Denis Malgin was all smiles when he was finally able to score a goal for the Toronto Maple Leafs, even if it was just preseason.
“It was nice to score, yes,” he said with a smile after his Maple Leafs defeated the Ottawa Senators 4-1 in both teams’ pre-season opener on Saturday afternoon.
Malgin, skating with William Nylander and newcomer Pontus Holmberg at camp, certainly appears to have picked up some speed since he last wore a Maple Leafs jersey in a game.
The trio have looked solid at camp and perhaps the biggest endorsement of Malgin’s play came from Nylander himself.
“His speed and just the way he holds onto the puck and makes small little plays, a tremendous little player,” Nylander said of Malgin.
There appears to be a concerted effort from Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe to give players like Malgin good spots to play in during the club’s training camp. And if a player like Malgin is going to stick around, allowing for a star like Nylander to have a seamless start goes a long way.
“We found chemistry early on,” Nylander admitted of his line. “Usually I don’t feel as good (in the first game of training camp) so definitely we can build off of it.”
Malgin is no stranger to skating with Nylander.
During Malgin’s eight-game tenure with the Maple Leafs in 2020, the Swiss forward bounced around the second-to-fourth lines and while forwards found themselves together on occasion.
But Malgin’s first tenure with the Leafs couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Initially acquired by the Toronto Maple Leafs on Feb. 19, 2020 from the Florida Panthers in exchange for forward Mason Marchment, Malgin made his Blue and White debut one day later in a 4-0 victory against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Intially starting the game on the team’s fourth line with Kyle Clifford and Jason Spezza, Malgin moved up the lineup to play on the wing of the second line with Leafs stars John Tavares and Nylander. He finished the game with 15:10 of ice time and finished with +1 rating.
There seemed to be a chemistry there until two days later when the Leafs hosted the Hurricanes.
The game was unforgettable. Toronto fell 6-3 and surrendered 47 shots on goal, made worse by the fact that Carolina has been down to a emergency backup goaltender David Ayres for just under half the game.
Malgin was not solely to blame, but he finished the contest a -2 and both he and the Maple Leafs were in the midst of a nosedive just before the COVID-19 put a halt to the regular season.
During that time, the Leafs were also without their best defenseman. Morgan Rielly had sustained a fractured foot on Jan. 13 and had played just one game with Malgin, Feb. 10, in a 2-1 win against the Tampa Bay Lighting before the season paused.
Covid made things weird.
Malgin returned to the Maple Leafs during the 2020 bubble but never got into Toronto’s lineup.
On Oct. 2020, Malgin re-signed with the Maple Leafs on a one-year, one-way $700,000 and was loaned to Swiss League club Lausanne HC.
After one year away from the Leafs, Toronto qualified Malgin for the 2021-22 season, but the forward wasn’t eligible for a guaranteed one-way contract as part of the qualifying process, due to falling short of the amount of NHL games played over one and three-year spans.
Malgin signed a deal with the Zurich Lions off the Swiss league, where he scored a career-high 21 goals and 52 points at the professional level.
The competition
If Malgin is to win a spot out of training camp, he’s going to have to perform better than a lot of newcomers and returnees vying for depth spots. Calle Jarnkrok was impressive in his two-goal pre-season debut on Saturday night and his $2.1 million AAV assures him a spot. It’s likely that Malgin will be competing against rookies Nick Robertson, Alex Steeves and Nick Abruzzese and newcomers Nicholas Aube-Kubel and Adam Gaudette. There are also returnees Clifford and Simmonds to contend with.
But Malgin looked good and so did Nylander. That alone is worth something as training camp moves forward.
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