{"id":434602,"date":"2026-01-29T17:27:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T17:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/434602\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T17:27:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T17:27:21","slug":"ex-employee-blames-organizations-mistake-for-toronto-injuries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/434602\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-employee blames organization’s mistake for Toronto injuries"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Toronto Maple Leafs are eight points out of a playoff spot<\/a> heading into Thursday’s action. In the first year of the post-Mitch Marner era, things have not gone well. The Maple Leafs have dealt with a bevy of injuries this season. The Athletic’s Jonas Siegel reported on the lack of a sports science department and the connection between that and the injuries. Former Maple Leafs director of sports science, Dr. Jeremy Bettle, connected those dots.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s gone back to being a traditional hockey club now.\u201d Bettle said, per Seigel, \u201cIt\u2019s back to how it was before I arrived. It\u2019s like it never happened. It\u2019s absolutely why they have more injuries. You cannot have injury-free seasons the way they\u2019re currently set up. And that\u2019s no knock on anyone in particular \u2014 it just doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bettle was hired by the Maple Leafs in 2015, according to Siegel. After he left for the Anaheim Ducks in 2019, Rich Rottenberg came in as the director of sports science. When Brendan Shanahan left the post as president of the Leafs, ex-Toronto GM Kyle Dubas brought Rottenberg to the Pittsburgh Penguins. This season is the first since 2014-15 that the Leafs have not had a director of sports science.<\/p>\n

The Maple Leafs have had two players play all 53 games this season: veterans John Tavares and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. William Nylander had missed one game due to injury<\/a> before this season. He is currently on the shelf with a lower-body injury and has missed a total of 16 games this season.<\/p>\n

The Maple Leafs have fallen out of the playoff race, but a hot stretch could bring them back before the stretch run. Despite their incredible talent, they have not stayed healthy and have not won games. It could cost Craig Berube his job as head coach, but it may not be his fault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Maple Leafs are eight points out of a playoff spot heading into Thursday’s action. In the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[5,20,5172,4,7901,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-434602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-maple-leafs","10":"tag-mapleleafs","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-nhl-injury","13":"tag-toronto","14":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","15":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115979566892834806","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}