Riding a 100-foot wave of emotions, Harnarayan Singh came down from the American Airlines Center play-by-play booth and left a happy question. “I’m in the Cloud 9,” the broadcaster exclaimed as he entered the conference room after the Toronto Maple Leafs match. His eyes were smiling over his mask. There may have been one or two beads of sweat on his forehead. “What game. Is every Leafs game like that?” Hockey people love their clichés. one of them is the “next man”. The same, we discovered the night Auston Matthews scored 55 (and 56), can be applied to the other side of the boards. Assuring that regular Sportsnet Leafs player – the respected, impeccable Chris Cuthbert – was up to date, Singh was spotted at the last minute. He hurried to take his COVID test, tried to find return flights from Alberta to Dallas and back. He fell close to midnight and was squeezed into a search for two teams and two teams he rarely calls. Singh was as dizzy as a rookie on a morning skate. He got information from Sheldon Keefe and got as much inside information as he could from beat reporters. It had gone viral with “Bonino-Bonino-Boninooooo!” call Punjabi. He had written a book about his wild and unique walk in the kiosk. But this would be his first call to Maple Leafs in English and the story was in the works. Hoping it would be the soundtrack of the story, Singh’s only wish was for Auston Matthews to break the record with a clear goal. (It is a nightmare for the play-by-play caller to have a monumental goal hidden by the goalkeeper’s intervention or by a difficult-to-detect diversion.) Not only did Matthews give Singh a moment to emphasize, but his overtime encore made the broadcaster stand on his feet at the stand. Singh dropped his call outside the park. It turns out that athletes are not the only ones who can climb under pressure. 2. Maple Leafs fans can not help themselves. They see how seamlessly Mark Giordano matched the line-up, how quickly he strengthened D’s body, and wonder if the 38-year-old can evolve into anything more than a rental. Is the contract extension in the mind of the upcoming UFA? Were there even these conversations? “No,” Giordano says with a laugh. “I am day by day, I am preparing for the playoffs. “I’m not thinking about anything else.” This does not mean that the defender does not enjoy life as a Card. He jumped from an expansion suit to 30th place to a candidate who has been 7-1-1 since his arrival. “Coming to this team, I know what my role is – to come in here and play very well, very well defensively. “I think the score on this team is obviously known throughout the league,” said Giordano. “So far, so good, and we just have to keep building.” Giordano says it was an easy transition because he knew so many Leafs on a personal level before from summer skates, charity events and golf tournaments. The fan’s dream is that Kyle Dubas will capture the heart of the city and persuade Giordano to join Jason Spezza: every time at the lowest league level. But the market for 20-minute defenders has skyrocketed. Much will be determined by how things go in May. 3. When top Rick Vaive closed his three-year streak with 50 goals – at the ages of 23, 24, 25 – the Maple Leafs finished fifth, third and fifth in the Norris Division. They have never collected more than 28 wins. they entered the playoffs once with defeats and it was a first round snack for the Minnesota North Stars. “I wish we could be more productive as a team. “Everything around the season with 50 goals would be much more enjoyable,” Vavev told me. “That you play in the National Hockey League and you play for the Toronto Maple Leafs and you are [scoring] and you are the captain, yes, all this is wonderful. But winning is what you play for. You play to win a Stanley Cup. “This is your dream when you are a child.” It’s Christmas morning. Unroll everything in your wish list. Then you take a look and the rest of your family pulls bruised oranges and charcoal from their socks. How much fun is that? Matthews reached the age of 50 in a super feudal revenge game over the Winnipeg Jets. He tied Vaive by hanging a hat-trick on the two-time defending champions and rewrote the book with a spectacular overtime in Texas. Big W in Big D. Journalists covering personal milestones in team sports know the exercise. If an athlete succeeds fantastically but the team loses, the post-match interviews are full of joy: Yes, it is nice that I scored seven goals and saved this puppy from a burning building after the morning skate. But what really matters are the two points we left on the table. Well, I leave with a sour taste. The night his best player surpassed Vaive and made his mark in the Leafs’ best individual season, coach Sheldon Keefe hit the nail on the head. “The best part about Auston doing that is that it does it in a winning environment,” Keefe said. “And he does things to help us win games. “Goals are part of that, of course, but it does so many other things that help us win games and help us keep playing.” Surely Vaive would agree. It would take 49 and a deep run over 65 and extra times. 4. The night Matthews reached 50, he also had a new career in assists. In just two of their last 15 goalless games, Matthews has four assistants. Unlike Phil Kessel before him, Matthews’s elite passing ability is rarely mentioned because he is an amazing shooter. His underrated ability to set up has been strengthened because Mitch Marner is finishing more than ever. Matthews’s previous high assist was 36 (in 2018-19). It smashes it to 41 and counts. 5. I was thrilled when Chris Pronger, one of the most fearless hockey personalities, took to Twitter. I was more excited to see how he uses it. Prongers wrote an impressive 17-post thread on the financial reality of professional players and the pitfalls that put them at risk. It’s worth reading, as Broke’s worth seeing. 6. It’s hard to tell if the Tampa Bay Lightning – lame in the stretch run with a four-game losing streak – is a wolf in sheep’s clothing or if we are actually witnessing a smaller version. Knowing that they can beat anyone and putting less emphasis on the success of the regular season, the Bolts have the worst record between matches (3-5-2) between the four Atlantic forces destined for the playoffs. But at this rate, Tampa will draw the No. 1 Metropolitan Division in Round 1 anyway. For now, that would be the prize of Carolina playing so well. Andrei Vasilevskiy lost six of his last nine starts and recorded an unprecedented savings of 0.890 in April. The absence of Ryan McDonagh opened a significant hole in the back and coach Jon Cooper did tricks to do a little mojo. After the 6-2 home defeat to Toronto, Cooper said his team was “very easy to play against; it was rather like a light training session for them.” Yes. 7. This is hilarious by Nikita Kucherov: Have fun meeting the unusual performer Shawn Thornton at Sunrise. Thornton serves as the Panthers’ Chief Commercial Officer, and his main concern is securing the naming rights for a barn now in its fifth title. The Cats are currently playing at the FLA Live Arena. But that’s a reservation name until Thornton and his team lock in the logo of a major sponsor to slap outside the building. “You better get one in time for the Stanley Cup final,” I teased. “This will be a top property.” Thornton recalled that Florida is hosting the All-Star Game 2023 – a juicy selling point for naming rights. The 44-year-old is happy to live outside the everglades. He says he sees alligators all the time. And, no, he is not afraid of them. If the push came, my money is in Thornton. 9. My most vivid memory of Ryan Getzlaf is from an otherwise forgotten game in March 2016. The Ducks Veterans were still a decent team, but they were funk. They entered Toronto to face the newcomers Leafs and lost 6-5 in overtime. The losing point had brought Anaheim to another place in the playoffs, but when I entered the visitors’ dressing room after the match, I saw a captain leave. Clearly wanting to be the spokesman, Getzlaf was the only Duck in his stall. You could hear a pin falling as it sat there with a loud intensity and a message. “We did not play a good hockey game tonight,” he said. “We are not in the rhythm of the game. We keep a long time and we concede four goals, five goals, three; they are too many goals to play in this championship. “ Getzlaf was clearly angry, but he directed his frustration clearly and justly. It was not so much the words he used. was the tone. He shouted at his teammates, generally but not by name, that night. It required professionalism. Although we the media, he ordered them to appear and execute. Getzlaf always kept himself to the highest standards and demanded the same. Wild but measured. I left the room thinking: Nice shit, this is how a hockey leader sounds. 10. Fantastic to see some positive momentum in Buffalo, just as the Sabers set the record for consecutive playoff smells (11 seasons). They win the Jack Eichel return race. They win the Heritage Classic. They keep some respected veterans on the trade deadline. They have a coach that the players and the city believe ….
