As Cathy mentioned in Friday's FTB, the lack of news is itself news. None of those oft discussed deals for big name Leafs' players appear to be happening any time soon, despite everyone still coming up with theoretical trades for Matthew Knies and Morgan Rielly.

"But we're only half way through August," you say. Well remember the new 84-game regular season starts much earlier this year. The first pre-season games are only five weeks away from today, which means the players will be back in Toronto soon as it is now de riguer to have informal skates at least a week before training camp starts, though I view those workouts as more of an excuse to get together and then go out to some trendy Toronto restaurant with a private dining room.

And the Rookie Showcase will be held in Gatineau at Centre Slush Puppie (really?) starting on September 12, in only four weeks.

Either way, if a Big Thing is going to happen, there's not much time for it to go down before everyone is getting ready to start playing. As they say, we'll see where this goes.

Our Top 25 Under 25 will continue next week and there will be a recap post of week one out at about 8:00 a.m. this morning and the words you are reading right now will be replaced with a link to that.

There is a tiny bit of actual news out there. A unique piece of Canadian hockey culture has been lost.

And, well that's it.

So let's take a mid-summer break to remember some good old times.

Have a great weekend all!

From The Branches