Report: Maple Leafs Will Continue To Look Internally To Manage Injuries, But Defense Upgrades Possible In The Future

The Toronto Maple Leafs will be without veteran defenseman Chris Tanev for at least the next three games, including Tuesday's contest against the Utah Mammoth, as the team placed the 36-year-old on IR retroactive to Oct. 10.

With that, he'll only be available to the Maple Leafs as early as Monday's game against the San Jose Sharks. But with no details being shared by head coach Jim Hiller, it's unclear how long Tanev will be out.

There's reason for concern given how his campaign last year went. He played just 11 games in 2025-26, dealing with multiple injuries throughout the season, including some spinal trauma and core muscle surgery.

But one area, among several others in the organization, that changed in the off-season was the team's sports performance department. The Maple Leafs invested in several people to support performance, recovery, and more, helping the team stay healthy, especially with many older veterans like Tanev.

"The Leafs are working through due diligence, doing some further testing on him," TSN's Chris Johnston reported. "This is going to be more of a standard for them when players get injured under this new performance staff." 

Again, it's not clear what Tanev's injury may be or how long he'll be sidelined for, but there is a sense of optimism.

"It's not known exactly what that time frame looks like, but I don't know that it's one that you have to jump to conclusions and assume it's going to be repeat of last season," Johnston said. "I think that there's a little more optimism around his situation that I'm sensing right now than what he went through last year with multiple injuries."

Aside from Tanev's absence for the next little while, even with him in the lineup, Toronto's blueline is a weakness on their roster. That's especially true for a team that's looking to get back into the playoffs, and in a division as competitive as the Atlantic Division.

However, with Tanev missing from the lineup and Oliver Ekman-Larsson missing practice on Monday (labelled as a maintenance day), the Maple Leafs believe they have the depth to deal with these situations internally, Johnston reported.

The team recalled 28-year-old Marshall Rifai to be with the team as their three-game road trip concludes.

But looking down the road, seeking moves to make upgrades is certainly a possibility for the Leafs.

"Now, bigger picture for sure," Johnston said. "We're going to continue talking about them, scouring the market for defensemen. It's really the one area of the roster that wasn't significantly touched, I would say, since John Chayka and Mats Sundin took over the hockey operations department. So, I think this will be something that stretches over a period of time in terms of trying to look for upgrades and improvements to that blueline."

As of Monday, Toronto has $4.925 million in salary cap space, with Max Domi, Dakota Joshua and Elvis Merzlikins on LTIR, according to PuckPedia.

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