The Maple Leafs look to finish off their lengthy four game road swing with a return to the win column as they take on the rejuvenated Winnipeg Jets at the MTS Center on Saturday night.
The Jets have been a different team since former Toronto head coach Paul Maurice replaced Claude Noel nearly two weeks ago, winning four straight games before losing a 1-0 decision in San Jose on Thursday.
Ondrej Pavelec will start in goal for Winnipeg, who are 10 points behind the Minnesota Wild for the last Western Conference wild card spot.
Toronto had won six straight and the first two games of their four game swing west of the Mississippi in Phoenix and Colorado before a 7-1 drubbing in Dallas on Thursday.
Both Leafs goalies struggled against the Stars, as Jonathan Bernier allowed three goals on 13 shots before being pulled in favor of James Reimer, who gave up four goals on just 15 shots. Leafs coach Randy Carlyle has chosen to start the Manitoba-born Reimer in Winnipeg over Bernier, who had won four games in a row before the Dallas debacle.
Reimer has started only three times in January, as opposed to nine games for Bernier, which has led many to assume that the former LA Kings netminder had seized the number one job away, but Carlyle is continuing to be coy in assigning labels for his two backstops.
The Leafs hope to get Reimer back into a more confident frame of mind, not only to give them a better chance to win his starts in the remaining 29 games of the season, but to make him a potentially more attractive trade commodity before the March 5th trade deadline or for next summer, when the 25-year-old becomes a restricted free agent.
Reimer will undoubtedly be looking to make more, either by filing for salary arbitration or in negotiations to make more than the $1.9 Million salary he is currently making and Leafs GM Dave Nonis has a lot of work to do over the summer, with veterans Jay McClement, Dave Bolland, Nikolai Kulemin, Mason Raymond, Cody Franson and Jake Gardiner all heading for restricted and unrestricted free agency.
Leafs GM Dave Nonis indicated in earlier in the week in an interview with the National Post’s Michael Traikos that Reimer is drawing significant interest from rival general managers and that he does not intend to make any changes with his goaltender tandem in the short term, but getting Reimer back on track to keep his value up for what many consider the inevitable trade.
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Sportsnet's John Shannon and Jeff Marek discuss whether the Leafs will trade defenseman Jake Gardiner before the trade deadline:
The dilemma that the Leafs and GM Dave Nonis face regarding the 23-year-old defenseman is whether they are willing to give him significant money on a new contract. Gardiner is in the final year of his entry level deal making $875,000 and is a restricted free agent at the end of this season. Toronto will be facing a situation similar to last summer when Nazem Kadri and Cody Franson both attempted to get a long term deals and remained unsigned into September before settling for short term bridge deals.
Signing young players before there is an accurate determination of their market value is risky. Montreal thought they had won by getting PK Subban to sign a two-year-deal coming out of his entry-level deal but in retrospect, they should have signed him to the long term deal he wanted, as the Toronto native will break the bank on a new deal this summer. Conversely, the Sabres locked up Calder Trophy winner Tyler Myers for seven years and his performance dropped dramatically for almost two years.
The Leafs have a young puck mover in rookie Morgan Rielly, who is relatively inexpensive on the cap for another two seasons and provides a similar skill set(some think that the 19-year-old has better hockey sense that the more experienced Gardiner), which makes it more likely that Nonis will use Gardiner in a package to acquire the elusive top line center Toronto has been looking for since the departure of Mats Sundin or a top pairing defenseman.
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