There was much excitement today when it was announced that a host of Toronto Marlies prospects had been called up to the Leafs.

William Nylander, Kasperi Kapanen, Nikita Soshnikov, Zach Hyman and newly acquired Connor Carrick will all make their Leafs debut tonight against Tampa Bay.

But they weren't actually called up this morning.

To play in the AHL playoffs, you have to be on the AHL team roster at 3:00 pm on deadline day. After that the NHL team can make 4 callups that aren't to fill emergency spots.

Also today, Mark Arcobello, Garret Sparks, Stuart Percy, Richard Clune, Brendan Leipsic and newcomer Alex Stalock were assigned to the Marlies officially.

So what does this mean? It means that as of 3:00 pm today the Marlies roster looked like this:

Any of those guys can be on the Marlies and in the playoffs. I can find no indication Connor Carrick was ever assigned to the Marlies, so he's a Leaf for the season.

As I understand the rules, you can callup only 4 guys, but the Leafs are planning on pulling up more than that just for tonight's game. So there's some nuance to these rules that I'm missing. Fill me in if you know.

Edited to take out Ben Smith, who I left in by mistake and to add Josh Leivo who is now showing up on the AHL transfer page as expected. And it's official. The AHL page is now showing a belated addition of Connor Carrick to the Marlies, with a corresponding callup to the Leafs.