Toronto Maple Leafs make 21 cuts
The Toronto Maple Leafs continued to trim their line-up on Sunday, cutting 21 players from their pre-season roster. The club is slowly piecing together the line-up they will start the season with in October.
The club released veteran Wayne Primeau, who was with the club on a pro try-out. The centre was with the squad last season, but was a healthy-scratch for most of the second half of the season. The cut is
likely to spell the end of Primeau’s career, as he failed get any contract offers over the summer.
Toronto also sent a plethora of youngsters back to their junior clubs for further development. Jesse Blacker of the Owen Sound Attack, Sam Carrick of the Brampton Battalion, Andrew Crescenzi of the Kitchener
Rangers and Brad Ross of the Portland Winter Hawks were all given another year with their respective juniors teams.
The Leafs also made moves sending a number of players to their American Hockey League affiliate the Toronto Marlies. Goaltenders Jussi Rynnas and Ben Scrivens will see time with the farm club this year. Meanwhile
defenseman Keith Aulie, Mike Brennan, Simon Gysbers, Korbinian Holzer and Juraj Mikus will make up the defence core. The forwards sent down were Jerry D’Amigo, Brayden Irwin, Marcel Mueller, Greg Scott, Robert Slaney, Ryan Hamilton, Joey Crabb, Alex Foster
and Darryl Boyce.
The string of cuts will mark the beginning or Marlies camp, as the club has two pre-season games coming up on the weekend.
The Leafs have now trimmed their club to 30 and are likely to make additional cuts before the end of the week.
Along with the starters from last year the club is still taking a hard look at Nazem Kadri, Tim Brent, Jay Rosehill, Mike Zigomanis, Brett Lebda, Danny Richmond, Matt Lashoff and James Reimer.
The Leafs are coming off a string of disappointing seasons and are looking to rebound.
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