Where's Hockey ?

 

 

So here we are in mid-October and nobody’s playing hockey.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Joe Thornton is voting with his feet and is off to skate with Davos in the Swiss league. It’s really here in North America where the days of fall seem pretty empty without the beginning of a new hockey season. No NHL. Major junior hockey is shut down. U Sports hockey isn’t happening.

The Greater Toronto Hockey League, the largest minor hockey operation on the planet, is dormant. Some girls’ hockey teams are practising, but plans to play in four-on-four bubbles have been put on hold. My Friday morning game with the Lorne Park crew has been cancelled for the year.

Everything seems a little backward. The leaves are falling, hockey is on the shelf, there’s no Grey Cup on the horizon, but yet The Masters is coming up in four weeks.

 

When it comes to the world of hockey, the optimism of seeing the bubbled Stanley Cup playoffs succeed is now subsiding, and the understanding is setting in that the entire industry is staggering under the unrelenting pressure of Covid 19. 

 The honest-to-Bill-Gadsby belief that the good ol’ NHL could conquer all because hockey is wonderful has now run headlong into reality. It’s like a giant cosmic payback for taking the game from the great outdoors where it was born and moving it almost entirely indoors. You know. Where the virus is most comfortable.

Interestingly, some of the strongest indicators about the fearful way in which the NHL is imagining its future emanated from Las Vegas over the past week. The Golden Knights signed the top free agent on the market, defenceman Alex Pietrangelo, to a seven-year contract worth $8.8 million (U.S.) per season.

 In normal times, this would have been a healthy sign for the league. Teams pursuing talent. Stars getting paid. An indication business was good.

But because of the flat salary cap created by the coronavirus, the Knights had to dump two good veterans. Pietrangelo was one of a very limited group of players who did particularly well in free agency. He was probably the only player to truly hit a home run.

 

 By comparison, this year has been mostly a free-agent fizzle. Jakob Markstrom and Kevin Shattenkirk did fairly well, as did Torey Krug. Players like T.J. Brodie and Tyler Toffoli got new deals, but for pretty much the same money. Significant names like Braden Holtby, Henrik Lundqvist, Corey Crawford and Justin Schultz took sizable pay cuts.

Tyson Barrie, a $5.5-million player two years ago, is now on a one-year contract at $3.75 million. Bobby Ryan has gone from being a $7-million player in Ottawa to a $1-million player in Detroit. Kyle Turris was making $6 million per in Nashville; now he’s making $1.65 million in Edmonton. Many well-known players don’t have new contracts at all.

Compare that with the previous free agency “frenzy” in July, 2019. Players like Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky and Matt Duchene hit the jackpot, all with seven-year contracts. Mats Zuccarello and Tyler Myers, neither an all-star, both got $30 million over five years.

This is not normal for the NHL. This isn’t the market. This is something else.

The other news out of Vegas, meanwhile, was an honest assessment by owner Bill Foley on the immediate future of the league. This was particularly useful since we rarely hear from actual owners these days other than Eugene Melnyk.

While NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has been talking confidently of starting up again Jan. 1, Foley says he can’t see it happening before February. Even then, Foley says, it would have to be a reduced schedule that must be finished by the end of June, playoffs and all, because rightsholder NBC has the Summer Olympics in July. Foley said NHL owners are “very nervous” about the future.

 

The Leafs add some new buds

 

 

Though many people thought that the Toronto Maple Leafs would be inactive in free agency due to salary cap pressures, the exact opposite has proven to be true.

On Friday the Leafs signed top pairing defenseman T.J Brodie, as well as veteran Wayne Simmonds to replace Kyle Clifford on the fourth line.  On Saturday the Leafs sent Andreas Johnsson to the New Jersey Devils in order to clear salary to help pay for Brodie.  In return for Andersen the Leafs got a decent prospect in Joey Anderson.

 Also on the Saturday the Leafs signed depth options Zach Bogosian and Travis Boyd. As if that wasn’t enough, the Leafs signed UFA Jimmy Vesey on Sunday.

Drafted in the third round of the 2012 draft by Nashville, Vesey never ended up signing with them and became a free agent after four years at Harvard.  He signed with the Rangers, where he played three years.

Last year he went to Buffalo and now the Leafs have signed him.  He’s a big winger who consistently put up either 16 or 17 goals in each of his first three NHL seasons, until this last year when he scored nine in the shortened season.

 Vesey doesn’t seem to have very good on-ice stats, but he has always played on lousy teams.  The Toronto Maple Leafs must see something in him, and the depth scoring is always an asset.

For 900 K you can’t really go wrong.

 As you can see from the chart, Vesey can score but can’t really defend.  No big deal, as a fourth line winger, you usually don’t get both.  The Leafs can now put Vesey into a mix that includes Robertson, Barabanov, Engvall, Spezza, Simmonds, Anderson,  Boyd, Agostino, Korshkev, Petan, Hallander, Malgin and Brooks and maybe a few rookies for ice time this year.

That is excellant depth  as it is 13 players, all of whom are more than likely perfectly fine on any 4th line in the NHL, competing for five jobs.  In reality, those five jobs will most likely go to Robertson, Barabanov, Engvall, Spezza and Simmonds, but the other guys will serve important functions as injury replacements and job competition.

 

 

The NHL is likely going to play some for of insanely condensed schedule next season and all these players will come in handy.  The important thing is that he Leafs are set to have one player in the bottom half of their forward group making over $1.5 million.

To have the kind of depth they do – 13 NHL players for five spots – at the price they’ve paid for it is exactly why they had the confidence to spend most of their money on a core group of elite players.  If you look around the NHL, you’ll see that most teams don’t have anywhere near this kind of depth or skill in their bottom six, and they are almost all paying more for it.

The draft should have held in Europe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just over a week after the Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup, the first major step of the offseason came to an end with the first round of the 2020 NHL Draft on Tuesday. The New York Rangers won the NHL Draft Lottery earlier this summer and used the pick to select Quebec Major Junior Hockey League star Alexis Lafreniere.

 

Lafreniere has spent the last three seasons starring for Rimouski Océanic. He was the No. 1 pick in the 2017 QMJHL Draft and burst onto the scene with 42 goals in 60 games. To put that into perspective, Lafreniere had the highest number of goals in a rookie season since Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby scored 54 for Rimouski Oceanic in 2004. In his three seasons in the QMJHL, Lafreniere has accumulated 297 points (114 goals & 183 assists) and blossomed into one of the most dangerous young players in the world.

 

Many believe that Lafreniere is a generational talent that will become one of the NHL's biggest stars sooner rather than later. The Rangers will look to pair Lafreniere with a nucleus that already includes the likes of Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad.

 

Rounding out the top five was Quinton Byfield, who became the highest drafted black player in NHL history when the Los Angeles Kings selected him No. 2 overall, German international Tim Stutzle, who got drafted by the Senators, Lucas Raymond (Detroit Red Wings) and top American prospect Jake Sanderson (Senators).

 

 

Here are the complete results of the 2020 NHL Entry Draft

Round 1

 

1. New York Rangers: Alexis Lafrenière, LW 
2. Los Angeles Kings: Quinton Byfield, C
3. Ottawa Senators (from Sharks): Tim Stutzle, LW
4. Detroit Red Wings: Lucas Raymond, LW
5. Ottawa Senators: Jake Sanderson, D
6. Anaheim Ducks: Jamie Drysdale, D
7. New Jersey Devils: Alexander Holtz, RW
8. Buffalo Sabres: Jack Quinn, RW
9. Minnesota Wild: Marco Rossi, C
10. Winnipeg Jets: Cole Perfetti, C
11. Nashville Predators: Yaroslav Askarov, G
12. Florida Panthers: Anton Lundell, C
13. Carolina Hurricanes (from Leafs): Seth Jarvis, C
14. Edmonton Oilers: Dylan Holloway, C
15. Toronto Maple Leafs (from Penguins): Rodion Amirov, LW
16. Montreal Canadiens: Kaiden Guhle, D
17. Chicago Blackhawks: Lukas Reichel, LW
18. New Jersey Devils (from Coyotes): Dawson Mercer, C
19. New York Rangers (from Flames): Braden Schneider, D
20. New Jersey Devils (from Lightning via Canucks): Shakir Mukhamadullin, D
21. Columbus Blue Jackets: Yegor Chinakhov, RW
22. Washington Capitals (from Flames via Rangers via Hurricanes): Hendrix Lapierre, C
23. Philadelphia Flyers: Tyson Foerster, RW
24. Calgary Flames (from Capitals): Connor Zary, C
25. Colorado Avalanche: Justin Barron, D
26. St. Louis Blues: Jake Neighbours, LW
27. Anaheim Ducks (from Bruins): Jacob Perreault, RW
28. Ottawa Senators (from Islanders): Ridly Greig, C
29. Vegas Golden Knights: Brendan Brisson, C
30. Dallas Stars: Mavrik Bourque, C
31. San Jose Sharks (from Lightning): Ozzy Wiesblatt, RW

 So many non OHL players were taken, you would think that they they all have the virus, no, they just could have the virus. 

I am not Don Cherry, not even Brian Burke, but you'd think more GM's would have stopped and thought about the talent right under their noses.

The Leafs top ten list

 

The last two offseasons have been dominated by the signing of one big contract for the Leafs. 

This year is more complex, and more likely to be filled with a series of minor moves as the puzzle pieces get shifted around to create whatever final form Kyle Dubas has in mind for the team.

Dubas got an early start with the Kasperi Kapanen trade landing very early in the playoffs, but there’s a lot more to be done. GMs don’t always get to decide what order things happen in, however; deadlines always shape their thinking to some extent.

October 9 is the likely date for free agency to begin, and that’s the big deadline. The other is October 6 when Qualifying Offers to RFAs are due, with a lot needing to happen in those three day, the to-do list goes something list:

1. With Kapanen gone, his replacement on the PK and on the wing, Ilya Mikheyev, needs a contract. He’s an RFA with arbitration rights, so if he wants to push it, that could delay the final number on his deal until November. Brendan Shanahan sent a message in his post-season presser when he talked about how it’s not fair, but a poor playoffs will affect his contract. Dubas will want this sorted out more quickly and with a team friendly result. The QO is only $874,125, but the final deal seems likely to be one million - something. The tricky part is the something. I expect this signing any day now, but you never know.
   
2. Newly acquired Evan Rodrigues needs a deal done before the QO is due because the Leafs aren’t going to get trapped into paying him either $2 million or an arbitration award. They didn’t take him in trade with the plan to just dump him, however. His deal might be the very next thing resolved, too, because if he wants to play on his hometown team, he has to know he needs to make a deal now that will let him prove that arbitrator’s award of $2 million wasn’t grossly inflated by ice time on a bad team. One year takes him to UFA status, so a cheap show-me contract could pay off for him next year. His alternative is to become a UFA one year early coming off a very bad season, so I think he’ll play ball.
3. Travis Dermott could get signed before the QO goes out too. His salary amount is the same as Mikheyev’s, it’s just one-way instead of two-way.I think its in his inetrests just to takethat one-yrqualifing offer, but he might want the security of a two-year deal now. It’s also not going to be large, and he has to decide how much he wants to play for the Leafs for the next couple of years. I don’t believe there’s any good reason for the Leafs to set out to trade him, but they aren’t likely to say no to a deal that includes him if it’s in their interests.
4. There’s other RFAs to sign, notably Denis Malgin and Frederik Gauthier. Gauthier is likely to sign a two-year minimum salary deal, which would make his AAV less than his salary in year two, something cap-strapped teams like. (Teemu Kivihalme’s deal is exactly this.) Malgin didn’t stick very well in the lineup after arriving in trade, and while he has arbitration rights, you can’t take a record like his to arbitration and come out the winner like Rodrigues did. He has had some good results in very limited usage in the past, and some fans like him because he’s the type of player they want to see on the ice, but he couldn’t take a lineup spot from Nic Petan, and that’s pretty much the recipe for a cheap depth deal or a flight back to Switzerland.
5. Jason Spezza is likely to be re-signed, but there’s not a lot of time pressure to do that right away.
6. Dubas has to decide if he wants Kyle Clifford or not. He should. He would likely announce ahead of the free agent date if the answer is no so Clifford can get other teams interested.
7. There are a host of NHL-contracted AHLers expiring as UFAs, and with Dubas on the AHL’s Return to Play committee, he will know how much effort he and Laurence Gilman need to put into sorting out the AHL roster. Normally that happens in the spring as college and junior players graduate off of teams, and then heats up just as training camp starts. This year, it feels like this might be a very last minute job.
8. Two AHLers are RFAs. One is Max Veronneau, whose arbitration rights coming off his ELC at 24 and his skill in the AHL make him worth signing early for something, maybe even his Qualifying Offer amount of $874,125. The other is Jeremy Bracco, who is at a crossroads in his career, and I can’t predict what will happen to him.
9. You may have heard that Dubas needs to find a defenceman. I’m not sure if that should be number one here or the last thing on the list, but it’s really what all the rest of this list is about. All of these peripheral players need to be squeezed, to be blunt, to make room for someone who matters a lot more. Someone who is at least better than Holl and approaching Jake Muzzin’s ability if not even better.
10. Dubas does not need to find more depth third pairing guys. There are at least nine NHL-probable defenders on the roster. That’s plenty at the bottom end. He doesn’t need to morph Dermott into a right-shooter of the same ability, either, because it’s just not enough of a difference to matter. If there are borderline top-four defenders out there like Dermott who can be had for low cap hits, that’s worth pursuing, but cheap depth is not the job here. A difference-maker is.

 

I am hopelessly optimistic about our chances, but I've been wrong more than I've been right. But with th right moves, we stand a better chance.

Canuckle Heads beat the Golden Knights

 

 

Thatcher Demko made 42 saves in his first Stanley Cup Playoff start, and the Vancouver Canucks defeated the Vegas Golden Knights 2-1 in Game 5 to extend their Western Conference Second Round series at Rogers Place in Edmonton on Tuesday.

"It's special ... it's my first time being in the playoffs," Demko said. "It's a unique circumstance (with goalie Jacob Markstrom being unfit to play), but playoffs nonetheless, and this is what I've wanted to be a part of since I was a kid, so being able to get this opportunity is super special. I want to just keep helping any way I can."

Brock Boeser and Elias Peterson scored, and J.T. Miller had two assists for the Canucks, the No. 5 seed in the West.

Shea Theodore scored, and Robin Lehner made 15 saves for the Golden Knights, the No. 1 seed.

"We just have to take a look at some video," Theodore said. "There were some mistakes that ended up in the back of our net, and those can't happen this time of year. We just kind of have to refocus and get ready for the next one."

Pettersson, who was the center on a line with Miller and Boeser in the third period, gave the Canucks a 2-1 lead on a deflection in front of Lehner at 3:19 of the third period.

Pettersson has 18 points (seven goals, 11 assists) in his past 14 games.

"We're been playing with each other all season, we have good chemistry, and I think it was good that we switched up the lines because the first two periods weren't good from our side," Pettersson said. "The coach made some changes, and it worked out."

 

Demko, a rookie, is the 15th goalie in NHL history, and second in two nights, to make his first NHL playoff start and win when his team was facing elimination. Michael Hutchinson did the same for the Colorado Avalanche in Game 5 against the Dallas Stars on Monday.

 

"I think at this point you rely on the work you put in," Demko said. "I've been doing my thing in practice, making sure my details were where they needed to be. It's different than a game, but everything you see in a game, you've seen at some point in practice, and you just have to rely on that."

Markstrom (8-6-0) started the first 14 postseason games for Vancouver. As part of the NHL Return to Play Plan, a team is not permitted to disclose player injury or illness information.

Canucks coach Travis Green did not have an update on Markstrom's availability for Game 6.

"We'll see where he's at tomorrow," he said.

Lehner was back in net for Vegas afterMarc-Andre Fleury made 28 saves in a 5-3 win in Game 4 on Sunday, the second of a back-to-back.

"Demko had a good game," Lehner said. "I thought Vancouver played a little bit better defensively to limit our odd-man rushes against them. I think they played five guys pretty tight and kept us to the outside. We had our moments where we really pushed and got some good opportunities, and [Demko] was there to save them. We just have to go to the next game, and we'll be fine."

 Theodore went backhand to forehand down the slot before scoring on a wrist shot at 15:12 of the second period to give the Golden Knights a 1-0 lead. It was the 25th shot against Demko.

Boeser tied the game 1-1 on a deflection in the slot off a pass from Miller at 15:36.

It was Boeser's first goal of the series and fourth of the postseason.

"I know I haven't been scoring and I know I need to score goals, but I've been trying to bring my work ethic each and every game and contribute something to the team," Boeser said. "It was nice to get one, it'll definitely help the confidence."

Defenseman Quinn Hughes had an assist on the goal to set the NHL record for assists by a rookie defenseman in a single postseason (13).

"I think we got a really good team, we know that," Hughes said. "The coaching staff believes in us, and most importantly we believe in ourselves. We have good leadership, we knew we didn't play well in the first two periods, knew we had to push a little bit.

"The next game, it'll be important to do that for 60 minutes. But there's a lot of faith in the group. We know they're a good team, but we know we're a good team too."

 The Golden Knights lost for the first time when scoring first in the postseason (8-1-0).

The Leafs are constructed poorly, and the fault is Kyle Dubas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uncle.

Enough.

It’s time.

The Toronto Maple Leafs need defencemen.

Plural.

And, God bless Rasmus Sandin and Timothy Liljegren, but they need some defencemen who are proven.

Yes, that means they might cost more than $700,000. Yes, that means subtracting some cap-allotted dollars from the most expensive forward brigade in the sport.

Do you know what the NHL’s top nine defensive teams in 2019-20 all have in common?

They’re all alive and well in the playoffs. The real ones that start Tuesday. That group includes the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Do you know what the bottom 10 defensive teams in 2019-20 all have in common?

They’re all eliminated. That group includes the Maple Leafs, who lost Sunday’s decisive Game 5 by a score of 3-0.

They were also up 3-0 in a pivotal Game 3 and could not lock it down.

 

We’ve beat this drum before, like on the night Mitch Marner signed a contract rich enough to give Kyle Dubas’s lottery-bound squad the top three highest-salaried forwards in hockey. But circumstances have changed.

First and foremost, Dubas’s hefty financial commitments to John Tavares, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Marner were all made on the (very reasonable) assumption that the salary cap would not only continue to rise with each passing Canada Day but that it could take a dramatic spike when the next U.S. broadcast deal kicked in.

That, of course, is no longer the case. The cap will remain flat until the virus decides otherwise.

Second, instead of taking a step forward, the Leafs — as a whole — have stumbled back. More than half the NHL is still bubbled up and battling for the Stanley Cup. They are not.

The Nazem Kadri trade, though explainable at the time, was a whiff. When push came to shove, rookie coach Sheldon Keefe took Tyson Barrie off the No. 1 power-play unit and replaced him with Morgan Rielly. Alexander Kerfoot’s third line wasn’t awful, but he and Kasperi Kapanen were both handed nice raises last summer. Neither scored a playoff goal, despite Keefe’s proclamation that he expected production throughout the lineup.

During the regular season, Toronto has been one of the most dangerous clubs at even strength that money can buy.

The post-season is a different beast. One that has gnawed on this core for four years in a row, no matter who’s behind the bench or how much ice time the stars are handed.

As the buzzer sounded in their hollow home Sunday night and Toronto joined the budget-conscious, punchline Florida Panthers as the only two franchises of the salary-cap era yet to survive a single playoff series, a few snapshots spoke volumes:

• A white-knuckle sequence in the D-zone where both Tavares and Matthews were scrambling around without sticks in their hands, trying to get into shot lanes.

• Matthews, Marner and Tavares bent over their sticks, gasping for breath after playing 21-plus minutes apiece and still failing to score a fourth even-strength goal for Toronto over five games.

• A dour Matthews — arguably the series MVP in a losing cause — bluntly saying he didn’t have an answer for the trend he saw in the core’s 0-for-4 performance in elimination series.

• And Keefe praising the Blue Jackets’ forwards for being so good. The coach also brought up luck, which is seldom a good look. 

A little more luck, and it might be a different result,” Keefe said, noting his team scored on fewer than two per cent of its shots 5-on-5.

 

Because Dubas built his roster as the counter argument to “defence wins championships,” Keefe spent three months of quarantine and the entirety of reset camp tweaking his system and urging his players to buy into improved own-zone play by all five guys.

For the most part, it worked. The Leafs did a decent job keeping Columbus out of the danger areas and shut the Jackets out in Game 2. Yet it came at the expense of their identity, their strength.

The roster isn’t balanced, so it has fallen to two coaches and some ill-equipped personnel to mask that imbalance.

“I’ll be thinking about this one for a while,” a sombre Keefe said post-game.

The Leafs will pack their Louis bags and carry a 5-on-5 goal drought of 182:46 worth of game clock into 2020-21.

With no Plan B when the sticks go cold, a desperate Keefe tried to make William Nylander a centre. He bumped one of the game’s best forecheckers, Zach Hyman, to Line 2, and stacked his top line. He threw surprise Andreas Johnsson into the mix, even though the winger hadn’t played since before Valentine’s Day.

The coach second-guessed his own decisions and deviated from the centre depth that was supposed to attack in unrelenting waves.

That’s what solid, committed defences do to their opponents. They frustrate them. Make ’em blink.

“We can’t lose sight of who we are as a team,” Keefe said prior to Game 1, prophetically. “We need to be really good

Conversely, John Tortorella’s group rolled out a trusted game plan night after night.

No secrets to the recipe: Hard work. Heart. Two good goalies. And plenty of quality defencemen who couldn’t care less about their point totals.

“We’re not changing,” Tortorella said of Game 4’s epic collapse. “We pissed it away on a couple of bad plays and just within a couple of minutes, [but] we thought we played a good game. We’re going to go play the same way.”

“May the best team win,” Jackets captain Nick Foligno wished pre-game.

It did.

Not only did Toronto’s regular-season deficiencies on the blueline have Keefe and the Leafs second-guessing their own game plan, but the loss of Jake Muzzin — the club’s best pure defender — for Games 3, 4 and 5 underscored an organizational crisis.

If you truly have Stanley Cup expectations, one injured defenceman should not be a critical blow against a middle-of-the-pack opponent.

For 2020-21, Dubas has already committed $52 million to NHL forwards. On defence? Just $15 million.

That gap has to close. The books need a little balance. The Maple Leafs’ blue line is crying for more depth.

It’s time.

Enough.

Uncle.

Somewhere Mike Babock is smiling.

 

 

Maricin in for Muzzin, oh now

Martin Marincin will replace Jake Muzzin in the Toronto Maple Leafs lineup for Game 3 of their Stanley Cup Qualifiers series against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Thursday.

Muzzin is out for the rest of the best-of-5 series after the defenseman was hospitalized following an injury late in the third period of Game 2.

"Marincin is going to go in for sure and take on some of that responsibility that Muzzin had for us and we'll make a further decision from there," Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said Wednesday.

The No. 8 seed Maple Leafs evened the series with a 3-0 win against the No. 9 seed Blue Jackets. The series winner advances to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Marincin skated on a pair with Tyson Barrie at practice Wednesday, and Travis Dermott was paired with Justin Holl, Muzzin's usual partner. Dermott played with Holl during the regular season when Muzzin was out of the lineup with a broken hand, sustained against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Feb. 25.

Keefe said he is considering whether to use seven defensemen in Game 3. If so, rookie Rasmus Sandin would make his NHL postseason debut.

"We're still talking about it, haven't made any final decision on what we are going to do there," Keefe said. "We've tried different things when we'd lost Muzzin before and went with seven defensemen. We're going to discuss it throughout the day and make the decision we think is best."

Muzzin was released from the hospital overnight and is at a hotel in Toronto, the Eastern Conference hub city. He was taken from the ice on a stretcher with 1:52 remaining in the third period at Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday. The Maple Leafs said he will quarantine in the hotel and try to rejoin them when he recovers from the injury. As part of the NHL Return to Play Plan, a team is not permitted to disclose player injury or illness information.

Muzzin fell chest-first onto the legs of Blue Jackets forward Oliver Bjorkstrand to the right behind the Toronto goal. Muzzin was down for more than 10 minutes lying on his back before being immobilized and taken from the ice, with stick taps from each team.

Marincin has played six NHL postseason games, for Toronto in 2017. The 28-year-old had four points (one goal, three assists) in 26 games this season.

"We think that Marty brings some of the elements that Muzzin brings," Keefe said. "Obviously he doesn't replace Muzzin in the intangibles he brings; he's a very important player for us.

But there are some elements in particular, the penalty killing and the size (6-foot-5, 217 pounds), there are some similarities in terms of what he can provide us and we think that is important."

Muzzin was second among Toronto defensemen in shorthanded ice time at 3:00 per game through Games 1 and 2 against Columbus (Holl, 3:47), and was second during the regular season at 2:31 per game (Cody Ceci, 2:50).

Defenseman Morgan Rielly said Muzzin, who won the Stanley Cup with the Los Angeles Kings in 2014, is a difficult player to replace.

"It starts with the off-ice aspect in terms of what he brings to our group being a leader and his playoff mentality," Rielly said. "He has experience and he's played in these types of games before, so that'll be missed. On the ice, he plays tough minutes against the opponent's top line, playing penalty-kill minutes, he's a big, tough guy out there (6-foot-3, 217) that blocks shots and leads by example. We're going to miss him. You can't really replace Jake; you just hope to have guys rise to the occasion."

Prayers for the Leafs chances accepted gratefully. 🙏