Weekly Takes - Monday, April 7th Edition

Weekly Takes - Monday, April 7th Edition

1. My three stars from the Leafs biggest regular season win in years against Florida on Wednesday…

1. Mitch Marner

2. Anthony Stolarz

3. Brandon Carlo

I never understood the “Stolarz or Joseph Woll” debate that has persisted for weeks. It was always going to come down to who plays better in the final stretch and it has clearly been Stolarz. He is your game-one goalie.

As for Marner, he did what he has done since the Four Nations — came to play on the big stage when his team needed him the most. Better goaltending, better team toughness, and the best defence in the Auston Matthews era are the reasons the Leafs have given this season to show they are different. But Marner’s “big game” play is the biggest reason.

And as for team defence, Carlo has changed everything. Jake McCabe-Chris Tanev is one of the better pairings in the league, but it was all going to be for naught if Toronto could not find a partner for Morgan Riley. They have in Carlo. 

Toronto now has two pairs that are winning their minutes. 

Now just get Simon Benoit off the ice and maybe the Leafs could have all three pairs win their minutes.

2. My three stars from the Leafs win over the Blue Jackets on Saturday…

1. Stolarz

2. Carlo

3. Knies

A slow start, but then the Leafs took over from there. Exactly what they needed to do against an inferior opponent, on home ice, a game after a big win.

The Leafs have had letdown losses happen all season, but the exact opposite happened here.

Now, with one more successful week, they can wrap up the division and do what they have never done before: Put themselves in the best possible position come playoff time.

Let’s see if they can finish the job.

3. It truly is amazing to me that Wayne Gretzky spent time after the Four Nations telling everyone and their uncle how hurt he was that most Canadians find his cozying up to Donald Trump disgusting, yet there he was on Friday making another political statement on a night that should have purely been about celebrating Alex Ovechkin. 

Traitor.

4. They say baseball season does not truly begin until your team suffers its first heartbreaking loss of the season, so I guess the Blue Jays season started on Saturday with their walk-off loss to the Mets.

Just a complete fumble by John Schneider, who has at no point shown he can run a Major League pitching staff.

Why is lefty Brendon Little facing the top-of-the-order (S, L, R) in the eighth inning, when you could have gone with Jeff Hoffman, your best reliever? I do not care in 2025 if it is not a closing situation. You use your best reliever in the most high-leverage situations.

A total fumble by Schneider. The Jays are simply not good enough to have their manager piss games away for them.

5. The Blue Jays re-signed Vladimir Guerrero Jr. because they had to.

If they wanted to avoid an era of darkness, they had to do it. If they wanted to be able to recruit future stars, they had to do it. If they wanted people to show up to games, they had to do it. 

And they did it, opening up a potential era of success for a team that has one starting position player (George Springer) over the age of 30.

Now go and re-sign Bo Bichette.

6. No, Cooper Flagg should not have been called for a foul late in Saturday’s Final Four contest, but that is not why Duke suffered one of the worst collapses in sports history. 

They scored one field goal in the final ten minutes. That’s it, that’s the story.

The next stop for Flagg is stardom in the NBA, because he is as sure of a thing as there has been in recent memory.

7. As Donald Trump burns the world economy into the ground and into a global recession, it’s important to remember that he isn’t actually wrong about world trade, per se.

But tariffs are tariffs alone (which is what Trump is doing) are not going to change anything.

Where’s the tax increase on the rich? Where is regulating Wall Street?

Without doing those things to complement his tariffs, all he is doing is plunging the world into a recession. 

Truly the worst president in modern American history. This is breathtaking to watch.