Babcock shows changes to lineup in warmups with Tavares, Hyman and Muzzin out this evening.

Leafs lineup appears set for this evening.

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Published 4 years ago
Babcock shows changes to lineup in warmups with Tavares, Hyman and Muzzin out this evening.
Kostas Lymperopoulos/CSM/Zuma

The Maple Leafs lineup appears set for this evening and unfortunately for fans in Toronto it is fairly obvious now during warmups that there are some pretty glaring holes to fill.

In spite of the fact that there was some significant optimism that Toronto Maple Leafs captain John Tavares would make his return to the lineup this evening it is now set in stone that the star center will miss at least one more game due to his broken finger. Making things worse for the Maple Leafs is the fact that Tavares will be joined on the sidelines once again by the injured Zach Hyman and even worse is the fact that veteran defenseman Jake Muzzin will also be out this evening due to personal reasons. This means that it will be a severely depleted Maple Leafs roster that heads into Philadelphia this evening, not what a team off to a slow start this season in is needed of.

The Leafs will be using the usual suspects at forward to step in for Tavares and Hyman, although it would be fair to suggest that the Leafs have no one on their roster currently that can truly fill the shoes of either man and the role they play within the team, but the real glaring weakness is the lack of defensive talent that head coach Mike Babcock has at his disposal to fill the gap on the blue line left by the absentee Jake Muzzin this evening. First here is a look at the Leafs lines from the pre-game warm ups as per TSN's Mark Masters:

Forwards:

Johnsson - Matthews - Nylander 

Mikheyev - Kerfoot - Marner 

Moore - Spezza - Kapanen 

Timashov - Shore - Gauthier

Defensemen:

Rielly - Ceci 

Marincin - Barrie 

Dermott - Holl 

Goaltender:

Anderson

As I stated early the glaring weakness here is the replacement of Jake Muzzin in the Maple Leafs top four by veteran defenseman Matt Marincin. Although it is clear that Mike Babcock sees a role for Marincin on the Leafs roster at this point I think you would be hard pressed to argue that Marincin is the type of player that belongs in the top 4 of any blue line in the NHL. It will be interesting to see if he does indeed get top 4 minutes this evening, although I suspect that will not be the case.


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