Welcome to summer. It began officially this morning at about 5:13 a.m. in Ontario. If you are like me and not a fan of the sun rising at a horribly early hour, then good news for us, the days will now start to get shorter, at least if you are in the Northern Hemisphere.

Here is what was happening at Stonehenge this morning, the giant monument constructed in what is now England around 4,000 years ago, and absolutely perfectly directionally aimed at the exact spot where the sun rises on the first day of summer.

If you are reading this from Australia, today is actually the first day of winter.
I’m sorry.

It could be a whole two weeks into summer before the end of the Stanley Cup Final now that the Tampa Bay Lightning have some life in them. After an embarrassing loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday night, they came back in their first game of the series in front of their home crowd to win the game 6-2 last night.

Even Patrick Maroon got in on the action with this super sneaky goal which caused Coach Jared Bednar to pull Darcy Kuemper from the net and put in the Avs back up, Pavel Francouz.

Could Maroon be one of the best depth players in the whole league right now? He appears to be a local fan favourite too. Or at least the favourite of a local fan.

No Point? No Problem. Lightning bounce back with 6-2 victory

The next game is tomorrow night in Tampa at 8:00 p.m.

Other News

It’s been a long time since that 2008 draft, but remember without Luke Schenn we would never have had JvR, so don’t try and go back and change history there or you will make the future worse!

This clip from the coming ESPN documentary on the famous 1996 Red Wings-Avalanche fight features Brendan Shanahan getting clobbered by Patrick Roy.

Canucks sign Russian free-agent Andrei Kuzmenko - Nucks Misconduct
The 26-year-old winger has been a consistent producer with SKA St. Petersberg in the KHL for the better part of five seasons, although the 2021-22 campaign was his best to date.

Report: Pete DeBoer Set To Be Named Next Stars Head Coach - Defending Big D
If this is the hire, what will the Dallas Stars look like next season?

Where Does Ryan Nugent-Hopkins Fit In 2022-23? - The Copper & Blue
If we are being transparent here, the argument could be made that Nugent-Hopkins has never been able to drive a line at even strength during his NHL career. Part of that was due to circumstance and part of it falls back on him never developing into that guy at this level. In his defence, his lot in life was altered the second Connor McDavid came into the picture, but that’s of no consequence in the here and now.

Site News

PPP Kitten Ranching and Radioactive Isotope Recycling GmbH is upgrading our systems to a new software version this morning, as a result, the commenting engine will be offline sporadically until about 9:00 a.m.. That’s assuming the kittens don’t escape the containment vessel in our sub-basement laboratory during the software update and reattempt to take over the world, but I assure you, we have backup systems in place to prevent such an...
[KLAXONS BLARING]
Oh no... oh no no no no!
EVERYONE RUN! RUN FOR YOUR...

This update will fix a bunch of long-standing issues, including performance (especially on mobile), any Z key inconsistencies, and the removal of the repeated (and hated) Load More buttons.

UPDATE 7:45 a.m.: We’re back. All systems are normal and no kittens were harmed.

From The Branches