Leafs make MASSIVE changes... It FINNALY happened | Toronto Maple Leafs News

This is breaking news. The Toronto Maple Leafs have just made multiple moves and ahead of the big game tomorrow against the Avalanche, they have recalled an interesting name that they recently acquired via trade. We're going to break that down as well as discuss a bunch of lineup changes. John Tavares is unavailable for tomorrow's game, which has led to a flurry of moves, maybe even more importantly than all of that, the blue line. They finally changed the pairings, and it's good. It's very good news. A ton to go over today. Before we get into it, a very quick reminder to hit that subscribe button. thank god they changed the defensive pairings we'll dive into that later in the video but let's start with this here the Toronto Maple Leafs have officially recalled and called up Miles Wood so it came out earlier this afternoon now we wanted to wait to make a video until of course practice concluded but Miles Wood has been recalled from the Toronto Marlies now this initially dropped again like seven hours ago six hours ago we're all thinking okay why is this happening what are they you know doing is just a lot of fans speculated myself kind of included Bo Gru. Is Bo Gru going to be the one who ends up being outside of the team here? Because he hasn't really done a whole lot. And then it came out, of course, that John Tavares is going to be missing games because he's having his not first, not second, not third, but fourth child. So Jim Hiller reveals that John Tavares is a dad for the fourth time. Is the family welcome Tucker Tavares? That's an A-grade name. Hopefully he can become a player at some point. But Tavares will be unavailable for tomorrow's game against the Avalanche. So Darius miles wood up to replace John Tavares. we'll dive into the lines in a minute here but honestly i'm happy to see miles wood up here hasn't played yet this year has elite elite speed and uh more importantly those would have to do later the blue lines change what are your thoughts on this yeah big changes to the blue line so we'll get into that later in the video but first of all congratulations to John Tavares on the birth of his fourth child Tucker Tavares great name like you said too and i do wonder if it has anything to do with Darcy Tucker and if it does that is awesome so uh really cool name there and obviously will not be available tomorrow now he has started the season pretty slow a lot of plays dying on his stick and and stuff like that i wonder if it was him literally playing on the edge waiting for this news so that does actually make some sense now so we'll see how he plays uh when he comes back but again congratulations to him on Miles Wood it not necessarily a surprising call up i feel like he could have been you know the next man up kind of thing does have a lot of nhl experience they actually tried to flip him after the Matthew Neely for Kirill Marchenko trade but he stays with the organization and now they're calling up now there's a couple interesting things with Miles Wood not the greatest player not a guy who's going to come in and be like oh you can play anywhere in your lineup like he's probably going to play on the fourth line and they're just going to use him probably for his speed so in the last four seasons he's finished 99th and 97th 97th and 99th percentile in speed in the NHL he is fast he is quite literally one of the fastest players in the NHL you can see this here uh at a maximum speed of 23 miles an hour and then he had 167 I cannot believe by the way that we have this data available now uh considering if you're watching hockey like 2008 but uh 167 bursts above 20 miles an hour uh which ranked in the for that specifically the 89th percentile so he's one of the best skaters in the league and what people don't realize it's not like he's a small little guy because usually those are the fastest skaters like we're seeing with McKenna and some of those stats now like he's really fast he's zipping around out there now that we have a couple of games uh of that data he is six foot two 210 pounds he's big he can skate he is fast and he can uh you know offer a little bit more i think on that fourth line so i'm interested to see how that plays out so there definitely is something here to this call up uh besides you know oh it's just a body to fill in for Tavares not necessarily like i do wonder what he can offer to that fourth line in terms of changing momentum and the pace of a game so we'll see how that plays out tomorrow but nick we do as a result of this do have a lot of changes to the forward group to the defense core in practice today and uh nick paul getting a huge opportunity and not only that we're finally changing things up except for one with poor nick Blankenburg on the on the back end there but uh some changes to the blue line yeah see here we'll dive right into it you have Marchenko Matthews Rosselvik so that remains untouched i think it's fine trying to get Marchenko going you have Cowan Nick Paul William Nylander Nick Paul sliding into the two hole um i guess the second line center spot to replace John Tavares you have McKenna Sissons Bo Grunow which is an interesting interesting pairing McEwen Teddy Bluger and Brandon Duhame so obviously the forward group it is what it is some big changes going to be interesting to see how Nick Paul actually performs in the second line, but that's only going to be for a game or two while John Tavares kind of, you know, it's with his family. I'm more interested in the, in the blue line part because finally they made changes and McCabe is with Radish. You have Riley with Tanev and you have OEL with Stetcher. I'd love to see Blankenberg in instead of Stetcher, but I'll park that for a minute. There's, this is by far the, I mean, I'm happy that Jim Hillard only took four games, five games. Now the two, two and one of five games to do it. A OEL is healthy again. thank god he's been playing terrible though um just to kind of go there like he's obviously healthy from yesterday's game but you'll notice Morgan Riley all the guys they completely uh completely changed it up now and i think these are very very good pairings and make a lot more sense you have Tanev to kind of back up Morgan Riley you have McCabe to back up Darren Radish and you have OEL and Setzer down there as the third pair i think you bring up a really good point with defense pairings where it's like on paper you have you know Riley and Radish don't really make sense and everyone was talking about before the season started because of their play styles right so if Radish wants to take a risk i don't want Morgan Riley being the guy that's back there you know making sure everything's tied down and then vice versa right like Radish maybe a little bit more so but uh that didn't really make sense to me but it's not perfect and this defense core is not perfect so on paper i think this does make a little bit more sense where McCabe he can take some chances himself but he's more stay at home he's a smooth skater right he'll lay the body so then Radish can maybe do a little bit more offensively right and then Morgan Riley can kind of try and do his thing offensively and take more of his risks that he loves to do and he doesn't you know go in for puck retrievals and maybe Chris Tanev can do that because he's calm cool collected back there right when he does those things so that could work the only thing for me though is when you look at uh Morgan Riley and Chris Tanev is we've tried this before and that's how you found out that McCabe and Tanev do work together but then there's times so far this season where you're realizing maybe it's age i don't know because it was a couple years ago when we first you know started looking at the defense pairing in 24 25 uh maybe that's not even working now anymore right so i welcome change i don't know what to think of it because i i can give you my thoughts on paper i need to see what it looks like in game this season but um i welcome the change because there are so many times so far this season the puck does get hemmed in the zone and you're like we're done we're finished here so um i i did want to see some change i thought that the change was going to be Nick Blankenburg poor guy he's not even going to play against his other former team in the Colorado Avalanche so it looks like he's still going to be an extra tomorrow but on the forward group too i mean Nick Paul we know that he can be a swiss army knife right he can move up and down he can play different positions he can play center he can play the wings so i'm interested to see what that dynamic looks like we know that he has chemistry with Cowan already so What does that look like with Nylander? I guess we'll find out in game. But, you know, I'm sure it won't be more than a game, maybe two, without John Tavares before he returns. And, you know, they play Tuesday, so they have a couple of days here for Tavares to return if he does. So, yeah, I think it's going to be pretty interesting. But, you know, when you really think about it, guys like Marchenko have to lead the way, right? And Austin Matthews, obviously. And what can Gavin McKenna do with Sissons and Giroux? I mean, that is an interesting spot to be for Gavin McKenna. Yeah, and hopefully he gets up soon to that top line with the next 20 or 30 games. Probably not going to happen. We'll have to wait and see, but the blue line's terrible. John Schaefer is not really, I'm sure he's trying to make moves, but they don't have a ton of assets to actually go out. They have a couple. You can maybe try to force it. What the other option is, the other option is to make changes like this. I'm very curious to see Riley and Tanev, and we will see it tomorrow. Let us know down below what your thoughts are. See you guys later.