Leafs reveal the real reason behind Kasperi Kapanen's mystery scratch.

Leafs reveal why Kapanen was out.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 4 years ago
Leafs reveal the real reason behind Kasperi Kapanen's mystery scratch.
Alan Schwartz/CSM/Zuma

The Toronto Maple Leafs made a very curious move on Saturday night and it was a move that only became more and more mysterious as time wore on and as more and more reporters chimed in with updates.

First, it was Sportsnet's National Hockey League insider Chris Johnston that broke the news that Maple Leafs forward Kasperi Kapanen had been pulled out of the lineup just minutes prior to puck drop on Saturday night, with Johnston reporting that Dmytro Timashov would be the man stepping in to replace him. The news resulted in some rampant speculation regarding a potential trade coming for the Maple Leafs, reasonable speculation given just how often Kapanen has been linked to trade rumors over the course of the past year or more.

I had speculated in our initial report on this story that this could potentially have been related to the elbow injury that Kapnen had been dealing with earlier in the week but we would soon learn that the injury option was off the table. Johnston's colleague at Sportsnet, NHL reporter Luke Fox, reported that the decision to scratch the Leafs forward was not injury related, but he was not able to provide any additional details regarding the status of Kapanen. Fox also added that Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe would be speaking to the media following tonight's contest against the Ottawa Senators to address the topic of the scratch this evening. 

Everyone was thinking trade here given that we are so close to the NHL trade deadline but now Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe has seemingly cleared everything up. Speaking to reporters following the game Keefe revealed that the decision to scratch Kapanen had nothing to do with the trade speculation surrounding the Leafs forward, but instead appears to have been the result of issues off the ice. Keefe was cagey with reporters saying that he would prefer to let Kapanen himself address the issue on Monday, however he did comment that scratch itself was motivated by "internal accountability." That of course means some form of internal discipline on the part of Keefe, but we will have to wait until Monday or perhaps even longer to find out what it is that Kapanen did to rub his coach the wrong way.


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