penalty minutes dished out. It only took two minutes of game time for a Match Penalty to be handed out to that guy who played one single game for the Leafs in 2020 that will be a trivia question at some point.

If you want to know how wild and out of control this game got, look at that last penalty in the Panthers column, which is likely a penalty you have never even seen handed out before, outside of rare circumstances in the first minutes of a game.

The Panthers took that penalty and had their eighth goal of the game cancelled several minutes after it was scored as it was put in the net by Niko Mikkola and if you look up the list of penalties there you can see he had actually already been ejected from the game, but he simply decided to come back and start playing again anyway, and no one even noticed until he scored a goal. At this point the Lightning were down to only four skaters left on their bench at 5 vs. 5, with six crammed into the penalty box.

The CHL's loss is the NCAA's gain.

Finally, OK BLUE JAYS!

Let's beat the Yankees again today!

From The Branches