Toronto Maple Leafs call up prospect + Senators Game Preview

The Toronto Maple Leafs are on a three-game winning streak, having recently defeated the Boston Bruins, Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens.

Despite the recent run of success, the Toronto Maple Leafs are a team ravaged by injury, and so they have called up prospect Alex Steeves, on an emergency basis, for tonight's game against the Ottawa Senators.

Steeves has been on fire for the Marlies this year, and the 25-year-old has nine goals in ten games, along with 12 points.

The Leafs aren't getting any depth scoring whatsoever. Of the Leafs players who are not obviously stars, the goals are few and far between: McMann 3, Lorentz 3, Pacioretty 2, Robertson 1. And after that, it gets even worse as Domi, Holmberg, Kampf and Reaves have combined to play just under 700 minutes without a goal. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

Toronto Maple Leafs call up prospect + Senators Game Preview

Auston Matthews will miss his fourth straight game amid rumours (denied by the team) that he has re-injured whatever has been keeping him out of the lineup. The NHL doesn't release injury information, so of course we are free to speculate wildly - for instance, no one has denied that the team's best player was attacked by a rhino at the Toronto Zoo last week. He most likely wasn't, but could his "upper-body injury" be from the horn of such a beast? There is no way to tell.

The Leafs are so full of injuries (Jarnkrok, Pacioretty, Matthews, Domi, Nylander) that yesterday they had to use defenseman they don't play to make a full group of forwards in practice. Nylander and Domi, however, will play tonight.

With Matthews out, Domi will once again be playing 1C, a position he is comically unsuited for. With Pacioretty out, the most interesting thing is who will join Tavares and Nylander. I would guess Robertson, because he's been really good lately, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Steeves get a shot either.

The Senators will be going with Linus Ulmark, while the Leafs will counter with Anthony Stolarz.

As for the standings, the Senators are six points behind the Leafs, but they have played two less games. Still, Ottawa is only getting half the points available to them and are not on the Leafs level.

One final note; the Leafs have scored and allowed just one 5v5 goal each in the last four games. They are playing extremely low-event hockey at 5v5, or at least trying to, and it seems to be working. This isn't a good long-term strategy, however. If you score 1 5v5 goal in four games, you should lose four games. Then again, without Matthews, you take what you can get.