Kyle Dubas met the media today to bring everyone up to date on John Tavares. As disclosed earlier, he has a knee injury, with a timeline of about 2 weeks to recover from, and a concussion with no timeline.  There are “no structural issues” with his neck and spine.

Dubas mentions many phone calls from the league and other teams and players offering best wishes.

When asked, Dubas won’t commit at all to Tavares returning in the playoffs.

Dubas discusses how the players feel a sense of vulnerability when they see a player suffer an injury like that, but he believes the team is handling this as well as possible.

This video, posted by the Leafs on their Youtube channel, does not contain his comments about the Toronto Sun cover. Chris Johnston transcribed it here:

The players and Sheldon Keefe also had some things to say this morning:

Key highlights:

  • Marner doesn’t think they were as quick as they can be in game one, and they need to adjust.
  • Holl, correctly I think, considers game one to have been too much transition, and not enough sustained offensive pressure.
  • Keefe believes they can handle the challenge of playing without Tavares, that many teams have to face this.
  • Keefe also says all the players need to be a little bit better.
  • Keefe repeats his comments from yesterday that they don’t have an abundance of options at the centre position.
  • Keefe expects Marlies players to join the extended roster, but he doesn’t name names. The Marlies season is now over.
  • Keefe says outright that Marner playing 27 minutes in a game is too much, but the circumstances led to it.  But don’t expect him to ever play less than 20 minutes./