The Toronto Maple Leafs Postponed Game Update and Recap
Covid-19 and all it’s variants have been making life miserable for a lot of us since March, 2020. This season looked like it would be a normal one for the Toronto Maple Leafs and the rest of the NHL. That is until Covid-19 started to tear it’s way through the NHL one team at a time.
On Saturday, December 18th, 2021 the Maple Leafs announced that the NHL was postponing Toronto’s next two games. Those games happened to be in Vancouver on December 18th, and in Seattle on the 19th. This was due to a number of players being put into Coivd Protocol after a few players tested positive.
Toronto forwards John Tavares and Alex Kerfoot were placed in Covid protocol on December 17th. The following day on December 18th, the team added forwards Jason Spezza and Wayne Simmonds to Covid protocol. This was enough for the NHL to decide that it would be best to postpone Toronto’s next two games.
Later that night, things went from bad to worse for the Maple Leafs. They announced that they were placing Jack Campbell, T.J. Brodie and Travis Dermott, head coach Sheldon Keefe and assistant coach Spencer Carbery into Covid protocol.
On December 20th, Toronto placed two more staff members into Covid protocol as well as announced that the team will be completely shutdown until after the Christmas Break. This shutdown added the December 23rd game against the St. Louis Blues to be postponed.
If that was not bad enough, the Toronto Maple Leafs placed David Kampf, Ilya Mikheyev, Petr Mrazek, Rasmus Sandin, goaltending coach Steve Briere and a member of their medical staff into Covid protocol on December 21st. So, as of right now, the Maple Leafs have 11 players and six staff members in the NHL’s Covid protocol.
What Comes Next For The Toronto Maple Leafs?
If all goes well for the Maple Leafs, they will play their next scheduled game on December 27th against the Columbus Blue Jackets. That would be the best case scenario, but we will see if actually happens.
On Wednesday afternoon, the NHL officially announced that they have withdrawn from the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. With NHL players not going to the Olympics in February, the NHL will use this two week period to reschedule all postponed games. This two week period was left unused for by NHL for Olympic reasons.
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The Toronto Maple Leafs currently have a total of four games that need to be made up during this time. They will need to play the Calgary Flames, Vancouver Canucks, Seattle Kraken, and St. Louis Blues. Hopefully these are the only games that Toronto needs to make up for, but if more games are missed, the NHL will figure out a way to fit them in during the month of February.