The Maple Leafs have recalled Jhonas Enroth and loaned Antoine Bibeau to the AHL for some playing time with the Marlies this weekend.
That and more in your Saturday morning links.
Leafs Links
Leafs’ Marincin put on injured reserve (TorSun)
The suspected lower back trauma he suffered a week ago turned out to be more serious than first thought and he’ll be out the next four to six weeks. Marincin went backwards hard into the base of the boards in Boston last Saturday. “Initially, we were told it was nothing,” said head coach Mike Babcock. “Now it’s a lot more. It’s unfortunate it happened (but) somebody gets an opportunity because of it.”
Toronto Maple Leafs recall Jhonas Enroth from Marlies (Sportsnet)
The Maple Leafs reached back and recalled the No. 2 goaltender Friday, sending prospect Antoine Bibeau back to the AHL Marlies after just one start. Bibeau played well in his NHL debut (.929 save percentage) but lost 3-1 to the Colorado Avalanche Sunday. He has a 6-5-2 record and a .907 save percentage with three shutouts in 13 games with the Marlies this season. Enroth was waived less than two weeks ago after a dismal start to the season, registering an .872 save percentage in six appearances and losing all four of his starts — each one arriving on the second half of a back-to-back.leafs-recall-jhonas-enroth-marlies/”>
Frank Corrado happy for Peter Holland but laments living ‘in no man’s land’ (The Athletic)
“It’s frustrating now,” Corrado said. “When you don’t get to play for a month and a half, and you’ve played in one game all year, it takes its toll on you mentally… Yeah, you’re in the NHL. It’s not that the novelty has worn off; it’s just that it’s time to play. It’s time to have a career. I feel like the more I’m not playing, that’s food off my table. That’s kind of the way I see it right now.”
leafs/”>Maple Leafs prospect Bracco pumped to play in T.O. for WJC (TorSun)
At the start of the season, Jeremy Bracco got some sound advice from fellow Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick, Mitch Marner. It went a little bit like this: “He told me to do what he did last year in [the OHL],” Bracco says, grinning, after a morning skate with the Kitchener Rangers. “I was like, ‘OK, I’ll work on it.’” In other words, the fourth overall pick in 2015 told Bracco to light it up. Marner won the Memorial Cup and the CHL Player of the Year award last season with the London Knights, and he averaged more than two points per game, with 39 goals and 77 assists.
Toronto Maple Leafs’ Auston Matthews, on pace to break Wendel Clark’s rookie record, on a tear after month-long dry spell (National Post)
Matthews is on pace for 40 goals this season, which would eclipse Wendel Clark’s Leafs rookie record of 34 set during the 1985-86 season. He’s also producing at a 65-point pace, which would threaten Peter Ihnacak’s record of 66 points in a rookie season. Ihnacak was 25 years old at the time. What Matthews is doing is more special than both given the significant decrease in scoring today versus the wide-open game of the 1980’s.
Bobby Pulford: all-time Maple Leaf, and a power forward before they coined the phrase
Over the years there has been a lot of debate around the notion that getting into the NHL Hall of Fame is not as difficult as it is in other sports, and I would tend to agree. In fact, “The Rocket” himself (Maurice Richard) made that claim in a magazine article I read as a kid in the early 1960s, a few years after Rocket had retired. And one of the names that is tossed around on occasion that supposedly doesn’t belong in the Hall is Pulford’s. I see things differently.
