The Toronto Maple Leafs won’t play against Pittsburgh or Columbus this week.
The Toronto Maple Leafs were scheduled to fly to Columbus post-Christmas and play the Blue Jackets, then fly home and play the Penguins in Toronto (even though Columbus to Pittsburgh is a three-hour drive).
The illogical schedule doesn’t matter now since both games are canceled. The Leafs – assuming they can cobble together a team- will play the Senators on New Years day.
When they play Ottawa this Saturday, it will have been 17 days between games.
Toronto Maple Leafs and the NHL vs Covid
The NHL will have some games tomorrow as it tries to continue the season. The league has brought back the Taxi Squad – which is all well and good, assuming you can fill it.
The Leafs not only had most of their players on the Covid Protocol, but also a bunch of Marlies as well, so I’m not sure how much that could have done.
The good news is that everyone in the NHL is pretty much vaccinated (except for one notorious embarrassment) and once players receive their booster shots, and with roughly 25% of the league exposed as well, things should get back to a somewhat normal version of the league after another month or so. At least, that is what I have been led to believe, but who even knows what to believe at this point?
Since the league is dissolving taxi squads after the all-star break, they must think the same thing.
For a full version of what the NHL is doing check out their news release.
The Toronto Maple Leafs also placed Jake Muzzin and William Nylander in the protocol over the last three days, and while this sucks, it does represent a slowing of the number of players affected.
John Tavares, one of the first Leafs to enter the protocol, was back at practice today, which is good news because that means that the large majority of Leafs players affected won’t be far behind. Perhaps they will have a pretty solid roster for their game against the Senators after all.
In much better news, Canada beat the Czech Republic 6-3 in their opening game of the World Juniors. Led by an Owen Power hattrick, Canada opened the tournament on a high note, but at this point, just the fact that there is a tournament to have is so cool I almost don’t care about the results.