TORONTO -- Timothy Liljegren was placed on long-term injured reserve by the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday with a high ankle sprain sustained Thursday in a 3-2 shootout loss to the Boston Bruins at TD Garden.
“He is going to miss significant time,” Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said Saturday.
The 24-year-old defenseman crashed awkwardly into the boards after falling during a race to retrieve a loose puck with Bruins forward Brad Marchand with 41 seconds remaining in the first period.
Liljegren required assistance to get back to the dressing room, struggling to put weight on his left leg.
The Maple Leafs, who are already without defensemen Jake McCabe (groin) and Conor Timmins (lower body), recalled defensemen Max Lajoie and Simon Benoit from the Toronto Marlies of the American Hockey League on Saturday.
Mark Giordano moved up and skated with John Klingberg at the morning skate, while Lajoie, who is expected to replace Liljegren, skated with William Lagesson. The Maple Leafs will host the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday (7 p.m. ET; CBC, SN360, SNO, SNW, SNP, MSG-B, NHLN).
“Moves pucks well, he’s played in the League before,” Keefe said about Lajoie. “Him and Lagesson have spent time together with the Marlies and a lot of time together through camp. Both he and Lagesson are guys who have played in the League before, so that’s positive. Lagesson has done a really good job for us coming in, we expect the same from Lajoie.”
The injury was met without any kind of physical response toward Marchand, which was addressed by the Maple Leafs as a team.
“I hated everything about it, I’ve addressed it,” Keefe said. “Just the response. In the moment some guys, you don’t quite know exactly what’s transpired and sometimes it’s hard to compute … it’s not what we want to be about. At times we’ve responded very well in those situations in the past but it’s about consistency though, so we’ve addressed it. Both players and myself, we talked about it in the intermission. Addressed it more since. We spent a good portion of the morning on it today.”
Forward Ryan Reaves, who was not on the ice at the time of the incident, said to expect a different response from the Maple Leafs the next time a similar situation occurs.
“It was addressed in the room,” Reaves said. “It’ll change going forward.”
Liljegren has one assist in 10 games and is averaging 17:55 of ice time per game.
Keefe said making do without several key defensemen comes down to collective improvement as a group.
“Play better,” Keefe said. “Play better as a team, play harder as a team, play tighter as a team. We went through this exact thing last season, and it actually ended up galvanizing our group and we had an unbelievable November, so we might as well do the same thing.”
McCabe and Timmins skated on their own prior to the morning skate Saturday. McCabe remains day to day, Timmins week to week.
“I think we learned a lot last year when we had a lot of guys on the back end miss time early in the season," captain John Tavares said, "and I think just playing a really good strong team game with everyone supporting one another, a five-man unit, six-man unit including our netminder. So just the importance of our team game and the structure within that, and allowing everyone to build confidence and feel connected throughout the group. The game just comes that much easier that way when we are all playing at a high level and playing connected.”
