It was a great game for the Leaps to win. You could see visible disappointment from Drew. He was like, What a way to lose because it's a fuck-over glass penalty. It's Miko Rantanin, who you can't get upset with ever because he's so good.

He's ridiculously good.

Really, both teams had had good moments and bad moments. The Leaps' bad moments started in the first, as usual. They go down to nothing. Wasn't great.

Boy, the Avalanche. Man, I can't believe they're down, Nekushkin and Landescag. That team was all over the leaves, like shit on Velcro, just for checking the life out of them. Then anytime the leaves were able to get out of their zone, you're not getting across that blue line. And if you are, you're not getting across with anything meaningful. I couldn't believe that the leaves outshot the avalanche in the first period. It was by one. Yeah, but I don't know what the shot attempts were. I imagine the avalanche won that battle, and I know they won the Ozone time with the Puck battle. I don't know what it was at the end of the game, but at one point, they had an advantage of four minutes, which is a lot of minutes.

It's a few minutes.

All He'll watch a game and he'll be like, Oh, man, this team is kicking the crap out of the other team. And the difference is like 45 seconds. It's really not that big. So for four minutes, that win had... It was really reminiscent of, I I thought the first round last year against the Lightning, where they just hung around. They did their best to keep it all to the outside. They did their best to make Samsonov's job as easy as humanly possible.

He did a great job when it wasn't easy.

A really good job, and they took advantage of their chances.

I want to talk about that first power play goal from Tyler Bertuzzi. He had to, but I think it's important to talk about John Tavares, because you talked about last week, you guys, about how John Tavares showed leadership when he said, Yes, I will drop down and play with two rookies while Max Domi gets to play with Bertuzzi and Neillander. No problem. And he's making the line work. It looks great. Also lost in that shuffle is that Tyler Bertuzzi is now on PP1 in front of the net in Tavares' spot.

And he's really good at it.

How big is that goal? That goal It all doesn't happen if John Tavares is like, Hell, no. That doesn't seem like a John thing, right?

Well, nick LaFlame on Twitter had, I thought, the tweet of the night. It was, The Leifs' Trade Deadline is their own players getting good.

I mean, he might be right.

But we've talked about it for a few weeks now. If regression is a real thing, Tyler Bertuzzi is going to win the Conspite Trophy. He's just been so horrifically snakebitten. And that was his best game as a leaf. Even outside the hat trick, just dropping into the butterfly and making ridiculous blocks and even without his stick. And I'm screaming at him to go get a new stick, and then he's doing stuff without a stick. And he's incredible. Yeah. He was good at both ends. And sometimes you just need confidence. Someone has obviously told him, Listen, your only way through this is to shoot your way through it. Right. And he is shooting more and getting stoned more and missing more. But the only way to get your confidence back is to score. So they put him on PP1. And it's not a charity case. He's good there. When he scored his first couple of goals at the beginning of the season, he was on the power play. If I remember correctly, he didn't have his first even strength goals of the leaf until American Thanksgiving, Christmas, something like that. He's a good power guy. And you should be able to thrive on this type of power play.

Yes. Tavares can do the things that Bertuzzi does in front of the net on the power play. You like him to have a little bit more space, so so he can use that shot. Bertuzzi is a pig at the trough, and he's just there to gobble up the slot, and he's done an incredible job.

He also scores the first goal of the second period.

With the power play stuff, I thought-Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Jess. Sorry. I thought, Mitch Marner said something fascinating after the game when he was asked about JT moving down. He said that middle position on the power play, everybody around the edges wants the buck, so you often don't get it there. When JT is there, it's a dark hole. He wants to score on the power play. He wants to get those points as well, but he's not going to get them from those positions. It makes more sense to have somebody there who's not necessarily searching for the fuck but can clean up the garbage. It works better having JT on the second unit, and he can handle that, and he can actually control the puck with the second unit, as opposed to putting him there being in the garbage position, because you have somebody there who doesn't need the puck to pass around. Like, Willy wants it, Marner wants it, Austin wants it. You have those three guys already. You don't need JT out there as well to try and get these shots, have somebody out there who's willing to get into the dirty areas in the middle there.

I think experiment with these things a little bit more freely when everyone is so terrified of Austin Matthews.

Every time he raises his stick, you You can see he does it all the time now. It's just faking people out. Oh, 100%.

I don't remember which Bertuzzi power play goal it was, but they're terrified of the guy. He absorbs all the oxygen in that situation. Bertuzzi on at least one of his goals, was wide open because, I don't know, we got to stop that freak. We have to stop that actual freak of nature who has 52 goals already. There's a little bit more freedom there.

Bertuzzi gets It's an even strength goal. Hey, in this economy, let's go. I know. Here are the assists. The assists on the first goal are Marner-Nielander. Second goal, Kneelander-Domi.

That line, man. It's so fun. It's a good line. They're fun. They're a lot of fun.

By the way, I low-key saw Kneelander out walking his dogs this morning. I won't say where, but he-Actually? Yeah. He was just out walking his dogs. Love that. I was walking in the streets of Toronto, and there he was just being chill.

Was he walking like he was on a seven and no tear?

Pretty much, yeah. I love that. And he should. Bertuzzi is a... Bertuzzi getting that goal as well, I think it's important because power play goals are one thing, but they do, for whatever reason, look at even strength goals as if they were a bit better. I think it's important that he gets that even strength number as well because teams are looking at that internally.

Adam, forget the even strength, the power play goals. Listen, it's seven degrees celsius in Toronto today. Was he wearing shorts?

No, he wasn't wearing shorts.

That's all people wanted to know. Damn. I tried. I got the information for you.

Jesse and I, in a different area, used to see him in the mornings. Do you remember that?

Yeah. Walking- I thought you weren't down I was downtown this morning.

I was downtown, but not in that area. Not in the area we used to see him. I don't want to say where it is. Not nice.

He lives at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

No, Scotiabank Arena. He just came out of his apartment in Scotiabank Arena, and that's where it is.

He lives in the dressing room.

He lives in the dressing room. That's right.

When they play the Raptors, the game is awkward because his kitchen's there, so they got to play around him.

They're like, What's up, Willy? He's like, Hey, guys. He sleeps sitting up. He's crazy.

With all his gear on.

Eyes open, smirking. Yeah.

Then you got Marner getting a goal, which we love. Rantanin ties it up in the third, and then Bertuzzi with the power play goal, as we mentioned, with Rantanin's Puck Over Glass penalty. Again, Neil-Ander Matthews. I mean, Matthews is only getting his 25th assist of the year, guys. Can't win the heart trophy when you only have 25 assists.

What a greedy piece of crap. Also, a little bit of symmetry. 52 goals, 25 assists.Oh, I like that.Exactly. I like that.

Jesse, do you care about that? The 52, the 5-2, and the 2-5?

I was like, the math doesn't math. There's no math. You just turn around the numbers. There's a 2 and a 5.

It's numbered with an artistic flair.

That's how we handled that. It's 13, but they drew a 31.

A little bit of that.

A little bit of that going I think it's gone underrated. It's his best defensive performance as well with Bertuzzi. He looked fabulous out there. Season high in blocks, just something small like that. It's like, Oh, yeah. He did an extra effort on his birthday, put in those goals. It was a very fun game from Bertuzzi.

Now, the counterargument to that is-Oh, please make it sad. No. What's the counterargument? The counterargument to a team coming up with a bunch of blocks because the Leaps came up with a ton of blocks.

The other team shooting?

The other team shooting. They have the fuck, and it's not good. But the other option is to simply... I mean, yeah, get the fuck. I'm sorry, Steve. But what if you can't?

I'm sorry, Steve. How did the game end? No, no. With a lead to victory? Is it not important for teams to win games like this?

I'm not the devil. I'm simply his advocate. Okay. I'm playing devil's advocate right here. Okay. I'm just saying the argument against that is you shouldn't be the one doing all the blocking. But Who doesn't frigging love when their team does that?

Oh, yeah. I think it's important for people to realize you're never going to outchance the other team every single game. You deserve to winometer always won't be at 100%. Sometimes when the other team looks a lot better than you, like the Aves did the entire third period up until the Leifs scored, you got to find a way to win those games. That's how good teams win in the playoffs. Even when you might not have it, even when the other team looks better than you, you grind it out and you win. It was very impressive to the Lefs to do that on the fourth game in five nights, the last game of a road trip to grind out a victory against one of the best teams in the National Hockey League. There's nothing to complain about there.