Maple Leafs Making Significant Change on the Blueline Ahead of Saturday's Date with Bruins
The Toronto Maple Leafs appear to be doing some shuffling on the blueline ahead of Saturday's tilt with the big, bad Boston Bruins.
The Leafs are coming off of two very ugly consecutive losses to two teams they shouldn't have just beaten, but dominated. Unfortunately, the Columbus Blue Jackets and St. Louis Blues had other plans, taking it to the Leafs and humbling them in a big way, taking them from what could have been a 6-2-0 record to start the year and pushing them to a 4-4-0 record through their first 8 games of the season.
During last night's 5-1 loss to the Blues, Craig Berube, who was less than enthused after dropping 2 points to his former team, made a pretty significant change on the blueline that yielded almost immediate results. He swapped Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Chris Tanev, moving OEL up to play with Morgan Rielly and Tanev down to play with Jake McCabe.
Shortly after this change was made, not more than a few short minutes, Rielly and Ekman-Larsson connected on what was OEL's first goal as a Maple Leaf, and oh, what a beauty it was.
We all know what had occurred the rest of the way, with the Blues not surrendering another tally, adding a trio of unanswered goals to embarrass the Leafs on home ice. However, Berube must have liked what he saw after making the change on defense, because he has kept Rielly with OEL, and McCabe with Tanev at this morning's practice.
If I'm being honest, I've sort of always liked the idea of pairing McCabe with Tanev on a true shutdown pairing that Berube could toss out against the oppositions best every night. I'm glad that pairing is getting a longer look.
As far as Rielly and OEL are concerned, with both players being more offensively-adept, perhaps running them together could yield some tremendous results in the offensive zone, even if it leaves a lot to be desired in the D zone. I'm certainly willing to wait and see.
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2 HOURS AGO | 224 ANSWERS Maple Leafs Making Significant Change on the Blueline Ahead of Saturday's Date with Bruins Do you like the new D pairings for the Leafs at Friday's practice? | ||
