Tuesday's FTB: Leafs host Chicago tonight

It's a bleak winter landscape where I live, at least until it starts raining in a day or two. It's feeling a little more bleak on the ice with the Leafs right now too.

Someone asked when we were going to talk about Auston Matthews, and I'll crack the fourth wall enough to say, you know, not December. Everyone is busy, and the world is what the world is and it doesn't feel like a very cheery season in many ways.

I'd like to look at Matthews – not to bury him nor to praise him – with some dispassion and to go into it (this is key I think) assuming I know nothing. Like John Snow.

Make do for now with this:

Luke Fox uses some fairly irrelevant stats, some less tenuous than others, and talks about goals without addressing games played, which, whatever. It is what it is, and what it is is what the audience won't feel intimidated by.

Arithmetic, so scary.

I find it interesting that Craig Berube laid some responsibility on Matthews after the Oilers game and then gentled his message a little yesterday.

Another reason I want to wait to delve more deeply into Auston over his career is that I am really, really tired of the stories that start with "and therefore it's all Berube's fault" but have a lot of words beforehand. There's not much to be said for dispassion when looking at a player who does genuinely appear to be making on-ice choices because his body is not now what it was then, when the response is just #fireberube.

I felt this way about the #firekeefe period when it was tribal yelling and boundary policing – you must admit this man is terrible! And in that instance, like now, I don't really care for the guy that much. I do like some of Berube's choices in how to talk about players, and I didn't like Keefe's. I liked some parts of Keefe's system and I like what I think is the reason why Berube has made the choices he's made.

I hate his offensive system. I don't hate him. I know people do, and I'm not your mom, you can choose your own path in life. But I don't think hate is good for you.

That's a lot of talking about Auston to tell you I don't wanna talk about it. In a few weeks, when the WJC is over, and the eleven thousand PWHL games packed into a week and a half is done, then I'll want to consider him at half-way through the season.

Tonight the Leafs get to play Chicago who are missing their best player. Let's see if that jazzes them up. But teams bring it in the Leafs building. Edmonton did. They haven't played like that, possibly all season, and they sure didn't the next night.

Speaking of the WJC...

It's only 10 days away.

Oh, and pop back up to Fox's article for a longer form of the comments from Tanev and Berube yesterday. Making a little more sense of his situation. It included the fact he was told to go six weeks without contact, and that was up this past weekend. So that explains the timeline that everyone is so eager to have in advance.

Women’s Olympic Tournament Referees Ready

That IIHF article mentions that some of the officials were at the Junior Men's Division 1B event that just finished. Hungary won the event and moves up to Division 1A next year – that's the level that Norway and Tinus Luc Koblar just were victorious at to get them into the WJC next year.

What's interesting about this is that that junior event was at Milan Rho arena, which the above link says is the main arena for the women's event. This is not, obviously, the new arena that isn't yet finished.

This rink is part of a complex of ice surfaces built into a convention centre in Milan to host the speed skating and some of the hockey. It's a little reassuring that an event with 15 games over a week was just held there successfully.

This video shows a clip from the U20 event and gives you an idea of what the rink looks like.

This is a great still shot:

Poland outshoots Italy 15-2 to open the first period in Milano. Score is tied at 1...

Only other note, it's pretty empty here for an Italian home game. I get it's lower-level junior hockey, but still rough pic.twitter.com/6gozYzt6E1
— Polish Puck (@PolandHockey) December 8, 2025