Yesterday at the WJC, Denmark and Germany both lost their final games of the round robin, ensuring the two winless teams will meet in the relegation game.

Tonight the quarterfinals will be decided by the two closest matchups in preliminary play. USA plays Sweden at 6 pm ET, and Canada plays Finland at 8:30 ET. Finland has seven points, Canada eight, and the other pair both have nine. Any thing can happen here in terms of the order in the groups, with the Czechs, in Canada's group with five points able to move up with a win in the afternoon over Latvia. The Slovaks have farther to climb but they play Switzerland in the afternoon as well.

The quarterfinals are the one-four, and two-three crossover format of most IIHF tournaments, and they start on January 2.

The Leafs are off until tomorrow, when they play the Jets.

About last night...

The Devils are in a massive slump, it has to be said, and while I feel for them (I'm lying, I don't) you need to take advantage of that.

Uh...

That's five-on-five, add in the series of power plays and:

Yes, that is rather stark, isn't it, for less than four minutes of Leafs PP time.

This new power play sure looks like it has more movement of the puck and of the players, and I did note the other day that McMann was the least used player on the PP under Marc Savard, but had a big Sh% last year and this with the man advantage.

Joe Woll worked hard to keep the Leafs going in the first.

In the second period, it was mostly New Jersey with the puck and taking shots. But it was the Leas with a just-barely five-on-five goal after another power play.

After two it was 2-0 Leafs, and they held the all-situations advantage in Expected Goals, but very much did not at five-on-five.

The Leafs held things even in the second without too much

Matt Knies and who? Nico Hischier:

And then Jacob Quillan made an impression with one of those honorary assist moves:

Matt Knies unwisely took a penalty during the last five minutes, which risked causing me problems for having said the word shutout in the GDT.

Matt Knies with the ENG and Joe Woll with lots of key saves.

Final score was 4-0 Leafs. Joe Woll was really great and earned that shutout, but the Leafs played as well as they needed to in front of him after they'd scored all those goals.

What if they aren't abjectly bad? Time will tell.

In other news:

Women’s Olympic Ice Hockey Roster Announcements for Milano Cortina 2026 Are Underway!

Just Japan so far.

Today will be the Men's Team Canada roster reveal, and that's about it. Get ready to be really mad when Tom Wilson makes the Olympic roster.

From The Branches