Steve Corcoran

[Steve Corcoran @iamcorcoran]

@TonyReali 9

[Pierre LeBrun @PierreVLeBrun]

Tough conference final for the Canadiens by any measure. But what a run by the youngest team to make the playoffs. Other front offices talk so highly about how Montreal is set up for the next decade with so many good contracts and a salary cap that’s going up big time. More in pipeline coming. Still some holes in that lineup, for sure. But Montreal is way ahead of schedule. Sky’s the limit.

[Mitch Gallo @MitchyGallo]

Here are my three takeaways from tonight’s 6-1 Montreal Canadiens loss to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Final brought to you by Snap Bar Sportif in Rigaud.

1- Montreal goes out with a whimper

On one hand, it’s unfortunate that the lasting image of the Montreal Canadiens’ season will be an elimination game where they went down without much of a fight. On the other hand, maybe that’s not the worst thing.

For the players, this is a game they should sit with all summer. They’ll know that while they were only seven wins away from the Stanley Cup, they weren’t particularly competitive against the Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference Final. Sometimes that’s the reminder young players need. There’s always another level to reach.

Game 5 was a carbon copy of Game 4. Carolina pounced early and never looked back. Mike Matheson getting pickpocketed seconds into the game leading to a quality scoring chance felt like foreshadowing for what was about to happen. The goals came early, the Hurricanes took control and before anyone could settle in, the game was out of reach.

The playoffs are a grind and the Canadiens looked like a team that had nothing left in the tank. That's not an excuse, it's reality. Their path to the Eastern Conference Final went through two long, emotional series against excellent teams. Meanwhile, Carolina earned the right to face weaker opponents by finishing first in the Eastern Conference.

The Hurricanes are also simply the better and more experienced team.

Sticking with the status quo made sense. There wasn't a lineup change that was suddenly going to bridge the gap. Brendan Gallagher and Arber Xhekaj are fan favourites, but a fourth-line forward or sixth defenseman isn't the difference when you're getting dominated territorially the way Montreal was.

People want answers. They want accountability and someone to blame.

Sometimes the answer is simple.

It's just not your time yet.

2- It was a wonderful season for the Canadiens

This season was an overwhelming success for the Canadiens.

At the start of the year, most people would have considered a playoff berth and looking competitive in the postseason a major step forward. Instead, Montreal beat two higher-seeded teams and finished as one of the final three teams standing.

Individually, there was significant growth throughout the roster.

Cole Caufield scored 50 goals. Nick Suzuki reached 100 points. Ivan Demidov was a Calder Trophy finalist. Jakub Dobes showed he can handle the spotlight when the games matter most. Lane Hutson built on his Calder-winning rookie season and rounded out his game even further.

And that's only scratching the surface.

As a team, they took major strides under Martin St. Louis. They played more connected hockey, improved defensively, increased their point total and won multiple playoff rounds for the first time since 2021.

All while remaining one of the youngest teams in the league.

But the biggest takeaway isn't the individual milestones or playoff wins.

For the first time in more than 30 years, the Canadiens look like they're being built the right way.

This wasn't a run fueled by a superstar goalie standing on his head. It wasn't a veteran group sneaking into the playoffs hoping lightning would strike.

Their best players are young. Their core is intact. And many of them are still years away from their peak.

Montreal isn't going anywhere.

3- What now?

If there's one thing Carolina showed, it's that building a contender takes time.

The Canadiens are clearly not a finished product and internal improvement alone won't be enough. Kent Hughes has work to do this summer.

Oliver Kapanen had an excellent rookie season, scoring more than 20 goals and developing chemistry with Ivan Demidov. But his game fell off in the playoffs and he's probably better suited to a complementary role.

The same can be said for Jake Evans. He battled hard and filled the role of 2C as best he could, but he's not the long-term answer.

Montreal still needs a legitimate top-six center to play alongside Demidov. They need someone who can think the game at the same level and finish some of the elite plays the young winger creates.

Hughes admitted he was close to making a significant move at the trade deadline before a deal fell through. He also hinted it could be revisited in the summer.

One would assume it has to be that missing piece in the top-6.

The Canadiens should also be looking to add some sandpaper to the fourth line, preferably someone with playoff experience, while continuing to add size and physicality on the blue line.

The Canadiens made enormous progress this season and are ahead of schedule.

Now comes the hard part.

Turning a promising young team into an eventual Stanley Cup winner.

@tsn690

[Old Canada Series @oldcanadaseries]

Two young 🇨🇦 men with the last name Fox went to high school 24kms apart just outside of Vancouver, BC in the mid 1970s. Both young men would inspire the world and combine to fundraise over $3 billion for Cancer and Parkinson’s research. Two amazing Canadians, Terry Fox and Michael J Fox. 🇨🇦❤️

[Oasis @oasishealthapp]

Children living near Driscoll's strawberry farms have a 38% higher childhood cancer rate than average.

But Driscoll's can't be sued for any of it.

They don't own a single farm, grow a single berry or apply an ounce of pesticides themselves

They are a genetics and marketing company making $3 billion a year, licensing plant patents to over 700 farms and taking a cut.

Their president said it himself: "Driscoll's is not involved in the fruit farming"

Researchers identified 13 pesticides linked to childhood cancer when sprayed within 2.5 miles of a home.

98.5% of those leukemia-linked pesticides were applied in Watsonville, California (Driscoll's main strawberry operation).

- Schools sit just yards from the fields
- 41,000 lbs of pesticides applied within 1 sq mi of an elementary school
- Pesticides linger in the air for up to 72 hours

Driscoll's is currently #1 strawberry in the U.S.

Check for pesticide testing on the Oasis app

[Rahil @RahilTheThrill]

Don’t want a Sabres fan speaking about embellishment ever again.

[NHL @NHL]

Gotta take another look at this one 👀 #StanleyCup

[Shane @McClellandShane]

“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

[Steve Corcoran @iamcorcoran]

@olivier_primeau N'oublions pas qu'ils font pression contre les droits des travailleurs, et que la pizza Salvatore c'est du carton, pire qu'une cafétéria

[Vatnik Soup @P_Kallioniemi]

Wild story by the great Canadian Broadcasting Company: A network of about 20 YouTube channels pushing Alberta separatism was actually run by a small group in the Netherlands. They used hired actors and “faceless” videos to make it look real.

And these weren’t small and meaningless channels, they got millions of views in total.

So what seemed like an organic grassroots movement was in reality cheap, mass-produced content farm to earn money, and push a political agenda on the side.

It's worth noting that both the US and Russia have been active in the Alberta separatist movement, and the key figures of the organization even met with Trump officials recently.

[Idiom @idiom_bytes]

Canada spent $5.1 BILLION fixing a broken payroll system (Phoenix). Now we're about to spend $4.2 BILLION+ replacing it with Dayforce.

I went through every lobbying record, every communication report, and every revolving-door hire to identify potential conflicts of interest.

Here's what I found.

1/🧵

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

In 2018, 3,000 Google employees signed a letter that said “we believe Google should not be in the business of war.” Google dropped a $9 million military contract to build AI for analyzing drone video. Palantir grabbed it. That rejected contract is now the foundation of a $340 billion company.

I went and pulled the numbers on what happened after.

The system Google refused to build is called Maven. Think of it as Google Earth for war. It takes feeds from satellites, drones, radar, and phone intercepts, then smashes them into one screen where a military operator can see a full battlefield and pick targets in real time. Three weeks ago the Pentagon made Maven their permanent, fully funded weapons-targeting system. Every branch of the U.S. military is required to run it by September.

The money moved fast. First Maven contract was $480 million in 2024. A year later, bumped to $1.3 billion. Then the Army rolled 75 separate Palantir contracts into a single deal worth up to $10 billion. The UK added another £1.5 billion. NATO bought the system too.

The speed comparison is what got me. Palantir’s CTO Shyam Sankar said on Bloomberg that during the Iraq War, hitting 1,000 targets took six months of planning and 50 to 100 people. In the current Iran conflict, one person handled twice that number in two weeks. One person. A Palantir engineer said at a conference last month that targeting work which used to need 2,000 intelligence analysts now gets done by 20.

Palantir pulled in $4.5 billion last year. Up 56%. The U.S. government paid them $1.86 billion of that. Government contracts went from $4.4 million in 2009 to $970 million in 2025. All of it with about 4,400 employees. They cleared $1.6 billion in profit. IPO was at $10 a share in 2020. Trades around $140 now.

Peter Thiel called Google’s decision to walk away from Maven “treason” in 2018. Palantir built a $340 billion company on the contract Google wouldn’t touch.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The air traffic controller cleared the fire truck onto the runway. Seconds later, the same controller screamed “stop, stop, stop.” The plane was doing 93 to 105 mph.

Both pilots are dead.

Everyone will frame this as controller error. One controller was simultaneously managing a United flight that aborted takeoff after an anti-ice warning, dispatching a fire truck across an active runway, and sequencing an inbound Air Canada landing at highway speed. At 11:40 PM. On a mandatory overtime shift at a facility that has been understaffed for years.

A system that assigns one person that workload will produce exactly this outcome. The only variable is when.

The FAA is short approximately 3,000 controllers. The headcount dropped 13% from 2010 to 2024 while flight volume rose 10%. Over 40% of the FAA’s 290 terminal facilities are understaffed. The New York TRACON, which manages the most congested airspace in America across LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark, has been chronically below target. Newark was operating at 59% of its staffing goal. LaGuardia handles 900 flights a day.

The hiring pipeline is broken at every stage. Only 2% of applicants complete the full process. Training takes up to 6 years. The FAA Academy in Oklahoma City is a bottleneck, with roughly 35% of trainees washing out. Congress blocked legislation to build a second academy. In one recent hiring cycle, the FAA brought on 1,512 candidates and lost 1,300 in the same window. Net gain: around 160 controllers for an entire country.

Three things need to happen and everyone who can make them happen has known for years.

Congress needs to fund and authorize a second FAA training academy. One facility in Oklahoma City cannot produce enough controllers for 900 million annual passengers. Members of Congress from Oklahoma have actively blocked this. That needs to end yesterday.

The FAA needs to cut certification time. Six years from application to fully certified controller is absurd. The agency’s own data shows tower simulators reduce certification time by 27%. They’ve installed them at 95 facilities. That should be every facility, and the simulated hours should count toward more of the certification requirement.

The FAA needs to stop plugging staffing gaps with mandatory overtime. Controllers at understaffed facilities are working six-day weeks rotating between morning, mid, and night shifts. The NTSB has flagged fatigue repeatedly. The controller last night was managing overlapping emergencies during a nighttime operation. Overtime is not a staffing plan. It’s a countdown to the next runway collision.

The controller said “I messed up” to a Frontier pilot who watched the whole thing. The pilot responded “No man, you did the best you could.”

One of them is right. The answer determines whether this happens again.

[ethical hater @DijahSB]

my homie made a website that highlights all of doug fords lies/underspending/overspending and wow bro. I knew it was bad but this guy is criminal https://t.co/0SOnmwdCh1

[bu/ac @buperac]

Bill C-22 should be considered treason.

Whoever made this Bill is clearly involved in foreign espionage. Imagine going into China and passing a bill that allows all this in Bill C-22 and not getting the death penalty:

11 reason's every Canadian is fucked with Bill C-22 passing:

1. Judicial warrants can authorize covert installation of tracking or transmission-data-recording computer programs on a suspect's device, planting and data onto your device.

2. Civilian employees of any police force (including foreign ones) can now issue warrantless demands for telecoms to confirm a Canadian's subscription detail, opening the ledger to overseas agents without judicial gatekeepers.

3. Warrantless "confirmation of service demands" by peace officers, public officers, or those civilians force providers to verify subscriber data on mere suspicion, bypassing traditional safeguards.

4. Exigent-circumstances powers let officers seize data or issue demands without warrant whenever they deem urgency pressing, subjective haste trumping Charter scrutiny.

5. Production orders for subscriber information now issue on the lower "reasonable grounds to suspect" threshold, diluting the evidentiary bar courts once demanded.

6. Court-authorized requests to foreign entities pull Canadian citizens' data from overseas servers, while foreign production orders gain enforcement here, creating a seamless transatlantic data net.

7. Ministerial orders compel providers to surrender subscriber or "other" information on ministerial terms alone, with only administrative review.

8. Providers must build and test "access capabilities" potentially including software features or backdoors, allowing police (even civilians from other forces) to probe those systems for perpetual access.

9. Immunity for voluntary disclosures and public-data scooping lets providers hand over information freely, greasing the pipeline without compulsion.

10. Gag orders and rushed reviews silence providers for up to a year while challenges get mere days, keeping the governed blind to the gathering.

11. Expanded computer-data warrants cover unknown future devices or apps the target might use, pre-authorizing surveillance shadows.

This isn’t a government “protecting citizens” this is a rogue government operating Canada.

[Unifor @UniforTheUnion]

A data centre in Etobicoke was approved to consume 1.2B litres/year.
This World Water Day, governments must address the imbalance between AI data centres and the water security of our communities, including 37 First Nations communities under long-term boil water advisories. https://t.co/Pf3BNd9Pr8

[Culture Crave 🍿 @CultureCrave]

Ticketmaster directors were caught bragging in internal messages about 'robbing [fans] blind'

The messages:

• 'These people are so stupid. I almost feel bad for taking advantage of them'

• 'Robbing them blind, baby. That’s how we do it'

• Charging '$50 to park in the grass' and '$60 for closer grass'

They recently reached a deal with the U.S. government to avoid a breakup over allegations of running an illegal monopoly

(via @Business)

[Pirat_Nation 🔴 @Pirat_Nation]

Ticketmaster directors were caught bragging in internal messages about 'robbing [fans] blind'

The messages were recently unsealed as part of the company’s ongoing antitrust lawsuit.

"Jesus, these people are so stupid ... I have VIP parking up to $250. I almost feel bad taking advantage of them"

[Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East @CJPME]

Breaking: @MarkJCarney's government just voted against Bill C-233, which would have stopped the flow of weapons to Israel via the United States loophole. Canada has chosen to protect those profiting from genocide. We will not forget how MPs voted in this urgent moment.

[Lauren @cabsav456]

I waited to comment on the girls' school struck in Iran because I wanted the facts to emerge first. But the situation has become absurd & needs to be condemned by every single American.

It was the WSJ and WaPo — not our own military leadership — that conducted the forensic investigations and confirmed the strike by U.S. forces. Despite the evidence, the President is still deflecting, suggesting Iran was responsible while simultaneously acknowledging the use of a Tomahawk missile — a weapon Iran doesn't even have.

Hegseth refuses to confirm the "error" even as Republicans in Congress have already begun calling it out as a tragic mistake.

The point is, we know what happened. Yet instead of an apology or a transparent briefing, Hegseth has chosen this EXACT moment to announce he is further weakening independent legal checks. Note: he already fired the top JAGs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force all at once back in Feb 2025, and many of these top roles have remained vacant ever since.

By rolling back rules of engagement and removing JAG oversight on war crimes and constitutional compliance, he is signaling that accountability is no longer a priority. The messaging truly could not be worse.