The Marlies have ten games left in their regular season and are starting to make that final push for the playoffs. It begins tonight at 7:00 p.m. with a game at the Coliseum against the Manitoba Moose, a team they visited earlier this month in Winnipeg for two games and they lost both.

However, that was followed by four wins in six games, including a 4-2 win against the Cleveland Monsters last week, the team the Marlies are chasing in the standings.

Here are the North Division standings as of last night.

The AHL playoffs are completely division-based, there are no wild card conference slots for the playoffs. The top three teams in the division move automatically in to the playoffs. The teams in fourth and fifth place have a so-called "play-in" series to be the fourth team in.

The play-in is a best-of-three tournament where really it's a coin flip. Lose that first game and you are already facing elimination.

Obviously, the Marlies want to leapfrog the Cleveland Monsters in the standings to avoid this entirely, which they would love to do given last season they wound up in the same position and lost in two straight, with the second loss a heart-breaking goal by Cleveland in second OT. This is what they don't want to happen again:

Alex Nylander summed it up by saying "We don't want to play in the play-in, we want to be in the playoffs from the start. Trust me, I've been in the play-in before and it's only best out of three, and anything can happen."

Nylander has done his part to make that happen, with seven goals and seven assists in the last six games.

The Cincinnati Cyclones step-up to the challenge

The Marlies have filled up the ranks with some support from players on the Cincinnati Cyclones. John Gruden said that the call-ups they have been able to blend in very well with the team quickly, noting "credit goes down to Riley [Weselowski] who is running the same systems that we have so it's easy for them to come up and adjust."

So let's give them some credit and show you their highlights.

Landon Sim, who has amazing hockey teeth, got his first pro-goal as well.

New NCAA Signings

It's the time of year where NCAA players sign Entry Level Contracts and join the team, and there's already two this year.

Defenceman Vinny Borgesi just joined the team after four years at Northeastern University.

Maple Leafs sign college defender Vinny Borgesi
He’ll join the Marlies this season.
PPP LeafsCathy Squires

Brandon Buhr joined after playing at Clarkson University for one year and three years at Union College. He picked up his first pro-hockey point quickly after signing a Leafs contract.

Maple Leafs sign Brandon Buhr to an ELC
He’ll join the Marlies for this year.
PPP LeafsCathy Squires

All that being said, we have an NCAA signing from last year to mention and that's Luke Haymes who continues to impress in his role.

Haymes credits Marlies coach Mark Giordano for his development on the power play, saying "obviously a defeceman while he played, but he's coaching a little bit of the forwards here and he's responsible for the power play and he's amazing the way he sees the game. He picks little things to tell you when you come off from a shift if he sees an open pass or a play you could have made, or a different perspective to think of on a play. He makes our job easy as forwards."

Thing I learned is Giordano is "G. O." to the players. Appropriate given the location of the Coliseum adjacent to the GO Train station.

Ten Games To Go

The remainder of the Marlies schedule includes the following (not in chronological order):
Two games against the Manitoba Moose
Two games against the Charlotte Checkers
Two games against the Utica Comets
Two games against the Laval Rocket
One game against the Rochester Americans
One game against the Syracuse Crunch

So the only game against a team chasing them in the standings is the one against the Amerks which will be on Friday in Rochester. A win there would be helpful, but to bounce Cleveland out of third place they need to get big wins against the other teams, including those out of the division.

The elephant in the room is the final two games of the season against the Rocket who lead the division and have already clinched. There's no understatement of how much these two teams don't like each other, and with the likes of Florian Xhekaj buzzing around for the Rocket those games will no doubt be entertaining, but also nail-biting if it all comes down to winning those to get up over the Monsters and into third place.

Toronto Marlies