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After a four-day respite, the Toronto Maple Leafs will pretty much be playing every other night until the end of the regular season on April 17th, starting with their first visit to Philadelphia to play the Flyers on Thursday night. The Leafs will be without winger Mitch Marner for the second straight game, who is nursing a lower-body injury suffered in Boston last week.
Marner skated in Toronto on Wednesday and could get back in the lineup soon, but the Leafs are not in a tight battle for a playoff spot. The club is in a position that they normally have found themselves in recent years, locked into a slot in the standings and playing out the last quarter of the schedule with little or no consequence.
Toronto is nine points behind second-place Boston after losing two games in regulation to the Bruins last week and is eight points in front of Tampa Bay for third place, which has the Leafs locked into playing whoever does not finish in first in the Atlantic in the first round.
Ilya Samsonov is expected to get the start for the Leafs against the Flyers, who the Leafs play two times in Philadelphia in the span of five days. The Flyers will be without head coach John Tortorella, who is serving the second of a two-game suspension for refusing to leave the bench in a game against the Lightning last week.
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At this time of the year, NHL clubs begin to search for unsigned undrafted free agents who either played in US Colleges, the CHL, or in Europe. For example, former GM Kyle Dubas signed winger Bobby McMann to an AHL deal coming out of Colgate University in 2020. He played in the ECHL and AHL for two seasons, earned a two-year NHL ELC in 2022, and has become a very useful player for Toronto this season. With the Leafs “light” on draft picks the next few seasons, GM Brad Treliving may be more active in the free agent market in the next few years.
Most players coming from the NCAA and KHL will sign an ELC and immediately expect to get a legitimate shot at the NHL right away. The Leafs have had some success in that endeavor with Tyler Bozak, Ilya Mikheyev, Alexander Barabanov, and Trevor Moore and misses like Nikita Soshnikov, Igor Ozhiganov, and Par Lindholm.
A name that could be on the Leafs radar in the next few weeks could be winger Maxim Tsyplakov. The 25-year-old Moscow native has played in the KHL since 2017, slowly gaining more playing time with Moscow Spartak, but only in the last two seasons has he begun to show any offensive chops. After scoring 10 goals in 2022-23, the 6’3”, 190 lb. forward is fourth in the league with 31 goals.
The Athletic’s Corey Pronman says Tsyplakov is a “big, powerful wing who plays a highly physical brand of hockey. He also has strong puck skills, offensive hockey sense and shooting ability”, and projects him as a bottom-six winger. With Treliving’s penchant for bigger players, the Leafs are rumored to be one of a dozen NHL teams that are interested, and the possibility of playing with the likes of Auston Matthews or John Tavares is definitely a plus in luring the free agent to Toronto.
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