The Toronto Maple Leafs lost two-thirds of their top line when Joe Thornton and Auston Matthews were ruled out at the same time earlier this week, and now they might be looking for a little bit of a boost upfront. While Matthews isn’t expected out long with his minor issue, Thornton is out for at least a month with a fractured rib. Add in Nick Robertson’s knee injury from earlier in the month and it didn’t come as much of a surprise when Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported on Saturday Headlines that the Maple Leafs are looking around for an addition at forward.
It’s not that the Maple Leafs have no depth, as they showed when Adam Brooks stepped into the lineup and scored a powerplay goal against the Edmonton Oilers, but some of the newcomers haven’t been able to contribute much so far. Alexander Barabanov and Wayne Simmonds have both been held entirely scoreless through the first six games while Jimmy Vesey has two goals and no assists. When the Maple Leafs traded away Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson to clear cap space in the offseason, they hoped these players could pick up some of the secondary scoring load—so far, they haven’t.
Of course, Toronto is already performing a delicate salary cap dance this season, moving players up and down from the taxi squad whenever they can to try and bank cap space. It resulted in the loss of goaltender Aaron Dell when they were forced to place him on waivers and doesn’t leave a lot of flexibility to make a trade.
The team isn’t going to be shipping out one of their high-priced talents, meaning any improvement would have to come on the margins of the roster at this point. Perhaps one option would be moving a defenseman as high profile KHL signing Mikko Lehtonen and top prospect Rasmus Sandin can’t find their way into the lineup on a regular basis. Still, if they remove any of that depth the same issue could crop up quickly with an injury on the backend.
2 goals in 6 games is pretty good. 18 or 19 goal pace for a 56 game season.
Sure they could use a forward but gimme a break.
I like how the writer say mikko and Rasmus can’t find their way into the lineup! The leafs defence is still bad so it doesn’t say much about those 2
Except the D are figuring it out. Holl looks like he’s a legit top 4 now Brodie and Rielly are really hit or miss but as they get to know each other their showing that they can be a good top pairing. Bogo has struggled so far and Dermott as always just doesn’t seem completely confident in his game. Long story short D is 10x better this year then last but still has a ways to go
Plus a Muzzin and Brodie combo is a great end of game to protect a lead pair.
The defense isn’t the problem. Its consistent effort and execution.
Disagree throughout the games you can see the mistakes the defence are making, Freddy is making them look respectable. Brodie was an overpayment without gio his flaws are really showing
take Aube-Kubel for a close-in-price stay-at-home D-man