Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Simmons offers a spread-out set of Sunday topics

03/07/2015 at 11:11pm EST

The Toronto Sun's Steve Simmons discusses the inevitable "falls" of Dion Phaneuf and Phil Kessel as the main topic in his Sunday notebook, but you and I both know that numbers 3 and 81 will be exiting Toronto in salary-and-or-player-dumps soon, and we all know that Jaromir Jagr's ability tos core in the "Dead Puck" era was (and now is again) pretty damn impressive, so this set of observations strikes me as the most pertinent "chunk" of Simmons' notebook:

Before trading David Clarkson to Columbus, the Leafs thought they had a deal going that would have sent him back to New Jersey. The player whose contract would have swapped in exchange has not been confirmed, but quite likely it’s the concussed Ryan Clowe ... There was significant interest in Roman Polak at the NHL deadline, including from his former team, the St. Louis Blues. The Leafs like what Polak gives them from a stability and maturity point of view, something the current team is lacking in ... Pretty sure Ron Wilson was an advocate of Phaneuf being named captain of the Leafs. Wasn’t he the coach at the time? ... The narrative once was that the Leafs won the trade that brought Joffrey Lupul and Jake Gardiner to Toronto in exchange for Francois Beachemin. The standings don’t agree. Since then, the Leafs are playing .497 hockey and the Ducks are accumulating points at a .638 clip ... If you don’t love the Andrew Hammond, Hamburglar, story, you don’t love sports. I’m doing something I don’t remember doing before: I quietly cheering for the Ottawa Senators.

Simmons continues, discussing his usual potpourri of Sunday sports topics.

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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