The Toronto Maple Leafs announced today that leading scorer James van Riemsdyk will miss the next six to eight weeks with a fractured left foot. The implication here is that the team’s meteoric surge forward after a dismal start to the campaign may be in serious danger of losing momentum in the winger’s absence.
Van Riemsdyk was the object of almost as much criticism as former linemate and current Pittsburgh Penguin Phil Kessel for his unflattering plus-minus performance last season. While the +/- stat category is often faulted as a misleading metric, when your top line has the worst collective rating in the league, eyebrows will most assuredly be raised.
Under head coach Mike Babcock’s direction, the former second-overall draft pick enjoyed a drastically-improved record of plus-three across fourty games, with fourteen goals and fifteen assists while averaging just under eighteen minutes active duty per game. His prolonged absence will no doubt be received as glad tidings by those who would prefer to see the Leafs bottom out for the remainder of the season in hopes of a shot at a lottery pick at the draft, and, truthfully, Tank Nation may not be a hallucination after all, given the news of what is certainly a significant setback.
Former third-round draftee Josh Leivo will make his first appearance under Babcock’s regime, having acquitted himself well with the Marlies, posting 11 goals and 19 assists across 35 games to date.
Leivo is a 6’2’’ winger with equal parts grit and skill. He likes to initiate the forecheck, and has both the frame and the hands to handle himself at the NHL level. What has kept him out of the show has been a lack of consistency during previous appearances. He’ll be looking to change all of that in the coming weeks.
The Leafs are off until Wednesday when they face the newly-relocated Seth Jones and his club the Columbus Blue Jackets, affording Leivo time to acclimatize to his new surroundings. The Blue Jackets are one-and-three in their first four games of 2016, coming off a tough overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes last Saturday.
Should he fare well, Leivo may make one of the Leafs’ “placeholders” such as P.A. Parenteau, Michael Grabner, or Brad Boyes redundant when van Riemsdyk re-inserts into the active roster some time in March.
The Marlies have taken quite a hit this season in terms of injuries, having lost Connor Brown, William Nylander, and goalie Garret Sparks to long-term ailments, making Leivo’s promotion yet another challenge for the club who are still perched in the top spot with 60 points on the year. Penguins AHL affiliate Wilkes-Barre-Scranton are a distant second with 53 points in three fewer contests.
Nylander will miss at least another month with post-concussion symptoms, according to the Marlies’ general manager Kyle Dubas. Despite having not played with the Marlies since December 18th, the Swedish sure-shot still sits third league-wide in points with 34 across 27 games. Chris Bourque of the Hershey Bears currently leads with 36, earned across 35 games.
