The Maple Leafs are going west again. Three weeks after their California road trip, the Leafs will spend the next week touring western Canada, with a bonus stop in Seattle to play their first ever game there.

Here’s the schedule for this week (all times ET):

  • Tuesday 9:00 p.m. Leafs @ Edmonton Oilers
  • Thursday 9:00 p.m. Leafs @ Calgary Flames (postponed indefinitely)
  • Saturday 7:00 p.m. Leafs @ Vancouver Canucks
  • Sunday 9:00 p.m. Leafs @ Seattle Kraken/

They will bring along some new faces for the trip too.

Leafs recall Dahlström, Seney from Marlies; demote Rubīns

The Oilers are on a five game losing streak right now, drifting down the Western Conference standing, though by no means out of a playoff spot yet, but enough that a win by the Leafs on Tuesday certainly would raise some alarms, and maybe force some interest in making some trades to shore up their de... more on that below.

World Junior Championship

Rosters are coming out for the World Junior Championship. From a Leafs perspective, second round draft pick Matthew Knies did make the USA team, as expected. Seventh round draft pick Ryan Tverberg was invited to the camp, but didn’t make the Canadian Team. He will go back to the University of Connecticut to play for now where he has a strong 16 points in 14 games this season.

Here is the full Hockey Canada roster, and here is the full USA Hockey roster. The tournament is in Edmonton and Red Deer once again this year with the first games played on Sunday December 26th.

Marlies

The Marlies finished their three game in three day road trip with a 5-1 loss in Providence against the Bruins, so in total they picked up only two of six points on their road trip through the Atlantic Division, but they hold on to third place in the North Division—with games in hand over the teams chasing them.

Right now we await news on Joey Duszak who slid hard into the boards feet first int he second period and was then down on the ice a significant time before being helped off on the shoulders of his team mates. After the game, Marlies coach Greg Moore said he didn’t have a full update, but implied there was a likely ankle injury. They will know more about the severity of it after they return to Toronto today. The Marlies next game is at the Coliseum on Wednesday against the Syracuse Crunch, who are presently last place in the division.

Other News

We’ll see how long this sentiment lasts.

Mikko Rantanen started a brawl at the end of last night’s Panthers vs. Avalanche game which didn’t turn into much, despite the commentators really wanting it to be one.

The Oilers are apparently desperate for left defence; could the Leafs make a trade here?

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