Every once in a while the Toronto Maple Leafs recall Marshall Rifai (or he finds his way into the news cycle some way or another) and I constantly find myself answering the question "who that?"
For whatever reason, the Toronto Maple Leafs love this guy, but whenever he gets into the news, my friends ask me who he is.
This happened when the Leafs called him up last year for two games, it happened this year when they re-signed him for two seasons, and it happened again after training camp when he went on waivers.
And to prevent it from happening again, I am going to write up this post so that we can all get to know and love this AHL stalwart who hopes to one day make a name for himself in the NHL.
Toronto Maple Leafs recall Marshall Rifai - but who is that again?
Rifai is an undrafted defenseman from Quebec, whom the Leafs signed as a UFA for organizational depth. He is in his third season with the Toronto Marlies and has gotten into two NHL games during that time.
The Leafs like him because he's big, physical, and can skate. He doesn't provide much offense, and he seems to take a ton of penalties, but they clearly like him.
The Leafs used 13 defenseman last season, and if Rafai gets into a game this time around, he will be the 10th they've used so far this season. The others are Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe, Morgan Rielly, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Conor Timmins, Simon Benoit, Philippe Myers, Jani Hakanpaa and Timothy Liljegren, who is playing great in San Jose and whose trade was ill-advised and working out about as well as expected.
Interestingly, despite a ton of injuries to their forwards, the Leafs blue-line has been very healthy this year. The top four has played in every game, while Benoit and Timmins have each just missed two games.
As for Rifai, he's a no-offense lefty who doesn't have a clear path to playing time. Simon Benoit isn't very good, but he's bigger than Rifai is, and that's about the only guy whose job he could hope to steal. With not much to differentiate between the two, the Leafs will likely just go with the bigger guy.
However, stranger things have happened. All Rifai needs is one game and then to get a bit lucky and that could snowball into a solid career, just like with Justin Holl or Benoit himself. Overall, I wouldn't expect much but you never know.