Sheldon Keefe reunites his top two stars in pracitce.

In spite of the fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs have been playing relatively well as of late, the Leafs are the winners of 3 straight and have won 8 of their last 10, head coach Sheldon Keefe decided to shake things up at practice on Monday.

The biggest takeaway was a change to the team's top line, with Leafs star forward Auston Matthews now centering Nick Ritchie and fellow star forward Mitch Marner. The decision hasn't been well received judging by the reaction of fans on social media, but I think the motivations here for Sheldon Keefe are pretty obvious.

Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas went out and signed Ritchie in the offseason to a 2 year deal that carries a cap hit of $2.5 million per season, and so far you would be hard pressed to argue he has gotten his money worth out of that contract. In spite of appearing in 16 games for the Leafs this season the 25 year old winger has no goals and just 2 assists on the season, and he currently boasts a plus minus rating of -4.

Keefe is clearly looking to find a way to jumpstart Ritchie and get some kind of production of him, and putting him with players the caliber of Matthews and Marner is a reasonable attempt at doing just that. Whether or not it will prove to be successful remains to be seen, Ritchie has yet to find the scoring touch that led to him scoring 15 goals for the Boston Bruins just one season ago.

Here is a full breakdown of the lines trotted out by Sheldon Keefe during today's practice:

Ritchie-Matthews-Marner
Kerfoot-Tavares-Nylander
Engvall-Kampf-Kase
Bunting-Spezza-Simmonds

This appears to be an indication that Keefe will be going with these lines when they face off against the Nashville Predators on Tuesday, but things could change between now and then. If Keefe does indeed go with this combination on his top line, it will be interesting to see how much time he gives it. The Leafs have 3 matchups on their calendar for this week, so once again things could change very quickly.