Anthony Stolarz stood in the hallway outside the Maple Leafs’ temporary confines at TD Garden on the evening of Nov. 11, eating something from the postgame spread laid out for players.
Stolarz exited that night’s game against the Bruins after the first period for reasons that remain unexplained.
It wasn’t until the second intermission that the team even disclosed that Stolarz had suffered an injury. After the game, coach Craig Berube said he didn’t think it was serious, that Stolarz might even be available to play two nights later against the Kings.
That wasn’t to be, of course: Stolarz hasn’t played, or even been on the ice, in the more than five weeks since. His situation — his injury and timeline for return — has become an object of mystery.
The Leafs have revealed very few details about what exactly is going on with their No. 1 goaltender, the one they signed to a four-year extension during training camp.
The latest morsel of information came via Berube, who said on Tuesday morning that Stolarz would go see “somebody” for additional support. Left unsaid: who that somebody is, what they’re treating, why there’s been no “progress” after all this time and what exactly happened that night in Boston.
The only thing Berube would say is that Stolarz did not suffer a concussion.
Such is the general policy of injury disclosure with the Leafs under GM Brad Treliving these days. Hazy and vague, with rare exceptions.
It doesn’t need to be this way.
The Leafs can — and should — do better for their fans.
The team has two primary arguments for their secretive nature regarding injuries.
One, the NHL, unlike the NFL, NBA and MLB, has no rules mandating disclosure. The Leafs aren’t breaking any rules by saying next to nothing. And if their rivals aren’t going to reveal anything, why should they?
Why do the Carolina Hurricanes, say, get to know what’s up with Brandon Carlo if the Leafs don’t know what’s up with Jaccob Slavin?
Never mind that the Leafs, under different management, once disclosed this kind of information (relatively) freely and never suffered for it, at least in the regular season.
As recently as the 2022-23 season, when the team piled up 111 points (second-most in franchise history), injuries revealed to the fans included: a left knee injury for Morgan Rielly that would keep him out four to six weeks; an oblique strain with a two-week timeline for TJ Brodie; a rib injury that would keep Brodie out 10 games later on; and a knee sprain that would sideline Auston Matthews for a minimum of three weeks.
There’s also this: How much of an advantage do the Hurricanes really gain knowing why Carlo isn’t playing? How much of a disadvantage do the Leafs suffer, on the other hand, if they don’t have Slavin’s exact details?
The lack of direction from the league office is also beside the point.
The Leafs should be asking what’s best for their fans, their customers? And those fans would surely like to know what exactly is going on with Stolarz, the goalie who delighted them last season. Maybe that’s because they’re fans and fans tend to be interested in what’s going on with the team and its chances of making the playoffs and competing for a Stanley Cup. Or maybe it’s because they want to buy tickets to a game and would like to know who’s playing and who’s not.
Another argument the Leafs will make to defend this policy: They want to protect their players. If other teams know the nature of injuries, then they might take advantage and target them.
And while there may be some truth in that, it tends to become a catchall excuse for keeping everything secret, even the stuff that won’t be impacted by disclosure.
How, for instance, would an opposing team prey on Scott Laughton after he returned from a broken foot earlier this fall?
In the equally brutal world of the NFL, all injuries must be disclosed, including to quarterbacks, the most exposed position of all.
It can border on the absurd at times, the vagueness of it all.
As when Jake McCabe took a puck to the face in Montreal earlier this season and was deemed out for the game with an “upper-body” injury. Or when Laughton clearly took a Moritz Seider shot off the left foot in the preseason and was deemed out with a “lower-body” injury.
That tends to be all (or most of what) the Leafs will say with regard to injuries: upper or lower body.
The haziness has only hurt their credibility on these matters. It’s become that much harder to know what is actually going on with injured Leafs, to distinguish how full a picture of these matters Berube, the unofficial spokesman on these matters, is painting.
The team would argue that the situation is evolving in a lot of these cases. That they really did believe that Matthews’ mysterious issue last season was only of the day-to-day variety initially.
More details would help. The team could clarify these situations if they chose to and eliminate the kind of frenzied speculation bubbling around a lot of these situations — Matthews last season and Stolarz this season in particular.
This all seemed to start with Matthews and the still-undisclosed injury last fall that morphed from a day-to-day matter into something that required an unannounced trip to Germany and two separate absences totalling 15 games.
But even in the previous season, during the 2024 playoffs, notably, the team went to great lengths to hide the nature of William Nylander’s sudden unavailability for the start of a first-round series against the Bruins for what was only later revealed to be migraines.
Things have remained that way, for the most part, since.
Brandon Carlo underwent surgery on his foot on Dec. 3. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
There was the mysterious case of Carlo.
He played nearly 20 minutes on Nov. 13 against the Kings, missed practice the following day for what the team said was maintenance and then didn’t play in Chicago the following night with an injury that wasn’t disclosed.
Then, suddenly, he was just gone for weeks with no explanation until last week, a month after his last game. That explanation: Carlo underwent surgery on his foot on Dec. 3 and would be sidelined for another month.
Why not explain all that in real time? Why not provide some context for what caused Joseph Woll to exit a game in Carolina earlier this month? Or explain Chris Tanev’s situation? The Leafs’ best defenceman hasn’t played since Nov. 1 because of an injury that sure looked like a concussion, but may not be.
It’s not exactly true, either, that every team is doing this.
After Patrik Laine was injured in October, for example, the Montreal Canadiens revealed not only that he underwent surgery to repair a “core muscle injury.” They also disclosed who performed the surgery (Dr. Mark Zoland) and where (Lenox Hill Hospital in New York) and, crucially, how long Laine was expected to be out (three to four months).
Exactly the opposite of the Leafs’ initial approach with Carlo.
Kirby Dach was announced out for four to six weeks with a fractured foot. For Alex Newhook, it was a four-month timeline following surgery to repair a broken ankle.
A day after Florida Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov was injured during training camp, the team revealed that he underwent surgery on the ACL and MCL in his right knee and would miss seven to nine months.
Last week, the Tampa Bay Lightning announced that captain Victor Hedman would require an elbow procedure that would keep him out until February.
What was lost in the Leafs disclosing any of this kind of information? Why go backward and reveal less to fans who care so deeply, who have supported the team through so much?