Toronto Marlies Notebook: It’s Baun to the Next One

The trade deadline is mercifully over, and the Toronto Maple Leafs are all stocked up for a lengthy playoff run.

Yet, as the Tomas Plekanec deal unfolded without subtracting any current pieces from the Leafs’ roster, the same cannot be said for the Toronto Marlies.

In fact, over the last month, three integral pieces of the Marlies roster have bid Ricoh Coliseum farewell.

Let’s take at how their absences will impact this team moving forward.

Departures

We all know Nikita Soshnikov, he of 17 points in 19 games, was shipped to St. Louis for a 2019 fourth round pick. It was inevitable. And, in the grand scheme of things, his departure was a muted blow.

Losing mainstays like Kerby Rychel and Rinat Valiev, however, is unchartered territory.

An AHL roster is constantly in a state of evolution. The reality is, the NHL team holds all the cards, enacting complete authority over their affiliate.

As players are frequently recalled, demoted and even traded at a moments notice, roster makeup changes drastically on nearly a weekly basis. So, two mid-20’s big league longshots getting dealt shouldn’t really come as a shock. Especially at the trade deadline.

With that said, the Marlies are a unique case study. Their roster is a finely-tuned machine.

Each player is given a defined role, one he’s expected to perform without question. The departures of Rychel and Valiev, two players who had assumed crucial roles for their team, necessitates some changes.

Namely, rookies like Timothy Liljegren and Jeremy Bracco will be in for an increased workload, far earlier than previously imagined. And, with depth no longer an applicable excuse, each lineup scratch becomes that much more telling.

(insert closing line)

Thinning Depth

Earlier this morning, the Marlies took on a divisional rival in the Syracuse Crunch. During warm-up, their lineup looked like this:

Now, let’s rewind the clock back to October 7th, 2017, opening night of the AHL season. As the Marlies prepared to kick off the year, these were the line rushes:

And these were the defence pairings:

Clearly, a lot has changed.

Rychel, Soshnikov and Kasperi Kapanen, who once accounted for half of the Marlies top two lines, have either been traded or promoted to full-time NHL duty.

Ben Smith and Dmytro Timashov, fourth liners on opening day, now find themselves anchoring the first line. Bracco and Mason Marchment are now key members of the Marlies’ PP units. On opening day, they didn’t even crack the lineup.

The staggering depth this team once possessed in October handed a rare luxury; control.

Control over the kids, allowing them to be eased into the rigours of the professional level for the first time. And control over the vets, who could then be spared from the mental and physical toll of three-in-threes by way of positional rotations.

Five months later, that’s no longer the case.

Now, is when we can be given a glimpse of just how good this team really is. Can they continue their dominance with depth players like Jean Dupuy replacing Bracco and Marchment as scratches? Will their defensive game start slipping now that the Valiev-Justin Holl pairing is disbanded?

Don’t look now, but the Marlies have dropped five of their last seven.

Two of those losses came against the last-place Hershey Bers and Binghamton Devils, games where they appeared to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Let this be a reminder that success in the AHL is never a guarantee. Not even for a team set to make history.

Quick Thoughts

• I simply cannot let a notebook go by without gushing over Liljegren. With the Marlies down 3-2 to Syracuse with less than a minute left, Liljegren decided to take took over the play. He began dishing the puck around the offensive zone like he was Oprah giving away cars, which eventually led to Chris Mueller tying it up with 34 seconds remaining. Sequences like that just further prove that Liljegren’s offensive tools are already lethal. If he continues to ascend at this rate, the Leafs will be adding a special player to their lineup.
• Calle Rosen, after firing 117 shots on goal, FINALLY had one cross the goal line last week against Rochester. As it stood prior to today’s game, Rosen held a shooting percentage of 0.008%. Yeah, that’s probably unsustainable.
• Sheldon Keefe confirmed on Wednesday morning that Miro Aaltonen suffered a concussion during Saturday’s 7-4 loss to Rochester. This, my friends, is a bummer. Prior to the injury, Aaltonen was scorching hot, with 15 points in his last 11 games. The Marlies were giving him a regular role on the PK, and he was excelling at it. I honestly wonder if the Leafs follow through on the Plekanec trade if Aaltonen was healthy. We may never know, but his play was certainly forcing management to take a long look at his immediate future.

Next: Enemy's Insight - Post Deadline

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