John Klingberg sat hunched over in the corner of a small locker room in Stockholm, Sweden, on Nov. 18, his eyes darting past the reporters in front of him and out into the open.
The Leafs defenseman has been sidelined with an unspecified injury since Nov. 11, and was only able to complete a few minutes of practice that day before leaving the ice on his own. “It’s very stiff and a little painful. There wasn’t much movement,” is how he described those few minutes.
Klingberg told reporters he had dealt with the injury throughout his career, but “I feel like I’ve hit rock bottom in the last few weeks.”
Less than a week into that practice, the rock bottom turned out to be even deeper. On Thursday, the Leafs placed Klingberg on LTIR. In the end, that media access was his last for the foreseeable future. It’s not yet determined exactly how long Klingberg will be out of the lineup. However, he was placed on LTIR, meaning he is ineligible to play until at least Dec. 12. In the coming days, Klingberg will continue to decide what his long-term prospects are.
Through 14 games, Klingberg hasn’t gotten the start to his tenure with the Leafs that he hoped for when he signed a one-year, $4.15 million free agent contract in the offseason. He didn’t score a single goal. Defending consistently well in his own zone was a challenge. Overall, Klingberg resembles a defenseman who struggled to find his game in brief appearances with the Anaheim Ducks and Minnesota Wild last season, and is similar to the All-Star with a shot at the 2018 Norris Trophy. It wasn’t.
And now, with the LTIR designation, it’s worth wondering. Did Leafs management understand the full extent of Klingberg’s injury and sign him to a hefty one-year contract anyway? Or were the injuries unclear to them? In any case, the optics are not very good.
The Leafs currently have just over $3.3 million in cap space, according to CapFriendly. However, Ryan Reeves, one of the four high-profile players acquired by GM Brad Treliving in the offseason, has been sluggish in the press box recently, and the departure of another player this season is uncertain. The pressure is mounting on Treliving to use the new cap space wisely.
At the moment, this decision appears to be a beneficial one.
Midway through an 11-game point streak with the Marlies, Alex Steeves was rewarded with a call-up to the Leafs. This is the third consecutive season that Steves has auditioned for a big club. Generating offense in a variety of ways, Steeves’ confidence is arguably at an all-time high, and Sheldon Keefe believes Steeves’ energy, physicality, and responsible defense, along with his minutes playing on the fourth line, has given him that scoring edge. We hope to be able to convert some of them. It will be up to Steeves to make this audition last longer than the three games he played each of the past two seasons with the Leafs.
The next possible move would be Connor Timmins being activated from LTIR. The right-handed defenseman injured his lower body in a preseason game on Sept. 29 and has been on LTIR since then.
The Leafs could use a boost from Timmins’ puck-moving ability and offensive tendencies, especially after a strong preseason in which Timmins scored six points in three games. Keefe has essentially cast Timmins as a comparable replacement for Klingberg, noting on Thursday that Timmins’ strengths are “similar to Klingberg’s strengths.”
“Timmins looks different,” Keefe said of how the team’s blue line could change with the 25-year-old in the lineup. “But the other part is just making the right shots there, which is important in terms of moving the puck and making the offense more fluid in all three zones.”
Rediscovering his preseason form should be at the top of Timmins’ to-do list. This preseason was partially due to Timmins logging more time than usual at the Leafs’ practice facility this summer. Timmins worked with Leafs skating development consultant Paul Matheson to improve his explosiveness and continued to build strength during his time off the ice during the injury.
“We were able to maintain a lot of what we did in the offseason,” he said confidently Thursday. “(The injury) passed relatively quickly for me.”
Timmins looked different in the preseason than the defenseman who was dealing with occasional moments of hesitation and questionable decision-making in 2022-23. Timmins admitted that at his best, he had good reads and, perhaps most importantly, “good mental space.”
“We weren’t trying to do too much,” Timmins said. “I was letting the game take care of itself.”
acquisition that Having a version of Timmins in the lineup could be a boon for a Leafs team that doesn’t generate a ton of offense from the back end outside of Morgan Rielly.
With injuries to fellow right-shot defensemen Klingberg and Timothy Liljegren, Timmins should get enough playing time for the rest of the season to prove himself in the top six. He is never afraid to collaborate with the team’s development staff. Will this be an opportunity for Timmins to show the impact of all the development work? The fact that Keefe immediately committed Timmins to the power play spot, even though other options were limited, means the coaching staff will It suggests they want him to make the most of the opportunity. Simon Benoit will likely be left out of the lineup with Timmins added.
Timmins believes in this process. On Thursday, he claimed he’s less interested in how power play time affects his game and more interested in breaking out the puck well and defending well.
“I’ve done a lot of good work since coming to Toronto. I’m really happy with the development of my game,” Timmins said.
There was always a affability in his demeanor, which allowed him to remain patient as he grew older. Timmins looked comfortable and always had a smile on his face throughout Thursday’s practice, including a good-natured rant against Matthew Nyes, another member of the second power-play unit, who missed the net during a power-play drill. Ta.
Staying healthy will be a top priority for Timmins, too. He had suffered a serious knee injury and concussion in the past. In his five seasons as a pro, he has logged just 66 NHL games.
“Given my history, it’s been tough. I haven’t been playing as much as I’d like. But I had a solid foundation, so I’m hoping I can start off on the right foot,” Timmins said.
If Timmins can do just that and show improved defensive awareness as a result of his developmental period, the Leafs’ defense could end up being better.
Otherwise, the cap space the Leafs currently have will depend, of course, on whether Klingberg requires surgery and how much time he misses, but how management approaches the trade market. may change. Cap-strapped Treliving may have had to move some kind of sweet package, including prospects and draft capital, into a less desirable contract or release deal to add to the blueline. . But now, at least on paper, the cost of one or two defensemen who are probably still on Treliving’s shopping list may look different. Once Leafs management knows how much time Klingberg will miss, this newfound cap space could be used to buy a prospect as strong as Treliving might have gotten a few weeks ago, or even a draft pick. Does this mean that rights may no longer need to be added to any contract?
It’s never a bad thing for a coach or general manager to have options. It remains to be seen what these options will be.
When signing Klingberg in the offseason, Treliving acknowledged that the Leafs’ blue line was still a work in progress. It seems like we will start to see steady progress in the near future.
(Photo by John Klingberg: Dan Hamilton/USA Today)
