The Hart Memorial Trophy crowns the Most Valuable Player in the NHL every year since 1972. Greats like Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, and Alexander Ovechkin have won the award multiple times, cementing their legacies as some of the best to step foot on the ice. This year’s race, however, is one of the tightest ones we’ve seen in recent history. It’s a four-way competition between Connor McDavid...
Auston Matthews was the first player since Lightning forward Steven Stamkos in 2012 to score 60 goals a couple of seasons ago. The season that followed wasn’t the greatest with some nagging injuries taking away Matthews’ scoring touch which had Leafs fans worrying if they had seen the peak of his goal scoring magic. All of that has been put to rest in just the first half of this season. Leading...
Okay, so I was wrong. Klingberg is no longer an all-star defenceman and it could not be any more obvious. Our goaltending isn’t bad but just terribly inconsistent. Tyler Bertuzzi cannot score playing five-on-five hockey. Domi’s not bad. Reaves got scratched already. It’s not looking good. The Leafs are not having a great start to the season. They can’t seem to win in regulation, their...
The Toronto Maple Leafs had a busy off-season and the fans have been eagerly awaiting the start of another regular season. This might be a nice time to remind fans that last year was technically not a complete failure. The Leafs were finally successful in breaking the curse and beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games to capture their first playoff series win in 19 years. Sure, they may have...
The National Hockey League (NHL) All-Star break has concluded, and Leafs fans had the opportunity to watch Mitch Marner fail to score on retired goaltender Roberto Luongo. This also means that the second half of the regular season is officially underway. The first half of the season was a roller coaster with injuries plaguing the entire defence core. However, the team rallied behind their young...
The Toronto Maple Leafs just lost defenceman Morgan Rielly for at least the next ten games. This was not welcome news: Over the last few weeks the Leafs have also lost TJ Brodie from their blue line and Ilya Samsonov from their crease. On the other hand, fans were seeing their team get on a roll with Matt Murray recovering and the team racking up at least one point in nine out of their last ten...
As I begin writing this article, the city of Toronto is mourning the Blue Jays as they blew an 8-1 lead to be eliminated from the 2022 MLB postseason. This event has resulted in many Toronto sports fans comparing the Jays to the Leafs, and losing all hope for Toronto sports. As a devoted Leafs fan who is too far into the fandom to lose hope, I present to you a fairly optimistic and, in my mind...
The National Hockey League (NHL) is not participating in the 2022 Winter Olympics being held in Beijing. This decision was made in consideration of COVID-19 concerns and the highly contagious Omicron variant which has already led to the cancellation of the IIHF’s World Junior Hockey Championship and U-18 Women’s World Hockey Championship tournaments. This news came as a shock to the hockey fans...
This Chicago Blackhawks scandal escalated to its peak late last month after Kyle Beach revealed himself as “John Doe One,” one of two sexual assault victims of former Blackhawks video coach Brad Aldrich. The sexual assault is said to have occurred in May 2010, a mere month before the Blackhawks would capture their first Stanley Cup since 1961. This would start the dynasty that saw the winning of...
Hockey is back and for Leafs fans, it’s the start of an 82-game regular season, which means close to nothing without that second-round appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. With a far from exciting off-season and the departure of some key pieces to the lineup, it is hard to gauge whether the Leafs are better equipped to face their playoff demons. The answer to whether this team is better than...