Pre-season Whatevers

The Leafs are doing their pre-season thing and the question of who will play with Mats Sundin has taken on a level of ridiculous speculation. Is Jason Blake the player that Mats has been waiting for for the past decade, the player who will convert every one of Sundin's sweet Swedish passes into pretty goals and career numbers and save us from another year of no playoffs? Yes, apparently, if you want to listen to the hype.

Me personally, I have my eye on Nik Antropov and Alexei Ponikarovsky. Hah, no I'm serious. This is their year. When Antropov is healthy, and come on, there's no way he can spend any more time on the DL, the guy is due, anyway, when he's healthy, he's actually got some game. Just watch. And Poni, well, did you see his breakaway goal in Edmonton? Poni is a workhorse.

The Leafs won their game in Winnipeg against Phoenix today, a game that was probably scheduled to shut up people in the Peg who still want their Jets back. C'mon, nobody wants the Coyotes. Alex Steen picked up a goal which was a nice tribute to Daddy Steen and Andrew Raycroft got the win which is just nice anytime.

The Leafs also brought Simon Gamache to training camp, and this guy is supposed to be hot shit over in Europe and the AHL, though if there's any room in the bigs for him probably depends on how well he translates his game. The Leafs are also guaranteeing a pre-season start for Scott Clemmensen who had the NHL's easiest back up role last year working behind Martin Brodeur. If I can be petty here, it was Clemancy who lost the final game of the season last year for New Jersey to the Islanders, which gave New York one more point than Toronto and the final playoff spot. If I can summarize, the Leafs failure last year can be blamed entirely on Scott Clemmesen.
I hope his ass gets shelled.

Jason