The Toronto Maple Leafs have played two preseason games thus far and it's still unclear who the team's first-line right-winger will be.
I'd prefer not to talk about Mitch Marner, but we still have two weeks left to talk about the All-Star winger, according to Auston Matthews, so I may as well do it now. As much fun as it was to talk about hypotethical Marner trades for the past few years and how great this team could be without him, his absense thus far has been clear.
Nobody flip-flopped their opinion on Marner more than I did, and although I'm happy they made a change, it is weird that he's gone. We could rely on 20 Marner-to-Matthews highlight-reels per season and after one game of Matias Maccelli, I'm not sure if we'll see one.
That's a harsh criticism towards Maccelli, because he looked okay beside Matthews, but it just didn't look right. Despite being essentially the same height and weight (5-foot-11, 185 pounds) as Marner, Maccelli looked smaller on the ice. It's probably because he isn't as flashy as Marner, but it just looked weird. This was obviously the first game for this duo so it's not supposed to be perfect immediately, but I'd personally like to see more size on that line.
In an interview with Nick Kypreos and Justin Bourne, GM Brad Trelviing discussed their current top-six situation and what he's looking for saying:
Treliving will most likely make a trade for top-six forward soon
“Step one right now is seeing what we have in camp. I know everybody’s focused on that one spot, and certainly we are, but you don’t know where chemistry is going to come from. You can put it on paper, but until you get on the ice and see who fits with who, you don’t know....Sometimes it needs a little bit of different ingredients — whether it’s a defensive presence, someone who can forecheck, create loose pucks, create space,. It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s go get a top-six forward.’ Well, who is that? And what is the cost?”
That's a great point by Treliving and it doesn't seem like it fits Macceli's game. I think that Matthew Knies delivers a lot of the forechecking on that first-line but in Marner's absence, I think that he can be more of a front-net prescence and someone who can create space and score. As a result, I think the Leafs need one more puck retreiver or someone with more size on that line.
Remember when the team acquired Nick Ritchie? Obviously that never worked out but I think that type of player could be someone who makes this first-line incredibly hard to play against, instead of Maccelli, who's much smaller. Although Marner was smaller, his game worked because he created space and had world-class skill, but unfortunately Maccelli isn't going to turn into Marner overnight, although we all wished he would.
So with that being said, as much as we hope Maccelli can be the Marner replacement, or Easton Cowan can fill the role, I think Treliving wants more size and more grit in that top-six. Tom Wilson is the north star, in my opinion, but that most likely will never happen. However, it'll be interesting to see what transpires over the next two weeks of training camp and when he pulls the trigger on a trade, because it's enevidble.