Happy Sunday everyone. Later today we'll have a post about Women's Worlds, but the medal games are today, the final day of the tournament.

Finland plays Sweden for fifth place at 10 am. At 3 pm, the bronze medal game pits Switzerland vs Czechia. And the gold medal contest, USA vs Canada is at 7 pm.

Not a lot other than the women's semifinals went on yesterday. The Marlies played their second last regular season game, but the playoff picture is now set. The Leafs had a minimalist practice, and recalled Wayne Simmonds.

Handing out 10 NHL awards, from most underrated player to game of the year
Best trade of the season? Best free agent signing? Biggest hit of the year? Here are the NHL awards you didn’t know you needed.
Yahoo SportsAnthony Petrielli

I looked for Leafs news and I see the Sun thinks the Leafs are "trying" to brush off the playoff history and the Globe & Mail just says they'll lose, huh I wonder who wrote that?

The house organ has a preview:

2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Maple Leafs vs. Lightning 1st-round preview
The first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs features 16 teams in eight best-of-7 series, which start Monday.Today, NHL.com previews the Eastern Conference First Round between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
NHL.com

And the other house organ has some clips from practice yesterday:

Maple Leafs embracing the opportunity as playoff pressure ramps up
On the first official day of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ new post-season march, the first chance for the team to reconvene with the regular season firmly in the rear-view, the message was clear: Embrace the opportunity.
Sportsnet.ca| April 15, 2023, 4:24 PM

TSN, which is, forgive me, another house organ, but a little less of one than the other two, went with the Samsonov angle:

Ilya Samsonov ready for playoff spotlight with Toronto Maple Leafs | TSN
With the Leafs set to host Game 1 of the best-of-seven series Tuesday, the Original Six franchise is banking on Samsonov’s solid campaign transitioning to the spring after he signed in free agency following an abrupt end with the Washington Capitals.
TSNThe Canadian Press

That's the news, now for some site updates.

I read the roadmap and comments about the commenting platform development more closely and I see that this issue of comments not loading without a refresh is a known issue. The plan is to improve stability of the embed. This is not an improvement the version 3 system is intended to fix, so we will have to see if V3 just helps anyway. V3 is almost polished up and finished, and I'm dithering about installing it before the playoffs. I'll let you know what I decide – possibly today.

There are ~35 accounts that were created as part of the import of emails for people who signed up for early access that have never been finalized. No one has ever logged in with them. This is totally okay, all readers are welcome to use the site without an account, but for some "behind the curtain" reasons, I'd like to get rid of these zombies.

Again, these are accounts no one has ever logged in with. I'm going to delete them sometime in the next few weeks. If you find out you were one of those people and you want an account, just make one by hitting the Sign Up link and then log into it.

Sometime later today I'll redo the front page – there's no downtime associated with these changes I'm doing, contemplating or possibly putting off for a few days. So no one need worry about that.

Have a great day, everyone!

From The Branches