Good morning!

The Leafs won last night! It was a genuinely good game with a lot of positives, too. Holmberg had a quiet, but good, debut. Matthews had a goal, a boatload of shots, and almost scored a nifty between the legs goal. ZAR scored. Tavares had a hat trick. I don’t like scrums all that much, but Gio taking a fight for Matthews was cool as well.

Does playing a good game against the Tortorella Flyers prove that they’ve fixed their issues? Not really. But did I have fun watching JT get a hat trick en route to a 5-2 win? Yes I did. More of that please, Leafs.

I could watch this all day:

Matthews’ goal moved him into sole possession of fifth-most powerplay goals for the Leafs. He’s still got a ways to go to catch Sundin in first, though.

Leafs Prospects

In prospect news, fresh off of winning the player of the week award earlier this week, Leafs 2020 7th round pick Ryan Tverberg won the Hockey East player of the month yesterday. He’s had a strong start to the year, with 7 goals and 4 assists in his first 11 games. What a great last week and month he’s had!

Shifting over to the OHL, Ty Voit continued his torrid pace last night and added to his league-leading points pace with a 4 assist game. He’s up to 28 points in only 13 games.

Around the NHL

There was only one other NHL game last night, and it was Pittsburgh vs Buffalo. Both teams wore their reverse retro jerseys, and, wow the Buffalo whites do not look good on an ice surface. Because of the reverse retro jerseys, Zucker pulled out a fun celly.

The game did not go well for Pittsburgh after that, though. In Pittsburgh’s previous game, against Boston, they had blown a 5-2 lead and lost 6-5. Last night, they went up 3-1 against Buffalo and ended up losing 6-3. Also, Tage Thompson has 11 points in his last three games; he really is doing his utmost to prove that last season wasn’t a mirage. Are the Sabres good now?

And while Thompson seems to be proving the “worst player in the league” statistical profiles from a few years ago wrong, we got to see first hand last night that Ristolainen... isn’t.

Oof.

From The Branches