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Posts Tagged Toronto Maple Leafs

Brendan Burke Passes On

Feb 6

Posted by EB in News | 1 Comment

Sad news in the hockey world today. Brendan Burke, youngest son of Toronto Maple Leafs Brian Burke has passed on.

Brendan and his friend Mark Reedy were involved in a car accident. Poor weather conditions caused their Jeep to lose control and slide into oncoming traffic hitting another car head on and killing the two young men.

It is times like these that we are reminded to cherish all those that are in our lives.

From HWB,  our thoughts are with the family and friends of both the Burke and Reedy family.

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Curtis Joseph Retires

Jan 12

Posted by Eddie in News | 1 Comment

Goaltender Curtis Joseph announced his retirement today at a press conference in Toronto. Joseph ends his career with 454 victories.

His victories places him 4th on the all-time winningest goalies list and is also has the most wins amongst goalies to never win the Stanley Cup.

At his press conference in Toronto, he said he had a “great career” and “didn’t leave anything on the table” He entered the league as an undrafted free agent and spent time between the pipes for Toronto, St. Louis, Detroit, Calgary, and Phoenix.

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Leafs eagerly await Kessel’s debut

Nov 1

Posted by Chris in News | 3 Comments

phil-kessel-brian-burke-2009-9-19-19-11-12The Toronto Maple Leafs currently sit dead last in the league with six points and one regulation win and only 30 goals for over the duration of 12 games, which is better than only a handful of teams. But the Leafs will get some much needed help early this week when forward Phil Kessel returns from long term injured reserve after off-season shoulder surgery. Kessel ended last season with 36 goals and 24 assists in 70 games with the Boston Bruins. Boston traded the star right wing to Toronto in the off season where he quickly signed a five-year, $27 million contract.

Reports indicate that Kessel will be in the lineup as early as Tuesday when the Leafs host the Tampa Bay Lightening. He has been skating for a solid three weeks with the team and has even been participating in contact drills in practice. This could be great news for Leafs fans who are highly anticipating the debut of Kessel in hopes that he will help lead an otherwise lackluster offense. As of now, defenseman Tomas Kaberle leads the team with 17 points. The next best point total comes from Mikhail Grabovski, who has 10.

Such high expectations may be sorely misplaced, however, at least at first. Kessel has been out of action all summer, which means that he will need a few games to say the least to come up to speed and get his timing back. Also, a significant debate is brewing in Toronto as to who will be the best fit to center the Kessel line. As a true goal scorer, Kessel plays better when he has a good passing center to feed him the puck. In Boston, center Marc Savard was the main set-up man for Kessel’s goals. Matt Stajan and Mikhail Grabovski seem to be the front-runners at this point to pair up with Kessel, and chances are good that each player will get a legitimate shot to see who sticks and where the best chemistry comes from. No matter who ends up on a line with Kessel, chemistry may take some time to build.

Two weeks might be a fair assessment for things to start clicking for Kessel and his new linemates, whoever they may be. Regardless, the Leafs brought in Kessel to score goals and help out their swindeling offense, so expect Kessel to get minutes into the twenties almost immediately. The boy needs to be on the ice if he’s going to score goals. Maybe Kessel will bring some of his plus-23 defensive play into the lineup as well, which the Leafs may need more than goals.

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Toronto Wins!

Oct 27

Posted by EB in News | 10 Comments

Niklas Hagman took first star in their first win of the year against the Anaheim Ducks. The face says, "Yay we won, but we still are bad."

Niklas Hagman took first star in their first win of the year against the Anaheim Ducks. The face says, "Yay we won, but we still are bad."

The fans of blue and white had something to cheer about as the Toronto Maple Leafs finally posted their first win of the season.

Sure the Leafs beat a struggling “…not worth my time” Anaheim Ducks, but the win is still a win and it gives hope to the fans. Ok… maybe not that much hope, but a little.

The game itself was relatively back and forth, as through two periods only a goal separated the two teams as the Leafs were on top 2 – 1. The third period though was the straw that broke the camel’s back as the Leafs came out on fire. Two goals in under 7 minutes, and another for safe measures just past the 10 minute mark to end their scoring for the night. Anaheim did make an attempt to come back, but only scored one more time with only 7 minutes not enough time to go in the game. The final score was Toronto 6, Anaheim 3.

The highlights of the night were Niklas Hagman’s abnormal hat trick, Tomas Kaberle’s helping hands, and Jonas Gustavsson’s return from the injured reserved.

Hagman put up three goals for the night, leading the scoring charge for the Maple Leafs. All three of those goals came on the power play, one in each period.

Kaberle assisted on four of the six goals, as well as netting a goal himself. Fantasy owners were jumping for joy as all his assists were on the power play, and his goal was a power play goal also.

Gustavsson posted his first win in the NHL, saving 25 of the 28 shots against. Not incredible numbers, but nonetheless, he will remember this one forever. Gustavsson afterwards commented, “It’s late in Sweden; I don’t know if they’ll all stay up, but I hope they saw some of it”.

Colton Orr (TOR) and George Parros (ANA) dropping the gloves 3 minutes into the game was a bit of foreshadowing as the two teams had an incredible amount of penalties between them. Orr took a 10 minute misconduct for pushing the linesman away from stopping their fight. Parros, not to be out doen, took a 10 minute misconduct as well later in the game. Twenty-seven penalties totaling 76 minutes. Twenty three of those were minor penalties with the majority of them being roughing. Five of the six goals scored by Toronto were on the power play, an impressive 83% conversion rate. Oddly enough though, because of all the penalties, only 1 player from Toronto ended up with a +1 while the rest were at zero or negative. On the flip side, Anaheim had 7 players with a positive plus minus rating, two of which were +2.

The game was emotional for both teams, both showing their frustrations with their losing seasons. Neither team are going to build any momentum off of this game, only to later have more frustrations when they play better caliber teams.

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Niklas Hagman Goal vs Flyers

Sep 22

Posted by Matt in Media | 1 Comment

Niklas Hagman, boy he’s got hands. He showed them off in pre-season action against the Flyers on September 19th. Watch this video, dangle + snipe.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Toronto Maple Leafs

Sep 8

Posted by EB in Season Previews | 4 Comments

Bran Burke's decisions to add grit and size may leave him all alone in thought depending on the teams success this year.

Bran Burke's decisions to add grit and size may leave him all alone in thought depending on the teams success this year.

The Toronto Maple Leafs look to be better this season as general manager Brian Burke intends on rebuilding the team similarly as he did the Anaheim Ducks; big and strong.

Offensively, the team added free agents Colton Orr from the New York Rangers in addition to acquiring Wayne Primeau in a trade with Calgary. Last season Primeau missed 56 regular season games as well as 6 playoff games with a broken foot, which will be a concern for the team as in the last two seasons he has only played a total of 67 games out of the 164 games possible. Orr will add the much needed enforcement to the Leafs as in the ’08-’09 season he had a respectable 193 minutes in 82 games played. This will allow defenseman Pavel Kubina, who led the team in penalty minutes last season with 94, a break from the box as his 40 points was best amongst defenseman and is much more needed than roughing it up.

Defensively the Leafs added free agents Francois Beauchemin from Anaheim and Mike Komisarek from Montreal. Once again similar to Primeau, Beauchemin missed 63 games last season with a torn ACL and will be a concern for the upcoming year. When healthy, expect him to be an average defenseman who hovers around zero in the +/- department, but will add 6’ 0” and 207lbs of clearing people out in front of the net. And similar to Orr, Komisarek will add even more enforcement as last season the defenseman put up 121 penalty minutes in 66 games. Komisarek, who stands 6’ 4” and weighs 243lbs, will also be able to assist in clearing people out from in front of the net.

With a 1 year contract, all eyes will be on Jonas "the monster" Gustavsson to be the goalie of the future.

With a 1 year contract, all eyes will be on Jonas "the Monster" Gustavsson to prove he is the goalie of the future.

The last spot to mention is that of goalie, as the team has signed Jonas “The Monster” Gustavsson. The goaltender stands 6’ 3” and weighs 192lbs, but is as agile as any goalie within the league. With all the hype surrounding the 24 year old Swedish goaltender, if it proves to be accurate, he may be the next Martin Brodeur. Last season in the Swedish league in 82 games played, he had an astonishing 1.96 goals against average and a .932 save percentage. This is nothing compared to last year’s playoffs, where he allowed 14 goals in 13 games played. That equates to a 1.03 goals against average and a .961 save percentage. In those games, the Monster recorded 5 shutouts. He has already been quoted as wanting the starting position that currently belongs to Vesa Toskala, which is to be expected as Gustavsson only signed a 1 year contract with the team. With the addition of backup goaltender Joey Macdonald, it is not farfetched that a goalie battle is going to happen. The battle between who is the question. Both Toskala and Macdonald become unrestricted free agents as Gustavsson is a restricted free agent at the end of the season.

Burke has added size in all positions, even goaltender, however with the mentality of speed is the new way to go, it will be interesting to see how everything panes out. It did work for the Anaheim Ducks; maybe it will work for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

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