The Toronto Maple Leafs won 5-2 in a thankless, Catch-22, game against the Chicago Blackhawks, last night at home.
The Toronto Maple Leafs were in a tough spot where they are expected to trounce the hapless losers from Chicago, or else face ridiculous questions about why they can’t handle bad teams.
As if all NHL results don’t have a degree of randomness everyone completely ignores.
But they did all-right. Matthews was back, Mitch Marner appeared to be channeling the powers of Adam Oates, and afterwards I stayed up all night watch the world’s longest movie.
The movie in question is called Heaven’s Gate and I wouldn’t even know where to start talking about it. It was 3 hours and 37 minutes, required you to be able to recognize the difference between two guys with exact same beard, and, I kid you not, included a 5 minute+ scene of a man playing the fiddle while roller-skating, which he did at a Roller Skating Rink that Jeff Bridges, according to the internet, but not made exactly clear in the movie, bought for the town, making it the only Western I know of to include a roller-skating rink as a major plot point (shout out to ODAS Park!! in O-Town).
That’s Art, Baby! but back to the game,
The Toronto Maple Leafs Destroy the Hapless Blackhawks
Sam Lafferty, Jake McCabe, Patrick Kane, Connor Murphy, and Jonathan Toews are all linked to the Leafs in trade talks. (By which I mean people with no idea what will happen talked about it).
Why would the Leafs be interested in up to five players from the worst team in the NHL *(regardless of what the standings say)?
Would you rather have Patrick Mahomes or the Dog Fighting guy? https://t.co/fTQCho5CvJ
— Editor in Leaf (@EditorinLeaf) February 16, 2023
They wouldn’t. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
While I could maybe see the team settling for McCabe if nothing else happens, or taking on Lafferty for (basically) free as like their 3rd or 5th most important pick-up (even if he is an
expensive upgrade on Aston-Reese) not one of these players is exciting.
Not one of these players makes you want to no-doubt scratch or trade a current Toronto Maple Leafs regular.
The most impressive thing about last night’s game was the fact that all five Leafs goals came at 5v5. You really can’t win when you’re a top team facing a bad team in the *nearly* random NHL.
But last night, the Toronto Maple Leafs had a dominant performance against a terrible team. They posted a 70% Expected Goals rating, and utterly destroyed the Hawks.
It was a good game, but the number of Blackhawks the Leafs should acquire is zero.