Thanks to the Leafs being the most important franchise in Canada if not the NHL last night's game was played at the ridiculous hour of 4pm PST so that Leafs Nation didn't have to miss out on a night on the town. Ironically, the Leafs seem to have played as if they had just spent a night out in Potville.

As a result of the unfortunate time change, I missed the game due to a previous commitment that I thought I had timed brilliantly. Luckily for me, the Leafs' official site provides game recaps in six minutes and I feel fairly confident that that is all I need to watch in order to put together a review of the game.


So what can someone take away from that six minute clip? Quite a few things:

  • Almost every time they show the Canucks it's an amazing chance that they buried. The Leafs have to improve their finishes to chances ratio.
  • The flip side is that Vesa Toskala needs to be much much better. His stats have him at the bottom of the goalie rankings. I'm confident that he can get it together but seeing it sooner rather than later would be nice.
  • What was Stajan thinking on the opener? Kyle Wellwood is equal parts soft and slow and he gets by you and deflects in the opener?
  • How bad were those 5-on-3s? Who will be on the new units next game? I have to imagine that the Man Grabs Lemon line gets to stick around but maybe John Mitchell if he is back in the lineup gets a crack or Ian White.
  • Speaking of White, I feel like that Wendel mustache has turned him into a latter-day Samson. For all of the crap that White took in the off-season his shift to forward has put him in a position to succeed. His goal showed of a nice quick release and was awfully similar to his goal against the Oilers. If he shaves that puppy he'll probably go back to being terrible.
  • Roberto Luongo didn't see too much traffic. A week ago the Leafs threw everything including the kitchen sink and Jason Blake at Carey Price and the traffic led to a number of goals. Last night it didn't look like anyone got into Luongo's grill.
  • Luke Schenn is awesome but someone else has to fight on this team. Also, Luke's got the start to fights down pat and he throws guys down really well but he has to either finish them off like a heartless bastard or not let them get back up because the second part of his fights aren't going too well./

What things did I miss in the other 54 minutes?

Also, thanks to everyone that came out to the game thread. LD got the crown and a special prize to be revealed tomorrow.

Name # of Posts
loser domi 209
JaredFromLondon 190
blurr1974 154
bkblades 112
Archimedies 85
EastLoop 78
MapleLeafs85 43
Chemmy 39
jrwendelman 26
Mr. Plank 4
koopa kid 3
penaltyshots 1