Good morning Toronto Maple Leafs fans!

The Maple Leafs are great, and are heading into their game against the Vegas Golden Knights tonight riding a three game win streak. There isn’t much news in Leafs land, but we did get some news about everyone’s favourite team to pick on, the Arizona Coyotes.

There will be a city council meeting on Thursday night to vote on putting the proposed new home of the Coyotes on a referendum ballot, with the vote to be held in May 2023. This is a move I support. All big civic projects like arena or stadium complexes should be voted on by the citizens of the city. No more backroom deals with councils and governments to build playthings for billionaires.

No public money should be going into projects that don’t benefit the public. Putting billions of dollars into arenas where the tenant gets the benefits and none of the cost is a drastic misuse of finds, and right now especially. Right now real people need help more than ever. Sports team owners don’t need a single finger lifted to help them, but they’re still trying to bleed cities, states, provinces dry of much needed public money.

I've studied stadium financing for over two decades – and the new Bills stadium is one of the worst deals for taxpayers I've ever seen

As well, if a mayor were to stand up to the owners, not wanting to dump public money into the hands of the wealthy, the scammers will try and set entrap them to get them out of office.

Calgary conservatives plotted to entrap and oust Mayor Nenshi in “big store con” scheme

The Tempe City Council has my full support over this move, and I hope they see great turnout so the citizens can have their say about how they want their money spent.

A final note, the current majority owners of the Coyotes, Alex Meruelo & Andrew Barroway are worth a combined $15 billion. I think they can swing some financing on their own.

Now, some more news.

So, who is this new guy?

Future Considerations: Scouting report on new Leafs goalie Keith Petruzzelli

Things got desperate in Washington as their leadership core is all out. Welcome alternate captain Trevor van Riemsdyk!

Despite that, they still beat the Oilers 5-4. Also the player they stole from the Leafs last week was having fun:

Leafs prospects are out there scoring goals:

Enjoy your day everyone!

From The Branches