Ahead of tonight’s game versus the NHL team consultant and part-time defender Drew Doughty and the Los Angeles Kings, the Leafs have called up Nic Petan.

Petan, as mentioned by Kristen Shilton, appeared in two AHL games over the weekend, and he, to use the technical term, wrecked shit in the first one. He was a little quieter in the second, but is still clearly too good for the AHL.

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Does that mean he’s good enough for the Leafs? Maybe. He might just be not the right kind of good enough, and the Leafs have said they will trade him to get him on a team where he is.

This whole exercise might be about letting him show off to make that trade happen. After all, he did clear waivers at the end of training camp. He was called back up and replaced Timothy Liljegren in a cap space shuffle move on October 3.

By my count (which you should be very suspicious of, I’m not very good with numbers) he was on the NHL roster for 29 days before he was sent down on November 1. All of this is complicated by which side of 5 pm papers were filed each day. But by my reckoning, he’s not going to be waiver exempt anymore, and that usually makes a trade less possible.

This might be an unusual situation where they just want him to now prove it in the NHL. And who knows, maybe the Leafs are changing their mind on him. Whatever is going on, it feels like they’re struggling to make the choices necessary to get Zach Hyman back on the roster.

Before that situation is resolved, however, is the question: will Petan play tonight? And will John Tavares? We’ll let you know in the preview later today.