Good news and bad!

Happy Holidays everyone, and thanks for making BenchBrawl so popular!!

I have to apologize, The switched my shift at work over the holidays and I have been a little less than diligent in my posting, as my good friend Brian pointed out today.

Ok, here goes. On Monday, the Leafs followed up a major rout of the Penguins, with a second consecutive win over the Atlanta Thrashers. This 6-2 victory, highlight the NHL debut of Leaf net minder Justin Pogge. Pogge was drafted 4 years ago by the buds 90th over all and made 19 of 21 saves to help his team to a second win in a row.

"It was nice to see Justin play as well as he did," Toronto coach Ron Wilson said. "When he is in a butterfly, all he has to do is move two or three inches. We played really in well in front of him, but he made three or four saves that would have given (Atlanta) lots of momentum."


The following night with the Dallas Stars in town however, it was a different Toronto squad that showed up to play Mike Modano and his squad. The Leafs were embarrassed 8-2 at home.

''We didn't have our legs, we didn't have our mind to be able to play a shutdown game,'' said coach Ron Wilson. ''Unfortunately, it got ugly.''

Ugly hardly describes the effort that the Leafs seemed to be lacking for 58 of 60 minutes this night. Already painfully aware that Toskala was nursing a sore groin, perhaps the Leafs bench boss made a error in judgement by letting him start rather than resting him un til after Christmas. Pogge was in town fresh off his first NHL appearance and more to the point, had to stay in town until the 27th when the holiday roster freeze is over. Perhaps the Leafs would have lost no matter who was in goal, that does not however excuse a very poor decision, in my humble opinion, on the part of Ron Wilson.