Toronto Maple Leafs netminder Anthony Stolarz is all of a sudden seeing a specialist for the upper-body injury he suffered ofer a month ago.
As reported by The Athletic's Chris Johnston, head coach Craig Berube spoke on the goaltender's injury saing, "(Stolarz) is not making the progress that we thought he would make."
It's funny that we're in this situation with the 31-year-old netminder depsite Berube saying “I don’t believe that’s serious. I think he’ll be fine,” immediately following the injury on November 11th. Obviosuly things change and injuries can worsen but it's very annoying that something that looked day-to-day has turned into a month-to-month ordeal.
The Stolarz news might be a reflection of the positive news out of Toronto today, as the Leafs reactivated Joseph Woll from the injury reserve, but with four more years commited to Stolarz after this season, GM Brad Treliving may need to rethink the decision he made with those two goaltenders.
On both occasions, Treliving signed Woll and Stolarz one year before he needed to, which in theory can be a smart plan, but for these types of players, it was one of the dumbest decisions Treliving has ever made, which is saying something.
Stolarz injury news makes his future status unknown
Tandem goalies can work very effectively in today's NHL but they only work when both are healthy and unfortuantely for Stolarz and Woll, neither have played a consistent season without a signficiant injury. I could understand the commitment to Woll at the time because he was only 25-years-old when they signed him, but commiting to a 31-year-old netminder with less than 150 career NHL starts is a bold move, especially for four years.
Stolarz put together a solid two-year stretch with Florida and Toronto, compiling a 2.08 GAA and .925 SV% in 61 career starts, but that shouldn't be enough to commit to him and Woll, so Toronto really needs to evaluate what they want to do moving forward.
As crazy as this sounds with Stolarz' four-year contract kicking in next year, the Leafs could be better off with pushing thier chips towards Dennis Hildeby and Woll, with hopes that Hildeby can be a number-one netminder and then Artur Akhtyamov is ready to be his back-up, if Woll gets injured again.
Or if the Leafs want to go with that Hildeby/Akhtyamov combination full-time, they could save the combined $7.41M due to Woll and Stolarz, as both young netminders will be on Entry Level Contract's still, which is huge. That money saved can be pushed towards more depth scoring and/or a top-pairing defenseman which is way more valuable than keeping Woll and Stolarz who can't stay on the ice anyways.
One month ago, this just looked like an unfortunate start to long commitment to Stolarz, but after this update, the Leafs may be better off without him for the foreseeable future.