No, you didn’t have a bad dream last night, but I can see why you would think so. You woke up on a Saturday morning and thought you had dreamed the Leafs lost horribly to the Ottawa Senators on Hockey Night in Canada, but how could that be real? Hockey Night in Canada is only on Saturday, and the Ottawa Senators are ranked 21 spots beneath the Leafs in the league standings.

Well it’s true. It all did happen Friday night. Here’s our goal recap of the game broadcast on the new “Friday Edition” of HNIC:

Maple Leafs take pity on Senators, give them a win.

It was only after the game that the real bad news dropped: we found out why Ilya Samsonov was the surprise starter last night, playing his fifth game in a row; Matt Murray is injured. Again.

But this time, it’s a secret mystery injury!

So it’s not a new injury, and it’s not the same injury that caused him to miss a few weeks earlier this season. So what injury is it? No one outside the organisation appears to know this detail. At least not yet.

This is potentially nothing, or potentially a disaster. Just the kind of high-variance risk-return ratio we have all come to expect from this team’s goalies, eh?

What we do know is the Leafs play their next game tomorrow (yes, Sunday, not tonight,) hosting the Washington Capitals. Whatever is going on with Murray we should get a clue how bad it is today from the Marlies. They are over in Winnipeg playing the Manitoba Moose and won 2-1 last night with Joseph Woll in net to get his 12th win in 13 starts now.

If Murray is actually going to be out for even one game, they will probably call back Woll to Toronto today. And all of this is on top of Auston Matthews out a few weeks with his injury.

The All-Star Break and the “bye-week” can’t come soon enough so this team can heal and rest up.

Other News

The NHL trade deadline is on March 3, but our intrepid Maple Leafs General Manager is already out there looking at the goods available in the market.

Things are definitely not going well for the Canucks, so they are a prime target to unload players at the deadline. Now some questions are emerging about the competence of their staff as several players appear to have had injuries far worse than initially thought. The latest is ex-Leaf Ilya Mikheyev.

Leafs prospects were in action in NCAA and the WHL with notably more success than the Leafs themselves had last night. First up is Matthew Knies for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers.

And here’s Fraser Minten for the Kamloops Blazers

A Q&A with Hayley Wickenheiser, four-time Olympic gold medallist, medical doctor and all-around overachiever - Toronto Life
She has a few things to say about failure, women in sports and hockey’s major sexism problem.

Lifelong Leafs fan fulfils dream of seeing first game, passes away next day - CP24
Mike Davy always dreamed of going to a Leafs game, and once it finally happened, he passed away the night after. [SPECIES: I'm glad it wasn't last night's game he went to see.]

And for the jersey design critics out there, here are the specials the Washington Capitals will use for their game against the Carolina Hurricanes at their upcoming outdoor Stadium Series game.

I’ve found there’s always a few people who have never noticed that the white-space at the bottom of that eagle logo they use is the shape of the dome on the Capitol Building in Washington D.C., and the triangular blue section above it leading to the neck of the eagle is the shape of the peak on the Washington Monument.

From The Branches