Breaking: Leafs make last minute roster change ahead of tonight's game.

Rookie gets a shot in the big league.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
Breaking: Leafs make last minute roster change ahead of tonight's game.
Keystone Press

The Toronto Maple Leafs have made a rather interesting change to their roster just moments before they are set to face off against the Buffalo Sabres in preseason action on Saturday night.

According to an official report from the Toronto Maple Leafs Department of Public Relations, the Leafs have made a last minute addition to their preseason roster this evening, adding young defenseman Andrew Nielsen to the line up. It's unclear at this time exactly why Nielsen is being injected into the line up but it seems fair to speculate that the Maple Leafs, and perhaps even head coach Mike Babcock, would like to get a closer look at the young prospect in the event that they made need a defenseman at some point during the 2018 - 2019 National Hockey League regular season.

Nielsen, a 21 year old left shooting defenseman from Red Deer, Alberta, is a former Maple Leafs' 3rd round pick (65th overall) in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft that has spent the last three seasons of his professional career with the Toronto Marlies of the American Hockey League. During the 2015 - 2016 season Nielsen was playing for the Lethbridge Hurricanes of the Western Hockey League before making his AHL debut, appearing in a total of 5 games for the Marlies. The following season Nielsen saw his role greatly expand as he would  go on to appear in a total of 74 games for the Marlies, recording 14 goals and 25 assists for a total of 39 points on the season.

Nielsen was also a part of the 2017 - 2018 Marlies team that would go on to capture the Calder Cup, although in this most recent season he only appeared in 65 games and saw his numbers drop to just 6 goals and 20 assists for a total of 26 points. Obviously that kind of regression is not what you want to see from a player at such a young age but it seems that the Leafs still believe in him given their desire to give the rookie a shot at the NHL preseason later on this evening. 

It will be interesting to see both how much use he gets this  evening as well as how much playing time he gets moving forward after tonight's performance. 

[pub]


Source: