Toronto

Leslie Street Spit will be the site of a new wetland project, one of many steps that authorities have been taking to bring Toronto’s waters back to life

Actor Christopher Meloni almost shot his stunt double on the set of new movie Man of Steel after his gun misfired during filming.

Bylaw aiming to curb growth on Queen West gets key approval ahead of city council vote next month

Soul icon Mary J. Blige has been hit with a lawsuit over a cancelled 2012 concert.

Former Terminator star Edward Furlong faces four years behind bars after allegedly assaulting his ex-girlfriend, actress Monica Keena.

The AHL playoffs are over and your Grand Rapids Griffins have won the Calder Cup after defeating the favorite Syracuse Crunch 5-2 at the War Memorial Arena in New York on Tuesday. The Griffins jumped out to a 3-0 series lead with two wins in Syracuse and one in Grand Rapids before being taken to game six by back-to-back Crunch victories at the Van Andel Arena. After giving up the first goal of the game, the Griffins scored two unanswered goals to take the lead. Syracuse tied it in the third, but Brennan Evans gave the Griffins a lead they wouldn't relinquish before Tomas Tatar and Joakim Andersson added empty-netters. On their way to the Final, the Griffins defeated the Houston Aeros, the Toronto Marlies, and the Oklahoma City Barons. Each of those series went the maximum number of games. On the other side, Syracuse flew through the first three rounds only losing one game to the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins in the Eastern Conference Finals. Tomas Tatar was named the AHL's playoff MVP. He scored 16 goals and was a force for the Griffins. Petr Mrazek also put up a slate of excellent performances, leading the AHL in shutouts during the playoffs. Other standout performances came from Nathan Paetsch, Brennan Evans, Joakim Andersson, Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Jurco, Jeff Hoggan, and Jan Mursak. Congratulations to the Griffins for their series victory.

Esmil Rogers is an easy-going guy. Where other starting pitchers are anti-social on the day of their starts, shunning all conversation to maintain the sombre focus of a monk, Rogers chats amiably and jokes around as he does every other day. Perhaps that's why he has converted so easily from the bullpen to the rotation, embracing the starters' spotlight with ease and aplomb.Right now the Blue Jays are reflecting Rogers' feel-good mood right back at him.The club extended their winning streak to a season-high seven games on Tuesday, defeating the Colorado Rockies 8-3 as Rogers dominated his former team and the Jays' offence exploded for four first-inning runs and three homers. J.P. Arencibia and Maicer Izturis hit back-to-back home runs, one inning after Edwin Encarnacion clubbed his 19th of the season to ruin the Canadian homecoming for Vancouver native Jeff Francis, who gave up eight runs on 10 hits.The win marked the first time the Jays have won seven straight in more than five years. The club has won 10 of their last 12 games and posted the second-highest winning percentage in the American League since May 11. Rogers, who spent his first 3 1/2 seasons with Colorado, took a no-hitter into the sixth inning before Jonathan Herrera broke it up with a single. The announced Rogers Centre crowd of 22,852 gave Rogers a standing ovation when he exited the game after 6 2/3 innings, charged with two earned runs on four hits and a walk. He humbly put his fingers to his cap as he stepped towards the dugout.Rogers — the Jays' eventual return on their trade of ex-manager John Farrell — has been a revelation in the starting role. Though he was tapped to start only after a series of injuries hobbled the rotation and the club ran out of capable minor-league call-ups, Rogers has made a strong case to stick in the rotation even after the likes of J.A. Happ and Brandon Morrow are able to return.In his four starts, Rogers has allowed just four earned runs in 21 innings. “I like him as a starter,” Jays manager John Gibbons said before Tuesday's game. “It all depends on what happens with Morrow down the road. And of course Happ. He's pitching very good right now and we'll see how long he runs with it.”Though they stumbled out of the gate to start the season with a star-studded rotation that many predicted would be among the league's best, the Jays are now rolling with a patched together crew that includes Rogers and veteran Chien-Ming Wang, who was plucked from the minor-league scrap heap.They are finally becoming the team everybody thought they would be, except they are doing it with the understudies instead of the stars. That said, the recent resurgence would not have come about without improved performances by the likes of Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson and R.A. Dickey.“Obviously earlier in the year we weren’t doing a good job, putting the team in a hole,” said Buehrle, who gets the start against the Rockies on Wednesday. “Now we’re going out there doing what we’re supposed to do and giving our team a chance to get a couple of runs.”Buehrle did also offer a dose of realism, however. “We’re going to go through stretches where we’re good, and we’re going to go through stretches when we’re bad. I wouldn’t expect to keep this rate up for too much longer. I mean, I’m sure someone is going to hit a bump in the road here soon. We just have to ride it out while we can.”MOREThe Star’s Blue Jays page

What a difference a year can make.

If the Boston Bruins hold on and prevail in the 2013 Stanley Cup Final, top point-getter David Krejci and otherworldly goaltender Tuukka Rask are both knee-jerk Conn Smythe Trophy candidates, and good ones at that. Krejci’s consistency comes through on his game log, where one will notice that his only case of back-to-back pointless outings occurred in Games 2 and 3 of the final. He has turned in memorable multipoint efforts, including a hat trick in the first round and a pair of assists in the finals opener which, in a losing cause, at least helped to verify Boston’s competitiveness. Rask is retaining a Tim Thomas-esque stat line with a .946 save percentage and 1.64 goals-against average whilst stifling top-notch offenses from Pittsburgh and Chicago. The way he kept the second game of the final competitive after a 19-shot first-period firestorm makes for one booming opening statement for his Conn Smythe case. But upon digging beneath the top of Boston’s production leaderboard and the NHL’s netminding leaderboard and exploring the context of various individuals’ output, Patrice Bergeron warrants at least equal Conn Smythe consideration. Bergeron leads all qualified playoff participants with a 62.7 percent success rate in faceoffs. His consistency in that area has rivaled Krejci’s in the point column. He has won the majority of his draws in 18 out of 19 postseason games. His worst success rate in those 18 games was 52.2 percent in Game 4 of the Toronto series. That 19th game, the only night when he finished with a losing record at the dot, ended with his second overtime goal of the spring, giving Boston a 2-1 win and 3-0 series lead over the Penguins. That goal, along with five shots on net and a pair of takeaways, easily recompensed his uncharacteristic 13-for-35 showing in the faceoff department. It was also the third sudden-death strike Bergeron has had a hand in during this tournament. In Game 7 of the opening round, he fired home a last-minute equalizer from the straightaway point through a forest, drawing a 4-4 knot and forcing bonus action against Toronto. He followed up by ending the series in the fourth period. In the resultant second-round series opener against the New York Rangers, Bergeron followed up on all of that with the primary setup on Brad Marchand’s overtime clincher. He also claimed credit for the secondary helper on the series clincher versus the Penguins. Ditto the goal that put Boston in the lead for good en route to a 5-2 victory over the Rangers in the second game of the second round. Later in that match, Bergeron had a hand in a goal that augmented the lead to 4-2 in the tone-setting first minute of the third period. Similarly, in Game 2 of the Pittsburgh series, he was in on a last-minute strike that drained any momentum the Penguins might have drawn from hitting the board and cutting Boston’s lead to 3-1 in the first period. He later made it 5-1 on the first shift on a fresh sheet in the closing frame. At the other end, virtually every Bruin has done his part to join Rask in minimizing the opposing offense. But Bergeron stands out for helping to keep the opposing power play scoreless. Of the 22 skaters to dress for Boston in the 2013 playoffs, 10 have yet to let an opposing power play convert on their watch. Of those 10, Bergeron is the leader in shorthanded ice time at 32:12, followed by his linemate Marchand at 28:15 and then Krejci a considerably distant third at 8:55. Conversely, he has been on the ice for three of the Bruins’ power-play conversions, with all three of those coming off his own blade to tie him with rookie depth defenseman Torey Krug for the team lead. The third of those five-on-four strikes came in Monday night’s 2-0 victory over the Blackhawks, helping them to a 2-1 lead in the series and a 2-0 goal differential on special teams. Who has scored the only other man-up goal in this series? That’s right. Bergeron conve

Differences between the first-round Bruins and the Stanley Cup finalist version.