Good Morning!

The World Junior Championships warm up games have begun and last night in Cornwall, ON a Leafs prospect has a starring role. Last night Carl Grundstrom scored the game winning goal to lead Sweden over Slovakia 4-3, let’s watch:

It’s good to (kinda) see the prospects doing the important things.

Team Canada also beat Finland 5-0 in Montreal last night.

Last night Randy had his revenge against the Maple Leafs, coaching the Ducks to a 3-2 victory.

Recaps: PPP (The best one), Anaheim Calling, MLHS, The Athletic, TLN, Editor in Leaf

In other news the Carolina Hurricanes ice maker broke so the Hurricanes/Red Wings game was postponed.

NHL.com looks at Team USA’s goalie options for the WJC’s - Maple Leaf Joseph Woll among them.

The Florida Panthers majority owner, Vinnie Viola, is Trumps nominee for Secretary of Army.

Can I just say, I think it should have a more formal sounding title? “Armed Forces” maybe. Calling it “Army” makes me think of Buster Bluth.

Mirtle takes a look at the Leafs centre issues over at The Athletic.

The Colour of Hockey looks at Team Canada forward (and Tampa pick) Mathieu Joseph at the World Juniors.

Last Word on Sports explains why Jake Gardiner is an elite defense man.

Rick Nash is injured, more woe for the New York Rangers.

The Bloggers Tribune has gathered all of the 2017 draft rnakings and mashed them together into one handy chart for you.

Die by the Blade wants Marc Foligno to be every Sabres fans favourite player.

When I was in Sudbury for a wedding, we went to the IceDogs/Wolves game. Foligno was still in jr then and it was a typical Sudbury Saturday night, with the fights and the rowdy crowd (us three IceDogs fans surrounded by 3,000 Wolves fans). Foligno gets in a fight and half way through the fight he pulls down the icedogs head looks at the crowd, throws his head back and howls. That man knows how to get a crowd on his side.

I found this website in Down Goes Brown’s grab bag last week and wanted to share it.

Historical Hockey Stats & Trivia. The posts I read were about the 1992 expansion and it’s really well done, very in depth and informative. My favourite part comes from the article on the expansion draft for ‘92 and the Ottawa Senators:

It all started with the Senators staff having brought all of the research they had done for the expansion draft on a laptop computer. It just so happened that when they got to the table at the draft meeting the computer's batteries were dead. They had no backup, and nothing to plug into to charge it. All of their prep work was stuck on a useless laptop. They had to make do with paper and select from memory, which proved to be very difficult.

It gets better from there.

Finally, Bibeau is back with the Buds, and Enroth goes down to the Marlies.

Alright people, go out and have the best damn Tuesday you can.

From The Branches