Toronto Maple Leafs: Near Perfection, Injuries and Waivers

The Toronto Maple Leafs preseason mercifully came to a close Saturday night with a win over the Ottawa Senators.

After the victory Saturday, the Toronto Maple Leafs moved to 5-1 against their preseason opponents, Ottawa and Montreal.  The Leafs outscored them  21-5 in their five preseason wins.

Sure, the games don’t count, but that’s still pretty sweet.

The Leafs will likely make a couple more roster moves over the next couple days, and then on Wednesday it will be game one against Montreal.

Toronto Maple Leafs Roster and Injuries

Whichever version of the roster we see on Wednesday will  depend heavily upon injuries.  Ilya Mikheyev seemed set to start the year as a somewhat surprising winner of the top-six sweepstakes.  Unfortunately, he was checked from behind and fell upon his arm awkwardly and will now likely miss an extended period of time.

You hate to see a guy get injured – especially one as easy to cheer for as Mikheyev – but this could potentially save the Leafs from themselves.  While it may not be the case at all, it at least appears that the Leafs are bending over backwards to give Mikheyev a chance to be a key player, which may have led to a poor lineup decision.   And while I think he could have succeed in the role, he certainly wouldn’t be my first choice.  I’d much rather the Leafs give such a juicy role to someone with the offensive talent of Nick Robertson, Josh Ho-Sang or Michael Bunting.

In other,  far more pressing,  injury news, Auston Matthews is still questionable for Wednesday’s game after not playing in the preseason due wrist surgery.

I don’t think much analysis is needed here: Matthews is the best player in the Eastern Conference and if he’s healthy the Leafs are the best team in said conference.

Finally, in other roster news, the Toronto Maple Leafs have made Kurtis Gabriel one of the last cuts at camp, and he has been placed him on waivers.   Gabriel is likely to clear waivers and report to the Marlies. Michael Hutchinson cleared waivers the other day, in case you missed it, so the Leafs still have three quality NHL goalies.

Mikheyev’s injury hopefully won’t be too bad (updates were promised for later today) but in the meantime, the Leafs might also benefit from having Pierre Engvall in the lineup.  It looked as if he might have been the odd man out, which is silly because he not only finished the year strong last year, but he had a great camp.

So while Mikheyev’s injury could be seen as a negative, the Leafs are a really deep team and this shouldn’t impact the Toronto Maple Leafs too badly.