Last night I went to my first non-NHL game in years. I once saw a Junior-A game as a kid where there was a few fights and as the opposing player was being thrown out the crowd began to chant ‘hey, hey, hey, goodbye’. I was already hooked on hockey by that point, but that certainly made both hockey and fighting infinitely cooler. After that I’ve caught a few random non-NHL games here and there, but I can’t pretend to be an avid follower.

It’s not that I think poorly of any sort of hockey below the NHL, it’s just that I prefer to pay money to see the best players play. But with a top Leafs prospect poised to make a deep run in the OHL playoffs I thought it was time to dust off the ol’ scouting cap and watch the Leafs’ next 100 point scorer cut his teeth (a guy can dream!).

The whole point of this little adventure was to watch Kadri live. This was actually the second time I’ve seen him play, since I was lucky enough to randomly catch his brief one game emergency call-up to the Leafs (February 8th against the Sharks). He held his own during that game, but I wanted to see him play against his peers. I wanted to see him dominate. Yes, that’s how far this season has fallen for me as a Leafs fan. I’ve resorted to travelling across Southern Ontario to watch the future of the Toronto Maple Leafs.