Matthews Injury Forces Significant Changes to Leafs' Lineup and Max Domi is the Main Beneficiary
The Leafs welcome the Boston Bruins to Toronto Tuesday night and were forced to shuffle their top-six forwards in light of Auston Matthews' injury.
As the Leafs took to the ice for their morning skate ahead of Tuesday's game against the Bruins, there was a noticeable absence with Auston Matthews nowhere to be found. The Leafs confirmed shortly after that Matthews is day-to-day with an upper-body injury.
With Matthews unavailable Tuesday, Craig Berube was forced to make some significant changes to his lines at the morning skate. After spending the past few games on the third line, Max Domi gets a huge promotion to the top line between Mitch Marner and Matthew Knies as Berube elected to keep the second line of Max Pacioretty, John Tavares and William Nylander together. The fourth line remains the same with Steven Lorentz, David Kampf and Ryan Reaves, while the third line sees Pontus Holmberg center Bobby McMann and Nicholas Robertson.
As the Leafs continue to sort out their roster, Matt Benning remains a healthy scratch amid trade rumours, as does Philippe Myers.
After a huge shuffle to the power play lines over the weekend, Tavares finds himself back on the top unit in place of the absent Matthews as it looks to strike for the second consecutive game after ending a five-game goalless drought with the man-advantage on Sunday in Minnesota.
Depending how the Leafs start, Berube could quickly throw his lines into a blender with Matthews out of the lineup, which may even lead to a return to center for Nylander in a pinch after the experiment seemingly fizzled out ahead of the regular season.
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