Toronto received an early gift to from the Easter Bunny last night, with the Leafs obliterating the Habs 7-1, and then an extra special treat of an Emergency Backup Goalie getting game time and his name in NHL history books. Here's our recap of the game:

Leafs Recap: Saturday night fun vs Montreal
The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Canadiens 7-1 for the last time this season in the final Saturday night game before the playoffs. There are now several Leafs at or very close to season milestones with three more games to go. Mitch Marner scored two goals and had an
PPP LeafsHardev

Jett Alexander stole the show at the end of the game, going in net to get himself officially logged in for 70 seconds of playing time, and forever listed in the official NHL game log.

Alexander is a goalie for the University of Toronto team and was called in ostensibly to sit on the bench and watch the game with Ilya Samsonov in net, but with the game turning into a rout the opportunity was there to have him log some actual game time and be able to say for all time that he was once an NHL player and for the Maple Leafs. Now that's a fun story for your future grandchildren.

Apparently the Easter Bunny only left sour lemon drops in Montreal as the Habs are all whiny about this EBUG playing, which is so hilarious.

But then who actually made the call to put in Alexander is a mystery...

We still are awaiting the full explanation of why Matt Murray was not available for this game and Joseph Woll was returned to the Marlies. It seems likely this is related to the near imminent arrival of Matthew Knies and the Leafs needing specific free dollars of cap space to sign him to an Entry Level Contract and add him to the roster in the coming days.

Speaking of Knies, he experienced the highs and lows of playoff hockey last night as the Minnesota lost to Quinnipiac in OT at the NCAA men's title game. Minnesota was up 2-1 in the third period but took a bad late-period penalty allowing Quinnipiac to tie the game up, and then it was all over after only 10 seconds of overtime.

There's only three regular season games left for the Leafs and they are all on the road. The first is tomorrow in Sunrise against the Florida Panthers, but what everyone is waiting to see is the game on Tuesday against the Tampa Bay Lightning who are locked in as the Leafs first round playoff opponent. It will be a preview of what's to come and also probably the most over-analysed game of the season, which is saying something because all Leafs games are over-analysed, but this particular game will be dissected as far as a neo-Changeling has to be before it finally breaks down to goo.

No meaningful games today for the wild card spots still open, but every game counts for all of these teams, which means Monday's game matters a lot to Florida.

Wild Card GP W L OT PTS P% RW ROW
1 Florida 80 42 31 7 91 0.569 36 40
2 NY Islanders 80 41 30 9 91 0.569 35 40
3 Pittsburgh 80 40 30 10 90 0.563 31 39
4 Buffalo 78 39 32 7 85 0.545 29 37
Wild Card GP W L OT PTS P% RW ROW
1 x-Seattle 79 45 26 8 98 0.62 36 45
2 Winnipeg 79 44 32 3 91 0.576 34 43
3 Calgary 80 37 27 16 90 0.563 30 35
4 Nashville 79 40 31 8 88 0.557 29 35
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Happy Easter, everyone, and may the Easter Bunny bring you many treats that are not sour (unless you like that kind of candy.)

From The Branches