Toronto Maple Leafs Prospect Scores Twice + Paper Transactions

The Toronto Maple Leafs made some interesting moves yesterday, then it turned out that it was all just a tease.

Sunday afternoon greeted us with quite interesting news: The Toronto Maple Leafs were recalling Kirill Semyonov and Joey Anderson, both of whom are off to great starts with the Marlies.

They were also demoting Timothy Liljegren, who now appears to be one of their six best NHL defenseman, which was another surprise.

Turns out it was all for nothing – just some salary cap machinations with both teams off Monday.

Semyonov and Anderson will both play for the Leafs this year (and arguably would be just as good, if not better than Wayne Simmonds and Nick Ritchie right now) but we’ll have to wait for their debuts.  Timothy Liljegren should continue in place of Justin Holl (or Travis Dermott, I don’t care, but TL should be #5 on the depth chart).

The one move the Leafs did make that actually counted was sending Michael Hutchinson back to the Marlies.  The Leafs welcomed Petr Mrazek back to the fold on Saturday, so that move was obvious. (NHL stats naturalstattrick.com).

Toronto Maple Leafs Prospect Makes Debut

Last summer the Leafs signed college UFA Alex Steeves, 21,  and this weekend he made his AHL debut and scored three points across his first two games, including the first two goals of his AHL career yesterday.

The Marlies are now 4-3, largely because of Josh Ho-Sang who is tearing up the AHL with five goals in six games.

Ho-Sang should get an NHL contract and a promotion any time now.  Once on the main roster, the Toronto Maple Leafs will potentially have Ondrej Kase, Ho-Sang and Michael Bunting providing the kind of dynamic depth that Connor Brown, Andreas Johnson and Kasperi Kapanen once promised to deliver (but failed to ever provide all at once).

With Joey Anderson and Kirill Semyonov also ready to be called up at any time, the Leafs depth is absolutely fantastic right now.  The competition for jobs is only going to make them better, and I think we’ve seen that to start the season with solid performances from Jason Spezza, Pierre Engvall and Alex Kerfoot, all of whom must know they’ve got to perform to keep their jobs.

The most likely players to be replaced right now seem to be Ritchie and Simmonds, neither of whom has been terrible or anything, just not exactly noticeable on a regular basis.  In fact, I’d say both players are doing much better than it appears going by their peripheral numbers.

The Leafs have been shooting under 2% with Ritchie on the ice, meaning that he’s not getting any credit for any of the things he has done well.  The Leafs have gotten a positive share of the shot-attempts, shots and scoring chances when he’s been on the, and he’s broken even on expected-goals.

Same with Simmonds, but with better expected goals and a slightly higher (but still low) on-ice shooting percentage.  I think both players could work on being a little more noticeable from a physical standpoint, since that’s why they’re on the team, but neither has been outright bad (though Ritchie was probably miscast on the top line to start).

Either way it’s a nice problem to have for the Toronto Maple Leafs who will start to play some of the NHL’s better teams this week.