The Leafs will take the ice to face the Vegas Golden Knights tonight and they’ll do it without Ryan Reaves. This will be the first of five games that Reaves will miss, courtesy of a high hit to the head to Darnell Nurse of the Edmonton Oilers last Saturday night that earned him a 5 game suspension. The fans will get an opportunity to see how things look with Reaves out of the lineup for a few games in a row, with most expecting their depth scoring to increase. Without Reaves I do believe that this lineup is far too soft, but I do agree that he brings little to the lineup outside of picking up for his teammates. With zero fights to his name this year and being nearly 25% of the way through the season, it begs the question, what exactly are they spending $1.35M on at the moment?
Reaves isn’t the only player set to be out of the lineup tonight. David Kampf was placed on IR yesterday, while Max Pacioretty was shuffled to LTIR and Auston Matthews has reportedly traveled to Germany to see a specialist about his mystery upper-body injury. Kampf is still expected to play this weekend, when the Leafs host Utah on Sunday, but Matthews’ return date is a little more murky. It is possible that the Leafs captain will also return on Sunday, but later in the month appears more likely.
In the meantime Fraser Minten has been recalled from the AHL Toronto Marlies and is expected to make his season debut tonight. With 2 goals and 4pts in 5 games for the Marlies so far this season, Minten has gotten off on the right foot and the hope is that he can build on that momentum and stick with the big club for a while.
With little more to draw on from the system in terms of centre depth, there are whispers about the possibility of Mitch Marner moving to centre ice until some of the Leafs’ regular pivots return. The only reservations that Craig Berube appeared to have was about faceoffs, where Marner has a 44.3% success rate over his career. With a total of just 219 faceoffs under his belt, it’s a legitimate concern, but shouldn’t stop them from experimenting if they need to. For now, it seems that it’s only going to be something they look at if Max Domi, who has missed a couple of practices this week due to injury, isn’t able to play, but the expectations are that he’ll be in the lineup.
These were their lines during practice yesterday:
McMann-Tavares-Marner
Knies-Domi-Nylander
Robertson-Minten-Holmberg
Dewar-Lorentz-Steeves
Rielly-Hakanpaa
McCabe-Tanev
OEL-Timmins
Benoit-Reaves
Stolarz, Woll