Ryan Reaves was hoping Joseph Woll was in earshot.
“I’ve never seen young goalies get days off like this when the team is out there grinding,” Reaves mused to media after Tuesday’s practice. “That’s the new NHL, I guess.”
Reaves and the rest of the Maple Leafs weren’t really surprised Woll stayed somewhere in the dressing room while the club worked out the day after the latest Woll-assisted win, a 5-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning.
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Head coach Craig Berube could use rookie Dennis Hildeby in one of the coming games, such as Wednesday against the Columbus Blue Jackets, but Woll has worked each contest of the team’s three-game winning streak, stopping 80 of 89 total shots.
Indications are that Monday’s rest was to keep him fresh for the Jackets and the Leafs would want Woll for Saturday in Ottawa, another Atlantic Division game in which they hope to extend their first-place lead.
“We have a 1A and 1B, in no particular order,” winger Reaves said of Woll and the injured Anthony Stolarz, who led the league with a .927 save percentage before minor knee surgery. Stolarz has just resumed skating on his own.
“Stolie was playing well, went down, and Woll kept going,” Reaves said. “He’s been light’s out for us since. The way the NHL is now, a lot of teams use two goalies and we’ll need both.”
Berube said Woll’s penchant for physical preparedness led to the decision to “pull back” from him practising in favour of a maintenance day.
“He works extremely hard, tries on every play,” Berube noted. “If he was out there today, he’s going to be competing on every puck. He’s at the level where he’s playing a lot (already a career-high 25 games) and needs his days.”
Also absent from practice were forwards Connor Dewar and Max Pacioretty, who both won’t face Columbus, Berube said. Dewar took a heavy hit in the Tampa game and has an upper-body issue. Pacioretty was scratched after getting an Auston Matthews’ friendly fire puck in the head Saturday in Montreal.
Reaves likely will replace Dewar, his first action since a highly scrutinized encounter with his opposite number, Canadiens enforcer Arber Xhekaj.
Seeking to fire up the lethargic Leafs from a 3-0 deficit at the time, the 38-year-old Reaves tried to goad Xhekaj. While like-minded scrappers usually engage, the latter refused, gesturing to the scoreboard trying to make Reaves look silly.
From that point, the Leafs scored seven unanswered.
“When you’re a younger guy and you do that to somebody who has been in the league that long, maybe that guy’s not going to give you (a fight) when you need one,” Reaves lectured. “Any time there’s a fight now, (it’s) somebody who needs momentum. If he needed momentum and asked me, I’d give it to him and expect it back. I’d have been obliged if he had done it there.
“But if you want to point at the scoreboard and get rattled off for seven, that’s tough luck.”
Much of the Leafs recent scoring is from star power. Matthews has goals in four straight games for the first time in this injury-hampered year, linemate Matthew Knies adding two more on Monday, Mitch Marner with two assists and three points and William Nylander with another breakaway goal.
Berube sees it all as an extension of his remarks earlier this week, that all his forwards are finding different ways to score from the tenets of the club’s defensive-oriented system.
“We were doing a good job of pushing through the neutral zone and creating offence that way,” Berube added Tuesday. “Willy’s breakaways and opportunities … everybody plays so tight on you now, you have to push out on people, be strong in your battles. Just getting pucks out of your zone doesn’t always have to be on the tape, but we’re hitting that slash guy a lot and it creates opportunities for us with people coming underneath.
“In the offensive zone, I think there’s a lot more movement, our defence is more active. We’re shooting a lot more pucks from the top through traffic and creating things that way. Our 1-3-1 set-ups and cycles look like they’re coming around and we’re working on them more (through a return to a semi-regular practice schedule as games thin out).”
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