Leafs Roll Over Habs With Decisive Victory

OH YEAH BABY! LET THE BRAGGING BEGIN - 4-1 Leafs on Saturday night. No, but really there will be no bragging until they win the season series. All in all, a good effort by the Leafs. And that's enough about that for now.

What I really want to talk about are the potential trades the Leafs might pull off in the coming weeks. I heard a Sundin for Corey Perry and draft picks trade rumor earlier this month. I'm ALL FOR THAT. Perry is going to be a superstar in this league and we need more young forwards. Look at the Penguins. They are rolling with a very young, but very talented lineup. I'll be interested to see if Tucker gets moved as well. He is still relatively young and could possibly get swapped for another very young talent. Anyway, I think I'll post something tomorrow about the Q, the MJAHL and the CISH tomorrow to update each league. Until then, later.

Leafs Hanging In Tough

Well, we're at the allstar break and the Leafs are tied for 8th spot. The other two teams do have games in hand, but we at least didn't slip too far out of contention as I predicted we would. Hopefully this break will get Wellwood and Tucker back into the lineup and I think Peca should be starting to skate again fairly soon.

The Leafs start a road trip shortly after the break and since they have been much better on the road than home, I think we have something to look forward to. I'll give an injury update later in the week to see where exactly we are at.

Leafs Roll Over Tampa Bay

Well, I intentionally did not post anything since the Leafs got pounded 6-1 by Vancouver on Saturday. Instead I decided to wait until the outcome of last nights game against the Lightning, more so to avoid castrating myself over nothing. It turned out to be a good decision because they came up with a 4-2 win last night in Tampa. I guess the moral of this story is that we should not be allowed to play at home again......ever. And if you look at the schedule, 8 of the next 9 games are away. So, if this year's winning trend of road game supremacy stays the course, we might actually make a little run in the next couple weeks. I guess we'll have to wait and see. On a side note: the habs are absolutely terrible lately falling 8-3 to Ottawa last Saturday and 4-0 to Vancouver last night.

Ok, hopefully I have something local to write about today / tomorrow and for now here are the top ten scorers in the NHL:

SIDNEY CROSBY 23 45 68
MARTIN ST. LOUIS 29 34 63
VINCENT LECAVALIER 29 34 63
ALEXANDER OVECHKIN 28 35 63
DANY HEATLEY 28 34 62
MARIAN HOSSA 29 32 61
JAROMIR JAGR 17 42 59
TEEMU SELANNE 29 29 58
JOE THORNTON 12 46 58
MARC SAVARD 17 40 57

CISH - Men's Update

Good morning y'all. There's the hick in me, I was wondering how long it would take for that to appear. Ok, we'll take a quick look at the current standings in the Atlantic University Men's Hockey Conference today. Leading the pack and also #1 in the country are Les Aigles Bleus de l’Université de Moncton (copied and pasted by the way), who hold a record of 14-2-1.

Next in line are the following:

Saint Mary's 11-4-2 = 24pts
UNB 11-4-2 = 24pts
St. Thomas 10-7-0 = 20pts
StFX 9-5-2 = 20pts
Acadia 5-10-2 = 12pts
UPEI 5-10-2 = 12pts
Dalhousie 2-10-4 = 8pts

Each team plays 28 games during the regular season, so there are still mathematical possibilities for any team to make the playoffs, but I think we can say with some level of confidence that Moncton for sure and Saint Mary's and UNB are locks for playoff spots. Where they rank at the end of the year is a different story, but they will at least make the playoffs! I still have yet to make it down to an X game, but I plan on attending in the very near future. Moncton is there on the 10th of February and that would obviously be an excellent game. We'll see.

Leafs Hurt But Holding On

Before going into Toronto's game Saturday night against the Sabres, the Leafs were coming fresh off two very commanding wins over the Boston Bruins (5-1 Monday in Toronto and 10-2 Thursday in Boston). So if we go back to my feelings on Saturday afternoon before the game I was thrilled that the Leafs had found themselves offensively. The funny thing is, five of the forwards who started the season are injured - Tucker, Peca, Wellwood, Antropov, and Ponikarovsky. So can we even call them the Leafs anymore? Or do we say that the Bruins got pounded by the Toronto Maple Marlies?

Anyway, they then went on to lose that night to Buffalo 4-3 in a pretty good effort. They had plenty of very good scoring opportunities and Pohl had an open net to tie it late in the game, but they came up short.

Again, until the Leafs piece together a couple wins, I can and will not say we're doing well. We need to stop show up for half the games and start putting in 60 minutes of hockey night in and night out!

Where Are They Now - Mike Mole

This segment of Where Are They Now features a cast member of Making the Cut; Mike Mole. Mike left StFX in 2005/2006 to further his pro career (Mike played 1 game with the Lowell Lock Monsters of the AHL in 2002/2003). He played 57 games last year between the Phoenix Roadrunners and the San Diego Gulls in the ECHL. He then started this year with the Pensacola Ice Pilots of the ECHL before getting called up to the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the AHL.

After watching Mike during his 2003/2004 season with the X-men, it is to no surprise that he is back in the AHL. And at only 24 years of age, he has plenty of time to continue his development to reach higher destinations (goal tenders tend to peak at a later age).

I plan on doing updates for all of the Where Are They Now candidates later in the season to see how they made out, so check back in March/April to see if Mike stays up with the Sound Tigers.

Leafs pull out a win

Good game last night. Not a great game; a good game. The scoreboard might say otherwise (5-1 Leafs), but there were still enough flaws that you cannot get too excited over that effort. However, I did like a lot of things. Most impressive was their play in the third period, especially that fourth line. If they can get an effort like that night after night, we'll be there come playoff time. We don't need the 1st of 2nd seed, 8th would work for us right now. A decent effort on Saturday night as well (3-2 loss in OT to Ottawa).

Tomorrow morning I figure it's time for a couple posts. I don't think I have too much on my plate at work from 8:30-10:00. Stay tuned for another segment of Where Are They Now and I'll follow up with the other topics I said I would discuss in previous posts.