A Hectic Day in the Life of the Leafs

Today was supposed to be a quiet day with the Leafs not having a game to play until tomorrow night against the Canadiens. That turned out to not be the case, as it instead became a frantic day of many roster moves by the Leafs.

It started innocently enough at the beginning of the practice when soon-to-be-traded P.A. Parenteau left practice just after 9 a.m. For the next 10 minutes, Twitter went into a frenzy with many believing this to be a sign that his days with the Leafs were over. It wasn't long before the reason for Parenteau's early exit became available, turning out to be a simple case of "soreness." When he learned about what happened on Twitter later, Parenteau was aware of what he did is just another case of the "frenzy of the trade deadline."

The next order of business came not long afterward when the greatest trash talker in recent memory, Rich Clune, was loaned to the Marlies, who were set to play against the Hershey Bears. The move surprised almost no one and provided Clune more playing time.

Leaf fans were happy for a few moments when the recently acquired defenseman Jared Cowen finally come off of IR, setting up for his debut in the Buds against the Canadiens. It turned out to not be the case as by noon, the news came out that Cowen was placed on waivers. It was shocking because the big man had been on the sidelines for the past few weeks. Interesting to see what happens with him in the coming days.

An hour later, the recently called-up defenseman Viktor Loov was, like Clune, loaned to the Marlies. He did play well in his short stint with the team and the move seems to be only temporary as the Marlies, like I said earlier, are playing tonight.

Finally, Raffi Torres, part of the recent Polak/Spaling trade, released a statement that he will not play for the rest of the season to fully heal from a recent injury. He wasn't playing for the Marlies in the first place and his presence was simply as a salary cap dump. Set to become a free agent this summer, this move comes as no surprise and saves the Leafs some valuable cap space.

So while nothing totally drastic occurred with the Leafs and no trade was made at the time of writing this, it has still been a very hectic day nonetheless. If anything, this signals the beginning of the final sprint towards the expectedly exciting trade deadline on Monday.

#TMLIMO