Round and Round We Go

Just as the Leafs are rolling and the blueline is slowly moving towards being completely healthy someone went and tore a ligament. Unfortunately, that ligament resides in Mats Sundin's elbow.
I am Mats' total lack of surprise.

Thankfully, the Leafs have just finished one of their busiest stretches of the season and have entered on in which Mats could miss anywhere from 7-12 games (3-4 weeks is the prognosis) depending on whether his famed ability to heal quickly has stood the test of time. Shoalts feels that the captain's absence will hurt much more now than during his eye-induced vacation last season. Rather than worry me this situation reminds me of one of Shakespeare's most well-known lines:

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.
- Act II, Scene V, Twelfth Night

Luckily this comes during November rather than April. The Leafs have had a reputation recently of being able to roll with injuries (Playoffs 2002, Mats' absence last year) and this year has been no different. The youngsters and reclamation projects have a great chance to show that they are ready for prime time.

Kyle Wellwood started the season brightly but has tailed off. The game in Buffalo was his best game in a while and it will be vital to the Leafs' success that he carry that momentum forward. He will most like centre Nik Antropov and Alexei Ponikarovsky to create the forwards answer to Fred and Barney (Gill and White). Clearly, Paul Maurice has quite the sense of humor if he is going to use the Soviet Bloc to bookend the Leafs' smallest forward.

Matt Stajan has been one of the Leafs best forwards this season and his incredible workrate has been vital in helping Jeff O'Neill in his path towards a renaissance. Add Alex Steen to the mix and this will probably be a line that will be depended upon for offence. Paul Maurice earlier noted that Steen had maybe taken his defensive focus too much to heart (playing with Peca will make you do that). This will be a perfect opportunity for his to showcase the offensive talents that led to a 45 point season last year as the line will probably see more powerplay time.

What other steps Maurice takes to address Mats' absence are anyone's guess. Judging by his line juggling they probably would not be good guesses. However, between tomorrow's game against Boston and Mats' return (Nov 28th against Boston at the earliest and hopefully December 7th against Boston at the latest barring surgery) the Leafs' coaching staff will learn a lot about their young forwards. Ian White and Brendan Bell continue to do admirable jobs while the Leafs deal with injuries on the backline. What will be seen is which of the forwards grabs their chance at greatness.

Leafs v. Avalanche: Pre-Game Thoughts

The Avalanche pay the ACC a visit on the back of two straight losses and apparently neither one was very pretty. Jose Theodore has had a rough go of things over the past two games and tonight should be no different considering his 5-10-2 (with three ties pre-shootout) in 23 appearances against Toronto. The Leafs are averaging almost 40 shots a game so if Propecia doesn't bring his 'A' game this could be a third straight high-scoring affair. The Leafs have lost the top spot in team scoring to the Sabres after last night's 9-1 crushing of the Flyers which has already led to some blood-letting. Here's hoping for a matching outburst to bolt us back into the lead!

Tonight, Mats Sundin will be honoured by the club for scoring his 500th goal. He has already gotten a nice pair of cufflinks which is nice but, along the lines of Bitter Leaf Fan's thoughts, maybe Canadian citizenship would be the greatest gift.

Injury Watch
Michael Peca will be in the line-up which will hopefully mean that we will see a much better defensive effort from the second line. Nik Antropov and Ben Ondrus are both still making their way back from the IR. Not that either one of them will drop back into forward lines that are starting to click. It will be interesting to see what happens to both once they are completely healthy. I would imagine that they would each get a two week conditioning stint at the Ricoh. As for the defencemen, no news on Carlo but Kronwall skated and it hurt a lot. It seems that with the time he has taken to return from an ankle sprain that he might have the dreaded 'high ankle sprain', a condition which is notoriously tough to recover from fully.

Predictions:
The Leafs will again frustrate with less than 60 minutes of effort but will still emerge victorious. Toronto hockey fans will get to see former St. Mike's Majors deity Peter Budaj when he comes in to relieve a shell-shocked Joey T.

6-2 Leafs: Mats (2), Tucker, McCabe, Steen, Peca

Falling Like Flies

Pavel Kubina will be out a minimum of four weeks and that could be extended depending on further tests. From JFJ's description of the diagnosis as "simply through manipulation" it sounds like the knee might still be too swollen to perform an MRI. This is bad news for a player that was bedding himself into the defence corps pretty well. It's nice to see the Leafs go from 'Who will win a spot on the defence' to 'who will survive playing defence'.

That brings the IR to:

• Carlo Colaiacovo (fatigue)
• Brendan Bell (assault)
• Andy Wozniewskit (shoulder)
• Staffan Kronwall (bad skates)
• Pavel Kubina (clumsy 'bury boy)

The popular opinion is that Bell might be ready to go on Thursday in New Jersey. If not, then the alternative is either putting Belak on the backend, which proved to be a disaster in the first game of the season, or to call up a Marlie like Brad Brown or Marc Moro. My choice is Brown because he is my friend's parents' neighbour and that would make two Leafs that are just 2 degrees of separation away from me.

Update: Pavel will be out four to six weeks with a strained MCL but will not need surgery! The scenarios are rife for dealing with the injury. To the above you can add trying to sign Brian Leetch with the money saved via the LTI clause (Thanks Lou!) or making a trade. Seeing as the Leafs have only $1M under the cap and Leetch made so much last season I would guess that JFJ will do as he did last year and work with what he has available. That means that Belak will most likely move back for a game or two until Bell returns and Suglobov will make his return to the fourth line.