The news hit me tonight like a tonne of bricks.  Brian Burke's son, Brendan, had succumbed to injuries he suffered in an auto accident.  Brendan was only 21-years old. The first thing I thought of was my James.  I'm sure all fathers can relate to this reaction.  I felt the

Part of the fun in catching Jean-Sebastien Giguere's first game as a Maple Leaf is seeing him suit up for the blue and white while wearing his Ducks mask. I don't know if he'll be wearing his Ducks mask tonight or if he'll be breaking in a new paint job,

I had horseshoes up my ass for this one.  Ford invited me to sit in their super amazing 3rd row seats just beside the Leafs penalty box just as I was hating my favourite team, and then a miracle happened.  This game became a big deal. I kept a very

I slept in this morning.  My son's early morning practice was cancelled due to a video shoot at the rink, so I didn't wake up until 9:30 or so. The moment I got online, I learnt something big was going down.  Brian Burke had a press conference scheduled for

Dion Phaneuf is a Toronto Maple Leaf.  This is not a drill.  The Toronto Maple Leafs have acquired defensemen Dion Phaneuf and Keith Aulie along with winger Fredrik Sjöström from the Calgary Flames in exchange for Matt Stajan, Nik Hagman, Jamal Mayers and Ian White. Phaneuf, 24, averaged 51.5

Up by 3 heading into the third, they fooled me.  For a brief moment, I truly believed we could win a game. Quite the fool I was.  In the words of Roger Daltrey, WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN. I'm told "major changes" are coming today.  In an hour, Brian Burke will

The Swansea Hockey Association is the world's largest outdoor hockey league.  Normally that's a good thing if you ask me, but when it's -18°C, it's less of a good thing. The SHA plays at Rennie Park.  The Rennie Park zamboni has animated Maple Leafs painted on it, and it

I just got back from a great little party to celebrate a pal's birthday.  I left this party with a pretty cool gift.  It's Wendel Clark's book "Wendel - My Life in Hockey" and it's autographed for me. Earlier in the week, I ordered a tee shirt from Pucking Hilarious.

I thought I hit the bottom last October. I had just come to the realization that my five and a half year old daughter had not  been alive for a single Leafs playoff game.  We Leaf fans are enduring an unprecedented streak of failure for a team that hasn't won

The George Carlin of the Barilkosphere, also known as Down Goes Brown, had this to tweet the other night. Dear 2009-10 Toronto Maple Leafs. You have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I hate you.That, in a nutshell, is precisely the problem.  There are no redeeming qualities to speak of.  We

This is a pretty shitty hockey team we have here.  We'll be missing the playoffs for the fifth year in a row, and if we throw in that lockout year, it'll be six springs without blue and white playoff action.  Remember how fun that was? After this loss, my son

It was just another night at the office for our Leafs.  This time, we decided to dig deep for a new way to lose.  How about too many men on the ice in the last minute of overtime.  That'll work... And that led to the Lightning scoring the winner with

Before I act, I always ask myself one simple question.  What would Wendel do? If you're asking yourself this same question, and you should, you should buy WWWD right now from PuckingHilarious.com because they're donating $2 from every shirt sold to the Canadian Red Cross for help with relief

I missed this one due to volleyball.  As a result, we're keeping this one really, really short.. Our beloved Toronto Maple Leafs lead the league with 177 goals allowed. That is all.  Go Leafs Go.

We jumped out to a juicy 3-0 lead with a trifecta of goals in our first 8 shots and then sat back and waited for Nashville to come back. They did, tying it in third and pressing to win until Phil "The Thrill" Kessel awoke from his slumber to win

YouTube user Retrontario frequently uploads fantastic retro-Toronto-centric gems.  These clips never fail to bring back a ton of memories for me, so I feature them from time to time. Lanny McDonald and Brian Glennie are hungry.  Thankfully, they have Hungry-Man tv dinners to fill them up. This is proof positive

Remember when we shutout Philadelphia 4-0?   Bozak had that sick goal and Toskala recorded his first shutout since October 2008? That was fun.

Were we that good or were the Flyers that bad?  Methinks we caught the Flyers on an off night because there's no other way to explain a Vesa Toskala shutout. It was a convincing win with the clear highlight being an absolutely sick goal by Tyler Bozak.  It also happens

The Leafs have allowed 51 power play goals against this season.  A blog called Behind the Net recently listed the worst penalty killing teams since 1963. Only two terrible Los Angeles Kings teams from the late 70s and early 80s had less than a 70 PK%.  This season's Leafs clock

Tied 1-1 in the second period, Alexei Ponikarovsky was awarded a penalty shot.  I saw it, you saw it, it happened. It never happened.  Instead, they determined that Sergei Gonchar had scored 13-seconds earlier.  There's a rule somewhere about scoring two goals on the same play, so the penalty shot

I have an idea that will instantly improve our hockey club.  Let's stop playing the Buffalo Sabres.  We've now lost 10 in a row against them, going 0-5 this season. I have another idea.  Let's stop spotting the opposition a two goal lead.  For the 23rd time this season, we

The Leafs fell behind 1-0 for 31st time in 44 games. But you know what's scary?  This was the 22nd time they were down 2-0. We've been down 2-0 or more in half of our games. In this one, we actually fell behind 4-0 in a snoozer of a game.

I thought it might be wise to get this Leaf recap up before tonight's game against the Flyers.  You see, there was another game last night, and this Leaf victory sort of got buried. What I'd like to see is a PPM look at GTA viewers of this game.  If