What A Day

So yesterday was a good day to be a Toronto fan. Both the Leafs and the Jays were in action, and both came out on top.

The Leafs were in Philly and smacked 'em around 5-2. True, all five goals were on the power play, and the last one was an empty netter... but any time the Leafs win a game by more than one goal these days is cause for celebration in my books. Especially when the other team is Philadelphia. That win puts them 3-1 against the Flyers this season. It's weird, but if this had been a season or two ago, that kinda record against the former Broadstreet Bullies would have been reason enough to pop open a bottle of bubbly, but now, I find that I just don't care. With the Leafs playing like garbage, and the Flyers no longer resembling the power house they used to be, the rivalry has lost it's spark. Perhaps because the game was essentially meaningless, it was hard to hate the team that eliminated the Leafs the last time anyboy competed for the Stanley Cup. The Leafs, despite being 5-0-2 is their last seven, have failed to pick up a single point on the eighth place team. (Side note: I really wish news outlets would stop saying that the Leafs are keeping their playoff hopes alive. Their playoff hopes died a long, long time ago)

The Jays on the other hand (I'm just going to pretend that they didn't lose today) showed some grit by coming back to squash Tampa 8-4. I had started off watching that game, in which Ted "I Don't Need No Spring Training" Lilly was making his season debut, but after three innings of all around bad play by the Jays, I gave up to go follow other pursuits. I mean, Lilly was stinking up the place. He couldn't hit the strike zone if it had been enlarged by two feet. But it appears my lack of faith was misguided, because right after I gave up on the Jays, manager John Gibbons gave up on Lilly, yanking him for Brian "Shave Those Side Burns" Tallet, and the rest is, as they say, history.

But with the loss today, that puts them at a rather mediocre 3-3. And here I thought these guys were the closest to ending Toronto's streak of futility. Sigh...

The Raptors have quietly assembled a seven game lossing streak without anybody really noticing. It's all about the lottery balls now, I suppose.

And the Leafs, despite being on a hot streak, are still doing little better than spinning their wheels in the mud. I just wish the headline writers would stop pretending the Leafs actually have a shot of going somewhere. With five games left, it would take something like a giant asteroid wiping out the entire Tampa Bay Lightning team for this Leaf squad to make the post season. And even then...

Later

Jason