Holl gets another shot to prove his worth as Maple Leafs shuffle deck again

TORONTO — After a tumultuous two-week stretch that saw him relegated to the press box as trade rumours began to swirl, defenceman Justin Holl will return to the Toronto Maple Leafs lineup when the club takes on the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday.

The 29-year-old’s been here before. His rise from press-box regular to everyday NHLer is well-documented, culminating in a key role last year as part of the Maple Leafs’ primary shutdown pair. It’s that ascent that made this most recent slide back to the fringes so tough.

“You know what it feels like to be a big part of the team, and you want to be a big part of the team. So that part’s difficult,” Holl said after practice Wednesday. “But at the same time, you’ve got to control what you can and maintain a positive attitude. That’s pretty much all you can do.”

Returning to his usual right-side spot alongside Jake Muzzin, Holl’s been granted another shot to show how impactful he can be as the blue-line corps enters Wednesday’s game on the heels of a performance that left much to be desired. Head coach Sheldon Keefe said he didn’t expect Holl to be sidelined as long as he was, the absence extended by a five-game win streak and some fine play from young Timothy Liljegren, but what transpired Monday in a 5-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings opened the door to another reshuffling of the deck.

Now, it’s time for Holl to prove his worth. And the club’s expectations for him are simple.

“Just to be the Justin Holl that we’ve come to expect. That’s it,” Keefe said. “He’s a good player, he’s a guy that’s done very well for us. He’s an important part of our team. … As I’ve told him before, my hope is that this is a bit of a reset for him, and when he comes out he’s refocused and we don’t have to revisit him sitting out for this period of time again.”

There are particular details in Holl’s sights that can help him get back to being the player he’s proven he can be, though. Holl and Keefe discussed as much after the defenceman was first taken out of the lineup late last month.

“Just small things here and there, small things that make a big difference,” Holl said. “Killing plays in the neutral zone, playing with better structure in the O zone, coming down the walls hard and being aggressive in that sense. … There’s definitely things that I can look at and point to, minor adjustments and things that I can do better. There’s always things you can do better. It’s always a work in progress.”

In Holl’s absence over the past two weeks, the story of the blue line’s been young Liljegren, who’s taken his opportunity and run with it, showing a level of poise and instinct not previously seen from him at this level.

Though part of the problem Monday — exposed by former teammate Trevor Moore on the Kings’ first goal of the night — Liljegren’s shown enough promise over the past five outings to hold onto his spot in the lineup. The 22-year-old stuck with fellow young gun Rasmus Sandin at Tuesday’s practice, while T.J. Brodie returned to the top pairing alongside Morgan Rielly, leaving Travis Dermott on the outside looking in:

Part of the thinking behind dropping Dermott from the lineup and keeping the kids together was simply an effort to balance out finding a spot for Holl and keeping some continuity throughout the blue-line group, Keefe said. But the performance of that group over this recent stretch also showed Keefe something novel about his defence corps and the flexibility the coaching staff has to work with.

Flexibility up front has been key to sparking the team’s offence when their top weapons were sputtering early on in the year, the ability to mix and match Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares a key factor in helping those four make some magic over the club’s recent win streak. So too will go the defensive alignments, it seems, with the coaching staff finding some newfound room to shake things up should the group fall into another slump.

“What we’ve learned as we’ve gone through this exercise over the last five games is that we have seven defencemen that can play, that can help us,” Keefe said. “And that’s a very positive thing for us. We’ve got guys that can play with different people — we didn’t really have that last season. We had a lot of continuity throughout the lineup, throughout the season. And early on here we’ve mixed things up, some that we’ve been forced to do, some that we’ve done ourselves. And I think that will serve us well as we go down the line.”

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There’s still more to be desired from the blue-line corps as a whole, surely, not only in protecting Jack Campbell from onslaughts like the one he endured Monday, but in chipping in at the other end of the rink, too. After some early flashes to start the year, the Maple Leafs’ secondary scoring has all but dried up over the past couple weeks, the team’s last 14 goals coming from the core four up front.

The onus will be on the bottom nine to carry more of that load moving forward, but given the calibre of talent the team has on defence, they’re hoping there are some more goals to be had there, too.

“It’s something that we’ve looked at over the last year or so — how can we more consistently get our defence involved?” Keefe said. “We’ve got some guys there that have the capability of scoring when they get opportunities, and it hasn’t gone in yet. So we’ve got to stay looking for ways to engage our defence, get them involved offensively.

“Sometimes for the D, it’s not even so much the actual goal going in the net, but can you create a goal for somebody else by shooting the puck off the goaltender, shooting the puck off a stick — those kinds of things create more chaos, and we think overall as we get to that, then more offence will follow.”

NOTES: Tavares and Ondrej Kase were absent Tuesday after sustaining injuries during Monday’s loss to the Kings. Both are day-to-day but will travel to Philadelphia with the team, and will be game-time decisions Wednesday, according to Keefe. … Goalless through 13 games after a career-high 15 last season, Nick Ritchie stayed out after Tuesday’s skate to work through some shooting drills with the Maple Leafs’ skills coaches (and David Kampf) as he looks to rediscover his scoring touch. Ritchie skated alongside Marner and Alexander Kerfoot during practice. … Jack Campbell will make his fifth straight start Wednesday against the Flyers, per Keefe. His last break between the pipes came on Oct. 30. While the team is focused on managing his workload, with Petr Mrazek back on the sidelines with a groin injury, Campbell will again be tasked with carrying the bulk of the goaltending duties moving forward.