The month of October has now come and gone with the Toronto Maple Leafs having a bit of an underwhelming opening few weeks of the season.
As the season start, Auston Matthews excited all fans with back-to-back hattricks over the first two games, however the Toronto Maple Leafs big center has just one goal in over the next seven games.
The Leafs are holding down a 5-3-1 record, good for a .611 points percentage but just fourth in their division. They have also been fairly lucky in putting together such a flattering record thus far.
The off-season moves by GM Brad Treliving look horrendous with the team looking like they’ll continue to try and push a square peg in round hole (*cough* Ryan Reaves).
Toronto Maple Leafs Have Had Three Standouts to Star the Season
With that being said, there were some remarkable starts to the season, so here are the three stars of the month of October.
3rd Star – Morgan Rielly – 9GP | 2G | 5A | 7Pts | 24:03 TOI
Morgan Rielly took a huge step forward last playoffs when he collected 12 points in 11 games, but more than just getting his name on the scoresheet his entire game look better and more assertive.
Rielly has carried that into this regular season and despite seeing a drastic drop off in powerplay minutes, he is carrying the heaviest workload of his career. Through nine games the former first round pick is averaging 24:03 of ice time per game.
The Vancouver native moved back to the top powerplay unit half way through the Hallowe’en game, but this may have been just to try and get a spark for the team as they were trailing 3-0.
It did seem to work as they were able to break the shutout with a John Tavares goal.
However, while he is a better option than John Klingberg, it may be better for the team to save his minutes for tougher situations as he is starting to show he may be more of a 1A defenseman, than a 1B.