Buds All Day

OK so I missed most of the Leafs game tonight because I went out with some friends to celebrate a birthday and were watching the Rush play, and now it's 2:00 AM and I'm finally getting caught up on what happened tonight, and man oh man what a game.  If you saw it in a movie you'd be like, "come on, that's so unrealistic."  Kessel opens the scoring, because of course he fucking does.  JVR ties it up with a RUDE goal, dude picked that puck out of mid-air and chipped it forward to himself AND stayed on-side, and then fires a perfect shot, that's a goal-of-the-year candidate in my books.  Then Andersen gets run over by that shit-bag Sestito, so now it's 1-1 in the biggest game of the year and Curits Mcelhinney, your backup goalie who you got off the goddamn waiver wire, has to come in and save the day.  It's cool though, because Dreamboat Willie will straight-up murder you on the power-play, and he sells the shot before firing a perfect pass to old man Bozak for a tap-in, 2-1 good guys.  Couple minutes later, Pens PP, Mcelhinney gets caught out of position and Crosby buries it, 2-2.  3rd period, 13 minutes left, and some Penguins plug floats a wrister from the half-wall and somehow it deflects off of both Leafs d-men and through Mcelhinney's legs, 3-2 Penguins and of course it was Gardiner who kicked it in, of course it was, and of course those two garbage goals are going to torpedo Toronto's whole season and DAMMIT MCELHINNEY YOU SUCK .  Down to 5 minutes and change, and it turns out the Leafs won the Kessel trade after all because Kasperi Kapanen gets his FIRST NHL GOAL off a sweet pass from Matt fucking Hunwick of all people, and then a couple minutes later, Connor Brown tips home Gardiner's point shot and holy shit the Leafs have the lead! Nazem Kadri and Connor Brown jumping into one another's arms when that goal went in is about as pure an expression of joy as I've ever seen, these kids are so damn precious and also Brown's like the 5th-best rookie on the team, and he has 20 goals which is just stupid.  So now down to the final minute, just gotta hang on, but oh no the Penguins are pressing and oh no Crosby's all alone and OH NO he's got the puck OH SHIT and MCELHINNEY ROBS HIM I LOVE YOU CURTIS and then, the icing on the cake, Auston Matthews gets his 40th goal of the year into the empty net with 3.4 seconds left on the clock because, of course.

So that's that.  The Leafs make the playoffs for the 2nd time in 13 years, and unlike in 2013 they actually deserve to be there this time, and it's great just to get in and all, but win tomorrow and you avoid the Caps and get the Sens instead and I swear if you don't want to see Toronto and Ottawa play in the 1st round there is something seriously wrong with you.

It's probably a good thing I didn't watch this game live, I don't think my nerves could have taken it.