The Maple Leafs finished off their 2018-19 regular season with a shootout loss to Montreal last night. They weren’t exactly fielding the A-team, but they were surprised by a Montreal prospect scoring a hat-trick in his first NHL game.

Leafs lose to Habs in a game that literally means nothing

The Staney Cup Playoffs schedule will be released today at 10:00 a.m. EDT. There will be some kind of long drawn out program on the NHL Network to announce all the matchups and game times and I sure hope they also have a simultaneous press release so we don’t have to wait for that program to finish.

UPDATE: THE SCHEDULE IS HERE

ICYMI
Here’s our covereage of the Women’s World Championships from this weekend.

2019 IIHF Women’s Hockey World Championships day three recap - nafio and Katya
USA beats Canada 3-2. Brianne Jenner’s 100th game didn’t go quite the way she wanted.

2019 IIHF Women’s Hockey World Championships day two recap - nafio
France and Switzerland each score their first goal of the tournament.

Other News

The Oilers ended their season with a win, and the news of the night should have been Leon Draisaitl scoring his 50th goal of the season in that game, but this is the Oilers, and nothing good for them can go unpunished. Connor McDavid instead became the news by getting badly injured when he smashed his leg into the Flames’ goal post. It isn’t clear how bad the injury is. Apparently he will get an MRI today. It would be very Oilers though if he winds up with an injury similar to the one Stamkos had and he will miss time next season.

That’s all, folks. Aside from the playoffs schedule, there isn’t going to be much more news until Tuesday night when the NHL Draft Lottery is conducted. While that doesn’t impact the Leafs, the fun part will be if the Avalanche win it with the pick the last place Senators traded to them.

There may be some news on the NHL Awards finalists on Wednesday, though, again, none of the Maple Leafs or their staff are expected to be in those. Sorry, Fulemin, not even Andreas Johnsson.

The Marlies regular season doesn’t even end for another whole week. They will play against the Senators on Saturday and the Monsters on Sunday at the Coliseum, before facing the Rochester Americans in the playoffs.

In the time in between now and some news, you can enjoy the Women’s World Championship. Team Canada is playing the Russians tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. EDT and it’s broadcast live on TSN.

Back to Excited will be out later today. In the meantime: PLAYOFFS!

From The Branches