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The Toronto Maple Leafs received some bad news on the injury front the day following their 3-2 loss to the Florida Panthers in Game 2 on Thursday. Head coach Sheldon Keefe confirmed that rookie forward Matthew Knies suffered a concussion in the incident with Florida’s Sam Bennett and his status for the rest of the second round is up in the air.
“(Knies) will definitely be out for both Games 3 and 4. We would call him day-to-day beyond that, but given the symptoms and such, I would say it is unlikely he’ll return in the series.” Keefe said. “We will give him some time to recover and see how it goes, but he is ruled out for the next two games.”
The Leafs have steadily elevated the 20-year-old winger in the lineup since he stepped in to replace Michael Bunting in Game 2 of the Tampa Bay series, and now in his absence, Toronto will have to rely more on the core group that carried them through the regular season, but who have been held in check in the first two games against the Panthers.
“Matt has proven to improve the depth of our team. We believe we are a better team when he is in.” Keefe said. “All of that said, we were a very good team before he arrived on the scene here.We will make some adjustments accordingly, but we have full confidence in our group.”
Those adjustments include the elevation of Alex Kerfoot, replacing Knies on the checking line with Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari, and re-inserting Zach Aston-Reese on the fourth line with David Kampf and Sam Lafferty.
The top two lines (Michael Bunting-Auston Matthews-Mitch Marner and Calle Jarnkrok-John Tavares-William Nylander) remain the same, as well as the three defensive pairings (Morgan Rielly-Luke Schenn, Jake McCabe-TJ Brodie, Mark Giordano-Timothy Liljegren) and there is no indicator that Keefe will shift to an 11 forward / 7 defensemen lineup for Game 3 on Sunday.
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The Toronto Marlies rebounded from splitting the first two games to the Utica Comets with consecutive road wins to close out their North Division Semi-Final series in four games.
The Marlies finished off the Comets with a 4-1 win in Utica on Friday, as Carl Dahlstrom, Matteo Pietroniro, Logan Shaw and Kyle Clifford scored and Erik Kallgren made 28 saves in the victory.
Toronto will play the winner of the Rochester-Syracuse series, who play a series-deciding Game 5 in Syracuse on Saturday.
Toronto Maple Leafs Blogger • 
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