He may have been born in Sweden, but for Maple Leafs fans, Mats Sundin is as Canadian as they come.
The team’s career scoring leader will be honored before the Leafs-Candiens game Saturday night when they raise his No. 13 jersey to the rafters of the Air Canada Centre.
“To have my sweater honored, up there with Darryl Sittler and Doug Gilmour, Borje Salming and Johnny Bower, that’s awesome. It’s going to be very emotional for me.’’
Sundin will be the 18th player to have a banner raised in his honor by the Maple Leafs.
The NHL’s Winter Classic is a hockey spectacle that has grown bigger each season of its five-year existence.
It won’t get much bigger than 2013.
The NHL announced Thursday that the next stop for the Jan. 1 outdoor game will be at Michigan Stadium, home of the Michigan Wolverines, with an incredible 115,000 tickets that will be available for fans.
Adding to the mystique of the New Year’s Day game at “The Big House” will be the two Original Six franchises participating in the game—the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings.
Every good captain needs an assistant, and that’s why Toronto Maple Leafs forward Joffrey Lupul and New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist have been named assistant captains for the 2012 NHL All-Star Game in Ottawa.
Lundqvist will join the team of captain Daniel Alfredsson of the Ottawa Senators, while Lupul will be part of the team led by captain Zdeno Chara of the Boston Bruins.
Thanks to some amazing chemistry with Phil Kessel, Lupul is enjoying the best season of his eight-year NHL career. He currently ranks fourth among all League scorers with 51 points (20 goals, 31 assists) in 46 games.
With the NHL trade deadline just about a month away, more and more rumors are beginning to surface regarding some key players. However, due to the fact that the standings are so tight right now in both conferences, we may not see much activity until the final weeks leading up to the Feb. 27 deadline. Nevertheless, here are some of the names that are currently linked to various rumors—some of which may actually be true.
James van Riemsdyk and Luke Schenn
This rumor started running wild last week when a report came out of Philadelphia claiming Flyers director of player personnel Don Luce scouted the Leafs in recent games.
Christmas came a little bit early this year for Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Ron Wilson.
And not only did it come early, but it came granting him his Christmas wish.
On Friday, Wilson couldn’t contain his giddiness over his early Christmas “gift” and took to Twitter to express how excited he was that Santa—ahem—Brian Burke gave him a contract extension.
At 7:49 a.m., Wilson posted this to his Twitter account, @coachrw63: “‘He came! He came!’ Remember saying that as a little kid? Well he did: I got a new Red Ryder BB gun and a contract extension!”
The highlight of Tuesday’s Leafs Nation Fan Night involved Toronto Maple Leafs bruiser Colton Orr and a little bit of “Tebowing.”
Orr paid homage to Tebow after he scored one of only three goals for the white team in a team shootout.
“I’m a Tebow fan too and I thought about doing it,” said centre Tyler Bozak, who attended the University of Denver, in the home city of Tebow’s Broncos. “(Orr) knew he was going to score—he’s a breakaway guy, he’s a breakaway specialist.”
His return probably won’t garner the level of national media attention that Sindey Crosby received with his first game back, but don’t think the city of St. Louis isn’t ecstatic to see David Perron back in the lineup.
After missing 97 games with a concussion dating back to last season, the St. Louis Blues forward is set to make his return tonight against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Perron will play left wing on a line with Patrik Berglund and Matt D’Agostini and has said that although he is nervous, he is prepared for contact.
Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke was his usual, trite, no-nonsense self when asked about the possibility of signing veteran goaltender Marty Turco.
“No interest.”
Reporters in Toronto know by now that to ask Burke to elaborate is pointless.
But the rumors of Turco possibly coming to Toronto seemed unfounded. It is true that starting goaltender James Reimer has been sidelined since Oct. 22 after he suffered a concussion—err…“whiplash-like” symptoms, according to those within the Maple Leaf organization. It is also true that backup goaltender Jonas Gustavsson has struggled and rookie Ben Scrivens isn’t quite ready to lead an NHL team between the pipes.
If there was one theme in the month of October in the NHL, it was to expect the unexpected.
With that in mind, as hard as it may be to believe, the current NHL standings are in fact correct.
So, where to begin?
How about over in the Northeast Division, where the last team you would expect to be at the top would be the Toronto Maple Leafs (7-3-1). However, the only thing that might be more surprising within that division is that the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins are dead last (4-7-0)—not only in the division, but in the entire Eastern Conference.
Heading into Thursday night’s game against the surging Toronto Maple Leafs, the defending Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins posted a somewhat disappointing 2-4 record, displaying some signs—as much as they wouldn’t like to admit it—of obvious Stanley Cup hangover.
Not to mention, the B’s were coming off an embarrassing 4-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, a game in which Boston’s early-season frustrations boiled over to the tune of 72 penalty minutes.
Needless to say, Thursday’s game with Toronto was an important one, and the Bruins finally appeared to be ready for the 2011-12 season. The Bruins got goals from six different players as they handed the Leafs their first regulation defeat of the season with a 6-2 win at TD Garden.
He may have been born in Sweden, but for Maple Leafs fans, Mats Sundin is as Canadian as they come.
