With Morgan Rielly expected to be punished for retaliating against Ridly Greig’s empty net goal on Saturday night, the Toronto Maple Leafs will need their defensive depth to step up for the foreseeable future.
If we’re looking at average ice time on the Maple Leafs’ blue line, the defenseman with the most after Rielly are T.J. Brodie with 21:44, Jake McCabe with 20:17, Timothy Liljegren with 18:54, Mark Giordano with 17:05 and Simon Benoit with 16:01.
However, Brodie has been up-and-down all season; McCabe has had his own flashes of skill or struggle, and Liljegren hasn’t broken out the way a team expects a first-round pick to have done by now.
On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli, Tyler Yaremchuk and Jay Rosehill discuss the incident and what the Maple Leafs need to do in order to maintain its place in the Atlantic Division.
Tyler Yaremchuk: We’ve been wondering all year what could spark this Maple Leafs team: is it a coaching change, a big trade, but do you think losing Morgan Rielly for however many games he’s suspended could be a rallying point? Could they look at this as something that finally got them together?
Jay Rosehill: On paper, it woudln’t make sense, because you’re leaving guys like Jake McCabe and Simon Benoit to step up. All those guys are going to have to step up. If you look at last year, they lost Rielly for a considerable time and they went on an absolute run, which was a bit of a head scratcher.
Like you said, Tyler, maybe that is a rallying point where people realize that there’s a big piece of the puzzle missing, and people have to make up for it. These games they’re playing, they’re very important points in the standings, and I don’t think Toronto envisioned themselves being in this position at this point in the season, but it is what it is.
You can watch the rest of the segment and the full episode here…
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