Arbitration hearings are under way.

That was my excited voice. Speaking of excited, here’s the newest Back to Excited podcast!

Now it’s back to unexcited.

We’re still waiting for Karlsson to be traded, if he ever is. Ditto guys like Pacioretty and Skinner, or even Faulk. Around these parts we haven’t quite started the T25U25 although the community here can start their voting already!

There is no real hockey news these days... no trades, no signings (editors note: except for Sandin’s ELC announced last night after this was written) and that means that everyone and their mother is sharing what they think the lineups and defensive pairings should be, how many goals and points their favourite players will get, and some fantasy trades to get them through the doldrums of the dark days of hockey summer.

It’s gotten so bad that you are seeing people asking for an NHL summer league, like the NBA does. I can’t even begin to describe how awful an idea that is, because it would ruin the best part of the NHL offseason.

Stalking the players’ Instagram accounts — with grace, like a hockey player.

I mean what would we do without seeing William Nylander in his 90’s boy band album cover on Instagram including what LOOKS like cheap flip flops, but probably cost more than one month’s rent.

Views

A post shared by William Nylander (@williamnylander) on

Or seeing Mitch Marner carving up some sick wakes, bruh!

Boys will be boys🤘🏄‍♂️

A post shared by Mitch Marner (@marner_93) on

Or Morgan Rielly getting, like, really REALLY deep about fishing, man.

What he said

A post shared by @ morganrielly on

There’s also the time honoured tradition of looking up obscure clips of your new draft picks to get irrationally excited about. Here’s one breaking down some shifts of the Leafs’ recent first round pick, Rasmus Sandin:

Or Fulemin’s favourite Small Adult Son, Semyon Der-Arguchintsev.

DON’T YOU TAKE THIS AWAY FROM US WITH SOME BORING EXHIBITION GAMES THAT ARE EVEN MORE MEANINGLESS AND BORING THAN THE ACTUAL PRE-SEASON EXHIBITION GAMES!

Ahem.

ONTO THE LINKS!

The big news from the weekend was the sudden and tragic death of Ray Emery in the early Sunday morning in the waters of Lake Ontario near Hamilton. His life and the manner of his death means there has already been some conflict over how different people have reacted to the news, so to keep it short and simple I’m going to shamelessly steal PPP’s tweets about it:

MLHS has a transcript of a radio interview that JVR did on TSN radio. It included this gem of an insight into the Leafs’ dressing room dynamic.

On his Instagram chirp towards Nazem Kadri about his “seven songs” repetition with his playlist:

The best part about trying to get under his skin is that you really can’t. He lets everything roll off his back and doesn’t let it get to him. He was in charge of the music in the past couple of years in particular. We had Jake Gardiner in the morning with his more poppy, maybe country mix in there, and then Naz would take it home before the games with a little bit of the EDM and hip hop and stuff like that. I like his stuff for sure before the game, but he definitely didn’t have much of a pulse for the different moods at the different times. We had someone else take care of that. His little role and his little niche that he found? He was great at that.

A guide to bargain hunting in what’s left of the 2018 NHL free agent class | by Jonathan Willis at The Athletic. Still some names out there to Shore up your center depth.

Have a great Monday everyone!

What do you think would make hockey during the summer better?

Rookie exhibitions to also test new NHL rules59
Swimsuit competition22
Just grab some popcorn and turn on the Ottawa Senators off-season if you want drama and entertainment!109
I’m happy with joining twitter arguments about how bad beer, metal, or other life essentials are seriously can someone recommend a good Leafs blog?33
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