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The Toronto Maple Leafs continue their five-game homestand against the Vegas Golden Knights on Monday with Jack Campbell returning between the pipes after the return of Petr Mrazek against Detroit on Saturday.
Mrazek appeared slightly rusty in his first start after suffering a groin injury on October 14, allowing four goals on 31 shots against his former team, but him being a stable 1B option is essential to what was thought to be the Leafs plan of splitting the goaltending duties.
Campbell was pressed into heavier duty than expected, starting six of Toronto’s first eight games, going 3-2-1 with a 2.31 GAA and .918 save percentage, but with Mrazek’s return, it will be curious to see how the Leafs divvy up a busy month of November.
"I think (Jack) has handled it well, it's the early going here, so I don't know that we have a whole lot to go off of necessarily." Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe said. "The performance and the play the net is one thing, but I'm watching him around the building, watching his interactions and watching how he handles the ups and downs that we've gone through here in the early going and he hasn't changed one bit.…
The Leafs have only one back-to-back in November, so it should be expected that there will be a rotation established to get Mrazek regular work and Campbell enough rest to stay healthy during the season.
Toronto is not expected to make any lineup changes after winning their second game in a row, which means that Timothy Liljegren will make his fourth start of the season and Justin Holl will sit for the second straight game.
In spite of the club scoring a season-high five goals and the core group finding some puck luck, Keefe believes that his club has not found their stride yet and is looking for more against the Golden Knights.
"I don't think we're close yet. We've shown signs of life here for sure, but we've got another level to get to." Keefe said. "We just thought through camp and preseason, we felt really good with where we were at, with a lot of the habits and things that we established last season showing through. Since we've started playing the games for real, they haven't been to the same level. Part of that is us, part of that is the opponent and the competition pushing back."
The Golden Knights are .500 (4-4-0) on the season, which should be considered an accomplishment since they have been without team captain Mark Stone and winger Max Pacioretty since the first week of the season. Robin Lehner is expected to make the start for Vegas and head coach Peter deBoer indicated that center William Karlsson will be out four to six weeks with a broken foot, which likely means that former Leaf Michael Amadio (claimed off of waivers on the weekend) will make his debut.
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