Joffrey Lupul on his miraculous return to the Leafs: “I'm excited to be playing, I'm excited to make a contribution.”

Many never believed it could happen and frankly neither did I.

In a stunning interview conducted with Toronto Maple Leafs forward Joffrey Lupul  in the Maple Leafs locker room, the long time Maple Leafs forward revealed that he was excited to finally make his return to the Maple Leafs line up.

"I'm excited to be playing, I'm excited to make a contribution," said Lupul as per the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Lupul of course has not played a single game at the National Hockey League level since he suffered a rather controversial injury that left him sidelined indefinitely during the 2015 - 2016 National Hockey League regular season. Lupul would then fail his physicals for the following two seasons and was sent to was has become known as "Robidas Island" in Toronto, otherwise known as long term injured reserve around the league. Now this is not an unusual situation for a team in the NHL to find itself in, however the Lupul case was far from your usual affair.

You see after the Maple Leafs made it publicly known that Lupul had failed both of those physical examinations the veteran Toronto Maple Leafs forward had taken to social media, Instagram to be specific, and had actually disputed the claims put forward by the Maple Leafs. This led many fans, and haters to be honest, of the Maple Leafs to openly question whether the Leafs were abusing the long term injured reserve system in the National Hockey League as a way to circumvent the rules of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, specifically as it pertains to the NHL's salary cap.

In fact that matter got to be so serious that the National Hockey League launched it's own independent investigation into the matter to make sure there was no funny business going on with "Robidas Island." Thankfully for the Leafs the investigation from the league would come up empty handed and the Leafs were sparred any potential backlash or punishment that could have come if they had been found to have been stiffing the careers of injured players for their own benefit. 

Here is a look at Lupul's comments from the aforementioned interview, and if you've made it this far might I suggest you take a hard look at the locker Lupul is standing in front of.

[pub]