Thursday's FTB: Road trip time

The Leafs are in Washington today for the start of a packed pre-Christmas season. Yesterday, before they left, they returned Artur Akhtyamov to the AHL. And that's as good a reason as any to go over the roster freeze rules today.

From midnight on December 19 to midnight on December 27, there are no waivers, no player movement (except for all the exceptions) and no trades.

The main exception to the "no player movement" part is that any player recalled from the AHL after December 11, and who is on emergency recall not regular recall, can be returned to the AHL up to December 23. Everyone else has to be sent down before the freeze begins or they stay on the NHL roster until the end of the freeze.

The other exception involves players returning to health off of LTIR.

The Leafs have the cap/LTIR space to have 23 healthy players on the roster at all times, so the player movement rules are not going to prevent having a full team on the ice. There are four games within that freeze period, however, courtesy of the tight schedule this year.

The Schedule

Leafs @ Nashville, December 20 - the freeze goes into effect the night before this game
Leafs @ Dallas, December 21
Leafs at home to Pittsburgh, December 23 - the Christmas break starts after this game
Leafs at home to Ottawa, December 27 - the freeze ends after this game
Leafs @ Detroit, December 28

The LTIR Exception

If a player on LTIR becomes healthy during the freeze period and is ready to return to play, the team is allowed to make any moves they need to to become cap compliant. The Leafs don't really have an issue here since it seems clear that Brandon Carlo or Anthony Stolarz can go on LTIR to make room for the only potential returnee, Chris Tanev.

However, they need roster room when a player comes off IR or LTIR, and they can't just do whatever they like to fit under the 23-man limit after the freeze. They are at 23 right now.

The only way this is an issue is with Hentry Thrun, who was recalled before December 11. He has to go down before the trip to Nashville or not until after the game at home to Ottawa on December 27.

Chris Tanev is on the trip to Washington, so it seems like Thrun might be returned to the AHL very soon to allow Tanev to be activated. Otherwise, the freeze won't affect the Leafs very much, although the flurry of big trades shows that it's concentrating minds like a deadline often does.

Fenway reportedly paid $900 million for the team four years ago.

Another Luke Fox look into the psyche of the team.

I'm not interested in more on the post-goal gesture or how it's perceived. The perception is about the perceiver not Matthews. But this line in the article is true:

In sunnier times, the fan base debated between Marner, Matthews and William Nylander. Today, the fan base oscillates between anger, apathy and grasping belief.

Maybe gasping disbelief is truer.

We saw with Mitch Marner, and should take a moment to take it on board, that when a player has hit the out of fashion phase of his tenure with a team, nothing he says is right. The tone is wrong, the words are parsed into outrage fodder, and everything is an affront. Watch his media hits with the sound off, and you can just tell by his posture, facial expression, hair style, everything is wrong.

Falling out of love is like that. Don't mistake it for actual insight.

Matthews isn't there yet, but a few people are looking up the numbers of divorce lawyers. Winning will, naturally, cure this problem.

There you are, we relearned the roster freeze process and discovered that the Mitch Marner argument cycle was actually the good times. If only we'd known.

Preview will be later today.

From The Branches