HOCKEY LAST NIGHT: LEAFS WIN!

This just in: Gatineau's Eva Avila, the Canadian Idol winner, will sing O Canada at the Grey Cup. It's the only way Ottawa-Gatineau will ever be represented at the Grey Cup again. Anyway, yeah, hockey last night:

Just one more thing, in the wake of our look at the Secretly Subpar and the Worst World Series teams... had to laugh like hell last night when a guy on TV (won't name names) said of the St. Louis Cardinals starting Anthony Reyes in Game 1 that "ideally, Reyes would be the Game 4 starter."

No, ideally, Reyes and his 5-8 record and 5.06 ERA wouldn't be starting at all.

Leafs 4 Blue Jackets 2: A decent bounce-back effort for Paul Maurice's team coming off that stinker at home against the Avalanche on Wednesday. Andrew Raycroft was solid in goal and the Leafs spread out the scoring for a change. By the way, anyone notice how slow Hal Gill looked on that Manny Malholtra goal?

Also, Sportsnet's Jim Lang managed to find a Tim Horton's in Columbus, Ohio, so it was good trip for the Toronto raiding party. All-around. A Tim's in Buckeye country. Good times.

How often do you see three Toronto hockey teams all winning on the same night? The AHL's Marlies and the OHL's Toronto-St. Mike's Majors also won their games.

Sabres 5 Canes 4: Great news, Gary Bettman: You finally have a fierce rivalry between U.S. teams again, except it's between teams from Buffalo and Raleigh. Yes, that should raise the NHL's profile.

Canucks 3 Blues 2 (overtime): C'est la vie for a rebuilding Blues club: They blow two-goal lead, giving up the tying goal in the final minute of regulation and the winner on a seeing-eye slapper by Sami Salo with eight-10ths of a second left in overtime, settling for the single point despite Curtis Sanford's 36 saves. Oh, and Jay McKee went out with a broken right hand.

The play where Ryan Johnson was called for boarding -- a play that the Canucks will likely be raising with the NHL office -- wasn't an icing situation since the Blues were already killing a penalty, but it looked reminiscent of those cases Don Cherry cites when he gets up on his soapbox about no-touch icing. It did give the Canucks a chance to go 6-on-3 in the final minute and Markus Naslund scored his fifth goal of the season to force OT.

Ducks 2 Wild 1: And then there was one unbeaten team. By the way, can you brace yourself for another Anaheim-Minnesota Western final next spring? It already happened once.

OHL

67's 8 Frontenacs 4: New Kingston goalie Jason Guy was welcomed to the Fronts by being bombarded with 50 shots against Ottawa last night. (Is it rude to point out this is an Ottawa team that's missing its most creative offensive player, Logan Couture?)

It wasn't a happy homecoming for Fronts defenceman Ben Shutron, who's from the Orleans section of Ottawa: He was minus-3 on the night. Now the Fronts get to take that five-game loss streak up to northern Ontario for games against the Soo Greyhounds tomorrow and the Sudbury Wolves (the team my friend Trevor Stewart covers for the Sudbury Star) on Tuesday.

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday, and know that yours truly will have a better shot at doing so if the Golden Gaels pull off a minor miracle against those Western Mustangs. Ob la di, ob la da, life gones on bra ... send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.