Leafs make SURPRISING move... - Brutal Injury Updates l Toronto Maple Leafs News

Here's some breaking news. The Toronto Maple Leafs have made multiple moves and ahead of a brutal stretch of games over the next few days, we have some very brutal, once again, injury updates surrounding this team. Updates surrounding Kirill Marchenko, Colton Sissons, but also multiple moves. They have called up an interesting forward who's getting put into a huge role right away. We're going to break down the moves, the injury updates, and what all this means going forward ahead of what's going to be, quite frankly, a very A very interesting, to say the least, stretch of play ahead of the game beginning tonight. Before we get into it all, very quick reminder to hit that subscribe button. Darius, we have a lot to go over today. Not a lot of it is positive, quite frankly, but let's start with the move at hand here. They have reassigned Vinny Letari to the Toronto Marlies, and they've called up a name that we've kind of covered in the channel a little bit, but he's finally getting an opportunity now to actually make an impact, and that's Ryan Twarberg, I think is how you pronounce it, but he has been recalled. So Twarberg is now going to be. Let's just dive right into it here. He's just getting thrown into the fire here. He's getting onto the second line with John Tavares, William Nylander, McKenna, down on the line with Dakota Joshua and Nick Paul. And as crazy as it sounds here, obviously, you're dealing with Colton Sissons being out for a little bit. I actually prefer the way these lines look than some of the other ones with Nick Paul on the second line with Tavares at center. But before diving into injury updates here, it's actually a pretty notable move here as Torberg's right away getting thrown into the fire. And they made this move because Colton Sissons, like you mentioned, is out now week to week. And like you said, we'll get into the injury updates because they gave us updates on everyone today. So we'll definitely get into that. And as you can see there, too, Morgan Riley not playing tonight as well. Now, I saw some tweets this morning. Okay, well, McKenna, clearly Jim Hiller hates him, right? On the third line again, you can't have that second line together because they're horrible defensively. So the answer is Ryan Twarberg. Watching this team recently, Nick. I am starting to lose faith that I know anything about hockey. Like, that's really what it's like the last little while when I'm watching this team. I'm like, I don't know if I know anything. That's how it feels, truly. And it's bleeding into tonight. And now you're playing a good team who has actually had their own troubles this season in Colorado. They're not like the dominant juggernaut that we've known for the last couple of years. Obviously still a really good team and a team that you've already beat this season. So you can try to build off of that. But man, this team is in a bad way with the injuries. They're in a bad way defensively. You're calling up Twarberg, putting him on the second line. He's playing on the left wing. He's a right shot. I don't know if I agree with that either. Of course, the lines are going to be put in the blender at some point during the game tonight. So don't even expect these lines to finish the game the way that they are. So I don't know. I'm frustrated. I think a lot of people are, Nick. So I look at a lot of this stuff and I'm like, How's it going to go tonight? Like, you don't feel good about, you know, going to this game, but who's going to, you know, put on their work boots tonight? Who's it going to be? Is it going to be anybody? Is anybody going to step up in that way? Is it going to be Austin Matthews? Are you going to try and lead the way here? Because something has to be done. It's the next man up mentality. Like, you have to look like you're at least in this game. You could tell right away the first five minutes of the Devils game it was going to be a stinker, right? You can't have that tonight. This is a game that if this one slips away, you could lose every single game on this road trip, It's not even a disaster at that point. You're in, you know, you could lose the entire season. Yeah, I know. People are wondering why not McKenna over Twarberg. The answer, I would assume, is in theory, they think Ryan's a little bit more defensively responsible, maybe, to kind of pair with John Tavares, who's been a step slower this season, but he's also your number one overall pick, and McKenna is, so I would just throw him into the fire. Now, on the injury updates. Morgan Raleigh is not playing tonight, but Colton Sissons week-to-week, which is devastating news because he's actually been very important to this team. Nick Blankenberg week-to-week, Karol Marchenko week-to-week. Morgan Raleigh should be back in a couple days, I would assume for the next game, actually. And then Marshall Refai week-to-week. So Colton Sissons being out now creates another hole, and that is one where we have to trust Jim Hiller to figure out the third line. And obviously the fourth line is going to remain the same, but Colton Sissons and Karol Marchenko remaining week-to-week is pretty rough as well. I mean, we've got to hope. Karol Marchenko comes back in the next couple of weeks because they desperately need him. But everyone now, I mean, I do want to take a minute to kind of praise Colton Sissons. He's been very good this year and obviously defensively on the PK, good for what his role is. And that's kind of important. But again, going back to the line, Sissons would have been on that third line. You'd figure, I mean, at this point you have a pretty weak, I mean, the top line is good. Fourth line is fine. In the middle, it's definitely interesting, and a lot of fans are kind of fed up with the way that Jim Hiller is going about things. But without, obviously, I mean, another one as well here is that McWard doesn't get the nod tonight either, and you have Dakota Mermis going in there. I actually thought McWard looked pretty good last game, and I'd almost rather give him opportunities at this point than a lot of the blue liners that they're playing, especially Dakota Mermis. But yeah, so McWard is out, and obviously Colton Sissons is done for a while. I think with Mermis, it might just be. Having him in for the experience, and I believe he was in that last game that they won against Colorado, so there could be some superstitious stuff going on there as well, which is, you know, it can be a factor in hockey sometimes. Obviously, Tanev is back in the lineup after his load management, whatever you want to call it, the Kawhi Leonard schedule that he has this year, so I don't think it's that extreme, but you know what I mean. Just having fun with it, but the other thing, too, is Jack Roslovic will play tonight, or it looks like he'll play tonight. He missed last game with an injury as well. Something's kind of nagging him, so it sounds like he'll be back in the lineup. He was back skating this morning on the top line. So, again, it's just a big game. Like, you're missing a lot of guys due to injury. You really have to dig down and figure it out, right? But a lot of this comes down to... You know, systems too, I think, because this team is in every single game, but they just find a way to shoot themselves in the foot every single time. Like a lot of these losses this year, it's self-inflicted wounds, right? So they have to find a way, I think, to just, they have to will themselves to victory. And I just haven't seen that for a couple of games. I didn't think Montreal was that bad, but it's been tough the last couple of games. We'll see what team shows up today. I actually think that this year they've been a lot better at starting games, but then they kind of go into this lull after the first like commercial break every single first period. So they have to try and avoid that and get after it and score first. That's the other thing. Like New Jersey scored, obviously the Leafs didn't even score last game, but they scored first and you can just feel like everything was sucked out of the building and the team, right? Like they have to try and score first and get after it very, very early. And then hopefully you can find some success that way. But again, you're playing a really good team on the other side. They're in tough. And if you look at the rest of the schedule, it doesn't get easier. Like Minnesota is coming on Thursday. You have, they're all at home, obviously, but then you have Edmonton on Saturday. Edmonton's feeling really good about themselves. They won again last night. So it doesn't get much easier for this team. And they're dealing with a lot of these injuries. What I will say, and I keep saying it the last couple of videos, they've traveled a lot already early in the season. They're going through injury woes right now. Hopefully, that slows down. The luck starts to be on their side later on in the season where you can start to pick up points, pick up wins when other teams are going to be going through that same stuff, right? So hopefully, that is a silver lining. Hopefully, that's something that, you know. We can, you know, they can, you know, build off of hopefully in the future, but you don't know right now. And last season, there was a lot of things that went wrong, Nick. And one of them was injuries, right? Like you can't avoid that. It wasn't the number one reason, but you know, it definitely was a reason. Yeah. And something else that's very important that we haven't really talked on, I had on the screen there. Borowski, he gets the nod again tonight. So obviously he's going to be the goaltender. You look at the workload and kind of the different management that it's been through. Borowski has played more. I mean, you can't, you have to just keep running him out there. You don't really have a choice. You're not going to bench the guy. You can't wave him. You can't get rid of him. Maybe at some point they give Aktiyamov some chances. But yeah, you look at the standings and the way things are going. This team desperately needs a win. If you win tonight, you can maybe start to squint and see an area where you can have a bit of a stretch run. But yeah, Tanev's back. One, you can see here as well for the Leafs side. All of a sudden, though, like. You can see here, they're somehow third in the playoff line. They were all the way down. I mean, I don't know. It's a wild, wild thing right now with the way the teams are losing. Like, Florida's lost two in a row, which has greatly helped the Maple Leafs. They're still only one game out of a playoff spot, by the way. As crazy as, I guess, two games, technically. But they're only two points out of a playoff spot. So, Darius, any final thoughts? The playoff picture looks actually fine. It's just that you have to take care of business now because teams like Montreal, Tampa Bay, and Boston are definitely moving in a direction that is significantly better than the Leafs. You have to take care of business. It could slip away very quickly. They're right there. They're right there. They've also played a couple more games than some other teams, but they keep losing to Atlantic Division opponents, right? And obviously you don't have any of those this week, but you have to try and pick up points here. And like you said, Florida, they've been weird this year, right? Like a lot of people picked them to win the division. I didn't really believe that, but I thought they'd be back in the playoff picture. But again, they're kind of up and down. They're hot and cold. And, you know. You got to try and pick up some points here to get back in that picture because now you're kind of falling out of it. And if this starts to snowball a little bit, it's going to be hard to make up that ground because you literally have shown us so far this season, you cannot beat teams in your own division. So that will get difficult. And then who do they play a lot later on in the season? Literally those teams because of the schedule earlier on this season. So big game against Boston coming up soon, right? Like games against Philadelphia. I know they're not in the same division, but like try to pick up points there. But these are, you know. What have we known the Leafs for the last 10 years? Games like this tonight where you're like, I don't feel so good about it. They come in and they win, right? And then they lose like the ones that you expect them to win. So I don't know. I have faith that they can still turn around. I think it's way too early in the season to say, you know, start the rebuild and all that stuff. Like we all knew what this was going to be at times. So I'm going to keep some of my faith, but it's not like it's not frustrating and not like they're in tough right now. There was also a report yesterday. From Chris Johnson, a couple of other insiders as well, the tensions are really high in the front office right now. Like they want to make, it sounds like they want to make a move and that they're feeling it right now because the team is not performing and they weren't, I don't know if they weren't expecting that, but obviously like anything can go wrong. We saw what happened last year, but I think they want to get back on track in a big way here. Yeah, let us know how you feel ahead of the game. Tonight we'll be live following the game, hopefully breaking down a win. Thank you guys for watching.