BREAKING: Leafs make MASSIVE changes... This is absurd | Toronto Maple Leafs News
Oct 16, 2026
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Video Summary
AI GeneratedThe Toronto Maple Leafs are implementing drastic changes, including a complete shuffle of their forward lines by coach Jim Hiller. Simultaneously, the team faces a significant defensive blow as Chris Tanev's injury status has been downgraded to week-to-week, sparking urgent discussions regarding potential trades to bolster the blue line.
We have some breaking news.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have just made multiple massive changes.
And while fans have been begging for change the entire season,
Jim Hiller has just went out and not only made one change,
but shuffled every single line.
The lines are in an absolute blender.
For the first time this season, we're going
to see some very interesting combinations.
But not only that, we have a brutal update
that just dropped surrounding Chris Tanev.
And folks, it is over for him.
For the foreseeable future, which now opens up
many questions surrounding this team's blue line,
the future of their blue line, and what John Chayka has planned next.
A ton of news to go over today, but before we get into it all,
there's a lot, a quick reminder, hit that subscribe button,
you guys would be so supportive.
Darius didn't necessarily expect this today.
Jim Hiller said, screw it, we're going to change every single line,
basically, on this team and just completely mix things up.
And you're going to want to stay tuned for that, but first,
let's dive into the Chris Tanev update and get that off our plate
because there is a big piece of news
that dropped a little bit ago here.
So you can see Chris Tanev is officially week to week,
ladies and gentlemen and we'll dive
into the lines there's a little tidbit now but a report
came out let's see here Leafs updating the status now
of Chris Tanev from not day-to-day but from
just being placed in the IR going to miss
a minimum of three games to now being placed on
the uh I guess he's going to be week to week
so you can see kind of the timeline here it started
October 10th he was placed in the IR
when he got hurt of course a couple days later got placed in
the IR then was week to week today
so Darius people are saying this is the end of his career
the end of his season at the very least he's going
to miss a significant amount of time and
For somebody who was coming into the season,
was viewed as one of the most important, if
not the most important, arguably players
in the team outside of you know Austin Matthews,
he's now done for the foreseeable future.
Yeah, I'm not going to go as far
as most people's brains went yesterday, which is, oh, his career
is over, which is, I think, a little crazy.
And Darren Dreger came out as well
and said that there's a lot of room for optimism right
now that he's going to play again this season.
They're just giving him a little bit more time.
And some of the tests that they did, I think it
was earlier this morning, revealed that
he's going to need a little bit more time to get back
to a hundred percent keep that in mind like when he returns
he should be you know back to feeling really well
and that's why they're giving him extra time but
this is a scenario where i hate
to do this because i'm really the optimistic guy usually
here on the channel and usually blinded by optimism sometimes
but this is a scenario if
you're the Toronto Maple Leafs you're looking
at this and you go this guy can't give us 84 games
anymore he just can't like we're gonna need
another option here we're gonna need to figure
something out and with or without Chris Tanev
if i've said in videos this year i've said it
since the preseason they got to do something like they have
to make a trade here on the back end
this is not good enough with or without him
and he's a huge player for them right one of their
most important players kills plays one
of the best defensive defensemen in the entire National
Hockey League huge part of this team
but even with him they need something else now is that taking a
look at or a longer look
at Marshall Rifai maybe right we'll see what he's going to be able to do
tonight as well if he does get back into the lineup
which it sounds like it might not happen
depending on kind of if they do go 11 and 7 again
which i don't think they're doing but we'll get to
that later in this video but um is it taking a look at Ben Danford
when he's healthy calling him
up maybe i would like to see what he looks like
at the NHL level with a couple of these guys i
don't know if he's like the answer right now
which is the biggest thing is he going to be
a fine defenseman yeah i think he's going
to be a fine depth defenseman for this team
at some point in the NHL he has speed you know
he can break up plays himself he's a great young
player but is he like the answer you call him up
and he's gonna fix everything like i don't know
if that's the case right now i think they do have to go out
and not make a panic move nick but make
a move nonetheless to bring in a defenseman
and there's a couple reports this morning from Elliot
Friedman too that when Chyka steps up
to the plate he does not like to hit singles he likes to
be like last year and uh you know hit those grand slams
so we'll see if he has a another trick up his
sleeve yeah Friedman's saying they don't know
if they're gonna make a move right now they're gonna
have to um we'll have videos of course talking about it
but like you mentioned he's gonna go
big so if he's gonna this may mean that it might
be hinting from Elliot Friedman that he might not
be going after a guy like Zach Whitecloud he might
be going after a bigger piece like Edvinsson
if he becomes available or maybe even Nikishin
so let us know down below what your thoughts are
trade pressure is kind of building here
for this team now like pressure is being put on John Chyka
and pressure clearly is being put on Jim Hiller
because out of nowhere uh david alter dropped an
article and it was a weird one
because it didn't really come out in like the normal way through
practice it came out through kind of an article there
is they're completely switching up the
lines so you can see here uh essentially
an article dropped from jim hiller or rather from
david alter i think it was talking about how
jim hiller decided now things are just going to
completely change now i mentioned earlier
that basically every line has changed you have Bo
Gru back in the fourth line kind of the same basically
but you can see here now it's nylander
matthews rossovich so the first line
is swapped now you have nylander up top which was i think
inevitable you have marchenko moved to the second line
but you also have nick paul promoted to the
second line with cowan moved down mckenna remaining
there colton sissons moving up to the third line
with now Duhaime, Teddy Bluger and of course Bo Gru on the fourth
so there is complete blender complete
mishmash of uh players i guess if you want to call it
that and all of a sudden now you're moving guys
around and Nick Paul is no longer alongside Colton
Sissons there's just a lot of movement here and
some huge huge changes just a note on this too
on the fourth line we'll see closer to game time and
warm up but i do actually think Bo Gru is coming out
for Zach McDowells so keep an eye on that as
we head closer to game time but on the top line we know that Matthews
and Nylander work and look
great together and i said yesterday why
is Jim Hiller starting the game with the same lines the
entire season when we know halfway through
the game you're going to change them anyway because
you keep going back to lines that look similar
to this every single game so why not start with
i see some of the comments oh it's
because they're trying to throw other teams off other teams have
video on the Leafs and you're trying
to win well why would you start a lineup that isn't as good
so he's finally changing it up here uh Nylander
with Matthews we know works Roslevic i don't know
about you Nick but pleasantly surprised by his performance
so far this season uh i have some
concerns about speed on the second line i know Paul
is actually quite fast but i do still have
concerns about speed with that second line i
do wonder about Marchenko being freed up to be the
guy on that line and really really create
and maybe that could open them up for more scoring
opportunities and really show out tonight
and then Cowan with McKenna I mean I don't know how
you don't like that like I think
and you have a responsible defensive center in Sissons I think
that could actually be very very good for them tonight
so that should be a lot of fun hopefully
they're shot out of a cannon and on the defense
pairings nothing's really changed since the last
time they changed them uh on Saturday
so we'll see how it all plays out Bob's going tonight uh
but I kind of like some of this because it makes sense right
when you look at it you're like all
right Nylander with Matthews that's
been working Rozovic works with Matthews let's see what that
looks like from uh the start uh puck drop tonight
and then Kirill Marchenko get him going a little
bit more like he hasn't been bad I see all
this stuff this morning that he's been bad they need
him to be great and all that type of stuff he hasn't
been bad like he's been fine but I think
there is another level and I think that's what people
are kind of searching for and I think
that's what he's searching for too
so we'll see if it gets unlocked with John Tavares and Nick
Paul I I feel like that line could potentially
be very difficult to play against too so we'll
see how that plays out but uh some logical moves
from the head coach nick because uh i think it was
time to start the game a little bit differently than just
the same lineup every single time and
it's very different than the craig ruby style
where he would stick with lines for a very very
long time very different i think it makes sense you look
at the top line there's a lot of fire
power there maybe marchenko this can unlock him
and if marchenko gets going on the second line
all of a sudden the whole team opens up the third line now
as well like mckenna feeding to mccowan
McKown McKenna feeling feeding to Cowan will
be pretty exciting um it is all good stuff also this
just came out from Marchenko
and he said that I feel fine not awesome so he knows that he can be
better he feels that he can be better I think all
of this is just in an effort to get Marchenko
going get everybody kind of on the same page here
and one final thing like you mentioned
Bobrovsky gets Buffalo so folks let us know down
below I mean there's move after move here lots of
changes continuing to happen
and obviously with Chris Tannebaum now their blue line is going to
need a lot a lot of work here and Matthew's had
some interesting success against Buffalo in the
past so hopefully the same happens tonight thank you guys for watching

