from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun,

- Do you cringe, as I do, when Gary Bettman eulogizes the hockey greats in interviews. I suspect the NHL commissioner didn’t watch one minute of Howe’s career.

- Finally, Bruce Boudreau and John Anderson, friends as teenagers, are coaching together in Minnesota. They must have a shared one or two late nights at John Anderson’s Hamburgers over the years.

- When Brendan Shanahan fired Randy Carlyle 17 months ago as coach of the Leafs, he turned to the players and gave them a rather blunt message: Show me something. Those weren’t his exact words, but the context was clear.

If you want to remain a Maple Leaf, show me you want to remain a Maple Leaf.

That was the beginning of the end of Phil Kessel’s time in Toronto. It wasn’t media. It wasn’t fans. It wasn’t hot dogs. It wasn’t personality that led to Kessel being traded by the Leafs. It was an absolute disregard for Shanahan’s words and the personal challenge he put out for the Leafs.

You can now twist the story any way you want with Kessel having the playoffs of his life and the Pittsburgh Penguins a win away from the Stanley Cup but the truth is that in the final 43 games without Carlyle, Shanahan believed he had no choice but to move him....

more on Kessel plus a few more hockey notes...