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The Toronto Maple Leafs coming off an impressive offensive output in a 7-3 victory on Thursday take on the Vancouver Canucks at Scotiabank Arena in the second of a three-game series. The Canucks are expected to make a few lineup changes after a lackluster effort, starting veteran Braden Holtby in place of Thatcher Demko and subbing in forwards Loui Eriksson and Justin Bailey.
Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe indicated after an optional morning skate that the only lineup change for Toronto would be Mikko Lehtonen taking over for the injured Travis Dermott on the bottom pairing alongside Zach Bogosian.
Frederik Andersen (6-2-1, 3.01 GAA, .888 save percentage) will make his fifth straight start for Toronto.
While the Leafs can’t really complain about their start with a challenges of a compacted 56-game schedule, there are indications that GM Kyle Dubas is not being complacent about potentially upgrading his club before the NHL trade deadline on April 12.
Last month, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that the Leafs might be looking for help at forward after injuries to Joe Thornton and Nick Robertson, which might be the reason why the club has recently been exploring their roster depth to see what they have in Joey Anderson, Travis Boyd, Alexander Barabanov and Nic Petan.
More recently the speculation has focused on Dermott, who is rotating in and out of the lineup with Lehtonen before suffering a charley horse on Thursday. Those rumors might be simply be because the 24-year-old blueliner will be exposed in the upcoming expansion draft and Dubas would rather use him as an asset in a trade instead of losing him in expansion this summer for nothing.
The bigger question is where exactly is Toronto looking to upgrade? It likely is not at goalie since the Leafs chose to play out the last year of Andersen’s deal and seem content with Jack Campbell as the backup (unless Campbell’s injury is more serious than expected).
Moving Dermott would be under the assumption that they are comfortable with giving Lehtonen or Rasmus Sandin more time, but that doesn’t seem to be the case based on Keefe’s comments.
At forward, the top two lines have produced and Toronto continues to get production from fourth liners like Jason Spezza and Boyd, but the third line with Alex Kerfoot (1 goal) and Ilya Mikheyev (0 goals) has not played well, which might be the reason why the Leafs are reportedly interested in Calgary’s Sam Bennett.
Toronto’s lack of cap space limits what moves they can make, and barring a money-in, money-out deal, they are likely to wait until closer to the deadline when the rental market heats up and teams are willing to jettison players for picks and retain salary to make a deal work.
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