Tomorrow, our lives come grinding to a halt until mid-June. The NHL playoffs are here—and even without the Toronto Maple Leafs (more on them in a second), that means there’s going to be meaningful hockey on TV almost every single night for the next two-and-a-half months. (That’s assuming you think it’s possible for sports to be meaningful, obviously; then again, if you didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be reading this.) Back in October we picked the......

Hope is a cruel thing for a sports fan: no matter how bleak the situation, as long as there's a straw in sight we'll happily clutch at it. Case in point: Leafs Nation, of which we're proud, occasionally defiant members. We've been flip-flopping over the Leafs all season long. A few weeks ago we'd written them off, then watched as the team put together an impressive run (which included comprehensive victories over the Ottawa......