Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand had fallen into a bit of a slump as of late as he was trying to break it before the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs.
He finally did it on Tuesday night against the Washington Capitals, snapping his 17-game scoring drought when beating goalie Charlie Lindgren. The funny thing is that barely no one noticed Marchand’s struggles since the Bruins have been so good.
Marchand had scored his last goal on March 9 against the Edmonton Oilers. He had previously gone 20 games without one in his rookie season in 2009-10, 15 games in the 2014-15 season, but went all the way up to 17 games during this stretch.
The 2022-23 season was not a great one for Marchand, who did not produce at his normal rate over the last month. However, he is expected to put up better numbers once the postseason rolls around.
Marchand has been the Bruins’ leading playoff goal scorer in each of the team’s last four seasons. Last spring, he led the Bruins in playoff goals (4), assists (7) and points (11) through the team’s seven-game series against the Carolina Hurricanes.
The end of this unnoticed 17-game scoring drought might be what Marchand needed to start the playoffs with a bang!
Journalists reporting on the status and future of the Colorado River are increasingly using the phrase “dead pool.” It sounds ominous. And it is.
Dead pool occurs when water in a reservoir drops so low that it can’t flow downstream from the dam. The biggest concerns are Lake Powell, behind Glen Canyon Dam on the Utah-Arizona border, and Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border [shown above]. These two reservoirs, the largest in the U.S., provide water for drinking and irrigation and hydroelectricity to millions of people in Nevada, Arizona and California.
Some media reports incorrectly define dead pool as the point at which a dam no longer has enough water to generate hydroelectricity. The more accurate term for that situation is the minimum power pool elevation.
As a 22-year drought in the Colorado River basin lingers, reaching minimum power pool elevation is the first problem. Lakes Powell and Mead have turbines at the bases of their dams, well below the surface of the reservoirs. Water flows through valves in intake towers in the reservoirs and is channeled through the turbines, making them spin to generate electricity.
Water levels in the Colorado River’s major reservoirs are falling to levels not seen since the reservoirs were created.
This system relies on what hydrologists call hydraulic head—the amount of liquid pressure above a given point. The higher the level of water above the turbines in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the more hydraulic head they have and the more power they will generate.
When the level in a reservoir approaches minimum power pool elevation, the turbines lose capacity to produce power as they start to take in air along with water and must be shut down before they are damaged. A reservoir that reaches this point usually has quite a bit of water left before it drops to dead pool and water stops flowing from the dam.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation recently announced unprecedented changes in its regulation of the water in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. First, the bureau will retain in Lake Powell 480,000 acre-feet of water that was scheduled to flow down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and into Lake Mead for use by California, Nevada, and Arizona. One acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons.
Second, the bureau will release an additional 500,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Dam on the Wyoming-Utah border. Water from Flaming Gorge flows into the Green River and eventually into Lake Powell. The water level in Lake Powell was 3,522 feet on April 30, 2022—just 32 feet above the minimum power pool elevation of 3,490 feet. Dead pool is 120 feet lower, at 3,370 feet.
Extreme drought and climate change partly explain this rapid decline. Another factor is that Glen and Boulder Canyons are V-shaped, like martini glasses—wide at the rim and narrow at the bottom. As levels in the lakes decline, each foot of elevation holds less water.
For now, finding enough water to keep generating electricity is the focus. But unless California, Nevada and Arizona make big cuts in the amount of water they use, dead pool in Lake Powell and Lake Mead can’t be ruled out.
This article has been updated to clarify that Hoover Dam holds back Lake Mead.
At my cottage, there is a mature cedar tree standing on the shoreline. My father built the original cottage in 1961, and from old photos, I can guess that this tree was just starting to grow back then. Today it must be more than 50 feet tall. Over the past few years, the top branches have lost their foliage. It appears that these branches are dead with some moss growing on them. Is this a sign that the tree is at the end of its life? Is there anything I can do to prevent or slow this process down, for example, provide nutrients to the tree to better its health?—Eric Hintermueller, Lake Labelle, Que.
So something’s obviously wrong, and “if there’s moss growing on the dead material, that suggests that it has been dead for some time.” That said, pruning away the dead parts of the tree could help, says Greifenhagen. “It may stimulate more buds to form on the living branchlets and produce more new foliage.” Of course, 50 feet is tall. “Pruning might not be feasible,” Greifenhagen admits.
Knowing what has caused the dieback would help you figure out how to rehab the tree. But that’s impossible to diagnose without close inspection of the tree. It could be a problem with the roots or the soil. It could be a disease. It could be a pest, which would leave cankers, exit holes, or webbing one could see “if one feels like taking out a magnifying glass,” says Leilak Anderson, an arborist in Wakefield, Que. Or it could be the weather, something as simple as a hot, dry summer. Often with trees, it’s a combination of factors that lead to demise. “A tree can become weak from a stressful environment of foot traffic and soil compaction, and then be attacked by pests, causing a quick decline,” says Anderson.
None of this information is actually helping you save your tree. You probably need an expert to investigate in person. Anderson suggests looking for an arborist near you, in your case, through the Société internationale d’arboriculture Québec. Meanwhile, try helping your cedar in the same way that you’d help any stressed tree. Give it water during times of drought—long, deep, once-a-week soaks to mimic rainfall. “Use a hose with low water pressure near the base of the tree and move it around within an hour’s time,” says Anderson. And mulch: do a layer two to four inches deep, fanned out so it’s covering the tree’s roots, not mounded around the trunk.
