Taking a gander at the daily line rushes for the Toronto Maple Leafs is always an emotional rollercoaster.
You truly never know what you’re going to find. With a coach who loves to tinker as much as Mike Babcock does, each day offers up a new wrinkle pertaining to the construction of the team, therein laying the groundwork for countless heated debates centring on the most minute lineup decisions.
Today was certainly no different.
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No, you are not hallucinating. When practice kicked off for the Leafs earlier this morning, it was none other than Trevor Moore who found himself as the rotation’s odd-man out. The reason? No one knows.
With Nazem Kadri seemingly recovered from a concussion and now expected to return to the Leafs’ lineup as early as on Saturday, one member naturally had to bow out to make room.
It was only a matter of who.
In a perfect world, Connor Brown, for instance, would be a prime candidate.
Following his 20-goal rookie campaign in 2016-17, Brown is currently on pace to finish below the 30-point barrier for the second consecutive season, despite logging significant time alongside William Nylander and even some spot usage with Auston Matthews. Even in a bottom-six role, Brown has managed just 4 points in his last 15 games and 8 in his last 25, failing to develop any meaningful chemistry on a staggeringly talented roster.
Perhaps it might be a good idea to give him a night off? Of course not! He’s a gud pl’r and that’s all that matters.
If Brown’s status is indeed written in stone, then Frederik Gauthier would naturally appear to be next in line for a breather, given that he is just coming off one on Thursday night.
The expectation for Gauthier is not to produce gargantuan offensive numbers. Doing so will never be his strong suit, and that’s just the reality of his situation. Nevertheless, the towering centre has all of 12 points in 57 games to his name this season and, even on the occasions he did manage to produce, saw his best offensive success when playing with, you guessed it, Trevor Moore.
Would the Leafs really be that lost without Gauthier’s 8 minutes per night? Babcock sure thinks so and, frankly, who can blame him? Gauthier is 6’5″ every time he steps on the ice, after all.
Of course, there’s always the chance that Moore is dealing nagging ailment and was only held out of the Leafs’ line rushes today as a precaution. If so, great! With the playoffs creeping closer on the horizon, maximizing the health of Toronto’s most important players should be the top priority moving forward, Moore included.
At the current time of publication, however, there has been no indication from anyone within the Leafs that Moore’s exclusion from the rotation was health-related, leading to the assumption that he will be a healthy scratch tomorrow night in Edmonton.
If that is the case, and Babcock is indeed intending on making his team’s most productive fourth line forward sit out, it does not bode well for how the Leafs’ lineup will be deployed when the games begin to matter.
Thanks for reading.
All stats courtesy of hockeyreference.com