I've lived in Southern Ontario all my life and hockey has been one of my greatest passions for as long as I can remember. Admittedly, that's only 18.5 years so a relatively small sample size, but still. I've been a Leaf fan since the moment I was born. Yes, that early. My parents immediately had me reading "there's always next year" over and over until I was a pro. Anyways...

5. THE SPEED

Basketball, Baseball, and Football all have much larger fan support than the NHL, but I've never fully understood the appeal. Basketball is irrelevant and full of overpaid sucks who whine anytime another player rubs shoulders with them. Baseball can occasionally be fun, but it's usually just something to watch when you're looking for an afternoon nap. The MLB season drags on forever, and the games follow suit. Football is actually fun to watch, but the constant pauses in game-play slow the sport down significantly. Hockey is the only one that offers non-stop end-to-end exciting action for 60 minutes of play (unless you're watching the NJ Devils, Buffalo Sabres, or Boston Bruins that is). There's hitting, there's fighting, there's lightning fast skating, and goalies are getting hit in the head with vulcanized rubber travelling over 90mph. I approve.

4. PLAYOFF BEARDS

There is a superstition amongst NHL players, mostly North Americans, that shaving during the playoffs is bad luck. So for more than a month, players go from clean shaven players to ridiculously hairy grizzly bears. Europeans sometimes pass on this and that's fine, but it's so much better when they don't: just ask Henrik Zetterberg. Kris Draper and Maxime Talbot's beards approve.

3. BOB COLE (AND HARRY NEALE)

So he's pretty much vanished off of the  face of the map in Leaf land and he's only called a few games this season. He's old, he's getting senile, and half of the time he can't remember player's names. But you know what? Screw all that, Bob Cole is awesome. Sens fans and Habs fans (mostly Sens fans) always accused him and partner-in-awesomeness Harry Neale of being Leafs homers, but they were usually just doing what the rest of Canada does on a daily basis: ignoring Ottawa. Bob Cole was a staple on Hockey Night in Canada for almost all of my life, and I still cringe every time I hear Jim"oh my god that's so terrible" Hughson and Craig "I won't play for the center of the hockey universe and greatest city in Canada, I choose you Edmonton" Simpson calling primary games on CBC. I miss Bob Cole.

2. RIVALRIES

And not just any rivalries: original six rivalries. I'm talking about Toronto-Montreal, Montreal-Boston, Toronto-Detroit, Toronto-Chicago etc. These rivalries have been around forever, and any time the two teams meet the intensity is high. When Toronto moved from the Western Conference to the Eastern Conference, our two most common rivalries (in the expansion era at least) were taken away from us. We only got to see Detroit and Chicago once every two years or so. Still, despite this, the building is always going INSANE any time these teams meet. It doesn't matter that they're not rivals by quantity anymore, they simply remember what they had and proceed to go for the throat. The same kind of intensity also applies to Toronto-Montreal games in either city, and this is arguably one of the best rivalries in professional sports; it doesn't get much more exciting than a meaningful Leafs-Habs game, such as the one on April 7, 2007. I'm sure most of you remember it.

1. THE FANS

Do you know what gets my heart racing more than anything else? Watching or being part of a fan reaction. Every time I watch Wendel's return to the Leafs in 1996, I swell up with Maple Leaf pride. Hearing thousands of people all chanting his name and cheering whenever he stepped on the ice was something special. Every time I watch videos of home games during the 1993 playoffs I get the same way. The fan reaction videos from Toronto and Vancouver when Crosby scored the greatest goal ever(TM). Hell, watching the replay of the aforementioned Leafs-Habs game gets me that way. Even the Leafs-Rangers game on Nov 1 last year (leafs won 5-2) drives me crazy. There's just something about thousands of people voicing their support and excitement over one team that gets me weepy. We haven't seen playoff hockey in a long time, but when we do the ACC is going to be absolutely fucking electric. If we win a cup... well, let's just say that the 91 World series win got me the exact same way, and we all remember what Toronto was like. It will be twice as big.

I suck at writing, and I'm tired, and my hand may be hurting, so I'm going to go get a coffee from Tim "please play again" Hortons.

Someone finally posted a Youtube video of the fights, and since I was working during the game I was pretty pumped to see it. The official Leafs website doesn't have a Game In Six set up yet, and TST/Sportsnet only showed extremely small clips. The video shows the Orr/Cote fight in it's entirety and the majority of the other fights other than Komisarek's which it doesn't have at all. Anyways, here is the video.

My take: 

Orr wrecked Cote. Again. When I heard about this after work, my first thought was "How far did Cote's head fly off after Orr punched it?" Cote is now 0 for 23695 fights against Orr, let's keep it that way. 

Carcillo is still a dirty little bitch. He has that dirty long hair and occasionally a nasty little child molester moustache, and he likes to cause problems without really owning up to it. "No thanks Rosehill, I'd rather fight non-fighter Stempniak here. He only has 3 crappy fights under his belt so I don't think I'll get rag-dolled this time around." 

Exelby is the definition of truculence. Granted, you could make that argument for half of the Leafs squad this year but it doesn't make it any less true. He throws some mean body checks and(unlike Carcillo) stands up for himself. Lapierre opened him up early on, but Exelby nailed Lapierre with a couple of haymakers later on and dropped him to his knees. He should be fun to watch. 

As for Komisarek...well, I never saw his fight or any of his hits or his fight in this game, but he was impressive against the Flyers the first time. 

What do you guys think? How did the Leafs fare in two games against the Flyers in the truculence department?

Editor's Note: sparrow13 made his way down to the Leafs' rookie tournament in Kitchener to see the Leafs' first game against the Penguins. Here's his report on the game and his thoughts on some players that caught his eye.

Here's the blog I wrote about the Leafs/Pens rookie game tonight. Originally posted over at Hockeybuzz, I now don it upon thee. Tell me what you think, it's my first real blog.  

I was at the Leafs/Pens rookie game in Kitchener earlier, so I have decided to try and write a blog about it. This is my first one ever, so any criticism and advice would be helpful. Here we go.

Final Score:

Leafs Rookies 3, Penguins Rookies 1

Goals:

Toronto:

1st Period - Viktor Stalberg - Tyler Bozak and Christian Hanson

Bozak takes a nice feed from Hanson and makes a beautiful tape to tape pass to Stalberg who is sitting in front of an empty cage for an easy tap in.

2nd Period - None.
3rd Period - Greg Scott - Unassisted, Alex Berry from(I'll figure it out later)

Greg Scott's goal was a bit of a fluke. He speeds into the Pens zone and fires a snap shot from the bottom of the left circle. His shot drills goaltender Killeen in the mask, and the goaltender seems momentarily confused as the puck drops to the ice and slides between his legs over the goal line.

Alex Berry's goal was a typical empty netter with about 35 seconds left in the game.

Pittsburgh:
1st Period - None.
2nd Period - None.
3rd Period - Joe Vitale from(again, once I get the boxscore)

A Pittsburgh player takes a shot from the point that is deflected nicely by Vitale to temporarily tie the game. This briefly caused myself and many others to pray for a shootout so we could see Gustavsson in true one-on-one action.

The game was fast paced and exciting. Body checks were flying everywhere and the intensity on the ice was high. Still, it was obvious that the players on the ice were auditioning for the big leagues by the way some players were handling the puck.

GMs Brian Burke and Ray Shero were in attendance with their assistant GMs, and Head Coaches Ron Wilson and Dan Bylsma were also in the building with their assistant coaches. Spotting the Leafs coach was especially easy during intermission, where he could be seen signing countless autographs for fans on baseball caps and hockey jersey's.

Now for my personal opinions. GM Brian Burke must have enjoyed what he saw, since he's trying to build a tougher team in Toronto. There were two fights in this game, one with Richard Greenop vs. Ryan Schnell(obviously a bad attempt to copy Schenn's last name) and the other with Alex Berry vs. some guy possibly named Sill. The first was dominated by the Maple Leaf player, while the other one was more even.

Continue reading this post »