Toronto Maple Leafs: Scratching Timothy Liljegren Means It’s Trade Time

The Toronto Maple Leafs will be taking on the Anaheim Mighty Ducks tonight.

The Anaheim Mighty Ducks are one of the NHL’s surprise teams of 2022, but that likely won’t stop the Toronto Maple Leafs from destroying them.

The Leafs are on a massive heater, having won 13 of their last 15 games, and are just two wins away from their third five-game winning streak in a row (LA and Pittsburgh offering up the only resistance they’ve seen all month).

Unfortunately for the Ducks, the Leafs decided to give Joseph and his Technicolor Goalie Pads the crease for Friday’s game against the Sharks, and that means they’ll have to face Vezina favorite Jack Campell and his microscopic GAA.

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Anaheim Mighty Ducks

How good is Jack Campbell? Well, I’ll just tell you one stat and we’ll move on:

In his best season, the best goalie of all-time, during the Dead Puck Era, Dominik Hasek posted a 1.87 GAA and a .937 save percentage.

Jack Campbell, is currently rocking a 1.63 GAA and a .943 S%.

Now, of course, the trick is to do this for 15 years and 740 games, but If you’re looking for a reason why the team with all the superstars is winning without scoring very much, that’s it. (stats hockeydb.com).

As for tonight’s game, it will be Jason Spezza’s 1200th game, and Ondrej Kase will miss the game with an injury.

Kirill Semyonov played vs the Sharks in Kase’s place, and I don’t remember seeing him at all, so it makes sense that Kyle Clifford will finally make his second Toronto Maple Leafs debut.  The veteran fourth liner is a solid player you can’t help but love.  He offers leadership, grit, solid defense and makes the Leafs just ridiculously deep.

In other news Travis Dermott will get back into the game after missing the last four.  Dermott has been one of the best 3rd pairing defenseman in the NHL for the last couple years and does not deserve to sit out, at all.

The only reason he is sitting is because the Leafs have seven NHL defenseman, and can only play six of them.  None of these guys has earned a scratch, but it’s inevitable.  The problem here is that with Liljegren’s upside he’s a better option than either Dermott or Justin Holl, which means the Leafs have to move one of those guys. 

You like to have depth, but healthy scratching Liljegren is egregiously stupid.  I mean, come on – with Liljegren on the ice the Toronto Maple Leafs have gotten 54% of the shot-attempts, 54% of the shots, 60% of the scoring chances, 63% of the dangerous chances, 58% of the goals, and 64% of the expected-goals.

There is just no justification for sitting this player.  Time to make a move.