Over the next 13 days, the Toronto Maple Leafs will square off with the rival Montreal Canadiens three times.
We’re less than two weeks away from the opener, baby!
We kicked off the latest edition of Leafs Morning Take by discussing Craig Berube and his no non-sense attitude. He’s so smooth with the media. Naturally, we got into that ridiculous question about it potentially being time to panic on Tuesday night in Chief’s post-game scrum. He handled it so well. After that, we dissected Mitch Marner’s comments regarding the upcoming Amazon Prime docuseries. I’m paraphrasing but he said it’s unlikely that he will be watching it closely.
Meantime, we shared our opinions on the 2-1 loss in Ottawa. Anthony Stolarz and Dennis Hildeby were really good in between the pipes. Also, I thought Pontus Holmberg had a solid outing. Without question, the 25-year-old is definitively in a battle with several others right now to crack the opening night roster. If he continues to play the way he did against Ottawa, he will make the coaching staff’s decision an easy one.
We also spent some time breaking down where Bobby McMann and Nick Robertson are at right now.
Then, we were joined by Don Granato, who’s fresh off coaching the Buffalo Sabres the past few seasons. We talked about Easton Cowan, Auston Matthews, and how much of a difference Craig Berube can make behind the bench. Also, seeing as Don made the decision to shift Tage Thompson to centre in Buffalo, I asked him about William Nylander and how the Leafs should navigate that whole experiment. Don was excellent.
To wrap, we discussed Matthews’ injury status. At this point, the captain is considered day-to-day with an upper body issue. That said, he was back at practice on Thursday, which obviously was great to see. It will be interesting to see if we see him again in the preseason.
I’ll be off next week. Zack Phillips, the host of TLN After Dark, will fill in for me. Be sure to join Zack and Jay Rosehill for another edition of Leafs Morning Take next Tuesday at 11 AM ET.
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