Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Is Officially Back as Camp Gets Under Way

It feels like Christmas morning as the Toronto Maple Leafs have officially started training camp.

One week ago, I really didn’t think I would care that much about the Toronto Maple Leafs returning to action.

I mean, I was definitely excited but pessimism was overtaking my optimistic thoughts of the upcoming series against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

But then a few tweets later and I’m 100 percent all the way back and excited for hockey to start again.

For the past four months, my news feed for the NHL was mostly depressing. It was a battle between hub cities and CBA arguments and it felt like the season would never actually get underway.

But now that the Leafs are back practicing as a full-team this week, I’m getting excited.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Are Back

With a reporters allowed in the Leafs practice facility, we were able to see a few interesting line-combinations that have made me very excited.

Just look below at Group 1 and 2 for the Leafs first practice and scrimmage.

https://twitter.com/markhmasters/status/1282707815753224194?s=20

Putting Auston Matthews back with William Nylander and Zach Hyman is an unbelievable move, not to mention Mikheyev returning from injury on a line with Tavares and Marner.

Although Marner spent the majority of his time with Matthews this season and excelled, reuniting Tavares and Marner is a great idea. Especially with the “Soup-man” being able to be the puck retriever on this line, similar to the Zach Hyman role.

Also, the bottom-six of the Leafs lineup is going to get incredibly interesting to watch over the next three weeks.

You’d have to imagine that Kyle Clifford, Jason Spezza, Kasperi Kapanen and Alex Kerfoot are locks, which means there are only two forward spots left.

Depending on which direction the Leafs want to go, Nic Robertson, Pierre Engvall, Frederik Gauthier, Adam Brooks, Nic Petan, Denis Malgin, Kenny Agostino and Yegor Korshkov will all be fighting for those last two spots.

Ideally, I’d love to see the bottom six go like this:

Nic Robertson – Alex Kerfoot – Kasperi Kapanen

Kyle Clifford – Jason Spezza – Pierre Engvall

If Robertson can hold his own in scrimmages for the next three weeks, there’s no reason why he can’t get his NHL debut against Columbus and be a difference maker.

Also, if you want to get even more excited about the Leafs returning to action, just look at this almost-highlight from Matthews.

If you listen closely, you can hear Mark Masters at the 10 second mark get extremely enthused about that Matthews play. Sure it didn’t work, but the creativeness is something we’ve missed over these past four months.

Not only is it exciting to see what the Maple Leafs are doing on the ice, but their actions off the ice are just as important.

As shown in the Tweet below, the team was fully committed to Black Lives Matter with every player wearing a T-Shirt to show their support.

Although there’s only been one day of training camp, the enthusiasm is building with every highlight and tweet from practice.

August 2nd can’t come soon enough for Toronto Maple Leafs fans everywhere.