NASHVILLE \u2014 Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube is making more changes in the hopes of sparking his struggling team.<\/p>\n
Max Domi will not play against the Nashville Predators. Domi is in the middle of a difficult season, with a 33 percent five-on-five on-ice goals-for percentage, the lowest among all Leafs regulars.<\/p>\n
In his place, Berube is turning to Matias Maccelli. The Leafs winger has not played since a Nov. 28 loss against the Washington Capitals.<\/p>\n
Berube last scratched Domi during that same game against the Capitals, making his absence against the Predators his second night out of the lineup this season. Domi is in the second year of a four-year contract with a $3.75 AAV and has been the subject of trade rumours throughout this season. He has been given opportunities on the Leafs\u2019 top line, but with just three goals in 32 games, he has since fallen to the fourth line.<\/p>\n
Berube is clearly looking for solutions for a team that has failed to play to its potential of late. The Leafs coach said before Saturday\u2019s game that changes would be coming to an ugly Leafs power play, which went 0-for-5 against the Capitals on Thursday for the first time all season, but declined to say what those changes would look like. Mixing up the two power-play units feels like the most likely outcome.<\/p>\n
The lineup changes don\u2019t end at Domi and Maccelli: Calle J\u00e4rnkrok is entering for Steven Lorentz in a fourth-line role and Philippe Myers will play on the bottom defence pair for Henry Thrun.<\/p>\n
Berube will have Easton Cowan play on the top line alongside Auston Matthews and Matthews Knies, rewarding the rookie for his consistently energetic play.<\/p>\n
William Nylander, who has come under fire for his lack of production lately, will join John Tavares on the second line alongside Maccelli.<\/p>\n
Berube wants his team to attack games more, having identified \u201ctentativeness\u201d on and off the puck as the root cause of their recent losses.<\/p>\n
The Leafs have lost three of their last four games, including a 4-0 loss against the Capitals on Thursday that was undoubtedly their worst game of the season.<\/p>\n
Toronto is now just one point out of last place in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, we\u2019re definitely down, right?\u201d Berube said on Friday. \u201cThey\u2019re not where we want to be, and neither are we as coaches. We are all in it together. I just said, \u2018Guys, we are in the NHL. Let\u2019s have some fun.\u2019 But we are still OK. We have to string some wins together and put ourselves in a better spot, but you love this game, right? We all do. That\u2019s why we are in it, and that\u2019s why we do what we do. You have to enjoy it, and you have to have that attitude going into tomorrow. Go out and play. Play the game. You guys have played it forever. You can\u2019t be tentative.\u201d<\/p>\n
While these changes are justified, given Domi\u2019s poor play of late, the lineup moves don\u2019t address how little the Leafs have gotten from their top players, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE \u2014 Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube is making more changes in the hopes of sparking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99,1788],"class_list":{"0":"post-361650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}