The Toronto Maple Leafs were the rare eliminated team that made news before the NHL Playoffs concluded.

The Toronto Maple Leafs traditionally bow out of the playoffs early and then wait politely for the rest of the league to conclude before stealing attention from the games by making their own news.

This year was different because the Leafs were required (by law, one assumes) to place 100% of the blame for losing on Sheldon Keefe and then couldn’t wait around for a month and a half before hiring their new bench boss.

They selected Craig Berube, and set off an annoying waive of old vs new school arguments with everyone pretending Berube is whatever is most convienent to them. Peronally, I don’t really have an opinion on the coach hiring – most coaches are the same and I don’t think anybody is going to do well coaching the Leafs until they make the “crazy” concession of putting an elite goalie and an elite defenseman on their roster.

So with that said, let’s take a look around the league and see what else is going on:

The Final Four is set.

The Rangers are going to play the Panthers. The Stars will play the Oilers after an intense game 7 in which the Oilers almost joined the Leafs in infamy.

The Canucks were without Brock Boeser, not to mention their starting goalie (though the unheralded backup Arturs Silov made some spectacular saves and made what was almost a sweet comeback possible).

On the awards front, I thought the NHL had an annual embarassingly bad ceremony with pop culture figures 20 years out of date, but I guess they realized that that was not working and have just started randomly announcing awards.

They already gave out the Mark Messier Leadership Award, which has to be the dumbest thing in existance. I couldn’t imagine caring about an award less. Curling Awards are more important than this.

An award that people do care about is the Selke Award, which Auston Matthews was nominated for, but which ended up going to Alexander Barkov.

If we’re being honeset, the NHL Awards are ruined. The fact that Auston Mattews, 69 goals, elite defense, was not a Hart Trophy nominee just makes the whole thing lack credibility. Might as well just have McDonalds give out the awards and let Grimace choose them.

In other news, Rod Brind’Amour is staying in Carolina. Now that the Leafs have their coach, this doesn’t matter so much, but I think he’d have been a good choice for the Leafs had he wanted to leaef Carolina.

Honestly, not too much news happens while the Playoffs are still going on. This year’s playoffs have been pretty awesome though, even without the Leafs. The Carolina series was really fun, and the Canucks/Oilers has been a classic. If you’re a Leafs fan, appreciating other playoff series is a key to staying sane.