Weekly Takes - Monday, February 3rd Edition

1. My three stars from the Maple Leafs loss to the Wild on Wednesday...

1. William Nylander

2. Pontus Holmberg

3. Auston Matthews

It is hard to get worked up about this one. No John Tavares and Matthew Knies, Nylander and Matthews both hit the post, and Matthews tipped a shot into his own net.

Sometimes, it is just not your night.

2. My three stars from the Leafs thrilling win over the Oilers on Saturday...

1. Joseph Woll

2. Nylander

3. Jake McCabe

A great first period, followed by an awful last 40 minutes -- simply hanging on for dear life.

But the Leafs top stars came to play and Woll was brilliant.

Tough for any team to beat the Leafs when that is the case.

3. The Canucks had to trade J.T. Miller rather than Elias Pettersson, simply because Miller is older. Trading Pettersson could have set the Canucks back by a decade.

But there is no denying the pressure now on Pettersson. His fall from grace has been stunning since signing his contract.

It is put up or shut up for him now.

4. The Blue Jays signing Max Scherzer is A) Cool and B) Another important step towards competing in 2025.

But the "job not finished" mentality has to remain in place, just like it did after signing Jeff Hoffman and Anthony Santander.

Landing one more impact bat is a must.

5. The Lakers won the stunning Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis swap, simply because the Lakers got a top-five player on the planet for the next decade.

Sometimes, trades are that easy to judge.

Yes, the Lakers are not a contender anymore -- with their defence simply being too awful -- and yes, Davis is a better fit alongside Kyrie Irving than Doncic was -- but when you trade/trade for a player like Doncic, looking at things through the lens of the next season or two does not matter in the slightest.

All that matters is the Lakers have their franchise cornerstone for the next decade, while the Mavericks future is now in shambles.

6. It is tough to know what to think about Donald Trump supporters these days.

On one hand, anyone with a brain could have told you he was a con man, but I sympathized with his supporters for a long time because Washington left people no hope but to put all their hopes in the hands of a con man.

But anyone who supports him after his first two weeks in office is simply in a cult.

Cozying up to billionaires? Destroying two economies at once, because Trump views Canada in the same way that Vladimir Putin views Ukraine?

He will surpass George W. Bush as the worst President in American history, between the COVID disaster in his first term and destroying relations between Canada and the U.S in his second.