The Toronto Maple Leafs are riding a five-game losing streak heading into Tuesday’s matchup with the St Louis Blues. They’ve already suffered a cavalcade of injuries, with Auston Matthews, Chris Tanev, and Brandon Carlo amongst those out of the lineup. The Maple Leafs have one other injury to their forward core impacting their lineup, as Matthew Knies will miss Tuesday’s game with a lower-body injury.
“The Leafs shall be without Matthew Knies tonight as a result of a lower-body injury. He joins an inventory of injured teammates that features Auston Matthews, Nicolas Roy, Scott Laughton, Chris Tanev, Brandon Carlo, and Anthony Stolarz,” Chris Johnston of The Athletic reported.
The Maple Leafs at the moment are 8-9-2 after losing each of their last five games, 4 of which led to regulation. Despite keeping the games close, with three one-goal losses and two two-goal losses, Toronto cannot finish games off. Without Knies, who has 22 points in 19 games, the offense will get even tougher.
The Maple Leafs have struggled defensively, partly due to injuries. Without Carlo, Tanev, and starting goalie Anthony Stolarz, Toronto has allowed not less than three goals within the last seven games. The Blues are an awesome team to get right against defensively, as they rank twenty sixth in goals scored this 12 months.
Knies is the young star on the Maple Leafs, at just 23 years old and with a 29-goal season already within the bag. The 30-goal expectations were loud coming into this season, especially after the lack of Mitch Marner in free agency. With just five goals to this point, the scoring touch has not been there. But his assist total has him near a 95-point pace to begin the season.
Can the Maple Leafs beat the Blues without so a lot of their good players? Or will or not it’s a sixth consecutive loss, turning up the quantity in Toronto?