Just running a clean sheet.
Did you hear that Babcock is still a weird piece of garbage?
https://x.com/spittinchiclets/status/1701599904655950062?s=20
Good ol’ Babs is going to have to keep his head down and just coach the game for a while I think.
As for current Leafs news, the team signed Noah Gregor to a PTO:
https://x.com/TLNdc/status/1701245932707172844?s=20
The pure offensive numbers that Gregor has produced won’t wow you and neither will anything else about his game.
Lastly, there are still a few names on the market that could be good additions for the Leafs.
Nolan Patrick is definitely an interesting player to me. He has never lived up to the hype that pushed him to be selected with the 2nd overall pick by the Philadelphia Flyers in the 2017 draft. With a couple of concussions in his past and an apparent “migrain disorder” keeping him from training properly, it’s now a question of if he’ll ever play again. If he is healthy enough to play then the Leafs could certainly use the help at centre.
Patrick Kane is still on the market and is working his way back from injury. How much does he cost to sign? Are the Leafs able to afford it? If negotiations with William Nylander on a new contract continue to not go well, could trading him to upgrade the defense while simultaneously signing Kane to play on the 2nd line be a valid route? Or is that too much of a dream? This isn’t a video game afterall. Of course it’s worth noting that Kane isn’t the same player he once was, but last I checked he’d still be a valueable 2nd line winger.
Jujhar Khaira is a big man that uses his size to his advantage. If you’re looking for a 4th line that could toss some weight around, and maybe they should do exactly that considering any 4th line that features Ryan Reaves is going to be a black hole offensively, then they could do a lot worse than adding Khaira. Slap a 6’3″ defensively responsible centre between those two wingers and you may actually have a 4th line that other teams would hate playing against. Instead they’ll trot out players that are capable of being little more than placeholders like Dylan Gambrell or the aforementioned Noah Gregor. After a little while Coach Keefe can call them vanilla and appear to be a hard ass. Good for you coach!!
Meanwhile, if they place Pontus Holmberg on that line it’s simply setting him up for failure. Holmberg might have some offensive talent, but he’ll have to play in a situation where his linemates can help him succeed. Slapping Reaves on his wing isn’t going to help him produce in the NHL and gain confidence in his game. The best option for the 4th line right now is David Kampf, which would leave a massive hole at the 3C position that may be above Holmbergs ability to fill so soon in his NHL career. Gregor and Gambrell certainly aren’t up to the task either.
Lets face it, the Leafs are 1 centre short of having a complete forward unit.