The Toronto Maple Leafs last four games have been postponed due to a massive resurgence in Covid leading up to the holiday season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are off until who knows when, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a plethora of minor news stories that we can wrap up into one nice quick little post.
The main story is that the NHL has paused until after Christmas and there is a rumour that in a day or two they will announce what everyone who thought about it for two seconds already knew:
the NHL won’t be going to the Olympics.
Toronto Maple Leafs News
In addition to those already announced, the Leafs said today that Kampf, Mikheyev, Mrazek, Sandin and members of the coaching and medical staff have been placed into the Covid Protocol.
The Maple Leafs have placed forward David Kämpf, forward Ilya Mikheyev, goaltender Petr Mrázek, defenceman Rasmus Sandin, goaltending coach Steve Briere and an additional member of the team’s medical staff into the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol.
— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) December 21, 2021
The Leafs are scheduled to play the Blue Jackets after the NHL resumes, but I’m not sure how they could even cobble a team together by then.
This isn’t exactly news, but I strongly recommend this article about how Matthews production is now matching his play. Lot’s to learn and think about here. Just an absolutely great article.
This isn’t hockey news, but the new Matrix comes out tomorrow. Wow a return to yet another 20 year old franchise for nostalgic reasons? How about someone, anyone, come up with an original idea? I have extreme fan-service backlash. Give me something new. Tenet is the only good movie I’ve seen in ages that is actually new.
In Leafs news, Marner could play if he’s healthy when the NHL resumes, even though he hasn’t missed the full ten games required by his injury designation.
Just learned that if he’s healthy, Mitch Marner can play #Leafs next game despite being on LTIR and missing only 6 games … The 4 missed because of COVID count towards the 10/24 requirement of LTIR … Apparently it was the case last year, too. I just didn’t encounter it.
— Kevin McGran (@kevin_mcgran) December 21, 2021
Additionally:
The Toronto Maple Leafs signed Ty Voit to an NHL Entry Level Contract. Voit was picked in the 5th round of last year’s draft. We have him 8th on our Leafs Top Prospect list.
Roni Hirvonin will be the captain of Finland’s team in the World Juniors this year. We had Hirvonin ranked 11th on our list. He will be one reason to watch Finland’s games this year, but an even better reason is Topi Niemela, who was named the best defenseman in last year’s tournament and a player who is rocketing up the Leafs prospect charts.
In conclusion, one cool result of the NHL not going to the Olympics might be a World Cup next year to make up for it. I personally don’t really see the difference, especially if the NHL does away with the U23 gimmick they had last time.