At 2 pm, the Sceptres are back on the ice after their break. Later at 4 pm, the Marlies play their must-win game 2 of their series with Cleveland. This play-in round is best-of-three. And the Leafs can get the sweep in Ottawa at 7 pm tonight on HNIC.

Also, if you want to pre-scout the Florida teams play at 1 pm today.

Yesterday was all about the silliness that is warmupgate. I'm sure we'll hear about it tonight more than anyone needs to.

To sum up, there is a grainy bit of video of Nick Cousins shooting the puck over the red line in warmup. This was aimed, it is said, at Stolarz.

Should you do this? No. Should there be anything beyond being told not to do this and to grow up? No. Not unless you decline the advice.

Anyway, in other news...

Well. There really isn't much. So how about some playoff trivia. This is trivia, I'm not going to lie to you and pretend this matters like when Craig tells you about faceoffs.

TOI

Jake McCabe leads the Leafs in all-situations TOI with 65:33. Mitch Marner is second with 64:33. The forward with the most ice time is Auston Matthews with 60:16.

Obviously Max Pacioretty has the least with 12:24, since he only has one game. Nick Robertson only has two, and he's at 20:36 (he was last before game 3). Steven Lorentz is next with 34:18.

At five-on-five, all the defencemen from Morgan Rielly, through McCabe, OEL, Benoit, Tanev, Carlo and Marner lead in minutes with Matt Knies being the first forward at 46:13.

Natural Stat Trick shows average shift length and the standard deviation as well.

Pontus Holmberg leads with an average of :43 and Chris Tanev has the lowest average at :32. Both Tanev and McCabe have high numbers of "short shifts" which may indicate that matching to get this defence pair on or off the ice is going on a fair bit. OEL and Benoit are high in this number two. All four of them also rank the highest in "extra long" shifts. (I checked the glossary, and it never tells me what those terms mean precisely.)

Now for the Senators

Jake Sanderson leads in all-situations TOI with 80:13 (holy cow!). Next are the rest of the top-four defence with everyone save Nick Jensen playing more than McCabe has been. The top forward is Tim Stützle at 59:57, followed by Shane Pinto at 57:16.

Matthew Highmore, who only played one game is last with 9:10, followed by the now-poorer Nick Cousins with 19:07 in two games. Last of the three-gamers is Adam Gaudette with 25:57.

Thomas Chabot has the longest average shift length a :50, and Sanderson, Stützle and Nick Jensen are all at or above :45.

Nickolas Matinpalo (third pairing defender) is last with :33 and Ridly Greig is right behind him at :35.

Greig, Pinto, Batherson, Amadio and Giroux all have 14 or more short shifts, and most of those guys show up with extra long shifts too. Maybe that's usually how it works out?

There are definitely some big differences in deployment between the two teams, though. The Leafs play a more balanced churn of defenders, and the Senators play their third line more in line with their top-six, whereas the Leafs load up their top-six with a lot of minutes.

Corsi and his friends

From the Leafs POV, the percentages (at five-on-five, score and venue adjusted) are:

  • CF% - 43%
  • FF% - 48% (Leafs have blocked 59 shots and have had 31 of theirs blocked)
  • SOG% - 48%
  • xGF% - 48%

Oh, and GF% of 70.

Goals Saved Over Expected

All-situations and using NST's numbers which are likely different to other models:

  • Anthony Stolarz: 6 Goals Against on 8.38 Expected
  • Linus Ullmark: 12 Goals Against on 7.44 Expected

So about that no news. Tom Wilson and Josh Anderson were... themselves to the max last night.

Oh, and Lars Eller and Mr. Arber Xhekaj. I am so surprised to see them involved.

I don't even know what this is about, but it's hilarious:

Both Sam Montembeault and Logan Thompson left the game with injuries. Thompson's seemed serious:

The final score in that game was 6-3 after Montréal scored three in the third, and the series is now 2-1 Washington.

Two other games were on later: Carolina vs the Devils and LA against the Oilers. The Devils won in second OT, to bring their series to 2-1 Carolina, and the Oilers won with a lot of goals and their series is 2-1 LA. That means only one team is down three games.

In Leafs prospect news, the London Knights kept on rolling with a win over Kitchener to lead that series 1-0, but Denver Barkey left the game after an awkward fall.

Ben Danford and the Oshawa Generals opened their series against Barrie with a win as well.

Noah Chadwick and Lethbridge were not so fortunate, being dominated pretty thoroughly by the favoured Medicine Hat 5-2 in game one.

But Nathan Mayes and Spokane won a barn burner 10-4 to start their series, with Mayes chipping in with one assist.

And that's it until the hockey starts this afternoon.

From The Branches