84 days and counting until puck drop on the 2024/25 Maple Leafs regular season.
Tuesday was a very, very special edition of Leafs Morning Take as we celebrated Jay Rosehill’s 39th birthday. We kicked off the show by quickly recapping what Toronto’s done thus far this summer, and more importantly, what they haven’t been able to do. After that, we got into the botched national anthem at the home run derby on Monday night. It’s being billed as one of the worst anthems at a sporting event of all-time. And honestly, rightfully so. Meantime, 50 Cent showed up at a concert in Boston over the weekend rocking a Leafs hat. Obviously, we had to talk about that, too. What a legend!
Presented by Greta Bar YYZ, as it normally does, the chat morphed into a Core Four conversation. At this point, it’s hard to proclaim whether the Leafs are a better team now than they were a few months ago when they lost in Game 7 to Boston. That said, there’s a lot of optimism surrounding Craig Berube’s arrival. Perhaps he can get more out of everyone when it matters the most? You never know. With that in mind, we discussed Mitch Marner’s charity event from last week. There was no red carpet this year, which surely raised some eyebrows. In fact, TSN and Sportsnet were told not to attend the event outright. Local news stations were granted interviews on Friday but were instructed that Marner would only be fielding questions on the event. For what it’s worth, neither of us really cared that he elected to do that. There will be a time and place to answer Leafs related questions. That storm will come in September when the players report to camp. That should be fun.
After that, we spent a few minutes discussing Jani Hakanpaa. 15 days after it was reported that the towering defender would be signing in Toronto, nothing’s been made official. Since then, there’s been growing speculation that the 32-year-old has a bummed knee, which obviously could be the hold up in all of this. At this point, it could be in the team’s best interest to just move on. The last thing you want is another John Klingberg situation on your hands.
We’ll be back in the mix on Thursday at 11 AM ET. Talk then!
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