Morgan Rielly placed on long-term injured reserve with knee injury

Uh oh.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have announced that defenseman Morgan Rielly has been placed on long-term injured reserve with a knee injury. Rielly will be out for a minimum of 24 days, meaning he’ll miss the first half of December at the very least.

Rielly left Toronto’s game early on Monday after colliding with New York Islanders winger Kyle Palmieri during the third period. The team is already without Jake Muzzin with a career-threatening back injury, and T.J. Brodie, who strained his oblique on Nov. 12 and has no timeline for a return.

That leaves the Leafs without three of their top four defensemen for the time being.

“It’s tough. We’re already missing guys, and Morgan is so important to our team and to our back end in particular,” Keefe said after the game. “We lose Muzzin, (the media) made a big deal of it, it wasn’t a big deal. We lose Brodie, (the media) made a big deal of it, it wasn’t a big deal. We just have to keep playing. That’s the way it goes.”

The Leafs subsequently called up Victor Mete and Mac Hollowell from the AHL’s Toronto Marlies. As it stands, Toronto also has Jordie Benn, Rasmus Sandin, Timothy Liljegren, Justin Holl and Mark Giordano in the lineup.

So one obvious question remains: will the Leafs tackle the trade market?

Last week, Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli wrote about six trade targets the Leafs could go after following Muzzin’s LTIR status became clear. John Klingberg, Vladislav Gavrikov, Matt Rouy, Carson Soucy, Nick Jensen and Dmitry Orlov were the names he mentioned, and there’s the obvious big cat catch of Arizona’s Jakob Chychrun. With Rielly now out, that’ll likely put Leafs GM Kyle Dubas into overdrive trying to find a replacement.

The Leafs currently sits second in the Atlantic Division with a 10-5-5 record, including a 6-1-3 run in the past 10 games. They’re only two points ahead of Tampa Bay with a game in hand and three points ahead of Detroit with two extra outings, so the next few weeks could become critical heading into the Christmas stretch run.

Losing Rielly is a tough blow. Now, for the team’s sake, you can only hope it’s not a long-term injury.