Maple Leafs make major changes to their top lines.

Details inside.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
Maple Leafs make major changes to their top lines.
Steve Roberts/CSM/Zuma

It appears that the Toronto Maple Leafs will be making some significant changes to their top lines. According to a report from Toronto Maple Leafs beat reporter Jonas Siegel Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock has made some significant changes to his top lines today, something that may indicate a change of direction for the Maple Leafs coming off the holiday break. 

As fans of the Maple Leafs will already know recently signed forward William Nylander has not lived up to expectations since signing the big money contract that he earned with both his play on the ice as well as with a significant hold out at the start of the season. It has been a source of great frustration for fans of the team, many of whom felt Nylander's hold out should have resulted in him being shipped off to another organization, and it undoubtedly has also been a big source of frustration for the Leafs who have given him big money with the expectation that he would produce on the ice. 

Nylander has not produced but it looks like the Maple Leafs will be giving him the best possible opportunity to succeed by putting him alongside the organizations top star in Auston Matthews. According to Siegel the Maple Leafs top line at practice today featured the aforementioned William Nylander and Auston Matthews centering that line with forward Andreas Johnson joining them on the wing. This is clearly designed to light a spark under Nylander although whether or not it proves to be successful remains to be seen

This of course will lead to some changes on the other lines as well and this is what the Maple Leafs line combinations looked like today according to Siegel.

Brown-Tavares-Marner

Marleau-Kadri-Kapanen

Lindholm-Gauthier-Moore

Now it's unclear if these changes will carry over to Toronto's next game which will be against the Minnesota Wild on Thursday. Babcock has the better part of 4 days now to toy around with his line combinations and you have to believe that things could be subject to change depending on what the head coach sees out of his players during practice. We will likely have a better idea of where Nylander ends up over the course of the next few days.

[pub]


Source: