Leafs’ Morgan Rielly won’t return until after Olympic break
Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube announced that defenseman Morgan Rielly won’t return to the lineup until after the Olympic break.
Morgan Rielly won’t return till after Olympic break. Still needs more evaluation. Was a lingering issue that got aggravated vs. Vancouver.
The Leafs only play two more games before they break for the Olympics, that coming on Monday against the Calgary Flames and on Tuesday against the Edmonton Oilers. With both games coming so quickly after Rielly’s injury, it makes sense to shut him down and give him some time to rest before the final stretch of the season.
Rielly sustained the injury during the Leafs’ 3-2 shootout win over the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday. There wasn’t a clear cut play that cause the injury, but according to Berube, it was a lingering issue that Rielly had been dealing with, and it was aggravated during the game.
Rielly also missed a game for undisclosed reasons in back in October, but he was back in the lineup after the one game. It’s unclear if his reason for missing that game is related to the injury that’s been bothering him throughout the season.
Rielly has struggled for the Leafs this season, as his seven goals and 24 assists for 31 points in 54 games is his second-worst scoring pace since breaking out in the 2017-18 season. He has also struggled in his own zone as per usual with a 0.149 5v5 regularized adjusted plus-minus expected goals against per 60 that is the 20th-worst among defensemen this season.
With Rielly out and Marshall Rifai also drawing out of the lineup, Philippe Myers and Simon Benoit are expected to play for Monday’s game against the Flames on the bottom pair. Meanwhile, Troy Stecher will move up to play alongside Oliver Ekman-Larsson, while Rielly’s partner in Brandon Carlo will play alongside Jake McCabe.
The Leafs currently sit in last in the Atlantic Division with a 25-21-9 record, and are eight points behind the Buffalo Sabres for the final wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. Toronto will look to build off of their win over the Canucks when they visit the Flames on Monday at 10 p.m. ET.