from Damien Cox of the Toronto Star,

“Any time you’re off the ice for that long, it takes ice to get it back,” said defenceman Cody Franson wryly. “In Montreal on the weekend, I felt better than I had all season. But you can practise as much as you want. It’s still not the same as games.”

To be fair, the Leafs could have won against the Islanders and Canadiens, and with some puck luck might have gotten the jump on the Blue Jackets Monday night as well. But they didn’t in all three cases, and now this group of 22 players, plus the injured David Bolland, has to sweat through the next two days until Wednesday’s trade deadline.

“It’s not a lot of fun being a player at this time of year,” said head coach Randy Carlyle, who was himself dealt at the deadline 30 years ago. “With Twitter and everything, there’s a lot more rumours floating around. There’s a lot more to it than there was in ’84. I don’t think there was Twitter back then, was there?”

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