This is it. The 2026 Winter Olympics come to a close today with the signature event of the Men's Hockey gold medal game, and if you weren't paying attention, you might have missed that coverage has probably already started as you are reading this. Canada vs. USA is on at 8:00 a.m. ET.

After the game is over, the closing ceremonies will start only a few hours later and the NHL will ramp back up to a full schedule. The Leafs will start it off with a trip to Florida to play the Panthers and Lightning on Wednesday and Thursday, and then host the Senators on Saturday.

The PWHL will also be back with the Sceptres also on a road trip out west, facing the Seattle Torrent on Friday and the Vancouver Goldeneyes on Sunday.

The Marlies have already restarted from the break for the AHL All-Star Classic, and after a bump up the standings last month, that gain has been squandered with losses in several games where they established early leads and then lose in the third period. Last night's game was better, given the loss was in OT, but they gave a division rival four standings points over the two weekend games while they earned only one.

Here's coach John Gruden on that.

At least this time the Marlies came out in dying seconds of the third period to make it to OT.

Here are the North Division standings as of yesterday night.

A reminder the top three teams in a division jump into the first round of the playoffs, while the fourth and fifth teams have the play-in best-of-three tournament to start.

Other News

The NHL trade freeze ends at midnight tonight. Watch out for the trade buzz about anyone and everyone, no matter how far-fetched, like some team willing to trade prospect assets for a 31 year-old right-shooting defenceman with a bad NHL record. What GM would ever consider sending assets to the Flyers for... Oh, right.

Rasmus Ristolainen might have played his way off of Flyers
With a bronze medal around his neck, and a highly impressive Olympics, has Flyers defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen played his way out of Philadelphia? We take a look.
Broad Street HockeyJason MacNeil

Canada picked up a gold yesterday in the funnest of non-hockey ice sports.

We here at PPP Kitten Ranching and Curling Industries SK are still trying to bribe the IOC, err... I mean make a solid business case to the IOC, to have Kitten Curling as an Olympic Sport. We would of course have our specially trained kittens available for only a nominal sum of a few hundred million dollars.

GO CANADA GO!

From The Branches