Rickard Wallin greets Brian Burke in Sweden
As we've all heard by now the Leafs lost two pivots as well as the hockey game on Saturday, Grabs broke his wrist and Weak Seed has a bum knee. I guess that snufs out my first line center controversy, I smell foul play Stajan (er, have been all year in fact).
Thankfully the loss will be mitigated by the return of John Mitchell who will now be the teams 2nd line center, most likely playing between Poni and Hagman. This also means that offensive dynamo Rick "the stick" Wallin will be bumped up to play with Jason Blake and Lee Stempniak on the third line, Dominic Moore 2.0 anyone?
Ideally Mitch is fully recovered and can step in and play hard and if anyone is going to break out it might as well be him. Our best case scenario here has Mitchell working at near-Kulemin levels in his own end and putting up some points. Grabovski being forced into elevating his game to earn his ice time back would not be the worst thing.
The most interesting part of this roster situation surrounds a player we aren't talking about yet. According to my mathskills two players on the shelf, one player off, leaves us with an open roster spot.
The most likely candidate is Christian Hanson, whom we saw earlier this year with adequate results. A more interesting choice would be the hardluck Tyler Bozak, he's missed time this year with H1N1 and a high ankle sprain. Bozak makes sense as a call up because of where the roster hole lies, neither Hanson or Mitchell are a true 2nd line center whereas Bozak is/will be, though his physical condition and current level of play may inhibit a call up.
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