In site news, we are working on banning both Fulemin, Acting The, and Seldo, El from both the website and possibly from Twitter as well. Rest assured, they will be punished severely for these Tweets from the first half of last night’s game:

The defendants claim, “they were up 5-1, they couldn’t possibly lose!”

The prosecutors responded with a statement, “you sweet summer child.”

The evidence includes:

  • Exhibit A: The Recap. The Leafs ran out to a 5-1 lead in the first half of a Tuesday night game against the Florida Panthers, before losing it all the way to 5-6 deficit. John Tavares got the team to overtime, only to lose in said overtime.
  • Exhibit B: Erik Källgren left the game in the second period due to an injury after taking a shot high. It appeared to clip somewhere near his collarbone, neck, or the side of his head. We have no updates as of yet.
  • And Exhibit C: The Leafs were on the second game of a back-to-back after beating Tampa Bay very convincingly and looked visibly tired in the second half of the game. For as incredible Mitch Marner was in the first half, he was straight up gassed in the second half. /

After pledging allegiance to the Blog overlords, jury will vote in the comments.

Various Leafs and Branches

Maple Leafs blow a big lead on game two of a back to back | by: Seldo

Jake Muzzin’s horrible, no good, bad year | by: Katya

With Erik Källgren out, who the heck is left?? We will find out tomorrow evening before the team flies out to Dallas.

Anaheim Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf, 36, will be retiring at the end of this season, marking a 17-year career all with Anaheim, including a Stanley Cup and over 1000 points to be the franchise leader. Emily Kaplan of ESPN reports Getzlaf might take on a front office role with the Ducks as their rebuild moves along.

This was a weird and sad story. The Hockey News reported a few days ago that NHL legend Mike Bossy was in palliative care. The story was taken down rather quickly and no statement or apology was made at the time. The Hockey News then changed their story to say he is in palliative care. Now, the Bossy family had to make a statement saying the former NHLer is resting peacefully at home while he battled cancer.

Note: a previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Hockey News had falsely claimed Mike Bossy had died. They had only falsely claimed he was in palliative care. We regret the error.

At the end of the day, sports shouldn’t try to be TMZ, and instead give privacy and respect to former players and such. It’s just not necessary.

In the KHL, the non-Russian teams Dinamo Riga (Latvia) and Jokerit Helsinki (Finland) have left the league. As reported earlier, there are about 120 foreign players in the KHL who are also planning an exodus as the country faces sanctions and potential war crimes for its invasion of Ukraine. Those players are hoping to populate the rest of European hockey, or potentially come to the AHL and ECHL.

From The Branches