The Toronto Maple Leafs defensive struggles continued on Wednesday night against the visiting Ottawa Senators, and everyone wonders how they will do against the Calgary Flames later today. The team needs to put up a much better defensive effort over the weekend, as the Vancouver Canucks come in on back to back games on Saturday.
Following Thursday’s practice, head coach Sheldon Keefe discussed the Maple Leafs’ high goals-against numbers so far this season, though he seems focused on finding solutions on the current roster. According to Darren Dreger, that’s the best way to come for now, he who warned the Maple Leafs about a potential trade on last night’s edition of Insider Trading on TSN:
“They’re looking [on the trade front] and we know that Brad Treliving is one of the more active NHL general managers. Undoubtedly, he’s involved in trade conversations and most definitely he’s targeting defensemen. But it’s so early and he doesn’t have a magic wand.
“It’s the inconsistency of the goaltending and the injury bug since the Maple Leafs have three defencemen out. That means that defencemen who were ninth or 10th on their depth chart are actually playing in the NHL and in the lineup.
“There hasn’t been a consistent commitment to checking or defending and those aren’t things that a general manager can fix via trade at this point of the regular season. What needs to happen is the forwards have to buy in, there has to be a commitment to tighten things up where the head coach can hold those who aren’t willing to do that accountable.”
Rumours have emerged that Treliving is indeed looking at the trade market, with a special attention to his former team, the Flames, though any move at this point would be complicated due to cap constraints.
I’m not saying the Maple Leafs will follow Dreger’s advice though for now it seems like Keefe and the rest of the team will look at solutions from within, pairing changes and even sitting out John Klingberg in order to get better coverage on the back end and bring down the Leafs’ high goals-against numbers.
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