Toronto Maple Leafs: Does Travis Dermott’s injury change off-season plan?

The Toronto Maple Leafs announced an injury update for John Tavares then dropped a larger bombshell with Travis Dermott’s diagnosis.

The Toronto Maple Leafs medical staff are in for a busier off-season than they might have anticipated. Zach Hyman had successful surgery on his torn ACL which he suffered against the Boston Bruins and is expected to miss the first month of the season.

It didn’t end there as the team announced that John Tavares will not play for Team Canada at the World Hockey Championships because of an oblique injury. The team is expected to provide an update but this shouldn’t keep him out of training camp.

Unfortunately, there was worse news shared not too long after as Travis Dermott‘s shoulder injury appears to be worse than previously expected. The defenceman initially suffered the injury on Feb. 27 and missed around a month but now he will have surgery which is going to take next six months to heal.

The tricky part about these injuries is they take time to heal completely, this was probably a situation where they were trying to see if Dermott could play with it but you could tell he was not the same when he was back in the lineup.

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Finding a player to take Hyman’s spot won’t be a major issue for the Leafs but Dermott’s situation is a bit more complicated. It was expected that the team was going to have to make moves with Jake Gardiner expected to be gone and potentially Nikita Zaitsev.

In any case like this, teams look to their depth to help fill the holes in cases like this and in the Leafs case, they made sure to have options going into next season. Acquiring Jake Muzzin certainly helps because he is around for next season plus they have Calle Rosen and Andreas Borgman who can step in as well.

Both Rosen and Borgman should be capable of stepping in on the left side but one thing to remember is that Dermott spent time on the right side. This has been an area the Leafs have been trying to address for a while and it should be the top priority this summer.

This could be a situation where Timothy Liljegren gets a better chance to make the team out of camp and it wouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin have been asked to play a bigger role for the Toronto Marlies this season and they have answered the call.

Sure the Leafs have Justin Holl who deserves a chance to show what he has to offer but the Leafs should want Liljegren to step in and take a job. As good as Sandin has looked this season, that would still be too big of a jump for a player who just turned 19 and has only one year of professional experience.

Kyle Dubas should be looking at any option he can to give the team more options and he started to do that with American-Finnish defenceman Teemu Kivihalme but he should be looking for more proven options. This is obviously easier said than done but not impossible either.

What do you think the Leafs do with Dermott injury? Should they try to trade for help, look at free agency or hope someone from the Marlies can step up? Let us know in the comments below.