2:00pm: Thornton has been moved to long-term injured reserve, meaning he must miss at least ten games and 24 days. It will give the Maple Leafs some added cap flexibility in his absence but certainly won’t excite many fans that were holding out hope for a quick comeback.
9:45am: The Toronto Maple Leafs will be without the services of Joe Thornton for at least the next month, as head coach Sheldon Keefe told reporters including Kristen Shilton of TSN this morning that the veteran forward suffered a fractured rib in Wednesday’s game against the Edmonton Oilers. For at least one game, Toronto will actually be missing two-thirds of their top line as Auston Matthews is also listed as day-to-day with upper-body soreness and will not play tonight. Pierre Engvall, Alexander Barabanov, and Adam Brooks will be inserted into the lineup.
The Maple Leafs’ forward depth has already been an issue this season, with Thornton, Barabanov, Jimmy Vesey, Wayne Simmonds, Ilya Mikheyev, Jason Spezza, and Nick Robertson combining for just two goals and five points through the first five games. That’s a total of 27 games played from the depth forwards without much to show for it, as Toronto has relied heavily on their top guns to carry the offensive load. Now with Matthews—who was averaging more than 23 minutes a game through the early part of the season—out, the team will need someone else to step up and put the puck in the net.
For Thornton, missing a month in a condensed season is much more concerning. The 41-year-old legend could miss a quarter of the 56-game schedule, meaning his spot on the top line will have to be filled with someone else as he works to get back into the lineup. It’s hard to know how long he’ll take to get back up to speed and whether he’ll be able to contribute at the level he is used to.
Oh god
Hit didn’t even look that big. It’s crazy how these smaller looking bumps can lead to bigger injuries than some of these full speed shoulder to shoulder hits
Joe Thornton and “brittle” are usually not mentioned in the same sentence. Josh Archibald pulled up and gave Joe a “bump”, instead of finishing his check with vigor. A “bump”, out of respect, that led to a “how the hell did that happen?” injury.
Dubas is happy about this. everyone else though…
I said at the start of the year I didn’t like the Thornton,Simmonds or spezza signings, I understand why we did it for leadership value but these guys are way past their primes and have looked a few steps behind already! Dubas has really boxed himself in a corner for a few years with the big 4 forward contracts, and the worst one is Tavares way back when it happened I thought this team can score but our defence is terrible this doesn’t make much sense and years later my thoughts were right! If this team had 2 5.5 million dollar dman contracts instead of Tavares right now this team would be a lot better, probably would still have kadri but I don’t want to think about that trade it was beyond terrible
I don’t think any are bad on their own, but you’re right, you can’t have that many players like that filling up a roster. They should’ve brought in Simmonds and probably stopped at that, because he was the exact type of forward they needed.
Simmonds should be playing on the first line with Thornton’s injury or move him Hyman there, move Simmonds to Tavares line and move C’est to the third line.
Simmonds isn’t the goal scorer he once was but what he has shown, which they needed, is he is a presence in front. Him in front on a Nylander or Matthews shot is what the leafs need.
As for the 2x 5.5 D men vs Tavares, I’d argue that there were other forwards the leafs could have got that may have been just as good a fit for slightly less (Mark Stone comes to mind) but while this teams defence is struggling, if you take out JT completely, you will have a huge hole on offense. They are two big lines deep right now and Kadri isn’t a replacement offensively for JT
Disagree Simmonds has looked terrible this year him and Thornton have been a step behind on the majority of plays, right now I would rather have 2 actual shutdown dmen than Tavares in 2 years his contract will be really bad besides his Offense he really doesn’t bring anything else and no leadership as shown by his poor playoffs, look what the islanders have done compared to what we have done in the playoffs since we signed him
Smonds has played mostly 4th line minutes plus I’m not saying he can. keep up with AM and MM. You need the guy who will work the corners and the fro t of the net. In a perfect world that’s Hyman but unfortunately they only have one of him not 3.
As for Tavares, again if you think for 2*5.5 you will get two shut down guys that’s fine. The offense will clearly struggle as this is ultimately a two line team and with JT gone a one line team.
The biggest issue with the defense is the #1 Reilly. He’s just not a good “defense”man. People ran Gardner out of town for the same mistakes Morgan is making on the backend and in 6 games he has 1G, 0A and is -4. That’s not a number one.