Neues » Phil Kessel was later whistled

ST. Walker Buehler Womens Jersey . PAUL, Minn. – Life just got a lot harder for the suddenly banged up Toronto Maple Leafs. Already struggling to produce a consistent product on the ice and facing a whole whack of games on the road this month, Toronto learned Friday that it will be without two of its top three centres and third-highest scoring winger, all for a good chunk of January. Joffrey Lupul will miss the next month with a lower body injury. Nazem Kadri, also out with a lower body injury, will be sidelined for 7-10 days. And Peter Holland will sit week to week with an upper body issue. All three stem from a Wednesday night win in Boston and will ultimately test the depth that defined the club’s offseason. “It’s been a strength of our team all year,” Lupul said of the club’s depth last month. “You never want to anticipate injuries or anything, but at some point in time there’s going to be guys that go down and this year it certainly looks like we have the depth throughout our lineup of guys that can step up and play in those situations and get offence and play in critical situations.” Though they fell in Minnesota, Friday’s effort was actually a reasonable start. “We cannot complain with the effort,” said head coach, Randy Carlyle, after a 3-1 loss to the Wild. “We’re not happy with the result, but I think that the effort was there. If we continue along those lines and we play that brand of hockey we’ll give ourselves a chance to win some games.” The Leafs actually won a rare possession battle, spending large amounts of the night in the Minnesota end while holding their opponents to just 29 shots. It was just the 11th time all season that they’ve held an opponent under 30 shots and second in as many games. Much of that, players said afterward, was due to improved exits from the defensive zone, a facet of the game the club has been pushing to improve in recent days (more on that below). They also didn’t allow near as many quality opportunities from those areas of the ice deemed dangerous. “Hopefully this is the style of play that we adopt and we feel that we can execute at that level and it all just starts in our own end in our puck recoveries and defensive zone coverage,” Carlyle said. “We weren’t as porous. They didn’t hold us in the offensive zone. They had a few flurries, but they weren’t dominating us on the possession time in our zone.” The highest scoring team in hockey, it was rare to see the Leafs held in check as they were by Darcy Kuemper and the Wild and it will be indeed curious to see how this group manages offensively in the coming weeks without Lupul and Kadri. Lupul led the club with 12 even-strength points in December, trailed closely behind by Kadri, who had six such goals and 11 points in 15 games. They are also the team’s two best possession players by some margin and form a dangerous secondary threat beyond Phil Kessel and James van Riemsdyk. That will mean more pressure on that top line to produce, specifically at even-strength where they’ve often failed to muster any consistent magic. It will also likely mean more ice-time for the likes of Kessel, van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak. Kessel and Bozak, in fact, pushed nearly 26 minutes on Friday, van Riemsdyk just a tad behind despite requiring repairs in the third period for the damage of a puck to the face. Toronto faced a similar challenge last season with injuries; a year ago last month they played 12 games without Bozak and the since departed Dave Bolland. The club went 5-5-2 in that stretch, surviving some without two of their top three centres. Centre ice will again be tested and likely exposed with Kadri and Holland on the shelf. Beyond Bozak, Toronto had Daniel Winnik, Trevor Smith and Greg McKegg line up in the other three spots down the middle against the Wild, a very limited trio offensively. What the Leafs have now that they didnt under similar circumstance last year is versatile depth across the roster. The likes of Winnik, Mike Santorelli, Leo Komarov, David Booth and later, Richard Panik, were added to help bolster what had been a three-line hockey team, one that was weak on options in case of injury. In this case, the Leafs will need those like Panik to produce with an increase in opportunity. Unexpectedly productive offensively in the early months the club will also require further contributions from Winnik, Santorelli and Komarov and something more from Booth, who has just one goal in 18 games. More generally they’ll require more of the structured acts that Friday brought. And they’ll have to do away from their Toronto confines, playing nine of the next 11 on the road. Five Points 1. Breakouts One point for improvement during a five-game trip that concludes Saturday for the Leafs in Winnipeg is how they break the puck out of the defensive zone. There’d been a tendency, as Cody Franson observed earlier in the week, for the five players on the ice to become too spread out. “I think it’s more puck support,” Carlyle said before Friday’s game. “I think we’ve been guilty far too often of leaving people high and dry. I think everybody’s got the same mantra in the league now that you have to have four or five guys around the puck. You make those short little passes, release passes away from pressure. “We know everybody’s forechecking with three guys and then the fourth guy is their defenceman usually pushing the walls. That hasn’t changed. That’s been probably a staple in the NHL here for the last four or five years. I think that’s one of the issues that we’ve had to deal with and we’re continually trying to improve in that area.” They did so against the Wild. Key to outshooting Minnesota – just the 10th time that’s happened for the Leafs this season – was improvement in those exits from the defensive zone. “I thought we had a lot of clean breakouts and we seemed to skate the puck in a lot from our end to their end,” Winnik said. “You have cleaner breakouts and quick breakouts and you’re obviously going to spend less time in your end.” 2. Discipline & Officials Discussed in the visiting dressing room after defeat was the club’s lacking discipline. Winnik’s third period slash on Ryan Suter sprung the Wild to their third and final goal, a one-time power-play blast from Mikko Koivu. “I’ve got to keep my cool in that situation, especially the time of the game and how we were kind of coming on there,” Winnik said. “It’s just a dumb play by me.” Phil Kessel was later whistled for unsportsmanlike conduct, chirping the officials after a slash from Matt Cooke went unpunished. The Leafs were none too pleased though earlier in the evening with the officiating. Mike Santorelli appeared to score the game’s first goal on a power-play, but the marker was called back shortly thereafter.