Leafs' Joseph Woll exits game vs. Hurricanes and it's a potential nightmare scenario

The Toronto Maple Leafs just can't have nice things.

After stopping 22 of 23 shots, Leafs goaltender Joseph Woll left the game at intermission due to a "lower body" injury. This is terrible news for the Blue and White as the team has been playing their best hockey of the season as of late, thanks to Woll.

The 27-year-old is no stranger to injuries, but after he missed the first month of the season due to "personal reasons" it felt like he was going to be the team's number-one goalie for the foreseeable future. Anthony Stolarz is also out with an injury and doesn't look like he's returning soon, so Woll's recent play gave the team hope for a push back into the playoff race and beyond.

In seven games thus far, Woll has been brilliant with a .924 SV% and 2.53 GAA, but that injury bug has always been a concern with him. Obviously, I'd just mentioned the "personal matter" but before that, Woll has suffered a groin injury, back sprain, shoulder injury and high-ankle sprain in the past three years. Although he looks like a top starting goalie when he's healthy, he's never been able to play more than 42 games in a regular season, making him a tough player to rely on.

Woll injury could spell disaster for Maple Leafs

When Woll left the game on Thursday night, the broadcast showed him shaking his right leg, indicating a potential groin injury, but we won't read too much into it until we get the results.

For those optimists out there, it's quite possible that the team pulled Woll due to precautionary reasons as they were up 4-1 heading into the third period. With such a strong lead and Stolarz nowhere to be found, it's possible that Craig Berube took the safe route, allowing Woll to rest and recover, instead of making that potential injury worse in the third period.

If this was another goalie who wasn't so injury prone, I'd be more worried about Woll leaving at intermission, but the fact that he never left the game immediately could give Leaf fans hope that he's actually okay.

For those fans on the more pessimistic side, this could be very bad.

It could not have come at a worst time. After sputtering to really find some consistent success this season, the Maple Leafs are finally looking very, very good. With a dominant 7-2 win over Pittsburgh, a solid 4-1 win over the Panthers, and then currently leading 4-1 over one of the Eastern Conference's top teams; it seems like Toronto is finally getting back into a familiar groove. So, of course their goaltender goes down with an injury and arguably the two most important players for Toronto last season are out and multiple games could just be thrown in the trash because of it.

Fortunately enough, the Leafs were able to hold onto the three-goal lead and defeat the Carolina Hurricanes, so Woll's dissaperence didn't change the result, so let's hope that this injury isn't too serious and Woll doesn't miss much time.