Columnist image

TSN Toronto Maple Leafs Reporter

| Archive

TORONTO – It was the fall, not the big hit, that caught James van Riemsdyk off guard.

During the third period of Monday’s game against the L.A. Kings, the Maple Leafs’ winger got stapled to the boards by Kings’ forward Trevor Lewis and crumbled to the ice. He returned gingerly to the bench, tested his right leg, and remained in the game.

After missing practice on Wednesday, van Riemsdyk’s status for Thursday’s tilt against the Carolina Hurricanes was in question, and still wasn’t certain after he fully participated in morning skate.

“Immediately there’s a little bit of that shock. I wasn’t really expecting to fall like that,” van Riemsdyk said Thursday morning. “We kind of got tangled up and I was trying to push one way and fell a little awkwardly. It probably could have been a lot worse but I feel pretty good today. I haven’t talked to [the trainers] yet but we’ll see how that conversation goes.”

The Leafs are planning on van Riemsdyk playing, but Josh Leivo, the team's perennial 13th forward, will take warmups on Thursday night in case of a last-minute setback.

On a personal level, suiting up against Carolina is of special significance for van Riemsdyk. His younger brother, Trevor, is a defenceman for the Hurricanes, and Thursday would mark just the third time since 2014 that they’ve gone head-to-head. So far, the sibling series is knotted 1-1, and their parents are in town to see who takes the rubber match.

“Usually they’re wearing both [team] colours,” van Riemsdyk said of his mom and dad. “Trevor came over for dinner last night. We have some other friends and family in town. It’s nice to have these moments. Obviously you don’t get to see each other much over the course of a season.”

Should van Riemsdyk get into Thursday’s game, it will be his fourth straight with Connor van Brown playing alongside him and Tyler Bozak in place of Mitch Marner, who remains on the fourth line.

Since the shuffle 10 days ago, the van Riemsdyk-Bozak-Brown line has been out for only one even-strength goal against, compared to seven of the first 12 even-strength goals scored against the Leafs prior to the switch on the wing.

“I don’t know which impact is Brownie and which impact is suddenly [realizing that] we better get going here. I don’t know the answer to that question,” said head coach Mike Babcock. “But Brownie has worked real hard. He’s a real good player, works hard every night.”

Going into Thursday’s game, the Leafs and Hurricanes are near opposite ends of the Eastern Conference standings. Toronto is 7-2, good for second place, while Carolina is 3-3-1 and sitting at 13th. The Leafs are first in the NHL in goals for (40) while Carolina is tied for third last (17), but their goals against is tied for third-best (21) while Toronto is tied for 22nd (30).

“[Carolina] is a team that has gotten better and better and better,” said Babcock. “I don’t think the results so far have showed much. They’ve lost some tight ones. They make it hard on you, and they can make it hard on yourself by not being prepared and then you get frustrated because they’re going to work so hard on breakouts and get pucks out in the neutral zone and forecheck heavy.”

It’s the third straight opponent the Leafs have seen, after Ottawa and L.A., built on stingy defence and annoying other team’s scorers with active sticks and tight neutral zone coverage.

Toronto has scored three goals in each of its last two games, which is below their season average of scoring almost 4.5 goals per game. But unlike last year, the Leafs are learning how to stay the course defensively at crunch time and not letting tight games slip away.

“We were young last year. We had a lot of guys playing their first year in the league,” said Morgan Rielly. “This year we have more experience and we’re feeling a little bit more comfortable and [that’s] getting us off to the start we want."

Morning skate notes

- Goaltender Frederik Andersen will play in his 200th career game on Thursday, against the team that originally drafted him in the seventh round, 187th overall, in 2010. Andersen never signed with the Hurricanes, and in 2012 was free to re-enter the draft, where he was nabbed in the third round, 87th overall, by the Anaheim Ducks. He’s posted a 3-1-0 record all-time against Carolina.

- Back in September, Auston Matthews was in Boston to shoot ads for Bauer Hockey and ended up taking in a baseball game at Fenway Park with Andersen, William Nylander, David Pasternak and Hurricanes’ defenceman Noah Hanifin. Matthews and Hanifin are long-time friends, dating back to a Boston Jr. Bruins tournament when they were kids and through their time together at the U.S. National Team Development Program. “He’s obviously a hell of a player and a really good guy, so it’ll be fun to play against him tonight,” Matthews said. “He skates so well, he’s been like that since he was a young kid, kind of a man among boys out there as far as skating and physical stature. He seems to get better and better every year and when his confidence is up he’s a really good player.”

- The Leafs enter Thursday’s game with the best faceoff win percentage in the league (54.9 per cent), which is well above where they ended off last season (49.9 per cent, 15th in the NHL). Babcock believes the improvement extends to the NHL’s much-discussed crackdown on faceoff violations. “Maybe it’s because [last year] we hadn’t been in the league long enough to cheat good enough,” Babcock said. “We didn’t have the same negotiating skills with the linesmen. You can say that’s not true, but when the linesmen don’t know who you are, you don’t get any leeway at all. Now it’s just, the rules are the rules. You cheat or you don’t. It’s so simple. That helps us.”

- Even after Marner played his best game of his season on Monday, recording two assists and helping his fourth line be the Leafs’ most productive, Babcock isn’t in a hurry to move him back up the lineup. Rather he’s focused on making sure Marner is playing an integral role for the Leafs each night. “He’s playing good, but Mitch doesn’t want to play on the fourth line. We don’t necessarily want him on the fourth line,” said Babcock. “We want to play him enough that he’s important to the team. We thought we played him enough last game that he was important and had a huge impact on it. It’s never as good as you think; it’s never as bad as you think. It’s always somewhere in between. Just keep on keeping on and if you’re a good player it’ll all turn good.”