It’s not often that you see the kind of implosion that we’re seeing right now with the Toronto Maple Leafs. May this never happen to you in your fantasy hockey league. It has happened to me before. Once. I had it locked with two weeks left. A title. And a mystifying slump lost it for me last day.

For Toronto, five losses in a row and six of seven. And James Reimer gets all the blame. The hate that’s going on by some idiot Leaf fans is baffling. Here you have an average starting-caliber goaltender who is in a two-week slump (which no goalie has ever had, right?) and his wife is getting raked over the coals on Twitter. Stupid. So dumb, in fact, that if I were a Habs fan – I could pretend I was a Leafs fan and do exactly that. Throw Reimer off his game any way I can. Because that’s all these yo-yos are doing – hurting the team they cheer for. How many of those five losses in a row would Bernier win? I would say two. Reimer is in a slump, but the team is sucking.

The problem that these angry Leaf fans have is – those two wins will be the difference between playoffs and non-playoffs. Toronto will need to win six of nine to get in now. At one point it was six of 14 – which you’d think would be a gimme.

I think if Bernier can’t go next game, look for Drew MacIntyre to get a shot.

The Leafs have been waking up halfway through the game. They play like a top team after spotting the opposition two or three goals. And in the final minute, Randy Carlyle is going with Phaneuf and Franson on the blue line. Phaneuf has done pretty well there in terms of keeping the puck in, but Franson has been mediocre at best and with Jake Gardiner playing the way he’s playing – that’s the guy you go with.

Gardiner has six points in his last nine games. If Carlyle lets him do his thing rather than try to fit him into his system, he’s a top puck mover in this league.

Morgan Rielly has 13 points in his last 25 games. If he avoids the sophomore slump, and I think he will, then he’ll top 45 next year. Calling it!

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Look at this beautiful pass by Jon Merrill – and then this sweet goal by Patrik Elias:

Canucks fans have to love what this duo did last night. The 6-4, 223-pound Shawn Matthias had a goal and two assists, while the 6-3, 214-pound Zack Kassian had four helpers. If the Canucks can find a 220-pound replacement for Brad Richardson on that line, that would be pretty fun to watch.

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The streaky Mathieu Perreault has quietly put together a five-game points streak, including 11 shots, six PIM and plus-3 in that span.

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The Dobber sites will be undergoing an upgrade in a couple of weeks. Actually, two upgrades. Just a heads up on that. May look different.

The forum upgrade (that went oh so smooth – and by ‘smooth’ I mean ‘horrible’) is complete – the mobile version of that site is now in place. Just need to customize it a bit so that you can access User Settings via your phone, otherwise it looks great. That ‘User Settings’ work, if it’s not done now, will be done very soon. I’ve also added other features such as:

– Top posters of the month (via a link in the main menu there)

– Advanced reputation bar

– Moderator stats – a neat tool that tracks when the last ‘mod’ thing that a moderator has done. It allowed me to trim a bunch of inactive mods and stick with an active team of about 10.

– ‘Today’s top posters’ lists the five most active, rolling 24 hours (found on forum home page at the bottom)

– ‘Exclude forum’ is a feature that allows you to exclude the sections of the forum you don’t want to see.

– Awesome Videos – a landing spot for the best (funniest?) hockey and non-hockey on the net. As well as a couple of other new sections – fantasy novels and an MMA/WWE section

Enjoy!