Toronto Maple Leafs: Three Stars for the Month of October

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.

The Toronto Maple Leafs 2nd Star of the Month

2nd Star – Joseph Woll – 3-2-0 | 1.89 GAA | .942 Save Percentage

Joseph Woll started the season as the Leafs back-up goalie, and technically no announcement has been made to the contrary, however, if we are going off of play since the start of training camp, he has definitely stolen the net. 

Woll has taken over as the unofficial starting goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs over Ilya Samsonov, but for how long and what that means remains to be determined.

While Samsonov was handed the starter’s role at the start of the season, Woll took it and ran with it after he entered a game just before the ten minute mark on October 21 and the team down 3-0 against the Chicago Blackhawks.

The Missouri native would go on to save all 27 shots he faced, which would allow the Maple Leafs to storm back and take the victory in overtime 4-3.

In his next two starts on October 24 and 26, Woll would go on to stop 68 of 70 shots for back to back victories.

Fans do need to temper their expectations for him as the starter as Woll has battled injuries over the entirety of his professional career and has not played more than 26 games in a season since his first season with the Marlies back in 2019-20 when started 32.

If Woll keeps up his solid play, he can hide a lot of the Leafs problems.  However, as we saw Halloween Night in Toronto against the Kings, he can’t do it every night.